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 AUG 2 3 1988 
 
 L161— O-1096
 
 3^4
 
 BARBARA
 
 LONDOX : 
 KOBSON AND SOXS, PBINTERS, PAKCRAS ROAD, K.W.
 
 THE STORY OF 
 
 B A K B A R A 
 
 HER SPLENDID MISERY, AXD HER GILDED CAGE 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 'LADY AUDLEY'8 SECRET,' 'VIXEN,' 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 
 VOL. L 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN AND KOBERT MAXWELL 
 
 MILTON HOUSE, SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET 
 \_All Rights reserved]
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2009 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/storyofbarbarahe01brad
 
 F^3 
 
 THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED 
 
 \ Co t^c iHrmoii) of 
 
 MAJOR W. S. K. HODSOX 
 
 (a VALIANT SOLDIER AND A SKILFUL COMMANDER), 
 
 WHO ACTED 
 
 WITH HEROIC COURAGE AND FIRMNESS UNDER • 
 
 CIRCUMSTANCES OF UNPARALLELED IUFFICULTY AND DANGER^ 
 
 AND WHO, 
 
 AS THE CREATOR OF HODSON's HORSE, 
 
 MADE FOR HIMSELF A REFUTATION THAT WILL 
 
 LONG SURVIVE IN INDIA.
 
 EXPLANATION, 
 
 This novel was commenced in the columns of the 
 World newspaper under the title of ' Splendid Misery.' 
 CopjTight in the title -words was asserted by the pro- 
 prietor of a halfpenny weekly journal, in which was 
 published, and in which lay buried for years, a short 
 tale with the title ' Splendid Misery.' Under pressure 
 of a suit in Chancery the novel was re-named ' Her 
 Splendid Misery;' but as this alteration did not satisfy 
 the Court of Chancery, the title was again changed 
 into ' Her Gilded Cage.' The new title was adopted 
 by Mr. Edmund Yates, Editor and Proprietor of the 
 World, to avert the risk of inadequately complying 
 with an injunction which had issued against the 
 continued use of the words ' Splendid Misery.' It 
 is to be hoped that the promised revision of the Law 
 of Copyright will contain clauses to protect authors 
 against the oppressive surprise of a Chancery suit 
 over a forgotten or a disused title, and that some in- 
 expensive court will be empowered to deal, promptly 
 and cheaply, with such insignificant contentions. As
 
 Yin EXPLANATION. 
 
 matters now stand, the Author feels constrained to 
 give prominence to the name of her heroine in the 
 title of her book, which she accordingly sends forth 
 as 
 
 THE STORY OF BARBARA ; 
 Hee Splendid Misery, and Her Gilded Cage, 
 
 in the belief that no one can take exception either to 
 a mere Christian name, w^hen used in the title of a 
 novel, or to the trebly distinctive title now given to 
 a book that was written to amuse the public, and not 
 to exercise the copyright lawyers. 
 
 Lichfield House, Eichmond, 
 
 Janitary 2StJ/, 1880.
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII, 
 
 vui. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XI. 
 
 XII. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 XV. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 A FAMILY Picture 
 
 The partial Boarder . 
 
 * "Written in Starlight on 
 
 Fa3iily Secrets . 
 
 In Arcadia 
 
 Mr. Trevornock . 
 
 ' When we two parted' 
 
 Too civil by half 
 
 The Cornish Client . 
 
 Paternal Instinct in Mr. T 
 
 ' Love, thou art bitter' 
 
 Flossie goes to the Post 
 
 Silence 
 
 A HANDSO^iE Offer 
 
 'The Love which alaketh 
 
 AND fair' 
 Buried Letters, buried Hopes 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 . 
 
 I 
 
 . 
 
 29 
 
 the Dark above' 
 
 46 
 
 . 
 
 59 
 
 . 
 
 76 
 
 . 
 
 97 
 
 . 
 
 114 
 
 . 
 
 136 
 
 . 
 
 144 
 
 T. . . . 
 
 160 
 
 . 
 
 174 
 
 . 
 
 182 
 
 . 
 
 201 
 
 
 208 
 
 all Things fond 
 
 
 . 
 
 232 
 
 )PES . 
 
 261
 
 BARBARA 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A FAMILY PICTURE. 
 
 ' " Having a house larger than they require" — you 
 must say that, mother,' said Bah, sitting on the 
 floor, with clasped hands resting on her knees, and 
 her knees on a level with the prettiest chin in 
 Camberwell. ' It's the correct thing.' 
 
 ' Only sixty words allowed for five shillings,' 
 said Mrs. Trevornock, looking up distractedly from 
 an original composition, which she was inditing 
 with the assistance of her two daughters. 
 
 * But you really ought to put it, mother,' cried 
 Flossie, on her knees beside the table. 'It's the 
 only thing that takes off the edge of one's humi- 
 liation. " A lady and her daughters, having a 
 house larger than they require, are willing — " ' 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 BARB ABA. 
 
 * " Will be happy," ' suggested the mother. 
 'No, mother; that's a great deal too humble,' 
 
 said Flossie. ' That's making oneself much too 
 cheap. Do make it ''are willing." ' 
 
 ' Very well, dear. It will be over sixty words, 
 I'm sure. "Are willing to receive a gentleman as 
 partial boarder." ' 
 
 ' Partial boarder !' echoed Bab, making a wry 
 face, but not able to make an ugly one. ' Partial 
 boarder ! Isn't it a horrid expression !' 
 
 ' " Bedroom large and airy." ' 
 
 * Large and airy,' repeated Flossie musingly ; 
 * I wonder what really constitutes a large bedroom 
 in the idea of a person brought up, say, in Gros- 
 venor-square.' 
 
 * People brought up in Grosvenor-square could 
 never sink so low as to be partial boarders,' said 
 Bab. 'Don't fritter away our time upon such 
 idiotic remarks.' 
 
 * " Bedroom large and airy," ' repeated Mrs. 
 Trevornock, dwelling upon this statement as if it 
 were an original idea; ' " use of sitting-room, dinner 
 on Sundays. Family musical." '
 
 A FAMILY PICTURE. 3 
 
 * Won't you add that we liave seen better days, 
 mother, since you seem bent on being biographical?' 
 suggested Flossie. 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock laughed good-humouredly at 
 this pert sally. She was always ready to laugh at 
 her daughter's smallest jokes, and their inherent 
 impertinence had been fostered by maternal indul- 
 gence. They were as poor as Job, this mother and 
 her two daughters ; but as far as indulgence went, 
 Flossie and Bab had been brought up under glass. 
 
 Yes, they were poor, absolutely poor ; not in the 
 sense accepted by society, which means that people 
 have fifteen hundred a year and would like to spend 
 three thousand, or have three thousand and find 
 life intolerable because they have not six. Mrs. 
 Trevornock and her two daughters managed to face 
 life upon a reliable income of something under a 
 hundred and fifty pounds a year. They had occa- 
 sional windfalls, or the problem might have proved 
 insoluble ; but after reckoning these casual inlets 
 of money, the total of their income rarely reached 
 two hundred pounds a year : but this was before 
 the Crimean war, and the cost of living was less
 
 4 BARBARA. 
 
 in those days than it is now. Yet their poverty 
 never degenerated into ugliness. The little semi- 
 detached house at Camberwell — rent, twenty- 
 five pounds per annum — had a dainty prettiness 
 not always attainable by people of larger means. 
 The mother and daughters were so fond of each 
 other, and so fond of their home, that the whole 
 of life was sweetened by this overflowing foun- 
 tain of love. They were always trying to surprise 
 each other with some improvement in house or 
 garden, were it only a shilling rose-bush planted 
 in the border, or a penny bunch of violets in a vase 
 on the mantelpiece. They were industrious, in- 
 genious, temperate. They cared very little how 
 they dined, but they cared very much about the 
 house in which they lived. Ugliness and dirt were 
 loathsome to them. The semi-detached cottage at 
 Camberwell was as clean and pure as a homestead 
 far away in a pastoral land, remote from the smoke 
 of cities. Mrs. Trevornock's existence was a per- 
 petual warfare against 'the blacks;' not an oppressed 
 negro race, but those wandering atoms of solidified 
 smoke which came floating on the wings of the
 
 A FAMILY PICTURE. 5 
 
 wind from the tall chimneys of Lambeth and Ber- 
 mondsey. 
 
 South-lane, Camberwell, is one of those places 
 which progress has doubtless eradicated from the 
 face of the earth. Progress means building-land at 
 two thousand pounds an acre, houses in serried 
 ranks, close as a square of infantry, mere packing- 
 cases set on end, with just as much garden to each 
 as would serve as drying-ground for half a dozen 
 pocket-handkerchiefs. South-lane knew nothing of 
 progress. It had come into being at an Arcadian 
 period of the world's history, when land about 
 Camberwell was of little more than agricultural 
 value. The houses, villas, cottages, what you will, 
 were various in architecture, and set in gardens that 
 were extensive as compared with the gardens of 
 to-day. The lane described a gracious curve, and 
 made a vista of greenery as seen from either end. 
 Trees grew and flourished — hawthorn and lilac, 
 lime and sycamore, sweet bay and Portugal laurel. 
 There were good tenants and bad, gardens neatly 
 kept and gardens neglected, but the general effect 
 was prettiness and rusticity.
 
 6 BARBARA. 
 
 The advertisement appeared in the Times, and 
 about three days after its publication — days spent 
 by Mrs. Trevornock and her daughters in a flutter 
 of expectation — a partial boarder — one only — ad- 
 dressed himself to the advertiser, who had discreetly 
 veiled her identity under initials, letters to be 
 addressed to ' F. T.,' 20 South-lane, Camber- 
 well. 
 
 ' One letter, only one poor little letter !' cried 
 Bab, running in from the hall, where the letters 
 fell through a slit in the door on to the floor- 
 cloth. * But it looks rather aristocratic' 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock broke the seal with a nervous 
 hand, while the two girls pressed round her as if 
 their most vital interests were at stake. 
 
 The letter had a gentlemanlike appearance, 
 sealed with a neat crest, written on thick creamy 
 paper in a firm hand. 
 
 ' Mother,' cried Flossie, pointing excitedly, ' look 
 at the address ! It must be from some one of 
 consequence.' 
 
 * East India United Service Club.' Those were 
 the mystic words which had excited Flossie. To
 
 A FAMILY PICTURE. 7 
 
 her simple mind a man who belonged to a club 
 must needs be a superior order of being. 
 
 ' mother,' she exclaimed dolefully, while her 
 bright blue eyes made a circuit of the little room, 
 *we shall never be good enough for him. I'm 
 afraid we made the advertisement too attractive. I 
 daresay he will expect to find us in a mansion.' 
 
 *As if people in mansions ever wanted partial 
 boarders !' cried Bab, with a practical air. ' Every 
 one knows that a partial boarder is a genteel con- 
 trivance meant to eke out a small income.' 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock read the letter aloud deliber- 
 ately. They had all three devoured it with their 
 eyes the moment it was opened. 
 
 ' Captain Leland' (' 0, what a pretty name !' cried 
 Flossie) 'presents his compliments to F. T., and 
 will be glad of an interview at F. T.'s earliest con- 
 venience. — East India United Service Club, St. 
 James's-square, Tuesday morning.' 
 
 'He doesn't say that he'll come,' said Flossie. 
 * Of course not,' retorted Bab. * He'll come and 
 look at us — '
 
 8 BARBARA. 
 
 ' Don't say us,' remonstrated Flossie. ' I shall 
 not be in the room when he calls.' 
 
 ' Nor I, of course. I mean that he will come 
 and survey mother, and the house, and the neigh- 
 bourhood, and our maid-of-all-work, and the large 
 airy bedroom ; and if he doesn't think it all worth 
 a guinea a week, with dinner on Sundays, he will 
 not take up his residence with us. I wonder 
 whether he'll ask you what kind of Sunday dinners 
 you mean to give him, mother — whether you have 
 your joints roasted or send them to the bakehouse. 
 I daresay a club-man would object to the bakehouse.' 
 
 ' Not if he were very hungry and met a shoulder 
 of mutton coming home on the top of a batter-pud- 
 ding,' said Flossie, with conviction. 
 
 ' I suppose we shall have to dine late on Sun- 
 days, and become quite fashionable in our habits,' 
 said Bab. * Come, mother darling, take your nicest 
 sheet of paper, and write a pretty note to Captain 
 Leland. I daresay his name is the best part of 
 him.' 
 
 * Perhaps he is old and ugly,' suggested Flossie, 
 her enthusiasm suddenly evaporating.
 
 A FAMILY PICTURE. 9 
 
 * He must be poor,' said Bab. ' No one who . 
 wasn't poor would offer himself as a partial border — Ct I 
 to get his breakfast in one place, and his dinner in 
 another — cutting himself in half, as it were.' 
 
 ' An excellent arrangement for a club-man,' 
 replied Mrs. Trevornock, who was inclined to take 
 a cheerful view of the question. * Of course he 
 will always dine at his club.' 
 
 * On the days when he does dine,' said Flossie. 
 * Perhaps he will contrive to skip his dinner some- 
 times, and revenge himself upon our tea. That 
 will be dreadful.' 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock answered Captain Leland's 
 note, appointing the following afternoon at three 
 o'clock for the interview, ' if quite convenient to 
 Captain Leland,' she added politely. 
 
 The two girls went out together to post the 
 letter, and to make various small purchases of 
 household stores in the Camberwell-road. They 
 performed this domestic duty daily, thereby saving 
 time for the one servant, a healthy round-faced 
 Devonshire girl, answering to the name of Amelia, 
 who, with Mrs. Trevornock's supervision, and a
 
 10 BARBARA. 
 
 good deal of actual help from the same lady, con- 
 trived to keep the house in immaculate order, a 
 bright example to neighbouring householders. 
 
 The girls talked about Captain Leland all the 
 way to the post-office. Their lives travelled in 
 such a narrow circle that the smallest incident 
 became a subject for inexhaustible talk. They 
 read a good deal, and were by no means unintelli- 
 gent or shallow ; but they could not always talk 
 about books. There was an impetuous humanity 
 in them which made it necessary to them now 
 and then to be interested in people. Their 
 acquaintances might be numbered on their fingers, 
 and the people they knew were not brilliant. In- 
 deed they might fairly have come under Carlyle's 
 sweeping category : they were ' mostly fools.' A 
 mother and two daughters living upon something 
 less than two hundred a year were not in a posi- 
 tion to cultivate a large circle of friends, or to 
 find their society in eager request among the salt 
 of the earth. If Mrs. Trevornock and her two 
 girls were invited to a tea-party once in six weeks, 
 or to a friendly dinner once a quarter, they con-
 
 A FAMILY PICTURE. 11 
 
 sidered themselves fairly favoured by the attention 
 of their friends. There were occasional droppings- 
 in, casual tea-drinkings, which enlivened the in- 
 terval between such deliberate invitations ; so that 
 life was not altogether dreary. 
 
 * I feel sure he is old and ugly,' said Flossie, for 
 about the twentieth time, as they crossed Addington- 
 square. 
 
 'Don't be so dreary,' remonstrated Bab. 'Let 
 us amuse ourselves by making the wildest images of 
 him for the next four-and-twenty hours. To-morrow 
 at three o'clock we shall know the worst ; for of 
 course we shall contrive to see him, though he won't 
 be allowed to see us.' 
 'Naturally.' 
 
 ' Let us imagine him like Piochester in Jane 
 Eyre: 
 
 ' Dark as Erebus, and with a heavy under-jaw ; 
 making the rudest speeches for the first week or so, 
 and then falling desperately in love with one of us,' 
 said Flossie, in a rush of eager words. ' Of course 
 it would be you, Bab.* 
 ' Why should it be T
 
 12 BARBAKA. 
 
 ' Because you are ever so much prettier than I am.* 
 
 ' Am I, Flossie ? Then I think I ought to be 
 very conceited, for you're the prettiest girl I know.' 
 
 * You know so few girls,' said Flossie deprecat- 
 ingly, and blushing all over her face, even at a sister's 
 compliment. 
 
 Flossie was not unworthy of praise, though she 
 was right when she described her sister as the pret- 
 tier. They might be called the positive and the 
 comparative degrees of beauty. Flossie's eyes were 
 blue and bright ; Flossie's hair was auburn with 
 golden gleams in it ; Flossie's figure was graceful in 
 outline. But there was that in Barbara's face which 
 belonged to a higher kind of beauty. Barbara's eyes 
 were darkest gray, with long black lashes. Barbara 
 had the white-rose complexion, pure, almost colour- 
 less, which is of all beauties the rarest. People who 
 passed the two girls in the street were apt to think 
 Flossie the prettier. Her brilliant complexion aud 
 bright hair caught the eye. 
 
 The letter was posted, the shopping was done, 
 the four-and-twenty hours of doubt and expectancy 
 were lived through somehow ; and at three o'clock
 
 A FAMILY PICTURE. 13 
 
 on the following afternoon Bab and Flossie were hid- 
 ing themselves behind the chintz curtain of an up- 
 stairs window, watching for ^Eochester.' 
 
 The clock of the church by the canal struck the 
 hour, and the last stroke had hardly died away when 
 the girls saw the top of a hat above the Portugal 
 laurels of the next-door garden. 
 
 ' He must be an old fogey, or he would never be 
 so punctual,' said Flossie, with a disgusted air. 
 
 'Kochester was never punctual in his life,' said 
 Bab, also disgusted. 
 
 The stranger was at the gate by this time, a 
 white five-barred gate, which swung back easily as 
 he pushed it. 
 
 ' He is quite 3'oung !' cried Bab. 
 
 'Dark!' 
 
 * TaU !' 
 
 * Good-looking!' 
 
 ' With a moustache !' 
 
 A moustache was a rare adornment in those days. 
 It might be taken to mean one of three things — a 
 cavalry of&cer, a foreigner, or a swindler. 
 
 * I hope he's respectable,' said Bab doubtfully.
 
 14 BARBARA. 
 
 ' He's very good-looking,' said Flossie. 
 
 The stranger came along the gravel walk ; it was 
 a semicircular sweep, which Mrs. Trevornock talked 
 of complacently as a carriage-drive. A very clever 
 coachman might have succeeded in turning a one- 
 horse chaise within that gravelled area without abso- 
 lute destruction to the vehicle or the parlour- window ; 
 but for prudential reasons, vehicles were mostly 
 pulled up outside the gate. 
 
 Little did the partial boarder wot of those four 
 bright eyes concentrating all their seeing power upon 
 the top of his hat as he knocked a resolute double- 
 knock at Mrs. Trevornock's door. He was contem- 
 plating the house and its surroundings, pleased with 
 the rural quiet of the scene, the blossoming haw- 
 thorns, golden laburnum, and all the flowers of the 
 sweet May time. The exterior view of the house 
 suggested comfort, and even a modest elegance. 
 
 ' It would be better than living in a smoky Lon- 
 don street,' Captain Leland said to himself, ' and it 
 would be cheaper into the bargain. The walk from 
 here to the clubs would not hurt my long legs.' 
 
 The little maid-of-all-work opened the door, neat
 
 A FAMILY PICTURE. 15 
 
 and trim in her afternoon gown and smart cap. Ser- 
 Tants wore caps in the days hefore the Crimean war. 
 Breathing hard, as in some terrible strait, the maiden 
 ushered the stranger into the drawing-room, where 
 Mrs. Trevornock, who had seated herself just three 
 minutes before, flushed after a hasty toilet, rose to 
 receive him. 
 
 What did Captain Leland see in the little draw- 
 ing-room, fifteen feet by twelve and a half, lighted by 
 one wide French window, looking out upon the semi- 
 circular grass-plat girdled with shrubs ? He saw a 
 woman who was evidently a lady. He saw a room 
 which assuredly belonged to ladies. The sweet face, 
 a little faded, but still very sweet, which greeted 
 him with an engaging smile, pleased him at once. 
 The room pleased him as well as its mistress. The 
 old-fashioned furniture was well worn, but not shabby. 
 The open piano and book-shelves, the spring flowers 
 and modest array of old china, suggested tastefulness 
 and love of home. Captain Leland had been at large 
 in the wide world long enough to reverence even the 
 abstract idea of home — how much more the reality ! 
 
 The first few questions and answers were embar-
 
 16 BARBARA. 
 
 rassing. The gentleman stammered, and traced the 
 pattern of the carpet with the feruie of his cane, the 
 lady replied hesitatingly. This kind of barter was 
 new to both of them. But when the sordid question 
 of terms had been settled, they gradually grew more 
 at ease, and then came a burst of frankness from the 
 Captain. 
 
 ' I am sure I shall like to live here,' he said plea- 
 santly : * I am home on leave from India, and as all 
 my people are in the depths of the country, I have 
 been living in West-end lodgings, and spending most 
 of my time at my club. I have been far from com- 
 fortable. West-end lodgings are always dear, and 
 sometimes dirty. Mine are decidedly dirty. A 
 club is an immense convenience to a single man ; 
 but one may have too much of it.' 
 
 ' I am afraid you will find this rather dull after 
 the West-end,' said Mrs. Trevornock. 
 
 ' Not I. West-end gaiety for me only means the 
 noise of perpetual carriage-wheels, and footmen 
 knocking double-knocks. I know very few people in 
 London, and don't care much about visiting those I 
 do know.'
 
 A FAMILY PICTURE. 17 
 
 Mrs. TreYornock looked at the Captain woncler- 
 ingly, as if this admission of his savoured of eccen- 
 tricity. A military man, young, good-looking, ought 
 to be in the very maelstrom of society, she considered. 
 He should be in request at the drums of duchesses, 
 admitted to the receptions of Cabinet Ministers. She 
 began to fear there might be something wrong about 
 Captain Leland. 
 
 ' 0, by the way, with regard to references,' said 
 the Captain, almost as if he divined her doubts. 
 ' There was something in your advertisement about 
 references, I remember. I can refer you to my 
 banker. He will be happy to answer any questions. 
 Not because he has a large balance in my favour, 
 but because he is a very good-natured fellow,' added 
 Captain Leland, with that engaging frankness which 
 had already won Mrs. Trevornock's regard. 
 
 'I am sure that will be all-sufficient,' she mur- 
 mured, without waiting to hear the banker's name. 
 * But the advertisement said references exchanged. 
 If you would like to call upon the incumbent of St. 
 George's — ' 
 
 ' Not the slightest necessity. I am a waif and 
 
 VOL. I. C
 
 18 BARBARA. 
 
 stray. You have a right to ask for my credentials ; 
 but you are a householder — and a lady.' 
 
 * You would like to see the bedroom, no doubt/ 
 said Mrs. Trevornock, trying to be business-like; 
 and then she rang the bell, and Amelia, who had 
 been carefully drilled in her part, escorted Captain 
 Leland up the pretty little staircase to the 'large 
 and airy' bedroom, overlooking half an acre of flower 
 and vegetable garden, a canal, a stretch of open 
 ground, and a conglomeration of roofs, melting away 
 into the thickness of London smoke. 
 
 The two girls in the front room were in a flutter 
 as the Captain's manly footstep came up the single 
 flight of stairs. He spoke to the servant, and they 
 heard his voice for the first time — a deep full voice, 
 pleasant of sound to Bab and Flossie. 
 
 ' Do you think he really means to come ?' asked 
 Bab. 
 
 ' No,' answered Flossie ; ' he is much too stylish. 
 We are not good enough for him.' 
 
 ' But he has been a long time talking with 
 mother.' 
 
 * Idle curiosity,' exclaimed Flossie contemptu-
 
 A FAMILY PICTURE.. 19 
 
 ously. She was trying to steel herself against dis- 
 appointment. 
 
 The Captain's inspection of the bedroom lasted 
 exactly two minutes. The window opened at top 
 and bottom, and there was a chimney, so the airiness 
 of the chamber was beyond question. Size is a 
 matter of degree. The Captain had seen many 
 larger rooms, but this one looked as clean as a new 
 pin, and he was languishing for speedy escape from 
 West-end grime and frowsiness. He went down- 
 stairs completely satisfied. 
 
 *Ah,' cried Flossy, ^ of course he'll tell poor 
 mother that he'll take a day or two to think it over, 
 and then he'll go away and forget all about us. I 
 know what such people are capable of.' 
 
 They waited breathlessly for five minutes, when 
 the hall-door shut with a bang, and then they pre- 
 cipitated themselves down- stairs headlong. If they 
 had not been very young and very familiar with that 
 staircase they must have arrived in the hall with 
 broken necks. 
 
 * Well !' gasped both girls simultaneously. 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock tried to look serious. She
 
 20 BARBARA. 
 
 would have liked to have had her little joke with 
 them, and to have kept them on tenter-hooks for 
 a few minutes ; but her satisfaction broke out on her 
 countenance in irrepressible radiance. 
 
 * He is coming ?' cried her daughters, still simul- 
 taneous. 
 
 ' Yes, he is coming,' admitted the mother ; * and 
 he is so friendly and gentlemanlike. I am sure we 
 shall all like him.' 
 
 * We shall have to be tremendously well-behaved,' 
 said Flossie, becoming suddenly doubtful as to the 
 unqualified delight of having a gentlemanlike boarder. 
 * I am afraid Captain Leland will put a stop to a 
 good deal of our fun.' 
 
 ' Well, of course we shall not talk quite so much 
 nonsense as we have been in the habit of talking,' 
 admitted Mrs. Trevornock. ' We must behave seri- 
 ously when he is at home ; but we can make up for 
 it when he is away. He has his club, you know. I 
 daresay we shall see very little of him.' 
 
 'No doubt,' said Flossie, again dubious. 
 
 The Captain had left his card. Barbara saw and 
 pounced upon it.
 
 A FAMILY PICTURE. 21 
 
 * H.E.I.C.S.,' she read. ' What does that mean ?' 
 
 ' Honourable East India Company's Service,' said 
 Mrs. Trevornock, proud of her superior knowledge. 
 
 ' Why, then he isn't a real soldier after all !' said 
 Flossie indignantly; whereupon her mother hastened 
 to explain that the Honourable East India Company's 
 Service was every whit as good as the Queen's. 
 
 ' Your cousin Walter Smythe was in the Com- 
 pany's service, Flossie. You ought to remember.' 
 
 ' I suppose I ought. But as I never saw my 
 cousin Walter in my life, I can hardly be expected 
 to feel deeply interested in him.' 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock assented with a gentle sigh. 
 The Trevornocks of South-lane, Camberwell, were 
 those social pariahs, poor relations. They belonged 
 to a good old Cornish family, and were very proud 
 of their ancient and eminently respectable lineage. 
 They had uncles and cousins in both services, uncles 
 and cousins well planted in the garden of the 
 Church ; but of all these well-placed kindred it was 
 their destiny to see but little. The rich Trevornocks 
 were not unkind or unfeeling. If they had been, the 
 poor Trevornocks could hardly have gone on exist-
 
 22 BABBARA. 
 
 ing, for it was partly to periodical remittances from 
 her well-to-do relations that Mrs. Trevornock owed 
 her means of living. But there was a gulf. Letters 
 were frequently exchanged. When the well-placed 
 Trevornocks came up to town, they made a point of 
 calling in South-lane. Mrs. Trevornock and her 
 daughters were even asked to a family dinner. But 
 there it ended. 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock had been a Miss O'Keilly, the 
 portionless daughter of a popular West-end physician, 
 Irish by birth, English by culture. The doctor lived 
 long enough to marry his daughter to a younger son 
 of old Mrs. Trevornock of Tregloss, near Bodmin — 
 a young man who was beginning life brilliantly as a 
 junior partner in a first-class firm of City solicitors 
 — and died at peace with himself and the world just 
 six months before young Trevornock went utterly to 
 the bad, and proved himself at once and for ever the 
 black sheep of his highly respectable family. 
 
 * When is he coming, mother ?' asked Flossie, 
 w^ho was the more eager of the two sisters for all 
 things promising change and excitement. 
 
 * To-morrow.'
 
 A FAMILY PICTURE. 23 
 
 Bab made a wry face. 
 
 ' Only one more evening of our sweet liberty,' 
 she said. *I wish Captain H.E.I.C.S. was at 
 Jericho.' 
 
 ' You know you don't mean it,' protested Flossie. 
 ' You'd be wofuUy disappointed if he were to write 
 and say he had changed his mind.' 
 
 * Well, perhaps I should,' admitted Bab. ' It 
 will be rather exciting to have a real live military 
 man in the house.' 
 
 Bab concluded by waltzing lightly round the 
 room on the tips of her toes, almost as cleverly as a 
 trained opera-dancer. She had practised standing 
 on her toes many a time when she had nothing to 
 do, and life seemed particularly flat and empty. 
 
 ' Mamma,' said Flossie, ' as this is to be our last 
 evening alone, we ought to have a scrumptious tea.' 
 
 * You mustn't say scrumptious before Captain 
 Leland,' said Bab. ' You will have to forget all your 
 horrid slang words.' 
 
 ' Shall I ? I hope he will teach me a lot of new 
 ones. Now, mother dear, what shall we have for 
 tea ? Bloaters ?'
 
 24 BARBARA. 
 
 'Bloaters!' cried Bab, with a disgusted look. 
 ' The smell of them wouldn't be gone for a week. I 
 vote for strawberry-jam, or one of mother's pound- 
 cakes hot out of the oven — such a cake as you made 
 us last Sunday, ma darling.' 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock looked down at her black-silk 
 gown, her one really good gown, the gown she wore 
 in society. 
 
 ' I must change my gown if I am to make a 
 cake.' 
 
 * Of course, ma. You wouldn't think of wearing 
 that lovely dress all the evening. We shouldn't feel 
 at home with you if you did. We should have to 
 put on company-manners.' 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock never denied her daughters 
 anything ; so the grand gown was exchanged for 
 every-day raiment, and they all three swarmed into 
 the neat little kitchen — not a loathsome blackbeetly 
 underground den, but a room looking into the gar- 
 den, and all a-glitter with shining tins and coppers. 
 Here there was much joyful chatter while the cake 
 was being made, the noisiest beating of eggs, a wild 
 dance with the flour-dredger, a general ebullition of
 
 A FAMILY PICTURE. 25 
 
 high spirits on the part of both girls, and much 
 good-humoured laughter from the light-hearted 
 mother, who thought her children the wittiest and 
 wisest examples of their species, as well as the love- 
 liest and the best. 
 
 Never was a happier meal than that six-o'clock 
 tea in the snug back parlour, opening, with one long 
 French window, into the old-fashioned garden, where, 
 six-and-twenty years ago, the roses grew and thrived 
 as they would hardly thrive in the smokier Camber- 
 well of to-day. There were no roses yet a while. It 
 was the middle of May, and still cold enough for an 
 evening fire. 
 
 So the mother and daughters sat by their snug 
 hearth, and drank strong tea and ate hot but- 
 tered cake, with a reckless disregard of possible 
 damage to their digestive organs, and chattered to 
 their hearts' content. 
 
 Of course they discussed Captain Leland. Mrs. 
 Trevornock was made to describe him minutely. 
 The impression conveyed by her description was 
 not altogether pleasing. 
 
 'Very dark, burnt almost copper -colour,' re-
 
 26 BARBARA. 
 
 peated Flossie. ' Why, mamma, he must be hideous. 
 I hope he isn't a native.' 
 
 ' Of course he is,' said Bab. ' He must be a 
 native of somewhere.' 
 
 ' I mean an actual Indian. I thought his com- 
 plexion looked dreadfully like the best coalscuttle as 
 he came up the garden.' 
 
 *It's only the effect of an Indian sun.' 
 
 'Don't say that, mamma,' protested Flossie. 
 * As if they had a different sun in India !' 
 
 * And the black moustache carries off the dark- 
 ness of his skin,' added Mrs. Trevornock. 
 
 'A moustache is heavenly, if one can only be 
 sure it's respectable,' said Flossie. 
 
 'Mother,' said Bab, 'what will aunt Sophia say 
 when she hears you have taken a gentleman- 
 boarder ?' 
 
 'I hardly know how to tell her,' faltered Mrs. 
 Trevornock. ' I shall have a dreadful letter.' 
 
 ' One of her lecturing letters,' said Flossie. 
 "'My dearest Flora, how could you ?" I know 
 them so well. She will tell you that, with two 
 young daughters, you ought not to allow a man
 
 A FAMILY PICTURE. 27 
 
 under ninety across your threshold; that in your 
 position you cannot be too careful ; that to take a 
 boarder of any kind is in a manner to humiliate and 
 degrade your family ; that if you felt yourself con- 
 strained to take a boarder, you ought to have 
 chosen an elderly Christian lady who wanted a quiet 
 home. Yes, mother, you are in for it.' 
 
 Aunt Sophia was a maiden lady, who lived in a 
 pretty house of her own just outside Exeter, a house 
 with just enough land about it to be called a ' seat,' 
 anJ to enable its possessor to figure respectably in 
 Burke's Landed Gentry. The best society of Exeter, 
 save in its ecclesiastical elements, was hardly good 
 enough for Miss Trevornock of Maitlands ; but she 
 yisited widely among the county families, and to her 
 mind all that was best and loftiest and most severely 
 proper upon earth lay within a twenty-mile radius of 
 Maitlands. She was a good woman, according to 
 her lights, kindly disposed, affectionate, accom- 
 plished, with a turn for elegant literature ; but she 
 could not see beyond that twenty-mile radius. Her 
 mind was narrowed to the limit of her own little 
 world and its little set of inhabitants. She saw all
 
 28 BARBABA. 
 
 things from their standpoint, and was always asking 
 herself what her own particular friends would think 
 upon any given subject. Their opinions she accepted 
 as her law. All the great names that made the 
 century famous were as nothing when weighed in 
 the balance with ' county people.' 
 
 It must be supposed that such a lady would 
 look with anxious eyes towards that unconventional 
 household at Camberwell. She was fond of her 
 sister-in-law, but she never knew what dear Flora 
 might do. Flora was impulsive ; Flora was impru- 
 dent ; worst of all, Flora was poor ; and if Flora did 
 anything foolish or degrading, be sure the county 
 families would hear of it. The thing would get 
 known somehow, by one of those unlucky coinci- 
 dences which we call strange, yet which seem to be 
 the common law of daily life.
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 THE PARTIAL BOARDER. 
 
 George Lelaxd, unconscious of the sensation he 
 had made in the family nest, appeared in due time 
 at the cottage in South-lane. Laburnum Cottage 
 was the name painted on the gate-post, in unpretend- 
 ing white upon black. The garden looked bright 
 and pretty in the afternoon sunshine, the modest 
 little entrance-hall was beautified with a bowl of 
 wallflowers and purple iris, eveiything looked ex- 
 quisitely pure and clean — most refreshingly so to 
 the deserter from the aristocratic tents of the West- 
 end. 
 
 *I had no idea Camberwell was such a nice 
 place,' said Captain Leland pleasantly, when he had 
 shaken hands with Mrs. Trevornock. ' You posi- 
 tively seem in the country.' 
 
 Here he became aware of two slim figures shrink- 
 ing from sight in the next room ; the folding-doors 
 between the two sitting-rooms were open, affording
 
 30 BAKBARA. 
 
 a spacious apartment, and giving a full view of that 
 dear old back garden, with its wide grass-plat and 
 background of apple-trees. 
 
 'My daughters,' murmured Mrs. Trevornock : 
 ' Captain Leland, — Miss Trevornock, Miss Florence 
 Trevornock.' 
 
 Hereupon came more handshaking. Flossie 
 vowed afterwards that the Captain blushed vehe- 
 mently. Perhaps he did. His bronzed cheek may 
 have flushed with sudden wonderment. He had not 
 expected to find anything so beautiful as Barbara 
 Trevornock within the confines of Camberwell. It 
 would not do to stand stock-still and stare at her, 
 like a man bereft of reason ; so he pulled himself 
 together, and said something. 
 
 * You seem to have quite a large garden,' he 
 remarked. 
 
 * Yes ; it is large for a garden so near London,' 
 Mrs. Trevornock admitted modestly ; ' perhaps you 
 would like to walk round it.' 
 
 * Yery much ; but I'd better go and settle with 
 the cabman first,' said the Captain, coming back to 
 every-day life and its responsibilities.
 
 THE PAPtTIAL BOARDER. 31 
 
 His portmanteaux were in the act of being carried 
 up-stairs, and were being bumped audibly at every 
 step. He ran out, saw that his belongings were 
 safe, paid the man lavishly, and hurried back to the 
 little drawing-room, where the three ladies, carefully 
 attired in their second-best gowns, were waiting for 
 him and wondering what he would do next. 
 
 ' I half promised Elliot to meet him at the club 
 at seven,' he said to himself, with a surreptitious 
 glance at his watch ; ' but I hardly feel inclined to 
 go back to town to dine.' 
 
 They all went into the garden in the stateliest 
 manner possible. It was a large garden for Camber- 
 well, as Mrs. Trevornock had remarked, but scarcely 
 large enough for stateliness. The neat gravel walks 
 were narrow. People walking two and two were 
 obliged to be rather near together. There was a 
 long border full of roses, and good old-fashioned 
 perennials — columbine and lupins, larkspur, peo- 
 nies, iris. There was the square grass-plat, al- 
 most worthy to be called a lawn ; and beyond that 
 smooth expanse of turf there came an espaliered 
 boundary, screening a not unpicturesque kitchen-
 
 32 BARBARA. 
 
 garden, where good old orchard-trees grew high 
 ahove the asparagus-beds and cabbage-rows. An old 
 brick wall divided the garden from the canal that 
 flowed outside it. Seen from the upper windows the 
 canal had a picturesque effect. Mrs. Trevornock, 
 who was inclined to see the romantic as well as the 
 humorous side of everything, said the garden and 
 canal in spring-time reminded her of Holland. She 
 had never been in Holland, but that country was 
 vividly represented in her pictorial mind. 
 
 Captain Leland walked by Mrs. Trevornock's 
 side along the narrow pathway. Bab and Flossie 
 strayed off arm-in-arm upon the grass, talking in 
 low voices, and very much inclined to giggle. 
 
 ' Do let us behave like young ladies, if we can,' 
 said Bab, giving the irrepressible Flossie's arm a 
 ferocious grip. 
 
 * Barbara, you are pinching me black and blue.' 
 
 * I would do anything rather than let you dis- 
 grace yourself. What do you think of him ?' 
 
 'Divinely handsome!' cried Flossie, always in 
 extremes. 
 
 * Nonsense ! He is not bad-looking. I rather
 
 THE PARTIAL BOARDER. 33 
 
 like that bronzed complexion : one would paint him 
 with a wash of warm sepia. The thick black mous- 
 tache is picturesque, too; in fact, the man's whole 
 air is picturesque. Flossie, don't go and elevate 
 him into a hero. You are so ridiculously romantic. 
 But he really is — just a little — like Rochester. 
 Don't you think so ?' 
 
 ' Not a bit,' answered Flossie decisively. ' He is 
 a great deal better-looking. Because, you know, 
 however one may let one's enthusiasm run away 
 with one, if Jane's description was faithful, Edward 
 Fairfax Rochester was a guy. It was his ways that 
 fascinated her. There was something so delightful 
 in his bearishness, so original in his incivility.' 
 
 Captain Leland was coming across the grass 
 towards them, talking to their mother as he came. 
 Yes, he was decidedly good-looking — dark hair and 
 darker eyes ; features large and boldly cut, but 
 regular ; a fine frank smile ; a lofty carriage of the 
 head ; and the air of a man accustomed to command : 
 a man essentially manly, essentially soldier-like — a 
 soldier by vocation, not for convenience. Had those 
 two girls, glancing at him shyly from the vine- 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 34 BARBAEA. 
 
 wreathed arbour to whicli they had withdrawn them- 
 selves, had Bab and Flossie known half that his 
 brother-officers could have told them about George 
 Leland, they would have esteemed him a far more 
 romantic personage than Edward Eochester, at best 
 but an unprincipled Yorkshire squire, who had made 
 a failure of his life, and had a very low idea of a 
 man's career or a man's duty in this world. 
 
 * I don't wonder that you are fond of your garden,' 
 said Captain Leland. ' It is as pretty as anything I 
 remember in Somersetshire.' 
 
 ' Somersetshire !' echoed Mrs. Trevornock. ' Do 
 you come from the West of England ?' 
 
 * Yes. My people all live in the neighbourhood 
 of Taunton.' 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock sighed. 
 
 * I know very little of Somerset,' she said. ' My 
 husband's family belongs to Cornwall. It is a very 
 old family. A Trevornock was member for the county 
 in Elizabeth's first Parliament.' 
 
 She could not help feeling proud of that one 
 glory which had been left to her in the days of her 
 poverty. It was perhaps as well to let the partial
 
 THE PARTIAL BOARDER. 35 
 
 boarder know that tliey were not common people. 
 His manner was courteous and respectful ; but, in 
 his secret soul, he might consider himself the supe- 
 rior. 
 
 ' '* By Tre, Pol, and Pen you may know the Corn- 
 ishmen," ' quoted the Captain. ' The name sounds 
 like a good one. "Were these young ladies born in 
 Cornwall ?' 
 
 ' xso ; they were born in London.' 
 
 ' Within the sound of Bow Bells, I'm afraid,' said 
 Flossie, recovering her accustomed pertness as the 
 soldier's aspect grew familiar, ' though I don't re- 
 member hearing them. I suppose I wasn't listening.' 
 
 ' I'll go and see about the tea,' murmured Mrs. 
 Trevornock, whose whole life was consumed in see- 
 ing about things. * Will you join us at our six- 
 o'clock tea. Captain Leland, or have you any engage- 
 ment in London ?' 
 
 * I — I had a kind of engagement,' faltered the 
 Captain, blushing violently; 'but I think I shall 
 forget all about it. Yes, I shall be delighted to 
 drink tea with you.' 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock departed, leaving the two girls
 
 36 BARBARA. 
 
 and the Captain face to face. It would have been 
 hard to decide which was the more bashful of the 
 two, Barbara or Captain Leland. Flossie's indomit- 
 able impudence was not to be dashed so easily. 
 She was the first to break an awkward silence. 
 
 * Is India a nice place ?' she asked, with alarm- 
 ing abruptness. 
 
 Bab was twisting a vine-spray in and out of the 
 lattice, looking down at her work as intently as if 
 her life depended upon it. 
 
 ' It is a magnificent country ; but I don't know 
 whether a young lady accustomed to the more refined 
 civilisation of — ' 
 
 ' Camberwell,' interjected Flossie. 
 
 * Would consider it nice. I liked it well enough, 
 though I had to work very hard there.' 
 
 ' Fighting battles ?' suggested Flossie. 
 
 * Not always. That kind of work is the oasis in 
 a desert of commonplace. In my early Indian days 
 I had to superintend the building of a hospital ; to 
 stand about in the sun, watching the men making 
 bricks ; to show one nigger how to lay his bricks, 
 when they were made ; to explain to another the
 
 THE PARTIAL BOARDER. 37 
 
 mysteries of screws and nails and hinges. And as 
 I had never learnt the building business myself, this 
 required more pluck than spiking a gun. Sometimes 
 I had to turn my hand to civil engineering, and was 
 ordered to make a forty-mile road. It was my pro- 
 vince to make myself generally useful. I am glad 
 to say that I came in for plenty of fighting after- 
 wards ; but I had to make my soldiers, just as I had 
 made my bricks, and to be drill-sergeant as well as 
 captain.' 
 
 * And did you — kill people ?' asked Flossie, strug- 
 gling against a look of abhorrence. 
 
 * Sometimes. If you saw a copper-coloured 
 scoundrel, a creature scarcely human in his ferocity, 
 rushing at you like a tiger, yelling " Wah, Gooroo, 
 ji !" and striking at you with his tulwar, what would 
 you do ?' 
 
 'I think,' said Flossie deliberately, 'I should 
 run away.' 
 
 ' I stayed, and cut him in two. Unhappily, you 
 see, a little bloodshed is an unavoidable element in 
 war. There are occasions when one must either kill 
 or be killed.'
 
 38 BABBAEA. 
 
 Flossie felt as if she would hardly enjoy her tea 
 in the society of such a monster. A good-looking 
 monster, decidedly. She stole a glance at him from 
 under her golden-tipped lashes, and made up her 
 mind that he was hetter-looking than the square- 
 jowled Kochester. There was more of the hero and 
 less of the bulldog about him. 
 
 How stupidly Bab was behaving, Flossie thought 
 indignantly. There she stood, twiddling the vine- 
 tendrils, and leaving the whole responsibility of the 
 conversation to her younger sister. This was the 
 consequence of seeing so little society. Bab, too, 
 who was supposed to be a genius, who had steeped 
 herself in Shakespeare and Byron, Bulwer, Thackeray, 
 and Dickens, and who wrote verses by the yard. It 
 was too bad ! 
 
 * Is India a — large place ?' Flossie inquired des- 
 perately, after a minute and a ' half of absolute 
 silence. 
 
 Captain Leland smiled. 
 
 * Yes, there is a good deal of it,' he said ; ' there 
 is plenty of elbow-room for fighting. I don't want 
 to be too geographical ; but to-morrow, if you'll allow
 
 THE PARTIAL BOAEDER. 39 
 
 me, I'll show you some sketches of scenery and native 
 life which I made during my travels in the land of 
 the five rivers.' 
 
 He spoke to Flossie, but he looked at Barbara, 
 wondering when those lovely lips would find speech. 
 It seemed as if she understood that look of his, for 
 she answered him. 
 
 'I should like very much to see them,' she said. 
 * Flossie and I are dreadfully ignorant about geo- 
 graphy, and about a good many things. We have 
 never been at school. Mamma has educated us, 
 and she is so indulgent, that we have only learned 
 just what we liked. We did not like geography.' 
 
 ' If you were to ask me where Kamtschatka is, I 
 couldn't tell you,' said Flossie. * I've a vague idea 
 that it's one of the cold places. As for latitude and 
 longitude, I scarcely know what they mean; and 
 whether the equator goes round the world, or the 
 world goes round the equator — ' 
 
 ' Don't expatiate upon our ignorance, Flossie,' re- 
 monstrated Bab. ' Captain Leland will take it on 
 trust.' 
 
 Thev all laughed, and after this the ice seemed
 
 40 BAKBARA. 
 
 to be broken, and they went for a turn round the 
 garden, Flossie bolting surreptitious green goose- 
 berries as they passed the bushes. Presently came 
 the neat little handmaid to tell them that tea was 
 ready ; and then they all went into the parlour, 
 where Mrs. Trevornock had prepared an actual ban- 
 quet. Cake and toast and thin bread-and-butter ; a 
 glass jar of marmalade ; a dish of anchovies nestling 
 in parsley ; the best china ; the best teapot — not 
 silver, but a very good imitation ; a snowy table- 
 cloth ; a bunch of lilies of the valley in the centre 
 of the table ; an all-pervading air of comfort, which 
 no one knew better how to impart to commonplace 
 things than Mrs. Trevornock. 
 
 * If we are going to live like this always. Cap- 
 tain Leland will be our ruin,' thought Flossie. 
 * A guinea a week will never pay for these luxu- 
 ries.' 
 
 What a merry tea-party it was ! Before Captain 
 Leland had finished his first cup, they were all as 
 friendly as if they had known one another for years. 
 He talked of himself freely, as if anxious to make 
 them acquainted with his antecedents, having no
 
 THE PARTIAL BOARDER. 41 
 
 one to introduce him. But not by one word did he 
 lead them to suppose that he was in any way superior 
 to the common run of men, or that he had done 
 anything to distinguish himself in the profession of 
 his choice. 
 
 He told them that his father was a country 
 clergyman, whose parish was within seven miles of 
 Taunton. His father and mother were both living 
 — quiet elderly people, with several sons and daugh- 
 ters, and no fortune to leave to any of them. 
 
 *We have all our own way to make in life,' he 
 said ; ' and so far, I am thankful to say, we have all 
 done pretty well. My father gave us a good educa- 
 tion, and left us to do the rest. I was educated at 
 Shrewsbury and Addiscombe. My two brothers are 
 in the Church. Three out of my four sisters are 
 comfortably married. The eldest, Marian, is an old 
 maid, and the angel in the house.' 
 
 ' Why were you not a clergyman ?' asked Flossie. 
 ' What put it into your head to go out to India and 
 kill people ?' 
 
 ' I hardly know, unless it was reading the life of 
 Clive.'
 
 42 BARBAEA. 
 
 * Are you not sorry you chose such a ferocious 
 profession ?' 
 
 *No/ he answered, with his quiet smile; '1 am 
 glad.' 
 
 He told them that, after eight years' service, he 
 had come home on a twelvemonth's furlough. Six 
 months were gone. He had spent the greater part 
 of those months in Somerset, and now he meant to 
 buckle-to and work hard at Indian languages and 
 Indian law ; for he had already held important civil 
 appointments, involving large authority in new dis- 
 tricts, and the post which he was promised on his 
 return was one that would need him to be a capable 
 magistrate as well as a daring soldier. He made 
 Mrs. Trevornock and her daughters laugh at his 
 stories of native squabbles and native chicaneries. 
 
 They sat long at the snug little tea-table in the 
 glow of the evening fire, the low sunlight fading 
 gradually behind roofs and chimneys beautified by 
 distance. Captain Leland, who had lunched lightly, 
 made a formidable attack on the bread-and-butter. 
 
 * If he always eats like this, a guinea a week will 
 go no way,' Flossie said to herself.
 
 THE PAPtTIAL BOAKDER. 43 
 
 Sordid consideration, perhaps, for a pretty girl. 
 But Barbara and Florence Trevornock had been 
 reared upon an income so small, that only the nicest 
 calculations made it sufficient for their modest wants. 
 They had been bred up with an intense horror of 
 debt. They were the very soul of honesty, truthful, 
 confiding, candid, without a particle of false pride. 
 These every-day virtues Mrs. Trevornock, in the 
 course of a desultory education, had been able to in- 
 stil into her daughters' minds, not by precept or elo- 
 quent theorising, but by the sheer force of example. 
 After tea, they repaired to the adjoining room, 
 where the cottage-piano stood in a recess by the fire- 
 place. In this apartment the girls kept their books, 
 and all the refinements of their life. Here there 
 were flowers, the few odds and ends of old china 
 which Mrs. Trevornock had picked up in her wan- 
 derings among brokers' shops, or saved from the 
 wreck of former splendour — her art-gallery, consist- 
 ing of about a dozen good old-fashioned engravings : 
 a landscape or two after Constable, two or three 
 heads by Reynolds, a pair of Hogarths, and four 
 w^ell-known Wilkies. Those familiar subjects.
 
 44 BAEBARA. 
 
 though only in black-and-white, seemed to give life 
 and light to the walls. 
 
 Seeing the open piano, ihe Captain naturally 
 asked for a little music. The two girls played an 
 easy sonata of Mozart's written for four hands, and 
 then Barbara and her mother sang an old Italian 
 air together : the mother in a sweet soprano but 
 little impaired by time ; the daughter in a fine con- 
 tralto, a voice worthy of higher cultivation than it 
 had received. Captain Leland listened and admired. 
 He had an honest love of music, and confessed by 
 and by to the possession of a baritone voice, with 
 which he would be happy to join in a glee or a duet, 
 as occasion required. 
 
 He sat near the bookcase, and surveyed its 
 contents while Bab and Flossie were playing. 
 Shakespeare, Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley — all the 
 old favourites-; David Copperfield, The Caxtons; the 
 Waverley edition of Scott, in well-worn brown calf. 
 Scott's novels and the poets had been among Mrs. 
 Trevornock's wedding-presents, and alone remained 
 to her of all the tributes that friendship had offered 
 to Dr. O'Reilly's pretty daughter.
 
 THE PARTIAL BOARDER. 45 
 
 Captain Leland liked the look of those book- 
 shelves. They indicated refinement without bookish- 
 ness. The modern learned young lady, in her 
 smoke-coloured spectacles, with the differential cal- 
 culus at her fingers' ends, would have despised so 
 simple a collection. 
 
 ' Upon my word, I believe I have fallen on my 
 feet,' the Captain said to himself. ' This Mrs. 
 Trevornock is evidently a lady ; and how lovely the 
 elder girl is, and how unconscious of her beauty ! 
 What a curious thing it would be if — But no, I 
 am a fool to think of that.'
 
 CHAPTEK III. 
 
 * WRITTEN IN STARLIGHT ON THE DARK ABOVE.' 
 
 It was midsummer, and the roses were in bloom in 
 the Camberwell garden, cabbage-roses, creamy blush, 
 old-fashioned moss-roses — striped red and white, and 
 deepest damask— nothing very modern or grand in 
 nomenclature. Mrs. Trevornock and her daughters 
 could not afford to be rose-fanciers. They were con- 
 tent to cherish and make the most of the roses they 
 had. The jasmine was in bloom on the southern 
 wall ; the lilies of the valley in the shady corner by 
 the old fig-tree had left off flowering. Captain 
 Leland had been living in South-lane for a month, 
 and he was as much at home with the Trevornocks 
 as if he had known them all his life. For a bache- 
 lor and a club-man he was wonderfully domestic. 
 He spent his mornings in the garden, or in the gar- 
 den parlour, studying Indian languages, reading the 
 daily papers, or reading aloud to Bab and Flossie,
 
 WRITTEN IN STARLIGHT ON THE DARK ABOVE. 47 
 
 while they stitched diligently at long strips of em- 
 broidery. He went to his club for an hour or two in 
 the afternoon, saw other military men, read more news- 
 papers, dined moderately, and came home at eight 
 o'clock to drink tea with Mrs. Trevornock and her 
 daughters. No arrangement could have suited that 
 modest little household better. The three ladies 
 could dine when they liked and how they liked, and 
 very simple and economical were the dinners so 
 eaten. They had their afternoons free. They could 
 mend and make their clothes, go on marketing expe- 
 ditions, with neat little baskets or reticules, in the 
 Walworth-roadi work in the garden, decorate their 
 drawing-room with fresh flowers, and dust and polish 
 and arrange and rearrange the furniture, without any 
 fear of interruption, and be neatly and freshly 
 dressed and ready to receive their partial boarder 
 before the clock struck eight. It was the simplest 
 and the happiest life possible. 
 
 * Mamma,' said Flossie one day, as they sat at 
 dinner, 'I think you must acknowledge that the 
 Captain is an acquisition. I'm so glad I thought of 
 the advertisement. It was my idea, you know\'
 
 48 BARBAKA . 
 
 This was one of Flossie's idiosyncrasies. Any 
 new arrangement that succeeded was always claimed 
 as her idea. It was the only talent to which she 
 pretended. She willingly acknowledged Barbara as 
 her intellectual superior, but the art of striking out 
 improvements in life she claimed as her own. 
 
 ' 0, come now,' cried Mrs. Trevornock, ' that's 
 too much, Flossie ! We talked of a partial boarder 
 ages ago. It seemed a sin to have such a nice bed- 
 room going to waste.' 
 
 'Yes, but it w^as my idea from the very begin- 
 ning. And see how well it has succeeded. If all 
 partial boarders are as good as Captain Leland, par- 
 tial boarding must be the high-road to fortune. I 
 wish we had six spare bedrooms !' 
 
 ' You didn't think quite so well of Captain Leland 
 the first evening, Flossie,' retorted Barbara, laughing. 
 
 * When I saw him attack our bread-and-butter ? 
 No, I thought we should be eaten out of house and 
 home. But how nobly he makes up for his appetite ! 
 How generous he has been !' 
 
 ' A York ham,' said Mrs. Trevornock. 
 
 ' A canister of Indian tea,' said Bab.
 
 WEITTEN IN STARLIGHT ON THE DARK ABOVE. 49 
 
 'A dozen jars of Dundee marmalade,' said 
 Flossie. 
 
 * Baskets of strawberries daily,' pursued Bab. 
 
 'And a small salmon last Saturday.' 
 
 ' To which we are bidding a tender farewell to- 
 day,' said Flossie, pointing to the dish, where the 
 backbone of a fish reposed in a shallow pool of 
 vinegar between sedgy banks of fennel. 
 
 This was a catalogue of Captain Leland's benefac- 
 tions since he had been a dweller under Mrs. Trevor- 
 nock's roof. Perhaps he had managed somehow to 
 find out that, in spite of the neatness and refinement 
 of the house and all its arrangements, in spite of the 
 pretty dresses and happy faces of the two girls, there 
 was not a superabundance of money at Xo. 20 South- 
 lane, and these gifts may have been designed as an 
 artful means of helping his well-bom hostess. 
 
 The Trevornocks, from a long experience of life 
 in the character of poor relations, may have been 
 wanting in that virtue which some people call 
 proper pride. They accepted the Captain's ofiferings 
 as frankly as they were given, and admired him as 
 the most generous of men. 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 BARBAKA. 
 
 ' There can't be anything too good for him,' ex- 
 claimed the enthusiastic Flossie. * Think how he 
 fought at Moodke, and splashed about in the muddy 
 water at Sobraon, when he was little more than a 
 boy. He doesn't boast of his own share in the 
 work, but I know he was a hero.' 
 
 Flossie was now as learned about Indian affairs 
 as she had been heretofore ignorant. She was as 
 familiar with the geography of the Punjab as if she 
 had lived there. She fancied she could have found 
 her way through the Bolan Pass, and would have felt 
 quite at home at Kandahar. She knew that the 
 Sutlej is a river, and that Sikhs are not Mahometans, 
 and she was proud of her knowledge. She adopted 
 quite a high and mighty tone about Indian politics ; 
 talked of Gough and Hardinge as if she had been 
 their brother-in-arms ; and had her own idea of the 
 kind of man who ought to be Governor-General. 
 
 'What are you going to wear this evening?' she 
 asked Barbara. * Your pink muslin ?' 
 
 * I don't want to be disagreeable, dears,' said Mrs. 
 Trevornock; * but since Captain Leland has been 
 here you have used an enormous amount of starch.'
 
 WRITTEN IN STARLIGHT ON THE DARK ABO^T:. 51 
 
 These young ladies starched and ironed their 
 own muslin gowns, and would not have been 
 ashamed to own it in the best society. 
 
 ' If Captain Leland were not here you wouldn't 
 have had that salmon,' said Flossie, pointing to the 
 backbone ; ' and think how many pounds of starch 
 you could buy for the price of him.' 
 
 ' And I'm sure you would not like to see us in 
 crumpled gowns, mamma dear,' said Bab, nestling 
 close to her mother. 
 
 ' Indeed I wouldn't, darling ; and you look lovely 
 in that pale -pink muslin,' answered the loving 
 parent. ' We shall get on somehow, I daresay. I 
 don't think any girls ever had nicer dresses, and your 
 aunt Sophia talks about sending a box before long.' 
 
 'Dear aunt Sophia!' cried Flossie, clapping her 
 hands ecstatically ; ' I love her when she sends us 
 one of her well-filled boxes, though I don't think 
 her taste in dress quite irreproachable.' 
 
 ' Decidedly rustic,' said Bab ; * but what should 
 we do without her ?' 
 
 * The mouths of gift-horses should not be too 
 closely scrutinised,' said Flossie, with mock so- 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
 
 52 BARBARA. 
 
 lemnity ; ' and we forgive aunt Sophia her bad taste 
 and her provincial dressmaker.' 
 
 The mother and daughters lingered over their 
 frugal dinner of pickled salmon and cold gooseberry- 
 pie. They sat wasting their time and talking about 
 Captain Leland. Any one who had listened to them 
 for five minutes would have known that they were 
 all three in love with him, that it was a desperate 
 case of hero-worship on all sides. But Barbara was 
 the quietest of the three. Barbara said very little. 
 
 After dinner came a sultry hour over the iron- 
 ing-board, with talk and laughter and song as 
 joyous as of birds in early spring-time, when it is 
 still a wonder that the earth is so fair and the sun 
 so bright ; then a trip to the Walworth-road, to buy 
 tea and sugar, and those nice crisp biscuits that set 
 off the table ; anon a digression to the Albany-road, 
 to pay a horrid tax, a thing which wrenches seven- 
 teen -and- ninepence out of one without rhyme or 
 reason, but which must be paid on pain of sum- 
 monses and all manner of grisly horrors ; then home 
 to dress, and to make oneself look one's very pret- 
 tiest against the Captain's return.
 
 WRITTEN IN STARLIGHT ON THE DARK ABOVE. 53 
 
 Those summer-evening tea-drinkings had grown 
 to be quite festive. The cottage -piano had been 
 wheeled into the garden parlour, and after tea Mrs. 
 Trevornock would play a waltz — the 'Elfin,' the 
 'Indiana,' or the 'Prima Donna' — while the Cap- 
 tain waltzed alternately with Bab and Flossie on 
 the close-cut lawn. Just half a dozen turns or so 
 with each fair young partner, in the soft light be- 
 tween sun and moon. Nothing premeditated; the 
 whole thing lasting hardly half an hour. But of all 
 the dances Barbara Trevornock was destined to 
 dance in the course of her life, those brief waltzes 
 on the lawn were the most lovingly remembered. 
 Nobody can be young twice. That first sweet fresh- 
 ness of girlhood, those first wild beatings of a heart 
 surprised at its newly-awakened passion, who can 
 know them twice over? Not Barbara Trevornock, 
 any more than the rest of her sisters. 
 
 And to George Leland — the hardy adventurous 
 soldier, the man who could spend ten hours in the 
 saddle, riding through the freezing night, the blazing 
 day, through storms of dust, and hot winds that 
 were like the blasts from a furnace — who shall say
 
 54 BARBARA. 
 
 how sweet these summer nights were to him ? A 
 year ago he had been leading a wanderer's life in a 
 wild country, sitting alone in his tent at eventide, 
 or with no better company than a couple of savage- 
 looking Afghan servants ; far from civilisation and 
 the fair face of woman ; away from books and music 
 and all those things he loved only less than duty. 
 That had ever been paramount with him. He was 
 a man who had never spared himself — who had 
 never shrunk from any toil, mental or physical, and 
 who had done more hard and difficult work in the 
 seven years of his Indian apprenticeship than many 
 men achieve in a long lifetime. 
 
 To him, then, more than to any, rest after toil 
 was sweet. 
 
 Half- past seven. The shopping done, the tax 
 paid, the spotless muslin gowns put on ; mother 
 napping in the shady front parlour; Flossie prac- 
 tising a new waltz on the little Stodart ; Barbara 
 walking alone in the garden, along the one shel- 
 teied path by which the hazels grew wild, and over 
 which leaned the biggest of the pear-trees — very 
 much aslant in his trunk, as if he had outgrown his
 
 WRITTEN IN STARLIGHT ON THE DARK ABOVE. 55 
 
 strength and gone crooked, but magnificent as to 
 his foliage, though his fruit was of small account. 
 
 What was Bab thinking about as she walked up 
 and down in the soft evening light, tall and slender, 
 dressed in pale muslin, with rich brown hair coiled 
 in a knot at the back of the lovely head, heavy eye- 
 lids drooping over dark -gray eyes, the sweet face 
 full of serious thought? What need to ask the 
 question ? What did anybody at No. 20 South- 
 lane think of in this June of '53 except Captain 
 Leland? He made the whole sum of everybody's 
 meditations. Mother had dozed off with her mind 
 full of speculations as to when he was going 
 to propose to Barbara ; yet with a feeling that, 
 admirable as he was, he was still unworthy of so 
 rich a prize, not being duke or marquis or mil- 
 lionaire. Flossie was giving only a corner of her 
 mind to the accidentals in her new waltz ; the 
 greater part was occupied by Captain Leland. 
 
 A step upon the gravel, the firm tread Barbara 
 knows so well, and in the next minute the subject 
 of her thoughts is by her side. 
 
 * What a comfort to return to this nice old
 
 56 BARBARA. 
 
 garden after tlie glare and dust and bustle of London 
 streets !' said the Captain. 
 
 * Have you been very busy to-day ?' 
 
 * Very. I have seen my agent.' 
 
 *0,' said Bab, with a curious sinking at her 
 heart, as if a cold chill had suddenly come over 
 the warm gladness of life's atmosphere. 
 
 * Yes ; and I have settled when I am to go 
 back.' 
 
 ' To India ?' faltered Barbara. 
 
 ' To India. I am to sail in the Hesper, which 
 leaves Southampton on the 4th of September. I 
 go overland, of course.' 
 
 ' So soon ?' 
 
 * Do you call that soon ? I have two long 
 months' rest and holiday yet.' 
 
 'And when you go back,' began Barbara, 
 steadying her voice with an effort, ' do you think 
 there will be any more war ?' 
 
 *Yes, I anticipate a few more skirmishes. 
 Affairs in the Punjab are by no means settled.' 
 
 * And I suppose you will be going to Somerset 
 for part of the time ?' said Barbara, after a pause.
 
 WRITTEN IN STARLIGHT ON THE DARK ABOVE. 51 
 
 ' 0, I shall run down for a week, towards the 
 last, to see the dear old mother. But that will 
 be quite at the end of my time probably. She 
 likes to see the very last of me.' 
 
 *How unhappy she must feel about you some- 
 times, when you are so far away, and exposed to 
 such perils !' 
 
 ' I hope she does not look too much at the 
 perilous side of my career. She is glad to think 
 I am doing my duty and serving my country.' 
 
 * Ah,' sighed Barbara, ' I suppose that is the 
 proper way of thinking. But if I had a son far 
 away in a strange country, fighting with a savage 
 people, I should be miserable.' 
 
 They walked a little longer in the garden, 
 looking at the roses, and gathering a few of the 
 finest for the adornment of the tea-table ; but 
 Barbara was somewhat silent. She was considering 
 the brevity of human happiness. Here was this 
 new friend, who had already woven himself into 
 the very fabric of their lives, whose presence had 
 given life and colour to a hitherto monotonous 
 existence, and in two little months he would go
 
 58 BAKBAKA. 
 
 away — across tlie wide unknown seas and sandy 
 desert plains — and forget them ; lie would be 
 leading his wild adventurous life, a life too full 
 of action to leave room for thought; he would 
 be building and road-making, taking forts and 
 training native soldiers, riding over hill and dale, 
 through swamp and jungle, reckless of danger, and 
 happy ; and it would be as if they had never 
 known and cared for him, as if he had never known 
 and cared for them. 
 
 * If he can speak so lightly about leaving his 
 mother, he cannot care a straw about leaving us,' 
 mused Barbara.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FAMILY SECRETS. 
 
 Next day was rainy — quite a shameful day for the 
 end of June, Flossie remarked indignantly ; so the 
 Captain, who did not seem in the least indignant 
 at the aggravating state of the weather, spent his 
 morning with the two young ladies, selecting all the 
 interesting bits in the Times to read aloud to them, 
 while Barbara worked diligently at a strip of cam- 
 bric embroidery. Flossie idled, and relieved her 
 oppressed spirits with occasional prances round the 
 room, like a spirited horse amusing himself in a 
 loose box. 
 
 The only kind of needlework Flossie cared for 
 was the alteration and reconstruction of her gowns, 
 mantles, tippets, and furbelows. Of that occupa- 
 tion she never tired ; but it was an untidy species 
 of work, which could only be done in strict retire- 
 ment, and Flossie's mind was to-day sorely exercised 
 by a sense of divided duty.
 
 60 BARBARA. 
 
 She would like to have been in her own room, 
 adapting her last year's muslin to the latest fashion 
 of this year, but she felt that she ought to stay 
 down-stairs and play propriety for Barbara. She 
 liked the Captain's society also, and was just a little 
 in love with him on her own account ; not enough 
 to make her uncomfortably jealous or unkindly 
 disposed to her sister, but so much as sufficed to 
 give a zest to his society. They talked a great deal 
 when all the not absolutely dryasdust paragraphs 
 in the Times had been exhausted : they talked of 
 India; they talked of England; of the past, the 
 present, the future ; and by and by the two girls 
 began to talk of their own history. They told the 
 Captain how long they had occupied the little house 
 in South-lane; how they had discovered the spot 
 by accident ; how the garden was a perfect wilder- 
 ness, the house both outside and inside deplorably 
 in want of paint ; and how by degrees they had 
 made house and garden what they now were. 
 
 * It has been up-hill work,' said Flossie ; * I am 
 not ashamed to tell you that I have done a good 
 deal of whitewashing and painting myself. You'd
 
 FAMILY SECRETS. 61 
 
 hardly know me, I believe, if you were to see me 
 standing on a hassock, on a kitchen-table, with my 
 head tied up in a handkerchief, whitewashing a 
 ceiling. It's very exciting work,' added the damsel, 
 * but not altogether pleasant, for the whitewash ivill 
 drop into one's eyes.' 
 
 * And I suppose you have lived at Camberwell 
 ever since you lost your father,' said the Captain 
 presently, after they had exhausted the subject of 
 whitewash. 
 
 * Lost our father !' echoed Flossie. * We never 
 lost our father. The author of our being is still in 
 existence.' 
 
 ' Keally !' exclaimed George Leland, with a 
 puzzled look. 
 
 To have been living under a lady's roof for 
 the space of six weeks, believing her a widow and 
 her children orphans, and to have a husband and 
 father sprung upon him in this way, was enough to 
 disturb any man's equanimity. 
 
 ^I really thought your mother was a widow,' he 
 faltered. 
 
 ' Yes ; mother is absurdly reserved upon the
 
 62 BARBAKA. 
 
 subject,' answered Flossie. * For my own part I 
 prefer perfect frankness. She has a husband; we 
 have a father ; but I am sorry to say that in both 
 relations he is a decided failure.' 
 
 The subject was serious, but Captain Leland 
 found himself smiling. Flossie's pert little face, as 
 she stood opposite him, supporting herself against 
 the end of the sofa, and twisting her pinchbeck 
 watch-chain in her fingers, was provocative of any- 
 thing rather than gravity. 
 
 ' We might justly say we have no father,' said 
 Bab ; ' he has never done a father's duty.' 
 
 * Nonsense, Bab ; don't be so hard upon the 
 author of our being. I perfectly remember one 
 Sunday, when I had my first frock with a pocket, 
 papa gave me sixpence to put in that pocket. And 
 he used to call me his little maid. I think those 
 were two nice traits in his character, at any 
 rate.' 
 
 ' It would have been nicer of him if he had paid 
 his debts, and kept a roof over our heads, instead 
 of squandering his money,' said Bab, with a touch 
 of bitterness.
 
 FAMILY SECRETS. 63 
 
 * What kind of man Tvas — is your father ?' asked 
 Captain Leland. 
 
 ' I'll describe him as I have often heard him 
 described — in five words, " nobody's enemy but his 
 own," ' answered Barbara. 
 
 ' !' said Captain Leland, as much as to say 
 that was a bad case. 
 
 ' He is a most good-natured person,' said Flossie. 
 * You could hardly put him out of temper, if you 
 tried. He will swear at you occasionally, but not 
 savagely. He has threatened to throw me down- 
 stairs or out of the window ; but he doesn't mean 
 it. I daresay he finds me rather trying.' 
 
 * Then you see him sometimes ?' 
 
 '0 yes. We are on visiting terms. Mamma 
 seldom goes to see him, because, you see, having 
 left him — I believe he pretended to be dreadfully 
 cut up about it at the time — she has a kind of 
 delicacy about calling on him. But Bab and I 
 sometimes favour him with a call. He is a soli- 
 citor, and has chambers in Gray's Inn. He has 
 not been at all fortunate in his profession, poor 
 man; but he goes on somehow, and he generally
 
 64 BARBARA. 
 
 contrives to have chambers, and tin boxes japanned 
 the colour of tortoiseshell combs, with people's 
 names painted on them in white letters; and I 
 believe he has a few old Cornish clients. I know I 
 have seen the same names upon the boxes ever 
 since I can remember.' 
 
 ' How glad he must be to see you !' said Captain 
 Leland, with conviction. 
 
 * Do you think so ?' asked Flossie, with a specu- 
 lative air. ' I am afraid I have rather an aggravating 
 effect upon him sometimes, or he wouldn't threaten 
 to throw me out of window.' 
 
 * Does he threaten to throw you out of the 
 window ?' asked the Captain of Barbara, who sat, 
 with drooping eyelids, intent upon a strip of em- 
 broidery. 
 
 * no. Bab never aggravates him. She doesn't 
 ask him for things, as I do.' 
 
 * 0,' said the Captain ; ' so you ask him for 
 things, Flossie !' 
 
 ' Yes. I'll give you a little sketch of our visit, if 
 you like. Scene, a solicitor's office : solicitor dis- 
 covered writing, or trimming his nails — more often
 
 FAMILY SECRETS. 65 
 
 the latter. Enter Mr. Maulford, articled clerk, 
 ushering in two young ladies, in their best bonnets, 
 got up generally regardless of expense. We try to 
 make a favourable impression on the author of our 
 being, though he is a dismal failure.' 
 
 ^ Flossie, you are getting diffuse,' said Bab ; 
 ' pray come to the point.' 
 
 ' Mr. Maulford announces, *' The Miss Trevor- 
 nocks, " and lingers in the doorway to hear as much 
 as he can of our conversation. '' 0," says Mr. Tre- 
 vornock, without looking up — in a general way the 
 author of our being is not given to looking up. 
 "It's you, is it? How do?" We greet him as 
 effusively as circumstances permit. " How's your 
 mother ?" he asks. We reply, without entering into 
 details as to mamma's last headache or the touch of 
 rheumatism she had on Tuesday week. There is a 
 pause, and then our parent asks, '' Any news from 
 the west ?" We impart so much of the contents of 
 my aunt's last letter as we think likely to interest 
 him. He doesn't seem to listen, but I believe he 
 hears. A second pause follows, and then I begin 
 my attack. *' Papa," I murmur meekly, '' could you 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 QQ BAEBAEA. 
 
 let us have a little money ? Barbara and I are dread- 
 fully in want of summer bonnets, and poor mamma 
 is worried about the water-rate. Two or three sove- 
 reigns would be a great boon." On this the author 
 flares up. He asks me if I think he can go out in 
 the streets and pick up money; if I suppose he 
 can coin or forge. I don't; but I do suppose in- 
 wardly that he might for once in a way earn a little 
 money. He goes on desperately for some time, but 
 generally ends by producing a sovereign, or a sove- 
 reign and a half, perhaps. We both thank him — 
 indeed, I go so far as to march up to him and kiss 
 him, while this stupid Barbara sits like a statue and 
 twiddles her parasol. Then I proceed to ask him 
 for a little silver to pay for our cab home. Of course 
 we never do have anything so horridly extravagant as 
 a cab ; but it's a polite way of extorting a little more 
 cash. Now he begins to lash himself into a dreadful 
 passion. I am a heartless minx. I would take the 
 coat off his back, or the teeth out of his head — as if 
 I wanted his teeth, poor thing ! — but he finally brings 
 a few shillings out of his trouser-pocket, which rat- 
 tles as if it were full of money : , and I am sure, from 
 
 r5
 
 FAMILY SECRETS. 67 
 
 the careless way he carries his gold and silver, mixed 
 up anyhow, he ought to he a millionaire. Then I 
 ask him for a few pence to buy some buns for our 
 lunch ; and when I have got those, I ask for a little 
 stationery — a quire or so of foolscap, and some seal- 
 ing-wax, and quill pens — and then he says he feels 
 strongly tempted to throw me — I am afraid he says 
 " chuck" me — out of the window, or to fling me 
 down-stairs. But after that I change the conversa- 
 tion, and before we leave him he gets quite friendly.' 
 
 ' A curious state of things,' said the Captain, with 
 a tender little look at Barbara, as who should say, 
 ' Sweet flower, not for you should fortune's wind 
 blow so roughly.' May I ask if these filial visits are 
 frequent ?' 
 
 'No,' said Flossie; ' if they were we should be 
 rich. We just contrive to make our parent provide 
 our bonnets and pay the water-rate. We have sel- 
 dom risen above that.' 
 
 'His portion of domestic responsibility is not 
 heavy. May I ask how long your mother and Mr. 
 Trevornock have lived apart ?' 
 
 ' You may ask anything,' replied Flossie ; ' I am
 
 68 BARBARA. 
 
 candour itself. Besides, you have been so kind and 
 friendly — salmon, ham, strawberries, Dundee mar- 
 malade,' she repeated inwardly — ' that I am sure we 
 ought to have no secrets from you. Ma left pa when 
 Bab and I were little. They had no vulgar quarrels, 
 you know ; but he never gave her any money for the 
 housekeeping bills, or the servants' wages, or any- 
 thing, and there was usually an execution in the 
 house. Perhaps you don't know what that means ?' 
 ' Yes, I have an idea of the process.' 
 ' Taxes meant one succession of summonses,' 
 pursued Flossie. ^ Of course I was not old enough 
 to know anything about it then. We always had 
 dinner, and I had no idea that we were on the brink 
 of starvation. But the debt and the executions and 
 the worry were killing poor ma. She is honest by 
 nature, poor dear, and she could hardly breathe in 
 an atmosphere of dishonesty. Pa used to go to his 
 club, and to races and gambling-houses, and enjoy 
 himself, leaving his clerks without their salaries. 
 The clerks used to come to ma — we lived over papa's 
 offices in those days — and ask her for money on a 
 Saturday afternoon, when pa had made himself scarce.
 
 FAMILY SECRETS. 69 
 
 It was dreadfully trying, and at last ma felt she 
 could not bear it any longer ; so one day she packed 
 her boxes, wrote pa a polite note, and came away 
 with us in a cab to some lodgings in the Old Kent- 
 road, which had been taken for her by her old nurse, 
 a faithful old hanger-on, who used to come to tea 
 occasionally. We were quite little in those days. 
 Bab had chubby legs. Don't blush, Bab ; you could 
 hardly have existed without legs of some kind, and 
 there's no harm in saying they were chubby. And 
 ma has toiled, and striven, and thought for us ever 
 since, and educated us, and dressed us, and made 
 us supremely happy ; and if we did not love her — 
 which we do, thank God — we should be hard-hearted 
 little wretches. And now you know the history of 
 our pa.' 
 
 ' It is very good of you to give me your confidence,' 
 said the Captain. 
 
 ' No, it isn't. I rather enjoy talking of him. 
 And on a wet day like this — there ought to be a law 
 against wet days in summer — one must talk about 
 something.' 
 
 ' Would you like to go to a picture-gallery ?'
 
 70 BARBARA. 
 
 asked the Captaiu, thinking that if he could get the 
 two girls into a gallery he might have this silent 
 Barbara all to himself, while Flossie stuck her im- 
 pertinent little nose into the pictures, which was her 
 way of looking at art. She said she wanted to find 
 out how it was done, having proclivities towards 
 pen-and-ink caricature, and thinking herself an artist 
 on the strength thereof. 
 
 ' No,' said Flossie resolutely. * That would mean 
 no end of money spent upon cabs. I know what an 
 extravagant creature you are. No, we will all stop 
 at home.' 
 
 ' Captain Leland may be going to his club,' 
 remonstrated Barbara. 
 
 'If he wants to go to his club he can say so,' 
 retorted Flossie, who had taken the Captain under 
 her protection, and talked of him and to him as if 
 she were his mother. ' He has the power of speech 
 as well as I. I was about to observe that we would 
 all stop at home, and Captain Leland should tell us 
 about the Sikh war.' 
 
 ' Nonsense, Flossie ; I'm sure you must be tired 
 of the Sikhs.'
 
 FAMILY SECRETS. 71 
 
 ' Does that mean that you want to be off to your 
 club ?' asked Flossie. 
 
 * Not at all. It is not a tempting afternoon for 
 the West-end.' 
 
 *You would just as soon sit here and contem- 
 plate our dripping garden, and tell us about the 
 Sikhs. Or perhaps you would like to give Bab a 
 lesson in Hindostanee ; though how she can feel any 
 interest in a ridiculous language in which there is no 
 verb " to have" is more than I can understand,' added 
 Flossie contemptuously. 
 
 The Captain had been teaching Barbara Hindos- 
 tanee during the last six weeks, chiefly for the 
 amusement of the thing, though Flossie insisted that 
 if ever Barbara went out as a governess it would be 
 a great advantage for her to know Hindostanee. 
 
 *I should like it of all things,' said Captain 
 Leland ; so the grammar and vocabulary and child- 
 ish little reading-book were brought out, and pre- 
 sently Barbara was absorbed in an exercise upon the 
 verb *' to go," while the two heads bent side by side 
 over the books, the Captain explaining and expound- 
 ing, and, indeed, doing the greater part of the work.
 
 72 BARBARA. 
 
 They were as happy as children at play, and almost 
 as innocent. It was only Flossie who was wise, only 
 Flossie who could see the other side of the cards. 
 That far-seeing damsel sat scribbling pen-and-ink 
 pictures upon a sheet of the solicitor's foolscap paper, 
 and feeling as if she was making her sister's for- 
 tune. 
 
 ' She couldn't have half so much of his society 
 if I were not always by to play propriety,' reasoned 
 Flossie. * Poor ma is so absorbed in the house 
 that it is almost as if she had no existence between 
 breakfast and tea. I am really a most valuable 
 young person, and ought to be handsomely re- 
 warded by and by, when our partial boarder is a 
 general, and he and Bab have a house in Portman- 
 square.' 
 
 The long summer afternoon was not one minute 
 too long for the Captain and Barbara, though Flossie 
 had to stifle more than one yawn, and grew des- 
 perately weary of watching the perambulations of 
 a neighbour's favourite tabby on the top of the 
 garden-wall. The roses were all dripping. The 
 grass looked sodden. The distant roofs and steeples
 
 FAMILY SECRETS. 73 
 
 were dark blotches upon the universal gray. For 
 anybody except lovers the day was chilly and de- 
 pressing; but for those two yonder, bending over 
 the grammar and exercise-book, it was as if they 
 sat in a sunlit garden made musical by a choir of 
 nightingales. And yet this happy idler, dawdling 
 away the afternoon in pretended studies, was the 
 same man who among his brother- soldiers had been 
 famous for reckless daring — who joyed in the life 
 of camps and revelled in the clang of arms — whose 
 music was the trumpet-call, and the battle-field his 
 ballroom. Love had tamed the lion. Love had 
 brought this modern Hercules to the feet of this 
 gentle Omphale. 
 
 'I wish ma would let us have a fire at tea-time !' 
 exclaimed Flossie, shivering; 'and, 0, I hope she 
 has made us a hot cake for tea I I'm half frozen, 
 and quite ravenous. And to think that we are on 
 the brink of July !' 
 
 Tea and the hot cake came at last, with Mrs. 
 Trevornock, who looked brisk and smiling, having 
 made a careful toilet, after a day of household grub- 
 bing such as her soul delighted in. When tea was
 
 74 BARBARA. 
 
 over there came music and song and much talk; 
 and the evening growing fine, with a big round 
 moon that shed glory over all Camherwell, the 
 Captain and the two girls took a walk in the wet 
 glistening garden. 
 
 * I've a proposition to make,' said Captain Leland, 
 throwing aside his cigar, which he was permitted to 
 smoke during these moonlit promenades. 
 
 * Gracious,' thought Flossie, 'he is going to pro- 
 pose to Bab in my presence ! How hideously un- 
 romantic !' 
 
 ' I know to-morrow will be a glorious day. Let 
 us all go to Greenwich, and see the Nelson gallery, 
 and stroll about the Park, and wind up with a white- 
 bait dinner. The fish will be as big as herrings by 
 this time, but that doesn't matter.' 
 
 *I agree to it all,' said Flossie, 'except the 
 whitebait. Why go and squander money on dinner?' 
 she demanded contemptuously. 'It is only you 
 gluttonous men who can reconcile yourselves to 
 spending sovereigns on a single dinner. We none 
 of us care a straw about whitebait. Let us have 
 our day at Greenwich, and come back to one of
 
 FAMILY SECRETS. 75 
 
 ma's meat-teas. A nice leg of lamb and a salad, 
 for instance.' 
 
 * That sounds tempting,' said the Captain, whose 
 exchequer was not so deep that he should desire to 
 waste money on Greenwich dinners ; ' and if your 
 mother and you would really like it as well — ' 
 
 * Millions of times better,' answered Flossie ; and 
 Bab was of the same opinion. 
 
 So it was decided they should drive to London 
 Bridge early next morning, and take the train to 
 Greenwich.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 IN ARCADIA. 
 
 Three o'clock in the afternoon of a glorious summer 
 day, the sky almost as blue as if it were looking down 
 upon an Italian landscape, vine -wreathed valleys and 
 olive woods, and the distant glory of a sapphire sea. 
 Three o'clock, and on the wood-crowned hill of Green- 
 wich there is delicious shade under old trees, whose 
 topmost boughs are faintly stirred by the soft west 
 wind. 
 
 The Captain and his party have done the Hospital 
 and the Nelson gallery, the chapel and all the splen- 
 dours thereof, which are of a somewhat chilly order. 
 They have thrilled at the sight of the hero's coat ; 
 they have looked at the sad grand picture of his 
 death with eyes full of tears. They have talked to 
 divers old gentlemen of the Tom Bowling type, who 
 have fought their battles in days gone by, and are 
 more or less glorified by scars or lopped limbs. They
 
 IN ARCADIA. 77 
 
 have eaten strawberry-ices and sponge-cakes — Flossie 
 indulging to a perilous extent — at the little pastry- 
 cook's in Greenwich town ; and now here they are 
 amidst the greenery of the good old Elizabethan 
 Park, quite deserted by holiday folks to-day, and as 
 lonely as if it belonged to the deer and the rabbits. 
 Up on One Tree Hill yonder there are some ancient 
 gentlemen with spy-glasses and decanter-stoppers, 
 lying in wait for the sixpences of the idle ; but here 
 by the warren all is stillness and sweet summer 
 silence, which means the low scarce-audible hum of 
 Nature's myriad voices. 
 
 The Captain and Bab strolled on a little way 
 ahead, while Mrs. Trevornock, who was beginning 
 to feel unconscionably sleepy, sauntered with Flossie 
 in the rear. 
 
 * How you do crawl, mother !' exclaimed that 
 lively young person. ' I don't believe we are walking 
 at the rate of half a mile an hour.' 
 
 ' Why should we hurry, dear ? We have had 
 a long day already. The picture-gallery was rather 
 tiring. I would give the world for a cup of tea.' 
 
 * If you had the world to give you couldn't get
 
 78 BAHBAEA. 
 
 tea up here,' said Flossie. 'Nothing but luke- 
 warm ginger-beer and flabby oranges, the refuse of 
 last Christmas, and choky seedy biscuits. How can 
 holiday people be so foolish as. to eat such things, 
 and encourage the impostors who sell them !' 
 ' My dear, holiday people will eat anything.' 
 
 * Yes, I believe it's characteristic of the race ; 
 they are like pigs and ducks.' 
 
 * You had better sit down, mother,' said Flossie 
 presently, when Barbara and the Captain were al- 
 most out of sight ; ' you are looking wofully fagged, 
 I'm afraid you tired yourself before we started, poor 
 dear.' 
 
 ' I only rubbed out your two muslin gowns.' 
 
 * ma, doesn't it seem hard that a Trevornock 
 should have to stand at the washtub !' 
 
 * I don't know that it's harder for a Trevornock 
 than a Jones,' returned the mother plaintively ; ' but 
 when I lived with my father in Harley-street, I 
 never thought I should have to do such a thing.' 
 
 * To think of your living in Harley-street ! I 
 never remember passing through it but once, and 
 then the dignity of the houses froze my veins. I
 
 IN AKCADIA. 79 
 
 kept saying to myself, ''My ma lived here. She 
 had the privilege of stepping out upon one of those 
 noble balconies, of knocking double-knocks with 
 those delightful knockers. She looked out of those 
 shining windows when she was young and pretty." 
 I don't mean that you're not pretty now, darling,' 
 pursued the girl eagerly ; ' you're the prettiest per- 
 son I know, ma, after Barbara.' 
 
 * My love, at forty one has given up thinking 
 about one's looks.' 
 
 * You have, dearest, and that's one of the reasons 
 why you are so pretty.' 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock breathed a regretful sigh, re- 
 membering how very little of this world's gear or 
 this world's joys her beauty had brought her. 
 She looked along the green vista, where the figures 
 of the Captain and his companion were growing 
 smaller in the distance, and sighed again as she 
 reflected that perhaps even Barbara's fair face was to 
 win no exalted prize in life's lottery. 
 
 ' I have had so much of poverty in my time, that 
 I should like my daughters to be rich,' she said 
 musingly, rather to herself than to Flossie.
 
 80 BARBARA. 
 
 The girl's quick wit interpreted her thoughts. 
 
 'It's a pity that Indian officers are not better 
 paid,' she said; 'but they say their widows are 
 particularly well provided for.' 
 
 'My dear, an officer's widow's pension at best 
 is but a pittance. If beauty were worth anything 
 in this world, Barbara ought to marry a duke.' 
 
 ' There are so few dukes,' retorted Flossie ; 
 ' one could count them on one's fingers. And most 
 of those I know anything about,' she pursued, 
 with a delightful air of familiarity, ' are old and 
 frumpy and married already. Captain Leland is 
 very nice.' 
 
 ' He is all that is kind and good,' said Mrs. 
 Trevornock warmly. ' I would not undervalue him 
 for the world. But I had hoped for something 
 so grand for Barbara.' 
 
 ' But, mother, where did you expect it, or him, 
 to come from ? Who is to know that a lovely girl 
 is waiting to be wooed and married in South-lane, 
 Camberwell ? We don't live in a fairy tale. If 
 Barbara were to burst out as a prima donna or a 
 great tragic actress, it would be different; but a
 
 IN ARCADIA. 81 
 
 portionless girl with a pretty face is like a flower 
 in a cottage-garden — she may bud and blossom, 
 and fade and wither, and the world may know 
 nothing of her existence. Think of all the fair 
 sweet things that live and die in the forests — the 
 primroses and violets, the butterflies, those young 
 fawns which are the very perfection of beauty. 
 ^Nobody cares about them or knows of them. I 
 think Barbara ought to be very proud of having 
 captured a tall handsome Indian officer.' 
 
 * She ought to make a better match,' argued 
 Mrs. Trevornock. 
 
 * What could be better than a man who is so 
 good to us ?' 
 
 'If she were engaged to him to-morrow,' con- 
 tinued Mrs. Trevornock, * I should set my face 
 against their being married for years to come. I 
 could not part with my darling. It would break 
 my heart if he were to take her to India — yet 
 awhile.' 
 
 * Years to come sounds a long while,' said 
 Flossie ; ' but I don't think Captain Leland will 
 be in a desperate hurry to marry. I heard him 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 . BARBARA. 
 
 say that he was not rich enough to keep a wife. 
 He is rich compared with us, of course, for he 
 has plenty of money for gloves and cabs and luxuries 
 of that kind ; but I daresay he has grand ideas of 
 how a wife should be kept. He would not expect 
 her to iron her own muslin frocks, for instance. 
 Besides, in such a climate as India ironing would 
 be doubly horrible.' 
 
 * I like him very much,' mused Mrs. Trevor- 
 nock ; ' but it would almost break my heart if she 
 were to marry a man who must ultimately take her 
 to India.' 
 
 While the mother was dolefully forecasting the 
 future, proud of her daughter's conquest, yet fearful 
 of its result, George Leland and Barbara Trevornock 
 were sauntering on through sunlight and shadow, as 
 happy in the present, as careless of the future, as if 
 they had been children straying through the wood- 
 lands of fairy tales, where, though there are ogres 
 and wicked witches to menace and affright, there are 
 always good fairies ready to appear in the nick of 
 time and make all things bright and pleasant. They
 
 IN AKCADIA. 83 
 
 had been talking of indifferent matters — the hos- 
 pital, the park, anything ; yet they were so happy 
 in each other's companionship that the commonest 
 theme seemed full of interest. Gradually their talk 
 took a personal tone. 
 
 • ' What a good woman your mother is, Barbara !'* 
 said the Captain. 
 
 He had taken to calling her Barbara on rare 
 occasions when they were alone together. Flossie 
 he always called by her pet name, just as coolly as 
 he would have called a favourite dog Gip or Flo. 
 
 ' Yes, she is all that is good.' 
 
 *I have respected and honoured her ever so 
 much more since you confided your family history 
 to me. I honour her for having fought the battle 
 of Hfe so bravely, for having brought up her daugh- 
 ters so sweetly.' 
 
 * She has fed and clothed us with love,' said Bab 
 tenderly. ' No girls ever had a happier home ; no 
 girls ever had a dearer mother. Money is not every- 
 thing iu life. Perhaps if we had been richer we 
 should not have been so happy, for we might not 
 have been so fond of each other. The pomps and
 
 84 BARBARA. 
 
 vanities of this world might have distracted us. It 
 is easy enough to renounce them in one's Catechism, 
 when they are never likely to come in one's way ; 
 but I daresay the pomps and vanities are rather 
 enticing to people who can afford to indulge in 
 them.' 
 
 ' You have known what it is to be poor, Barbara, 
 and you have not found that poverty must needs 
 mean unhappiness.' 
 
 ' Indeed I have not.' 
 
 * Then you would not be afraid to marry a poor 
 man if you loved him ?' said Captain Leland earn- 
 estly. 
 
 The attack was desperately sudden. Barbara 
 turned white and then red. 
 
 * Darling, you know what I want to say to you. 
 You know — you must have known ever so long ago — 
 how fondly and truly and entirely I love you.' 
 
 He put his arm round her, and her blushing 
 face found a shelter on his breast. There was no 
 one to see them but the rabbits, and the does, lying 
 in the sunshine yonder, with their fawns, looking at 
 the lovers gravely with calm contemplative eyes, as
 
 IN AECADIA. 85 
 
 solemn and as wise as the gaze of benignant 
 Nature. 
 
 * I thought — I began to hope,' faltered Barbara, 
 in tones so low that he was obliged to bend his head 
 close to her dark hair to listen, ' that you cared for 
 me — a little.' 
 
 * Hypocrite ! you knew that I loved you to dis- 
 traction.' 
 
 ' Indeed, I did not. Or if I ever thought for a 
 
 moment that you really loved me, I told myself 
 
 afterwards that it might be only a passing fancy. I 
 
 remembered those lines of Byron's you read us one 
 
 night, out of the poem which is not in mother's 
 
 edition, — 
 
 " Man's love is of man's Hfe a tiling apart ; 
 'Tis woman's whole existence," — 
 
 and I thought, though you were very kind and very 
 attentive, and seemed pleased to be with us all, you 
 would go away and forget us.' 
 
 ' Like unto a man beholding his natural face in 
 a glass ; for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way 
 and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he 
 is,' quoted the Captain, laughing at her. *When
 
 86 BARBARA. 
 
 looking-glasses are so rare that I can forget my 
 own physiognomy, I may hegin to forget you, Bar- 
 bara — you and yours. I love you so dearly, that if 
 your mother were not half so sweet as she is, if 
 Flossie were not the pleasantest little puss in crea- 
 tion, I think I should love them both, all the same, 
 out of my overflowing fondness for you.' 
 
 * "What made you care for me ?' asked Barbara, 
 moved by her exceeding curiosity to look up, with 
 eyes exaggerated by wonder. 
 
 ' How could a man help caring for the loveliest 
 thing in creation, and the gentlest, most modest, 
 truest, divinest of her species ? I love you because 
 you are altogether lovable. Make me happy, my 
 angel, and confess that you are not quite indifferent 
 to me.' 
 
 * I hope you won't be dreadfully shocked,' said 
 Barbara, looking- intensely ashamed of herself, ' but 
 I'm afraid I adored you after I had known you a 
 week. You see, you were almost the first man 
 Flossie and I had ever known, so you must not be 
 surprised if we thought a good deal of you.' 
 
 * True,' said the Captain, somewhat crestfallen.
 
 IN ARCADIA. 87 
 
 ' My position was almost as advantageous as Adam's. 
 Then I suppose if I had been the second male 
 individual of your acquaintance I should have had 
 no chance ?' 
 
 ' You know better than that. You know that I 
 never could have cared for any one but you.' 
 
 * Hike to think so, even if it is a sweet delusion,' 
 said the Captain passionately. 'I like to believe 
 you are that other half of me which went astray in 
 the beginning of things, and was only recovered 
 when I met you.' 
 
 *It seems rather like that,' assented Barbara, 
 with conviction. ' There must have been something 
 fatal in it, or you would never have chosen mamma's 
 advertisement from all the others.' 
 
 ' Of course not. My eye lighted on that at 
 once.' 
 
 ' I helped to compose it,' said Bab, with a touch 
 of pride, as if it were an honour to have assisted in 
 that work of art. 
 
 * Yes ; and I recognised your hand in it, no 
 doubt. It was a genuine case of elective affinity.' 
 
 ' Gracious !' exclaimed Bab suddenly, looking
 
 88 BARBARA. 
 
 back through the leafy distance ; ' I'm afraid we 
 have lost mother and Flossie.' 
 
 ' We've only mislaid them. They'll turn up 
 presently.' 
 
 They went slowly back, telling each other, with 
 many sweet variations upon the same old tune, how 
 fondly and how deeply they loved. Little was said 
 of a practical nature — of ways and means not a word. 
 They made no plans for the future. They had not 
 descended from the heaven of abstract love. In that 
 empyrean they lived and had their being. To-mor- 
 row would be time enough for hard facts and the 
 dull truths of work-a-day existence. 
 
 They found Mrs. Trevornock and Flossie on a 
 comfortable bench under the elms : the elder lady 
 fast asleep; Flossie yawning desperately, and dig- 
 ging the ferule of her parasol into the rugged 
 bark of an unoffending tree in sheer weariness of 
 spirit. 
 
 How lovely Barbara looked, with the new light 
 of happiness shining in her eyes and glorifying 
 every feature ! Mrs. Trevornock awoke scared, fan- 
 cying that it was morning and the milkman ring-
 
 IN ARCADIA. 89 
 
 iug, and Amelia not up to answer the bell.' Flossie 
 saw at a glance what had happened. 
 
 * Bab's engaged,' this astute damsel said to her- 
 self. ' She looks every inch of it.' 
 
 ' Is it time to go back to the station ?' Mrs. 
 Trevornock asked sleepily. 
 
 ' That is just as you ladies like,' answered the 
 Captain, looking at his watch. * It's half -past four ; 
 there's a train at a quarter-past five. But if you 
 would care to stay later — ' 
 
 ' I could walk in this lovely old park for ever,' 
 said Barbara. 
 
 * We ought to be back by seven,' said her 
 mother. 
 
 So it was decided that they should stroll quietly 
 down to the station ; which they did, heroically re- 
 sisting those insinuating invitations to tea and 
 shrimps with w^hich they were besieged on the way, 
 and without so much as a thought of whitebait or 
 iced champagne. There were five minutes to spare 
 when they got to the pastrycook's, and Flossie was 
 not proof against the offer of another strawberry-ice. 
 
 0, what a home-going it was by the smokiest
 
 90 BABBARA. 
 
 railway in the environs of London, across level 
 marsh-lands, through dingy Deptford and dingier 
 Bermondsey ! Some there were that fair June even- 
 ing to whom the smoky way was a path through 
 Paradise. Barhara sat in her corner, with the west- 
 ern light shaded hy a purple hlind, silent, happy, 
 knowing her lover's eyes were watching her, yet 
 never daring to look up. Flossie prattled of things 
 in general discursively, and Mrs. Trevornock made 
 a comfortable finish of the nap she had begun under 
 the Greenwich elms. 
 
 What a happy evening ! What a joyous meal 
 the tea-dinner in the garden parlour, with youth 
 and hope and love for the sauce to meat ! Later a 
 few turns in the moonlight garden to the sickly 
 sweet *' Prima Donna' waltz. Blissful halcyon day, 
 tender poetic night, day and night of pure and per- 
 fect happiness for Barbara Trevornock ! 
 
 Next day came a dash of sadness, a sprinkle of 
 tears. Mrs. Trevornock had to be told what had 
 happened. She was proud of her daughter's con- 
 quest ; she was honestly attached to her partial 
 boarder ; yet, having dreamed of dukes, earls, and
 
 IN ARCADIA. 91 
 
 millionaires, she liad to let her ideas do\Mi a long 
 way in order to contemplate Barbara's marriage with 
 an Indian Captain. 
 
 He would want to take her darling to India. 
 That was the worst part of the business. To this 
 the mother could not consent. Her idolised girl, 
 who had been a child only a year or two ago, obedi- 
 ent to her lightest word, subservient to a look, 
 would never be so cruel as to take her fate into her 
 own hands and declare her right to choose for her- 
 self, and snap asunder the tender tie that had bound 
 mother and daughter through all the peaceful loving 
 years that were gone. 
 
 Barbara wept at the sight of her mother's tears. 
 
 *Xo, darling, I am not going to leave you,' she 
 said, when Mrs. Trevornock put forward her claim. 
 * Do you think I could be so ungrateful ? You are 
 always first in my mind. I shall always obey 
 you.' 
 
 And then the Captain confessed that, though he 
 would fain have made Barbara his wife without a 
 day's delay, the present unsettled state of the 
 country was not in favour of his taking a bride to
 
 92 BARBARA. 
 
 India with him this time. He who had lived the 
 wild life of a partisan leader, with a native regiment 
 of his own creation, in the remote hill-country, 
 spending his days in the saddle and his nights 
 under canvas, and who might have to lead the same 
 hardy roving life again when he went hack, was not 
 in a position to take a delicately-nurtured girl for 
 his companion and helpmeet yet awhile. It might 
 be safer and wiser to wait till some more of the 
 fighting was over, since more fighting there must 
 inevitably be. And it would be harder to leave this 
 dear one alone in an Indian city than to leave her 
 here in her mother's tender care. 
 
 *It will be two or three years at most, dearest,' 
 he said ; ' and I shall have got a first-rate staff- 
 appointment, or perhaps an assistant commissioner- 
 ship — I have been promised both — and then I shall 
 be better able to give my darling pleasant surround- 
 ings. It seems a long time to wait ; but I shall 
 know that you are happy here with your dear 
 mother, and we shall write to each other by every 
 mail.' 
 
 This arrangement satisfied everybody. Mrs.
 
 IN ARCADIA. 93 
 
 Trevornock rejoiced at the idea of keeping her dar- 
 ling for three blessed years, and put aside the 
 images of dukes, earls, and millionaires without a 
 sigh. It was not possible for her to like anybody- 
 better than she liked George Leland ; and Mrs. 
 Trevornock's affections were very warm, if somewhat 
 fickle. The Captain had behaved so well and kindly, 
 he had shown so much regard for her feelings, that 
 she could not withhold her consent ; so her approval 
 and her blessing were given. The vows vowed yes- 
 terday were ratified to-day with the maternal con- 
 sent, and, in due course, Flossie was informed that 
 her sister was George Leland's plighted wife. 
 
 * You needn't have taken the trouble to tell me 
 anything about it,' said Flossie. ' I knew what had 
 happened yesterday evening directly I saw your face. 
 I never beheld such a transformation in any one in 
 my life. You had such an air, so solemn, so self- 
 contained, as if you were marching up the nave of 
 some great cathedral to be crowned and anointed, 
 and all that sort of thing. I think really I should 
 have passed you in the street without recognising 
 you. And after all he is neither a duke nor a rail-
 
 94 BARBARA. 
 
 ' way king,' pursued Flossie. 'I don'fc see anything 
 so very wonderful in the business.' 
 
 * It is wonderful to me that he should care for 
 me so much,' faltered Bab shyly, 'and that I should 
 so idolise him.' 
 
 * Goodness gracious !' cried Flossie, rather in- 
 clined to be snappish. ' The same kind of thing 
 might happen to me to-morrow with a grocer's boy, 
 or the young man at the post-office. Love is a per- 
 petual Midsummer Nighfs Dream, and we are every 
 one of us as weak as that silly little Titania when 
 our time comes.' 
 
 Three days after this came a letter from George 
 Leland's mother, an honest friendly greeting to her 
 son's promised wife. 
 
 *We shall all love you, my dear,' wrote the 
 mother. ' I know that the girl my George has 
 chosen must be worthy of my warmest affection.' 
 
 Mrs. Leland went on to say how, when next 
 summer came, while George was in India, Barbara 
 must come for a long visit to the Somersetshire 
 vicarage, so that she might get friendly and familiar 
 with her future sisters and brothers before her mar-
 
 IN ARCADIA. 95 
 
 riage. They were homely people, with no preten- 
 sions to style ; hut they would try to make her happy. 
 
 Barbara was as proud of the letter as if it had 
 been written by a queen ; so proud, that poor Mrs. 
 Trevornock felt a little disposed to jealousy. 
 
 ' I hope you are not going to spend half your 
 time away from me in the few short years we are to 
 be together,' she observed plaintively. 
 
 'Mamma darling, have I ever wished to leave 
 you '?' cried Bab, embracing her. ' I should like to 
 know George's mother ; but — ' 
 
 ' Of course, it's only natural. You ought to go 
 to the vicarage; but you will be quite lost to me 
 among these new relations.' 
 
 After this there came halcyon days for the lovers, 
 a time when the winds were at rest, and all the hours 
 were full of sunlight, and all the land ran over with 
 gladness. Barbara knew herself beloved, and was 
 no longer ashamed to show how fondly she loved 
 again. Flossie looked on and approved, and was a 
 sharer in all those delights natural to such a time — 
 impromptu jaunts to Richmond or Kew, Windsor or 
 Hampton, boat-races up the river, picture-galleries,
 
 96 B ABB ABA'. 
 
 concerts, operas — all pleasures the soldier's modest 
 means could command. The days drifted by as 
 gently as a shower of rose-leaves wafted on a sum- 
 mer breeze ; and yet, through all this happy melody 
 which filled life with music there ran one mournful 
 minor movement that told of parting and tears. 
 
 * So soon, so soon, so soon !' sighed Barbara. 
 Her lover was to leave her early in September.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MR. TREVORN'OCK. 
 
 When it is said of a man that he is nobody's enemy 
 but his own, it may generally be taken as a solemn 
 fact that the progress of that man through life has 
 been fraught with calamity and ruin to all belonging 
 to him. He has most likely begun by breaking his 
 mother's heart : he has in all probability reduced a 
 virtuous father to bankruptcy : he has robbed his 
 sisters of their portions : he has been an incubus 
 upon his meritorious brothers : he has brought his 
 wife and family to the gutter : and he has degraded 
 a good old name. Yet his own particular set speak 
 indulgently of him to the last as a good-hearted 
 well-meaning fellow, incapable of harming any one 
 but himself. 
 
 Such a man was Thomas Trevornock, solicitor, 
 of No. 2 St. Alban's-court, Gray's Inn. He was the 
 black sheep in an otherwise spotless and unblemished 
 flock. His family had been full of forbearance and 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 BAKBARA. 
 
 long-suffering; they had propped him up when he 
 lurched, and had picked him up and set him on his 
 feet when he fell. But there was an unconquerahle 
 downward inclination in Thomas Trevornock. He 
 had vices of which his daughters knew nothing. He 
 had been a drunkard and a gambler. He had squan- 
 dered his money amidst the lowest surroundings ; he 
 had w^allowed in the gutter. He had been engaged^ 
 in so many doubtful transactions that it was a marvel 
 that he had escaped being struck off the rolls. That 
 some few clients of seeming respectability and as- 
 sured means still stuck to him was even a greater 
 marvel. 
 
 Yet he had clients, and, although he consistently 
 refrained from the support of wife and children, he 
 did earn money ; and for the last few years he had 
 contrived to maintain a reputable appearance in his 
 neatly furnished ofi&ce at No. 2 St. Alban's-court, 
 much to the satisfaction of his kindred, who told 
 each other complacently that Thomas seemed really 
 to be doing well, and that it was a great pity that 
 he and poor dear Flora were not living together 
 comfortably.
 
 MR. TREVORNOCK. 99 
 
 On a bright morning in early August a gentle- 
 man, who was evidently a stranger to the locality, 
 might have been seen passing through the archway 
 that leads into Gray's Inn — a gentleman with a 
 bronzed complexion, dark eyes, and dark moustache, 
 answering to the name of George Leland. He made 
 an inquiry at the little news-shop under the arch- 
 way, and having been there instructed in the way 
 he should go, proceeded at once to St. Alban's- 
 court, where on a second floor he discovered Mr. 
 Trevornock's office. 
 
 The door was opened by a boy, whom Captain 
 Leland began to interrogate; but before the youth 
 could answer his question a young man looked out 
 of a door close at hand, and took the stranger under 
 his protection. 
 
 'You want to see Mr. Trevornock,' he said. 
 ' Have you an appointment ?' 
 
 Love and antipathy at first sight are happily not 
 common, for if they were, they would assuredly 
 throw the quiet working of this world's machinery 
 out of gear. A dislike so intense as that which 
 Captain Leland conceived for Mr. Trevornock's
 
 100 BARBARA. 
 
 articled clerk could hardly fail to be fraught with 
 inconvenience, if not a greater evil. The man was 
 tolerably good-looking, well dressed, sufficiently 
 good-mannered ; but he had those red-brown eyes 
 and that freckled sanguine complexion which are to 
 some minds a challenge to war. George Leland 
 hated red eyes and a sanguine skin. The man's 
 mouth was thick and sensual, his teeth large, 
 tusky, and suggestive of the lower animals. Even 
 the unctuous curliness of his dark-red hair had an 
 irritating effect upon the Captain, though it ought 
 hardly to be considered a fault in a man that his 
 hair inclines to greasy corrugations, when the grease 
 and the curliness are alike the work of nature. 
 
 Perhaps it was the look of eager curiosity in 
 Mr. Maulford's red-brown eyes which was most 
 offensive to the Captain : a hungry look which 
 asked so plainly, ' Is this another pigeon come to 
 be plucked? Who and what are you, and have 
 you brought any grist to our mill ?' 
 
 ' No,' said the Captain, ' I have no appointment 
 with Mr. Trevornock; but I suppose if he is dis- 
 engaged I can see him.'
 
 MR. TKEVORNOCK. 101 
 
 Mr. Maulford appeared to hesitate, darted into 
 the room from which he had just issued, made a 
 show of consulting some memoranda, and darted 
 back again, his face all alive with that eager look 
 Captain Leland so much disliked. 
 
 ' He can give you a quarter of an hour. A rather 
 important client from the West of England is due at 
 twelve o'clock. What name shall I announce ?' 
 
 ' Captain Leland,' answered the soldier, wonder- 
 ing a little at the articled clerk taking upon himself 
 so humble a duty. 
 
 A glance into the room whence Mr. Maulford 
 had emerged showed the Captain that there was no 
 other clerk at present upon the premises. It seemed 
 as if Mr. Maulford and the lad who had opened the 
 door formed the full force of Mr. Trevornock's office. 
 
 George Leland thought of Flossie as he saw the 
 middle-aged gentleman, bald-headed, largely whis- 
 kered, sitting at his desk, busily engaged in polishing 
 a filbert- shaped thumb-nail. He thought of Flossie 
 as he glanced at the window, with a sudden descent 
 from which she had been so often threatened. 
 
 *Pray sit down,' said Mr. Trevornock politely.
 
 102 BABBARA. 
 
 He laid aside his penknife, and waited for his 
 visitor to explain his business, taking it for granted 
 that the stranger was a new client. A man who 
 wanted to borrow money, most likely, and who had 
 heard of Mr. Trevornock as a. likely person to assist 
 him in that mysterious process known as ' doing a 
 bill.' 
 
 ' I must premise that I have not come on law 
 business,' said the Captain, *but on an affair of a 
 still more delicate nature.' 
 
 'Ah,' thought Mr. Trevornock, 'exactly so; he 
 wants to raise money.' 
 
 ' For the last four months I have had the 
 honour to be an inmate of your wife's house.' 
 
 ' Indeed !' said Mr. Trevornock. ' My daughters 
 told me their mother was going to take a boarder. 
 A very foolish proceeding, and not likely to be pro- 
 fitable in the long-run. Pardon me for saying so. 
 And so you are the gentleman who answered Mrs. 
 Trevornock's advertisement. My younger daughter 
 told me something about you.' 
 
 Mr. Trevornock's manner had suddenly lost its 
 courteous blandness. He suspected his wife's lodger
 
 MR. TREVORNOCK. 103 
 
 of some evil intention. This officious stranger had 
 come to plague him about Mrs. Treyornock's taxes 
 perhaps. The girls had hit upon a new way of 
 tormenting him for money. It would be like the 
 impertinence of that younger one — the father did 
 not even know the younger Flora's pet name — to 
 attempt such a thing. 
 
 ' May I ask what induced you to favour me with 
 this call, Captain Leland ?' he inquired. 
 
 ' I have come to you Mr. Trevornock, to tell you 
 that your daughter Barbara has done me the honour 
 to accept me as her future husband. I have her 
 mother's approval ; but I thought it right that you 
 should receive the information from my lips before 
 I go back to India.' 
 
 * 0, you are going to India !' 
 
 * Yery shortly.' 
 
 * Does my daughter accompany you ?' 
 
 ' Xo. I regret to say that, in the present dis- 
 turbed state of the district to which I am going, I 
 cannot ask her to go with me. We must wait for 
 more peaceful days. It is Mrs. Trevornock's wish 
 that our marriage should be delayed for two or three
 
 104 BAHBARA. 
 
 years. I hope by that time to be in a better posi- 
 tion to maintain a wife — as — as she ought to be 
 maintained/ faltered the Captain, with an uncom- 
 fortable feeling that he was talking to a man who had 
 never maintained his wife at all, and who might be 
 sensitive upon the subject. 
 
 Mr. Trevornock accepted the position with as 
 lofty an air as if he had been the most immaculate 
 of fathers. 
 
 ' I suppose I ought to feel honoured by this con- 
 fidence, late as it comes,' he said ; ' but I confess 
 that I cannot consider the prospect a brilliant one 
 for my daughter Barbara, who is a girl of remarkable 
 attractions, and might look high.' 
 
 Captain Leland wondered inwardly where the 
 girl was to look for a loftier suitor, unless it were in 
 threepenny omnibuses or on the Camberwell high- 
 road. 
 
 * I am sorry to find you consider the alliance 
 unworthy of your daughter's merits. I own that she 
 is exceptionally lovely in person and mind. But 
 she has lived a most secluded life. It is my happi- 
 ness to be her first suitor.'
 
 MR. TREVORNOCK. 105 
 
 • She is very young,' said Mr. Trevomock — 'too 
 young to tie herself up in this absurd way. I don't 
 want to offend you, Captain Leland, but I cannot 
 give my cordial approval to an engagement which 
 seems to me only remarkable for its imprudence. A 
 girl of nineteen to engage herself to a gentleman who 
 is going to India almost immediately to fight the 
 Sikhs, who may be shot before the year is out, and 
 who, if he live, may or may not come back to Eng- 
 land three or four years hence to make her his 
 wife — ' 
 
 'Barbara has no more doubt of my constancy 
 than I have of hers,' said the Captain. 'I came 
 here, Mr. Trevornock, because I considered that it 
 would be an ungentlemanlike act to leave England 
 without seeing you. But knowing your past indiffer- 
 ence to the fate of your daughters, I certainly did not 
 expect to find you opposed to any decent alliance 
 which either of them might please to make.' 
 
 ' You are impertinent, sir,' said the solicitor, 
 twiddling nervously with his penknife, as if that fil- 
 bert nail of his still wanted some touches to arrive 
 at perfection. 
 
 V
 
 106 BARBAJIA. 
 
 ' No, Mr. Trevornock, I am only plain-spoken. 
 I come of a good old English family — a family that 
 never had a black sheep in it. Young as I am, my 
 name is not unknown in the Company's service. If 
 you are acquainted with people who know what has 
 been doing in India during the last few years, you 
 may ask them any questions you like about me. I 
 am not afraid of the answer. I have the honour to 
 wish you good-morning.' 
 
 * Good-morning, Captain Leland. I am sorry I 
 have made myself unpleasant ; but you have taken me 
 by surprise. I had higher views for my daughter.' 
 
 * Would it not have been better to prepare her 
 gently for the elevation for which you destined her ?' 
 asked the Captain, with quiet scorn. * She has no 
 idea that you ever had any views about her.' 
 
 ' I am not responsible for her folly. When the 
 proper time came I should have told her my inten- 
 tions. Well, she has chosen to go her own way. I 
 shall not interfere. I wish you all prosperity in 
 your career. Captain Leland, and that you may be 
 faithful to an engagement which I can but consider 
 hasty and ill-judged.'
 
 MR. TREVORNOCK. 107 
 
 ' I hope the result may convince you that you are 
 wrong, sir/ said the Captain stiffly. ' Good-day.' 
 
 He opened the door so abruptly that he brought 
 himself almost into collision with the nose of the 
 articled clerk, which was inconvenieutly close to the 
 door. 
 
 *A message from your Devonshire client, sir,' 
 said Mr. Maulford, nothing abashed. * He is sorry 
 he can't be here till one.' 
 
 * That fellow was listening,' thought Captain 
 Leland, as he went down the crooked old stairs. 
 ' He is the image of Uriah Heap, and I hate the idea 
 of Barbara seeing him every time she visits her 
 father.' 
 
 He had arranged to meet the two girls at a pastry- 
 cook's in the Strand, and to finish the day with them 
 at a picture-gallery. He made his way across Lin- 
 coln's-inn-fields, pierced divers lanes and narrow 
 streets, and arrived in good time at a tawdry little 
 shop, where Bab and Flossie were sitting at a marble 
 table, in a fly-spotted apartment garnished with 
 libellous looking-glasses, contemplating a salt-cellar 
 and a pepper-box. It was a time when the eating-
 
 108 BARBARA. 
 
 places of London were small, obscure, and incon- 
 venient, with some few brilliant exceptions, which 
 were all strictly masculine. The good little Italian 
 coifee and ice shops were unknown. A hungry way- 
 farer might have roamed all over London in quest of 
 a steak and potatoes a la Frangaise, and a good cup 
 of coffee. 
 
 ' Well,' said Flossie eagerly, when the Captain 
 had ordered strawberry-ices, and taken his seat at 
 the marble table, ' did you see papa ?' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 ' And was he nice ?' 
 
 ' Do you wish me to be strictly candid ?' 
 
 ' You know I delight in candour.' 
 
 * Then I'm afraid I must say that he was nasty.' 
 
 ' Now you'd hardly expect that from a man who 
 is nobody's enemy but his own,' said Flossie, with 
 an aggrieved air. ' 1 thought he would have been 
 delighted at the idea of getting rid of one of us. I 
 daresay if you had offered to take me to India he 
 would have been in raptures. But Barbara never 
 asks him for anything ; she only sits and twiddles 
 her parasol.'
 
 MR. TREVORNOCK. 109 
 
 ' Your father had higher views for you, Barbara,' 
 said the Captain, with a tender look at his betrothed. 
 * Can I blame him for that ?' 
 
 Barbara opened her lovely eyes to their widest 
 extent, full of innocent wonder. 
 
 ' What can he mean by higher views ?' she 
 asked. 
 
 ' He thinks you worthy of a suitor better placed 
 in the world — more independent than a soldier in the 
 service of John Company.' 
 
 ' But we don't know a mortal in half such a good 
 position as yours,' protested Flossie; ^you are quite 
 the grandest person we have ever been intimate with. 
 Really the author of our being is lapsing into idiotcy.' 
 
 'Never mind his idiotcy, Flossie,' said the Cap- 
 tain, smiling at her seriousness ; ' I have made him 
 understand pretty plainly that Barbara and I are 
 engaged, and that we shall not wait for his consent 
 to get married.' 
 
 ' What do you think of the Author ?' asked 
 Flossie. 
 
 ' Of your father ? Well, he looks like a gentle- 
 man.'
 
 110 BARBARA. 
 
 ' He always looks clean,' said Flossie ; ' his shirt- 
 fronts and wristbands are perfection. If anything 
 could reconcile me to his manifold shortcomings, it 
 would be his cleanliness. I could not respect a dirty 
 father, if he were a Howard and a Wilberforce rolled 
 into one. What did you think of Mr. Maulford, pa's 
 articled clerk ?' 
 
 ' What do you think of him ?' 
 
 *I frankly detest him,' answered Flossie. 
 
 'Will you tell me why?' inquired the Captain 
 earnestly. 
 
 *I haven't the least idea. It is a case of Dr. 
 Fell. The reason why I cannot tell, but I utterly 
 loathe and abominate that young man.' 
 
 * So do I,' said Captain Leland. ' Now I w^onder, 
 Flossie, whether we are right or wrong ? Is it a 
 wise instinct that makes us dislike Mr. Maul- 
 ford, or is it a foolish prejudice ? Is it because 
 there is something of the human cobra under that 
 smooth exterior of his ? or is it because our eye for 
 colour is offended by the disagreeable tint of his 
 hair ?'" 
 
 ' I am sure he is a human cobra,' said Flossie.
 
 MR. TREVORNOCK. Ill 
 
 ' " I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word." 
 First and foremost, he always listens at doors. I 
 have caught him at it more than once.' 
 
 * I caught him to-day,' said the Captain. ' Has 
 he been long in your father's office ?' 
 
 ' Ages — three years at the least. Papa has a 
 great opinion of him. I believe he is to be a part- 
 ner by and by. If papa has three clients — and I 
 shouldn't think he had more — that will be one and 
 a half apiece.' 
 
 * You have a very low estimate of your father's 
 practice.' 
 
 ' How can I help it ? In all the times I have 
 favoured him with a morning call, the nearest ap- 
 proach to a client that I have seen was one elderly 
 woman in a poke-bonnet. Papa said she had once 
 owned a great deal of property, and that he was try- 
 ing to get it back for her. From my experience of 
 the Author's character, I should say it was much 
 more likely that he was trying to get what was left 
 of the property for himself. With the exception of 
 that decayed female, I have never seen a mortal in 
 pa's offices; and that doesn't seem much of a busi-
 
 112 BARBARA. 
 
 ness to divide between two, does it?' demanded 
 Flossie. 
 
 * Perhaps it is a better business than it appears 
 to the naked eye,' said Captain Leland, not feeling 
 particularly cheerful about his future father-in-law. 
 
 But he dismissed all painful thoughts, and gave 
 himself up to the dreamy delight of watching Bar- 
 bara as she ate her strawberry-ice, savouring it with 
 a lingering enjoyment. 
 
 They went to the National Gallery, and prowled 
 about among the old pictures, in which Flossie alone 
 pretended to be ever so faintly interested. While 
 she was peering into a magnificent Claude, at that 
 date in a condition of unrestored dinginess, try- 
 ing to find out ^how it was done,' George Leland 
 and his betrothed stood side by side before pictures 
 which neither of them saw, wholly absorbed in each 
 other. 
 
 ' I hope you are not disheartened by your inter- 
 view with my father ?' Barbara faltered timidly. ' I'm 
 afraid he is not exactly the person you would have 
 chosen for a father-in-law.* 
 
 * Dearest love, I chose you,' Leland answered
 
 MR. TREVORNOCK. 113 
 
 warmly. 'If you had fifty uncomfortable relations 
 in the background, it would not make a shadow of 
 difference.' 
 
 ' You are so good !' she murmured. 
 
 ' No, dear ; but I love you so dearly.' 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 'when we two pabted.* 
 
 It was the morning on which George Leland was 
 to sail. The Peninsular and Oriental steam-packet 
 Hesper was to leave Southampton on this September 
 day, which was dawning in palest yellow and faintest 
 purple above the roofs and steeples, the Hollandish 
 canal, the ripening apples in the Camberwell garden, 
 lighting up the little bedroom where Barbara and 
 Flossie slept with a spectral gleam, so cold, so pal- 
 lid, so unlike all other lights of earth as to seem 
 unearthly. 
 
 That pale ghostly day peered in through the 
 white blind, and patched the little room with light. 
 A gleam yonder on the plaster cast of a winged 
 angel on the mantelpiece ; a slanting ray across the 
 hanging shelves where Bab and Flossie kept their 
 pet books, devotional and poetical ; a wandering 
 glimmer on the little table where Bab's workbasket
 
 WHEN WE TWO PARTED. 115 
 
 ran over with rags of unfinished work, and many- 
 coloured tangles of silk and wool. 
 
 Bab raised herself upon her elbow and looked, 
 0, how hopelessly! at the dim shrouded window. 
 She had been lying broad awake in her little white- 
 curtained bed all night, and tossing her weary head 
 from side to side upon her pillow, and bringing upon 
 herself much objurgation in muffled and sleepy tones 
 from Flossie, whose rest had been considerably dis- 
 turbed by these agitations. Flossie was now fast 
 asleep, lying on her back, with her arms folded 
 above her head, and her tip-tilted nose pointing 
 straight up to heaven ; and when Flossie was sound 
 asleep a cannon might have been fired in the next 
 room without waking her. 
 
 Bab stared piteously at the cold blank day, the 
 day that was to see her lover leave England. Her 
 cheeks were damp with those last tears with which 
 she had wept herself to sleep for just one hour of 
 troubled slumber, made terrible by dreams of part- 
 ing. She had dreamt that they two were standing 
 on a narrow ledge of rock, a little boat tossing below 
 them, her arms clinging round his neck, as if by
 
 116 BAKBAKA. 
 
 the sheer might of love she would have kept him 
 from that hungry sea. But lo, suddenly he had 
 slipped, he had melted from her arms ; and looking 
 up to the remote edge of a lurid horizon she had 
 seen a steamer moving swiftly across the sun-bright 
 waters, through weaves that seemed flecked with 
 blood. The little Swiss clock over the mantelpiece 
 — a mere toy, but it kept time occasionally for a day 
 or two — struck five while Barbara pondered on her 
 dream. A gleam of colour flashed into her face, her 
 eyes brightened. 
 
 ' There would be time,' she said to herself; ' the 
 train leaves Vauxhall at a quarter to seven. There 
 would be time.' 
 
 She looked at the slumbering Flossie. It would be 
 unfair to say of so pretty a girl that she snored ; but 
 Flossie was breathing with considerable vehemence. 
 
 *I wonder whether it would be a very wrong 
 thing to do ?' mused Bab. ^ He would not think it 
 wrong, I know, or, if he did, he would be glad all 
 the same. Mamma might be a little vexed at first, 
 but I am sure she would forgive me. She knows 
 how unhappy I am.'
 
 WHEN WE TWO PARTED. 117 
 
 Barbara rose, and drew up the blind very softly, 
 though she need hardly have been so careful, since 
 the Seven Sleepers never slumbered more profoundly 
 than Flossie for the time being. It was by the quan- 
 tity, and not by the quality, of their slumbers that 
 the famous Seven distanced the younger Miss Tre- 
 vornock. 
 
 The morning was lovely : that exquisite tranquil- 
 lity of early day beautified, even sanctified, the pro- 
 spect which Barbara looked out upon. The dark 
 tracery of the orchard trees was so delicately defined 
 against that pure citron sky. The slender chimney- 
 shafts, the aspiring steeples, had a tone of deepest 
 purple yonder where the higher heaven was bright- 
 ening to rose-colour. Clouds like painted dragons 
 sailed slowly across the sky. There was such an 
 air of utter calm upon all things that Barbara fan- 
 cied there was no one awake in the world but her- 
 self. 
 
 ' Yes, I daresay it is wrong,' she said to herself 
 softly, as she quietly began her toilet, ' but I shall 
 go. Why should I not do a foolish thing once 
 in my life, for his sake ? It will make me happier
 
 118 BARBAEA. 
 
 to have seen him at the very last. Yes, it will be 
 just one ray of light in the darkness of the years 
 to come. Three years, three years, at the very 
 least; and through all that time he will be in the 
 midst of danger, face to face with death ! love, 
 how can I bear my life without you for three 
 years !' 
 
 She was dressed by a quarter to six, and then 
 she sat down at her own particular little table, and 
 wrote a few lines in pencil to Flossie : 
 
 * Dear Flossie, — Tell my darling mother that I 
 felt almost too unhappy to live this morning, and 
 that my only chance of consolation is to go down 
 to Southampton, and see him for one little moment 
 at the very last. I am going by the parliamentary 
 train, third class, and I shall be back somehow 
 before dark to-night. I have just enough money 
 for the journey. Beg dearest mother to forgive 
 me. She knows how dearly I love him. — Your 
 affectionate Barbara.' 
 
 This note she impaled upon the pincushion with 
 a big shawl-pin, and then she paused for an instant,
 
 WHEN WE TWO PARTED. 119 
 
 smiling at her own image in the glass, half in 
 sadness, half in jest. 
 
 'It seems such a desperate thing to do/ she 
 said to herself. ' I feel almost as if I were going 
 to elope.' 
 
 She wore her plainest garments — a dark dress, 
 a black-silk jacket, a neat straw bonnet, and thick 
 veil. It was in the days of bonnets and veils, 
 when women's faces were not so much in evidence 
 as they are now. A girl as lovely as Barbara 
 might pass you in the street unobserved if she 
 wished to do so. 
 
 Barbara knew the way to Yauxhall perfectly, 
 and she was a splendid walker. There was nearly 
 an hour for the walk, by Camberwell New-road and 
 Kennington Oval and streets and roads beyond. 
 Away she tripped through the dewy morning, under 
 the brightening sky, finding as she went that there 
 were a good many people awake in the world 
 besides herself. Just as she came to the station 
 her courage began suddenly to falter. 
 
 ' Suppose he should think it a very unladylike 
 thing for me to do?' she asked herself. 'It is
 
 120 BARBARA. 
 
 unladylike. Yes ; I feel that it is. A lady ought 
 to sit at home and cry quietly, all to herself. 
 Besides, if he had wanted to see me again, he 
 might have come to Camberwell. However much 
 he had to do at the last, he might have managed it 
 somehow.' 
 
 These reflections came upon her at the foot of 
 the squalid wooden stairs leading up to the station. 
 She paused, hesitated, was half inclined to turn 
 back, when she heard the shriek of an engine. 
 Her train, she thought. 
 
 'I don't care what he may think of me,' she 
 said; ' I will see my darling once again. How do 
 I know that he will ever come back to me ? How do 
 I know that those savage Sikhs will not kill him ?' 
 
 She ran quickly up the stairs, and arrived at 
 the booking-office breathless, and took her place 
 in a little procession of shabbily-dressed travellers — 
 shabby, but happily not dirty or disreputable. A 
 better kind of voyagers use the third class than 
 Luxury, reclining in the padded corner of a Pull- 
 man car, could imagine. 
 
 Barbara took her ticket, and waited for the
 
 WHEN WE TWO PARTED. 121 
 
 heavily-laden parliamentary, which puffed itself la- 
 boriously into the station five minutes after hjer 
 arrival on the platform. It teemed with life of the 
 homeliest kind ; it brimmed over with small chil- 
 dren, clamorous and enthusiastic about the engine, 
 which their parents and guardians had taught them 
 to call * Puffing Billy' — small children who looked 
 upon a railway journey as a perpetual feast of parlia- 
 ment and peppermint-drops, and who made the 
 atmosphere savoury with those compounds. Barbara 
 found a corner in a caravan of families, a regular 
 household ark. She sat between a brace of stout 
 matrons, one nursing a baby, the other lavishing 
 her attentions upon a birdcage, in which a canary of 
 imbecile aspect hopped from one perch to the other 
 and back again throughout the journey. 
 
 For Barbara that travelling nursery scarcely 
 existed. The landscape, lovely with the rich colour- 
 ing of early autumn, flitted past her gaze, impress- 
 ing her as vaguely as a country seen in a dream. 
 She was thinking of her lover and that far-away land 
 whither he was going, its manifold dangers, its cruel 
 remoteness.
 
 122 BAEBABA. 
 
 It was still early in tlie day, hardly more than 
 breakfast-time with the idle world, when * Puffing 
 Billy' steamed slowly into the Southampton ter- 
 minus, with its freight of domesticity and thajb one 
 eagerly-beating heart. 
 
 Landed on the crowded platform, a dreadful 
 sense of desolation seized upon Barbara. This was 
 the first journey she had ever taken alone ; and now 
 that the thing was done, the idea of its folly — nay, 
 of its impropriety — came upon her suddenly with 
 overwhelming force. She looked helplessly at the 
 busy passengers intent upon the scramble for their 
 luggage, feeling ashamed of herself because she had 
 no luggage to scramble for. Gradually the crowd 
 melted away, and there came a lull in the traffic. 
 Absolute loneliness crept over the scene ; and then 
 Barbara, standing looking idly at an advertisement 
 on the wall, felt as if she were the focus of every eye. 
 The porters were wondering about her ; the man at 
 the bookstall had his doubts as to her respectability. 
 The door of the first-class waiting-room stood in- 
 vitingly open, revealing the luxurious accommoda- 
 tion within — morocco-covered seats, a Bible, a
 
 WHEN WE TWO PARTED. 123 
 
 decanter of whity-brown water ; but Barbara was 
 too conscientious to avail herself of these comforts. 
 As a third-class passenger it would have seemed to 
 her a kind of thieying to take a seat in the first-class 
 waiting-room. 
 
 She wandered up and down the platform, and 
 then sat down on a bench and took her lover's last 
 letter out of her pocket. 
 
 His plans for his last day in England were 
 clearly stated. 
 
 ' I shall leave Taunton by an early train that will 
 land me in Southampton soon after midday. The 
 Hesper will start at three in the afternoon. Ah, 
 dear love, how sadly I shall think of you at the last I' 
 
 Soon after midday ! It was now close upon 
 noon. Barbara had eaten nothing that day. She 
 felt faint and sick, yet she had not the courage to 
 go to the refreshment-room, and fortify herself with 
 a doughy bun and a glass of lemonade. She sat on 
 her bench, staring vaguely at the trains for nowhere, 
 which were perpetually being shunted. 
 
 Presently, when the clock had struck twelve, and 
 time was creeping on at a pace which made every
 
 124 BARBARA. 
 
 minute seem a quarter of an hour, she mustered 
 courage to ask a porter how soon there would be a 
 train from Taunton. 
 
 The porter knew nothing about Taunton, but he 
 told her there was a Salisbury train due at a quarter 
 to one. 
 
 Three-quarters of an hour. What a heart-sicken- 
 ing business it was to sit there and watch the tardy- 
 hands of that aggravating clock ! Her sleepless 
 night and the motion of the railway-carriage had 
 given Barbara a racking headache. Another Lon- 
 don train came in, and riot and confusion had the 
 mastery for the next ten minutes ; then again came 
 a lull and all-pervading emptiness. Anon the por- 
 ters began to look along the rails towards Bishop- 
 stoke in an indifferent manner, as if there might or 
 might not be a train coming. Then the bell which 
 had rung for the London train began to ring again ; 
 an engine slowly rounded a curve, and noiselessly 
 brought in its long line of carriages. 
 
 A number of heads were put out of windows. 
 Barbara's eyes roamed despairingly along that tangle 
 of strange faces. This must be his train. He must
 
 WHEN WE TWO PARTED. 125 
 
 be there ; but she could not see him. The faces 
 swelled and oscillated before her clouding eyes. Her 
 journey had been a useless folly. He was not there. 
 
 A dreadful humming noise, like a thousand 
 wheels going round, came in her ears : and all those 
 strange faces melted into a thick black cloud. When 
 she recovered her senses, she was sitting on a sofa 
 in the waiting-room, with her head lying on George 
 Leland's shoulder. His arms were round her, hold- 
 ing her up. He had been putting wine to her pallid 
 lips; but the wine which reyived her was the love 
 shining out of his dark eyes, the tender words 
 breathed into her awakening ear. 
 
 * My darling, my own true love, what a surprise, 
 what a delight to find you here ! My sweet girl, 
 who brought you ? How did you come ?' 
 
 ' Nobody brought me,' she answered faintly, faint 
 from actual inanition. ' I came quite alone, by the 
 parliamentary train. I wanted so much to see you. 
 You're not very angry with me, are you, George ?' 
 she faltered. 
 
 ' Angry, my angel ! How can I ever love you 
 dearly enough for this sweet folly ? God knows
 
 126 BABBARA. 
 
 there is no room in my heart for more love than I 
 bear you.' 
 
 They were quite alone in the waiting-room ; his 
 arms were round her; he drew the sweet pale lips to 
 meet his own in a kiss that was half passion, half 
 despair. 
 
 ' my dear one, how can I leave you ?' he 
 murmured. * This meeting makes it harder to part.' 
 
 As, they were seated thus, side by side, the girl 
 locked in her lover's arms, a gentleman, debonair of 
 aspect, brisk of movement, carrying a neat little 
 leather bag and a slim umbrella, passed the window, 
 caught a glimpse of a face he knew, turned, and 
 repassed much more slowly ; then, seeing those two 
 wholly absorbed in each other, he lingered, and 
 peered in upon them through the waiting-room 
 window. When he had quite satisfied himself as to 
 the identity of these two young people, he walked 
 slowly away to the further end of the platform, and 
 remained there, watchful from a distance, till George 
 Leland and his sweetheart came arm-in-arm out of 
 the waiting-room, she white as a lily, he anxiously 
 intent on her wan face.
 
 WHEN WE TWO PARTED. 127 
 
 ' My dearest, you are so pale,' said the Captain. 
 
 * I'm afraid, George,' she murmured hesitatingly, 
 * that it's because I haven't had any breakfast. Per- 
 haps if I were to have a bun — ' 
 
 ' My dear loye, what an inconsiderate brute I am ! 
 No breakfast ! and you left home so early, and you 
 have travelled so far. We will go to an hotel this 
 instant.' 
 
 ' But you have so much to do. There is your 
 luggage.' 
 
 ' I will manage about that. All my big trunks 
 are on board. I have only a few oddments,' said 
 the Captain, looking at a truckload of carpet-bags, 
 hatboxes, desks, portmanteaux, and gun-cases, which 
 stood abandoned and unowned in the middle of the 
 platform. ' Here, porter, get those things taken on 
 board the steamer Hesper directly, like a good 
 fellow.' 
 
 He tossed half-a-crown to the man, and with 
 Barbara still on his arm left the station. 
 
 The gigantic hotel which now adjoins the ter- 
 minus had in those days no existence. George 
 Leland called a fly, and drove straight to the Dolphin
 
 128 BARBARA. 
 
 in Southampton High-street. It was the only hotel 
 he knew, and here he was sure of getting a decent 
 hreakfast. He asked for a private room, and ordered 
 tea, coffee, cold chicken, ham and eggs, with a reck- 
 less prodigality. 
 
 ' lam so sorry you should take all this trouble,' 
 said Barbara. ^A bun would have done just a 
 well.' 
 
 ' A bun ! A lump of indigestion ! My pet, is 
 it much that we should have one parting meal to- 
 gether when you have come so far to bid me a last 
 good-bye ! Come and sit by this open window, dear, 
 and let the fresh air blow the colour back into your 
 cheeks. How confoundedly slow they are with this 
 breakfast !' cried the Captain, who had only given his 
 orders within the last five minutes. ^ I know you 
 are dying for a cup of tea. How good of your 
 mother to let you come !' 
 
 * She didn't let me,' said Barbara, blushing 
 vehemently ; ' I came away before any one was up. 
 Nobody knew anything about it. I had been awake 
 all night — so miserable about you; and then towards 
 morning I had a fearful dream. And when I saw
 
 TTHEX WE TWO PAETED. 129 
 
 the cold gray dawn, and knew that it was the last 
 day on which it was possible for me to see you, 
 an unconquerable desire to come and say good-bye 
 to you seized hold of me. I knew if I stayed at 
 home, that afterwards, when it was too late, I should 
 hate myself for not coming ; so I came, and I hope 
 you don't think I have done yery wrong, and that you 
 don't utterly despise me.' 
 
 'Despise you !' cried the Captain. 'I love you 
 to madness.' 
 
 ' Yes ; but you might do that, and despise me a 
 little all the same.' 
 
 ' My love, you have done no wrong. You have 
 acted with true womanliness, not schoolgirlish con- 
 straint. I love you, I honour you, for this dear proof 
 of 3'our love. Do you think it will not make me 
 happy far away to remember this morning? ''She 
 loved me so well when we parted," I shall say to my- 
 self, "can I doubt that she will remain constant till 
 I go back to her?" ' 
 
 'Constant!' she echoed sadly. 'It will be no 
 merit in me to be constant. It is a part of my 
 nature to loye you. George, I verily believe I loved 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 BARBARA. 
 
 you at first sight, that clay I saw you come in at 
 the garden-gate, when Flossie was vociferating about 
 your dark complexion, and your moustache, and your 
 military air. I said nothing, but my soul was full 
 of admiration. You looked brave and noble ; you 
 were my ideal hero ; you looked every inch a soldier 
 — a man born to fight and conquer. But, 0, how I 
 wish you were anything in this wide world except a 
 soldier, and that you were not going away this day!' 
 
 ' Would you like me to be a draper or a grocer ?' 
 he asked, ringing the bell violently for the breakfast, 
 which by this time had been ordered about ten 
 minutes. ' Why doesn't that fellow bring your tea ?' 
 
 ' I shouldn't like it,' said Bab, making a wry 
 face ; ' for I am so proud that you are what you are. 
 But I should like to have you at home.' 
 
 'If they would make me Commander-in-Chief, 
 for instance, or give me some snug berth of that 
 sort ! No, love, I believe I was born to work and 
 fight ; and there is plenty of work and fighting wait- 
 ing for me out yonder. 0, here comes this tea at 
 last !' 
 
 A sumptuous breakfast was being laid while the
 
 WHEX WE TWO PARTED. 131 
 
 Captain grumbled : a shiny tongue, cold chicken, 
 kidneys and ham and eggs in covered silver dishes, 
 a rack of dry toast — all in vain. Captain Leland 
 was in no mood for eating, and Barbara could take 
 nothing but the cup of strong tea which her lover 
 poured out for her, and a little bit of toast, just 
 enough to revive exhausted nature. Yet they lin- 
 gered over the meal, and it was infinitely sweet to 
 them to be together. 
 
 * Is it a dangerous passage ?' asked Barbara. 
 ' Are there ever shipwrecks ?' 
 
 'Never,' answered the Captain, with conviction; 
 * nobody ever heard of an accident by the P. and 0. 
 The thing's unknown.' 
 
 ' I am glad of that. And does the steamer really 
 start at three?' 
 
 ' She does, love. And, unhappily it's striking 
 two at this moment. We must be going, Barbara.' 
 * May I walk with you to the docks ? May I see 
 the steamer ?' 
 
 ' Dearest, don't you think it would be better for 
 me to take you to the station, and put you into a 
 train ? There's one leaves at two thirty-five. We
 
 132 BAEBAEA. 
 
 should be just in time for it. I can't bear the idea 
 of leaying you alone in a strange place.* 
 
 * No,' she cried impetuously ; ' I will not be 
 taken to the station. I have come to see the last of 
 you. I will not leave till the steamer sails. What 
 does it matter about me ? I am only a miserable 
 stay-at-home creature. No harm can come to 
 me.' 
 
 He argued the point, but vainly. She had set 
 her heart on seeing him till the last possible mo- 
 ment. So he consulted the time-table again, and 
 found that there was a train that left for London at 
 four o'clock, and arrived at a little after seven. A 
 cab would take her to Camberwell by eight. 
 
 Captain Leland paid for the breakfast which 
 nobody had eaten, and he and Barbara left the 
 Dolphin, and walked slowly down the High-street 
 towards the glistening water. 
 
 * What a calm and happy river it looks !' said 
 Bab. * And to think that it is going to take all I 
 love away !' 
 
 * Not all you love, darling. You will have your 
 mother and Flossie.'
 
 WHEN WE TWO PARTED. 133 
 
 ' My mother — yes ; I love her dearly ; and Flossie 
 is a good kind little thing. But I want you too.' 
 
 There was a good deal of conversation of this 
 kind, more or less unreasonable on Barbara's side, 
 yet full of an unselfish tenderness which touched her 
 lover's heart. They walked to and fro for a little 
 while on the platform by the placid shining water. 
 The Captain talked of the fair future that was to see 
 them united, and tried his utmost to cheer Barbara 
 with visions of happiness to come ; for there was a 
 growing despair in the girl's face — a look that told 
 of the tension of a mind racked beyond its power of 
 suffering — which frightened him. The time came 
 when her lips grew dumb. She could only answer 
 him by a motion of her head. Her eyes had a look 
 that was a hundredfold more piteous than tears. 
 
 They went together to the steamer ; and here — 
 so commonplace are the necessities of daily life — 
 the Captain was obliged to leave Barbara sitting 
 forlornly upon somebody else's camp-stool, while 
 he went to inquire about his luggage. He found 
 her as still as a statue, the incarnation of silent 
 anguish, when he came back to her. The bustle
 
 134 BARBARA. 
 
 and movement of the scene passed by her without 
 making the faintest impression. 
 
 ' Darling,' he said very gently, ' the boat will 
 start in five minutes. I must take you back to the 
 shore.' 
 
 '0!' she cried, as if she had been hurt; 'so 
 soon, so soon !' 
 
 ' Love, in a few short years I shall come back.' 
 
 ' They will not be short. They will be agonising 
 in their length. 0, write to me soon, George, at 
 the very first opportunity ! How shall I live till I 
 get your letter ?' 
 
 ' My dearest, think of others — your dear mother ; 
 she has such a strong claim upon you.' 
 
 He was leading her gently to the gangway that 
 that was to take her back to shore. At the last 
 moment, when they were standing on that frail 
 bridge, heedless of the gaze of the multitude, he 
 folded her to his heart for the last time, and let her 
 lips meet his in a despairing kiss. 
 
 For her the world was as empty as Eden. She 
 had no thought of the eyes that were looking at 
 her.
 
 WHEN WE TWO PARTED. 135 
 
 ' God bless you ; God be with you, my own dear 
 love !' said George Leland. 
 
 She was standing on the shore, among other 
 people all intent on the departing steamer. Her 
 lover was lost in the crowd on deck. A bell was 
 ringing. The turbid water was rolling up against 
 the keel of the vessel, as she swayed with the motion 
 of her labouring engines. 
 
 ' These partings are hard,' said a friendly voice 
 at the Captain's side. ' Your young wife seems 
 deeply affected. I hope she is not alone. No, I 
 see she has a gentleman with her.' 
 
 The speaker, an elderly civilian with white 
 whiskers and a benevolent expression, was watching 
 the shore through his field-glass. Leland looked 
 in the same direction, and saw two figures in that 
 fast-receding picture — Barbara and Mr. Maulford, 
 the articled clerk. He was standing by her side, 
 talking to her with an air of deepest interest. 
 
 ' What, in the name of all that's unpleasant, 
 brings that fellow here ?' thought the Captain.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 TOO CIVIL BY HALF. 
 
 ' Can I be of any use to you, Miss Trevornock T 
 asked Mr. Maulford. * Let me get you out of the 
 crowd. Are you staying at Southampton ?' 
 
 'No,' Barbara answered, with her eyes following 
 the departing steamer ; ' I am going back to London 
 immediately. Don't take any trouble about me; 
 I can find my way to the station.' 
 
 ' I could not think of leaving you. I am going 
 back to town by the four-o'clock train ; till then I 
 am perfectly free. You are going to meet friends 
 at the station, perhaps ?' 
 
 The steamer was growing a mere speck far away 
 on the bright blue water ; but Barbara's eyes held 
 it still ; for her it was the centre of the universe. 
 Mr. Maulford repeated his inquiry. 
 
 ' I beg your pardon,' faltered Barbara absently; 
 and then suddenly becoming aware of the drift of 
 his question, she answered carelessly, ' No ; there
 
 TOO CIVIL BY HALF. 137 
 
 ■will be no one to meet me. I am going home 
 alone.' 
 
 ' May I be permitted to take care of you on the 
 journey ? I am travelling by tlie same train.' 
 
 ' I Tvill not trouble you. I am going third class; 
 I daresay you are going first.' 
 
 ' The pleasure of being in your society will more 
 than compensate me for any difference in the'accom- 
 modation. Besides, I really think a third-class 
 carriage is pleasanter than a first-class in such 
 weather as this.' 
 
 ' Bar the dust and the style of one's fellow-pas- 
 sengers,' added Mr. Maulfprd inwardly. 
 
 *You are very kind,' said Barbara; 'I don't 
 want to be rude, but I had much rather travel alone. 
 I am out of spirits, and it would worry me to have 
 to talk to anybody.' 
 
 * You will let me put you into your carriage, at 
 least.' 
 
 ' Of course ; I cannot object to that. But don't 
 put yourself out of the way to do it. The station 
 is so near. I know my way; there is no diffi- 
 culty.'
 
 138 BARBARA. 
 
 ' I shall be miserable if you refuse me so small 
 a privilege/ said Mr. Maulford. 
 
 So they walked side by side to the station, 
 Barbara profoundly silent, the articled clerk watch- 
 ful of her white pained face. 
 
 ' Have you any message for your father ?' he 
 asked presently. 
 
 ' No. My sister and I will be calling on him 
 soon, I daresay.' 
 
 * Perhaps you would prefer that I should say 
 nothing about my having had the pleasure of meet- 
 ing you here,' suggested Mr. Maulford, with an 
 unpleasant expression in his red-brown eyes. 
 
 'I do not care one straw about it,' answered 
 Barbara, flushing. * You are quite at liberty to tell 
 my father that I came down here this morning 
 alone to take leave of Captain Leland, my future 
 husband. Perhaps it is not exactly what another 
 girl would have done under the same circumstances; 
 but my father knows that Flossie and I have not 
 been brought up like other girls. We have lived 
 in our own little world.' 
 
 'And are not governed by the hard-and-fast
 
 TOO CIVIL BY HALF. 139 
 
 lines of society, with its narrow restrictions,' said 
 Mr. Maulford, with an odious air of patronage. 
 ' Strange that I should have happened to meet you, 
 wasn't it ? I came down to arrange a little hit of 
 conveyancing business, and, finding myself with a 
 spare hour after my work was finished, strolled to 
 the docks, where there is always something going 
 on. Here we are at the station. I'll go and see if 
 the train's made up, and secure you a good place. 
 I wish you would let me exchange tickets with you ; 
 you might find the first class more comfortable.' 
 
 ' No, thank you. I am more at home in a third- 
 class carriage. I travelled down very comfortably. 
 There were nice motherly women with birdcages.' 
 
 * Very well ; I'll try to find you some motherly 
 women for the return journey. I suppose you don't 
 insist upon birdcages.' 
 
 Barbara sat on the bench where she had waited 
 for her lover's coming, while Mr. Maulford went off 
 to make his inquiries. She was thinking of that 
 departing steamer, sailing so blithely over a summer 
 sea ; she was following it with her thoughts, as she 
 had followed it a little while ago with her eyes.
 
 140 BARBABA. 
 
 Mr. Maulford came back to say that he had found 
 a seat in a comfortable compartment where there 
 was a motherly female. 
 
 *It's a second-class carriage/ he said, as he con- 
 ducted Barbara to the train. ' It's all right ; I've 
 squared the guard.' 
 
 ' I'm sorry you've taken so much trouble,' said 
 Barbara, writhing under the sense of obligation ; 
 * the third class would have done just as well.' 
 
 * I wish you'd let me travel in the same car- 
 riage.' 
 
 ' I'd much rather be alone.' 
 
 ' Very well, Miss Trevornock ; your will is law. 
 Don't take any trouble when you get to the ter- 
 minus; I shall be in the way to put you into a 
 cab.' 
 
 ' Thank you,' said Barbara, hating him intensely 
 for his civility. 
 
 She told him that she had started from Yauxhall, 
 but he said it would be better for her to go on to 
 Waterloo. She would be more sure of a cab. 
 
 All through the homeward journey her thoughts 
 were- following her lover, following him with sadness
 
 TOO CITIL BY HALF. 141 
 
 and longing. Sometimes a tear slid slowly down her 
 pale cheeks under her veil, she too deep in thought 
 to know that she was cryiug. The motherly female 
 made her hospitable offers of sandwiches and butter- 
 scotch, which were politely declined. The journey 
 seemed to prolong itself to an unendurable tedium. 
 Towards the latter part of the time she began to 
 think a little of her mother and Flossie, and what 
 would be their opinion of her day's work. 
 
 'I don't care much,' she said to herself; 'it 
 would hardly hurt me if mamma were angry. My 
 heart is one big pain.' 
 
 Mr. Maulford appeared directly the train stopped, 
 as if he had been waiting on the platform. Barbara 
 thought he must have risked his life in getting to 
 her so quickly. He put her into a cab, paid the 
 driver, and took his ticket. 
 
 ' I've paid the man,' he said, putting his head in 
 at the window. ' These fellows always try to impose 
 on a lady. Good-evening !' 
 
 ' Good-evening,' answered Barbara coldly, very 
 ungrateful for attentions which had been forced upon 
 her; and as the cab drove off she flung herself back
 
 142 BAKBARA. 
 
 in a corner, and sobbed out her great sorrow, while 
 the vehicle jogged along the Waterloo-road, where 
 the meagre dimly-lighted shops looked the quintes- 
 sence of shabbiness. 
 
 She need not have feared anger at home. She 
 was welcomed like the returning prodigal. 
 
 ' you poor tired thing !' cried Flossie, prancing 
 out to receive the wanderer. ' How white and ill you 
 look ! And the idea of coming home in a cab ! What 
 recklessness ! Come up-stairs and take off your bon- 
 net. We've got such a tea ! Do be quick, dear. I'm 
 absolutely starving.' 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock was in the hall. 
 
 ' My foolish darling !' she said, giving Barbara a 
 hug. ' However could you do such a thing ? I've 
 been wretched about you all day.' 
 
 ' And I thought if ma made one of her hot cakes 
 for tea it would distract her mind,' interjected Flos- 
 sie. * She did nothing all the afternoon but moan 
 about railway accidents — as if an express was going 
 to run into a parliamentary just because you were 
 travelling !' 
 
 Ten minutes afterwards they were all sitting
 
 TOO CIVIL BY HALF. 143 
 
 snugly at the round table in the garden parlour, the 
 table where George Leland had sat so often in the 
 brief happy summer. Barbara's spirits revived in that 
 loving companionship. She enjoyed Mrs. Trevor- 
 nock's strong tea and the inimitable pound - cake, 
 and she was able to tell her adventures, which Flossie 
 insisted upon having in detail. That young lady 
 was particularly impressed by the breakfast at the 
 Dolphin. 
 
 ' I never was inside an hotel in my life,' she said, 
 ' or at any rate since I can remember. What a 
 heavenly breakfast ! Shouldn't I have appreciated 
 it ! I'm afraid you didn't, Bab.' 
 
 ' I wasn't very hungry,' answered Barbara, smil- 
 ing faintly. 
 
 ' No, you reserved your appetite for the widow 
 and the orphan's tea,' said Flossie.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE CORNISH CLIENT. 
 
 Nearly a year had gone since the sailing of the 
 Hesper. The roses in the Camberwell garden, the 
 sweet- smelling purple stocks and carnations, breath- 
 ing all the spices of Ceylon, were basking in the 
 July sunshine. Barbara was sitting in a wicker- 
 chair under the biggest of the pear-trees, while 
 Flossie lay on the grass at her sister's feet, reading 
 a well-thumbed novel, borrowed, at a penny the 
 volume, from the limited collection of a shabby little 
 library in a shabby little street near at hand. There 
 had been no more partial boarders at 20 South-lane. 
 Mrs. Trevornock had managed to get on somehow 
 without that source of income. She and the two 
 girls had pinched and scraped, and been infinitely 
 happy in doing without things. They were able to 
 live upon so little. The boxes from aunt Sophia 
 supplied them with plenty of finery. That agony of 
 being shabbily clad, which women feel so keenly,
 
 THE COENISH CLIENT. 145 
 
 was not imposed upon them. The girls always 
 looked better dressed than any of their neighbours. 
 Thus they had lived on, from hand to mouth, con- 
 tentedly. If illness had come with its manifold 
 expenses the little household must have been ship- 
 wrecked, or must have sent forth a cry for help to 
 the rich relations, who had done so much to help 
 already. Happily there had been no such calamity. 
 Barbara had drooped a little after her lover's depar- 
 ture, but had speedily taken courage, and had re- 
 sumed the even tenor of her way with all her old 
 sweetness. 
 
 It had been decided, in family council across the 
 cosy tea-table, that there should be no more partial 
 boarders. 
 
 ' We should feel as if we were vulgarising our- 
 selves if we were to open our doors to any comer,* 
 remarked Mrs. Trevornock. 
 
 ' We might get a vulgarian,' said Barbara. 
 
 * We might get a husband for mey said Flossie ; 
 'Bab has had her turn.' 
 
 ' You wouldn't like our house to be a husband- 
 trap, Flossie ?' remonstrated Barbara. 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 BARBAEA. 
 
 * no, of course not. But still you have had 
 your chance, you know : and if I don't meet with a 
 husband in this house I am doomed to die an old 
 maid, attached to cats and things, and looked down 
 upon by my fellow-creatures. The three or four ac- 
 quaintance, with whom we have the honour of drink- 
 ing tea occasionally, can't produce an eligible young 
 man among them.' 
 
 ' I don't think Captain Leland would like us to 
 take another boarder,' said Mrs. Trevornock. 
 
 ' Perhaps not ; but it's rather hard that Captain 
 Leland's jealousy should be allowed to stand in my 
 light,' protested Flossie. 
 
 This ill-used damsel found her wishes overruled 
 by the majority. No further advertisement, from 
 this one particular lady, with a house larger than 
 she required, appeared in the columns of the Times, 
 and the Trevornocks managed to fight the battle of 
 daily life without the aid of a boarder. The house 
 looked bright and pretty, the little maid-of-all-work 
 received her wages on quarter-day, the tax-collector 
 went away satisfied, and the surrounding tradesmen 
 had no right to speak evil of Mrs. Trevornock. If
 
 THE CORNISH CLIENT. 147 
 
 the dinners at 20 South-lane were skimpy — or some- 
 times even non-existent — the teas were luxurious. 
 The little servant was red and chubby, though there 
 were days on which no butcher's-meat crossed the 
 threshold of her mistress's door. 
 
 Captain Leland had proved, so far, an excellent 
 correspondent. Every mail brought Barbara a letter, 
 in which, on the flimsiest of paper, the Captain 
 related all that he had done, and discoursed elo- 
 quently upon all he felt, in that language which is 
 the delight of lovers and the wonder of everybody 
 else. 
 
 Barbara read and re-read the flimsy letters, wept 
 over them a little in secret, and replied in letters 
 of even greater length, lavishing the treasures of 
 her young soul upon her far-away lover, having no- 
 thing to tell him but her love, and telling that with 
 the passion of an undeveloped poet. 
 
 The happiest days of her eventless life were 
 those on which she wrote to her betrothed. Those 
 days were held sacred in the little household. 
 Mother and sister respected her privacy. Bab must 
 have the front parlour all to herself, they said. Bab
 
 148 BARBAKA. 
 
 was writing her Indian letter. And on sucli days 
 Flossie and her mother would devote themselves to 
 some special task of tidying or muddling, as the 
 case might he. They would look over the half- 
 forgotten treasures of some up -stairs cuphoard, as 
 various as the contents of a marine- store dealer's 
 shop. They would arrange and classify ancient 
 ruhhish, and waste time with a semblance of being 
 intensely industrious. Only by such innocent self- 
 deceptions, unconscious as the delusions of lunacy, 
 could the burden of a monotonous life have sat so 
 lightly on these simple women's shoulders. 
 
 One bright July morning Mrs. Trevornock sat 
 down to breakfast with a countenance of unusual 
 gravity. She breathed a gentle sigh as she poured 
 out the tea, and she watched Flossie's bold onslaught 
 on the four-ounce pat of butter with a gaze of mild 
 reproachfulness. 
 
 * My dears,' she said presently, ' I have got 
 another tax.' 
 
 ' mother dear, don't say that !' cried Bab. * I 
 thought we were clear till next Christmas.' 
 
 ' So did I, Bab, when I told you so,' sighed Mrs.
 
 THE CORNISH CLIENT. 149 
 
 Trevornock. 'But you know I always have been 
 stupid about those tax-papers — ' 
 
 * Frightfully dense, poor dear ma, I admit,' in- 
 terjected Flossie. 
 
 ' And I had quite overlooked this one. It's 
 Queen's, I believe, and it's rather heavy.' 
 
 'Queen's, indeed!' ejaculated Flossie. *Why 
 can't Victoria carry on her affairs without worrj'ing 
 us ? We don't go to Windsor Castle to worry her. 
 It's a ridiculously one-sided arrangement !' 
 
 * It comes to one pound seven - and - sixpence 
 for the half-3'ear,' said Mrs. Trevornock; 'and 
 if it's not paid by next Thursday I shall be sum- 
 moned.' 
 
 Here Mrs. Trevornock became suddenly absorbed 
 in the teapot, which wanted more water ; and when 
 she had gazed into the teapot for some moments, as 
 if intent upon finding an augury in the leaves, she 
 lifted her eyes and looked with meek appeal at 
 Flossie. 
 
 ' 0,' cried that young lady, with an impatient 
 shrug of her shoulders, 'I know what you mean, 
 ma, and you might just as well speak out. You
 
 150 BARBARA. 
 
 want me to go and see if I can get the money out 
 of Mr. T.' 
 
 This was Flossie's way of speaking of her father. 
 
 ' I thought you and Barbara might call on him 
 this morning, dear.' 
 
 ' I and Barbara !' exclaimed Flossie. ' You 
 might just as well say I and an umbrella. Bab is 
 no more use than one. She doesn't back me up by 
 so much as a word, but only sits and looks a picture 
 of placid loveliness. However, I suppose we must 
 go and see what can be done. It's lucky you've one 
 daughter who's not afraid to speak her mind. I 
 should never get a sixpence out of Mr. T. if I 
 didn't make him shake in his shoes.' 
 
 Half an hour after breakfast the two girls set out 
 upon their expedition. Funds were at a low ebb in 
 South-lane, too low even to allow the cheap luxury 
 of a Waterloo omnibus ; but the girls thought 
 nothing of a walk to Gray's Inn on a fine fresh 
 summer morning, when the shops in the Wal worth- 
 road looked their brightest, and there was a gaiety 
 in the atmosphere as of unseen birds and butterflies. 
 There was a good deal of dust at the corners of bye-
 
 THE CORNISH CLIENT. 151 
 
 streets, but the newly - watered roads breathed a 
 refreshing coolness, suggestive of woodland streams. 
 Gray's Inn, with its grassy lawns and famous catalpa 
 tree, planted by Francis Bacon, seemed a haveu of 
 greenery on this July morning. 
 
 * What a nice shady sober old place it is !' cried 
 Flossie. * I almost wish ice had chambers here. It 
 would be so handy for the theatres.' 
 
 The customary boy opened the door, aud Mr. 
 Maulford emerged as usual from his adjacent den, 
 eager-eyed and politely officious. 
 
 ' I think you will have to wait a few minutes, 
 Miss Trevornock,' he said, addressing Barbara — he 
 always ignored Flossie. 'Your papa has a client 
 with him.' 
 
 ' The bells shall be rung, and the mass shall be 
 sung,' murmured Flossie, to whom an actual client 
 in her father's office seemed a phenomenon worthy 
 of note. 
 
 'I believe he's just going,' said Mr. Maulford. 
 ' I'll announce you if you like, and that will hurry 
 him.' 
 
 Before Barbara could say no, the articled clerk
 
 152 BARBARA. 
 
 opened the door and announced ' Miss Trevor- 
 nock and Miss Flora.' 
 
 A tall ungainly-looking man was standing in 
 front of the office-table talking to Mr. Trevornock. 
 
 Barbara thought him the awkwardest man she 
 had ever seen. He was largely -made and broad- 
 shouldered, but bony. All the angles of his figure 
 were prominently defined under his loose gray 
 garments. His clothes seemed of coarser fabric than 
 the stuffs commonly worn by gentlemen in those 
 days. He had large features, regular in outline, 
 but ruggedly cut. His face was weather-beaten; 
 his coarse hair and whiskers were of dull brown 
 mixed with duller gray. His shaggy brows made a 
 penthouse over his severe gray eyes. He wore no 
 gloves. His boots were thick and clumsy, and his 
 very indiff'erent hat was flung carelesslyon the back 
 of his head. 
 
 ' A very common kind of person,' thought 
 Flossie, dropping into a chair, after saluting her 
 father with a pert little nod. 
 
 The client looked round at the entrance of the 
 young ladies, and hastily removed his hat, which
 
 THE COPwNISH CLIENT. 153 
 
 appeared to be a repository for old gloves and busi- 
 ness documents. 
 
 ' I think that's all, Trevornock,' he said. ' You 
 perfectly understand me? I'll stand no nonsense 
 from these people.' 
 
 * I should have known that without your telling 
 me,.' said Mr. Trevornock, without looking up from 
 his desk. *You never do stand nonsense of that 
 kind.' 
 
 ' Of course not. If they can't pay they must 
 turn out. T\Tiat is it to me that they and their 
 people have had the land seventy years ? That kind 
 of sentiment won't fill my pockets.' 
 
 *Much more likely to emj)ty them,' replied Mr. 
 Trevornock. 
 
 The client took up his walking-stick, which was 
 as thick as a young tree, and moved towards the 
 door slowly, hesitatingly, with his eyes fixed on 
 Barbara, as if he were in danger of taking root on 
 the office-floor in the intensity of his wonderment. 
 When the two girls had entered he had been ab- 
 sorbed in his business, and had not honoured them 
 with a glance. Only by the clerk's announcement
 
 154 BARBARA. 
 
 and the rustling of their garments had he known 
 that they were women. Now he perceived that one 
 of them was a lovelier woman than his eyes had 
 ever looked upon, or so at least Barbara seemed to 
 him in this moment of surprise. He was not a 
 student of female loveliness, or of art, or books, or 
 any of those things which make life beautiful ; but 
 he had an instinctive idea that this face on which 
 his eyes were riveted w^as perfect beauty. 
 
 He lingered to say a few more words to Mr. 
 Trevornock, and then went slowly out of the room, 
 with his gaze fixed on Barbara to the last. 
 
 'What an utterly horrid man!' exclaimed Flos- 
 sie, directly the outer door had shut on the stranger. 
 
 *You wouldn't say that if you knew who he 
 was,' said Mr. Trevornock. 
 
 'Yes, I should. My. knowledge of him wouldn't 
 make the slightest difference. Such hair, such 
 hands, such clothes, such boots, such a hat ! The 
 creature will haunt me like a nightmare. Pray are 
 all your clients like that, papa ?' 
 
 'I wish they were. That is one of the richest 
 men in Cornwall.'
 
 THE CORNISH CLIENT. 155 
 
 ' Then what a beggarly county Cornwall must 
 be !' retorted Flossie. ' Can't the poor thing afford 
 himself a decent pair of boots ?' 
 
 ' The poor thing would think no more of buying 
 a thousand acres of land than you would of buying 
 a new bonnet/ retorted Mr. Trevornock. 
 
 ' And yet wears such odious boots. Perhaps 
 they are fashionable in Cornwall, though? Really 
 country people should not be allowed to come to 
 London without being edited and revised by a 
 capable person. And pray who is this gray gentle- 
 man ?' 
 
 'He is one of the largest landowners between 
 Launceston and St. Columb,' said Mr. Trevornock. 
 ' He is the owner of slate-quarries that produce four 
 thousand a year. His father was three times mem- 
 ber for the county. He belongs to one of the oldest 
 families in Cornwall. His name is Vyvyan Penruth. 
 Do you want to know anything more about him ?' 
 
 ' Yes,' answered the unabashed Flossie. ' I 
 should like to know who's his tailor; so that, in 
 the unlikely event of my ever wanting a riding- 
 habit, I might go to somebody else.'
 
 156 BARBARA. 
 
 *Ah,' siglied Mr. Trevornock, producing his 
 penknife, and going to work eagerly at liis nails, 
 which he had been constrained to neglect for the 
 last hour, 'if your sister could marry such a man 
 as that now, instead of her beggarly Indian Captain, 
 she would be a lucky woman.' 
 
 * I would not exchange my Indian Captain for an 
 emperor,' said Barbara, flaming up at this insult 
 to her absent lover. 'And as for that horrid gray 
 man, I would not marry him if I were a beggar in 
 the street and he ofi'ered me half his fortune.' 
 
 ' Well, you are never likely to be tempted,' said 
 Mr. Trevornock. ' Penruth is not a marrying man. 
 He has come to eight-and-forty years of age without 
 ever thinking of a wife. It isn't very likely he'll 
 begin now.' 
 
 * Eight -and- forty !' echoed Flossie. 'I should 
 have thought he was a hundred. He looks like a 
 fossil.' 
 
 ' So would you, perhaps, if you had lived the 
 best part of your life in an old house in the centre 
 of a park on the Cornish moors, with only a brother 
 and sister for your companions, and nothing to do
 
 THE CORNISH CLIENT. 157 
 
 from morning till night but ride round your own 
 land.' 
 
 * Then why does he do it ?' demanded Flossie. 
 'Why doesn't he take a house in London and 
 enjoy himself? Why hasn't he a yacht? Why 
 doesn't he keep racehorses ? Is he a miser ?' 
 
 ' I think not. But he has never fallen into 
 the way of spending his money like other rich 
 men. He is perhaps a little dull. He has no 
 tastes or fancies. He has been brought up in a 
 stupid secluded way ; and he cleaves to his dull 
 life and his old country house as the snail cleaves 
 to his shell. He is not a bad fellow by any 
 means.' 
 
 'I daresay not, for those who can appreciate 
 him,' answered Flossie. 
 
 Barbara gazed dreamily out of the window at 
 a blank space of blue sky, and stifled a yawn. 
 
 Flossie proceeded to the business of the day. 
 She made her application with firmness, but with 
 as much modesty as she could command; and Mr. 
 Trevornock yielded with a better grace than usual, 
 tossing three sovereigns across his desk for his
 
 158 BARB ABA. 
 
 younger daughter to pick up from among his 
 papers. This she did deftly, and then pushed the 
 siege a little further. 
 
 ' We walked all the way here,' she said, ' and 
 it was very warm. I'm sure you would not like 
 us to walk home under the midday sun. If you 
 could spare a little silver — ' 
 
 'I wonder you don't ask for my teeth,' growled 
 the outraged parent, as he reluctantly produced 
 three-and-sixpence. 
 
 ' They wouldn't he any use to us,' said Flossie 
 naively ; ' but a few pence to buy some buns.' 
 
 '0, deuce take you!' cried Mr. Trevornock, 
 flinging her another sixpence. ' Why can't you 
 ask for what you want at once ? Here, do you 
 want any paper and envelopes, sealing-wax, pens ?' 
 
 He shuffled some stationery into a sheet of news- 
 paper, and handed the packet to his unabashed child. 
 
 * If you knew what a struggle it is for us to 
 have to buy even those trifles,' said Flossie apolo- 
 getically. 
 
 * 0, nonsense ! Your mother's better off than I 
 am. She has no office to keep, no clerks to pay.'
 
 THE CORNISH CLIENT. 159 
 
 *No ; but she has two daughters to proyide for,' 
 answered Barbara, who rarely took part in these 
 discussions. 
 
 'Well, good-bye, girls,' said her father hur- 
 riedly. ' I've a great deal of work to get through 
 this morning.' 
 
 His daughters took the hint and their departure, 
 Flossie delighted with her success. 
 
 *What would ma do if she hadn't me?' she 
 exclaimed triumphantly.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PATERNAL INSTINCT IN MR. T. 
 
 Three days after that visit to the office in Gray's 
 Inn the most wonderful event happened. Mr. Tre- 
 vornock sent his elder daughter a card for a private 
 box at the Haymarket Theatre. 
 
 Such a thing had never before befallen the little 
 family in South-lane. That Mr. Trevornock should 
 voluntarily stretch forth his hand to give them plea- 
 sure was an altogether inscrutable thing. 
 
 'I can't make it out/ said Barbara, looking in- 
 tently at the card. 
 
 'It doesn't look like an order,' remarked Flossie, 
 with a business-like air, ' but it must be one, all the 
 same. Mr. T. would never put his hand in his 
 pocket to buy us a treat of this kind. I suppose 
 some one gave him the ticket, and he didn't know 
 what to do with it, until it flashed upon him all at 
 once that he had a wife and dauo:hters.'
 
 PATERNAL INSTINCT IN MR. T. 161 
 
 There was even a little note with the ticket : 
 
 * Dear Barbara, — I enclose a box for the Hay- 
 market for next Tuesday evening. Ask your mother 
 to take you and Flora. I understand the comedy 
 now being performed there is well worth seeing. — 
 Your affectionate father, T. Trevornock.' 
 
 ' It's monstrously civil of him,' said Flossie ; ' I 
 begin to think that he must be dotingly fond of us, 
 after all.' 
 
 The girls had not left off wondering at this un- 
 wonted attention on the paternal part when Tuesday 
 came, and they set off under the maternal wing for 
 the friendly Waterloo 'bus, which was to deposit 
 them almost at the door of the theatre. Their fresh 
 muslin gowns, their blooming faces, made an oasis 
 of beauty in the 'bus, where the pervading effect was 
 dinginess. They had white gloves and fans and 
 other trifles of adornment in their mother's reticule, 
 and the cloak-room of the theatre was to see the 
 final touches of their toilet. 
 
 Behold them anon seated in their box, adorning it 
 as flowers adorn a window, so fresh in their attire 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 BARBARA. 
 
 and altogether lovely that it is difficult to believe 
 they did not roll up to the theatre in a well-appointed 
 brougham. 
 
 The play was one of those high and dry modern 
 comedies for which this theatre used to be celebrated 
 — well acted, well put upon the stage, without any 
 pretension of elaborate realism, well dressed, without 
 extravagance or eccentricity, having altogether a re- 
 spectable and almost classic flavour. 
 
 For Barbara and Flossie to be at a theatre at all 
 was for the time being to inhabit Paradise ; and even 
 Mrs. Trevornock was deeply interested, though not 
 without a backward glancing thought of the young 
 serving-maid, and whether she might or might not 
 contrive to set the house on fire. She had even dis- 
 tracting ideas about an eighteenpenny lobster to be 
 bought, possibly bargained for, on the way home. 
 Yet she enjoyed the play, and pronounced sound 
 criticism on its merits, as became a woman of some 
 culture, who had read and thought in her time, al- 
 though at present absorbed in domesticity. 
 
 The first act was over, and the two girls were 
 surveying the house with bright young eyes which
 
 PATERNAL INSTINCT IN MR. T. 163 
 
 needed no aid from opera-glasses, when there came 
 a knock at the hox-door. 
 
 ' Gracious !' cried Flossie, 'what can that mean ? 
 I hope it isn't some one come to say that the ticket 
 is a forgery. I give Mr. T. credit for a good deal, 
 but hardly for forging theatre-tickets.' 
 
 'I suppose we had better open the door,' said 
 Mrs. Trevornock dubiously ; and at this moment the 
 knock was repeated. 
 
 ' I daresay it's only some one worrying with ices,' 
 cried Flossie, darting to the door, which she opened 
 with an energy indicative of impatience. 'No, thank 
 you, we don't want any,' she said sharply, before the 
 door was quite open. But on looking at the intruder 
 she perceived to her horror that it was not a young 
 woman with a tray of ices, but a tall man in dress- 
 clothes, a man of angular figure, whom she recog- 
 nised at a glance as Mr. Penruth, her father's Cornish 
 client. 
 
 ' I beg your pardon,' she stammered ; ' I thought 
 you were refreshments.' 
 
 He seemed hardly to hear her. His eyes looked 
 over her head towards Barbara.
 
 164 
 
 BARBAKA. 
 
 * I recognised you and your sister from the other 
 side of the theatre/ he said, ' and I thought I might 
 venture to pay my respects. Will you present me to 
 your mother ?' 
 
 ' With pleasure,' answered Flossie. ' Ma, this is 
 one of pa's clients. Ma, Mr. Penruth. Mr. Pen- 
 ruth, ma.' 
 
 Barbara had risen from her chair, blushing, not 
 with pleasure, at the stranger's advent. She could 
 not withhold her hand when Mr. Penruth held out 
 his. 
 
 * How do you like the play ?' he asked, addressing 
 himself to Mrs. Trevornock, and dropping into the 
 unoccupied chair, with an air of being very much at 
 home. 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock told him her opinion of the first 
 act. 
 
 * And the young ladies ?' he asked, looking at 
 Barbara from under his bushy brows ; ' I hope they 
 are pleased.' 
 
 ' How can we help being pleased ?' exclaimed the 
 loquacious Flossie, who left very little margin for 
 other people's conversation. ' We go to a play about
 
 PATERNAL INSTINCT IN ME. T. 165 
 
 once in a blue moon. I'm sure I can't imagine what 
 inspired pa to send us a box for the theatre. It's 
 quite out of keeping with his character to do such a 
 thing.' 
 
 ' Perhaps, while I am in town, you will allow me 
 to send you tickets now and then ?' said Mr. Pen- 
 ruth. * I get a good many.' 
 
 •0,' exclaimed Flossie, ' then I daresay it was 
 you who gave pa this one.' 
 
 ' Yes, I sent him a box for to-night. I had no 
 idea he would make such good use of it.' 
 
 ' !' said Flossie, beginning to make her own 
 conclusions at a tremendous rate. 
 
 Yyvyan Penruth looked just a little more civilised 
 in his conventional suit of black than he had ap- 
 peared in his shooting-clothes and hobnailed boots ; 
 but he was still far below the standard of elegance. 
 His bony angles were too obvious, his arms and legs 
 were too long. His iron-gray hair and whiskers 
 were in sore need of the barber's art; his complexion 
 testified to nearly half a century's hard usage. 
 
 The curtain rose, and Barbara riveted her atten- 
 tion to the stage, replying only by monosyllables to
 
 166 BAKBARA. 
 
 Mr. Penruth's persevering attempts to draw her into 
 conversation. Flossie's attention was divided be- 
 tween the play and the stranger. She could not 
 wholly withdraw her attention from him, though she 
 was deeply interested in the play. 
 
 Having established himself in the seat behind 
 Mrs. Trevornock, Mr. Penruth showed no desire to 
 withdraw. He was not in a very convenient position 
 for seeing the play, but he remained for the rest of 
 the evening, making himself as agreeable as he could 
 to Barbara's mother, and trying very hard to improve 
 his acquaintance with Barbara. 
 
 When the play was over he escorted the ladies to 
 a cab, paid the driver and took his ticket, just as 
 Mr. Maulford had done upon a previous occasion. 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock remonstrated, and tried to push 
 her poor little purse into his hand, but in vain. 
 
 * You must really allow me,' he said ; and Mrs. 
 Trevornock allowed him. 
 
 *Well, ma,' exclaimed Flossie, as they drove 
 past all the grandeurs of Trafalgar-square, * what do 
 you think of the horrid man ?' 
 
 * I think him one of the most gentlemanly men
 
 PATERNAL IXSTINXT IX ME. T. 167 
 
 I ever met,' answered Mrs. Trevornock, who was 
 enthusiastic and fickle. 
 
 ' mamma !' ejaculated Barbara, with deep-toned 
 reproachfulness. 
 
 *He certainly improves on acquaintance,' said 
 Flossie. * And he is going to send us more tickets 
 for the play. If he always pays our cabs in that 
 polite way, it will be very nice.' 
 
 *I am going to no more of his plays,' said Bar- 
 bara. 'I detest him !' 
 
 ' 0, nonsense !' cried Flossie. ' What's the good 
 of detesting people who can be useful to one ? I 
 agree with mamma. Mr. Penruth's manners are 
 eminently gentlemanlike ; and when one considers 
 that he has slate-quarries and things — ' 
 
 Two days after the evening at the Haymarket, 
 Mr. Penruth called in South-lane. He had had a 
 box given him for the Olympic, where Robson was 
 delighting everybody in the Wander'uif/ Minstrel; 
 and he had thought it best to bring the ticket him- 
 self. He came at a discreet hour in the afternoon, 
 when Mrs. Trevornock's household duties were over,
 
 168 BARBARA. 
 
 and she was able to receive him without embarrass- 
 ment. In the hospitality which was natural to her 
 she was sorely tempted to ask him to tea ; but she 
 refrained, lest so homely an invitation should bring 
 discredit on herself and daughters. The delightful 
 institution of afternoon tea — before dinner — was 
 unknown in those days ; and to mention tea at five 
 o'clock was a frank confession of bourgeoisie. So 
 Mrs. Trevornock, having no wine to offer, offered 
 nothing except the refreshment of a walk round the 
 garden, which Mr. Penruth accepted greedily, having 
 caught a glimpse of two girls in muslin frocks, 
 sitting under the apple-tree. 
 
 'It must seem a very poor little garden to you 
 after your place in Cornwall,' said Mrs. Trevornock, 
 with an apologetic air. 
 
 * 0, my gardens are nothing particular. I pay 
 very little attention to them. The flowers grow 
 well enough, I believe, though we are nearly a 
 thousand feet above the level of the sea. But I 
 have no taste for horticulture. My sister has her 
 own special garden, and takes a pride in its culti- 
 vation ; but I don't understand those things. I feel
 
 PATERNAL INSTINCT IN MR. T. 169 
 
 rather bored when she tells me the names of her 
 plants.' 
 
 *A sister!' thought Mrs. Trevornock; and she 
 began incontinently to picture to herself a feminine 
 edition of Mr. Penruth. 
 
 The girls rose from their low basket-chairs at 
 sight of the visitor. 
 
 ' Is it not extremely kind of Mr. Penruth ?' 
 asked the mother. * He has brought us a box for 
 the Olympic' 
 
 Barbara said not a word, but Flossie turned 
 cherry-coloured with delight. 
 
 'How intensely good of you!' she exclaimed. 
 * It is the one desire of my life to see Kobson.' 
 
 'I am very proud to be able to gratify it,' said 
 Mr. Penruth. 
 
 He lingered by the apple-tree for a little, trying 
 to get Barbara to talk to him, but with the least 
 possible success. He was favoured, however, with 
 a very free expression of opinion upon various sub- 
 jects from Flossie, who did her best to atone for her 
 sister's coldness. 
 
 ' I can't think how you can be so uncivil to the
 
 170 BARBARA. 
 
 man, when lie is heaping favours upon us,' remon- 
 strated Elossie, after Mr. Penruth had taken his 
 departure, and the two girls were alone in the 
 garden. 
 
 * I don't want his favours. Can't you see through 
 the whole business ?' said Barbara impatiently. 
 
 *I am generally pretty clear-sighted.' 
 ^ Don't you see that my father wants this man to 
 marry one of us ? And he has given him mamma's 
 address, and encouraged him to come here.' 
 
 * Well, if he has, it shows a nearer approach to 
 fatherly instinct than he has hitherto displayed,' said 
 Flossie. 
 
 ' I call it a cruel insult. As if he thought that 
 in our poverty we would be willing to marry any 
 rich man for the sake of his money.' 
 
 ' We can't both marry him,' said Flossie. ' You 
 are talking arrant nonsense.' 
 
 ' My father has no right to send this man here.' 
 
 ' He has a right to look after the interests of his 
 daughters — ' 
 
 *Yes, after letting them grow up like weeds!' 
 interjected Bab.
 
 PATERNAL INSTINCT IN MR. T. 171 
 
 ' And if he knows of a Cornisli millionaire going 
 begging he is quite right in letting us have the 
 refusal of him.' 
 
 * Flossie, you are so frivolous !' 
 
 * Better to be frivolous than disagreeable. I 
 suppose you think because you are engaged that 
 nobody else has any right to think of matrimony. 
 I am rather fascinated with the idea of myself as 
 the wife of one of the richest men in Cornwall. 
 I was looking at Cornwall on the map last night. 
 It's very small. I'd rather it had been Yorkshire.' 
 
 * Flossie, you never w^ould marry such a man 
 as that ?' 
 
 'Well, he's not my ideal. But then you see 
 one might waste a lifetime looking for one's ideal. 
 I think it might be better to take the first million- 
 aire that came in one's way.' 
 
 Barbara sighed. There was no use in arguing 
 with such a sister as this — a being so utterly un- 
 stable, a mere feather on the stream of life, dancing 
 and gyrating with every motion of the tide. 
 
 This visit of Vyvj^an Penruth's made a note of 
 discord in the family harmony. Mrs. Trevornock
 
 172 BARBARA. 
 
 and Flossie could talk of nothing but their new 
 acquaintance. They speculated upon the amount 
 of his income. They discoursed sagely about slate- 
 quarries — which must be an inexhaustible source 
 of wealth, seeing how many slated roofs there were 
 in Camberwell alone. 
 
 'We are slated ourselves/ said Mrs. Trevornock, 
 alluding to her house. * Very likely our slates came 
 from Mr. Penruth's quarries.' 
 
 They drew fancy pictures of his house, and dwelt 
 much upon its being a thousand feet above the sea 
 level. 
 
 * So airy,' said Mrs. Trevornock. 
 
 * So delightful to be able to look down on all 
 the rest of the county,' remarked Flossie. 
 
 When the next evening came, Barbara resolutely 
 refused to go to the theatre. 
 
 'I don't want to interfere with your pleasure, 
 or Flossie's, dear ma,' she said ; ' but I really have 
 a headache, and I expect my Indian letter. I shall 
 be ever so much happier at home.' 
 
 ' But it will seem so ungracious to Mr. Penruth,' 
 objected her mother.
 
 PATERNAL INSTINCT IN MR. T. 173 
 
 ' I can't help that, mamma ; I am under no 
 obligation to be gracious to Mr. Penruth. He has 
 forced his acquaintance upon us.' 
 
 'But, my dear, when a man of his age and 
 position takes so much trouble ! A client of your 
 father's, too ! I'm afraid he'll be disappointed 
 if he should happen to be at the theatre and not 
 see you there.' 
 
 ' Why should he be disappointed ? He will 
 have you and Flossie. Besides, the box was a 
 free gift. There was no appointment to meet him 
 at the theatre.' 
 
 ' Of course not, my dear.' 
 
 Half an hour later, when Flossie and her 
 mother were trudging to the Waterloo 'bus, Mrs. 
 Trevornock gave utterance to a very decided opinion. 
 
 ' Flossie,' she said emphatically, ' I consider 
 Barbara's engagement to Captain Leland the 
 greatest misfortune of her life.' 
 
 ' Why, ma ?' 
 
 'Because if she had not been engaged to him 
 I'm sure she mi^jht have married Mr. Penruth.'
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 * LOVE, THOU ART BITTER.' 
 
 Barbara sat reading in the garden in the declining 
 light, very thankful for having been allowed to stay 
 at home. It was a womanly instinct, and not a 
 vain girl's consciousness of her beauty, which had 
 warned her that she was the attraction that drew 
 the Cornishman to South-lane, and had procured 
 this curious concatenation of theatre-tickets and 
 afternoon-calls. She wanted to be true to her 
 absent lover in the smallest acts of her life, and 
 she shrank from accepting attention of any kind 
 from another man. 
 
 She thought of the happy evenings last summer, 
 when Captain Leland had taken Flossie and her to 
 the Opera — the lovely music, the lively talk as 
 they drove home. What pleasure could ever be 
 like that ? 
 
 ' I feel as if I had no right to enter a theatre 
 while he is away,' she said to herself.
 
 LOYE, THOU ART BITTER. 175 
 
 She was listening for the postman's knock all 
 the time. South-lane was very silent in the 
 summer dusk. She would hear the man's foot- 
 steps even in the garden, she thought; yet her 
 impatience would not let her stay out of doors. 
 She went into the front room, and sat on a low 
 couch in the window, watching for the postman's 
 arrival. It was by this post that her Indian letters 
 generally came. 
 
 She sat looking through the leafy twilight, and 
 listening absently to the small servant-maid sing- 
 ing ' Home, sweet Home,' in a fresh young voice, 
 not innocent of a country twang. Neither book 
 nor work could occupy her thoughts in this pain- 
 ful hour of expectancy. She could only watch the 
 bend of the lane, just visible between the branches 
 of lime and sycamore. Yes, here came the post- 
 man, tramping along with his little load of trouble 
 and joy, as indifferent as Juggernaut. 
 
 Bang-bang ! went the knocker, as Bab flew 
 into the narrow hall. There was the thin foreign 
 letter lying on the floorcloth. It looked even thinner 
 than usual, miserably scraggy.
 
 176 BAKBARA. 
 
 Barbara picked it up and put it to her lips, 
 skinny as it was. 
 
 ' Poor dear, he must have been dreadfully busy,' 
 she said to herself. 'Those accounts worry him 
 so.' 
 
 Captain Leland's duties for the last few months 
 had been as exciting as they were laborious. He 
 had been appointed to the command of a Corps of 
 Guides on the frontier, a post at once important 
 and desirable. In one part of his district he was 
 at the head of every department of business, judi- 
 cial, financial, and military. The finance question 
 had already given him some trouble. 
 
 'What a poor little letter!' sighed Barbara, as 
 she went back to her sofa by the window, to make 
 the most of the fading light. 
 
 This was what she read : 
 
 ' Dearest, — I write this to bid you good-bye. 
 Yes, love, there is no other course open to me. 
 Events have happened which make our marriage 
 impossible to me, as a man of honour. A shadow 
 has fallen on my career, so dark, that I would
 
 LOVE, THOU ART BITTER. 177 
 
 not have tlie life of the woman I love clouded by 
 it. There would be nothing gained by my entering 
 into details. You would not understand. I do not 
 understand myself how this thing has befallen me. 
 
 ' God bless you, dear love, and good-bye. I 
 give you back your liberty. If you should be 
 pained, by and by, by hearing evil spoken of me, 
 you will at least be spared the torture of hearing 
 your future husband slandered. I shall be nothing 
 more to 3-ou than an old friend, with whom Fate has 
 dealt hardly. — Yours, in friendship and sad despair- 
 ing love, till death, George Lelind.' 
 
 What was she to make of such a letter ? She 
 read and re-read it ; she sat staring idly at the 
 lines, dazed, bewildered, helpless. That he re- 
 nounced her, released her from her enofagement, 
 flung her off utterly, seemed hideously clear ; and so 
 much only could she understand. What could have 
 happened to him to make such an act necessary? 
 The blood mounted to her face in a crimson flood 
 as she thought that one kind of involvement alone, 
 one kind of disgrace alone, could make it incumbent 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 BARBARA. 
 
 upon him to write such a letter. An entanglement 
 of some kind with another woman could alone force 
 him to break his faith with her. 
 
 He forewarned her that she would hear evil 
 things said of him. The scandal, whatever it was, 
 had gone far and wide, then. She felt the sting 
 of his shame; she writhed beneath the burden 
 of his disgrace. 
 
 ' 0, why could he not tell me all ?' she asked. 
 * Why should he be afraid to trust me ?' 
 
 And then it struck her that the story might 
 be too shameful for him to tell to a woman whose 
 purity he honoured. 
 
 She went back to the letter, trying to get at 
 its hidden meaning, if there were anything hidden 
 from her. 
 
 Events had happened which made their marriage 
 impossible to him as a man of honour. It was he 
 who drew back. His honour demanded the sacrifice. 
 That seemed final. "What could she say against it ? 
 Yet something she must say. She could not sur- 
 render him and all her hopes of happiness without 
 some protest.
 
 LOVE, THOU ART BITTER. 179 
 
 She opened her desk and began to write, though 
 it would be nearly a week before her letter could 
 begin its journey eastward. 
 
 'Your letter has almost broken my heart/ she 
 wrote. ' It seems unanswerable, yet I must answer 
 it. You say that your honour forbids our marriage. 
 How can our marriage dishonour you, unless cir- 
 cumstances have arisen that constrain you to marry 
 some one else ? love, if your heart has gone from 
 me, if you have given it to another, the change is 
 cruel in its suddenness. You might have given me 
 warning. I should not have upbraided you for your 
 inconstancy. I would have endured my loss and my 
 sorrow very patiently. 
 
 'If you have ceased to love me and learned to 
 love some one else, you have only to say one little 
 word. Or if you would rather not say even that, I 
 shall take your silence to mean that it is so. Let 
 all the past be as if it had never been. I will think 
 of you only as a friend who once was very dear. But 
 if the shadow you speak of involves you alone, if you 
 still love me, still in your heart of hearts wish me to
 
 180 BARBARA. 
 
 be your wife, I care nothing for what the world may 
 say of you. I know you well enough, I love you 
 well enough, to believe you against all the world. 
 Good report or evil report will make no difference to 
 me. You may freely, securely, tell me anything 
 evil that has happened to you ; and you may be sure 
 that, however dark the story may seem to the eyes 
 of strangers, I shall never doubt that my hero is 
 scatheless ; I shall never honour or admire my dear 
 love less than I have honoured and admired him 
 from the first. 0, trust me, George, trust me, with 
 all your heart !' 
 
 She wrote more than this, fondly repeating the 
 same appeal. Nothing could change her love for 
 him, or weaken the tie that bound her to him, so 
 long as he was unchanged to her. 
 
 And then when the letter was finished, blotted a 
 little with the hot tears that had rained upon it, 
 Barbara's fortitude gave way utterly, and she buried 
 her face in the sofa-pillow and sobbed out her pas- 
 sion of grief. 
 
 It was late by this time. Dreading the return
 
 LOVE, THOU ART BITTER. 181 
 
 of her mother and sister, loquacious and enthusiastic 
 
 about the evening's entertainment, Barbara went 
 
 up-stairs to bed in the summer dusk, which was 
 
 hardly darkness, too miserable to light her candle, 
 
 feeling as if the obscurity of night were in some 
 
 wise a shelter for sorrow. 
 
 Lying on her bed of woe, the tears streaming 
 
 from her tired eyes, she could still hear the servant 
 
 shrilling in the little kitchen below, like Elaine in 
 
 her tower : 
 
 ' 'Tis tlie last ROSE of suih-mer 
 Left bloo-oo-ming A-A-A-lone, 
 All her lover-LY kumpanyuns 
 Har fa-ver-did and gorn !'
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 FI^OSSIE GOES TO THE POST. 
 
 After the receipt of that letter Barbara fell ill. It 
 was no desperate case of brain-fever. She did not 
 become delirious and rave about her cruel lover. 
 But she was sick and sorry. She lay on her bed, 
 in the sunny little bedroom, and drooped, like a 
 flower that has been plucked ruthlessly from its 
 stem. She could neither eat nor sleep, and she re- 
 fused to be comforted. For a little while she tried 
 to keep her sorrowful secret. To all Flossie's spe- 
 culations and interrogatories she was dumb ; but on 
 the third day, when Mrs. Trevornock was sitting by 
 the bed, and the broken-hearted girl lay in those 
 loving arms, her head resting on the maternal 
 breast, the ice broke all at once, and, with tears 
 streaming down her pale cheeks, she told her mo- 
 ther about George Leland's letter. 
 
 * My dearest child,' cried the mother, melting
 
 FLOSSIE GOES TO THE POST. 183 
 
 into tears, ' how could he he so cruel ! Show me 
 his letter, darling. I can't understand — ' 
 
 ' No, mother, the letter is too sacred. I would 
 show you any other letter from him, but not this 
 one.' 
 
 And then she explained falteringly her loner's 
 dark hints of dishonour and disgrace. 
 
 ' I have written to tell him that no evil judg- 
 ment of other men could alter my trust in him,' she 
 said. ' I have told him that nothing hut a change 
 in his own feelings could make any difference to 
 me.' 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock looked alarmed. She was so 
 easily impressed, poor soul, so much a creature of 
 the present moment ; and latterly the idea that Bar- 
 bara's engagement was in some wise unfortunate 
 had been gaining strength in her mind. 
 
 ' But, my love, you must not send such a letter 
 as that,' she exclaimed. *You must not marry a 
 disgraced man. "What would your aunt Sophia say? 
 He must have been doing something dreadful. Some 
 gambling transaction, perhaps — young men in India 
 gamble frightfully — or some horrid entanglement
 
 184 BARBAEA. 
 
 with his colonel's wife — young men in India often 
 entangle themselves with their colonels' wives. I 
 have read of such things in novels. Let me write 
 to him, darling. It is a mother's duty to write and 
 ask him for an explanation. It is not your place to 
 reply to such a letter. Marry a disgraced man ! 
 No, love, you v/ould break my heart if you did that — 
 you who were born to occupy a distinguished posi- 
 tion. It would be bad enough for you to marry a 
 poor man ; and you know I never quite approved of 
 your engagement.' 
 
 ' mother, when you were so fond of George !' 
 
 ' I liked him, darling ; but I never liked the en- 
 gagement. He would have made a very good hus- 
 band for Flossie. Let me write to him, dear. Pray 
 don't send that foolish letter.' 
 
 ' I musi,, dear mother. This is a matter in which 
 I must act for myself. It is life or death with me.' 
 
 The resolute young face, the thoughtful eyes, 
 beautiful in their intense sadness, gave emphasis to 
 her words. This was no fickle soul, blown whither- 
 soever the weathercock of fancy pointed, but a nature 
 in which all the seeds of life took deep root.
 
 FLOSSIE GOES TO THE POST. 185 
 
 Here Flossie, who exercised no authority over 
 her legs when she was excited, came tumbling into 
 the room. In one hand she held a big bunch of 
 loveliest yellow roses and maidenhair fern — both 
 rarer in those days than they are now — in the other 
 a basket of purple grapes, such as one sees in a 
 picture by Lance, or in the shop of the haughty 
 Solomons. 
 
 * Look at these, Bab,' gasped Flossie, throwing 
 the roses on to the bed, ' and say if pa's client does 
 not improve on acquaintance. And he wants to 
 know if you will be well enough for the last night 
 of the Italian Opera — the Huguenots, at Covent 
 Garden — next Tuesday ; and it will be your only 
 chance this year, and I do hope you'll not be such 
 an idiot as to refuse ; and he says he's intensely 
 sorry you are ill ; and he has got on a black frockcoat 
 and gray trousers, and looks quite civilised ; and 
 there's a hansom waiting while he cools his heels 
 in our front parlour ; and will you go down and see 
 him, ma ?' 
 
 'I must change my gown first,' said Mrs. Trevor- 
 nock, looking down at the well-worn garment in
 
 186 BAKBARA. 
 
 which she had been assisting the maid in her morn- 
 ing's house-work ; for that little house in South- 
 lane was only kept the pink of perfection by means 
 of much labour from mistress as well as maid. 
 ' What shall I say to him, Barbara dear ?' 
 
 'Anything you like/ mother, as long as you 
 don't accept his Opera-tickets for me.' 
 
 ' What !' cried Flossie, lifting up her eyebrows 
 till they almost touched the roots of her hair, ' do 
 you mean to say you don't want to hear the Hugue- 
 nots, with the new soprano as Valentina ?' 
 
 ' I should dearly love to hear her if I could go 
 to the Opera with people I like — you and mother 
 alone, for instance. But I am not going to the 
 Opera with Mr. Penruth.' 
 
 ' He doesn't ask you to do anything of the kind. 
 He will only drop into our box.' 
 
 * And stay there all the evening, as he did at the 
 Haymarket. It is too dear a price to pay for the 
 enjoyment of a play. Please tell him that I am not 
 well enough to go to theatres, and that if I were I 
 shouldn't care about them.' 
 
 * But, my pet,' pleaded her mother, * you really
 
 FLOSSIE GOES TO THE POST. 187 
 
 ought to distract your mind. If you give yourself 
 up to grief in tliis way you will get seriously ill.' 
 
 The girl's unexpressed thought was, ' That would 
 not hurt me. Death would mean release from sorrow.' 
 
 ' I call it absolute folly,' cried Flossie, with an 
 aggrieved air, when her mother had gone to change 
 her gown. ' Here is a gentleman rolling in money, 
 the dearest wish of whose life is to provide us with 
 amusement; and he is kept waiting in our front 
 parlour in a most inhuman manner — with a cab at 
 ever so much a minute standing at the gate — while 
 a disagreeable young woman turns up her nose at 
 his polite attentions and blights all our chances of 
 enjoyment. I call it disgusting selfishness.' 
 
 ' I don't want to prevent mamma and you accept- 
 ing his Opera-tickets, Flossie. You can go to the 
 Opera without me.' 
 
 'Of course we can. But when Mr. Penruth 
 finds one member of a small family persistently dis- 
 agreeable, he will naturally leave ofi" showing kind- 
 ness to the other members. How am I to thank 
 him for those divine roses and those delicious 
 grapes ? They were brought specially for you.'
 
 188 BAEBAKA. 
 
 ' Say anything you think proper.' 
 
 * Then I shall tell him that you were longing for 
 purple grapes and yellow roses, and that his kind- 
 ness has anticipated the desire of your soul,' cried 
 Flossie, dancing out of the room almost as wildly as 
 she had tumbled into it. 
 
 The next day was the day for the Indian post, and 
 Barbara was still far too ill to go out and post her let- 
 ter with her own hands, as she would fain have done. 
 She got up, and experimentalised with herself by a 
 walk across the room, and found herself so weak 
 and tremulous that to dream of an excursion to the 
 post-office would have been sheer foolishness. She 
 must employ Flossie in this all-important mission 
 — a frail skiff in which to trust her fortune ; but 
 there was no other. It was Saturday, and for Mrs. 
 Trevornock to leave her house on the last day of the 
 week was a thing unknown. That excellent house- 
 keeper, indeed, was at all times, more or less, a 
 slave to domesticity, and was loth to intrust her 
 eight-roomed dwelling to the doubtful custody of a 
 servant. 
 
 'You'll take the greatest care of my letter, won't
 
 FLOSSIE GOES TO THE POST. 189 
 
 jou, darling ?' asked Barbara, when she had put the 
 sacred charge into Flossie's hands. 
 
 ' Goodness gracious, child ! Yes, of course. 
 You know I am the ver}' essence of carefulness, and 
 the only woman of business in this house,' cried 
 Flossie, admiring her fresh young face as she tied 
 her bonnet-strings before the looking-glass. 
 
 Then Flossie danced down-stairs to the kitchen 
 to get her mother's commissions to the "Walworth- 
 road, which, the day being Saturday, were more 
 numerous than usual. 
 
 Flossie was to look in at the butcher's, and 
 make a special request that the Sunday joint should 
 not be too fat, nor weigh more than seven pounds at 
 the uttermost. She was to call at the butterman's, 
 and order half a pound of best fi-esh, and sixpenny- 
 worth of breakfast eggs. She was to ask the baker 
 to send a particular kind of fancy loaf for Sun- 
 day's consumption. She was to buy ever so many 
 small articles at the grocer's, and bring them 
 home in her reticule, as that grocer's errand-boy 
 was a creature as tricky and uncertain as Robin 
 Goodfellow. She was to order a pound of compo-
 
 190 BARBARA. 
 
 sites at tlie oil-and-colour shop, and she was to call 
 at the circulating library for the first volume of 
 Bulwer's last novel, to comfort Barbara in her sick- 
 ness. 
 
 * Hadn't you better write the things down ?' 
 suggested Mrs. Trevornock, who was making pastry 
 at the little table by the vine-wreathed window. 
 ' It's a good deal for you to remember.' 
 
 * Providence has blessed me with a tolerable 
 memory,' said Flossie. 'Now, ma, the sinews of 
 war, please. Look sharp ! I've a letter to post for 
 Bab, and it must be in by four o'clock.' 
 
 ' 0,' said Mrs. Trevornock, looking grave, as she 
 fumbled with a floury hand in her pocket for the 
 money, ' her Indian letter ?' 
 
 * Yes, her Indian letter.' 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock sighed as she counted her 
 little stock of silver. 
 
 * I hope Barbara is not going to be poor all her 
 days, like me,' she said. ' One's life seems such a 
 long journey when one has to calculate the cost of 
 every step. I should like my darling to marry a 
 rich man.'
 
 FLOSSIE GOES TO THE POST. 191 
 
 * So should I,' said Flossie ; * if it were only for 
 the sake of poor rae.' 
 
 Flossie on her peramhulations on a fine summer 
 afternoon was a creature to observe and study, a 
 being of the butterfly species altogether, yet with a 
 certain stratum of sound sense under her butterfly 
 frivolity. The fact that she had business on hand 
 was never absent from her mind ; yet she contrived 
 to get as much amusement as she could on her way. 
 She looked her prettiest on these occasions — her 
 bonnet neatly put on, her bonnet-strings a picture ; 
 her gloves, in their small way, perfection ; her mus- 
 lin gown brightened by a ribbon just where a dash 
 of colour was needed. People looked at her and 
 admired her as she went by ; but no one ever 
 doubted that she was a young lady. The days of 
 that half-world which lies between respectability and 
 the disreputable had not yet come. Powder and 
 paint and darkened eyebrows were the livery of a 
 race outside the pale. There was no compromise 
 between virtue and vice in that simpler epoch. 
 
 It was astonishing what a large amount of 
 amusement Flossie was able to derive from the con-
 
 192 BARBARA. 
 
 templation of shop-windows which she saw nearly 
 every day. Looking at shops with Flossie was 
 almost a passion. She stopped to gaze into the 
 most insignificant windows. The scent-hottles and 
 pomatum-pots and packets of court-plaster at the 
 chemist's ; the Berlin-wool patterns at the fancy 
 shop ; the toys, the trumpery, the sham jewelry, 
 the Brummagem hrooches, tinsel bracelets, all in- 
 terested her. But these were as nothing compared 
 with a display of bonnets, gloves, ribbons, parasols, 
 and French flowers at elevenpence three-farthings 
 the spray. Over these she gloated for ten minutes 
 at a stretch, trying to make up her mind what she 
 would buy when she had a half-sovereign to spend 
 for herself. To-day she was in a particularly vola- 
 tile humour. Mr. Penruth's theatre-tickets had 
 demoralised her. She was thinking of Robson ; she 
 was forecasting the bliss of an Italian opera. She 
 found it harder than usual to fix her mind on 
 butcher's-meat and grocery. She fluttered past the 
 butcher's shop, on the wings of her muslin frock, 
 forgetting that she had a message to deliver there, 
 and fluttered back again conscious-stricken from the
 
 FLOSSIE GOES TO THE POST. 193 
 
 other side of Addington-square. She had not her 
 usual grasp of the situation at the grocer's, and 
 blundered about the quarter of a pound of orange 
 pekoe which was to perfume the family teapot. 
 Her ideas were disarranged. Slate-quarries and old 
 Cornish mansions a thousand feet above the sea- 
 level mixed themselves with the daily humdrum of 
 fancy bread and lump-sugar. She found herself 
 speculating upon what might have been her fate had 
 Mr. Penruth been attracted by her charms instead 
 of Barbara's ; whether she could ever have brought 
 herself to look over his awkwardness of gait and 
 figure, and to accept the mansion and the quarries. 
 
 She had decided that these drawbacks were not 
 unconquerable, and she was already in imagination 
 reigning over the Cornish household and riding 
 thoroughbred horses over the Cornish moors, when 
 she pulled herself up suddenly at the post-office, 
 and came down with a tremendous drop from the 
 airy realms of fancy to the solid world of fact. 
 
 'Gracious!' she exclaimed inwardly, 'Barbara's 
 letter!' 
 
 Barbara's letter ! Where was Barbara's letter '? 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 194 BARBARA. 
 
 The joy or woe of two lives hangs upon that sheet 
 of flimsy paper. The fate of two strong and stead- 
 fast souls has been trusted to this butterfly creature, 
 and the result is ruin. 
 
 Flossie searched her reticule and turned her 
 pocket inside out in vain. The letter was gone. 
 She turned hastily and hurried back ever so far, 
 perusing the pavement with her eyes. In vain. She 
 asked the most unlikely people if they had picked 
 up a letter. She looked down the gratings before 
 her favourite shop-windows ; she went back to the 
 baker's, the butcher's, the grocer's, and fluttered 
 those respectable tradespeople by her eager in- 
 quiries ; but there was no trace of Barbara's letter. 
 That message of faithful love, that fond despairing 
 appeal to a lover's heart, had disappeared as com- 
 pletely from Camberwell as if the winds of heaven 
 had taken pity upon the writer and wafted it away 
 to the Indian seas. 
 
 'What shall I do?' thought Flossie, standing 
 on the pavement, staring wildly round in an agony 
 of remorse. * Barbara would never forgive me, if 
 she knew how careless I have been.'
 
 FLOSSIE GOES TO THE POST. 195 
 
 But Barbara ought to know, and Barbara could 
 easily write another letter, argued reason ; and 
 Flossie went slowly homewards, framing the apolo- 
 getic speech in which she should confess her sin. 
 
 She felt deeply humiliated. She, who had been 
 wont to assert herself as the one business-like in- 
 dividual in the family, to be thus convicted of dire 
 carelessness ! "Where henceforward would be her 
 pretensions ? She had yielded the palm to Barbara 
 in beauty and in intellectual acquirement, but she 
 had asserted herself always as the sole proprietor of 
 practical wisdom. She walked slowly into the sun- 
 shiny kitchen — where Mrs. Trevornock was setting 
 the teatray, while Amelia hearthstoned the back 
 premises with a view to all-pervading spotlessness 
 on the coming Sabbath — and sank exhausted into a 
 chair by the open window, where the vine, which 
 never in its life had grown an eatable grape, pushed 
 in its leaves and tendrils so prettily. She had a 
 guilty look, which struck her mother at once. 
 
 'I hope you haven't forgotten anything,' cried 
 Mrs. Trevornock, as she warmed the teapot. 
 
 ' No, ma dear.' *
 
 196 BARBARA. 
 
 ' You called at the butcher's ?' 
 
 ^Yes.' 
 
 * And you have brought the pekoe, and a teacake 
 for Barbara's tea ?' 
 
 ' Yes ; here's the teacake. I'll toast it if you 
 like.' 
 
 ' No ; you look tired, and you're as pale as a 
 ghost. Was it very warm out of doors ?' 
 
 ' It was — for me. It's no use trying to hide it, 
 mother,' cried Flossie, in a gush of candour; 'I've 
 done something dreadful.' 
 
 ' You've lost my change !' exclaimed Mrs. Tre- 
 vornock, horror-stricken. 
 
 'Change, indeed!' cried Flossie; 'why, there 
 was only sevenpence-halfpenny left after I'd paid 
 for everything. It's much worse than that.' 
 
 'You horrid girl, how you are torturing me!' 
 said the aggrieved mother, letting the kettle boil 
 over unheeded, to the detriment of a newly whitened 
 hearth. ' For mercy's sake speak out, and have 
 done with it !' 
 
 ' I've lost Barbara's Indian letter.' 
 
 ' Lost it ?'
 
 FLOSSIE GOES TO THE POST. 197 
 
 * Yes ; I must have dropped it into an area, or 
 let it fly away into the clouds. It's gone.' 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock looked fully alive to the enor- 
 mity of the offence, but she answered not a word. 
 Profound thoughtfulness took possession of her. 
 She had just enough consciousness of common 
 things to snatch up the kettle, which was now 
 making a Great Geyser of itself, and to fill the 
 teapot ; hut, for the rest, her thoughts were far 
 away. 
 
 ^You might say something sympathetic, ma,' 
 observed Flossie, aggrieved by this silence ; ' I 
 shall have a nice scolding from Bab. Her inmost 
 thoughts bandied up and down the Walworth-road 
 and circulated all over Camberwell ! I'm sure I 
 don't know however I shall bring myself to tell 
 her.' 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock sat down, and looked at her 
 daughter doubtfully. 
 
 ' Suppose you were not to say anything about it, 
 Flora ?' she said. 
 
 *Why, then poor George Leland would be lan- 
 guishing for a letter — '
 
 198 BARBARA. 
 
 ' Flossie,' interrupted Mrs. Trevornock solemnly, 
 * there are reasons why it would be much better for 
 Barbara that Captain Leland never got that letter. 
 I don't mind trusting you, for you have plenty of 
 common sense, and know how to look at things in a 
 practical way.' 
 
 * Well, ma, I am not ridiculously romantic, like 
 Bab ; and though I am only eighteen, I have some 
 knowledge of the world.' 
 
 * An enormous amount for so young a girl,' said 
 Mrs. Trevornock approvingly. ^Well, dear, I am 
 sorry to say poor Captain Leland, who was always 
 so gentlemanlike and so kind, and whom I really 
 loved, has got into some dreadful trouble — whether 
 it is gambling or something worse, I don't know, and 
 Heaven only knows how it may end — and he has 
 had the proper feeling to write to Barbara, releasing 
 her from her engagement — ' 
 
 'Very nice in him,' said Flossie. 'And that is 
 why Barbara has been breaking her heart ?' 
 
 * Yes, poor darling child ! And, in spite of all 
 I could say, she has been foolish enough to write 
 and tell him that nothing can change her love for
 
 FLOSSIE GOES TO THE POST. 199 
 
 him, and that she will be true to him through evil 
 report and good report — ' 
 
 * And that is the letter I have managed to lose !' 
 cried Flossie, jumping up, and executing her favourite 
 pas seiil round the kitchen. 'Why, what a clever 
 girl I am ! I really thought I had been stupid for 
 once in my life, and behold, my stupidity was a 
 stroke of genius ! Give me your benediction, mother. 
 Bab shall marry the slate-quarries, and you and I 
 will walk in silk attire all the rest of our lives.' 
 
 * Flora, Flora, how wild you are !' 
 
 'I am only pleased with my unconscious inge- 
 nuity. To think that I, who never lost a letter 
 before in my life, should go and lose just that one ! 
 I sha'n't say one word to Bab. The Captain will 
 think she accepts his release, and he will consider 
 the engagement at an end. And Barbara will be 
 Mrs. Penruth, and one of the richest women in 
 Cornwall; and all my doing ! And now let me toast 
 the teacake, and get her tray ready. Poor dear pet, 
 she shall have a nice tea !' 
 
 And the mother and sister, who were dealing 
 with Barbara's fate as if they were wiser than Provi-
 
 200 BARBABA. 
 
 dence, and knew better how to regulate life and its 
 chances, thought they were making some amends for 
 their duplicity by small attentions and trivial tender- 
 nesses, such as are given to a sick child as compen- 
 sation for weary hours and nauseous medicines.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 SILENCE. 
 
 Her letter on its way to India, as she supposed, 
 Barbara began to count the days which must pass 
 before she could receive her lover's reply ; and the 
 fond expectation of this answer, which would doubt- 
 less reward her faith by the assurance of George 
 Leland's unchanged and unchangeable love, cheered 
 and comforted her. She revived and bloomed again, 
 like a flower which has bent to the storm, and 
 seemed almost the old, bright, happy Barbara in the 
 small family circle ; whereat her mother and Flossie 
 concluded that the barb had never gone deep into 
 her heart, that she had liked Captain Leland only 
 because he was at hand to be liked, and that she 
 had a stock of affection ready to be transferred to a 
 more worthy object. 
 
 A blank and monotonous tranquillity character- 
 ised the period of falling leaves and fading flowers in
 
 202 BARBABA. 
 
 South-lane. The angular Cornishman had gone 
 back to his moor and his slate-quarries, disgusted by 
 Barbara's incivility, no doubt, as Flossie remarked 
 complainingly on several occasions. 
 
 ' The very first influential friend we ever had,' 
 grumbled the damsel, * and Bab must needs make 
 herself disagreeable to him. A man who could get 
 endless orders for the theatres.' 
 
 ' I feel convinced that he has no more influence 
 at the theatres than you have, Flossie,' protested 
 Barbara. * He bought all those tickets.' 
 
 ' All the more to his credit if he did. It proves 
 that he has a generous disposition, and that he 
 ought to be cultivated. Yet you must needs snub 
 him shamefully. And now he has gone back to 
 Cornwall, and we shall never see him again.' 
 
 ' I devoutly hope we sha'n't,' said Bab. 
 
 But in this hope Barbara was disappointed, as 
 in that fonder hope of a speedy reply from her lover. 
 The year waned ; the leafy groves of Camberwell 
 grew bleak and bare ; the friendly muffin-man loomed 
 through the mists of afternoon ; the yellow gaslight 
 flared against a background of brown fog, and Mrs.
 
 SILENCE. 203 
 
 Trevornock's parlours put on their cosy winter aspect. 
 The sofa was wheeled to the fireside ; the round 
 table drawn nearer the hearth ; the wide French 
 window shrouded with warm curtains ; and a sense 
 of homeliness and comfort and love and union grew 
 stronger with the lengthening of the winter nights, 
 since darkness and the shutting out of the external 
 world seemed to draw mother and daughters, and 
 even the faithful and melodious serving-maid, nearer 
 together. 
 
 Yet there was a discordant note in their music. 
 Barbara w^as not herself; Barbara, bravely though 
 she bore her trouble, was evidently unhappy. No 
 answer had come to her letter — that frank and gene- 
 rous letter, in which she had, as it were, flung her- 
 self into her lover's arms, thrown herself almost at 
 his feet, setting at naught the world and the world's 
 good word for his sake. There had been plenty of 
 time for his reply, but he had not answered her. 
 Barbara accepted his silence as the admission of his 
 inconstancy. His heart had gone from her. It would 
 have been useless, painful, perhaps, for him to reply 
 to her letter. What could he say ? ' My dear, you
 
 204 BARBARA. 
 
 are very generous, and I thank you for the assur- 
 ance of your love. Unhappily I have fallen in love 
 with some one else, and am only embarrassed by 
 your amiable constancy.' No, it was better for him 
 to leave her foolish letter unanswered, since he could 
 say nothing which would not be more or less dis- 
 creditable to him and humiliating to her. 
 
 So while he was the real offender, her shame and 
 remorse were as profound as if the sin had been hers. 
 She despised herself for having written that letter. 
 She ought to have accepted the annulment of her 
 engagement without a word. He had wished to be 
 free, and he had told her so. Her place was to have 
 bowed to his decision. All those fine phrases in 
 which he had enveloped the one plain fact of his 
 inconstancy meant nothing, and she ought to have 
 so understood them. 
 
 ' I was very foolish ; I knew so little of the world,' 
 she told herself, in deep abasement. * And he seemed 
 so fond of me ; we were so happy. I thought he 
 loved me as intensely as I loved him. How could 
 I tell that his love would last such a short time? 
 How pale he was that day on the ship, when he
 
 SILENCE. 205 
 
 held me to his heart as if he could not part with 
 me ! His eyes had a despairing look. If that was 
 not love, true faithful love — God, was it only 
 seeming ? Can he hold another woman to his heart, 
 look into other eyes, and in one short year — ' 
 
 These were Barbara's thoughts in many a solitary 
 walk up and down the narrow gravel path in the 
 bare wintry garden. She liked to be alone with her 
 trouble, and had taken to avoiding Flossie's society. 
 She had to fight with her great grief, and conquer it, 
 if she could. She had abandoned all hope of a reply 
 to her letter. There could be no delay in such a 
 matter. A letter of that kind must be answered at 
 once, or not at all. She made up her mind that all 
 was ended between her and George Leland. If they 
 were ever to meet again, it would be as strangers. 
 They would pass each other in the street, perhaps, 
 without a word, with only one swift glance of horri- 
 fied recognition, and then carefully averted eyes. 
 
 ' my love, I have loved you so ! I thought you 
 so entirely my own !' she said to herself. ' I thought 
 we were to live and die together, and lie side by side 
 in the grave. And now it is all over and ended, and
 
 206 BAKBARA. 
 
 you look back perhaps and wonder how you could 
 ever have liked me.' 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock and Flossie were more than 
 usually affectionate and considerate in their treat- 
 ment of Barbara, but neither dared to intrude upon 
 her grief. Flossie affected an abnormal gaiety, and 
 made occasional sprightly allusions to the man in 
 Cornwall^ his estates, and his Opera-tickets, and his 
 evident admiration of Barbara ; but these being re- 
 ceived by her sister with an icy coldness, she was 
 not'encouraged to enlarge upon the theme. Neither 
 mother nor daughter breathed Captain Leland's 
 name. They knew they had done wrong, yet they 
 hugged themselves in the belief that they had been 
 guilty of a very small evil in order to bring about a 
 very large good. Barbara's pallid cheeks and heavy 
 eyes were an ever-present reproach, but her cheek 
 might have been as pale and her eye as dull if her 
 letter had been duly posted ; for who could tell what 
 trouble the Captain's reply might have brought her ? 
 And to sanction her marriage with a disgraced man 
 would have been to doom her to pale cheeks and 
 careworn looks for the rest of her life. Desperate
 
 SILENCE. 207 
 
 ills must have desperate remedies. Mrs. Trevornock 
 felt that she had done her duty as a mother in con- 
 cealing the loss of the letter. 
 
 Youth and health are possessions not easily 
 squandered. Before the winter was half over Bar- 
 bara began to recover, physically, from the blow that 
 had fallen so heavily on heart and mind. She had 
 not ceased to grieve in silence ; she was not less un- 
 happy ; but the bloom came back to her cheek and 
 the lustre to her eye. She was more like the old 
 Barbara in that pre-Adamite period of life before the 
 idea of a partial boarder had entered Mrs. Trevor- 
 nock's mind. She was able to smile at Flossie's 
 pertness; she was loving and companionable as of 
 old with mother and sister. 
 
 Peace was restored to the family circle.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A HANDSOME OFFER. 
 
 Just at this time, when London days were shortest, 
 and London fogs thickest, the gaunt Cornishman re- 
 appeared in South-lane. He dropped in one Decem- 
 ber day between the lights, when Mrs. Trevornock 
 and her daughters were sitting by the cosy fire, 
 chattering gaily in the leisure interval when it was 
 too dark to work and too early for candles and tea. 
 He had come up for the Cattle Show, he informed 
 Mrs. Trevornock when he had shaken hands with 
 the three ladies — not because he cared about such 
 things, but only because a neighbour of his, living 
 within twenty miles or so of Penruth Place, was 
 coming, and wanted his company. 
 
 ' I'm glad you don't care about looking at poor 
 ill-used over-fed beasts,' said Flossie. ' You would 
 have sunk in my estimation if you had. I'm sure 
 no client of pa's would have such bad taste.' 
 
 * By the bye, how is Mr. Trevornock ?' inquired
 
 A HANDSOME OFFER. 209 
 
 the client. ' I only came to London last night, and 
 haven't had time to call upon him.' 
 
 The mother and daughters glanced at each other 
 in serio-comic embarrassment. It was nearly two 
 months since either of the girls had seen her father, 
 and then Flossie had paid him a solitary visit, Bar- 
 bara keeping aloof, lest she should hear her faithless 
 lover abused. 
 
 ' Our parent was in excellent health when we last 
 heard of him,' Flossie answered boldly. 
 
 Mr. Penruth sat in his corner between the fire- 
 2)lace and the folding-doors, and said very little. 
 He did not shine in conversation ; and on this occa- 
 sion he flung the responsibility of entertaining him 
 upon his hostess and her daughters. He could just 
 see Barbara's clear-cut face in the firelight, and it 
 was sufficient pleasure for him to sit there and con- 
 template her beauty. Flossie watched him from her 
 place in the shadow behind her sister. 
 
 'I suppose Cornwall was looking very wintry 
 when you left ?' said Mrs. Trevornock. 
 
 ' It was bleak and dreary ; but we rarely have 
 snow so far west.' 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 210 BARBARA. 
 
 * How nice !' 
 
 ' Yes, it's a pleasant climate, if you don't mind a 
 good deal of rain.' 
 
 'I adore rain,' cried Flossie, determined to be 
 civil. ' It's so cool, and clean, and refreshing.' 
 
 'Are you near the sea?' inquired Mrs. Trevor- 
 nock, casting about in her mind for any stray crumb 
 of conversation to oifer a man of v^hose surroundings 
 and character she was painfully ignorant. 
 
 * Seven or eight miles.' 
 
 ' Too far for a walk, unless one were a very good 
 walker,' speculated Mrs. Trevornock. 
 
 * I often walk to the coast.' 
 
 * Ah, then you are a good walker.' 
 
 *My quarries are on the way to the sea. I go 
 there sometimes on business.' 
 
 His quarries ! Flossie and her mother thrilled 
 at the word. It was the first time he had mentioned 
 the quarries in their hearing. 
 
 'Do you attend to the qu-quarries yourself?' 
 faltered Mrs. Trevornock, obliged to make her con- 
 versation interrogative, since the man gave her so 
 little assistance.
 
 A HANDSOME OFFER. 211 
 
 * Not entirely. My brother Mark does the greater 
 part of the work. He is manager — pays the men, 
 keeps the books, writes letters — an excellent man of 
 business.' 
 
 'What a comfort for you!' ejaculated Mrs. Tre- 
 vornock gushingly. 
 
 *Yes; I don't know what I should do without 
 Mark. I hate pens and ink. I like walking or 
 riding about my land and looking after that : but 
 the superintendence of the quarries would be a 
 nuisance to me ; and I shouldn't like to trust a 
 stranger.' 
 
 *And your sister?' pursued Mrs. Trevornock, 
 feeling that the conversation was getting interesting, 
 and that her guest was warming a little. ' What a 
 comfort she must be to you !' 
 
 ' She keeps my house,' replied Mr. Penruth 
 curtly; and the talk came to a dead stop. 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock had been carrying on a little 
 argument with herself all the time she talked. She 
 wanted her tea desperately, so no doubt did those 
 dear girls. And Mr. Penruth evidently was in no 
 hurry to go. She ought to offer him some kind of
 
 212 BARBARA. 
 
 refreshment, and she had nothing hut tea- to offer. 
 She must face the situation boldly. 
 
 ' We are just going to have tea,' she began 
 modestly, ' and T should like to ask you to join us ; 
 but'of course you dine late, and — ' 
 
 'I dine at any time I find convenient, when I 
 am away, from home,* answered Penruth. ' I had 
 some cold beef at Baker-street in the middle of the 
 day. I shall be very glad to take tea with you.' 
 
 Lowly-minded creature ! The owner of lands 
 and quarries to confess so simply to a snack of cold 
 beef and bread, washed down perhaps by unpre- 
 tending beer ! 
 
 * That's very friendly of you,' said Mrs. Trevor- 
 nock ; and then she rang the bell with a grand air, 
 intending to slip out of the room before the tray was 
 brought, to see that everything was in perfect order. 
 
 * Have you been to the theatres lately ?' asked 
 Mr. Penruth, when he was alone with the two girls. 
 
 ' No,' sighed Flossie. ' We have not many friends 
 like you, with the entree to all the theatres and the 
 disposition to give us pleasure.' 
 
 ' Then I hope you will allow me to send you
 
 A HANDSOME OFFER. 213 
 
 some tickets before I leave town. Is there anything 
 you particularly wish to see ?' 
 
 Flossie named three plays, to see any one of 
 which would be rapture. 
 
 ' And you, Miss Trevornock ?' asked the Cornish- 
 man, determined to extort speech of some kind from 
 this beautiful statue. ' Is there nothing you wish to 
 see at all the London theatres ?' 
 
 ' No,' answered Barbara, ' I don't care about 
 theatres.' 
 
 ' Now you know, Barbara, that is not true,' cried 
 Flossie ; ' only a year or so ago you doted on plays. 
 You were never happier than when you were at a 
 play or an opera.' 
 
 * Times change and people too,' said Bab ; ' I am 
 quite different now,' 
 
 * So early tired of the pleasures of life !' exclaimed 
 ]\Ir. Penruth ; ' that is almost a miracle.' 
 
 * Some people tire sooner than others, perhaps,' 
 said Bab gravely. ' I have had enough pleasure of 
 that kind.' 
 
 ' Well, I shall send the tickets, and I hope your 
 mother and sister will tempt you to go with them.'
 
 214 BABBARA. 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock returned, and the teatray was 
 brought in immediately afterwards — the most delicate 
 bread-and-butter, a shining teapot, the best cups and 
 saucers — a general air of elegance which Flossie felt 
 was too good for that rough-looking Cornishman, 
 however rich and great he might be in his own 
 county. 
 
 They sat round the fire and drank strong tea, 
 and seemed as friendly a party as in the vanished 
 days, when George Leland had sat where Mr. Pen- 
 ruth was sitting now. But 0, how different their 
 talk was ! In those old days everybody had had too 
 much to say. There had been laughter and frolic ; 
 grave talk of that distant Indian world which the 
 soldier knew so well ; talk of men and of books, of 
 art, poetry, music; mere nonsense talk also, the 
 overflow of happy minds unburdened by a care. To 
 night it was up-hill work to maintain any kind of 
 conversation. Barbara would take no trouble; 
 Flossie's pert chatter sounded out of tune; the 
 Cornishman lapsed into silence after every little 
 spurt of communicativeness. 
 
 *I don't think I could endure life with such a
 
 A HANDSOME OFFER. 215 
 
 dull man,' mused Flossie, ' if he were ever so nch : 
 unless I could be the kind of wife one reads about in 
 fashionable novels, who only meets her husband, by 
 accident, once or twice a week on the stairs.' 
 
 Mr. Penruth stayed till nine o'clock, and seemed 
 unconscious that time hung heavily in his society. 
 He said what he wanted to say, and no more. He 
 looked at Barbara ; he smiled grimly once or twice 
 at Flossie's impertinences ; he was civil, and even 
 courteous, in his wooden way, to Mrs. Trevornock. 
 For the rest, he seemed a creature hewn clumsily out 
 of a block of wood— a being without feelings or senti- 
 ments, or the capacity for intense passion, whether 
 of grief or anger, or love or hate. 
 
 ' I shall be stopping in town for a week or so,' he 
 said, when he had risen to take leave, ' and I shall 
 call again some afternoon, if you won't consider me 
 an intruder.' 
 
 An intruder? As if the owner of lands and 
 quarries could intrude ! Mrs. Trevornock declared 
 that she and her daughters would be flattered and 
 delighted by Mr. Penruth's visits. 
 
 ' mother, how dull he is !' cried Flossie, with
 
 216 BARBARA. 
 
 a desperate yawn, when Amelia had opened the hall- 
 door for the visitor, and the winter night had swal- 
 lowed him up. ' What a weary evening it has been !' 
 ' Nonsense, Flossie ; he has lived a great deal in 
 the country, and he is of a retiring disposition. But 
 I am sure he is clever ; I can see it in his fore- 
 head.' 
 
 * There's a good deal of bumpiness above his eye- 
 brows ; but he is the dullest man I ever met. Cer- 
 tainly Captain Leland is the only other man I know 
 much about, and I must say that any comparison 
 between the two is vastly to Mr. Penruth's dis- 
 advantage.' 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock rewarded her daughter with an 
 awful frown. Bab had gone into the next room, and 
 was playing to herself softly in the glimmer of light 
 that came through the half- open folding-door, play- 
 ing one of Mendelssohn's saddest melodies. 
 
 'Mother,' whispered Flossie, 'I'm afraid it will 
 never do. Bab can't bear him. Don't ask her to 
 marry him.' 
 
 * Why, Flossie, what nonsense you talk ! How 
 do we know he is going to make her an offer ? Do
 
 A HANDSOME OFFEE. 217 
 
 you think I would urge a child of mine to marry 
 against her own inclination ? But I should like to 
 see Barbara in a grand position. I think she was 
 born for it. She would adorn any circle ; she would 
 be a noble mistress for a fine old house.' 
 
 ' Like that house on the Cornish moors. If she 
 could only forget her Captain !' 
 
 * She has seemed happier lately ; quite her old 
 self.' 
 
 ' On the surface. But I'm afraid she has not left 
 off regretting him.' 
 
 This conversation was carried on in whispers 
 while that pathetic strain of Mendelssohn's rose and 
 fell in the next room. Poor Mrs. Trevornock went 
 to bed sorely distressed in mind. She loved her 
 daughter with a passionate love, capable of self-sacri- 
 fice in the highest degree. Her ambitious views did 
 not include one selfish desire. That a rich marriage 
 for Barbara would insure prosperity for herself, peace 
 and security for her declining years, hardly entered 
 into her thoughts. She wanted Barbara to have 
 wealth and honour ; she wanted Barbara's beauty to 
 win some great prize in the lottery of fortune.
 
 218 
 
 BARBAEA. 
 
 Bravely as she had confronted the difficulties of life 
 on a very small income, she had a thorough apprecia- 
 tion of the difference between wealth and poverty. 
 She knew how hard it was to be harassed by sordid 
 cares, to have to contrive and study ways and means 
 unceasingly in order to eke out a scanty pittance and 
 keep clear of debt. It would be bliss to her to see 
 her favourite child lifted at once and for ever from 
 this dismal swamp of poverty. 
 
 ' And how much she could do for poor little 
 Flossie!' thought the mother; 'there would be a 
 home for her always in Cornwall, if Barbara were 
 married to Mr. Penruth. And, by and by, when I 
 am dead and gone — ' 
 
 Eeflections of this kind occupied most of Mrs. 
 Trevornock's waking hours after that visit of Vyvyan 
 Penruth's. It was very clear to her that he had 
 fallen desperately in love with Barbara, wooden as he 
 was. Tickets for the most fashionable theatres 
 rained upon the little family after that December 
 evening. Barbara at first refused to go, and only 
 yielded at sight of her mother's tears. 
 
 'If you set your face against all pleasure and
 
 A HANDSOME OFFER. 219 
 
 amusement you will make me absolutely miserable,' 
 remonstrated Mrs. TreYornock. 
 
 * Then I will go, mother. I will do nothing to 
 make you miserable.' 
 
 So Barbara went, and enjoyed the play, escaping 
 for a little while from the sad world of her own 
 thoughts. 
 
 ' Why should I not try to be happy]?' she argued 
 with herself. ' He is happy, no doubt, with his last 
 new love. Let me imitate him, and learn to forget.' 
 
 Mr. Penruth was always in attendance. He sat 
 at the back of the box, and pretended to be interested 
 in the play, of which he only obtained a diagonal and 
 strictly limited view ; he conducted the ladies to a 
 cab, for which he made a point of paying, and he was 
 so liberal in his payment as to secure unbounded 
 civility from the cabman. 
 
 ' It is very nice to be paid for in this way,' said 
 Flossie ; * but I think Mr. Penruth shows a little too 
 plainly that he- knows we are poor.' 
 
 *How can he help knowing that,' exclaimed 
 Barbara bitterly, ' when he knows our father ?' 
 
 *He may be deceived as to papa's character,
 
 220 BARBARA. 
 
 and believe him a most estimable man,' retorted 
 Flossie. 
 
 Mr. Penruth stayed in London nearly a month, 
 came often to South-lane, and saw Mrs. Trevornock 
 and her daughters several times at the theatre. He 
 became as intimate with them as it was in his 
 nature to be with any one ; and they grew used Jo 
 him and his ungainly bearing, his wooden ways. 
 He seemed to them dull and harmless — a man not 
 easily pleased or easily offended, but once impressed, 
 impressed deeply. His admiration of Barbara was 
 as respectful as it was undisguised. He talked of 
 going back to the west daily, yet did not go. He 
 had apparently very little reason for remaining in 
 London, except the pleasure he derived from his 
 visits to South-lane. 
 
 On the day before that which he had finally 
 fixed for his return, Barbara received a brief note 
 from her father ; an event of such rare occurrence 
 as to cause much wonderment in the small family 
 circle. 
 
 *Dear Barbara, — Come and see me to-morrow
 
 A HANDSOME OFFER. 221 
 
 at twelve, without your sister. I want to talk to 
 you about a very serious matter. — Yours affection- 
 ately, T. T.' 
 
 'Without your sister I' exclaimed Flossie. 'What 
 a base return for my attentions ! Life must have 
 taken an extraordinary turn for papa to want to see 
 either of us. His inclination generally points the 
 other way.' 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock and Flossie both looked at Bar- 
 bara. Barbara sat with the open letter in her hand, 
 her eyelids lowered, and a resolute expression about 
 her set lips. Flossie and her mother glanced at each 
 other significantly. They had a shrewd suspicion as 
 to the subject of the interview which Mr. Trevor- 
 nock asked for. 
 
 'You'll go, dear, of course,' said Mrs. Trevor- 
 nock. 
 
 ' I suppose I must, mother.' 
 
 ' Yes, dear. I wish Flossie were not excluded. 
 But she can go as far as Gray's Inn with you, and 
 wait for you at a pastrycook's.' 
 
 ' I hate waiting at a pastrycook's !' ejaculated
 
 222 BARBARA. 
 
 Flossie. ' It is tlie most abominable thing in life. 
 One feels oneself an encumbrance directly one has 
 eaten one's bun. And after one has read the play- 
 bills there is nothing to divert one's mind.' 
 
 'Barbara cannot go to town alone,' said Mrs. 
 Trevornock. 
 
 * No. I suppose I must play propriety. To- 
 morrow in papa's letter means to-day. We have 
 only time to dress and start.' 
 
 At eleven the two girls were on their way to 
 Gray's Inn. It was a cold bright morning, and 
 they decided upon walking the whole way, always 
 glad to husband the mother's scanty store. It was 
 like the widow's cruse of oil or the manna in the 
 desert, just enough and nothing over. The slender 
 purse had never failed yet, but had often been on 
 the very edge of emptiness. 
 
 The sisters had never talked together so freely 
 as of old since the sudden end of Barbara's engage- 
 ment. They seldom spoke of Mr. Penruth, save 
 when Flossie broke out into enthusiastic praise]]of 
 his liberality, and then Barbara was resolutely 
 silent.
 
 A HANDSOME OFFEK. 223 
 
 ' I wonder what papa can have to say to you ?' 
 Flossie speculated, as they crossed Blackfriars 
 Bridge — that old bridge, which was narrow and 
 crowded and dirty, and which led by a dingy Far- 
 ringdon-street to a hilly Holborn. 
 
 * Ah, what, indeed !' said Barbara carelessly. 
 ' You don't seem a bit interested.' 
 
 * Why should I be interested ? He can tell me 
 nothing that will make me happy.' 
 
 ' Perhaps some one has left you a fortune.' 
 
 * That is as probable as the play we saw last 
 night.' 
 
 ' Ah, if things would only happen as pleasantly 
 in real life as they do in the fifth act of a play !' 
 sighed Flossie. 
 
 Barbara left her companion at a dismal little 
 confectioner's in Holborn, a shop where Flossie 
 might sit for half an hour with very little fear of 
 being seen by many people. The girls had refreshed 
 themselves with buns there often on their way 
 from their father's office, and the woman who kept 
 the shop was well disposed towards them. 
 
 Mr. Maulford opened the door, just as if he had
 
 224 BABBARA. 
 
 been on the watch for Barbara. He devoured her 
 face with his great red-brown eyes, eager to read the 
 secrets of her soul. 
 
 'You are quite a stranger, Miss Trevornock,' he 
 said, 'and I am sorry to see you not looking so 
 well as when we last met.' 
 
 ' Is my father at home ?' 
 
 ' Yes ; and expecting you. Mr. Penruth was 
 here yesterday afternoon.' 
 
 He opened the door, and a voice from within 
 called ' Barbara.' 
 
 For the first time since Bab could remember, 
 her father rose to welcome her, and kissed her with 
 some semblance of affection, instead of allowing 
 himself to be kissed with his usual business-like air. 
 
 ' Sit down, my dear. How pale you are look- 
 ing ! Aren't you well ?' 
 
 ' Pretty well, thank you, papa.' 
 
 ' Mother well ?' 
 
 ' Very well.' 
 
 ' Any news from the west ?' 
 
 ' Ma had a letter from aunt Sophia the week 
 before last.'
 
 A HANDSOME OFFER. 225 
 
 ' Humph ! She was well, I suppose ?' 
 
 ' She had just had one of her nervous attacks.' 
 
 ' Nervous fiddlesticks ! If she had to work for 
 
 her living as I do we should hear nothing of nervous 
 
 attacks. Stuff and nonsense !' 
 
 Barbara contemplated her catskin muff. Mr. 
 
 Trevornock trimmed his favourite nail. 
 
 •'Well, my dear, I've some good news for you.' 
 
 * I'm very glad of that.' 
 
 * I hear from Flora that everything is off between 
 you and Captain What's-his-uame.' 
 
 ' Captain Leland. Yes; all is ended between us.' 
 ' Very wise on both sides. It would have been 
 a wretched marriage for you. I told you so at the 
 time. I have received an offer for your hand, Bar- 
 bara, from a gentleman of old family and of great 
 wealth. Of course you know whom I mean. Mr. 
 Penruth has behaved in the most straightforward 
 manner. He came to me yesterday afternoon, told 
 me in his plain-sailing way that he had fallen des- 
 perately in love with you ; had admired and loved 
 you from the first day he saw you, by accident, in 
 this office — a lucky accident for you, by Jove ! He 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 BARBAEA. 
 
 asked my permission to make you an offer ; and he 
 told me what he would do for you if jouv answer 
 were favourable.' 
 
 ' How do you mean, papa ?' 
 
 ' I mean that he is prepared to make a splendid 
 settlement. He knows what a hard fight I have 
 had — that my practice is hardly good enough to 
 enable me to keep an office over my head and a 
 decent coat on my back — and that your mother is 
 chiefly dependent on my relations for her income. 
 He offers to settle an estate worth six hundred a 
 year upon you. You could afford to give your 
 mother three, and yet be rich enough to gratify 
 every fancy and extravagance a young woman need 
 indulge in. Six hundred a year ! I have never 
 been able to earn as much by my profession, toil as 
 I might. And you would have six hundred a year 
 pin-money — money you could spend how you pleased 
 and on whom you pleased. I hope you consider 
 that a generous offer.' 
 
 'I do, papa; a very generous offer. Six hun- 
 dred a year as the price of a penniless girl. It is 
 a splendid offer.'
 
 A HANDSOME OFFER. 227 
 
 'I sliould think so. Do you know the capital 
 required to produce six hundred a year, even at five 
 per cent ? — and this would be derived from land, 
 which produces less than three.' 
 
 ' Without any elaborate calculation I should say 
 twelve thousand pounds,' answered Barbara coldly. 
 *I had no idea that anybody would ever think me 
 worth twelve thousand pounds.' 
 
 ' But that is not all. I have no doubt I could 
 induce him to make a settlement giving you the 
 greater part of his estate after his death, supposing 
 he died childless ; if you had children, of course 
 your eldest son would inherit the bulk of the pro- 
 perty.' 
 
 * Don't enter into details, papa. I am quite 
 ready to acknowledge Mr. Penruth's generosity; 
 but as I cannot accept his offer it is not worth while 
 talking any more about it.' 
 
 ' You cannot accept !' cried Mr. Trevornock 
 angrily. ' Are you a fool or a madwoman ? Do 
 you understand what you are refusing ?' 
 
 ' Perfectly.' 
 
 ' Great God !' cried the solicitor, bursting with
 
 228 BARBARA. 
 
 indignation, * was there ever such folly ! Here is a 
 penniless girl, a girl dependent on the benevolence 
 of aunts and uncles who may die to-morrow ; a girl 
 who has nothing to look forward to but the work- 
 house ; and she coolly refuses one of the richest 
 men in Cornwall — a man who worships the ground 
 she walks on, and is ready to make the most liberal 
 
 provision for her future ! I — I — I am ' here Mr. 
 
 Trevornock descended to unpolite language — ' if I 
 ever heard of such outrageous stupidity !' 
 
 ' I daresay I am very stupid,' Barbara answered 
 coldly, ' and that if I were wise I should marry a 
 man I do not love, and perjure myself at God's 
 altar.' 
 
 'Nobody asks you to love him. All you have 
 to do is to marry him, and do your duty by him as 
 a virtuous wife ; and I should think that ought to 
 come easy to any well-brought-up young woman.' 
 
 * It would not come easy to me ; and I will not 
 make my life a lie for all the good that wealth could 
 bring me and mine.' 
 
 'A nice daughter!' ejaculated Mr. Trevornock ; 
 ' a piece of pampered selfishness ! Your mother
 
 A HANDSOME OFFEE. 229 
 
 may work her fingers to the hone — she and your 
 sister may starve or beg in the streets — for all you 
 care.' 
 
 ' I care more than you do, at the worst, father,' 
 said Barbara, confronting him with steady eyes. 
 * If they have to starve or beg, I shall starve or beg 
 with them.' 
 
 ' You might make them happy and comfortable 
 for life, you — consummate minx!' cried the out- 
 raged parent, choking for want of words forcible 
 enough to express his anger. ' Don't let you or 
 your sister come to me any more for money, mind 
 that ! Don't let me hear any of your cursed whining 
 about water-rates or new bonnets. If you come 
 plaguing me any more I'll pitch you both out of 
 window !' 
 
 ' Very well, papa. Henceforward we will try to 
 exist without the few pounds your generosity has 
 bestowed upon us.' 
 
 ' As for your impertinent sister,' cried the soli- 
 citor, lashing himself into a fury, ' don't let her 
 show her face here. The sight of her makes me 
 sick.'
 
 230 BARBAEA. 
 
 ' She shall not trouble you.' 
 
 * If I hear that you are all in the workhouse I 
 sha'n't care a .' 
 
 * Good-bye, father,' said Barbara on the threshold. 
 Mr. Maulford darted from his lurking place to 
 
 open the outer door for her, and to make a second 
 perusal of her countenance. There were no tears 
 in the proud eyes. The face was marble white, and 
 calm as marble. 
 
 * You look faint,' said the articled clerk, linger- 
 ing with his hand upon the latch ; ' let me get you 
 a little water.' 
 
 ' No, thank you ; I am quite well. Open the 
 door, please.' 
 
 Mr. Maulford reluctantly obeyed, looking at 
 Barbara with a familiar compassionateness which 
 made her detest him a little more than usual. 
 
 Half-way down the stairs she met Mr. Penruth 
 coming up. He took both her hands; he looked 
 at her inquiringly, with as much anxiety as his 
 rugged face could express. 
 
 * You have seen your father,' he said. * Has he 
 told you ?'
 
 A HANDSOME OFFER. 231 
 
 * He has told me the honour you have done me. 
 I — I — am sorry I should have been so unlucky as 
 to win your regard, for I cannot return it.' 
 
 ^ Barbara, why answer so quickly ?' 
 
 '•Because I am quite sure of myself. If I were 
 to deliberate for a year I could make no other 
 answer.' 
 
 ' I will not accept such a hasty decision. I 
 shall wait till you change your mind.' 
 
 ' That will never happen. Please let go my 
 hands. I have no doubt that you are, as my father 
 tells me, all that is good and generous ; but I can 
 never be more to you than I am to-day.' 
 
 'I shall wait,' answered Vyvyan Penruth, looking 
 at her with a severe earnestness under the shadow 
 of projecting iron-gray brows ; * the time may come 
 when you will feel the helplessness of your position, 
 and be glad of a strong man's love.' 
 
 ' Good-morning,' said Barbara, as he reluctantly 
 released her hands.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 ' THE LOVE WHICH MAKETH ALL THINGS FOND AND 
 FAIR.' 
 
 It is a hard thing to have those you love against 
 you, and this was what Barbara had to bear after her 
 interview with her father. She was obliged to tell 
 her mother and Flossie the gist of that conversation; 
 and they knew that she had refused the finest estate 
 in Cornwall, and an independent income of six hun- 
 dred a year. It seemed hard, and almost incompre- 
 hensible to them, that she should have so acted. 
 Flossie and her mother held long conferences toge- 
 ther on the subject. They were never tired of ex- 
 patiating upon Barbara's folly. They loved her not 
 the less because she was so foolish ; the mother's 
 heart yearned towards her as of old. But mother 
 and sister were alike convinced that she was flinging 
 away a life of happiness for the sake of indulging 
 vain regrets for a man who had, by his own admis-
 
 LOVE MAKES ALL THINGS FOND AND FAIR. 233 
 
 sion, proved unworthy of her love. She was sacri- 
 ficing the real good of existence to an empty dream. 
 
 * Six hundred a year !' exclaimed Flossie, — * six 
 hundred a year for pocket-money ! Twice the income 
 we have to pay for everything, down to the chimney- 
 sweep ; for even he is too selfish to sweep a chimney 
 for nothing, though I believe the soot is worth ever 
 so much to him ! Six hundred a year ! Just con- 
 sider the gowns, the bonnets, the parasols she might 
 buy herself with half the money, and the good she 
 might do with the other !' 
 
 ' She might help me a little with my rent and 
 taxes,' said Mrs. Trevornock plaintively, ' though 
 Heaven knows I should never be influenced in such 
 a matter by any consideration of my own advantage. 
 But I should be so proud, so happy, to see her well 
 placed in life, to see her sitting in her own carriage.' 
 
 ' And we could go and stay with her at Penruth 
 Place, and wander about the moors. And you would 
 get so strong, mother, in that fine air.' 
 
 ' Yes, it would be delightful,' said Mrs. Trevor- 
 nock, who had been pinned to Camberwell for the 
 last seven years.
 
 234 BARBARA. 
 
 People who have only just enough for bread -and- 
 cheese cannot afford such indulgences as change of 
 ah' and scene. The August emigration of the middle 
 classes does not affect them ; the long vacation brings 
 them no holiday. 
 
 ' It would be very nice,' sighed Mrs. Trevornock. 
 * I have not been to the west since you were born. 
 Your grandmother was kind enough to ask me more 
 than once before she died ; but I thought as I had 
 been there with Mr. T. people might make remarks 
 if I went there without him. And after your grand- 
 mother's death the old house was let to strangers, 
 and your aunt Sophia bought a place near Exeter.' 
 
 ' And I have never seen the house where my 
 father was born,' said Flossie. * That seems hard. 
 Bab was there when she was a little thing in blue 
 shoes. She has a hazy recollection of a garden full 
 of roses, and a land of fatness, where she sat upon 
 people's laps and ate clotted cream and apple-pasty 
 all day long.' 
 
 ' Yes, it was a dear old house. I doubt if Pen- 
 ruth Place is as pretty.' 
 
 Penruth Place was incessantly present to the
 
 LOVE MAKES ALL THINGS FOND AND FAIR. 235 
 
 minds of Mrs. Trevornock and her daughter as the 
 winter wore on. It was what is called an old-fash- 
 ioned winter — a winter in which grim Death sharp- 
 ened his sickle and mowed down tender infancy and 
 feeble age; while sturdy youth and middle life 
 slapped its chest and hectored about the fine season- 
 able weather and the glorious frost which — with the 
 small disadvantage of throwing the bulk of the popu- 
 lation out of work — made the Serpentine a playground 
 for the idle. Coals went up to starvation price, and 
 the little household in South-lane felt the pinch of 
 poverty more keenly than they had done for the last 
 few years. 
 
 Was it that possible six hundred a year, that re- 
 jected offer of Yyvyan Penruth's, which made the 
 petty trials and straits of poverty so hard for Mrs. 
 Trevornock this winter ? She saw herself with her 
 means lessened to the extent of those stray sovereigns 
 which Flossie had hitherto contrived to extort from 
 her father. He had said he would give them nothing, 
 and he was the kind of man to keep his word. There 
 was a tax-paper on the mantelpiece inviting imme- 
 diate attention ; and Mrs. Trevornock knew not
 
 236 BARBARA. 
 
 whence the money to meet that demand could come. 
 She had contrived to keep out of deht, hut to pay her 
 way from day to day had been her utmost achieve- 
 ment. 
 
 The balance between comfort and destitution was 
 so nicely adjusted, that a feather would turn the 
 scale. 
 
 Barbara knew this, and there were times when 
 the thought that she might have made the rest of 
 her mother's life serene and free from care shot like 
 an arrow through her heart. 
 
 ' Darling,' she cried once, throwing her arms 
 round the mother's neck, ' how good you have been 
 to me ! how you have worked and striven to make 
 me happy ! and when I had it in my power to help 
 you, I refused ! It was selfish ; it was horrible ! I 
 hate myself for my ingratitude ; and yet — ' 
 
 ' My dearest, I would never ask you to do any- 
 thing that was not for your own happiness. And if 
 you felt that you could not be happy with Mr. Pen- 
 ruth, you were quite right in saying so. Can you 
 think I would wish you to sacrifice yourself for my 
 sake ? I should like to see you prosperous and well
 
 LOVE MAKES ALL THINGS FOND AND FAIR. 237 
 
 placed in life, and poor Flossie's future more secure ; 
 but at my age it can matter very little what may 
 happen to me. I have lived my life. It has not 
 been a fortunate life, but I have been thrice blest in 
 my two dear daughters.' 
 
 * No, mother, don't say that. I have not been a 
 good daughter ; I am made up of selfishness ; I have 
 thought only of myself. But 0, if you knew how I 
 loved him !' 
 
 Mrs. Trevornock burst into tears. 
 
 * My love, I could not have endured your marry- 
 ing a disgraced man. That would have broken my 
 heart.' 
 
 * Don't speak of him, mother ; it hurts me too 
 much.' 
 
 Very soon after this, the first confidence between 
 Barbara and her mother since Mr. Penruth's offer, 
 Mrs. Trevornock fell ill. She had been slightly out 
 of health all the winter, but had insisted on leading 
 her usual active life, sweeping and dusting and 
 scrubbing in holes and corners, in the unceasing en- 
 deavour to maintain that perfection of brightness 
 and cleanliness which distinguished the little house
 
 238 BARBARA. 
 
 in South-lane from all other houses. But now she 
 broke down altogether, and for the first time within 
 Flossie's memory that expensive luxury, a doctor, 
 appeared at 20 South-lane. He came daily in a 
 smart tilbury with a man in livery, and the two girls 
 felt that the smartness of his equipage would make 
 an appreciable difference in his bill. Hitherto their 
 only medical adviser had been the chemist round the 
 corner by Addington - square ; a valuable man, who 
 had a good old-established pharmacopoeia at his fin- 
 gers' ends, and never did one any harm, even if he 
 sometimes failed in doing good. 
 
 The proprietor of the tilbury did not disguise the 
 fact that Mrs. Trevornock was seriously ill. She had 
 neglected herself for a long time ; she was weak and 
 low to an alarming degree, and required very careful 
 nursing. 
 
 The two girls listened to him with scared faces, 
 hanging upon his words piteously, as if he were the 
 source of good and evil. 
 
 'You may be sure we shall be careful, for we 
 love her so dearly,' faltered Barbara. * Only tell us 
 exactly what to do.'
 
 LOVE MAKES ALL THINGS FOND AND FAIE. 239 
 
 * There is not much to tell,' said Mr. Asplatt — 
 doctor 2^ar excellence — ' quiet, freedom from worry, 
 and a generous diet. That is all I can suggest at 
 present. A little later, when we have brought our 
 dear mamma round, a change to mild sea- air — Yent- 
 nor or Bournemouth, for instance — would be emi- 
 nently desirable — indeed, I may say absolutely 
 necessary.' 
 
 * She must have it,' sighed Barbara, her heart 
 beating tumultuously. * And about the diet — ' 
 
 ' Must be light and nourishing,' replied the 
 doctor. 'Clear soup, white fish, the breast of a 
 boiled chicken, sweetbread plainly dressed, asparagus, 
 or — if you can't get that — a little sea-kale. The 
 diet should be varied and delicate ; and as for 
 wine — ' 
 
 ^ Wine !' echoed Flossie hopelessly. 
 
 Barbara gripped her sister's hand with fingers 
 cold as death. 
 
 ' "What wine would be best ?' she asked the 
 doctor. 
 
 * Two or three glasses of old port would not be 
 too much in the course of the day; but mind the
 
 240 BARBARA. 
 
 wine is thoroughly good and sound — not a heavily- 
 brandied port on any account.' 
 
 ' What is a brandied port ?' wondered Flossie, 
 stricken with a sense of utter helplessness. 
 
 Their adviser encouraged them with a hopeful 
 word or two, and bade them a cheery good-day. He 
 went off so blithely in his tilbury that Flossie hated 
 him as she had rarely hated mortal. 
 
 * What are we to do ?' she asked her sister, with 
 pitiful appeal. 
 
 ' We must save our mother. my dearest, my 
 fondest, I have never loved you half so well as you 
 ought to be loved !' cried Barbara, in a voice half 
 suffocated by sobs. 
 
 * She must not see that you have been crying.' 
 *No, she must not see,' choking down her tears. 
 
 ' I must go to her at once. She must not know 
 what the doctor says. Worry and care must be 
 kept away from her — somehow.' 
 
 * We've had two summonses about that last tax,' 
 said Flossie. * If it isn't paid within — ' 
 
 ' My father must pay it ; he must and shall give 
 us money. I shall write to aunt Sophia this after-
 
 LOVE MAKES ALL THINGS FOND AND FAIK. 241 
 
 noon ; she has always been good to us in the hour 
 of need.' 
 
 * Yes ; she lectures exceedingly, but she does 
 help us. Soup, fish, chicken, asparagus, port, and 
 the tilbury man to be paid afterwards,' said Flossie. 
 * We shall want a fortune.' 
 
 'Will you go to Gray's Inn at once, Flossie, 
 while I nurse mamma and wTite to aunt Sophia ?' 
 
 ' I would rather walk over burning ploughshares ; 
 but I'll go. And if Mr. T. talks about the window, 
 he shall have a bit of my mind. To be married to 
 such a dear woman as my darling mother, and to 
 treat her so ! He must have a heart of stone. What 
 are you going to get for ma's dinner ? The gener- 
 ous diet ought to begin at once, oughtn't it ?' 
 
 ' Leave that to me, Flossie. You go off to Gray's 
 Inn, and tell your father that his wife will die unless 
 she has comforts which we cannot buy without his 
 help.' 
 
 Bab went up to the sick-room, while Flossie ran 
 to prepare herself for a raid on Gray's Inn. The 
 girl sat by her mother's bed, and watched her as 
 she slept the uneasy slumber of sickness. The face 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 BARBAKA. 
 
 — SO fresh and bright a few months ago — was pinched 
 and pale. The markings of age showed as they had 
 never done before in a countenance which had kept 
 the bloom of youth long after youth was gone. Yes, 
 it was care which had made those cruel lines ; a 
 long struggle with adverse circumstances had hol- 
 lowed those cheeks. The woman who had carried 
 her troubles so bravely had broken down under the 
 burden at last. 
 
 Barbara waited till her mother woke from that 
 brief slumber, and greeted her waking with loving 
 words and caresses. 
 
 ' Did the doctor say I was very ill ?' the invalid 
 asked anxiously. 
 
 ' No, dearest ; but he told us to be careful of you. 
 As if we would not be careful of our treasure ! I am 
 going into the Eoad to get two or three little things. 
 Shall Amelia come and sit with you, mamma 
 dear ?' 
 
 * No, darling, I shall be quite comfortable alone. 
 But don't be long ; I like to know you are near me.' 
 
 * I will come back on the wings of love,' answered 
 3ab gaily ; and then, full of care, she ran to put on
 
 LOVE MAKES ALL THINGS FOXD AND FAIR. 243 
 
 her bonnet and shawl for a momentous expedition in 
 quest of generous diet. 
 
 She looked into the well-worn purse which Mrs. 
 Trevornock had surrendered when she grew too ill to 
 conduct the household affairs. It was quite empty. 
 The money had been dribbling away daily and 
 hourly ; for illness is a costly calamity. There was 
 no money coming till after Lady-day, when the rent 
 would come in from a small farm, which formed the 
 last remnant of Thomas Trevornock's heritage, and 
 had happily been settled on his wife. And it was 
 now only the middle of February. For the next six 
 weeks Mrs. Trevornock and her daughters would 
 have to exist upon somebody's charity. 
 
 ' I never felt the sting of beggary before,' thought 
 Barbara, as she shut the empty purse. ' Poor 
 mother used to bear the whole weight of the burden. 
 No wonder it has crushed her. Well, money must 
 be got to-day, somehow ; and there is only one way.' 
 
 She looked at her solitary treasure — the only 
 ornament she possessed which had any marketable 
 value — the ring George Leland had given her the 
 day after their engagement, a massive band of dull
 
 244 BARBARA. 
 
 gold with a single diamond in the centre. She had 
 not even thought of returning this token when their 
 engagement came silently to an end. 
 
 'I will keep it so long as I am true to him/ she 
 had said to herself. ' It is not I who break the bond 
 that bound us. Let him claim it from me, if he 
 will. No act of mine shall part us. If he were to 
 come back to me to-morrow repenting his falsehood, 
 I could not refuse to forgive him. I should take 
 him to my heart again.' 
 
 But now the time had come when the ring must 
 go out of her possession, for a little while at any 
 rate. She walked hurriedly to the Camberwell-road, 
 where there was a silversmith's shop, before whose 
 glittering window she and Flossie had stood many a 
 time, admiring the Geneva watches, the silver tea- 
 pots, and debating as to which they would buy if 
 they were suddenly to come into a fortune. The 
 shop stood at a corner, and there was a mysterious 
 door in the side street, a door over which there hung 
 three golden balls. 
 
 It was by this dingy doorway that Barbara en- 
 tered to-day, for the first time in her life. The place
 
 LOTE MAKES ALL THINGS FOND AND FAIR. 245 
 
 within was dark, and smelt of dirt, and she shud- 
 dered involuntarily at finding herself elbowed by a 
 fat Irishwoman, who was negotiating a loan upon 
 divers articles of hardware, wi-apped in a patchwork 
 counterpane. The shopman turned impatiently from 
 the Irishwoman to ask Barbara what he could do for 
 her. Pretty faces were not rare in that dimly- 
 lighted den, but there was a fresh young beauty in 
 this face which startled the pawnbroker's clerk. 
 
 ' I want to know if you will lend me some money 
 on a ring,' said Barbara, trying to speak as coolly as 
 if she were an old hand at this kind of business. 
 
 * That depends on the value of the ring, and the 
 amount you want upon it, miss,' the man answered 
 glibly. ' I'm sure I'd strain a point to oblige you.' 
 
 Bab laid the ring upon the counter with a stifled 
 sigh. The man took it up, and twisted it round 
 between his dingy finger and thumb, and scrutinised 
 the diamond, and breathed upon it, and wetted it 
 with his tongue, and polished it on a coloured hand- 
 kerchief, and finally appeared to make up his mind 
 that it was genuine. 
 
 ' Two pun ten,' he said ; ' will that do for you?'
 
 246 BAKBAEA. 
 
 'Yes,' answered Barbara, delighted to get so 
 much money. 
 
 She held out her hand for the cash; but the 
 youth had to write a ticket, which operation he per- 
 formed in a leisurely manner, ogling his customer 
 between whiles. Then he brought the money out of 
 a drawer, and dropped a couple of sovereigns into 
 her hand, and then slowly doled out nine shillings 
 and elevenpence-halfpenny. 
 
 She was going away without the duplicate ; but 
 he called her back to receive this, and pressed her 
 hand tenderly as he gave it her, and was not crushed 
 by the magnificent frown which darkened her young 
 face as she snatched away the insulted hand, and 
 left a place which seemed to her a den of iniquity. 
 She felt herself contaminated by the whole transac- 
 tion. Her lover's sacred ring so bartered ; her own 
 self-respect so outraged ! 
 
 But in the next minute she was thinking of the 
 dear invalid at home, and of the things she had to 
 buy. She bought a plump young fowl ; she bought 
 soup-meat and lemons and grapes ; and finally, with 
 almost as much fear as she had entered the pawn-
 
 LOVE MAKES ALL THINGS FOND AND FAIR. 247 
 
 broker's shop, she crossed the threshold of a respect- 
 able wine-merchant's office. 
 
 A gentlemanly man of middle age left his desk 
 to attend to her. 
 
 ' I want a bottle of port, if you please, if you don't 
 mind selling so small a quantity,' she faltered. *It 
 must be very good, as it is for an invalid. I sup- 
 pose you have some very good port at about five 
 shillings a bottle ?' 
 
 * We have port as high as thirty shillings a 
 bottle,' said the wine-merchant, who was a quick 
 observer, and as well able to read the expression of 
 the fair young face as he was to see the heavily-laden 
 basket and the carefully-mended gloves ; ' but I can 
 give you a bottle of good sound wine for fi.ve shil- 
 lings.' 
 
 * Thank you. The doctor said it must be old 
 wine. Would it be very much trouble for you to 
 send it ?' 
 
 ^ No trouble at all.' 
 
 Barbara counted out the five shillings and gave 
 her address, after which the wine -merchant bowed 
 her out as politely as if she had given him a splendid
 
 248 BARBARA. 
 
 order. But he was assuredly a loser by that five- 
 shilling bottle of port ; unless it were that the con- 
 sciousness of having done a kindly act was worth the 
 difference between the value of the wine he sent and 
 the price Barbara paid him for it. 
 
 Flossie came home from her quest with five-and- 
 twenty shillings, extorted with difficulty, and made 
 bitter by the assurance that they were the last she 
 would get from a righteously wrathful father. 
 
 ' Was he not sorry to hear of mamma's illness ?' 
 asked Bab indignantly. 
 
 'He said he was sorry; but that, whether we 
 were well or ill, he could not coin money. If he 
 were ill himself he would have to go to the work- 
 house. Nobody would find money for him. He 
 was dreadfully bitter about you.' 
 
 * Because I refused to marry Mr. Penruth ?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' He is very unjust.' 
 
 ' Mr. Penruth has been in London again,' ob- 
 served Flossie, rolling up her gloves with elaborate 
 care. 
 
 '0!'
 
 LOVE MAKES ALL THINGS FOND AND FAIR. 249 
 
 k 
 
 ' Indeed I believe lie is in London now.' 
 
 Barbara answered nothing. 
 
 The week that followed was full of anxiety. There 
 were no signs of rallying in the invalid, though all 
 that loving care could do to restore health was faith- 
 fully done. The money, discreetly administered by 
 Barbara, held out till the end of the week, and then 
 came a welcome five-pound note from aunt Sophia, 
 who had been away from home when Barbara's 
 appeal was sent, and had thus seemed slow to an- 
 swer. 
 
 This remittance Barbara felt marked the limit 
 of her resources. After this there was nothing she 
 could hope for till a week or two after quarter-day. 
 A dreary vista of weeks stretched before her, and de- 
 pression seized her as she looked forward to them, 
 wondering how the wants of each day were to be sup- 
 plied. And looking beyond this present necessity, 
 she saw a hopeless future. Her mother's health had 
 so completely broken down within the last few 
 months that it was hardly to be hoped she could 
 ever be again what she had been, ever again be able 
 to take life lightly, and face poverty with a happy
 
 250 BAEBARA. 
 
 temper and an indomitable courage. No ; those 
 days when they had enjoyed themselves on the brink 
 of a precipice, the easy-going hand-to-mouth days, 
 were over and done with. The dread spectre of sick- 
 ness and death would henceforth be always lurking 
 somewhere near, and happiness would be impossible. 
 For the first time in her life, Barbara realised the 
 helplessness of three women whose means, eked out 
 by casual aids, were hardly enough to suffice for 
 daily necessities, and left no margin for sickness or 
 special needs of any kind. For the first time too 
 she felt what it was to be friendless, or to have only 
 half a dozen friends, all as poor as, or even poorer 
 than, herself. She knew too well that in those fami- 
 lies with whom Mrs. Trevornock and her daughters 
 were wont to exchange occasional tea-drinkings, 
 although the outward aspect of things seemed fair 
 and prosperous, there was but a hair's-breadth be- 
 tween that prosperity and destitution. They were 
 genteel families, living in small houses, with one 
 servant, upon incomes which, husbanded and man- 
 aged ever so skilfully, left hardly the balance of a 
 shilling at the end of the year ; but more often a re-
 
 LOVE MAKES ALL THINGS FOND AND FAIR. 251 
 
 siduum of debt, to be paid — Heaven knows bow ! — 
 in a year tbat would bring no increase of means. 
 
 *I never knew that poverty was bard before!' 
 sighed Barbara, looking hopelessly round the pretty 
 little room, with its black-and-white pictures, and 
 gaily -bound books, and stray bits of old china. 
 * We have contrived to be so happy on so little.' 
 
 It was the dreariest of February afternoons ; a 
 drizzling rain had been coming down all day long, 
 with the pertinacity of small things. The sky was 
 dun colour; the leafless trees, and even the ever- 
 greens, looked dismal. All the grace and beauty 
 had gone from South-lane. Barbam stood looking 
 out of the window, sick at heart, yet rooted to the 
 spot somehow, as if there was a fascination in that 
 hopeless prospect. 
 
 ' It is like my life,' she said to herself — ' blank 
 and gray, with not one star shining through it.' 
 
 Presently the white gate feU back with scroop- 
 ing hinges, and a tall figure came stalking up the 
 gravel-path. 
 
 How well Barbara knew the taU gaunt form, the 
 rough overcoat, and shabby hat! No one but a
 
 252 BARBARA. 
 
 pauper or a millionaire would have dared to wear 
 such a hat or such a coat. 
 
 Her first impulse was to run out of the room and 
 tell the servant to say that no one was at home. 
 Then came the thought of the sick mother, sleeping 
 the sleep of weakness up- stairs. He might be use- 
 ful, perhaps, this rich man. He would send hot- 
 house grapes and fine old wine, very likely, if he 
 knew of Mrs. Trevornock's illness. 
 
 * God help me !' thought Bab despairingly. 
 ' Poverty is teaching me to be odiously mean.' 
 
 She stayed by the parlour-window, and Amelia 
 ushered in Mr. Penruth, with as much style as can 
 be expected of a maid-of-all-work at nine pounds a 
 year. 
 
 *I am sorry to hear of your mother's illness,' he 
 said, as he took Barbara's cold hand in his, looking 
 at her closely, as much as to say, ' I wonder if you 
 have changed your mind since you and I parted.' 
 
 *Yes, she is very ill,' sighed Bab. * My sister 
 and I are full of anxiety.' 
 
 She sat down by the dull neglected fire, and 
 waited for her visitor to talk. She had nothing to
 
 LOVE MAKES ALL THINGS FOND AND FAIR. 253 
 
 say to him. There was no subject upon which they 
 could sympathise ; there was no love or liking which 
 they had in common. 
 
 ' You have good medical advice, I hope ?' 
 
 ' We have the best doctor in the neighbour- 
 hood.' 
 
 ' And does he consider the case serious ?' 
 
 'Very serious,' answered Barbara, trying to keep 
 back her tears. 
 
 ' Is there anything I can do '?' asked Mr. Pen- 
 ruth. ' I shall esteem it a privilege if I can be of 
 any use.' 
 
 * You are very good. Xo, there is nothing,' 
 began Barbara ; and then, love conquering pride, 
 she faltered, ' Yes, there is one thing. Once, when 
 I was ill, you were kind enough to send me some 
 fruit and flowers. If you would send my mother a 
 few grapes I think she would like them. They are 
 difficult to get here.' 
 
 ' I will send you some of the best Covent Garden 
 can produce every day. And flowers too ; perhaps 
 you would like some flowers for the sick-room ?' 
 
 ' A thousand thanks.'
 
 254 BARBARA. 
 
 Then came an awkward silence. 
 *Have you seen your father lately?' asked Mj^ 
 Penruth. 
 
 * No ; I seldom see him. He does not care 
 about seeing us, and we only go to him when we 
 are obliged.' 
 
 'He is a — curious man,' said Mr. Penruth 
 slowly, as if it were gradually dawning upon him 
 that Mr. Trevornock was not perfect in his domestic 
 relations. 
 
 ' Very curious.' 
 
 * I fear you must have had a hard life with such 
 a father.' 
 
 ' I never felt its hardness till my mother broke 
 down under her burden. She and my sister and I 
 have been very happy together. The sting of 
 poverty never touched us.' 
 
 ' But now that your mother is ill yeu begm to 
 find out the hardship of poverty. Why will you not 
 exchange poverty for wealth and comfort? You 
 know that I am prepared to make a settlement that 
 would enable you to provide comfortably for your 
 mother and sister for the rest of their lives.'
 
 Barbara shuddered. 
 
 * Yes, you have made a generous offer, and I 
 have refused it. That seems as if I cared very little 
 about my mother and sister, does it not ? Yet it is 
 a hard thing for a woman to — No, I should hate 
 myself; life would be a burden to me.' 
 
 ' Do you mean that you hate me ?' asked Vyvyan 
 Penruth, looking at her intently from out of deep- 
 set eyes, shadowed by shaggy brows. 
 
 'I do not love you, and I did once love some 
 one else very dearly. If I were to accept your offer 
 it would be for the sake of my mother and sister ; it 
 would be for the sake of the settlement. Would that 
 be fair to you ? Would you be willing to marry a 
 woman on such terms ?' 
 
 * I would marry you on any terms. I want 
 you for my wife. I will leave all the rest to 
 Fate.' 
 
 * You would marry me knowing that I have given 
 my heart to another man ?' 
 
 * Yes ; provided that all is over and done with 
 between you and that other man. I don't know that 
 I^have a jealous nature, but I should not like a man
 
 256 BARBARA. 
 
 you once loved to cross my path. I should hate 
 him savagely.' 
 
 ' He is far away, and all is over between us. He 
 gave me up of his own accord. I suppose he met 
 some one he liked better than me.' 
 
 ' Barbara, will you marry me ?' asked Yyvyan 
 Penruth, bending down and taking both her hands 
 in his. ' Let that man lament his loss far away — 
 in India. Your father told me all about him. Do 
 not waste another thought on him. I shall not. 
 Be my wife. I will trust to time and Fate for the 
 rest.' 
 
 *If I were to marry you it would be for my 
 mother's sake,' said Barbara, looking at him earn- 
 estly, as if entreating him to decline so bad a bar- 
 gain. 
 
 ' I do not care for whose sake it may be, if you 
 will only consent.' 
 
 * Kemember, I do not even pretend to care for 
 you ; I never shall pretend. I will try to do my 
 duty ; but it is not in me to do more than that.' 
 
 ' Duty from you will be a rich reward for my 
 love. You don't know what it is, Barbara, for a man
 
 LOTE MAKES ALL THINGS TO^T> AND FAIR. 257 
 
 of my age to fall in Iotg. Neyer since I was five- 
 and-twenty did a woman's face touch my heart, till I 
 saw you. I had my boyish fancy, calf-love — a flame 
 that burnt fiercely for a little while, and then went 
 out for ever. For more than twenty years I lived 
 my jog-trot life, and thought no more of women 
 than if there had been none nearer than the moon. 
 Then I saw you, and my heart woke from its long 
 sleep. I am not a poetical kind of man ; I am not 
 clever at finding the proper words to describe my 
 feelings ; but I am as true as steel. Be true to me, 
 
 and I will be faithful and devoted to vou. Let the 
 
 t/ 
 
 past be dead and buried from this hour. I shall 
 never speak of the man who jilted you. I beg you 
 never to speak of him to me. Is it a bargain, Bar- 
 bara ?' 
 
 'Yes,' she sighed; and he raised her hands to 
 his lips and kissed them. 
 
 There was a solemnity in the action, as if it were 
 the sealing of a bond. 
 
 He saw that she was depressed and anxious, and 
 did not stay much longer. 
 
 ' I shall stop in town till your mother is well,' he 
 
 VOL. I, S
 
 268 BARBARA. 
 
 said, as he took leave, ' and then we can fix the day 
 for our wedding.' 
 
 * So soon T she cried. ' no, no ; not this 
 year!' 
 
 ' Why not ? We have nothing to wait for.' 
 ' Yes, we have ; we are almost strangers. Let 
 us learn to know each other a little hefore — ' 
 
 * I can never know you better or love you better 
 than I do already,' he interrupted passionately. 
 ' Why should we put off our marriage ? It is only 
 people who have to study ways and means who need 
 wait. Good-night — God bless you !' 
 
 He took her in his arms and kissed her, having 
 the right to do so now, as he thought ; and she sub- 
 mitted as helplessly and as hopelessly as she would 
 have done had she fallen into the sea, and felt the 
 arms of some hideous sea-monster winding round her 
 and strangling her. 
 
 She went back to the fireside when her visitor was 
 gone, and sat by the dying fire, weeping silently over 
 her own dreary fate. 
 
 *I must be a selfish wretch,' she said to herself 
 accusingly ; ' for even the thought that it will make
 
 LOVE MAKES ALL THINGS FOND AND FAIR. 259 
 
 my mother's life happy cannot reconcile me to -what 
 I have done.* 
 
 She had not the courage to go near her mother 
 till late in the evening, but allowed Flossie to per- 
 form all her duties in the sick-room. Then at last, 
 when Mrs. Trevornock had asked for her several 
 times, she went quietly in and sat down by the bed, 
 and took the wasted hand in hers silently. 
 
 ' My darling, what makes you so silent ?' asked 
 the invalid anxiously. ' You have not been grieving, 
 I hope ? If it be God's will that I am to be taken, 
 surely He will care for you and your sister. You 
 are so friendless that doubtless God will raise up 
 new friends for you. My dearest, I lie here and 
 think of you both till my head swims — ' 
 
 ' Don't think about us any more, mother dear ; 
 there is no reason for your anxiety. Only get well — 
 only get strong and well, dear love ; that is all I ask 
 of Providence. We are all going to be rich ; and — 
 and you shall walk in silk attire, and siller have to 
 spare. I am going to be one of the richest women 
 in Cornwall, mamma. I am going to be Mrs. Pen- 
 ruth.'
 
 260 BAEBARA. 
 
 ' My angel,' exclaimed the mother feebly, but 
 rapturously, ' I always felt that you were born to ride 
 in your carriage. my love, my darling, you have 
 taken away the fear of death ! I shall not leave you 
 behind to face friendlessness and poverty ; I can die 
 happy now.' 
 
 'No, no, mother, you must not die. It is for 
 your sake — only for your sake !' sobbed Barbara, on 
 her knees by the bedside, her face buried in the 
 coverlet.
 
 CHAPTEK XVI. 
 
 BURIED LETTERS, BURIED HOPES. 
 
 Flossie was elated exceedingly when she was told 
 of her sister's engagement ; even the little serving- 
 maid, Amelia, sang louder than ever for joy; the 
 sick mother mended slowly but surely from that 
 hour. Barbara alone was sad. She moved about 
 slowly, as if leaden weights were tied to her feet ; 
 her heavy eyes looked straight before her, gazing 
 with infinite horror into a hateful futurity. In her 
 mother's presence she contrived to smile, and even 
 to talk gaily. Love gave her courage, love gave 
 her strength. She was the old happy Barbara in 
 the sick-room. Pride forbade that she should bare 
 her wounds before the volatile Flossie. To her 
 lover she was uniformly courteous, with a grave 
 politeness which to most men would have been 
 disheartening, but which Yyvyan Penruth accepted 
 placidly, as if he expected nothing more. 
 
 There was no need to pay any further visits
 
 262 BAIlBARA. 
 
 to the dusky office round the corner by the silver- 
 smith's shop. The insolent clerk who had squeezed 
 Barbara's hand saw her no more. Vyvyan gave 
 her a hundred pounds for immediate necessities, 
 and she took the money without compunction. 
 She had sold herself for a price, and she felt no 
 shame in accepting any portion of that price. The 
 shame was in the bargain itself — a deeper shame 
 for her plighted husband than for herself, she 
 thought. One of the first uses she made of Mr. 
 Penruth's money was to send Amelia to redeem her 
 first lover's ring. But the golden circle was never 
 to be worn by her again. The bond of which it 
 was the sign had been doubly broken. 
 
 She packed the ring in a little box, and enclosed 
 it with a letter addressed to George Leland's 
 mother, begging her to restore it to her son at a 
 convenient opportunity. 
 
 *No doubt you know that Captain Leland 
 cancelled our engagement some months ago,' she 
 wrote. ^Perhaps I ought to have returned the 
 ring then ; but I was so foolish as to think that he 
 might change his mind, and that our engagement
 
 BURIED LETTERS, BURIED HOPES. 263 
 
 might some day be renewed, and I could not bear 
 to part with the souvenir of his love. But now I 
 am going to be married I have no right to keep the 
 ring any longer, and I shall esteem it a favour if 
 you will take an early opportunity of sending it 
 to him, with my sincere wishes for his happiness.' 
 
 There was no more than this. It was the most 
 commonplace of letters, and seemed heartless in its 
 poverty of phrase. Yet the girl wrote with a 
 breaking heart and eves drowned in tears. 
 
 Hothouse grapes, good old wine, all luxuries 
 that money can buy were delivered in abundance 
 at No. 20 South-lane : but it was not the wine or 
 the invalid turtle, the spring chicken or asparagus, 
 that brought back the colour to Mrs. Trevornock's 
 cheek or the strength to her limbs. It was the 
 knowledge that her children's future was provided 
 for, it was the delightful idea that her favourite 
 daughter was going to be a great lady, that restored 
 her. She had sunk under the weight of petty cares 
 and harassing trivialities, and now the burden was 
 lifted off her shoulders altogether. She had no 
 longer to calculate and provide for the necessities
 
 264 BARBARA. 
 
 of the morrow. For the first time since her luck- 
 less marriage she could fold her hands, and take 
 her rest, and say, with a contented spirit, ' Suffi- 
 cient for the day is the evil thereof.' She could 
 see no evil in the day or the morrow ; she had 
 no misgivings as to her child's happiness. To 
 the matter-of-fact temper of middle age the passions 
 and sorrows of youth seem of small account. No 
 doubt poor Barbara had been very deeply in love 
 with Captain Leland; but she must have almost 
 forgotten him by this time, and would, as in duty 
 bound, become attached to Mr. Pen ruth, whose 
 generous devotion was calculated to inspire grateful 
 affection on the part of its object. ^ 
 
 ' If I had met with such a man in my youth, 
 instead of Mr. T., what a happy woman I should 
 have been !' mused Mrs. Trevornock, forgetting that 
 at nineteen years of age she had not been so well 
 acquainted with the value of worldly wealth as she 
 was now. 
 
 A week went by without bringing any response 
 to Barbara's letter, and then came an answer in 
 a strange hand on deeply-bordered mourning-paper :
 
 BUKIED LETTERS, BURIED HOPES. 265 
 
 ' Dear Miss TreTornock, — I am sure you will 
 be grieved to hear that my dear mother died last 
 November after a short illness. It has been a ter- 
 rible blow for us all. I will send the ring to George 
 by the next mail. I am sorry your engagement 
 should have been broken 'off, but it is perhaps 
 better so for both. My brother has not been fortu- 
 nate in India, and he is in no position to marry. 
 I think he will be surprised to hear that you are 
 engaged to some one else. — Yours very truly, 
 
 * Marian Leland.' 
 
 ' He has not been fortunate,' sighed Barbara. 
 * Was it his bad fortune that made him give me 
 up ? That can hardly be ; for I told him I had 
 no fear of poverty or even of disgrace — that I 
 would be true to him in the darkest days of his 
 life. If he had cared for me he never could have 
 flung me off. Well, it is all over and done with, 
 and it is my duty to forget him.' 
 
 She did try honestly to put her lover's image 
 away from her during these early spring days, 
 which seemed to hurry by with inexorable speed,
 
 266 BARBARA. 
 
 drifting her towards her doom. They were days 
 evermore to be remembered; days now historic. 
 Such great and terrible scenes were being played 
 out'? yonder in the Crimea, that Barbara's petty 
 griefs should have seemed as nothing to the heroic 
 mind. Yet those small sorrows were large enough 
 to fill her little world. Never had she been so 
 miserable, yet never had the days been so short. 
 She clung to her mother with ever-increasing fond- 
 ness. The idea of going away to her husband's 
 distant home was intolerable to her. 
 
 * How shall I ever bear my life so far away from 
 you?' she said, sitting on a low stool beside her 
 mother's armchair in the sunny southward-front- 
 ing window. 
 
 South-lane was putting forth buds and blos- 
 soms under the April sunlight. The almond- 
 trees were in flower ; the lilac-bushes were covered 
 with green buds; the garden was yellow with daf- 
 fodils. Mrs. Trevornock was well enough to sit 
 up for an hour or two in her own room, when 
 the day was at its warmest. 
 
 * My sweetest, you once thought of putting a
 
 BURIED LETTERS, BURIED HOPES. 267 
 
 much wider distance between us,' she said, smiHng 
 down at the sad face nestling against her pillows. 
 ' You did not shrink from the idea of going to 
 India.' 
 
 ' That was to be three years hence ; and I hardly 
 reahsed the idea. When the time came it would 
 have been dreadful to go so far away — even with 
 him.' 
 
 ' Cornwall is really no distance in these railway 
 days. A day's journey at most. And we shall 
 come to stay with you sometimes, I daresaj . Mr. 
 Penruth is so kind that I am sure he will wish 
 us to visit you.' 
 
 ' Of course, of course, mother. My Hfe will be 
 bearable only when you are with me.' 
 
 * Barbara, don't talk like that !' cried the mother, 
 looking at her anxiously. ' My love, if you have 
 such a feeling as that — a conviction that you are 
 going to be unhappy in your married life — the mar- 
 riage must be broken off, late as it is, and though it 
 is such a grand match for you, and has made us all 
 so happy.' 
 
 *No, mother, I am not going to break my en-
 
 268 BARBARA. 
 
 gagement to Mr. Penruth. One broken engagement 
 in a lifetime is enough, is it not ? But you don't 
 suppose I am desperately in love witli him, do you ?' 
 'No, dear; but I look forward to your being a 
 good and dutiful wife, and a very happy woman.' 
 
 * Yes, mother, I shall be happy ; I am happy, for 
 you are spared to me. 0, 1 am an ungrateful wretch. 
 When you were ill I wearied Heaven with my prayers : 
 and now I am not half grateful enough. I fancy my 
 fate a hard one.' 
 
 ' My dearest, it is a fate that ninety-nine women 
 out of a hundred would envy,' interrupted Mrs. Tre- 
 vornock. 
 
 * Do you mean that ninety-nine out of a hundred 
 would marry for money ?' 
 
 'Yes, dear, if they had learned the value of 
 money, as we have, by bitter experience.' 
 
 ' Bitter experience !' echoed Bab. ' Whatever 
 my future may be, I shall look back at my days in 
 South-lane as the happiest part of my life.' 
 
 Everything was settled. The wedding-day was 
 fixed for the 20th of May. Mr. Penruth was unaffected 
 by Flossie's protest against a wedding in May as
 
 BURIED LETTERS, BURIED HOPES. 269 
 
 proverbially unlucky. He was not given to such 
 small superstitions, thougli not entirely free from 
 that leaven of belief in the uncanny which lies deep 
 in the Cornish nature, not to be eradicated by time 
 or civilisation. There was every reason to suppose 
 that by the 20th of May Mrs. Trevornock would be 
 well enough to assist at her daughter's marriage, 
 and, except her illness, there was no reason for 
 delay. It was all decided with very slight reference 
 to Barbara. She gave her consent to the arrange- 
 ments with a meekness which was rather submission 
 than content. The when and the how mattered little 
 to her, since this thing was to be. 
 
 Aunt Sophia wrote warmly in approval of the 
 new engagement, and sent her niece fifty pounds to 
 buy wedding-gowns. She had considered Barbara's 
 previous engagement the height of imprudence. She 
 had disapproved of Captain Leland as a partial 
 boarder, she had disapproved of him as a lover. 
 The whole business had, in her estimation, been one 
 of poor Flora's mistakes. But now she was enthu- 
 siastic in her congratulations. 
 
 '1 know all about Mr. Penruth, but by repute
 
 270 BAKBARA. 
 
 only,' she wrote to her sister-in-law ; ' for his estate 
 is so very far west, and the Penruths have been 
 always rather an eccentric family, living very much 
 by themselves. They are among the best people in 
 Cornwall, as no doubt you know. One of the Pen- 
 ruths married a Miss Mohun, an heiress. They 
 have intermarried with the Carews. Barbara ought 
 to feel vastly proud of making such a marriage. Mr. 
 Penruth's age may perhaps appear a drawback in 
 her mind ; but as he has never been married before, 
 and is so devoted in his attachment to her, that 
 should make very little difference. I consider her 
 a most fortunate girl; and I think that even you. 
 Flora, will allow that in this instance my brother 
 Thomas has done very well for one of his daughters, 
 and has some claim to your gratitude.' 
 
 Slowly and reluctantly Barbara set about the 
 purchase of her wedding-clothes. She shrank with 
 secret horror from any act or part in the preparations 
 for her marriage. Yet she tried heroically to hide 
 her misery, lest her mother's love should prevent 
 the sacrifice. 
 
 ' What a strange girl you are !' exclaimed Flossie.
 
 BURIED LETTERS, BURIED HOPES. 271 
 
 * I'm sure if I had my purse stuffed full of bank-notes 
 I should be rushing off to the Road to spend them/ 
 
 The Road — otherwise the Walworth-road, or at 
 farthest Newington-causeway — bounded Flossie's 
 horizon in the way of shops. But here Mrs. Trevor- 
 nock, with her experience of a previous existence in 
 more fashionable localities, suggested a cab and a 
 pilgrimage to Regent- street and Oxford-street. 
 
 ' That will be dehghtful !' cried Flossie. ' A cab ! 
 To think that we can afford to hire a cab whenever 
 we want one ! It is like entering upon a new stage 
 of existence.' 
 
 ' You really had better make your purchases this 
 afternoon, Bab,' urged Mrs. Trevornock, who had 
 now descended to the parlour. 'We are halfway 
 through April already, and dressmakers are so slow.' 
 
 Barbara had no objection to offer; so she and 
 Flossie went to Oxford- street, and selected such 
 raiment as might be suitable to a Cornish gentle- 
 man's wife living in a lonely old house far oft' the 
 beaten tracks. Mr. Penruth had counselled her to 
 buy no finery. He kept no company at Penruth 
 Place. His nearest neighbour lived seven miles off.
 
 272 BARBARA. 
 
 This niiglit have seemed a dreary look-out, even for 
 a woman who married for love. But it made no 
 difference to Barbara. 
 
 ' You will let my mother and sister come and 
 see me sometimes, won't you ?' she asked one day. 
 
 ' Yes, of course. They can come when they like, 
 but I'm afraid they'll find it dull. Your sister won't 
 like Cornwall. She's fond of gaiety, theatres, con- 
 certs, and so on.' 
 
 ' Yes, but she is fond of the country too,' urged 
 Barbara. ' I hope you will let me have my mother 
 and Flossie to stay with me — often.' 
 
 She would have liked to have said ' always,' for 
 she felt that only under such conditions could her 
 Cornish life be tolerable. 
 
 ' 0, yes, they can come,' responded Penruth, not 
 too graciously, ' provided they and my sister can hit 
 it pretty well together.' 
 
 Barbara shivered. That sister, of whom she had 
 heard so little, but who was always spoken of as a 
 fixture at Penruth Place, a feminine edition of Mr. 
 Penruth, was a person to be thought of with some 
 apprehension.
 
 BURIED LETTEKS, BURIED HOPES. 273 
 
 * Does your brother live with you ?' she asked 
 once, wondering whether she was to support exist- 
 ence with three of the Peuruth race. 
 
 ' Yes ; Mark has free quarters at Place. He is 
 fond of horses and dogs, and makes better use of 
 my stables than I do. But he is not always with 
 us. He has a couple of rooms at the Quarries, and 
 we sometimes see nothing of him for a week on end.' 
 
 * Is he like you '?' 
 
 ' No,' answered Vyvyan, with a grim smile. ' He 
 is the buck of the famity. He favours his mother, 
 who was a Carew. He was a handsome fellow once, 
 but he has contrived to get rid of his good looks 
 somehow, though he is my junior by eleven years.' 
 
 Flossie enjoyed herself vastly that April afternoon 
 at the West-end drapers'. It was she who chose 
 everything, she who decided what the future Mrs. 
 Penruth ought or ought not to have. Barbara sat 
 by and looked on, the picture of indijBference. Flossie 
 thought this arose from an innate want of taste in 
 her elder sister. 
 
 * Some people have no taste in dress, no ideas,' she 
 said to herself; ' that kind of thing is born with one.' 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 BABBARA. 
 
 She rattled away mercilessly to Barbara in those 
 blank intervals when the shopman had gone to fetch 
 fresh goods. 
 
 ' You must have one or two dinner-dresses,' she 
 said; 'however far off your neighbours may live, 
 they must give dinner-parties, and with plenty of 
 horses in your stables you won't consider distance. 
 You ought to have a velvet gown. Shall it be ruby 
 or black ?' 
 
 ' By all means black.' 
 
 * But you have chosen two black gowns already ; 
 surely you are not going to wear perpetual mourn- 
 ing/ 
 
 ' I like black.' 
 
 ' Well, if your dinner-parties are to be few and 
 far between, perhaps black velvet would be best. It 
 would take you ages to wear out a ruby velvet, but 
 you can wear out black velvet by your own fireside.' 
 
 ' How far-seeing you are, Flossie !' 
 
 ' In choosing a trousseau one has to study con- 
 tingencies,' answered Flossie sagely. 
 
 It was Mr. Penruth's particular desire there 
 should be no fuss about the wedding.
 
 BURIED LETTERS, BURIED HOPES. 275 
 
 'We can't be married too quietly,' he said; 'I 
 know nobody in London, and I — I suppose you 
 haven't many friends in the neighbourhood.' 
 
 ' Very few,' answered Mrs. Trevornock. 
 
 And then she ran over the names of about ten 
 people, the people with whom she had been wont to 
 exchange small hospitalities in the way of tea and 
 muffins, whom she would like to invite to the break- 
 fast. 
 
 * Oblige me by not inviting any of them,' said 
 Mr. Penruth ; ' when a man of my age marries a 
 pretty girl he does not care to make a spectacle of 
 himself. Let us be married as quietly as possible. 
 I suppose Mr. Trevornock will give away his 
 daughter.' 
 
 ' I suppose so,' faltered Mrs. Trevornock, think- 
 ing that there might be some awkwardness in the 
 sudden appearance of her husband in a neighbour- 
 hood where she was popularly supposed to be a 
 widow ; not that she had ever so declared herself. 
 She had only been silent as to the existence of Mr. 
 T., save to those more intimate friends who knew 
 the troublous history of her married life.
 
 276 BARBARA. 
 
 If the wedding were strictly private no one need 
 know of Mr. Trevornock's brief appearance on the 
 domestic stage. So the good lady renounced the 
 pleasing idea of a procession of carriages drawn by 
 snow-white horses, artfully touched up with whiting 
 for the occasion, and that elegant confectioner's 
 breakfast which she had planned in honour of her 
 daughter. 
 
 There was to be no breakfast at all, in the festive 
 sense of the word. Barbara was to be married in her 
 travelling-dress of dark silk, and she and her husband 
 were to drive from the church to the railway station, 
 on their way to Paris, where they were to spend their 
 honeymoon. Mr. Trevornock had informed Flossie 
 of his intention of not setting his foot inside No. 
 20 South-lane. He had no objection to perform a 
 father's part in giving Barbara away, as she was 
 making a marriage he highly approved. But beyond 
 that he would not go. He had not forgotten how 
 badly he had been treated ; the bad treatment con- 
 sisting of his having been relieved of the burden of a 
 wife and daughters whom he had never been able or 
 willing to support.
 
 BUEIED LETTERS, BUKIED HOPES. 277 
 
 'It isn't a very lively notion of a wedding,' said 
 Flossie to the bride-elect, ' but as you are going to 
 be enormously rich it doesn't mach matter. When 
 I marry I shall insist upon making a feature of my 
 wedding-day; but I daresay I shall espouse some 
 wretched pauper, and that we shall have to pinch 
 afterwards.' 
 
 The 20th of May arrived, so soon, so terribly 
 soon. Barbara had watched the swift days hurry by 
 with a dim idea that something would happen, some- 
 thing wild and strange, to prevent that hateful mar- 
 riage. She had steeled herself to the issue. She 
 was resolutely bent upon the sacrifice which was to 
 make her mother's life secure from adversity. Yet 
 she had a vague fancy that the sacrifice would be 
 prevented somehow. The stroke of doom would not 
 descend. She remembered the story of Iphigeneia, 
 and how the offended goddess relented and provided 
 a stag for the altar, while the gentle victim was car- 
 ried off in a cloud, to regions of everlasting bliss. 
 George Leland would come back from India, faithful 
 and fond as in the first days of their love, powerful 
 to save her. Wealth would drop down from the
 
 278 BAEBARA. 
 
 skies. Some relative or friend unknown would leave 
 her mother a fortune. 
 
 She dreamt nightly of some strange and sudden 
 release. She felt the delicious sense of recovered 
 freedom, and awoke to the grim reality. The days 
 were slipping by, the days had gone ; this pale-gray 
 dawn, flushed with rose on its eastward edge, was her 
 wedding-day. She awoke as early as she had done 
 on that other fatal morning, when George Leland 
 was to sail from Southampton. Sleep was impos- 
 sible. There are doomed wretches who can slumber 
 on the eve of their execution, can lie down and take 
 their rest with that hideous end staring them in the 
 face. Barbara was not made of such stern stuff. 
 She started from her pillow at the first glimmer of 
 dawn, got up, and put on her dressing-gown, and 
 went over to her little table by the window, to make 
 an end of her past. 
 
 Her desk, a roomy old mahogany desk, was filled 
 with George Leland's letters. She had kept them 
 till this final day. Something might happen. So 
 long as that hope remained, were it ever so faint, she 
 had kept those dear evidences of a dead and gone
 
 BURIED LETTERS, BURIED HOPES. 279 
 
 love. To destroy them even now seemed a kind of 
 sacrilege, almost a murder. She handled the letters 
 gently, as if they had been living creatures. She 
 sat waiting for clearer light, that she might read 
 some of them for the last time. Dear letters, full of 
 tenderness. Light-hearted happy letters, breathing 
 hope. 
 
 ' my love, my love, why did you grow weary of 
 me ?' she cried, in her despair ; ' I know you loved 
 me once.' 
 
 The sun was high before she had read the last 
 of those fond protestations, which the writer's after- 
 conduct had so strangely belied. But at last there 
 was no excuse for lingering over those lines any 
 longer. She lit her taper, and held one of those 
 doomed letters over the flame. Only for a moment. 
 A curious fancy came into her head. She smiled at 
 her own foolishness. The church-clock chimed the 
 half hour after six. 
 
 ' There will be time for me to do it,' she said to 
 herself. ' No one will be getting up till after seven. 
 I won't burn his letters. I'll bury them.' 
 
 She wrapped the packet of flimsy letters in a
 
 280 BARBARA. 
 
 sheet of foolscap, sealed it in three or four places, 
 and wrote upon it, ' G. L.'s letters. May 20th, 
 1855 ;' then she put the sealed packet into a small 
 tin box, and with this box in her hand she ran down 
 to the garden, bare-headed, in her dressing-gown 
 and slippers. 
 
 She went to the end of the garden, to a spot 
 where lilies of the valley grew abundantly in the 
 angle of the crumbling old wall, under the shadow of 
 a barren fig-tree. Here seven years ago she had dug 
 a grave for a beloved canary that had perished un- 
 timely, a victim to the treachery of a favourite cat. 
 She remembered the childish tears which had rained 
 upon that innocent grave. And now in the pride of 
 her womanhood she came to the same spot to bury 
 the memorials of a disappointed love. 
 
 She fetched a spade from the little summer-house 
 where the garden-tools were stored in a dark corner, 
 and dug a deep hole between the lilies and the rugged 
 old roots of the fig-tree. It was as much as she could 
 do to find space enough for the grave of her hopes 
 amidst the bulbs that had spread and multiplied all 
 over the ground. When she had dug deep enough to
 
 BURIED LETTERS, BURIED HOPES. ' 281 
 
 please her fancy, she kuelt clown and dropped the 
 little tin box into its grave, and then filled in the 
 earth again, and trod it down with her feet. 
 
 ' The lilies will he all growing over the place next 
 year,' she said to herself; 'but I shall never forget 
 the spot ; and perhaps some day when I am an old 
 woman I shall come here and dig up those dear let- 
 ters and read them again, wondering at their foolish- 
 ness. For it seems to me that elderly people have a 
 curious knack of forgetting their youth.' 
 
 It was a breezy morning, one of those days of de- 
 lusive sunshine and east wind common to the treach- 
 erous month of May. Barbara was chilled to the 
 bone by the time her task was finished. She hurried 
 back to the house, shivering violently, as the clocks 
 were striking seven. 
 
 ' I am glad I did not burn them,' she said to her- 
 self. ' It would have been as bad as cutting off one 
 of my own limbs.' 
 
 *For goodness gracious' sake where have you 
 been ?' cried Flossie, sitting up in bed, her twisted 
 locks bristling with hair-pins, like a new Medusa. 
 
 ' I have been gathering the first lilies of the val-
 
 282 BARBARA. 
 
 ley for my wedding-bouquet,' answered Barbara, with 
 a hysterical laugh. ' I shall always remember those 
 lilies on the anniversaries of this day.' 
 
 She dressed herself as quietly as if being married 
 were the commonest event in life, while Flossie 
 fussed and bustled and protested tearfully that her 
 hair never had been so difficult to do since she was 
 born. 
 
 ' It serves me right for putting it in hair-pins, 
 when it has a natural ripple,' she said. ' It was all 
 that stupid Amelia's advice. '' Twist it in and out of 
 an 'air-pin, miss," she said, " like I do." As if she 
 were a model.' 
 
 There was a hurried agitated breakfast in the 
 garden -parlour — scene of all those cosy tea-drinkings 
 of days gone by, which never, never, never could be 
 again. No one ate anything, but cups of tea were 
 drunk feverishly. Mrs. Trevornock was painfully 
 agitated, and looked pale and wan in her new gray- 
 silk gown. She wondered how Mr. T. would behave 
 to her. It was twelve years since she had seen 
 him. 
 
 'We have always written to each other in a
 
 BURIED LETTERS, BURIED HOPES. 283 
 
 friendly tone,' she said ; ' but it will be awkward 
 meeting him.' 
 
 Barbara was the quietest of the three. Her 
 cheeks were faintly flushed, her eyes were brighter 
 than they had been for some time. 
 
 * You never looked lovelier, darling,' said her 
 mother fondly. ' That dark purple suits your com- 
 plexion admirably.' 
 
 The wedding-gown was as sombre of hue as it 
 could be without being black. The wedding-bonnet 
 was in no way distinguished from the bonnets of 
 every-day life. 
 
 ' Not a scrap of orange - blossom ! ' protested 
 Flossie. ' It looks unlucky.' 
 
 Pinned against the bosom of the bride's dress 
 there was a single lily of the valley. Her own tremu- 
 lous hands had fastened it there, a token of the spot 
 beneath which her lover's letters lay buried. 
 
 The sunny morning had clouded over a little as 
 they drove in a hired carriage to the church by the 
 canal. It was as if May had retrograded to March. 
 
 Mr. Penruth was waiting for them at the door of 
 the church, in company with Mr. Trevornock and
 
 284 BARBARA. 
 
 Mr. Maulford, at sight of wliom Barbara drew back 
 with a shudder of absolute antipathy. 
 
 'What business has he here?' she thought. 
 * Has he come on purpose to remind me of that day 
 at Southampton ?' 
 
 She had an unreasonable dislike to her father's 
 articled clerk, an unreasonable idea that he was her 
 enemy. 
 
 Flossie turned up her pert little nose at sight of 
 the intrusive Maulford, but was rather glad there was 
 an extra man to admire the waviness of her hair and 
 the perfect fit of her new gown, to say nothing of her 
 bonnet, which had been the study of the last ten 
 days. 
 
 Mr. T. greeted his wife with a careless * How d'ye 
 do, Flora ?' and gave her the tips of his fingers to 
 shake. The settlement had been duly executed. 
 He felt himself a pattern father. What more could 
 the most careful parent do for his child than to get 
 her such a husb^ind as Vyvyan Penruth, or rather 
 such a settlement as Yyvyan Penruth had made? 
 The man himself was a secondary consideration. 
 
 It was a humdrum wedding. The service was
 
 BURIED LETTERS, BURIED HOPES. 285 
 
 hurried over by a gray-haired curate, who had grown 
 elderly while he waited for a living that had been 
 promised him when he was a lad at school. He had 
 no idea that he was marrying ' this woman' to so 
 much money in the person of ' this man.' The bond 
 was sealed in the shortest possible time, and Barbara 
 was Mrs. Penruth. 
 
 ' If George Leland were to rush into the church 
 this instant, rich, triumphant, eager to marry me, it 
 would be no use,' she thought, remembering her 
 wild dreams last night. ' All is over.' 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 ttOBSOK AISD SONS, TRINTERS, PA^XRAS ROAD, N.W,
 
 e