1/J f( iV>v^ y^^x^ x /^a /h ^^^^^^^^r^^^^- ^) A DOUBTING HEART. A DOUBTING HEART. BY ANNIE KEAEY, A'uTHOB OF "CASTLE DALY," "OLDBUKY," ETC. En %hrct Volumes. VOL. I. MACMILLAN AND CO. 1879. [All Rights reserved.'] CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS. tZ3 v. I 3 i > d£ x This book was the work of the last year of its £! Author's life. It is now given to the public exactly Qj as it passed from her hands, except for a few verbal .I corrections which were left for others to make. One scene only remained incomplete, and this link was supplied at the Author's request by her friend Mrs. Macquoid, to whom my thanks are due for the care and skill with which she has fulfilled her task of love. E. K. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. IDLE TEAKS CHAPTER III. IDUNA'S GROVE PAGE 1 CHAPTER II. THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 44 59 CHAPTER IV. AIR THRONE 84 CHAPTER V. A fe'JLDEN SMILE ........ 106 Vlll CONTENTS. PROS AND CONS CHAPTER VI. • • • • • PAGE . 139 CHAPTER VII. A TURNING-POINT i • • • 100 CHAPTER VIII. SPIDERS AND NORNIR's THREADS • • • 1 — CHAPTER IX. FORTUNATUS'S PURSE 222 CHAPTER X. TWILIGHT • ••••• 2-40 CHAPTER XT. HORACE KIR KM AN 261 CHAPTER XI 1. ROUND IHE FIRE . 23 A DOUBTING HEART. CHAPTER I. IDLE TEAES. Tears, idle tears — I know not what they mean. << Well, Alina, I really think that at last I have earned a few minutes' rest." The speaker of this sentence was not, as might be supposed, a weary sempstress in an attic, hushing the click of her machine, as it completed the last stitch in her long, long day's tale of work, or a washerwoman in a cellar wringing the soap-suds from her wrinkled arms, or a governess, whose charges had just been borne off to bed. It was a handsome, matronly lady, in a black velvet dress, who, suiting her action to her words, sank down into a well-cushioned chair by a glowing fire in a London drawing-room. The last visitor had been shown out, the footman had disappeared with the afternoon tea- tray, the doors of the inner drawing-room were shut, and VOL. I. •2 A DOUBTING HEART. the curtains drawn across; but there was something' beyond even these tokens of quiet, that combined to fill the room just then with a subtle atmosphere of repos . There was a suggestion, though one could not precisely say where it lurked, that this delightful stillness succeeded a commotion of some sort. It might be given by an unusually festive arrangement of the furniture of the room, or by occasional sounds of hurrying feet and clacking tongues that came up from the lower regions. Alma read it most plainly in the radiant self-satisfaction that shone in her mother's face, and seemed to surround her whole person with an aura of congratulation and conscious well-doing. Only for an instant did her lace cap touch the back of her chair, the next, her head w erect again, and her face turned to her daughter with an alert expression on it, which told Alma that the disc; sion of yesterday's events, that had been going on since morning, and of which she herself was sick at heart, ¥ about to be opened again in some new phase. "Do you know, my dear Alma/' Lady Rivers began, " I really can't yet take in the thought that only yester- day at three o'clock Constance left us — Constance and her husband. Now the excitement is all over, we shall begin to miss the dear child dreadfully. I wonder I don't feel it more, but of course I shall now that all is over." IDLE TEARS. 3 " I liope not, mamma." "But I shall. A mother must feel the loss of her daughter, however satisfactory the cause of the separation may be. Do you know. Alma, I fancied Lady Forest was a little surprised that the leave-taking between myself and Constance passed so quietly. She cried when she said f Good-bye ' to her son, I observed, but then she is a widow ; I am sure I hope she won't argue, from my self-control, that Constance is not a great loss to me. I hope it won't give a wrong impression about how that lovely creature is regarded in her own home. I really don't know how it happened. I am sure my feelings are keen enough ; but yesterday morning was such a whirl, and just as the travellers were starting, Preston came to me with a teasing question about the arrangements for the evening. I was obliged to attend to him, or nothing would have been as it should be." "Lady Forest is differently circumstanced, you see, mamma ; she can afford to have feelings on public occa- sions, and let things take their course. She is not on promotion as we are." " I should be very much grieved if I thought Constance was in any danger of being looked down upon by the people she is going among. I have been doing my very utmost ever since I saw how things were likely b 2 4 A DOUBTING HEART. to turn out, to give the Forests the right impression about all our connections. I have given your father all the hints I could, to prevent his making unfortunate allusions, as he does sometimes, and I have gone against my own feelings and run the risk of offending old friends, for the sake of keeping all our entertainments lately, as nearly as possible, to their set. My own feelings would have led me to ask Emmie West to be one of the brides- maids, but I refrained, from fear of giving theirs the smallest shock." u I wonder what sort of feelings those are that would be shocked at the sight of Emmie West ? " " Lady Forest is very inquisitive, and might have asked questions. As it was, I think she must have been struck with the fact that the person of most consequence in the room was a friend on our side, quite unconnected with them. I wonder whether your father talked at all to Lord Anstice. I rather thought he would have pro- posed his health, but he did not. Do you suppose Lord Anstice was satisfied with the amount of attention he received, Alma ? M " I did not ask him, mamma ; but I don't suppose he came here to talk to papa, or to have his health drunk either." " Alma, have you any idea that he came for any other IDLE TEAES. 5 reason than because lie was asked ? You will tell me, I am sure, if you have/' "He did not come for the reason that has just shot into your head, dear mother, I assure you, so put it away as quickly as you can. It was all a joke to him. His cousiu, whom we do know intimately, and whom we did not ask, saw the invitation we sent to him whom we knew very little, and ordered him to accept it. My clairvoy- ance does not go farther than that. I can't make up my mind how much good-nature there was in Wynyard Anstice' s bestirring himself to secure us the presence of a live earl at our first wedding, or how far it was done in pure scorn. Lord Anstice did as he was bid, and is only disappointed that we are all so like the people he sees every day, that coming to our wedding has given him nothing new to talk about. If we had been vulgar on the surface, so that he could see it, he would have been quite satisfied with his morning's entertainment." "Keally, Alma, I wonder how you can talk in that cold-blooded way. If Wynyard Anstice has been repre- senting us to his cousin as proper subjects for ridicule, I can only say he makes a most unworthy return for all the kindness I showed him in old times, when your brothers used to bring him from school to spend holidays with us. I can't believe such a thing of him, however.' )> 6 A DOUBTING HEART. " And you need not, mamma. I am quite as sure as you can be, that Mr. Anstice has never spoken disparag- ingly of us to anyone, and I sincerely believe he meant to do you a pleasure by sending his cousin here yesterday. Perhaps he thought it would please me too; I don't know." " Then you should not say such misleading thi: :y dear, making one uncomfortable for nothing." "You are right, mamma, I should not." The conversation seemed to have come to a standstill, as it was apt to do when Wynyard Anstice's name got into any talk between the mother and daughter. Alma, who was much given to tracing effects to their causes, was just beginning to wonder how t! name came to be spoken so often — seeing that her own determination, and, as she believed, her mother's, was to keep it from ever being spoken at all: was it really much in her secret thoughts, that it forced itself to her tongue without her will's leave ? — when the thread of her- self -questioning was broken by the entrance of the servant with the evening letters. A foreign one, ad- dressed to Alma, fixed her mother's eyes, as well as her own. "From Constance," exclaimed Lady Rivers, leaning forward in her chair, the self-satisfaction passing from IDLE TEARS. 7 her face as a flash, of true mother-hunger came for a moment into her eyes. " Be quick and open it, Alma ; there will be something for me inside. What ! not a line — well, read — what does the sweet child say ? Is she comfortable and happy ? " " There is not much; you had better read it, mamma ; it is chiefly directions about sending on her boxes/' said Alma, as she handed a sheet, with a few lines scribbled on it, to her mother. " And there is nothing more ? Alma, are you sure ?" said Lady Rivers, after a moment's silence, during which her heart, deadened and choked with world dust as it was, had been rent with a sore pang. ' ' You are sure there is no slip of paper inside the envelope with a more private word to me or you ? This tells us nothing." " It is all there is ; and, mamma, I am very sorry to see that you are so disappointed; but I think Constance is right : it would not do for her to begin writing private words to me, or even to you, now that she is Constance Forest. She cannot have anything really interesting to tell us, so she had much better hold her tongue." " My dear, I had a great deal to say to my mother the day after my wedding." " You, mamma ! Yes." The tone in which this was said carried so much 8 A DOUBTING HEART. suggestion with it, that Lady Rivers sat upright in her chair, and folded her hands in her lap preparatory to answering it. "My dear Alma, I wish you would get out of the habit of insinuating things. I don't think you can mean it, but really your manner of speaking of Constance's engagement ever since it took place, and now of her marriage, would lead anyone who heard you to suppose that it was something forced upon her, instead of being her own deliberate choice, as you well know to have been the case." "No, mamma, I don't mean to throw any blame of the kind on you ; I beg your pardon if I have given that impression. I know that Constance chose her lot herself with her eyes open, and I really think she has taken what will suit her best : but, all the same, I doubt whether her thoughts about it just now will bear discussion with you or me, and I think she is wise to take the silent com and work it into the best shape she can by herself." " I can't see why she should not be radiantly happy and thankful to me, who have done so much for her, and by my exertions (for this is the case, Alma) enabled her to gain tho position she is best suited for. Sir John Forest may not be as clever as your father or so agreeable as Wynyard Anstice M IDLE TEARS. 9 "There is no need to bring his name into the dis- cussion, mamma." " Certainly not, except that you and your brothers have made so much more of him than he deserves ; but, as I was saying, it is an enviable position Constance has gained, and I do think it is rather hard on me, who have toiled night and day for all your advancement, that when anyone of you succeeds you should grudge me the satis- faction of knowing you are content." ' ' Dear mother, it is hard, but I think the fruit of the tree we are all of us busy gathering has that kind of taste. Constance has got her apple of Sodom, and it is a very handsome one to look at; we had better not insist on knowing exactly what she finds inside it, I think." " My dear Alma, at least I hope you will keep such reflections for home use." (C You may depend on that, mamma ; and after to-day, on this subject at least, I don't think you will hear any more of them. You must please forgive me if I have made you uncomfortable, but you know, now that I have lost Constance, there is no one else to whom I can safely grumble on home subjects. However, I have done now, mamma. Let us turn to the other letters." A heap of invitations and notes of congratulation were examined, discussed, and put aside to be answered later, 10 A DOUBTING HEART. and then Alma held up two thick letters to her mother's notice. " One is from Agatha from her convent, and the other from Aunt West : shall I read them aloud to you ? ft Lady Kivers sank back in her chair with a look of real uneasiness and oppression now. ft I don't think I can bear either to-night/' she said ; " they must keep for a few hours. Whatever Agatha has found to say about her sister's marriage, I know it will be something to give me pain ; and the last time she wrote she signed herself, ' Sister Mary of Consolation/ as if to show how completely she had cut herself off from her own family. You m not readily believe it of me, Alma, but I could hardly get the thought of Agatha out of my head all yesterday, the bitter thought of her estrangement from me : and vou would have me suppose that I have lost Constance, too, in another way." u I am sorry I said so much, mamma, for I am sure Constance will give you all the satisfaction out of her married life she can j but how about Aunt West's letter ?'*. " Eead it to yourself, and tell me by-and-by if there is anything that needs an answer. It can hardly be a pleasant letter. Of course your poor aunt must feel aggrieved, for I really have been obliged to neglect the Wests of late, and it is unfortunate that it should have happened so soon after the death of the little boy IDLE TEARS. 11 "which she took so much to heart. I am sure I felt for her at the time, but when, soon after, this affair of Constance's came on, I could not help my time and thoughts being greatly taken up. Lately I have not dared even to mention the name of West before your father, for fear he should take it into his head to insist that Emmie and Harry, and perhaps half-a-dozen more of them, should be asked to the wedding. Luckily your father never thinks of things unless they are actually brought before him. Of course I can't exactly explain to your poor aunt how it has been, or tell her I am deter- mined to make up for my seeming neglect by doing all we can for them now." " If they will let us." ' ' Ah, yes ; Mr. West's temper is a great hindrance to the whole family, and poor Emmeline has always given way far too much to him. I think, even with all their misfortunes, she might with spirit have kept up the credit of the family better. I don't think I should ever have allowed children of mine to live in a house, the best rooms of which were let out to lodgers; that degradation, that last fatal step, I think, I should have had resolution to spare my family." " Even with Mr. West for a husband. Mamma, what was Aunt Emmeline like when she was young — I don't 12 A DOUBTING HEART. mean as to looks — I can imagine that well enough ; but, in short, how did she ever come to marry Mr. West ? w " My dear, things looked very differently then from what they do now. When we two sisters were engaged about the same time, it was I who was thought to be doing the imprudent thing, and, so to speak, rather throwing myself away. Emnieline's match was con- sidered a very good one — the junior partner in an old London mercantile house. I can remember how my mother used to explain it to our visitors, and the touch of mortification I felt at the few words that came to my share. ' Mr. Rivers is considered a clever man/ my mother would say apologetically, ' and though promotion is slow at the Bar, poor Agatha has made up her mind to take her chance with him.' No one could have foreseen then how affairs would tarn out, or the altered position we two sisters should stand in towards each other by the time our children were grown up." M So poor Aunt Emmeline has not even the satisfaction I always credited her with — of having a disinterested love match to look back upon." " You do so jump to conclusions, Alma. I never said your aunt did not love Mr. West when she married him. Of course she did, and was flattered by his choice of her, as well as very thankful to give such a triumph to her IDLE TEARS. 13 <> father and mother, who had not had much prosperity in their early lives, I can tell you. She made them happy in their old age, and I often tell her the reflection should be a greater support to her in her misfortunes than I fear it is. At all events, she has a right to look for a like return from her own daughter." " Poor little Emmie, I hope you won't impress that obligation too strongly upon her, mamma ; she has burdens enough already, and had better let the matri- monial one wait a while. It is all very strange. Now I think of it, I can remember stories of Agatha's and Frank's childhood which always struck me as investing the Wests with quite a different relationship to ourselves from anything that Constance and I ever saw. I have felt dimly, but never realised, that they were the great people in those days, and that some strange jugglery must have taken place to alter the perspective so." "No one can say, my dear, that prosperity has changed my feelings ; it has only laid fresh duties upon me, and of course your poor aunt Emmeliue's duties are changed too." " As far as we are concerned, the life in Saville Street has faded into a dim background, which brings out all the sharp points of our prosperity, with different effects on the minds of the beholders — very different effects." 14 A DOUBTING HEART. " You need not remind me of that, Alma ; it is never far from my thoughts, and you cannot wonder if I feel very little disposed to throw you younger ones much under Aunt Emmeline's influence. I never can forget that it was after spending a month in Saville Street that Agatha first began to talk to me about her distaste of the world, and attraction toward sacred poverty, and to put forth the extraordinarv views that have landed her where she is now." (( Aunt West is not responsible, however, for the direction Agatha's enthusiasm has taken ; she is quite as much puzzled at it as you are ; and to set against Agatha's convent, in the scale of obligation between us and the Wests, you must put yesterday's wedding. You may not be aware of it, but it was after an afternoon spent in Saville Street that Constance made up her mind to throw over young Lawrence for all the dances she had promised him at old Lady Forest's ball, and forced herself to give Sir John the smile that settled his destiny for ever afterwards. I saw it all, and shall always maintain that if the atmo- sphere in the Wests' little breakfast-room that day Lad been a whit more tolerable, and the boys' manners just a shade more civilised, young Lawrence would have won the day, and been the bridegroom at Constance's wedding yesterday." IDLE TEAES. 15 " Alina, what reckless talk ! liow can you allow yourself to indulge in it now ? " " Just tliis once more, mamma. As I said before, I have no one but you to grumble with, and after to-night I shall have so accustomed myself to the new state of affairs as not to care to talk about it. But I have done already. I am going to read the letters." The mere outside of tlaese seemed to have effectually quelled Lady Rivers's activity, for she at last leaned back in her chair, and shaded her eyes with her hand, not to see Alma's face as she read the closely-written sheets slowly by the firelight. The flicker rose and fell, bringing out all manner of beautiful lights and shades on her sheeny silk dress, on the coils of soft light hair that lay low on her neck, and on a face, turned towards the flames, that was never hard to read, and that some people thought worthy of a good deal of study. Some people — others were apt to raise the question whether Alma Rivers would have passed for a beauty if the loveliness of her two sisters had not somehow involved her in a halo of ad- miration and observation that blinded the public eyes to her actual claims. And then would follow a criticism of features which demolished all her pretensions to the regular beauty they inherited from their mother, by showing how much likeness to her father there was in her spirited face. 16 A DOUBTING HEAET. It was almost ridiculous, people said, to catcli under a wreath of flowers and braided hair, a resemblance to those strongly - marked characteristic features which political caricatures and illustrated journals had fami- liarised everybody with, and had held up again and again to public admiration or contempt. It really did make the homage paid to Alma as a reigning beauty almost absurd. But the homage continued to be paid through a second season when Lady Rivers' s energetic management had taken her daughters everywhere ; and there was one at least of her admirers willing to allow that it was just those irregularities of form and flashes of expression to which other people objected, that gave her face its conquering charm, and made it the one beautiful face in the world for him. Alma let the letters fall into her lap when she had read them, and sat with her hands clasped round her knees, looking into the fire, for a long time. There w perfect stillness at last, and the room was full of the scents of hothouse flowers, and of a ruddy fire-glow in which it was luxury to sit and dream, and there was, it must be confessed, a kind of luxury of sadness in the reverie to which Alma gave way. A saduess which was very far indeed from being pain, though, as the thought- rose, large round tears gathered in Alma's beautiful eyes, IDLE TEARS. 17 and made marks on the sheeny dress as they fell. She fancied herself very unhappy, for she had no experience which taught her the great gulf that lies between imagi- native sorrows which can estimate the pathos of their own pain, and those vital ones which strike at the very root of thought ; and she believed herself just now to have come to a point in her life when a great many cherished illusions must be parted with, and a reality she was not prepared for embraced. Henceforth, she was saying to herself, there would be much of solitude in her life, and if any important decision had to be made she must make it alone ; and, what was worse, without any clear principles or even definite wishes to shape her determination upon. She had, she told herself, grown out of many splendid hopes of her youth, and the failure consisted rather in that she was disenchanted with herself than with her old ideals. The objects she had longed for might even be near, ready for her to take ; but she doubted very much her own strength to choose them now, or rather to be satisfied with them when chosen. Was it strength or weakness, reasonableness or folly ? she asked herself with a touch of self-contempt, which made her see the desirableness of opposite goods so strongly that she could not heartily wish for anything; or was she really at twenty so dusty and dried up with the vol. i. c 18 A DOUBTING HEART. worldliness slie liad imbibed from her childhood as to have no power of feeling vividly, only this horrible power of tliinlring, of weighing everything in the balance, and finding it wanting ? Why had Agatha deserted her ? Agatha, through whose imagination she had been used to look at the world, who had invested the amusements and pursuits they had shared together with some- thing that made them worth living for. Why had Agatha, suddenly at the end of one month of absence, come back translated as it were into a new world, the entrance-gate to which was for ever shut to Alma? Why . had she deliberately stripped off the halo, she had herself given, from all their aims and pleasures, pronouncing them hollow and unsatisfying, and then stepped out into a sphere whose pure, cold, dazzling air Alma felt she could not breathe? Her hand strayed once during these thoughts to Agatha's letter lying on her lap, but she did not take it up. It was no use. It was too far off from her to be any help. The inward spiritual experiences it treated of were, for her, too unreal to have any comfort in them. Tears of real pain, but of the pathetic bearable sort still, came to her eyes as she murmured to herself : " For this alone on Death 1 wreak The wrath that garners in my heat He put our lives so far apart. We cannot hear each other speak." IDLE TEARS. 19 Was the misfortune less when something else than death did this ? when the body was left and the audible voice, and it was the soul that had gone too far off for thought to pass between it and those it had left ? What silence was there so terrible as the silence that comes between souls that can no longer make each other under- stand, however loud they speak, or however closely and lovingly they whisper in the ear ? For ever, Alma said to herself, must this silence reign between herself and her best-loved sister ; and now Constance, her nursery com- panion, who had clung to her trembling a few hours ago, had been borne off — rather by the course of events, it seemed, than her own free will — into this unknown world of matrimony, to which certainly love had not given her a golden key. How would she fare in it ? Was hers the substantial real world, and Agatha's only shadow ; or was it just the other way ? Was there a real world possible for those who, having tasted of the Sodom apples, had lost the power of distinguishing substance from shadow ? Alma smiled with a little scorn of her self-scorn, as she asked the question, and then proceeded to justify it by a rapid survey of the lives she knew best — even Aunt West's, robbed of the spice of romance she had credited it with, beginning under false expectations, and ending in gloom — her mother's, which to outsiders looked such c 2 20 A DOUBTING HEART. a brilliant example of rewarded love, but from which, as she knew, love had long since been crowded out by hosts of uneasy cares and paltry ambitions. After all, since this same dust of care choked all roads alike, did it matter much by which gate one entered on one's destiny, love or worldly prudence ? Had not Constance after all done well in io-noring the gate, and choosing what appeared the least uphill road, strewn with fewest stones to hurt her feet? Alma thought she was relaly pondering this problem in the abstract, and trying to give it a dispassionate answer ; and, all the time, it was not Constance's decision she was looking at. Her thoughts, like birds on the wing, were hovering, but never settling, round an application of the question that concerned herself. There it was in the distance, a very uphill road, but the gate looked golden enough. She was not nearly ready for a decision yet. She might never be ready, she told herself, but mean- while there was at least interest in glancing furtively that way sometimes. If she could but see h< >w the road would look a little farther on. If the hand that offered the k would remove some stones out of the way she was required to walk in ; if he would even leave off patting down fresh stones ; or if — if — looking down into her soul she could find strength to choose the stony path, and lind the same IDLE TEAES. 21 strange satisfaction in it that he seemed to find. Well — well — Constance's marriage, and yesterday's display, and the invitation sent to Lord Anstice that was due to his cousin, were threads of circumstance certainly not drawing her tJtat way. She saw how they were being woven about her, and wondered whether she, like Constance, would wake up some day to find herself bound to a course she only half approved by a million slender invisible threads that could only be broken by the strength of a Hercules. Alma had ample time for all these speculations, for this was one of the evenings when her father was not likely to return home till very late ; and under pretext of fatigue she and her mother had decided on keeping on their afternoon dresses, and indulging in a second tea in the inner drawing-room, instead of dinner. Lady Rivers dearly loved this indulgence, but sternly refused it to herself, except on rare occasions, for fear her servants should guess that its enjoyment consisted in its being a renewal of old habits. When, an hour later, she and Alma were sitting together, with a comfortable meal spread on a small table by the fire, and a knock came at the front door, her face showed an extremity of dismay at which Alma could not help smiling. " Will Preston be so absurd as to let anyone in?" she 22 A DOUBTING HEART. cried. " What o'clock is it, Alma ? Only a quarter-pa. -t eight ! We could not be supposed to be taking tea after dinner, and withpafes and jelly on the table, at this hour/' " Only a very charitable person would give us the benefit of such a supposition, I am afraid, mamma. J Jut don't be alarmed. I assure you I have seen Lady Forest sit down to tea on Sunday evening with a plate of radishes before her ; and if our visitor at this untimely hour proves to be one of her set, I will take an opportunity of men- tioning the circumstance." " Pray don't be so absurd. Stay ! It was not your father's knock ; but surely that is his footstep on the stairs ! What a comfort that it is only your father ! ; ' But Lady Rivers rejoiced too soon. It was indeed the face of Lord Justice Rivers that appeared when the door opened ; but other steps followed his to the inner room ; and before she had finished her exclamations of Burpr at her husband's unexpected return, Wynyard Anstice had shaken hands with Alma, and was making his way towards her, with a look on his face half deprecatoi half mischievously-triumphant, such as ho u "Ah, yes, I know; and besides, dear mamma, I generally like the thought of the party beforehand well enough ; and Alma is sometimes kind ; or if not, and the reality is worse than I look for, I can always now run up to f Air Throne' the next morning, and laugh over my mortifications with the two Moores, till I get not to care for them. I was not complaining, mother dear; but I want you to face the real state of things ; give up THE YALLEY OF HUMILIATION. 55 impossible hopes, and sell the necklace. It won't be wanted ever for such a day as you fancied ; but we shall have other happy days — great days for the boys perhaps, or even for me, in some other way than marriage. You should hear how the Moores talk. Till these good times come, there is a great deal of pleasure to be got out of the world, even in shabby clothes, and with all our worries and troubles, if you, mother, would only pluck up your courage again. Very nice bits come in between whiles for us young ones. Fun in the back sitting-room of evenings, while you and papa are sitting here dolefully ; and delicious talks with the Moores in ' Air Throne,' and cosy times with dear old Mrs. Urquhart in the l Land of Beulah/ Does it not sometimes make you dread mis- fortune a little less when you see that our great crisis — the crisis that you thought would break your heart — of i our having to take lodgers into our house, has ended in making us happier ? At least, I know I am a great deal happier since the Moores came ; and Harry and the boys have quite got over the little mortification it was to them at first, in the fun of giving odd names to the new divisions of the house. If Aunt Rivers chooses to be ashamed of us, and to send us to Coventry, we can bear it ; and you won't think us unsympathising, will you, dear, for being able to get a little amusement out of what seemed such a terrible sorrow at first V* 56 A DOUBTING HEART. Mrs. West thought of the contraction that came on her husband's brow whenever, in the course of their long, silent evenings, the sound of a bell from the upper story re- minded him that he was no longer sole master of the house in which he had been born, but she could not quench the light in Emmie's beautiful eyes by such an allusion. " Whatever makes you happy is good for me," she said, gently stroking her daughter's hair back into its usual becoming waves over her forehead, and thus obliterating the little attempt to look like Katherine Moore that had its terrors for her, though she said nothing about it. " I am sure I hope the Moores' coming will prove good for us all. As your cousins keep so much out of the way, I like you to have other companions." " Friends/' corrected Emmie, eagerly ; " friends who will do more for us than all the Riverses put together ever would. Mamma, if you do not mind my telling Katherine about the necklace, I believe her advice will be very useful. She gives lessons on two evenings in the week to a young man who is a working jeweller, and I dare say he could tell us what the necklace is really worth, or even manage the sale for us, if you liked to trust him. I know you don't wish Harry to have any- thing to do with it. J )> THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION. 57 (C My dear, I hope the young man does not come here. What would your father say if he met him, and heard that one of the young lady lodgers gave him lessons ? He would think it a monstrous thing ! He would want us to turn the Mo ores out of the house at once. I had no idea myself that Katherine gave lessons to young men — and shopmen too." " Dear mamma, she thinks nothing of it. You must not judge the Moores as you would anybody else. They are to be judged in quite a different way; and no one but Katherine can explain it. However, you need not be at all uneasy. She never brings any of her pupils up to ' Air Throne ' — that is, ChristabePs shrine — to draw and write and paint in. Katherine would not desecrate it, she says, by bringing, drudgery there. She goes out to give her lessons, and I believe this is one of the evenings. Let me take the jewel-case to her and speak about it now ; in another minute papa will come in ; and I am sure you will feel happier for having come to a decision. It may be a long time before you and I can have such another long uninterrupted talk, and it would be a pity to let it go for nothing. Would you like to look at the necklace, and say good-bye to it before it goes, mamma ? M Emmie's finger, as she spoke, was on the spring of 58 A DOUBTING HEART. the purple case which she had previously taken from the box on her knee, and her eyes looked pleasantly ex- pectant, but her mother made a hasty negative gesture. " No, no, dear, I don't want to look at it again. I said good-bye to all that it means for me a long, long time ago ; and if you are not to wear it, I had rather never see it. Put the case into your pocket, and carry it to Katherine while papa and I are at dinner. If we women can manage the matter among ourselves, I shall be thankful. My conscience will be easier for not having drawn Harry into our little conspiracy, since I must conceal it from your father for the present. There, is not that papa's step outside ? Run away, dearest — run away, and put the jewel-box exactly in its usual place on my dressing-table, so that there may be nothing to strike your father's eye when he goes into the room to dress for dinner. I shall tell him that I have been obliged to part with the necklace, some day, Emmie dear; but I want to spare him the pain of knowing exactly when it was done, and of following us in all the painful little details of the business. The loss is his as well as ours ; but we can spare him part of the degradation. Yes, run away, Emmie dear, and leave me alone. Your father likes best now to find me alone here when he first comes in, weary and out of spirits." CHAPTER III. id una's geove. Treasures there are many, Xecklaces many ; But on the breast Of Freyja alone Glitters the noble Brisinga necklace. Norse Lay. Me. West was accustomed to have to wait even on cold evenings a long time at his own door before it was opened to him, and he had learned to shut his ears, when at last he was admitted, to a good many sounds of scuffling feet and sharp voices, which told of hasty preparations to receive him. He did not care now to probe beyond the outside surface of decorum and order,, which was indeed too thin to deceive eyes that did not court deception. There had been a time when he had stood up for his right to know everything that passed in his own house, and devoutly believed in his power to GO A DOUBTING HEAKT. regulate all in his own way, and carry out his wishes to the minutest point. He had been a martinet when nothing had opposed him but the wills of people weaker than himself. Lately, circumstances, and, as it had seemed to him, the whole course of nature had declared against him ; and being continually more and more worsted in his combats with these, he had withdrawn himself gradually into closer and closer entrenchments, abandon- ing the outworks in despair, but always struggling to keep some little kingdom where his will might be supreme, and whose minute details he might regulate. The management of his family and household had baffled him now for some time, and he was at present, with the energy of despair, holding on to the attempt to maintain his own personal surroundings precisely as they used to be in the days of his prosperity. Even this possibility was daily slipping away, in spite of the efforts of his wife and elder children to keep this last stronghold of his injured dignity intact. They were wondering, with sick hearts, what hold on life he would have when the thin appearance of past gentility they were holding up before his eyes had at length melted away. Emmie had time to restore the jewel-box to its usual place before Mary Anne had made herself fit to open the door for master, and her next movement was a hasty i IDUNA'S GEO YE. 61 flight up two staircases to the threshold of " Air Throne." Thence she watched her father's entrance into the house, peeping at him over the balusters of the highest staircase of the high house. She was not at any time given to make the worst of appearances, but to-day she was struck with the dejection written on her father's face, and expressed by his whole figure, as he wearily mounted the first flight to his own bedroom : the nerveless hand clinging to the balusters, the trailing footstep, the bowed head, the gray, still face, that had perhaps been hand- some and dignified once, but that seemed now petrified to an image of sullen, outraged pride, brooding on itself. Emmie sighed and shivered a little as she looked. It was just as if the fog outside had gathered itself up into a visible shape, and stalked into the house to put out all the lights, and hang a dead weight on everyone's breathing. But it was her father, and she must not grudge him the privilege of bringing what atmosphere he liked into the house, during the few hours he was in it, even if it was an atmosphere of chill, gloomy reserve, in which the most modest little household joys withered, or had to hide themselves away. Her mother was un- fortunately the chief sufferer, for she had to sit in the very thickest of the fog the whole evening. To the other members of the family it made itself felt more or €2 A DOUBTING HEART. less distinctly, hushing fresh voices, putting clogs on springing steps, checking with a dull hand the eager beating of young, hopeful hearts. But (and Emmie's sensitive conscience reproached her a little for finding relief in this thought) there were spots even under this roof whence the dark influence was successfully shut out — pleasant nooks — when, by just opening and shutting a door, one could find oneself breathing fresh air and morally basking in sunshine. As this thought rose to comfort her, she turned and looked down a dark passage, at the end of which a faint stream of light issued from the crevices of a low door. Behind it was "Air Throne," and from thence a crisp cheerful sound, like the rippling of a little river, reached Emmie where she stood ; a pleasant sound of two gay voices in continuous chatter, broken now by a musical laugh — Christabel's laugh, that was music itself — ringing from the low-roofed attic down the dark, cold passage, and warming Emmie's heart. Well that it was such a big house, and the attics far enough removed from the ground-floor for people to dare to laugh freely there without fear of being thought hard- hearted. Looking down the balusters towards a lower story, she could see a half-opened door, from which another wider and brighter stream of light came. Emmie could IDUNA'S GROVE. 63 have wished that door were shut, for her father would pass it in going downstairs, and the lavish light would bring him a reminder that would not please him. That, however, was the " Land of Beulah/'. and Mrs. Urquhart, the kind-hearted old lady, who, with her son Dr. Urquhart, rented all the best rooms in the house, was too important a person to be dictated to as to when she should shut or open her drawing-room door. The door was left ajar because Dr. Urquhart had not yet returned from his afternoon round of visits to his patients, and his mother was listening for his ring at the bell. Emmie knew just how she looked as she sat listening, for she had lately shared the watch once or twice — not anxious, only pleasantly expectant — and she knew too how the comely old face would broaden into smiles of perfect content, when the quick, business-like knock and ring came, followed by a springy step on the stairs that all the household knew. The drawing-room door was always close shut after that for the rest of the evening ; but though it shut in long spaces of silence, there was no gloom. Emmie could not continue the scene ; but if she had been clairvoyante, and had watched the occupants of the c ' Land of Beulah " till bed-time, she would only have seen pictures that would have confirmed her pleasant thoughts of the place. Tho> old mother nodding over her 64 A DOUBTING HEART. parti-coloured knitting, when the cosy meal was over ; the son with his books and- papers and shaded reading- lamp at a table writing, covering his eyes to think a minute, and then rapidly dashing off a page or two with nervous fingers pressed on the pen, and knitted brow under the thick fair hair; aware, however, of every movement in the chair by the fire, and ready, when the signal came, to jump up, thrust his long fingers through his hair, clearing his brow of thought and frowns with the movement, and come forward to the fire for a comfortable half-hour's chat Yvdth his mother before she retired to bed. This was the crowning cup of pleasure in the tranquil days Mrs. Urquhart shared with her now prosperous son; days that were a sojourning in the "Land of Beulah" to her at the end of a stormv life, as she often told Emmie. It was talk that had no pain and not much excitement in it, over the happy events of each successful day, flavoured sometimes with a mild joke or two about the young lady-students upstai whom Dr. Urquhart came across sometimes in lecture- rooms, in whose company (he said) he felt puzzled as to whether he should treat them as comrades or as young Indies, and against whose possible designs on her son's heart Mrs. Urquhart, generous in everything else, watched jealously. Perhaps there would be a little sham quarrel IDUXA'S GKOYE. 65 ■> when Mrs. Urquhart would maliciously repeat some gossip about the Moores she had learned from Emmie, and Dr. Urquhart would pretend a great deal of excite- ment in defending them ; all to be ended by a tenderer than usual good-night kiss. Yes, there was pleasant talk from happy hearts in that room every evening, but the gay atmosphere never penetrated to the parlour just beneath, where Mr. and Mrs. West spent their evenings alone ; she lying on the high-backed sofa by the wall, he seated upright on a chair beside her, their hands clasped together, not talking much, not often even looking at each other, but mutely interchanging pain, and lessening it perhaps by such silent partnership ; she suffering only for him, he for himself chiefly, but also for all the others dependent upon him whom he had dragged down into what looked to him an abyss of shame and ruin. He was like a ship- wrecked mariner on a raft in a wide sea — the sea of his own bitter thoughts — clinging to the one comrade who had courage to embark with him on its salt, desolate waves, but separated from all other help. Yet, if he could but have cleared his eyes from the mists of tears that pride would never let him weep away, he might have seen that the storms which to his thought had shattered his whole existence, had but carried off a few VOL. I. F 66 A DOUBTING HEART. useless spars and a little overcrowded canvas, and that all his real treasures were still preserved to him, and were lying unheeded at his feet. Emmie stood leaning her arms on the balusters, and looking down into the hall, till she had seen her father recross it and shut himself up in the dining-room, and then she too ran lightly down. A thought had struck her while waiting which had changed her intention of going immediately to et Air Throne," to tell the story of the jewel-case to Katherine Moore. She must find out from Harry whether there was to his knowledge any fresh cause for the additional shade of misery she had read on her father's face, or whether it was only one of those chance thickenings of the fog of gloom in his mind, which they had learnt to expect as certainly, and endure as patiently, as January snow-storms, or east winds in March. Harry had come home as usual a quarter of an hour after Mr. West, and had made the most of the interval before dinner, while his father was upstairs, to bring the brightness no one could help feeling in his presence, to bear upon his mother; but when Emmie found him ho had retreated to the little tea-room, (Mice a butlers pantry, where noise being fortunately shut in by double doors, the younger members of the family were accus- tomed to congregato in the evening. Mr. West had IDUNA'S GROVE. 67 not been known to put his bead inside the green-baize doors for years ; and Mrs. West, since Dr. Urquhart had one day spoken gravely to her on the necessity of sparing herself fatigue, had paid it few visits. It was the spot which, according to Alnia, had played an important part in turning Constance Rivers into Lady Forrest ; but less fastidious and more imaginative persons might have seen a "Temple of Youth," or even an " Iduna's Grove," within the four dingily-papered walls, cumbered with faded furniture. It was the one place in the house where the naturally high spirits of the young Wests had free play, and managed to bubble up above the dull crust of care which extinguished them outside the sanctuary. Old Mary Anne, whose forty years of do- mestic service had left more poetry in her than three London seasons had left to Constance, was capable of disen- tangling the genius of the place from the moth-holes and weather-stains of the furniture, and used of evenings to steal up from her cleaning in desolate regions below, where hungry winds moaned through empty cellars and larders, to refresh herself by standing between the double doors, and listening to the gay racket of voices within. It sent her back to her cogitations as to how to dish up two mutton cutlets to look as if they were five with renewed courage, convinced that there were still members f 2 63 A DOUBTTXG HEART. of the West family worth cooking for, at reduced wag* Emmie closed the double doors quickly behind her, how- ever, mindful of ears in the house that had a right to complain of hubbub ; for as she had been longer absent from the juvenile party than usual, there was of course a great outcry to greet her reappearance — everybody speaking at the top of their voices and at once. u Where have you been all the afternoon, Emmie ? Have you heard about the row on the stairs when the boys came home at five o'clock ? Casabianca and the Gentle Lamb would play at f tig ' on the stairs, thinking everybody was out, and they quarrelled and fought on the landing, till Casabianca knocked the Gentle Lamb right into the 'Land of BeulaW Two old ladies were drinking tea with Mrs. Urquhart, and you should have seen their faces when the Gentle Lamb came rolling through, and fell with his head among the tea-cups." The speaker of the last sentence was Mildred West, a tall, energetic-looking girl of fourteen, somewhat given to domineering, and nicknamed Mildie by the resl the family, in the exercise of a peculiar style of wit prevalent in Iduna's Grove, which consisted in calling everything by the least appropriate name that could bo IDUNA'S GKOVE. 69 found for it. The fun of these names might not be apparent to outsiders, but they afforded great satisfaction 4 to the young Wests, and were in fact the chief weapons by which they held the troubles of life at bay, and, so to speak, kept their heads above water; a new privation or grievance always seeming to lose its sting with these young people as soon as one of their number had invented a by-word to fling at it. Emmie shook her head at the two offenders, who were now struggling for possession of the least rickety of the school-room chairs, and said to her sister : "But what were you doing to let them fight on Mrs. Urquhart's landing, Mildie ? " " My Physics/' said Mildie, loftily ; " I was in the middle of a proposition; and I think with Katherine Moore, that a girl's studies are too important for her to allow them to be interrupted by the folly of boys. Women are the students of the future, Katherine says, and I mean to do credit to my family, whatever becomes of the others." Of course this speech was a signal for a general onslaught of the boys on Mildie ; but Harry, who did not seem quite in his usual spirits to-night, checked the skirmish peremptorily ; and, while the rest of the party were taking their seats round the tea-table, Emmie found 70 A DOUBTING HEAET. the opportunity she wanted of drawing him aside to ask her question. " Anything happened to-day ? " she whispered. 11 Bad — do you mean ? " " Oh, my dear Harry, of course I meant to papa ; and does anything good ever happen to him — should I expect that ? " " The poor Governor/' said Harry, with a good deal more compassion in his voice than there had been in Emmie's. " He certainly is unlucky, poor old chap ; he always does contrive to get himself into every mess that's eroiuc If he could but stick to what he's told to do, and not put his unlucky oar in where it's not wanted, he might at least drudge on without being noticed, like the rest of us. But I suppose it is difficult for him to forg the time when he was one of the heads, and ordered as he liked, and to remember that he's nothing in the new house but an old supernumerary clerk, kept on sufferance. It must be hard." " But has anything more than usual happened to-day to annoy him, do you suppose ? " " Mr. Cummins sent for him to his private room to speak about his having taken more upon himself than he ought in a business matter that came under his eye, and, of course, muddled it. Their voices got so loud — for yon IDUNA'S GROVE. 71 know when the Governor's pride is thoroughly stung he can speak, and Cummins is an insolent brute — that a good deal was overheard in the clerks' room. I can tell you, Emmie, I sat trembling, for every minute I expected, and at last hoped, that the Governor would end the lecture he was getting by throwing up his place and mine, and vowing never to make a pen-stroke in the old hole again. I wonder how he helped it. I wonder how he ever swallowed his pride and rage, so as to get out of that room without a regular flare up ; and how he bore to walk back to his place, with the other olerks staring at him. All of them young fellows like myself, except two superannuated old chaps, who began in grandpapa's time I believe, and who, like old idiots as they are, tried to show they pitied him. It was an awful time for us both I can tell you, I daren't so much as look at him, to see how he was taking it, but I could feel the desk we were both writing at tremble when he leaned upon it again and took up his pen. Poor old chap ! " " If he should quarrel with Mr. Cummins some day and throw up his post and yours, what would become of us ? " pectabili thrown over their enterprises. Even when >\\c was in- dulging in her most soaring day-dream of the future triumph of what she called " her cause," foolish, nervous Mrs. West's motherliness would recur to her memoi as a sort of stronghold in the background, into which Christabel at least might always run and be safe from slanderous tongues. That arriere-pensee, even more than their other recom- mendations, made the low-roofed attics a really home-like place to Katherine, and sent her out from them to the arduous struggle of her student life, and to the teachi that filled up its spare hours, with a courage that had known no check as yet. AIR THROVE. 87 It was no easy life the orphan sisters led together there ; but they had known so much worse things than toil and privation, that these came to them almost in the guise of interesting new acquaintance, and were met with a gay defiant welcome that forced them to put on their least repellent looks. What hardship was there in sitting down to bread-and-tea meals which their own labour had paid for, to people who were used to eating sumptuous meals made bitter by taunts of dependence, or cold, silent tokens of antagonism and dislike? Christabel, whose ardent, imaginative character had suffered most in the atmosphere of suppression from which they had escaped, and who, being the younger by some years, did not share Katherine's feelings of responsibility, found such delight in the mere fact of their freedom that her spirits were always ready to bubble up under the weight of a privation or toil, and lift it to the height of a pleasure, or a welcome experience at least. Weariness might come by-and-by, but she was so far from it yet, that there was even energy left to seek out difficulties and obstacles for the mere joy of overcoming them and proving her strength. Mr. Carlyle, in his essay on Jean Paul Eichter, excuses the German poet's defiance of public opinion in his celebrated " clothes' controversy/' by pointing out that a youthful disposition to be combative in unimportant matters while 88 A DOUBTING HEART. a great life-struggle is also going on, shows a reserved fund of energy which leads one to augur well for the chance of victory in the serious endeavour. Dare any of ChristabePs female friends have so augured from her indulgence in little vagaries of taste in dress, or from her small defiances of public opinion in minor social questions, seeing nothing in these mutinies but the overflowing bravery of a strong spirit on its way to success, or must they have looked grave, considering that the path of a woman who aims at making an inde- pendent career for herself is already too difficult for it to be safe for her to plant a needless thorn upon it ? The sisters, who had formerly scarcely ever known what it was to be an hour apart, were now separated during the greater part of each day, by having to carry on their different sorts of work in different places; but this circumstance only made the reunion that came in the evening an ever-recurring love-feast that lost nothiug of its gladness by being constantly repeated. Katharine's eyes were always just as hungry for the sight of Chria- tabel's face as on the evening when she had returned to the attic after her first day's study, and found her sister at home before her, and Christabel was never less eager to pour out the history of the day's doings into Katherine's cars. The talk and the love-making they had been used AIR THRONE.' 89 to spread over the whole day had all to be crowded into a few evening hours now ; no wonder the sound of their voices came like a rippling river from Air Throne, when Emmie West stood and listened outside. ChristabePs out- pouring of talk generally came first. She said a little about what she had done and seen during the day ; and then a great deal about what had been transacted in that inner world of imagination which was to her the most real world she knew. Katherine followed her sympatheti- cally through both narratives — first, through the little outer court of actual experience, where the figures were often somewhat dull and pale, as not having had power to force an impression of themselves through the dream- halo in which Christabel walked, then passing as it were through a curtain into the theatre, where as yet all the most moving events of Christabel's life had been transacted — the brightly-lighted, gaily-coloured drama of her thoughts and dreams. The dream-people who per- formed there were so much the most congenial companions the sisters had, that to Katherine as much as to Christabel it was a coming home to rest, after work among strangers. When a day in dreamland had been well lived through, Katherine's time to tell her experience came. Her sepa- rate life had only its outer court that could be talked about ; but it was a very different sort of outer court from 90 A DOUBTING HEAKT. Christabers. Very real and distinctly seen, if in some respects strange and different from her expectations. Her daily story of hard unaided work, of hindrances ob- trusively thrust in the way, of snubs and slights meeting her at every step in her enterprise, was always told shortly, in plain words, without a tinge of bitterness in them. She could not afford to let herself speak bitterly ; it would have cost too much of the force she had to husband for each day's struggle. It was only when something of a contrary nature had to be related — when some unexpected word of encouragement had come her way, when some hand in authority had been held out to help her up, instead of to push her down, or when some service had been rendered by a fellow-student in such a way as neither to wound her feminine susceptibility nor hurt her inde- pendence ; it was only on the rare occasions when things of this kind came into the day's history, that her voice warmed up, and her lip trembled, and her eyes, iixcd on Christabel's face, took a depth of feeling, which told Christabel how far into the proud sensitive heart the usual experience of contempt and coldness cut down. A short silence would Bometimes follow on the end of Katherine's story. The two sisters would sit hand-in- hand leaning against each other, Katherine's soft dusky braids touching Christabel's rich auburn, the two hearts AIB, THKOISTE. 91 beating to the same tune, for they were thinking of each other. It was the gravest moment of their day. The pause after hard work and after the joy of meeting again, when anxious thoughts and doubts, if any were at hand, knocked at the door. Christabel would soon escape from them back into her dream-world; but Katherine often had a hard struggle to wrench herself away from what she felt were disabling forebodings, cowardly lookings back, to a past from which they had cut themselves off. Yet the question would come, had she done right to bring Christabel here with her ? If she should fail, and for all her toils and struggles, reap only the blame of having tried to thrust herself where she was not wanted ; if she did not prove herself stronger than all the strong prejudices arrayed against her ; if she had to fall back beaten in the hard battle she had entered on, what retreat was left to them ? The old sphere would not open again to receive them, or if it would, their position in it had been hard before, but would be intolerable when they went back with the disgrace and ridicule of such an attempt and such a failure fixed upon them. She could bear anything for herself, but Christabel was such a rare treasure to guard; so bright and tender to those who loved her — such an enigma to all others ; so rich in gifts that yet needed tender encouragement to give them fair play ; such an enthusiast 92 A DOUBTING! HEART. for work and for high thoughts, and after all such a dreamer. Kathcrine's arm would tighten its hold on her sister's waist as her thoughts reached some such point ; and Christabelj startled out of a fancy that had taken her worlds away, would look up suddenly into her sister's face, with surprised wide-open blue eyes, bright and yet misty, and the far-off sweet look in them which comes from habitually dwelling on distances invisible to ordinary eyes. A change of place for these evening talks, from the neighbourhood of the wide-hobbed fireplace to the window- seat of the low attic window, was the principal event by which the sisters marked the passing of the seasons in their present life, too full of work to be monotonous, and yet having few breaks in it. The first months of their freedom — their hardest and loneliest, and yet perhaps their gayest time — had been fire- side months, when the hearth-rug (a dingy black and gray one, knitted from strips of cloth by some West of a past generation) had been Christabers throne for the greater part of the evening, and when Ivathcrine's household thoughts had turned chiefly on schemes for bringing her medical books and her papers to the draughty end of the table, and leaving the cosiest nooks for Christabel's easel and the embroidery frame, to which she gave an hour or AIR THRONE. 93 two every niglit. The lengthening days, when there had been light but not warmth far into the evening, had not been an improvement ; and then, quite suddenly, as it seemed, there had come a time when the low-roofed attics had turned into furnaces filled with lifeless air, and the hour for comfortable talk had to be put off almost till bed- time; then at last, weary with the long hot day, they would sit by the open window and watch the crimson in the west die out into a uniform pearly grey over miles and miles of monotonous roof -lines, down to a distance where the dome of St. Paul's lifted itself, round and perfect, into the empty evening sky. The pain and the pleasure of that time, too, had passed, and now here they were again, with the shiny black bars of the grate for their evening prospect. What had been their gains and losses since Christabel, on the first day of their taking possession of the rooms, had exercised her ingenuity in turning every bit of carving into a picture illustrative of the rapid development of the fortune they had come to seek ? They had been discussing* the question together when Emmie heard their voices, as she stood at the head of the stairs, and Christabel's laugh testified that the retrospect had not saddened them. While she could laugh — such a gay, free-hearted laugh, too — all must be well with Katherine; well with her heart, at least; for Katherine was too far-sighted not to be subject to 94 A DOUBTING HEART. twinges of mental anxiety, even when filled with present heart-content. Even now, when she got up, with the echo of Chris- tabel' 8 happy laughter still in her ears, she felt only half- satisfied with their late outpouring of confidence, and wished she could have penetrated deeper than words could reveal, and read the yet unformed thoughts, the hopes and purposes to come, whose seeds lay in her sister's soul. Would the time ever arrive when she would begin to be "sick of shadows," and take to looking at life as it really was, and if so, in what guise would the awakening come ? Would some new influence dawn in her life strong enough to merge her two worlds into one, and force her to act and suffer among realities with the same intensity with which she was now dreaming them all in her own way ? Katherine knew of only one influence that was likely to do for Christabel what the mere friction of everyday experience was rapidly doing for herself, and it was an influence which, when they began to live their independent life, and put themselves out of the way of being sought by their equals, they had decided must never come near them. Christabel had better go on dreaming to old age, Katherine thought, than come out into the daylight of reality through that door. She paused with an armful of anatomical drawings — her last night's work — which she was going to put away AIR THRONE. 95 on a high shelf, to comfort herself with a reassuring study of her sister's face. Christabel was lying at full length on the hearth-rug, spreading out the long skirt of her serge dress, cut after some artistic design, more pleasant to the eye than convenient to the pedestrian, to dry by the fire ; for the same purpose she had let down her thick hair, which the small hat she wore had badly protected from mist and rain; and she was now propping herself on her elbows, and resting her face upon the palms of her hands, as she read a book open before her. l< Luckily," Katherine thought, u it was a face that could easily pass in and out among crowds without attracting many eyes to it — Pale et pourtant rose, Petite avec grands yeux." There was that in the soft outlines and dim colour- ing which gave an effect of remoteness, as of some- thing dropped into a place to which it did not belong ; a lack of responsiveness in feature and expression that would deaden most people's interest rather than provoke it. Nobody but Katherine ever saw the sleeping beauty in the face wake up ; to all others it was shrouded, shut out from their seeing as completely as Christabel's soul was cut off from ordinary contact by her dreams. AVell, 95 A DOUBTIXr; HEART. it was best so. Katherine satisfied herself that this year had not brought ahair's-breadth of change; even the rose hue under the fair skin was not faded by toil or privation ; there was not a line of care on the broad low brow or round the dreamy mouth ; the delicate chin propped between the two hands had not sharpened in outline. It would be difficult to point out the lightest sign of the passage of another year over that fair drooping head. Does living among dreams make one, so long as it lasts, fadeless, like them? "Listen, Katherine/' Christabel said suddenly, looking up from her book; "it is Pascal speaking of imagination: f Ce pouvoir enorme ; l'ennemi eternel de la raison, qui se plait a etaler son empire en l'amenant dessous ses pieds, a cree dans Diomme une seconde nature. II a ses joies, ses douleurs, sa sante, son malaise, ses richesses, sa pauvreU'. II arrete P empire des sens, et encore il leur fait part d'u penetration artificielle.' " " Are you looking out passages from Pascal to read with old David Macvie?'' Katherine asked. "Is not that travelling rather fast ? " "Plums," said Christabel. " Of course it won't be much of a French lesson; but we have drudged on at the grammar so many evenings lately that I think I may give him a treat. It will be great fun for me, too, to see and hear. AIR THEONE. 97 I wish you could be with us. He will read the paragraph through first in his good solid Scotch-French, then I shall give him the English of a word or two he will not have understood, and gradually the full meaning of the passage will dawn upon him, and he will begin to knit and unknit the wrinkles about his forehead till his face spreads out into a blaze of comprehension and delight; the spectacles will come off then, and he will fold his hands on the book, and we shall talk about imagination, ' its joys, its griefs, its sickness, its health/ till one of the hundred and odd clocks on the walls of the back shop tells us that the lesson has lasted two hours instead of one. Then I shall have to quarrel with him about not taking my usual fee, the half- crown that always lies ready, neatly folded up in paper, in the broken Sevres china tea-cup on the chimney-piece, and that he generally slips into my hand as I take leave, with a look of deferential apology that will some day, I am afraid, oblige me to kiss him. I should have done it , before now if he did not take snuff and eat onion porridge for supper always just before I come in." " To think of old David Macvie being the only intimate friend we have made, out of this house, during our year in London ! Aunt Fletcher would have spared some of her warnings if she could have foreseen how little dangerous our acquaintance would be. We might VOL. I. II 98 A DOUBTIXr; HEART. just as well have stumbled upon him, his old clocks and watches, his cases of butterflies, and his semi-scientific, semi-mystical talk in a little shop in a back street in Chester." " But I should not have given him French lessons at half-a-crown an hour, if we had found him when we were living with Aunt Fletcher ; and, above all, he would not, under those circumstances, have led us into the one adventure that Aunt Fletcher could reasonably profess to be horrified at, that has befallen us since we came here. I mean our going with him to that meeting, and your getting up to speak. It was all over in such a f minutes that I can still hardly believe it happened ; but I did admire your courage, Katherine." " I felt so like a hypocrite while sitting still," said Katherine, thoughtfully. " It made all my professions unreal, if when the occasion came and I found myself among people who seemed to be seeking after remedies for evils of which I thought I knew the cures, and seeking them in a wrong direction, I could not get up simply and tell them what I thought, I was not courageous, for I had no idea that what I said would rouse such opposition and dislike." "Had not you ! I knew it by instinct. I could not look round on the faces about us without being sure that AIR THRONE. 90 the kind of things you would say would surely give offence. I felt it in the air." "And generally I know so much more of what is going on than you do." "Ah, yes; but you see it has two sides to it, this imagination, as David and I shall prove by a thousand instances to each other directly. c It arrests the exercise of the senses, and again it gives them an artificial power/ One never can tell how it will serve one, e its riches, its poverty/ However, there was one man in the room who understood you. I saw that before he got up to speak, and how well he spoke, like a regular trained orator; and what a pleasant winning face and manner his was. David thinks that between^ you, you and he, you made an impression on the meeting ; and if you had not spoken he would never have taken up the cudgels in your •defence." " A curious momentary partnership of two unknown people who found themselves thinking alike in an adverse crowd. I think these flashes of sympathy do one good; if there are only points here and there to catch the electric light it will travel on, and their being far apart does not so much signify. I am glad David thinks I did no harm." ' ' He simply glories in you ; but I doubt if you have h 2 100 A DOUBTING HEAET. not fallen in someone else's esteem in the exact propor- tion in which you have risen in his. I put Emmie W on to telling the tale to old Mrs. Urquhart this morning, just from my goodnatured impulse to let everybody have plums to their taste, and is not she enjoying the delight of passing on the scandal to the Gresham Lecturer this instant? What a pity it is that we are not clriirvoy antes, and cannot see and hear. I really think it will be worth a free admission to the lectures for you. Mrs. Urquhart will look upon it as a shield to secure her son's heart against the possibility of damage from you for ever after- wards, and she will withdraw her objections to his taking you under his professional wing, and fighting some of your battles for you, as I really think he is half disposed to do." " Poor old lady ; she would be much happier if she could set her fears at rest, and give her benevolence free play. Coming upstairs after you to-night, I caught sight of her face as we passed her open door in our wet cloaks, and the conflict on it was quite comic. She longed to ask us in to get warm by her fire till our own had burned up, but could not make up her mind to expose her son to the danger of intimacy with adventuresses like ourselves. If she only knew how safe he was, she would sleep better of nights." AIR THRONE. 101 " There, you are mistaken, Kitty ; there, rny imagi- native insight carries me farther than yours. It would not at all conduce to Mrs. Urquhart's repose to believe that her son was quite safe from anyone's admiration ; it would puzzle her so she would lie awake wondering what kind of a heart it was that could be indifferent to winning her treasure, and perhaps begin at last to lay schemes for conquering it. Think, Kitty, of your coming, some years hence, when you are over thirty, and have taken your doctor's diploma, to be courted by Mrs. Urquhart for her son ! Shall we not feel that we have slain prejudice, and trampled our enemies under our feet, then ? » The sisters enjoyed a hearty laugh together at this notion ; and then Katherine felt Christabel's skirts, and gave her leave to get up from before the fire, and prepare for their evening expedition to a house, a few streets distant, where they had each a lesson to give. They crept softly down the back stairs, not to remind Mr. West unnecessarily of the presence of lodgers in the house; but as they passed the green-baize door, Katherine paused an instant, and drew Christabel's attention with a smile to the clatter of gay young voices that was going on within. " If we had been members of a large family, and had 102 A DOUBTING HEAPvT. had brothers," she said, as soon as they were out in tho fog, and she had drawn Christabel's hand underneath her arm, " I wonder what difference it would have made- in our destinies — whether we should have been strong enough to act independently of them, according to our own ideas, or whether we should have been hampered ? Can you imagine the difference it would have made in our liv- at Aunt Fletcher's, if we had had a bright, energetic brother, like Harry West, coming to the house once or twice a year to make much of us ? AYliich side would he have taken, when the great question of what we were to do with ourselves came up ? " " That would have depended on the sort of brain he had, and it is hardly likely that there should have been another in the family equal to yours, Kitty; probably he would have thought it incumbent on his manhood to si with Aunt Fletcher, and use all the power he would have had over us to condemn us to worsted work, mild visit ii and perpetual snubbing for all the vigorous years of our lives. I think we may be thankful that so little of the masculine element came into our lot. We found Aunt Fletcher hard enough to deal with, and she is only a woman like ourselves." "Only a woman!" said Katherine, giving the little hand on her arm a squeeze against her heart. "What AIR THKONE. 103 an admission from you ! How pleased Aunt Fletcher would be if she could hear you saying that." " And don't you think she would be pleased if she could see us to-night turning out in the wind and the rain at eight o'clock to mate our way to a dingy old shop in a back street, where you will climb up three pairs of dirty stairs to give a lesson in mathematics to a con- sumptive young Jew, and I shall teach an old Scotch optician to read French badly at half-a-crown an hour ? Only think, we might have been seated in a warm, well- lighted drawing-room at this moment, nursing Aunt Fletcher's two fat King Charleses in our laps, and with nothing on earth to do but make conversation about the weather, and get snubbed for our pains. I say, Kitty, does not London mud smell sweet — and don't you breathe freely in the fog — and would not you like to jump lamp- post high for joy that we are safe in it ? " Christabel turned her head towards the lamp -post under which they were passing as she spoke, and its light fell for that instant on a sparkling, mischievous face, in which all the latent beauty was awake and looking out. The momentary illumination electrified two passers-by, who had chanced to be near enough to catch the last words, and who had turned with amused surprise to look at the speaker, but it was lost on 104 A DOUBTING HEART. Katherine, whose eyes were fixed on a distant spot in the badly-lighted street. " Stay/' she said, M is not that a woman's voice calling for help ? The sound comes from that little group of people down there by the railway-bridge. I am afraid something is going on that ought not to be. Ah ! again ; yes, it is certainly a woman's voice calling for help." " Let us hurry on and see if we can be of any use." lt If you were not here." a Am I a Pharisee, pray, to pass by on the other side ? Why, Kitty, what did we break away from the drawing-room atmosphere for, if not to protest against there being any such words as c if you were not here ' applied to ourselves to make us hindrances instead of helps when work is to be done ? Let us hasten. I won't be made an ( if you were not here' to hinder you from acting." They pressed forward towards a corner of the road where the arch of a railway-bridge cast a shadow so deep as to swallow up the red glare from the windows of a gin-shop in its neighbourhood. A group of two or three were hanging about in the shade, but no crowd had gathered as yet ; drunken rows on that spot were occur- rences of too ordinary a nature to attract much notice, and as the sisters left the pavement they could distinguish a pair standing close together, at whom the stragglers AIR THRONE. 106 •were idly staring. A ragged, liatless man, holding a woman fiercely by the shoulder, and pressing her up against the wall of the bridge where the shadow was deepest. " He has struck her again ; he's a desperate bad 'un, he is," one of the lookers-on was saying to another, in a half-indifferent, half-frightened voice, as Katherine passed between them. She did not pause to ask any questions, but, pushing her way through the bystanders, w r alked straight up to the scene of action and laid her ■white gloveless hand on the ruffian's arm. She was ■shabbily enough dressed not to attract much, attention among such bystanders as these, even when taking the unusual course of interfering between a drunken ruffian and a woman whom he had presumably the right to ill- use. She was putting herself in danger of life or limb, no doubt, but then, perhaps she was a Bible-woman, whose business it was, or somebody queer who had better be left to her own devices. The Don Quixotes of the present day have at least the advantage of not attracting so much attention as their prototype, for however extravagant their enter- prises may be, they keep as much as possible to ordinary appearances, and do not arm themselves for their frays so much as with a dinted copper shield, or a lame Rosinante to lift them above the heads of the crowd. CHAPTER V. A SUDDEN SMILE. For ever, Fortune, wilt thou prove An unrelenting foe to Love, And when we meet a mutual heart. Come in between and bid us part. London in November ought to be peopled with love for there is nothing that can make a person really in- different to the depressing effect of an atmosphere of con- densed gloom but the carrying about with him the curious exaltation of brain and happy or unhappy unrest of heart which belong exclusively to the condition commonly called being in love. It may be agony, or it may be ecstasy, but it is a specific against caring for the weather all the same. Wynyard Anstice reaped the benefit of this immunity the day after his interview with Alma, and went about his business in the fog and rain with such perfect unconscious- ness of the state of the atmosphere that it was well nothing better was wasted upon him. Ho was not exactly preoccupied, he went through his day's work just as A SUDDEN SMILE. 107 usual, took notes of an intricate case in a law-court with even greater apprehension of the bearing of the evidence than ordinarily came to him ; chatted with some friends, and threw out suggestions for an article in a journal to which he and they contributed, with more than his usual vivacity and readiness. No one who came near him had the slightest reason to complain of absence of mind in him, but they would have been very much surprised if they could have looked through the surface thoughts and words, which all matched quite well with the things they were busied about, to the under consciousness that lay beneath, and in some strange way vivified and glorified all. He would have been astonished himself, for this consciousness of Alma which accompanied him all day, wiping out the fog from the sky and filling noisy law- courts and dusty newspaper offices with a curious vivid- ness of life and interest not naturally belonging to them, was something too airy to be put into words, or even into those full-born thoughts already half-clothed with words, which throng the outer courts of the mind. It made itself known through the busy hours only as a luminous presence waiting outside a secret door of the soul, to be let in by-and-by, and meanwhile illuminating the whole house by the rays that streamed through the chinks and fell everywhere. 10S A DOUBTING HEART. There was a little impatience, perhaps, as the day wore on, for the hour to come when the secret door might be opened, yet when at length Wynyard had parted from his last client and was on his way home, a strange re- luctance to enter upon the pleasure he had been promising himself all day came over him. Through his cold, rainy walk to his chambers he kept himself warm, not by thinking on the subject that had been keeping his heart beating to a quicker tune all day, but by planning how he would soon allow himself to begin to think about it. How by-and-by, when he was quite alone, he would open that door in his memory and let Alma come through, and again hear her say every word she had said last night, and see for an instant the quick rain of tears veil the dearest and loveliest face in the world, and feel over again the strong pain and joy the shock of that sight had given him : yes, and find out all the meaning there was in it, and count all the good reasons for continuing to love her that might be wrung out of her kind looks and her indifferent words, and the warm, true tears that could only have sprung from a loving woman's heart. Perhaps it was that part of the prospect which had sown the seeds of reluctance amid his eagerness ; a little cold dread threatened to kill all his delight, lest a second, or a third, or a thousandth's going over of what A SUDDEN SMILE. 109 had passed should point to the conclusion that nothing new had happened, and that Alma's looks and words and display of feeling had nothing essentially different in them from what he had seen often, and as often been dis- appointed in, when the immediate charm of presence had been removed by a little space of time. Never mind, last evening had at all events been a turning-point ; he had resolved to hope, and his determination should remain, however little he could justify it to his reason. Had he not been experiencing all day what a difference to his daily drudging this permission to hope made ? The question brought him to the door of his abode and oc- cupied his thoughts while he shook the wet from his umbrella and mounted two flights of stairs to the floor where his chambers lay. He was a popular man, whose friendships and acquaintances branched up and down into various grades of society, and he had had quite a fight to evade invitations that would have given him the choice of several oddly different occupations for his evening. He almost felt as if he had broken away from all his acquaintance to keep an appointment with Alma, and that when he entered his room he should find her seated in one of his two armchairs by the fire, ready to talk to him. His first glance round the place brought a startling half- realisation of his fancy. The gas was burning brightly,, 110 A DOUBTIXC HEART. the table was spread, with signs of someone having lately made a meal there, and the most comfortable of the arm- chairs was wheeled just in front of the fire, with its back to the door, so that nothing was seen of its occupant but a head of light hair above its high back. Wynyard stood staring for a minute like a person in a dream, and then burst out laughing, while a young man leisurely picked himself up from the depths of the chair, where he had ensconced himself, and came forward, showing a face and figure that had just so much likeness to Wynyard' s as would have made a stranger set him down at first sight for a younger brother. " You expected to see me, old fellow, didn't you ?" he said, holding out his hand. " When I perceived that someone had eaten up my dinner, of course I did. The empty table was enough to make me think of you, as it used at Eton when I came in from cricket and found all my bread and butter devoured; I knew you had been there." "Well, I had nothing else to do, and I was hungry : so when your old Mrs. Gamp looked in and began to puke about, I told her I thought she had better bring in the dinner at once, and I'd keep it hot for you." " Which you appear to have done admirably in old Eton fashion." " Not so bad ; there is a bit of juicy steak and a hot A SUDDEN SMILE. Ill potato down by the fire, and I sent out for a second pot of porter, which you'd never have thought of doing for nie." u You would always have taken care of yourself first." " Come, now, don't be crusty, and make a fellow out to be more selfish than he knows he is. Sit still, if you are tired, and Fll fag for you ; it won't be the first time by a hundred. You shall have your dinner before you in a minute, hot, and a steak that is worth eating*, I can tell you ; a great deal better than anything I ever get now." " Except when you steal it, you deeply-to-be-pitied martyr to State dinners." " Well, sit down ; I've a lot of things to tell you that you'll like to hear; but get your dinner first, and then we'll talk. I don't believe you have half such a tiring life after all as mine. You look as fresh as possible, and when I got here after hunting about after you all day I was so done up, with the beastly weather and all, that if it had not been for the beefsteak and porter coming- handy, you might have found a corpse on the hearthrug*, and had to stand a trial for conspiring with Sairey Gamp to murder your cousin. To hear of my demise, by the way, would be nuts to somebody in Eccleston Square, and lead up — in how short a time, I wonder ? — to another wedding-breakfast there." " I dislike that kind of nonsense," said "Wynyard, so sharply that Lord Anstice, who was lifting the hot dish 112 A DOUBTING ^EART. from before the fire, put it down again "with a clatter, to shrug his shoulders. " So bad as that, is it ? " he exclaimed. " Well, I am warned ; I won't approach that topic again, unless with a face a yard long. But there, now, eat ; and if that steak don't put you into a good enough humour to talk about anything, I should say your case was a very serious one indeed." While Wynyard eat his dinner his companion half- turned his chair from the fire, and with his legs thrown commodiously over one arm, sat sideways, watching him with a lazy, good-humoured sort of interest in the meal, such as a child shows who finds relief from the trouble of entertaining himself by watching his elders, and feels rather honoured in being allowed to do so. The likeness between the cousins, though most ap- parent at first sight, remained strong even in the opinion of those friends who knew every change of the two coun- tenances. In fact the constant pleasant variety of expres- sion was the point their faces had most markedly in common, and it required a careful student of face-lore to detect the different qualities of the smiles and quick looks of intelligence and sudden glooms of annoyance or pain that made each countenance like an open landscape on a day of cloud and sunshine. A changeful show, very A SUDDEN SMILE. 113 agreeable to look upon. It was easier to see that the younger face was the handsomer of the two, being in fact singularly handsome, and to overlook that what it gained in symmetry of feature it lost in moral strength and intel- lectual power. Just at that moment the look of listless discontent which usually lurked about the well-shaped mouth and drooping thick-fringed eyelids was absent, but the tone of voice in which the younger man's next re- mark was made showed an approaching relapse into the prevailing mood. " I should say you lead a very jolly sort of life here by yourself, with very little to trouble or bother you." " Except my work," answered Wynyard dryly, "which, if I remember right, you considered something of a trouble when you attempted it." u Attempted it, precisely ; but then I never did it ; I never got any work to do, and I could not have done it if I had. I was not saying that I should lead a jolly sort of life here, but that you do." " Never mind me ; let me alone. How about yourself ? I have hardly seen you since you were last at Leigh. What made you come back so suddenly ? was your mother there ? or what happened ? Let us turn to the fire ; I have nothing very particular to do this evening, so you can talk as much as you like." vol. i. i 114 A DOUBTING HEART. u Good heavens! may I ? What a gracious perm sion ! I ought to be hugely obliged to you for conde- scending to listen to me." Wynyard thought he was partly right there, but he only said : " I thought you intended to stay at Leigh till after Christmas ? M "Intended? No; you said I ought: but I never in- tended anything but to be governed by circumstances, as I always am. You were right just now about my mother being there ; she was there, with all her friends." " Well, I suppose you consider the house your mother's home as much as yours ? " " c Ministers to make one die* — that was a capital speech of Florae's in ' The Newcomes.' It made more impression on me than anything else in the book; puts all my life experiences into a nutshell. They were all there, every one of them, men and women." (t If you were of tener at home, your mother would take more pains to suit her society to your taste, I should think. When you leave her alone of course she gets her old friends about her." " Come, now, Wynyard, did she ever think of my tastes in her life, except to try to crush them out as if they were serpents ? Docs she not consider it her first duty in life to bully me ? and would hot ploughshares A SUDDEN SMILE. 11 ~. strewn in the way keep her from it ? You know you never could stand her for more than ten days in the old times. After the first week or so of the holidays you used to sneak off to the Rivers's or somewhere, and leave me to bear the brunt of the lecturing alone." " She was not my mother," said Wynyard, quickly. " However, what are we talking about ? You don't wish me to condole with you on your mother's temper, I suppose. She is about the only relation you have in the world except myself ; and she did the best she could for you when you were dependent on her." " And now that she is dependent on me, you fancy, I suppose, that I find it easier to get on ? " "No," said Wynyard, with the first pleasant smile that had crossed his face since the talk began ; te I know you both too well to fancy any such thing. I am certain that her conscience does not allow her to abate her vigi- lance over your shortcomings by a hair's-breadth, because she is now owing everything to you ; and as for you, I won't say what quality it is in you that makes you a greater sneak than ever under the circumstances, but I am prepared to give up all hope of ever seeing you stand up to her as you ought, now that you have a house of your own, which you could turn her out of if you pleased." " Then you ought to leave off bullying me when I turn i 2 116 A DOUBTING HEART. myself out of the house ; you know it's hammer-and- tongs when we are there together, and that I always hated it. When I think of the old Eton holidays in that awful little house in Chelsea, and the state I used to be in at the end of them, I wonder I am alive now. It's only natural I should want a year or two of peace and quiet to shake myself together again. Why should you object?" " I don't object ; I only say the sort of aimless life you are leading now is very bad for you, and it's for you to consider whether you ain't getting sick of it." " What's the good of considering ? I don't see any- thing else to be done — unless — yes, I had a scheme in my head, but for that you must help me ; and though it's for your own good as well as mine I declare I don't know how to put it to you." "I don't advise you to bring me into any of your plans ; it would not answer. You've got to learn to look after yourself, and if you can't, why should not you marry ?" "That's the worst piece of advice you ever g&T6 me. It would be a beastly selfish, and a monstrously silly thing to do. If I chose a wife to please myself and brought her home, there would be two people instead of one for my mother to bully ; and if I let my mother A SUDDEN SMILE. 117 choose for me one of her sort, there would be two people instead of one to bully me. It's out of the question. I want peace and quiet and something to amuse me, and you suggest getting married ! I ain't so hard-hearted as all that. Fancy bringing a little frightened thing like the bride I saw yesterday to Leigh for my mother to sit upon I" u There are plenty of girls as lovely and timid-looking as that one, who would be quite ready and thankful to attempt the adventure if you put it to them, I fancy," said Wynyard, rather bitterly. " By all accounts Lady Forrest has not been wanting in courage. >) "Ah ! but there it's the man himself that has the temper, or drinks, or something, is it not? and that's nothing — nothing to a nagging mother-in-law. A woman can always get the whip -hand of a man if she likes, and all the better for beginning by seeming afraid of him. So they say at least — I don't know. No mortal being ever even pretended to be afraid of me. Fm not made for ruling, I suppose. It is a dreadf al mistake that you are not in my place, Wynyard, and that brings me to what I came here to talk about. I have been thinking of it ever since yesterday." " I should have thought that was too old a story to be talked or thought about now, and, for myself, I don't see the use of it." US A DOUBTING HEART. " You will by-and-by, when I have got what I came to say right side up in my head, and can put it properly to you." There was a little pause, during which Wynyard took out his note-book and began to study it, and Lord Anstice folded and unfolded a stray sheet of foolscap into various shapes, with great appearance of interest. After finally producing a cocked-hat and sticking it on to a bust of Dante on the chhnneypiece, he resumed, in a meditative tone : "No, I can't understand her passing for a beauty. She looked well yesterday, extremely well ; but I never could get over her nose. A woman with a nose like that has always too much to say for herself. I suppose you don't mind it, eh ? n Wynyard, who had now taken up a pencil, proceeded to re-write an obscure note, with an expression of face which he intended to make utterly indifferent and pre- occupied, but he could not prevent his features from quivering a little. ' ' Why don't you answer a fellow ? n " I don't know what you are talking about." " Oh yes, you do. I was asking you whether you did not think Miss Rivers about as equal a match to n mother as one could expect to meet with in this genera- A SUDDEN SMILE. 119 tion. Those delicate aquiline noses and bright blue eyes, with a spice of devil in them, mean temper, don't they ? and plenty to say for yourself. Altogether, a person who would not consent to be sat upon easily, eh ? M Wynyard returned his note-book and pencil to his pocket and sprang up from his chair. " I'm going out/' he began ; " if you've exhausted all you have to say to me, and have nothing better to do than discuss Miss Rivers's nose, which is no business of yours or mine, let me remark, I shall leave you. I have just come across the address of an old fellow, whose acquaintance I made accidentally at a public meeting, and whom I promised to look up some day. I've a fancy to find him out to-night." " That's to say, that any old fellow is better worth listening to than your own cousin, though he has come out on a wretched evening to talk to you about your own affairs." " I have not heard anything about them yet ; but you can come with me if you like." " I'm coming, of course ; I like your oddities, and when I've got you out in the streets, you won't be able to get away from me till I've had my say out." " That depends," Wynyard observed when they were out in the air, and walking down the wet street arm-in- 120 A DOUBTING HEART. arm. " I may as well tell you at once that I'm not in a humour to-night for chaff on the subject you introdue*. just now. Anything else you please ; I don't want to be crusty, but that is tabooed now and for ever, unless you wish really to annoy me." " There is nothing I mean less. It was not chaff either I was beginning upon. 1 had a handful of good wheat to show you, if you'd only have looked at it. Now, I suppose, I shall have to come round you with the halter some other way." " If you really have anything to say — say it out. It can't possibly concern Miss Rivers." " But it does. However, I've turned round now, and am beginning at the other end. What should you say to my cutting Leigh for a few years, and setting forth on my own hook, without letting anyone know precisely where I was going, and without knowing any better myself ? A life of travel and adventure is positively the only sort of life I care a rap for ; and why should not I have it ? I should take plenty of money with me, and while it lasted, live about as I pleased in out-of-the-way places — Timbuctoo, perhaps — without any of my people being a bit the wiser; and when I came back, say in ten or fourteen years — who knows ? — I might be ready to settle down and marry the woman my mother has in A SUDDEN SMILE. 121 lier eye for me already, and make up to lier for all the years wherein I have plagued her, by walking in her ways for the rest of my life. You may not credit it, but I have such a praiseworthy ending always in view, and nothing will bring me to it but a long spell of freedom first. What do you say ? " " Say ! there's nothing to be said ; but that it's as foolish and selfish a plan as you could possibly propose to yourself. You know perfectly well that your mother would be miserable, and that you've no right to throw responsibilities on her that she's even more unfit to deal with than you are yourself. You don't expect me to further such a project, I hope ? 3> " Wait a bit before you begin to swear at me. Just suppose for an instant or two that I'm dead/' « What's the use of that ? " " You'll see — say I'm dead, and that you immediately marry Miss Rivers : what would happen next ? You would not, I take it, turn my mother out of Leigh, since she has taken to the place ; or stop her from carrying out her favourite plans in the village, seeing that they are about all she cares for in life at present. She would be dependent on you instead of on me, and your wife would manage her. That's the point. The thing opened out to me as I sat looking at Miss Rivers's profile the 122 A DOUBTING HEART. day before yesterday, and I've been thinking about it ever since." " You don't mean to drown yourself on the uncertain prospect of getting Miss Rivers to manage your mother I suppose ? " iC Not at all. I go away for a few years, leaving the entire management of my affairs in your hand You have sufficient clue to my whereabouts to send me money, but you decline to give such information to my mother or any of her allies as would set them on following and remonstrating with me. It's an understood thing among all parties that my eventual return and my future con- formability depend on my taking a long spell of let-alone first ; and meanwhile you marry Miss Rivers and do pretty much what you like at Leigh. You might try on any of your pet social schemes you pleased on the estate for anything I should care. Shut up all the alehouses, or give all the women votes if you can. I'd promise not to undo more than I could help when I got home again. How do you think it would work ? " " Like a good many of your plans, agreeably enough, perhaps, for yourself and very badly for everybody else concerned. What makes you Buppose that I should be willing to give up my profession, and all my prospects in life, to do your work while you enjoyed yourself ? M A SUDDEN SMILE. 123 w Well, I could tell you in a word why you should, if you will let me. Miss " " No, don't go on," interrupted Wynyard hastily.. u It's absurd. If I can't put myself in a position to win the wife I want, by following my own line, I certainly shall not do it by becoming a paid servant of yours. You misunderstand the matter altogether.'" " But don't be crusty. Servant is a notion of your own. Of course I meant a sort of partnership, of which you should settle the terms yourself, and that could go on all the same after I came back again to England. Leigh is large enough for a colony of us, and dull enough to want plenty of inhabitants to make it bearable." " Thank you — you mean well, I dare say ; but plans- of that kind never answer, and I am the last person " "You ought to be the first person, if you put the smallest atom of faith in your own theories. I've heard you talk by the hour as if all private property was a mistake and everybody who has anything ought always to be giving it away to everybody else, and doing everybody's work as well as his own; and now, when a chance comes of carrying out your doctrine, and a fellow asks you to take the work he can't do himself off his shoulders, and go shares with all that he has, you say, ' It won't answer,' as coolly as if you had never preached it up as the right thing." A DOUBTING HEART. " Don't push me against the lamp-post in your vehemence. Look where yon are going — you will have your umbrella hooked on to that woman's bonnet in a minute. " The woman was Katherine Moore ; and as Wynynrd pulled his companion farther on to the pavement, and slackened his pace to lower the obstructive umbrella, the sisters, talking eagerly, passed him closely on the lamp side, and Christabel's remark about the pleasantness of a London fog, and her upward glance at the light, arrested the attention of the two young men at the same moment. They did not speak, but they exchanged glances, first of amusement, then of surprise, when the face, whose sudden beauty the lamplight had revealed, had been swallowed up again in the murky gloom of the street. " Queer things one hears in the streets sometimes/' said Lord Anstice meditatively, after they had proceeded a step or two on their way. " I wonder what the girl meant by sayiug that London mud was sweet ? I wish I could see her again and ask her. She looked as if she meant something more than met the ear, and I shan't get her saying out of my head in a hurry; it was such a qu< thing to hear in the street on a foggy day. Hallo ! What's that ? " "Not a queer thing to hear in these streets/ 1 said A SUDDEN SMILE. 125 Wynyard ; " some drunken row probably before the gin- shop at the corner. Here is our turning." cc But the girl who passed us just now went that way. I saw her pressing on as if she had business down there. Let's follow at all events to see what's up." Wynyard, who had had a good deal of previous ex- perience of the general inutility of interference in street rows, did not second his companion's desire to push on with the same eagerness that Katherine and Christabel had displayed. Consequently the two young men did not reach the scene of action till a few minutes after the appear- ance of the sisters there, and as a rough crowd had now poured out of the gin-shop near, they had some difficulty in forcing their way through to what seemed the core of interest — a clear space, close to the railway-arch, where four figures, disengaged from the throng, were standing out conspicuously; a woman leaning against the brickwork of the arch, wiping some blood from her face with the corner of a ragged shawl, and a man, who seemed lately to have turned from her towards two other women stand- ing before him, one of whom had her hand on his arm. His face, on which such light as there was fell, wore an uncertain look, half-bewildered, half-savage, as of a person arrested in a moment of fierce passion, and held irresolute by some strange new experience, which had not as yet 126 A DOUBTING HEABT. translated itself into his consciousness as a cause for pat- ting aside or inflaming his rage. The woman who was touch- ing him, and on whose face his strained, bloodshot eyes were fixed, was still speaking, for a clear, refined voice was audible a few paces off through the hubbub of the crowd; but just as the two young men gained the outer circle of spectators someone in the throng laughed — a shrill, jeering woman's laugh. At the sound the arrested madness in the ruffian's face lighted up again like a jet of fire bursting forth, and as the evil flame leaped from his eyes, there came the dull sound of a heavy blow followed by a fall, and then a shrill wailing cry rang through the street. Two minutes of indescribable confusion and backward and forward surging of the crowd followed ; but at the end Wynyard and his cousin had each accomplished the object they had respectively thrown themselves upon, when the sound of that cowardly blow fired their pulses. AVynyard, aided by a wiry little old man who had elbowed his way to the front at the same moment with himself, had pinioned the offender against the wall of the bridge, and was holding him firmly there till the proper authorities, who wi said to be making their appearance round the corner of the street, should arrive to take him into custody. Lord Anstice had succeeded, he never quite knew how, in dragging up from under the feet of stupid starers and A SUDDEN SMILE. 127 gesticulators the woman he had seen felled to the ground, and in carrying her out of the throng of people intent on watching Wynyard's prowess, to a spot just beyond the shadow of the railway-arch, where a coffee-stall with its lamp and awning seemed to offer a sort of shelter. Two or three women followed him, and almost the first thing of which he was distinctly aware was the touch of a cold, trembling hand laid on his, and a voice, hoarse, but imperious, saying in his ear : " Give her to me — here, into my arms. She is my sister." " Can you hold her ? She has fainted ! " he said, looking <3own into a small white agonised face in which he did not at the moment recognise the flashing-eyed smiling counte- nance he had noticed under the lamp a few minutes before. " Of course I can ; she is my sister I tell you. She will open her eyes when she feels me. Oh, Kitty ! Kitty ! " A woman pushed the coffee-seller's chair forward and drew Christabel into it ; and then Lord Anstice knelt down on the pavement, utterly regardless of wet and by- standers, and laid his burden across her knees. Neither he nor Christabel had presence of mind to think of any other course to take than this. They were both absorbed in one question, so dreadful to Christabel that it might not have suggested itself to her if she had not read it in his 128 A DOUBTING HEART. eyes. What was the meaning of the death-like whiten* of the face, which fell prone on Christabel's shoulder soon as Lord Anstice's supporting arm was withdrawn ? Before he rose from his knees he had time to take in a good many particulars connected with the white face and drooping head, from which the bonnet, crushed into a shapeless mass, had fallen. Its high white brows, one of which was disfigured by a wound, the soft dusky hair brushed smoothly back from the face, the delicate ears, the sweeping black eyelashes and level eyebrows, — and he thought what a strange face it was to have grown death- like in a street row, and how still more incongruous with the surrounding scene — the flaring light of the coffee- seller's lamp and the flaunting and wretched figures gathered round — was the clear-cut cameo-like head that bent over it; the features as pallid and almost as motionless, but instinct with living agony instead of unconscious peace. He had time for these thoughts before any change came, and then there was a quivering of the white eyelids, a swelling of the nostrils, a moan from the recumbent head, and at the same moment the other face flushed up, and two earnest eyes, witli a strange look of triumph in them, were lifted to his. "There, } T ou see, I said she would wake up as soon as she felt my arms round her : I knew she would come A SUDDEX SMILE. 129 back to me. Katherine, Katherine, my darling, I am holding you fast ! M Another long-drawn sigh, and then the dark-fringed lids were fairly raised, and the eye's turned to the face above them with something of an answering look of love ; and Lord Anstice, as he sprang to his feet ready for helpful action now that suspense was over, felt a curious pulse in his throat, and a quick bound of joyful relief in his heart, such as nothing that had occurred to himself for many a day had been able to give him. It was, to use his own phraseology, the u oddest " feeling he had known for a long time, and he quite applauded himself for being capable of such strong emotion. By this time Wynyard and his coadjutor had resigned their captive into the hands of the police, and they now joined the smaller group by the coffee-stall. The shabby old man, who, to Lord Anstice's secret disgust, recognised Christabel and called her " my dear/' immediately took the lead in deciding: what was to be done. " These ladies are friends of mine," he explained to Wynyard, "and were coming to my house when the accident occurred. It is a few yards farther down the main road, in a side street : we had better get them there as quickly as we can, out of the way of the crowd that will soon be surging back to the gin-shop." VOL. I. K 130 A DOUBTING HEAET. Katherine, who was now sufficiently recovered to take part in the discussion, caught at this suggestion and managed to drag herself from Christabel's arms and put her feet to the ground ; but the first effort to move brought a moan of pain, and though she assured Christabel that she believed no bones were broken, she was obliged to let herself be supported by the arms of the numerous helpers who came forward, and was at last fairly carried into the little shop. The jar of the last step across the threshold, and of being laid down on the hard sofa in the back parlour among the clocks, cost her another fainting- fit longer than the first, and while Christabel was occupied in applying restoratives, there was time for a few words of explanation to pass between the owner of the house and the two young men, whom alone of the crowd he had allowed to pass beyond the shop-door. As soon as he began to talk quietly, Wynyard recognised his acquaintance of the public meeting in the little old man, and he did not feel the less inclined to put him down as a social phenomenon for hearing him speak of Christabel as his teacher, and seeiug her take from under her cloak a volume of Pascal, which was to have been the subject of their evening's study. Surely there must be a spirit of travesty abroad to-night, and his long day's suppressed excitement had ' A SUDDEX SMILE. 131 i carried liiui into some region of illusion, where perhaps there was nothing incongruous in wiry old shopkeepers being the pupils of pale young ladies, or in women with grand pure faces like that one on the sofa being knocked down by drunken ruffians in street-rows. It did not increase, but rather lessened Wynyard's bewilderment, when Chris tab el, in answer to his question, gave the name of the street and the number of the house where they lived, and he remembered all at once that it was Mrs. West's address, and recalled Lady Rivers' s embarrassed explanation about the two young ladies whom her sister, Mrs. West, had taken into her house as companions for her daughter, that pretty shy little Emmie West, whom he had met in Alma's company once or twice during the course of the last year. This information seemed rather the mot de Veii'ujme, so far as accounting for his own share in the events of the evening went, for now he knew why it was that, failing the quiet reverie he had promised himself, a stroll in the direction of Saville Street had appeared the next most agreeable thing. It brought him not near the Rose indeed, but near the earth that sometimes touched the Rose. All through this evening's walk there had been lying at the bottom of his mind a plan of turning towards Saville Street, when his visit to the watchmaker was k 2 132 A DOUBTING HEART. over, and (if his courage held good at the last moment) of paying a late call on Mrs. West, and finding an excuse for drawing Emmie into talk about the wedding that would include one speaking and one hearing of Alma's name at least. The project was at all events so fixed in his mind, that when Dr. Urquhart had been summoned, and had decided that Miss Moore must be conveyed home before anything could be done to relieve her, it seemed quite a matter of necessity that he should follow and see the end of the adventure. He did not even feel surprised at the energy with which his cousin scouted Dr. Urquhart's demur to the necessity of bo many attendants accompanying his patient to her own door. He was glad to be upheld by a perfectly indifferent person in his opinion, that something would arise as soon as they all reached Saville Street to make the household there glad of the presence of two willing messengers, who might be sent anywhere that occasion required. As it turned out, Wynyard's presence really was a boon to Emmie and Mrs. West, for they found him sufficiently quick of comprehension to be used as a decoy for the purpose of drawing Mr. West's attention from the unusual bustle and confusion in the lodgers' part of the house. He allowed himself to be hastily sent into the A SUDDEN SMILE. 133 dining-room, while Katherine's transfer from the carriage, through the hall, was being effected, and honestly taxed his conversational powers to the utmost, and kept Mr. West so well entertained that he quite forgot to harass the rest of the family by complaints and questions. After more than an hour's hard work, Wynyard had his reward. Mrs. West and Emmie came back to the room, and after a little talk over the accident, he found an opportunity for telling them that he had been present at Lady Forrest's wedding the day before. The remark started the sort of conversation he desired, talk that was always more or less hovering round Alma, and which at last brought out an expression of Mrs. West's preference for Alma over her sisters, and the relation of various anecdotes of her kindness to her Saville Street cousins, Wynyard (despising himself for his folly all the time) thought that the interest of these little stories, totally irrelevant to him and his concerns as they were, well repaid him for the hour and a half he had spent in waiting for the chance of some such treat. He knew that they did not concern him in the least, and ought not to alter his thoughts in any way, for he believed that he understood Alma's character better than anyone else did. Yet as he sat and listened, while the foolish little anecdotes fell in diffuse sentences from Mrs. West's lips, 184 A DOUBTIXC HEART. lie could not help receiving them into his mind as a brightly-coloured hazy background, prepared for him to begin painting hopeful pictures upon as soon as he should be alone at last. Emmie, seated on the edge of the sofa, and putting in a word now and again, entered into his thoughts only as a pretty incident in a scene that would always live in his memory with a certain pleasurable glow upon it. He had been so well amused himself that it did not occur to him to feel surprised at the sight of his cousin still linererinQ' in the hall, when at last unmistakable signs of weariness in the master of the house had driven him to take leave. " What did you find to do ? and where have you put yourself these two hours?" he asked, when they were on their way home, and had settled preliminaries about meeting next day to offer their evidence of the assault they had witnessed. Lord Anstice launched into a description of the Moores' rooms, to which he had been invited by one of the children, under an idea that he was the attendant of the surgeon whom Dr. Urquhart had summoned to his assistance. He made a long and amusing story out of his encounters with different members of the crowded Saville Street household, not omitting to describe Emm by beauty and old Mrs. Urquhart's wonderful evening-cap ; A SUDDEX SMILE. 135 but lie said very little about tlie real heroines of the evening, and nothing at all concerning a few words of conversation between himself and Christabel, which, though he might not perhaps have confessed it even to himself, had repaid him for a good deal of unusual self- denial. The opportunity for talk had fallen out in this way. He was standing where he had been left by Casabianca, in the corner of the Moores' sitting-room, partly hidden by Christabel's easel, while the two medical men talked together by the fireplace, when Christabel came out from an inner room in which Katherine was, and walking straight up to him, touched him on the arm. " My sister wishes to speak to you before you leave the house/' "Is she able?" " She will not sleep till her wish is satisfied; follow me before we are forbidden," with a glance at Dr. Urquhart and a movement towards the bedroom. Lord Anstice fol- lowed her. Katherine was lying on a low bed, that fitted into a slope of the attic-roof, pale, but with full conscious- ness and energy in the grey eyes she turned on him. M I want to ask one question before I sleep," she said, in a weak sweet voice, " You were there ? — you saw it all, did you not ? — you are " 136 A DOUBTING HEART. " Ralph Anstice," he said, seeing that she paused and looked earnestly at him. " I was wondering whether it was you whom I saw in the crowd. You came first to our help — I think you must have seen " "The blow that struck you down. I did, and you may be quite sure that the ruffian who dealt it shall get his deserts as far as I can accomplish it." " Hush ! I was not thinking of him. I want to know what became of the woman whom he had struck before I came up. Did no one think about her ? Did no one notice what became of her ? " " I can't say that I did. She followed the crowd, I suppose." " But she seemed much hurt ; she is a woman, you see, as well as I, and much more helpless." " At all events she shall be free from her tyrant for a pretty long time to come. I think I may safely promise you that.'" " But it may not be enough ; it may not even be the best thing for her, if the man is her husband. I want you to understand that I interfered for her protection, and it is her good, not any foolish indignation on my account, that I want all of you who saw what happened to bear in mind, if you are called upon to give evidence A SUDDEN SMILE. 137 to-morrow. Do not make what happened to me the important point. I brought it on myself, and I shall feel guilty if things are made worse for that miserable woman on my account. I can trust David Macvie, and you — may I not ? — to consider her welfare first, and not press the charge on my behalf, if prolonged punishment of the man would be bad for her." There was a moment's silence, while Lord Anstice hesitated in some embarrassment at the request ; and Christabel, who had gone round to the other side of the bed, and was bending over Katherine, looked up at him. " You had better do as my sister bids you," she said. " She is always right, I can assure you, and the sort of person to be obeyed." As she spoke a sudden smile broke just for an instant over her face, bringing colour and light and sweetness upon it, and a look into the wonderful wide blue eyes that made them seem to his fancy like gateways, giving a glimpse into a new world, where such feelings as ennui, and weariness, and unprofitableness had no existence. In that moment he recognised the face to be the same as the one that had flashed upon him in the street, and struck him so much by its strange beauty. When he had left Wynyard at his door, and was proceeding on his solitary way to his own quarters, he 138 A DOUBTING HE A: occupied himself in wondering how one small pale face could wear such opposite looks, and which of those he knew, he should find upon it when he came to Saville Street again, as of course he must, to render an account of how he had kept his promise. >- - CHAPTER VI. PEOS AND CONS. But busy, busy, still art thou, To bind the loveless, joyless vow, The heart from pleasure to delude To join the gentle to the rude. " So you saw Agatha when you were in Paris, and never wrote me word. How was that, Constance ? " " Speak lower, dear Alma, my maid is in the next room putting away all my bridal dresses, and the door is open." And young Lady Forrest, the bride of six weeks ago, looking very unbride-like in the deep mourning she had lately put on for her mother-in-law, whose sudden death had cut short the wedding journey, looked timidly towards a figure dimly seen through the open dressiug- room door and then appealingly at Alma. " Now, Constance, I hope you are not going to set up a fear of your servants in addition to all your other little terrors," said Alma. " I did look, at all events, to seeing 140 A DOUBTING HEART. some dignity and independence come with the con- sciousness of your wedding-ring. Do you ever mean to feel as if you were mistress of this house, I wonder ? ' Constance answered by another frightened ' ' Hush ! ' and Alma, after crossing the room and closing the door, knelt down by her sister's chair and put her arms round her. " Now we are thoroughly alone at last," she said coaxingly. " I see it won't often be so. Let us feel alone this once, and speak one or two free words to each other once more in our lives. I have scolded mamma for wanting to make you talk, and here I am doing it myself ; but I am so hungry for a little bit of your real self, Connie. We have not talked together in our old way since the day, three months ago now, when you came into my room and said : ' I am engaged to Sir John Forrest/ I was naughty, and you were frightened, and a thin ice wall grew up between us. It has passed away now, has it not ? and you will at least let me look into your eyes, if you can't speak to me, and I shall read there how it is with you, now that you have six weeks' experience of what it is to be married." " Of course, since Lady Forrest's death it is all very sad, so different from what we expected," Constance answered, still avoiding her sister's gaze. PROS AND CONS. 141 " Yes ; but that need not keep you from looking at me. The suddenness was very shocking, and it must have been sad for you both, hurrying home to find that all was over. But now that it is all over, let us speak the truth to each other about it. Lady Forrest was a very formal person, whom neither you nor I could get on with, and — I suppose it was very hard-hearted of* me — but my first thought, when I heard she was dead, was that now there was one person less for you to be afraid of." " I had been making up my mind not to be afraid of her, but to try to get her to like me. I thought she might be a help to me ; show me how to manage ; give me hints when I felt at a loss, as I do sometimes." " I should have been frightfully jealous in that case. Yes, indeed, I don't mean to give you up to anyone. You will have to confide in me still in the old schoolroom fashion. I will not allow that the mere fact of your being married has put such a gulf between us that we cannot be as useful to each other as we used to be. Now I challenge you to look me full in the face and say that you can do without me, and that you don't, just now, long to talk to me without any false pretences." At last Lady Forrest did lift her drooping eyelids far enough to give Alma a good look into her lovely eyes. " You don't want me to say whether I am happy or 142 A DOUBTING HEAPT. not, do you?" she asked, with a visible shrinking from. the question. " You know it is very difficult, while every- thing is still so strange, to know exactly how it is with one; but (lowering her voice to a still softer whisper) I don't mind telling you, if this is what you want to know, that he is really very fond of me, in his way, he is indeed, Alma." u What a singular he," cried Alma lightly, to conceal the pain the earnest look she had courted had given her. sitting opposite her uncle, whose alternate fits of absence 174 A DOUBTING HEART. of mind and inconvenient talkativeness made him a for- midable vis-it -vis for her, had time to discover that other causes than scantiness of provisions might give uneasiness to host and hostess. It might be natural enough that Constance should feel a little nervous while entertaining her father for the first time in her own house, but it did seem strange to Emmie, who thought herself versed in graver troubles than any her cousins knew, to see Constance turn pale when Sir John ad- dressed a whispered question to a gentlemanly man behind his chair, and frowned over the answer; as pale as her mother turned, when Mary Ann brought breath- less news of a catastrophe in the kitchen, which meant a bread-and-tea dinner for everybody in their house that day. Could anything go very seriously wrong in a house- hold where dinner seemed to be an august ceremony, almost like a religious service ? If so, was it good-nature or inadvertence which just at this crisis made her uncle wake up from absorbed enjoyment of an i , and address a question to Mr. Anstice, which presently drew the two lawyers into an eager discussion of a legal topic that no one seemed disposed to share with them? The effort might be well-meant, but it did not answer the purpose of bringing good-humour and ease to the t and bottom of the table. r A TURNING-POINT. 17 Sir John's face grew more and more wooden, and the tone in which he said " Exactly " more and more unmean- ing, at every attempt to draw an opinion from him; while Constance leant back in her chair, and played with the contents of her plate, instead of eating her dinner, very certain that her first trial at entertaining her own people was not proving a success. She had meant to take a private opportunity of begging her father not to slide into professional talk with Mr. Anstice, but the little excitement of fetching Emmie had put it out of her head; and now it seemed to her that she read in her husband's sullen face the fate of all her future efforts to bring her family about her. All the little devices for securing the relief of congenial, familiar companion- ship, with which she had comforted herself during the dreary tete-a-tete of the last six weeks, her father was blowing them all awav with his voluble legal talk, think- ing all the while, too, that he was doing her good service, and keeping the conversation up to the point of brilliancy he prided himself on always maintaining at his own table. Lady Forrest saw before her long, long vistas of dinners — whole years of them — during which she should sit looking at that sullen face opposite, depending on its more or less of gloom for her comfort or discomfort through the evening, and her heart sank at the prospect. 176 A DOUBTING HEABT. Even the old family plate, in such much, better taste than the heavy modern epergnes and salvers that were the joy of her mother's heart, failed to cheer her greatly ; for what satisfaction could one get from the most perfect and unique possessions, if one were not allowed to dispr them before those whose pride in one's dignity seemed now the only thing that made it much worth having ? Ah, there was her father launched on one of the stock anecdotes he always had recourse to at home when he felt suddenly self-convicted of having neglected the weaker intellects among his audience. Constance looked across at her husband : would he say " Exactly " at the end of the story about the Irish advocate who apostrophised a prisoner in the dock as iC a serpent in a tail-coat, shedding crocodile tears, with a hat upon his head ; " or would he condescend to smile at this grand tour de force of her father's comicality ? It seemed a turning-point ; and when the inevitable word in the usual dull tone came out, she felt as if it were a sentence to gloom for all the remaining evenings of her life, and she made a great effort to swallow a piece of ice-pudding to keep down a sob that threatened to rise in her throat. Emmie wished she could help thinking everything handed to her so nice, that she longed to transport each dish as it passed to the dinner-table at home, or to Air A TURNING-POINT. 177 Throne, where the boys and Mildie were probably just then feasting on stale buns with Katherine Moore. Otherwise she felt she could conscientiously tell Katherine next day that she agreed with her about the inanity of polite society, and truly preferred the noisiest and scrani- bliest tea at home to the grandeur in which she was sitting silent and unnoticed. Before and after the u crocodile- in-a-hat ,J anecdote, which diverted Iter, if no one else, she had time to hatch a good many private anxieties in her brain ; as to whether she must have a cab to take her home, which would have to be paid from the slender emergency purse she and her mother watched over so anxiously — whether Constance would remember to tell her maid to put up the purple linsey dress, and whether she should have courage to ask any servant in the house to bring it downstairs and put it in the cab ? The longer she thought, and the oftener she glanced up at the grave faces, and decorous figures that flitted noiselessly about the room on the service of the table, the more did this difficulty loom mountainous before her. There was some relief when the move to the drawing" - room came. Emmie felt the glamour of pleasure in pretty things and luxury steal over her, as she sat by the fire sipping coffee from Sevres china cups, that were curiosities worthy of a museum, and listened to Alma ' VOL. I. K 178 A DOUBTING HEART. i playing dreamy music on the grand piano, and still more when, seeing Constance's eyes closed, she grew courageous enough to wander about the room full of pleasant lights and shadows, keeping time to the music with little trip- ping steps and fancying pleasant fancies. If one were a princess, for example, living in this house, and if its owner were a prince with a face majestic and kind, like the one that had looked at her over a deep lace collar from the opposite wall during dinner, and if by some painless process all the quivering heart-strings that linked one to the thickening trouble at home were severed, so as to leave room for pleasure and delight to flow in, then to be sure — but no, Emmie's heart was too tender and loval to allow her to take more than a minute's pleasure in even a fancy that cut her off from sharing the family pain. A vision of her mother's face, looking sad when she was not near to comfort her, pulled down her castle in Spain before it was half built, and sent her back humbly to the piano, to watch Alma's hands during her skilful playing, for the chance of carrying home some hints to Mildie that might aid that ambitious young person in her determination to become, among a few other things, a first-rate pianist. The gentlemen entered from the dining-room while the final chords were sounding, and Mr. Austice stopped A TURXIXG-POINT. 179 by the piano and began to talk to Emmie, inquiring after Ivatlierine Moore, and referring to the night of the accident, and to one or two late visits to Saville Street, where, as it seemed to Alma, who kept her seat on the music-stool, and heard every word that passed, he had made himself very familiar in a very short time. It was always his way, and always with the wrong sort of people, she thought disapprovingly. After a while she found an opportunity for interrupting the conversation to ask a question she had intended all the evening to put to YTynyard, though she had kept it till nearly the end, not to seem too eager on the subject. " Have you heard of the great doings we are to have at Golden Mount for Christmas and the New Year ? " " Golden Mount — do I know the place ? " (t Yes, yes ; you do perfectly well ; and what is more, I happen to know that you have had, or soon will have, an invitation to spend Christmas week there. Golden Mount is the country house in Kent, close to Longhurst, that the Kirkmans have lately bought, and almost rebuilt in splendid style. Mrs. Kirkman knew mamma long ago, and since their rise in the world, and their becoming our neighbours in the country, they have rather thrown themselves on us for advice. They have asked mamma to manage their house-warming for them, and it is to be n 2 180 A DOUBTING HEART. on a scale of magnificence, such as only suddenly-made millionaires ever think of indulging in. I can't help being curious about it, for people say that the house, and above all the new conservatories and winter gardens, are curiosities of perfection. Mamma is closeted with Mi Kirkman to-day, writing invitations and making plans. * and we have promised to stay on throughout a whole fortnight of fetes." " I hope you will enjoy it." " You will have the opportunity of judging how far we succeed in making it enjoyable ; but you must not flatter yourself that you owe your invitation, when you receive it, to our suggestion. Mr. Kirkman wrote down your name himself, and it is due to his admiration of your talents, of which it seems he has had proof in some way or other." " Admiration indeed ! The scoundrel ! He must be more vulnerable, however, than I supposed, if he thinks it worth his while to try to stop a small growl like mine, by throwing a bribe at me." "You are not at liberty to call my friends names, if you please." "You don't know what you are doing when yen call such a man as that your friend. You don't know what he is, as I happen to do. You have no idea of how A TURXIXG-POINT. 181 lie lias made this money you talk of helping him to spend." 11 Of course I have not ; it is no business of yours or mine. His wife is a kind motherly old woman, who is fond of mamma, and since this fabulous fortune has, one way or another, got into the hands of people who don't know how to enjoy it, I consider we are doing good service to society by showing them how to make it useful. There are plenty of people, I can tell you, with more right to be fastidious than you or I, who will keep us in -countenance only too gladly." 11 What do you consider gives one a right to be fasti- dious in such a matter — more or less honesty, more or less dislike to divide the spoil with the spoiler, or what?" " I won't have you wax eloquent ; there is no occasion for it. It is quite a simple question. If one is never to share in entertainments unless one can account to one's own satisfaction for the money that pays for them, we shall have to keep pretty well out of the world." " Exactly \" This was said with a playful smile, and ■a slight imitation of the tone so often heard at dinner, and was meant to atone for the over-gravity of his last speech ; but when Alma's face did not relax, Wynyard added : ' c Yes, it is exactly as you said, one has to keep pretty well out of that world." 182 A DOUBTING HEART. " But I have told you mamma and I are going into it, and that you may spend a week with us there if you lit Not that we shall be in any want of pleasant company. w There was a little pause, and then Wynyard said: "I am glad to know that I shall not owe my invitation to a kind suggestion from anyone belonging to you. In that case I should have found it very difficult to refuse/' " Why should you refuse Mr. Kirkman V " I can't help myself. Look here, this packet that I am going to post on my way home to-night contains a magazine article, the third of a series I am writing to v - pose the sort of dishonest speculations by which Mr. Kirkman, among others, has gained his sudden wealth. His name is not mentioned in it, but I had him in my mind at every sentence, and it was some private know- ledge of a shady proceeding of his which set me on to write as I am doing. How should I feel, do you think, reading this in proof next week at his breakfast-table ? About as honest as I consider my would-be host, or indeed rather less so." 11 If that is all, give the letter to me instead of posting it ; I suppose a writer can't be expected to burn his own manuscript, but he would not feel any sympathetic agony, would he, while another person put it into the fire ? V can write three or four of these things in a month, I A TURNING-POTXT. 183 suppose ; one cannot be of so much importance to you, can it — as — I don't say the pleasure of spending a week with old friends, but as abstaining from giving papa another reason for thinking you impracticable ? He has no scruple about visiting Mr. Kirknian, why should you have any ? " Alma rose from her seat as she spoke, and ap- proaching Wynyard, held out her hand to take the letter. Emmie had been listening anxiously ever since Mr. Kirknian' s name — which carried painful home associa- tions with it — came into the talk, and now a strange fear of seeing the paper move to meet Anna's fingers possessed her. In her eagerness, she felt as if some momentous result, involving the triumph of the man who had ruined her father, over new victims, hung on Alma's getting her way, and she only just restrained herself from putting her hand on Mr. Anstice's arm to hold it back. " Don't, Alma," she cried vehemently. " Let the letter go. I have heard mamma say that Mr. Kirkman deceived papa, and helped to ruin him long ago. It is only right that people should know and be warned in time. Let the letter go, Alma." Both Alma and Wynyard, who had forgotten Emmie's near neighbourhood altogether by this time, were startled 184 A DOUBTING HEABT. by the interruption, and surprised ai the eagerness of the blushing face on which they turned to look at the same moment. Emmie would be overwhelmed with shyness at the mere recollection of the part she had acted by-and-bv, but for the present, shyness was burnt out by a stronger feeling. "Ask mamma about Mr. Kirkman," she went on eagerly, "or Harry; he knows, and will tell you. Ask them what they think before you decide, dear Alma." "Had I not better get them both an invitation to spend their Christmas at Golden Mount V answered Alma, with something very like a sneer on her beautiful trembling lips, for she felt her cause was lost, and knew how sorry she should be when her anger was over. "Oh, Alma!" "Well, why not? The change of air and amusement would do them good, and it would be a sensible way of turning Mr. Kirkman'fl profusion to good account. A better thing than railing at him, I maintain. You can- not persuade me that the national morality will suffer from his having a guest or two more or less at his Christ- mas parties, any more than it would have suffered from the suppression of the paper you are putting back into your pocket, I see, Mr. Anstice." A TURNING-POINT. 185 " We are not concerning ourselves about j)iiblic morality that I know of/' Wynyard answered a little coldly ; then, approaching* her and lowering his voice so that only she could hear, he added : u I thought you were above bribery — and such a tremendous bribe as that one to me — a week with old friends, I think you said, — well, my comfort all through my solitary week will be to know how you would have despised me if I had accepted it." " Not at all. I was in earnest at the moment, but now I really think you had better not go. People who feel differently on almost every subject had better keep out of each other's way. You have lately, it seems, grown accustomed to such very intellectual society in the Saville Street attics — ' Air Throne/ I believe my cousins call it — ' that anything terrestrial must appear very low-minded indeed to you. AVe shall each, no doubt, enjoy ourselves equally among our new friends and forget all about old ones." ""Speak for yourself," said Wynyard, quickly. "I shall have no gaieties to put recollections of past Christ- mases out of my mind. Must I really keep them all to myself this year ? Shall you not be able to spare a poor quarter of an hour even at the end of the year for a glance back to the days when we did not feel differently on almost every subject — as you profess we do now ?" 186 A DOUBTING HEABT. Alma turned back to the piano to collect her music at this, and though Wynyard followed and stood beside her for a minute or two, affecting to help her, he got no answer whatever to his question. If she had spoken what was in her mind she would have retaliated on him with another query. How could she believe in the sincerity of regrets for past happiness when opportunity for making it present were so lightly thrown away — for a mere scruple ? What better could she do than drown all thoughts of the refusal that hurt her pride so deeply, by entering with all the zest she could command into splendours and gaieties which he might have made so much more than empty shows for her ? She mentally registered a resolve so to drown her pain, and though perhaps there might have been a relenting if she had looked up and seen the eyes that watched her — pleading for another word or two — the opportunity for further conversation did not occur. Her father came to the piano, before she had finished tying up her music, to tell her that their carriage was announced, and to beg her not to keep it waiting, as he had arranged with Constance to send Emmie on to Saville Street in it when it had dropped them at their own door. Emmie was too full of her own relief at being informed by the servant who brought her cloak that her A TURNING-POINT. 187 * other belongings had already been placed in her uncle's carriage, to notice the formal hand-shake, given without the least upward glance on either side, with which Alma and Wynyard Anstice parted. CHAPTER VIII. spiders' and nornir's threads. Much like a subtle spicier which doth sit In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide ; If aught do touch the utmost thread of it, She feels it instantly on every side. Our souls sit close and silently within, And their own web from their own entrails spin. <( Spinster, fairy spinster, don't hinder your sister's spinning any longer j I want the money I am spinning out of my head quite as much as you want the gold and silver fly wings your threads are to catch ; let me go on with my thread now, little idler." 11 Idler ! " echoed Katherine Moore from an arm-chair by the corner of the fire, where she was lying back watching' her sister at work before her easel, with the placid content of a convalescent in seeing others busy. r r 1 SPIDERS' AXD KORXIR'S THREADS. 209 me of ignorance of attics, for I assure you, that taking all the hours of my life together, a large proportion of the best of them have been spent under the roof. I used to vote the attics at home the only endurable part of the house, and they were not to be compared to these of yours. Why, this room is magnificent ; you might get a regiment into it." " Of tin soldiers/'' said Christabel, laughing. " It must have been a reminiscence of those old battles with steadfast tin soldiers fought under the roof you told me about, which made you say that; though, judging by the quantity of ' Christmas ' you appear to think we require for our decorations, you must indeed have got into your mind a grand idea of the space we occupy." " Will these things be in your way, then ? You can burn them, you know, if you don't care for them ; only you said something about wanting branches of trees to copy, and I was afraid you might not find anything* good enough among those I sent this morning. Look here!" stooping down to pick up something that lay on the floor under a branch of laurestinus, "I hit upon this when I was looking round, and I fancied you might think it worth having." This was a beautiful pale yellow tea-rose, with an VOL. I. P 210 A DOUBTING HEART. abundance of shining leaves, that must have cost a gardener some trouble to produce in such perfection in mid-winter. Christabel took it in silence from the hand tl: offered it to her, and laid the blossom against her face, breathing its odours in a sort of quiet ecstasy, while Katherine praised the size and beauty of the flower, and ventured a little wonder as to where it had come from. "I, in point of fact, hit upon it; I generally do find what I want if I look about me," was all the satisfaction she got, uttered in a tone of languid complacency that made her feel Christabel/ s theory of the poor cousin more difficult to hold than ever. Could this elegant-looking young man possibly belong to the Bohemian artist class they had read about — wdiose manner of life had, she knew, a certain vague attraction for Christabel ; and, if so, was this new acquaintanceship on which, for the first time in her life, she seemed to be entering eagerly, a good thing for her ? Katherine so shrank from the pnssibility of a breath of difference in opinion arising between her- self and Christabel, that she hastily ordered herself not to be prejudiced, and tried to listen complacently to a desultory artistic-sounding conversation that now an about the pretty effects of the firelight on the dark SPIDERS' AND NORNIR'S THREADS. 211 holly leaves and the laurel boughs, which Christabel had gathered into her lap, and was nursing tenderly. Before all the evergreens were discussed and disposed of about the room to the satisfaction of the two artists, who found something to say about every leaf and spray, Mrs. Urquhart's servant appeared with a tray of good things for Katherine's supper, and a message that Mrs. Urquhart herself would follow shortly to ascertain that justice had been done to her fare. Christabers intention of paying David Macvie a visit and asking his escort for a shopping expedition was now again referred to, rather to Katherine's disappointment, and their visitor began to look for his hat, which had rolled off into a dark corner after his encounter with the beam. He stood with it in his hand by the door, while Christabel stooped over Ivatherine once more to ask if there was anything she could do for her before she left her. " If David Macvie should be out," Katherine began. "Now, Kitty, you have promised me not to be nervous ; you are not to think of me again till I come back when my business is finished. You will try to be reasonable, won't you ? " " Especially as I shall have the pleasure of walking with your sister to the watchmaker's door, and puttino- her under Mr. Macvie' s charge before I leave her. I will r 2 212 A DOUBTING HEART. not let her get knocked down in a crowd, I promise you/' said a voice from the door. " It is not our usual habit to want people to take care of us/' said Katherinc, falteringly. " We are accustomed to walk through the streets and do our own busim without any help, and generally we prefer it." " Poor Kitty," said Christabel, putting her hand on Katherine's forehead and feeling how the temple* throbbed. "You are so troubled just now you hardly know what you wish, and you are making yourself wor by struggling with your fears. Come now, I am not the least bit afraid of going anywhere alone, as you know, but I will be magnanimous and let myself be taken care of across that haunted corner just for once, to spare your nerves." " And, indeed, Miss Moore, you may depend on me for talcing care." Katherine's eyes were shaded by ChristabePs hand at the moment, so that she did not see the look that stole in- voluntarily under ChristabePs eyelids towards the door the unusual words "taken care of" passed her lips, or the electric glance that answered it. She might have been a little startled if she Ii<<tcr does not like." u r To-night she docs not like it, but she will not think FORTUNATUS'S PURSE. 225 about it when she is strong, and we get back to our usual life again; we are too busy people, I assure you, to give way to fancies ." " I can't bear to think of your having to work so hard ; women ought not to have to work." " Hush ! that is dreadful heresy ; Katherine thinks it our chief privilege and glory, and will not endure that there should be a possibility of hardship we don't claim a share in. She would feel herself insulted if you said that to her." " Well, you see, I can't say I consider work a privilege myself, and as for hardship — one sees a woman sometimes for whom one cannot endure the thought of it ; one would like to pave a road with jewels for her to walk upon, it is the only thing that seems fit for her." " Katherine and I don't belong to that order of women then," said Christabel, lowering her eyes to avoid a too meaning look, which however brought a still deeper glow to the cheeks the wind had brightened. " We have taken to rough paths of our own free choice, and we find a great deal there to compensate for the sharp pebbles and puddles we sometimes come across." " That puts me in mind of something you said once before. Stay, it was just here, close to the lamp-post we are passing now. I daresay you have forgotten, but I vol. i. o 226 A DOUBTING HBABT. never shall. You looked round at your sister just here, and said London fogs were sweet to you, and that you were glad to be in them. I was passing and overheard, and I thought I would give a great deal to be able to a you what you meant. I did not know all that was to come of it."" " You saw us before the accident ? You followed us into the crowd ? w " Yes, that was when I saw you first, just here where we are standing now." " Just here." An electric thrill passed through Christabel as she repeated the words. She saw the crowd again swaying backwards and forwards over the spot where Katherine had fallen, and one figure, with a face that had looked to her like the bright face of a rescuing angel, pressing on- ward, intent only on her safety. He had followed them then with the purpose of saving, and just here the first impulse to that protectorship she had begun to feel so constant and so strange, was born — just here. She looked up to the gas-lamp, down to the flickering square of light on the pavement where they stood, and almost involuntarily held out her hand. He took and pressed it silently, and then they walked on, still without speaking, passed the fateful crossing, and turned down the little FORTUNATUS'S PURSE. 227 dark street where the watchmaker lived. He was sur- prised and perhaps somewhat taken aback at the sudden impulse that had led her to show her feeling of gratitude so frankly, he felt it had something in it a little beyond him, a little more liigliflown than he could quite under- stand, though nothing had ever so moved him, or made him feel so happy before in all his life. But to her, that hand-clasp under the gas-lamp in the crowded street was a solemn acceptance of a new power come into her life, vague in its requirements as yet, but a reality, capable of usurping the realm of her dreams, and reigning there as not even Katherine had hitherto reigned. When they reached the watchmaker's, they found that the shutters were up, and the shop-door closed, though it was still early. David had probably gone out to spend a cosy evening with a brother-entomologist, or to attend a meeting at his club, and Katherine's pupil, the con- sumptive young jeweller who occupied the upper story of the house, had left London when the cold weather set in. Christabel stayed her companion's hand when he was about to pull the bell impatiently a second time. " There is no one in the house," she said ; " I know the look of the place well enough when it is left in the guardianship of the clocks and the butterfly cases. Ringing again would only bring out the heads of the two scolding Q 2 228 A DOUBTIXfi HEAET. women who live next door on each side, and who might perhaps revenge their last quarrel with David, on us, by throwing cabbage-stalks at our heads. Well, it is a pity! I don't think the streets ever before looked bo inviting for a stroll as they do to-night — but never mind. I can make some of my purchases on my way back to Saville Street, and I have already had a walk that has done me good. Thank you for it." " You are not dismissing me here ; I never heard of such a thing," cried Lord Anstice, stammering with eagerness. " Of course I shall see you safe home, for I promised your sister that you should not come to any harm, and how can I tell unless I see ? And, beside-, why are you in a hurry to go back ? Your sister won't begin to expect you till the hour when you would have returned, if you had had a walk with the old man. Why should you go home earlier than you first intended V " No, Katherine won't expect me for another hour/* said Christabel ; " it is very pleasant out of doors to night, and if you have nothing better to do M u I could not do anvthin^ that I liked better." Thev had reached the corner of the side street new, and Christabel stood for a moment or two irresolute, looking wistfully through the railway-arch towards a better quarter of wider streets and brightly-lighted shops FORTUXATUS'S PURSE. 229 that lay beyond. Just outside the arch was the opening to the square, — whose trees, not snow-powdered now, but black and bare, could be seen from "Air Throne," — and the broad road that followed stretched — a long vista of lessening lights and converging crowds, into a dim dis- tance of mist and light. Christabel's eyes dilated as she gazed, and when she turned them on her companion, they had still the dreamy, far-seeing look that made them so different from other eyes. " Do you know," she said, with the delightful smile expectant of sympathy which had hitherto been kept for Katherine alone, " I don't know how it is, and I am half ashamed of it, but a scene like this moves me a great deal more than most country views, I don't say than all, but beyond most that I have seen. If I ever paint a real picture — I never may, but if I do, — it will be some- thing made up of light and darkness, stillness and move- ment, contrasts of life, such as you will see if you look down there." The spot to which she pointed was the space, half in bright gaslight and half in shadow, between the corner house of the square and the railing of its garden, which, in comparison with the thronged pavement of the main road close by, looked almost deserted. A ragged boy was standing in the circle of light made by the bright 200 A DOUBTING HEART. door-lamp of the corner house, thrumming a guitar, while his companion, a little girl fantastically dressed, had seated herself on the lowesl step of the hou and was resting her spangled head on one hand, the tambourine hanging uselessly from the fingers of the other. Farther back in the shade of the i . a group of ragged children were dancing in time to the music ; their uncouth gestures, and dingy faces and garments, making them look wild and spectral in the partial gloom in which they moved. As Christabel spoke, the girl on the doorstep sprang up, and holding the tambourine over her head, resumed her task — for that one moment's rest — of twirling round and singing 1 in a shrill, sweet, childish voice, that rose above the noises in the street, and reached to where the observe were standing. "I know the tune" Lord Anstice remarked a little indifferently, for Christabel's admiration of such a common bit of London life puzzled him. xt I have heard it at theatres and places very differently sung ; but she keeps the time wonderfully, and the voice is not bad for the open air." "It has spoilt it all to me," said Christabel. She was a picture a minute ago, and now she is a poor little tired child, singing fur her sapper, with very little chance FORTUXATUS'S PURSE. 201 perliaps of getting a satisfactory one. Let us go and give her a penny." This movement decided the question of Christabel's prolonged walk. When they had turned from the little singer — into whose tambourine Lord Anstice threw two pieces, that were not, as Christabel saw by the lamplight, brown pennies, but white half-crowns — they were in the main street, among the shops brightly lighted and decorated, and set oat temptingly with Christmas gifts and Christmas cheer. The most inviting provision shops had not only their throngs of busy purchasers coming and going, but were besieged by lingering groups of wistful, hungry-eyed children and pale women, who hung' about the windows to look with longing eyes on luxuries that were not for them, and who scattered whenever a voice of authority from within, or a policeman's step approaching without, warned them away. Into one or two of these shops Christabel turned to give brief orders, and make small payments, and brisk little inter- ludes of conversation passed between herself and her companion as they waited for their turn, among the throng of purchasers, or hurried from one place to another. Christabel had hitherto hated the details of housekeeping, and left the dispensing of their slender funds to Katherine's skill, but to-night the little per- 232 A DOUBTING HEABT. plcxities that arose from the necessity of proportioning the contents of the purse to the wants it had to y, only exhilarated her, and when in the lightm E her heart she explained her difficulties to her new friend, and he volunteered astounding suggestions, which revealed profounder depths of ignorance on economic questions than her own, they laughed together over their mistak like two children playing at responsibility. "That is the last/' said Christabel, coming out of a grocer's shop, where they had been longest detained, l( and you see it is as well," holding up a worn leathern purse that plainly showed its emptiness. " Katherine and I never get anything we can't pay for at the time and we never need, this good little purse always has just enough in it ; but tell me now, do you ever wish to be rich — on some such night as this, for example, when you are out making purchases, have you ever felt a burning covetous- ness enter your soul ? w 11 1 don't know. I used to wish awfully to be rich, but somehow or other, lately, I've got to think that perhaps there's not so much in it as one fancies." " You're right about ordinary riches. I never in my neediest moment wished for a settled income of so many hundreds or thousands or even millions a year. I am FORTUNATUS'S PURSE. 233 quite well aware that is never enough, and always turns v out to be a mere encumbrance. I have no faith whatever in riches that people know all about and expect you to spend properly : but Fortunatus's purse I should like to have. A purse with always a sovereign and a shilling in it is what I desire ; and if I had it I am convinced that I should use it a great deal more sensibly than the shadowless man did. I should not pull out my mouey recklessly, so as to excite people's suspicions by the sight of heaps of gold. I should keep the purse close in my pocket, and go modestly about the world, feeling that I might spend my pound and my shilling on any fancy that came into my head, without owing the slightest responsi- bility about it to myself or anybody — there would always be another ready, and no second thought about my spendiugs should ever trouble my conscience. To-night, for instance, I would go into that crowd before the grocer's shop we have just left, and pick out the palest and most wistful-looking of those women and the shabbiest child, and I would take them back with me, and for once in their lives give them as much of every one of those good things they are devouring with their eyes, as they could carry home, more than they want. What a story it would be to them for the rest of their lives. One unstinted, undeserved piece of good luck, 234 A DOUBTrffG HEABT. coming they did not know where from, and leaving no obligation behind it. I should like, beyond anything else in the world, to go about Bowing such st —for once in my life at least. It would transport me into an Arabian night at once." u So it would ! What a capital idea ! It would be the best fun going. And I say, why should not we have Fortunatus's purse just for to-night ? " Christabel turned round and stared at him. "Why should not we? What are you dreaming of? Are yon by chance the little grey man — and have you got the purse iu your waistcoat-pocket ? 9i For answer Lord Anstice thrust his fingers down into his waistcoat-pocket and drew out a small purse, which he held out to Christabel. "Try it," he said, imploringly. " Try if it won't have a sovereign and a shilling in it as often as you give it back to me to-night. It would be the best joke that was ever acted ; do try it." " What can you mean ? You don't suppose, do you, that I would give away your money in that reckless w. Of course I was only talking nonsense." "But I don't think it was nonsense. You said it was what you would like beyond anything in the world. So why should not you have what yon like on one FORTUXATUS'S PURSE. 235 Christmas Eve ? It won't do me any harm, I assure you* It's — in fact — a windfall that I meant to give away at Christmas — and I believe you've hit upon the very best way of doing it. I don't know what you feel, but I'm in an Arabian night already, and want to take as many other people into it as can come. There — that pale woman with the shawl over her head, and two ragged children hanging on to her skirts, why should not it begin with her ? " Christabel could not keep her eyes from dancing with delight, even while her hand still hesitated to take the purse. To know that this strange feeling of having got out of herself and wandered into a magic world of dazzling delight was not unshared, added another spell, and made her feel that the only safe exit for her excitement was to pass the pleasure on to others. " You are sure that you are serious, and intend what you are doing ? You won't be sorry for it to-morrow, as. I am sometimes when a Will-o'-the-wisp of a fancy beckons and I follow it ? " "Not I. I shall look back upon it as one of the best things I have done in my life." "And there will still be another shilling and sovereign in the purse for yourself when you want them ? " " Oh yes ; you need not trouble your head about 236 A DOUBTING HEART. that. I can make it a Fortunatus pur-'.' as far a- sovereign and a .shilling go whenever I like." " Ah, then you must really be a much better artist than I am, whatever you say of yourself/' cried Christabel, looking up, with an air of respect that amused Lord Anstice intensely, at the broad forehead shaded by his wideawake, and then at the well-shaped, delicate hand that held out the purse to her. A true artist's hand, she said to herself, then aloud, " If you are really so lucky — but come into the shop with me, and see the delight on that woman's face which Fortunatus's purse .going to buy for us." Lord Anstice, however, preferred to wait outside, pleading that it was better to avoid attracting the atten- tion of bystanders, and that Christabel could flit in and out among the crowd, and act the fairy benefactor more easily alone. She came back to him when he had waited about ten minutes and was just beginning to tire, with a radiant face, and a look in her wonderful eyes turned upon him, that made him forget he had felt impatient. " I slipped out of sight while the shopman was counting out the change into her hand. Let us turn down this side-street and lose ourselves in the throng round Punch and Judy as quickly as we can. I have heard all about her. She is a widow with eight children, FORTUXATUS'S PURSE. 237 and goes out charing. She went so far as to remark that she ' had heard of angels/ when I put a whole pound of tea into her lap — but the other things, the oranges and savoury jelly for the child who is ill — and the lavish materials for to-morrow's plum-pudding for the other seven, reduced her to absolute dumbness, and when she finds me vanished, and has to go home with her five shillings change in her hand, her puzzlement will be as complete as we meant it to be. I know she will tell the six children she left locked up at home that she had a glimpse of wings underneath my cloak and heard them flutter just as she lost sight of me. Oh, and I did not forget the shilling, either. I slipped it into the hand of the eldest child to secure his falling in kindly with the angel legend. Fortunatus's purse is quite empty." "Give it back to me then, and look about in the crowd to see who is to come next." A hump-backed boy, poorly but decently clad, who, with a big basket in his hand, was hanging on the out- skirts of the Punch-and-Judy crowd, took ChristabeFs fancy now. "Tiny Tim shall carry the turkey home himself this year," she cried eagerly. " Leave him to me ; I have a story ready about a sympathising friend who wishes to 238 A DOUBTING HEABT. :id a token of respect and good-will to lii.s parents tliis Christmas. Ah, there is my token — in the poulterer's shop opposite, tied up with rose-coloured ribbon His basket is just big enough to hold it. I will catch him, and be back in a minute." Tiny Tim visited a second shop, and acquired a warm comforter before Fortunatus\s purse was exhausted. By the time it was returned to her again, Christabel had fallen in with a tribe of ragged urchins, mothered by a little woman of six, on their way to a by p to spend a halfpenny, and, after following them to their destination, and astonishing their small minds with undreamed-of abundance in the way of buhV-eycs and toffy, she carried them off to a ready-made clothes shop over the way, and equipped them in warm jackets, cap and hats, adding a shawl for mother, who was report* d to be coming home from the hospital on Christinas Day. When she gave back the purse at the close of this performance, which had necessitated its being once carried back to its owner in the course of the bargain, and had triumphantly pointed out the transformed tribe trotting homewards, each clutching the other's miraculously whole garment with solemn looks of in- fantile amazement, it suddenly struck her that time had been passing, though she had not heeded it during tin FORTUNATUS'S PURSE. 239 ■exciting experiences, and that Katherine must long ere this have begun to expect her at home. " Yes, it's about time we escaped from these quarters/' Lord Anstice assented. " People are beginning to stare, and the next thing that might happen is our being taken up for passing bad money. Fortunatus's purse would puzzle the policeman, and before we could make all •clear your sister would have time to think I had fulfilled my promise of taking care of you very badly/' " Let us make haste home, then, and I need not keep you, you know, after we have passed under the railway- bridge." " Do you think I can't walk as fast as you, or must I tell you again that nothing you can say to me will make me give up a step of the way ? I never enjoyed a walk so much in my life, and I have not so many pleasures that you need grudge me the fag-end of this one." Christabel was silent for a few minutes after this speech. The sentence, " I have not so many pleasures " went to her heart, and confirmed the delightful sense of comradeship that had given such zest to all the events of the evening. Her companion was, she thought, leading just the sort of life she had read of and dreamed about, and that she admired utterly — a generous, free-hearted, careless life — not from recklessness, but from that sense 240 A DOUBTIXr; HEART. of power to command ultimate success and distinction which supreme genius gives. Self-denying, too, in the midst of power, for it had few pleasures, and they were of this kind. When they had repassed the railway-bridge and were nearing home, she spoke again. " Ours is not a pleasure that will come to an end when our walk is over ; in fact it is, properly speaking, only just beginning now. Tiny Tim has hardly reached home with his basket yet, and our charwoman has not begun to tell her story to the six home children, for I feel sure she turned into a greengrocer's on her way home to spend that five shillings on coals for to-morrow's fire to boil the pudding. There are a good many people who will never forget this evening." " You may count me for one of them." " Yes, it has been a wonderful walk. I can do without another for a long time with this to think of." " But why should you do without another? Mi Moore, look here. I think your sister is right in not liking you to walk about by yourself." " But that is condemning me to no walks at all, and, luckily, it would be an impossible rule for me to keep. After the Christmas holidays I shall begin to give drawing- lessons again, and some of my pupils live a long way off, FORTUNATUS'S PURSE. 241 on the other side of the park. I shall have walking enough then." " So shall I. I am going into the country for a week or two on business, but when I am in town I walk about a great deal, and generally across the park. When we meet, it will give you a chance of prolonging your walks without your sister needing to be anxious. You'll let me do that for you sometimes, won't you, after taking such good care of you this evening ? " They had reached Mrs. West's house by this time, and Christabel turned on the doorstep to wish him good- night. " I don't ask you to come in again," she said, " be- cause it is late and Katherine is tired, but when you come back to London " " Precisely, I shall come and settle about those future walks." " And Katherine will thank you for taking care of me on this one." " I consider it a promise, however," said Lord Anstice as they shook hands. Christabel's excitement died away into anxiety, and some doubt about the wisdom of her actions, when she found herself shut into the emptiness of the Wests' front hall. It was Casabianca who had opened the door for VOL. I. R 242 A DOUBTING UK ART. her, and ho proceeded instantly to enlighten her on various disagreeables consequent on her prolonged absence which he thought she ought to know. (( Oh, I say/' he began, " there have been people coming to the door from shops all the evening with parcels for you. They said you ordered 'em, and Mary Ann says you'd better keep a footman to open the door for your purchases, since you've grown too grand to carry 'em home yourself. She wonders who you expected to ■ take 'em up to the attics for you." " I did not think they would come so soon," said Christabel penitently. " I thought I should get home in time to ask you, Casa, to be on the look-out and take them in for me. It surely is not late." "Mary Ann meant to keep you standing half an hour at the door to punish you; but I dodged her," continued the boy. "Yes, it's pretty late. Mrs. Urquhart's tea has come out of the drawing-room, and Mildie overheard her telling her maid to inquire whet]; you had returned and gone upstairs to Miss Moore. Mildie flatly refused to satisfy the old lady's curiosity, I should have given it to her if she had ; but, I Bay, another time you'd better take 4 me out witli you to carry home your tilings. It would be better fun for me than sitting in that stuffy school-room while Mildie does her physics, FORTUNATUS'S PURSE. 243 and Fd bring you home the back way and keep yon out of scrapes with Mary Ann." " Thank you," said Christabel, smiling, as she com- pared the different kinds of protection that it seemed just now to be her fate to have thrust upon her ; " but where are my parcels ? You have not let Mary Ann make away with them, I hope." " Oh no, she only threw them into the lamp -closet because she said she would not have lodgers' parcels lumbering about the hall; I'll fish them out for you in a minute and carry them up to the top of the house if you'll let me." Christabel declined his company, under plea of wanting to get upstairs as quietly as possible, and she was conscious of feeling a little sneaky as she passed Mrs. Urquhart's door on tip-toe, to avert the danger of being assailed by the old lady with a shower of questions and remonstrances for having left Katherine alone so long. Had she really been neglecting Katherine for her own pleasure this evening ? The strange thing was that a pleasure without Katherine should have been complete enough to make her forget. If Christabel had been selfish she was punished, for she was not able to make the immediate atonement she had promised herself, of taking Katherine into her pleasure B 2 244 A DOUBTING HEABT. by telling her all about it. Katharine's weary pale face, and the unwontedly querulous tone of her voice as she asked the cause of her long absence, showed that this was no time to begin a long story, a story too that Christabel felt she could only tell comfortably to sympathising ea in a mood to take its humours in good part. The tale of Fortunatus's purse must wait for another time, and live, as no dream even had ever yet lived, alone in Christabel' s memory, without there beinga reflection of it in Katharine's. Christabel told herself that this disappointment was only one more added to the many troubles, great and small, caused by her Bister's illness which had first made her know what it was to feel lonely; yet she was un- reasonably depressed when she had to lie down by Katherine's side at night, with the unconfided events of the evening lying, as she fancied, like a tract of unknown country between them. The pain of this thought kept coming in and out among her dreams, and mixing in a fantastic way with recollections of the scenes of the evening, till she was recalled from uneasy slumber by the sound of the church bells ringing in the Christmas morning. She sat up in bed, resolved to shake off the vague discomfort to which she had awakened, and as she recalled the night visions to dismiss them, she hardly knew whether to laugh or shudder when she found that FOKTUNATUS'S PURSE. 245 the most persistent of them had been one in which she saw herself entreating the companion of her late walk, in the guise of the " little grey Master/'' to take back his purse in exchange for her shadow, with the loss of which she thought Katherine was reproaching her. CHAPTER X. TWILIGHT. Forth from the spot he rideth up and down, And everything to his rememborance Came as he rode by places of the town Where he had felt such perfect pleasure once. Lo, yonder saw I mine own lady dance, And in that Temple she with her bright eyes, My lady dear, first bound me captive-wise. Chkistabel Moore's one little bit of Christmas gaiety passed quickly, and for the present seemed to have left no trace behind it. The owner of Fortunatus's purse did not appear again in Air Throne, or make any further demon- stration of himself by token or message, and the intimacy that had sprung up during the Christmas Eve walk began to wear a dream-like unreality in Christabel's recollection, as of something that could not possibly belong to the world of solid outside fact. The more so as Katherine had a slight relapse during the last week in the year, and showed such unwonted symptoms of d< pondency and anxiety about Christabers doings, that TWILIGHT. 247 somehow or other (Christabel could not quite explain it to herself) the story of her Arabian night remained untold. It lay a weight on her conscience, that had never known a reserve from her second self before, and yet a treasure that seemed to grow more precious, more dazzling in dream-like beauty, every time she withdrew herself into the one unshared corner of her mind where its remembrance was stored, and allowed herself to live over its incidents one by one. Otherwise the opening month of the new year was a trying time to the two sisters ; the first, since they had lived alone together, when their spirits had failed to rise higher than the difficulties that challenged them, and outside discomfort had been allowed to reflect itself within. Katherine found the mental irritability and weakness attending on her slow recovery far harder to bear than the suffering of real illness, and could scarcely reconcile herself to herself in such a new state, even by regarding it as an enlightening experience for future use. Christabel was sometimes almost tempted to wish for the days back again when her patient lay passive in her hands, so diffi- cult did she find it to restrain Katherine's eagerness to be at work again, without bringing up the depressing question of what was to become of them if two continued to eat while only one earned. Outside helps to forget 248 A DOUBTING HEART. this vexed question came seldom er and scldomer. Even Mrs. Urquhart went away the < after Christinas Day to spend a fortnight with her married daughter in Devon- shire, and the doctor took a fit of shyness or prudence, and, when professional visits were no longer nece- sent up notes of inquiry by Casablanca, and was as seldom seen by the sisters as before Katherine's accident. The young Wests came and went as usual, but did not bring much brightness with them. Nothing particular had happened, Emmie explained, when questioned tenderly by Christabel to account for certain red circles that sur- rounded her pretty eyes once or twice when she came up to Air Throne — nothing new, but — well, it was the beginning of the year, and if Katherine and Christabel did not know what that meant in a family like theirs, it was hardly possible to explain. If she must say something, it meant — well, seeing mamma turn pale every time the postman's knock came at the door, and having it always in one's mind that one must be on the watch to intercept dreary-looking letters which, if they fell into pap hands, brought a look into his face and a tone into 1 voice that, on account of the effect they had on mamma, must be kept back, at the expense of any amount of vigilance by the rest of the family. It meant, too, the sorrowful looking over of these missives with mamma TWILIGHT. 249 at a safe time, and the making of all sorts of painful discoveries. Emmie had not hitherto been very definite in her complaints to the Moores of home troubles, but one day about this time, when she came upstairs with a little glow of angry red on her cheeks that almost put out the traces of tears round her eyelids, she was moved to open her heart to them respecting a source of vexation and anxiety, that had only dawned on herself and Harry after long poring over this year's unpaid bills, though poor mamma had had it weighing on her heart for a long, long time. They (she and Harry) had discovered that papa was not to be trusted with money. No, she did not mean to say exactly that. Mamma would never forgive such words, and Katherine and Christabel must please pay no heed to them, only, alas ! they were true. Papa, it seemed, never had, and, they feared, never would, leave off mixing himself up in speculations of the same reckless sort that had ruined him years ago, and in spite of all the expe- riences he had had, and of all his bitter disappointments, he would still, whenever mamma did not prevent him, keep back part of his salary from her, or intercept the rent of the drawing-room, to make a private fund to invest in some scheme which he always believed would enrich them this time. 250 A DOUBTING HEART. " Of course it never does/' said Emmie, in a hitter tone that sounded strangely coming from such sweet li] ■ " Of course nothing does succeed when papa goes into it, and so of course it ends in our growing poorer and poorer, and having longer and longer unpaid bills for mamma to cry over every dreadful January. It is breaking mamma's heart, and even Harry is angry with papa now that he understands the trouble clearly. You don't know what a dreadful feeling it brings into the house when we find that Harry, whom we always looked to, to cheer us, is losing heart at last, so that all our poor little jokes have to be put away, and the school-room is as dull and silent as the other parts of the house. I wonder whether fathers and brothers quite know how hard it is for us women, who have been in the house all day waiting for the evening and planning comforts for them, when they come home too sad and tired to take any notice of what we have been doing ? It seems to take all the pleasure and meaning out of our lives. Of course we have always been used to that from papa for years and years, but when Harry's good temper and spirits fail, it is almost impossible for mamma and me to struggle on. ■> " Poor little clinging air-plant!" said Kaiherine, some- what patronisingly, as she tried to stroke the angry Hush from Emmie's cheek with her firm, cool hand, " AVhen do TWILIGHT. 251 you mean to strike down roots into soil of your own, that will make you a little more independent of other people's tempers and doings ? " " I don't know," answered Emmie, who was too much in earnest in her present sorrow to care to change the talk into a discussion of Katherine's favourite theories. " I don't think that even working for myself, or having ever such a grand career of my own, would make me in- different to papa's and Harry's doings. How could it, when it has come to such a pass with us that we are being rained by our father, and that Harry, who has always stood up for papa through everything till now, is losing faith in him at last ? Oh, I wonder how successful people feel — the clever speculators who gain what the foolish ones lose? I wonder what their houses are like, and how they look when they come back to their wives, and their sons and daughters, and tell them that they are gainiug every day, and putting the possibility of poverty and anxiety farther and farther away from them ? Alma could tell me. She knows by this time how the Kirkmans live, and how they behave to each other." " But you don't envy them ? " said Katherine, a little disturbed at the sorb of hungry light which came into Emmie's eyes as she spoke the last words. " You don't wish that your father were a successful deceiver, instead 252 A doubtim; eeabt. of tlie dupe of other people's cunning ? He is very wron no doubt; but failure in such a course shade betl than success." "Yes," said Emmie suddenly, unclasping the ham she had raised over her head, and relaxing all her strui frame into its usual soft, pliable lines. "Yes, you are right there. I don't envy the Kirkmans — no, I don't. I would not have a splendid house and prosperity that an honest person could not share. I don't put riches above people, if Alma does. I am only wondering how she has liked her Christmas visit, and perhaps thinking it strange that her new year should begin so differently from mine; that - should be enjoying herself with the winners, while I am finding out all the bitterness that comes to those who lose. Well, Alma may choose the Kirkmans and their splendour, but everyone does not feel like her — not everyone." Katherine could have wished that Emmie had -aid she preferred principles to riches instead of proph, and that the soft light which put out the anger in her eyes had not suggested some new direction, towards which the air- plant was putting out its tendrils, rather than any resolute takins: foot-hold on soil of its own, such as she rccom- mended. She let the conversation drop here, howev for she saw that Emmie's thoughts had drifted away into a channel where she had no clue to follow her. TWILIGHT. 253 Emmie's fancies were the more tempted to stray towards Alma and her late gaieties just now, because, since the beginning of the year, one or two little incidents had conspired to restore the Rivers family to that pro- minent place of importance in the thoughts of their West relations,, which they had rather forfeited by their neglect before Constance's marriage. Lady Rivers had sent her carriage with an urgent message one day when she was suffering from a severe cold, and caused Mrs. West to dress hastily in her best clothes, and leave her own home- business at a very inconvenient moment, to go and sit with her sister through one of her idle mornings. Sir Francis too had himself actually called in Saville Street one Sunday afternoon, happily interrupting the weekly repetition of the Catechism by the younger children, and had made Mrs. West's heart nutter with wild hopes by asking various questions about the ages and prospects of the boys, and by remarking that Aubrey (Casabianca) was a well-grown, intelligent-looking lad for his age, and ought to be enjoying greater educational advantages than the school he at present attended seemed likely to afford. And besides — only Emmie in all the family knew the link which made this circumstance a "besides" to the others — Mr. Anstice had taken to dropping in for an hour in the evening at short intervals, and had contrived to make his 254 A DOUBTIXr; EEABT. visits welcome to all the members of the household, as an agreeable lightening of the gloom of this dreary season. Mrs. West pleaded the possibility of late visitor an excuse for bringing Emmie, Harry, and Mil die into the dining-room for the last hour or so before bed-time, and when Mr. Anstice did come in, they were almost a merry family party. Wynyard drew Mildie i rat about her studi and won her heart by giving her a bettor explanation of an algebraic problem than she had got from Katherine Moore, while professing to share Casabianca's awe of her learning all the time. Once or twice the two Moores were invited to take late tea in the dining-room to meet him, and then, when Mr. West was discovered to be fairly asleep behind his newspaper, they all gathered round the fire, and actually achieved a game of capping vers " Just as other people do at Christmas tinie," triumphantly remarked Casabianca, who had stolen in against orders, and who endured the verses for the sake of monopolising a seat next Christabel Moore, and pre- venting Harry from handing her tea-cup. The mirth and the interest he showed in all that went on were thoroughly genuine on Wynyard's part, for he had Long been so shut out from any experience of family life as to be grateful for such a chance participation in it as even this; but Emmie was not blinded to the hope which lay TWILIGHT. 25 '_'•>■> at tlie bottom of his attraction towards their society, and, with a sad little feeling of self-depreciation, she made it a point of justice with herself to give him each time he came, at some well-chosen moment, the word or two of news about Alma for which she felt sure he was longing. " Of course," she thought, " it is to hear of Alma, not to sit an hour in our dull house, that he, who can make himself welcome anywhere, takes the trouble of seeking us, and laying himself out to please us. It would be cheating him to let him go away without what he comes for." She feared that in taking his wishes thus for granted she was perhaps assuming a closer intimacy than the extent of their acquaintance really warranted, but Alma^s name slipped almost involuntarily from her lips on the first opportunity that came, and when once such an amount of private understanding had been established between them, it seemed useless to go back from it. " Yes/' she had said, on the occasion of Mr. Anstice's first call after Christmas, when he and she chanced to be standing- a little apart from the rest, and he had hesitatingly ventured a remark that tended in that direction — "yes, they did go to Golden Mount two days before Christmas, and they stayed till the end of the first week in the new year. I don't know how Alma enjoyed the visit, and I am afraid I shall not have an opportunity of asking her, for Aunt 256 A DOUBTING HEABT. Rivers took a severe cold in coming home, and is full of anxiety just now about her own health. She sent for mamma, and told her that on account of her illness she should not give the usual Christmas party, to which Harry and I have always been invited hitherto." " It is rather hard on you, is it not, to lose your share of pleasure because other people have been having too much of it ? " Emmie's face flushed up. Did he think her such a baby, or so ignorant of what was due to her, as to be pleased with the sort of entertainment she met with at Aunt Rivers' s house ? " I don't think I shall miss it," she said. " Well, I am not so philosophical as you are. I used to think those Christmas parties at the Rivers's very pleasant, and I saw you there last year, you know." " In a corner/' said Emmie, smiling ; and Wynyard, reading the mortifying recollections that lurked in the smile, answered quickly: " Yes, we shared the corner together for a good part of the evening, did we not? You took me in when I was feeling myself somewhat in the shade and wanting someone to countenance me, and I assure you I felt grateful." A speech, by the way, which won more gratitude TWILIGHT. 257 and dwelt longer in its hearer's memory than it deserved from the amount of meaning it had for the speaker. On the next occasion there was more shyness in Emmie's manner when the subject was entered upon, and a look of pain in her eyes which startled Wynyard as showing a deeper understanding of his feelings than he liked to realise, perhaps also a knowledge of something kept back for the sake of sparing him. "Alma was here to-day," Emmie began, in an interval of a game at " What is my thought like V which Casabianca had got up. " She came with a message to mamma from Aunt Rivers, and sat in that chair where you are sitting now, talking for nearly an hour to Mildie and me/' " Indeed " — with a visible effort to speak indifferently, and empty his face of expression, " and I hope that your cousin brought you a better account of Lady Rivers." " Do you care so much for Aunt Rivers ? I thought " "That I did not like her," interrupted Wynyard, forced to take up his natural manner again through sheer amusement at Emmie's naivete. " Well, let us change that topic then, and turn to a kindred one in which I hope you will allow me to be honestly interested. What VOL. I. S 258 A DOUBTING HEART. prospect is there of Christmas gatherings at the River— for us all?" Emmie shook her head. " I don't believe you want to talk about that either. There was nothing said about it, but it is not likely; they are full of other things." " The splendours of Golden Mount to wit ? ' "Perhaps Alma is not really thinking so much about Golden Mount as might be supposed," said Emmie, answering the look that accompanied the question, rather than his words. "I have often noticed that she talks most of what she cares least about. She said there was a grand show, and that the Kirkmans were better bred people than she expected to find them. Mr. Kirkman himself seems to have made a great deal of Alma, and to have given her a prominent part in the acting and every- thing, though there were people of much higher rank and consequence of the party." u It does credit to Mr. Kirkman' s discrimination. He is no fool, he knows how to help himself; he is choosing his tools to force his way into society with the same judgment as when he built up his fortune." "Tools! Alma?" " It was an irreverent expression. I recall it. us hope that Mr. Kirkman has for once met his match, TWILIGHT. 259 and that your cousin is not going to let herself be made a tool of." Emmie glanced at her father nodding uncomfortably in his high-backed chair. " Some men are made tools of, I know/' she said sorrowfully. " I did not mean that Alma was too wise, only that I did not see how she could be of any use to Mr. Kirkman, who seems to be courted by the grandest people in London. The charade-acting went on for several nights, and Alma enjoyed the magnificent way in which everything was done. She brought Sidney a very beautiful box of bonbons that had been presented to her in some scene she acted in." " That was a good-natured thought at all events." " Sidney put it into the fire directly she had gone — I made him," said Emmie, lowering her voice and turning away her head to hide the crimson that tingled to the very roots of her hair. Then while Wynyard was thinking in some surprise that this soft-eyed grey-robed little girl, who looked so childish and talked so frankly, had stronger feelings and more decided opinions than many more imposing-looking specimens of her kind, she looked up again and said quickly : " Did that paper you wrote against speculation ever get printed after all ? " c Q o — 2C0 A DOUBTING HEAET. '• YeB, it did, so long ago that I had almost forgotten it." "I should like to read it." u Do you interest yourself in social questions so much V* " In that one I do. I can't help it. I have to think of it every day, and I wish I had not, for it makes me angry with people I ought not to be angry with, and put< hard thoughts in my head, for which I am more sorry afterwards than anyone knows." Quick-rising tears drowned all the anger in her eyes at the last words, and Wynyard answered kindly : u W< • all have hard thoughts to repent of now and then. With you they will pass away with the cause that excites them, and they will leave no bitterness behind. We shall soon be allowed to forget the Kirkmans altogether, let us hope. Here is Casabianca coming to ask l What our thoughts are like/ Let us try which of us can suggi the farthest-away topic from the Kirkmans. Would it be allowable for me to say, 'Miss Emmie West/ and then I should be safe from stumbling upon them again when I am asked for my comparison." CHAPTER XI. HORACE KIRKMAN. Use virtue as it goeth nowadays, In word alone, to make thy language sweet ; And of thy deed yet do not as thou says ; Else be thou sure, thou shalt be far unmeet To get thy bread. At trie time of trie last recorded conversation Alrna her- self would often have been glad of leave to forget the Kirkmans, for the consequences of the accepted Christmas visit were spreading into more intricate meshes than she had at all bargained for. One more name on their already long visiting list, one more great house whose crowded entertainments they might swell when they pleased, it had not seemed any great matter at first, but was it a result of something in the Kirkman character or fortune which doomed them always to swallow up rival interests and swell into colossal bigness wherever they appeared — it really did seem to Alma now as if this new acquaintance was destined to absorb all their other social ties, and stand out the chief fact in their outside world. 262 A DOUBTING HEART. They had been at home some three weeks, but the Kirkman flavour which, as a first result of accepted hospitality, had pervaded their Christmas parties, and overflowed even into the innermost recesses of home life, had not in any degree abated yet. Perhaps some of their old chosen friends were holding aloof in consequence of this new obtrusive element ; Alma was not sure, but she felt that somehow or other she was being swept along in a triumphal procession, or rather involved in the rush of a victorious army on its way to seize the seat of power, and when she perceived that her talents were reckoned on and skilfully used as auxiliary forces in the struggle, she felt put upon her mettle, and could not but take pleasure in proving that she was more than equal to the expecta- tions she had raised. She saw that she had got among people who appreciated her brilliant social talents as they would never be appreciated in the respectable narrow clique io which the Forrests belouged, and into which her mother by much patient struggle had barely got a precarious foothold in all these years. It was a new, more dazzling, more exciting world she was invited to enter, and there were times when its rush and glare and the field for ambition it seemed to offer, captivated Alma's imagination, while at other moments she loathed it all. 'These last were generally the moments when she HOEACE KIKOIAN. 263 felt, as she was now often made to feel, that intimacy or non-intimacy with the Kirkmans was no longer, as at first, a question that her will would have much weight in determining. She had drawn her father into accepting their advances at first, and he had given way with his usual indifference to everything that lay outside his own province, but now he, hardly less than her mother, had fallen under the new influence. He took to admiring Mr. Kirkman as a contrast to Sir John Forrest, and relieved the 2 J il ue which his son-in-law's supercilious dulness constantly provoked, by taking every occasion to launch out in praise of his new friend's shrewd humour, and the rough common sense that made his conversation actually worth listening to. Luckily for Constance, these tirades were generally uttered in the absence of the person at whom they were aimed, and Alma enjoyed one all to herself through a tete-a-tijte dinner with her father on the evening of the day when she had called in Saville Street, her mother being confined to bed with a rather serious relapse, brought on by her having insisted on going out to attend a errand concert at the Kirkmans', when her doctor had positively forbidden her to leave her room. Sir Francis confined himself to generalities as long as the servants were present, but when the dessert was put upon the 201 A DOUBTING HEART. table and lie was alone with his daughter, the conversa- tion took a more confidential turn. "Yes," he began meditatively, as he proceeded to peel a gigantic, highly- flavoured pear which had come in a basket of splendid fruit sent from the Golden Mount winter-gardens ; " yes, that last talk I had with Kirkman two days ago has almost decided me. You may not like the thought of it, Alma, and I am not sure that it will please the lad himself, but I believe it is the best I can do for him. I am thinking of removing your brother Gerald from college — your mother will tell you what reason I have to be dis- contented with the bills sent to me on his account this term, though Heaven knows his allowance is ampler than I can well afford to make it — and putting him to some sort of business under Mr. Kirkman's protection. He has brains enough for that, I suppose, though he has not been able to make anything out of his residence at Oxford so far, but an occasion for spending my money. If I lu.d behaved in my youth as your brothers seem to think them- selves justified in behaving now, I wonder where I should have been at this moment — certainly not supplying my family with the means of living in luxurious idleness." " I am afraid Gerald is idle, papa ; but do you think he is fitted for business ? Would he get on with Mr. Kirkman if he took him into partnership ? iy HORACE KIRKMAK 265 " Took him ! Mr. Kirkman ! Your head must be turned indeed, Alma, to entertaiu such, a notion. Million- aires like Mr. Kirkman don't take idle lads like Gerald into partnership so readily. No, I am not thinking of any such close connection ; I am not even sure it would be desirable for Gerald, but Mr. Kirkroan's affairs have ramifications in many directions, and he has suggested several possible steps that might be taken for establishing Gerald where his influence would tell immensely in open- ing the way for him. He is very downright and plain- spoken, a little premature perhaps in stating his wishes and explaining his motives for offering help, but as for partnership, — Gerald, at all events, is not the member of our family he would choose to confer that distinction upon, if he had it in his power. He is too good a judge of what is worth having for that. Alma would not see the look of amused intelligence her father directed towards her as he finished his sentence, though she felt it, and to turn back the conversation from the dangerous direction it was taking, said quickly : " I always thought you hoped to get some Govern- ment appointment for Gerald if he failed at Oxford. Everyone says you have so much interest ! " " And that I have strained it to the last^ tug it will 266 A DOUBTING HEART. bear. Don't you remember the remarks in the papers when Frank was sent out to India, remarks, by the wav, which he seems bent on justifying just now. No, no, Alma ; I have stretched my conscience too far already on Frank's and Melville's behalf. A public man who has the misfortune to have half-a-dozen fools for his sons, should know when to stop in pushing them, unless he means to sink himself and all his belongings together. There have been instances enough of fair reputations ruined in that way ; I don't want to swell the number." Alma made no answer. Her father had got upon the one topic — his sons' incapacities — of which he ever spoke with bitterness, and she knew that if he were not contra- dicted, his usual cheerful disposition to make the best of things would soon reassert itself. There was a little pause, and then with a sigh which seemed to dismiss a mountain- load of disappointment he went on : " Well, I suppose there is a great deal of give and take in the way in which this world's affairs are managed. One must not expect to have everything to one's mind. If I had been a weak-minded unlucky old potterer like poor West, for example, I daresay I should have had energetic clever children to work for me, and take a great deal more account of me than if I had been the making of them. As it is, I suppose I must just broaden HOEACE KIRKMAN. 267 out my shoulders to carry the whole kit of you on to the end ! " " Papa/' said Alma, whom this comparison with the Wests touched to the quick, " will you tell me exactly what you mean to.-day ? Are you thinking that I could do anything ?" She rose as she spoke, walked to the end of the table w r here he was seated, and stood behind his chair, putting her arms round his neck. He turned back his head to look up at her, the cloud quite gone from his face, and a playful affectionate smile hovering round his lips and in his eyes. ff Am I getting so very feeble," he asked, "that you suggest your white shoulders as a substitute for mine ? No, no, my child. Here, sit down quite close to me that we may talk out our case comfortably together. If I know myself, I have nothing in my mind about you, beyond a wish that you should do what is best for your- self, and what you like best, in any decision you may be called upon to make soon. Of course with a needy clique like ourselves, if one gets very considerably up in the world, it gives a hand to all the rest ; but I was not making you the subject of any vicarious ambitions, I assure you. Don't imagine that I am making an appeal to you for help ; my arm feels strong enough yet to pull 268 A DOUBTING HEART. all my belongings through, even if they continue to be such a dead weight behind me as Frank and Melville and Gerald have contrived to prove themselves this 1 year." " But it is very hard on you. I wish — Oh, how I wish » "That heads could be changed," said Sir Francis, drawing his hand knife-wise across Alma's slender throat. " If we could just take off this head with all there is in it, and put it on Frank's shoulders, there might be a chance of a judge's wig for it some day, while his straight features and crisp black curls and company-smirk would do very well for the head ornament of a petticoat balloon, would not they V " Do you mean/' said Alma, drawing back her head a little hastily, li that you quite despair of my being of any use — any satisfaction to you as I am; won't you condescend to want anything from me ? " " Only that you should be happy, and not make any mistake in your start in life. I don't deny it is a mor- tification to me that none of your brothers seem in the least likely to make a figure in the world, or that I should not be glad to see the one child who can sympathise with me, in a position where the little bit of wit she has perhaps inherited from me could be shown to advantage. HOEACE KIRKMAN. 26D I thought Agatha liad brains once, and that she would be a pleasure to ine, but she chose to bury herself in a convent, and I gave my consent rather than thwart her, and I will be equally indulgent to you all. If you choose to stick yourself in a corner, or even to bring another impracticable upon me in the shape of a pseudo-social reformer we wot of, I won't grumble, but — well, I will be candid with you, child, to-night, as you ask it — the other thing would make me happier."" It was early days to speak about that " other thing," for though Alma and everybody about her had seen it hovering nearer and nearer for some weeks, no shape of words had, as yet, been given to it, so far as Alma's knowledge went. Her father must then know more than she did ; Mr. Kirkman must have been speaking to him about his son's feelings — no, intentions — the idea of Mr. Kirkman speaking about feelings was too absurd. The discovery did not make Alma blush — the subject had for her no possibility in it of calling up a blush, but her heart stirred with a strong emotion, which might be fear or elation, but which was due chiefly to the thought of the consequence she might be to her father. She said nothing more, but drew a dish towards her and began silently to pick out the choicest specimens of Golden Mount fruit to take upstairs to her mother, Brobdiug- 270 A DOUBTING HEART. nagian grapes of the rarest flavour, and yellow bananas with no flavour at all, but which her mother liked to eat because they had ripened in hot-houses that were the wonder of the country round for the skill and expense it cost to keep them up to the pitch of perfection Mr. Kirk- man required in all his belongings. " Papa/' she said, as her fingers laid the last bunch on the pyramid she had been building, " did you ever read < Patronage' ?" " A novel of Miss Edgeworth's ? Why, yes, I think I did, to your mother on oui* wedding journey. There is a bad lawyer in it, is there not, who is always trying to hook his children on to someone else. Were you pointing a moral at me, my dear ? I don't feel very guilty ! " Before Alma had time to disclaim, a servant entered and gave a visiting-card to Sir Francis Rivers. " Horace Kirkman to inquire after Lady Rivers. Yon can show him in here to me, Preston/' Then as the servant left the room and Alma rose to carry off her fruit, Sir Francis added : "That young man is a frequent visitor, certainly, but I can put up with him, he has something to say Eor him- self. Old Kirkman is a luckier fellow than I am ; he has only one son, and he has contrived somehow to give him a good deal of the polish that a rise in the world nial, HORACE KIRKMAN. 271 desirable, with hardly any diminution of the pluck and energy that built up his fortune. There must be some satisfaction in sending an improved edition of oneself into the world to carry on one's work." " Papa," said Alma, smiling, " you forget that you are a Lord Justice, and must not condescend to turn advocate again. When you first saw Mr. Horace Kirkman, I re- member you said he was nothing but a frank, overgrown Eton schoolboy." "Yes, but one of the right sort, with what the Americans call grit in him, and plenty of force and deter- mination, so as to be all the better for growing up slowly. I hate your blase old men of twenty-two, and am not over- fond of world-philosophers of twenty-six either. But what am I about ? You must not misunderstand me, child, I make no pretension to overrule your judgment. You are going up to sit with your mother now, I suppose ? Do as you like, just as you like, about coming down to the drawing-room again this evening." " I shall certainly come back, papa, if mamma can spare me, and relieve you by the time you have had Alpine climbing and athletics enough to send you to sleep," said Alma, who was more deeply touched by the look of tender consideration, almost of deference, that accompanied her father's last words than she could have 272 A DOUBTING HEART. been by any amount of persuasion. She paused and stooped to kiss his forehead before she left him, though she felt that the action and the promise she had just given were first steps in yielding a great deal more than she had as yet quite made up her mind to yield. The consequence of this delay was that she came upon the hastily-entering visitor in the doorway with her dish of fruit in one hand. "An improved edition of the elder Kirkman , yes, certainly her father was right there," Alma thought, as she raised her eyes to a sunburnt bluff face, that was just then one smile of delight at seeing her, and yielding her disengaged hand to a shake that would have been boisterous if the giver of it had not felt a sudden check — a touch of wonder and tendernc awakened by the contrast between his rough, red palm, and the "white wonder of a hand" that lay in it. "You are going away already, Miss Eivcrs ? " he exclaimed in a tone of vexation. " Can't I carry those things anywhere for you ? No — to Lady Rivers, you say, and I should disturb her ; too clumsy, in fact — but what am I good for, but to fetch and carry for you ? You will come back, though, won't you ? My people are gone to the opera to hear Patti, and I gave up going with them to come here, hoping you would sing that song to me we HORACE KIRKMAX. 273 talked about last night. I have got it here in my pocket, just let me show it to you." " You had better have gone to hear Patti," Alma said, mentally registering a v<5w never to mention any- thing she could be supposed to desire to a Kirkman again, for fear of having it thrust upon her. ' ' However, I will come down to the drawing-room by-and-by, if mamma can spare me ; she is not very well to-night." Lady Eivers was dozing when Alma got upstairs, and she had time for a good deal of thought as she sat by the bedroom fire, waiting till her mother was ready to talk to her. She covered her face with her hands to shut out even the subdued light of the fire, while she mentally went through her late conversation with her father word by word, but no idle tears streamed through her fingers on this occasion; she was too much in earnest in her thinking* now to take the tear-provoking, sentimental view of the question she had to determine. She wished the crisis had not come so soon, she wished people would let her alone, just till some sore places in her mind — or heart, was it — were more nearly healed; she wished vaguely that all the good of a woman's life did not depend on decisions that were thrust upon her, not brought by her own will, or at her own time ; she wished that it were possible to wipe out whole pages of VOL. i. t 274 A DOUBTING HEAET. memory and leave them clean and blank for fresh writing. Looks, tones of voice, the remembrance of long talks on summer evenings, or in nooks by Christmas fires, when thought, too quick for words, leaped out to meet thought — if these were to fit in with nothing that matched them in after life, what a constant ache their memory would be ! How hard to bear the gnawing hunger to look at them again which must never be satisfied, never ! If such recollections could be washed away, burned away, by any alchemy, if memory were a live thing, and could be made to drink molten gold like Crassus, and be suffocated by the draught — then — then her father's wishes might have some reason in them, and a life satisfactory enough might be now opening out before her. From this point her thoughts became less collected, and merged into a succession of pictures of herself in contrasted situations, beneath each of which she mentally wrote the words " bearable" or " unbearable. " And all the time it never occurred to her that it was mainly of herself she was thinking, of her own importance to her father, of the way in which her own family and friends would, esteem her, of the possibility of forgetting and ceasing to suffer, of the sufficiency of the lot she might choose to her own requirements, as bringing her the manner of life most congenial to her tastes. She fancied HORACE KIRKMAN. 275 she was preparing for an heroic sacrifice, but the subtle poison of self-regard lay under all her thoughts and pur- poses, putting the true womanly instincts, the enlighten- ing intuitions of real self-forgettinglove, far away from her. Lady Rivers woke up before anything like a resolu- tion had grown out of these cogitations, and Alma had to apply herself to the task of soothing away the fretful- ness that usually attended her mother's awakening. Lady Rivers did not make such a tractable invalid as her sister, Mrs. West, who had gone through a long appren- ticeship to suffering of one kind or another, and who could not afford to make much of small ailments. Lady Rivers's invalid mood vacillated between a desire to claim all the pity and consideration from husband, children, and friends which the rare occurrence of her ill- ness called for, and the revulsion she felt when their concern grew real enough to rouse thoughts of her own danger, and drive her to frantic efforts to prove to herself that her health was as good as it had been years ago. Having been reassured about her condition by her doctor just before she slept, she awoke in the fretful, complaining state of temper. "No, I have not had a comfortable rest," she said, when Alma came to the bedside to offer the fruit she had brought upstairs. "I must have closed my eyes just as t 2 276 A DOUBTING HEART. you came in, for the dinner-hour seemed very long, and I could hear your voices whenever the dining-room door opened. Your father must have been talking all the time very amusingly, I daresay, as he never does when I'm downstairs — I've observed it hundreds of times, you need not contradict me, Alma — you and he will get on very well together, and settle the affairs of the family all your own way when I am quite laid aside. No one will miss me, I daresay, but my poor Gerald, whom your father is so hard upon. He has been complaining of Gerald to you, perhaps." "Hardly that/' said Alma, "and indeed, mamma, you should not allow yourself to grow low-spirited. You will be as well as ever, and among us again in a few weeks, if you will only be prudent. Dr. Urquhart told you so this afternoon, now did not he ? " " Yes, but after all, Dr. Urquhart is only a young man, whom I was induced to call in because your Aunt West tells me such astonishing things of his skill. I hope he is not making a mistake about me. There is consumption in my family, and I was quite shocked to see how thin your poor Aunt West looked when ^hc called here the other day." "But you are not thin, mamma, happily." " I am sure it's a wonder I'm not, when you think of HOEACE KIKKMAN. 277 all tliere is to harass me. Your father's displeasure against Gerald, and your intractable temper, Alma, that will make you, I know, go against my wishes whenever a chance arises of something I should particularly like, happening to you. I say nothing of the miserable separation from Agatha, nor of my disappointment at seeing so little of Constance, that really she might almost as well have married young Lawrence, and gone out to India, for any comfort she is likely to be to me now. Your Aunt West is luckier than I am in keeping her children about her, and getting them to behave affection- ately and dutifully at home. I often think how nice it must be for her to have a cheerful-tempered daughter like Emmie, whom she feels justified in keeping always at home to wait on her, because there are no other prospects open to her but just to make herself useful in her own family." " If you could reconcile yourself to such prospects for me, mamma, I should only be too glad," Alma said, not quite truthfully, as her conscience told her the minute she had spoken. " At all events, let me stay to-night and read to you ; there is nothing I should like better," she added, feeling perfectly sincere now. It really did come like a reprieve to her, to escape a return to the guest in the drawing-room, and that nice adjustment of manner •278 A DOUBTING HEART. between repression and encouragement which her present vacillating turn of mind rendered necessary. The book Alma took up was a volume of religious meditations adapted to a time of sickness, left by Mrs. West the week before, and every sentence she read sounded like a sarcasm to Alma as addressed to the invalid on whose behalf she was giving expression to counsels of submission and detachment from earthly cares. Possibly Lady Rivers only heard the musical cadences of Alma's voice flowing evenly on, without taking in much of the meaning of what she read, for she was apparently listening all through the lecture, for indications of move- ment in other parts of the house. Presently she lifted up her head quickly. "The dining-room door opened just now, and I thought I heard two sets of footsteps going up to the drawing- room. Is not your father alone to-night V "Mr. Horace Kirkman came in just as I was leaving the dining-room with a message of inquiry for you from Mrs. Kirkman. I forgot to tell you." " Forgot, — really, Alma, I have no patience with you; and you sit here as if you did not know you were wanted in the drawing-room. Of course you must go at once/ "Not if you would like me to stay, mamma. Let mc at least finish this chapter about illness being a call to HORACE KIKKMAK. 279 renounce worldly-mindedness, which Aunt West, you see, has scored with double lines all down the page." " My dear, what nonsense ! What does all that signify when Horace Kirkman is waiting downstairs to see you ? You can send Ward to me, or if she is still at supper, I don't mind being left alone, not in the least, when you are so well occupied. I would not keep you from Horace Kirknian on any account. Kiss me before you go, however, Alma. You may not think it, but I have done the best for you all that I knew how, ever since you were born, and I never mind being neglected or any- thing when it's a question of advancement for any of you/' Alma gave the kiss required, shut up the book of de- votional essays whose teaching seemed so very wide of the mark just now, and went downstairs. "It was true/' she said to herself on the way, quite true. It was her advancement that both her parents desired, only that. They wanted her to have what they cared most for, and had prized most themselves. Why should she feel indignation against them when she perceived the manoeuvres that thrust advancement nearer and nearer to her ? Did she not, at the bottom of her heart, or if heart was the wrong word, of her mind, desire it for herself ? Was it not her chief good too ? She was still in a con- tradictious, uncertain mood when she reached the drawing- 280 A DOUBTING HEART. room, and she resisted all Mr. Kirkman's efforts to induce her to try the music he had brought for her. She would hold on to the privilege of playing music of her own choosing and purchasing for some little time longer, at all events, she thought ; and besides, a tete-a-tete at the piano would have reminded her too closely of another evening's tete-a-tete, whose incidents and emotions she had no desire to dwell upon just then. To break the spell she placed herself as far from the piano as possible, under the full light of a chandelier, and armed herself with a large embroidery-frame, which she hoped would, convey a hint of unapproachableness that a person of the smallest sensitiveness would not fail to interpret. But Mr. Horace Kirkman was not sen- sitive in the least degree. If she would have consented to sing to him in a far-away corner of the room he would have liked it, but since that did not please her, he was almost as well content to sit astride a drawing-room chair planted as immediately in front of her as the em- broidery-frame permitted, and crossing his arms on the back and propping his chin thereon, to look at her and talk at his ease without fear of interruption. It was true that he had plenty to say for himself, and not altogether foolish things either. Alma looked up from her work at the end of any sentence that chanced to call for an answer, HORACE KIBKMAN". 281 (monologue about his own affairs was Mr. Horace Kirk- man's habit rather than conversation), and met sensible eyes full of admiration and liking fixed unfalteringly on her. There was no shy reverent veiling of feeling in them, for she was not a mystery or an ideal to him, and carried no halo of unapproachable purity and glory about her head; she was just a beautiful, stylish woman, whom he liked heartily, and thought every way fitted to share the successful jolly life he meant his to be, and he did not much care how soon or how late she understood him, being pretty confident of getting what he wanted in the end. The big, strong, self-assertive face, full of blunt common sense and directness of purpose, would, no doubt, Alma allowed, have been attractive to some women, for to some it might even have realised their highest ideal of a desirable lord and master to whom a submissive life might be dedicated. To some women, perhaps, but not to her : she might take him for her own, she would have to bow down if she did take him, she would have to grow to his likeness in the end contentedly enough, perhaps, but such taking would always be, to her conscience , a distinct choosing the world — the world instead of something else, some vague ideal that might have been better, though her eyes were not purged enough to see it clearly, and become out-and-out enamoured of its beauty. Here Alma had to 282 A DOUBTING HEART. look up and smile at the point of an anecdote Mr. Kirk- man had just finished, relating to some adventure of his own in foreign travel; and she managed the necessary smile, not very meaningly, perhaps, but with quite ex- pression enough to satisfy her present companion, and then, looking down, she resumed her reflections, which gradually crystallised into something as like a purpose as reflections of this kind usually produce. She resolved that she would not allow herself to be hurried into an irrevocable promise to Horace Kirkman, but at the same time she did not determine to set herself seriously against the current of events that were, she knew, bearing her steadily on to that point in the end. She was not strong enough for such a course, not sure enough of her own wishes, or, she said to herself, of the real wishes of that other person whose want of determination to win her as she wished to be won, was perhaps the real grievance that lay at the bottom of her vacillation, and of the dull fire of pain and indignation she was trying to trample out into dead ashes in her heart. What justice there might be in giving this dead heart in exchange for the honest liking she thought of appropriating she did not ask herself; and she dismissed the question with a re- flection that a Kirkman might surely be trusted to look after his own interest and get of everything he wanted as much, or more than he deserved. CHAPTER XII. EOUND THE FIRE. Let others seek for empty joys, At ball or concert, rout or play ; Whilst, far from fashion's idle noise, Her gilded domes and trappings gay, I while the wintrj r eve away ; 'Twixt book ami lute the hours divide, And marvel how I ere could stray From thee — my own fireside. Lady Rivers' s covetous longing after Emmie West as a convenient sick nurse who might, without scruple, be kept constantly in attendance was not a mere passing fancy. It recurred again and took the persistent shape of an invalid's craving, when a succession of imprudences had brought about a state of health that made Dr. Urquhart speak warningly, and at last obliged Sir Francis to inter- pose his authority against further trifling. Mrs. West came often to Eccleston Square, and while Alma was driving or visiting with the Kirkmans, spent loug mornings and afternoons shut up in her sister's close dressing-room, and then went out into the cold January air to make her way back to distant Saville •284 A DOUBTING HEART. Street, and reached home exhausted and shivering, to the loud-spoken indignation of Emmie and Harry, but to the silent satisfaction of Mr. West, who, from the depth of his present humiliation, saw a possibility of ad- vantage in this renewal of the intimacies of old times. Mrs. West was companion enough for her sister as long as actual suffering lasted; her soft voice and sad eyes and resigned phrases were felt by Lady Rivers to be the best safeguards to have about her so long as she was obliged to admit the shadow of a distant dread into her thoughts ; but when she began to think she might dismiss that fear to another season, Mrs. West's grey presence was discovered to be a little oppressive. "Poor Einmeline," Lady Rivers would say to her husband, when he went to her sitting-room a few minutes before dinner to congratulate her on having had her sister's company through the afternoon ; " Poor Emine- line is not much of a companion for me now ; she never had any spirit, and she has let herself sink dreadfully under her misfortunes : she cannot see that there are a great many alleviating circumstances in her case, though I tell her she really ought to see it. We all have our anxieties, and if I were to look' only at mine I should be melancholy enough. The trial of poverty ROUXD THE FIRE. 285 is nothing to the trial of parting with one's children. Indeed, I tell Emmeline that if I could keep a dutiful daughter like her Emmie always with me, I don't think I should care very much for anything else. She con- fesses that she finds it an immense comfort, and she has promised that I shall have Emmie to stay here for a week or two while I am so closely shut up, and while Alma's time is too much engaged with visitors for her to be often with me." " I don't see why Alma should not give up her time to nurse you as well as Emmie West." "My dear, what are you thinking of ? I would not be so selfish for the world. I should be miserable if Alma were shut in here with me in this close room, losing her complexion and everything, just at this time when so much is going on of immense importance to her. I am not selfish." " Emmie West's complexion is not of any importance then ? There is nothing selfish in shutting her up ? " " My dear, we can so easily, in so many little ways, make it up to the Wests. Why, as we are not likely to give dinner-parties till I am about again, I have ordered one of our weekly hampers of poultry and game from Longhurst to be sent to Saville Street, instead of here. Mr. West is a man who values a second course to 286 A DOUBTING HEAET. his dinner, and to be able to give it him is an immense comfort to poor Emmeline I find." " It balances the loss of her daughter, who is, yon say, an immense comfort too, eh ? But, my dear, why have you not thought of doing this before, if they really cannot indulge themselves in game, unless it is sent to them ? I fancy, 'if I were to look back, I could find in some corner of my mind recollections of dinners in Saville Street, when the second course was something of a treat to us too. I have no time for such matters, but how is it that you did not think of the game sooner ? " " When we were giving two dinner-parties a week ourselves, it was impossible to spare it; and besides, I always think it is a pity to let such things grow into a habit. They would have depended on its coming every week, and it would have been no particular pleasure or gratification just now." " When it comes as payment for shutting up poor little Emmie; you are a financier lost, my dear. However, if her complexion is to be sacrificed — it is a very pretty