LI E> R.ARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N IVLRSITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS 
 
 v.|
 
 ' I I V 
 
 II 
 
 if
 
 so NEAR AKIN 
 
 a iSotiei. 
 
 M. A. BENGOUCxH 
 
 /.V THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. L 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, 
 
 i3ublisf)rrs in ©tlimarg to |^cr £Hajrstg tf}c ©urrn. 
 1891. 
 
 (^//? rt splits reserved.^
 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I 
 
 1 
 
 ^ CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 i LA Disgrace to the Family .. i 
 
 >^ 11. Her Son's Mother ... ... 27 
 
 III. Anne's Miracle Play ... si 
 
 IV. The Wide, Wide World ... 77 
 ^, V. Cousin and Aunt ... ... 108 
 
 ^ VI. The Family Skeleton comes out of 
 
 r1 the Cupboard... ... ... 134 
 
 ^ VII. The Whirligig of Time ... 160 
 
 rj VIII. Brings about its Revenges ... 185 
 
 ^ IX. After the Conquest .. 217 
 
 O X. "People in Society" .. .. 246 
 
 '- XI. Hester's Convert ... ... 269
 
 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A DISGRACE TO THE FAMILY. 
 
 It was a quite aggressively respectable 
 house. The whole neighbourhood, in- 
 deed, was redolent of respectability ; for 
 this was Clapham — in the latter end of 
 its palmy days, it is true, but still some 
 time before the era of the Junction or of 
 the Oxford movement. This house in 
 particular, might have been built to order 
 for a serious family ; there was a well-to- 
 do comeliness in every line of it, but a 
 comeliness tempered with sobriety. Even 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 2 SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 now, amidst the dreary dimness of a 
 drizzling autumn twilight, It kept up its 
 dignity. The very flowers in the garden 
 seemed to have been trained, like so many 
 gladiators, to die decently. No trailing 
 stalks or dishevelled heads were here ; 
 they died, but they did not surrender. 
 The place was a very epic of respectability. 
 So it seemed to the man who stood 
 leaning against the gatepost. And a smile 
 grew about his lips as he looked — a smile 
 most like an inaudible chuckle. 
 *' Just like Thomas," he said. 
 Then he picked up a bundle tied up in 
 a blue check handkerchief, slung it across 
 his stick, and the stick across his shoulder, 
 gave a rapid touch to his hat, imparting the 
 true vagabond cock, and strolled leisurely 
 down the garden path. The little yellow 
 puddles in the gravel soaked in through 
 his ragged boots, water dripped from the
 
 A DISGRACE TO THE FAMILY. 3 
 
 brim of his battered hat, two buttons that 
 did not match, and an elaborate system of 
 pins, kept together his frayed and faded 
 blue coat. Altogether he felt effective, 
 and he was so — a figure as entirely out 
 of keeping with his surroundings as his 
 fondest wish could frame. 
 
 The shutters were up and the curtains 
 drawn ; when the front-door was opened a 
 flood of lamplight and warm air streamed 
 out to meet him, and gave all needful 
 point to the contrast. There was nothing 
 else warm about the welcome ; the butler 
 who answered the bell was more than 
 cool. 
 
 " Master never gives anything at the 
 door," he said shortly, eyeing the visitor 
 with strong disfavour. 
 
 " Is not your master at home ? " 
 
 " He can't see you." 
 
 " I think he will, if you will do me the
 
 4 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 kindness to say that Mr. William would 
 like to speak to him for a moment." 
 
 The stranger's voice was singularly well 
 modulated ; without being harmonious it 
 impressed itself on the hearer, and it had 
 its effect. Perhaps, however, it was not 
 only his voice that moved Mr. Graves into 
 sudden relenting. He did not address 
 Mr. William as '' sir," nor did he formally 
 invite him to enter ; but he muttered 
 something about letting master know, and 
 stood aside. The family skeleton glided 
 meekly in ; the chuckle in his eye could 
 almost be heard as he sat humbly down on 
 the edge of a hall chair. 
 
 He sat there for some time. His 
 arrival seemed to have made some sensa- 
 tion. Not upstairs, where Captain Paton 
 was at that moment solemnly dressing for 
 the five o'clock solemnity of dinner. But, 
 from downstairs, the servants suddenly
 
 A DISGRACE TO THE FAMILY. 5 
 
 began to come and go. The two maids 
 kept passing across the hall. They did 
 not always remember what they had come 
 to do, but they never forgot what it was 
 they had come to see, and they made the 
 most of their opportunities. Mr. William 
 felt his spirits steadily rising. He knew 
 they guessed something of the situation ; 
 from a professional point of view he was 
 fond of playing to a pit audience, and 
 now he began to play to this one. He 
 did not speak ; he did not seem to 
 know they were there. But in dumb 
 show, with no other help than genius and 
 a red pocket-handkerchief, he began to 
 give pathetic domestic drama to the maids 
 at one minute, and, at the next, low 
 comedy to the little butler's assistant till 
 he vanished into the dining-room with a 
 clatter of falling spoons and a smothered 
 shout.
 
 6 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 At the same moment there was a 
 diversion. The nursery was evidently in 
 revolt. There was a scuffling struggle on 
 the top landing, a subdued remonstrance, 
 a child's shrill rebellious treble. The next 
 moment, sliding down the banisters at 
 break-neck speed, taking the curves in 
 gallant fashion which yet brought Mr. 
 William's heart into his mouth, came a 
 little girl. How she finally alighted, safe 
 and breathless, at his feet he did not 
 know ; she was so light there was scarcely 
 the sound of a drop as she swung herself 
 to the floor. Then she leaned for a 
 moment, flushed and panting, against the 
 rail and looked at him. 
 
 For his part he could only look at her ; 
 he had seldom seen such a vision of child- 
 hood. She was nine years old, but did 
 not look jter age. Her hair was of that 
 pure gold, like raw silk, which does not
 
 A DISGRACE TO THE FAMILY. 7 
 
 often outlast actual infancy. It was kept 
 short, after the fashion of the day, but 
 round the temples it curled of itself into 
 loose, soft rings of irresistible curve. 
 She had the face of one of Sir Joshua's 
 most heavenly-minded cherubs ; the limpid 
 candour of her blue eyes would have con- 
 verted a cynic to belief in virtue. Alto- 
 gether she was the type of the predestined 
 martyr to good conduct made familiar by 
 a certain class of Sunday-school books. 
 But Anne Paton possessed a magnificent 
 constitution, and enjoyed (not altogether 
 metaphorically) the reputation of being 
 the naughtiest child in the neighbourhood. 
 She was plainly dressed in a grey merino 
 frock. The short sleeves and low neck 
 showed off the perfect childish modelling 
 of her arms and shoulders ; round her 
 throat she wore a string of some small, 
 pearly-tinted foreign shells.
 
 8 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 The vision spoke, still a little breathless. 
 *' She wanted to keep me, but she said 
 it was father's brother downstairs, and so 
 of course you are my uncle, and all little 
 girls go and see their uncles. And if I 
 had not come I might not have seen you 
 at all, because I mayn't go down to 
 dessert for a month because I squirted 
 Henry Stephens and spoiled his clean frill. 
 Are you going to stay to dinner ? and are 
 you my uncle Will ? " 
 
 *' Yes ; it is, it is your long-lost uncle. 
 And you — you are Nancy Paton." 
 
 The child was in his arms at the word. 
 
 *' Oh ! you dear naughty uncle ! They 
 said you were naughty, and no good 
 people ever call me that. Oh ! I have 
 hoped and hoped some day to be called 
 Nancy. I hate Anne; it sounds so good." 
 
 Uncle Will's chuckle exploded softly at 
 last.
 
 A DISGRACE TO THE FAMILY. 9 
 
 ''So they told you I was naughty, 
 Nancy ? Yet you were not afraid of me." 
 
 "You see, I am so naughty myself," 
 said Anne, with simple candour. 
 
 ** And do you think I look as black as 
 I'm painted ?" 
 
 The child slipped from his arms and 
 stood back to take a look at him. 
 
 " Were you painted ? I see you are a 
 little smudged still, but I suppose the rain 
 has washed it off; you don t look black, to 
 speak of, now. But of course I should 
 have known you were not a good man." 
 
 " Indeed, and how ? " 
 
 '* Good people are always tidy, and never 
 use pins ; when they go out in the rain 
 they take umbrellas. And they don't 
 call me Nancy. Uncle Will," she said 
 abruptly, " can you dance a hornpipe ? " 
 
 The actor's eyes twinkled. They were 
 curious eyes, small and deepset, of inde-
 
 lO so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 finite colour ; changeable too in hue, it 
 seemed, like those of the not then immor- 
 talized Pied Piper. '' I have done so, on 
 occasion," he said. " You know, or per- 
 haps you don't, that your grandfather was 
 a sailor." 
 
 " Yes, that was why I asked. And will 
 you then ? Oh, will 370U ? " 
 
 She was clinging round his knees, sud- 
 denly she pulled him down to listen ; even 
 Anne dared not name the bribe aloud. 
 
 " If you will I — I'll whistle for you," she 
 whispered. 
 
 When Captain Paton, in the full glory 
 of evening costume, opened the door of 
 his dressing-room, he caught, first, the 
 sound of a clear bird-like whistle, unmis- 
 takably Anne's, trilling out a nautical air. 
 With this was mingled a peculiar sound of 
 alternate thump and double-shuffle, varied 
 by an occasional finger snap. And when
 
 A DISGRACE TO THE FAMILY. I I 
 
 he came out on to the landing, too much 
 bewildered as yet even for horror, the first 
 thing he saw was his daughter, perched 
 lightly on the rounded end of the stair-rail, 
 whistling ecstatically as she watched a 
 draggled-looking individual performing a 
 rollicking hornpipe in the middle of the hall. 
 
 '' Anne ! " 
 
 The whistling broke short off, like the 
 song of a startled bird ; she slipped from 
 her perch and stood with drooping head 
 and downcast eyes. The dancer, too, 
 came to a stop, and faced round to see 
 what had happened. Then Captain Paton 
 recognized him. He had not done so at 
 first. Prepared though he was for his 
 visitor, he had not expected anything so 
 bad as this ; now it flashed upon him that 
 this disreputable yet jovial vagabond was 
 really his brother Will. He had been 
 prepared for shabbiness, for misery and
 
 12 SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 degradation, even for abject poverty and 
 distress, for anything and everything but 
 this. In the shock of that recognition 
 Anne was forgotten ; he took no further 
 notice of her as she Hngered on the stairs, 
 uncertain whether it would be better poHcy 
 to go or stay. She thought he was too 
 angry to speak, but in truth the child had 
 faded from his mind. The memory of 
 older, earlier ties, strained to snapping 
 long ago, came between him and all the 
 present, except that one ragged, wet, 
 draggled irrepressible, who advanced to 
 meet him at the foot of the stairs. Cap- 
 tain Paton had not an expressive face, 
 scarcely more so than one of his own 
 figure-heads. But on this occasion it was 
 possible to gather something of his mind 
 from his countenance. It was nothing 
 flattering. 
 
 " My brother ! " exclaimed Mr. William,
 
 A DISGRACE TO THE FAMILY. 1 3 
 
 in thrilling tones. He seemed about to 
 clasp him, as he had done Anne, in a 
 damp embrace. But suddenly he turned 
 away his head, and retreated a step or 
 two, extending towards the Captain an 
 averting, deprecating hand. 
 
 " Forgive me," he murmured, " I had 
 forgotten — what I am, what you are. I 
 thought for a moment of what we both 
 were years ago, in our father's cottage, at 
 our mother's knee. 'Twas natural, but 
 'twas unfitting. Your pardon, Thomas." 
 
 He had turned his head again. From 
 that mobile countenance every trace of 
 levity had disappeared ; his very eyes 
 looked more hollow and sunken. 
 
 For a moment his brother stared at him 
 with a wooden bewilderment. Then he 
 gave up all attempts to follow suit to such 
 a conversational lead as that, and started 
 afresh on his own account.
 
 14 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 "This Is not the place for an interview, 
 William," he said. " And I must say that 
 I am grieved and pained — seriously dis- 
 tressed, that you should have compromised 
 the character of my establishment, cor- 
 rupted, I may say, the morals of my 
 domestics, encouraged the deplorable in- 
 stincts I have to lament in my child " 
 
 " It was I, sir, who begged my uncle 
 William to dance, and who offered to 
 whistle for him. I'm very sorry, father, I 
 forgot," said poor Anne. 
 
 " Go, child, and reflect on your conduct. 
 I do not wish to see you again until I send 
 for you. You are a great grief to me, 
 Anne." 
 
 The reaction, the excitement of all the 
 circumstances, broke the child down. She 
 burst into sobs more angry than penitent. 
 
 *' Then I wish you would give your 
 horrid wicked daughter right away to your
 
 A DISGRACE TO THE FAMILY. 1 5 
 
 naughty brother to be his little Nancy ! 
 I'm not a grief to him. And they might 
 put me into a story book, with the bad 
 end I'm sure to come to, and you could 
 give it to Hester, and she and Henry 
 Stephens might read it together. I wouldn't 
 mind about the bad end, if I might have all 
 the good time first. And I'm not a grief 
 to you, Uncle Will, am I ?" 
 
 She clung to him in her sudden passion 
 of revolt. 
 
 " Upon my word," he said, with a lapse 
 into his natural, unhistrionic manner, " I 
 don't think that's a bad notion the child 
 has got. Come, Thomas, exchange is no 
 robbery, you know ; suppose we make an 
 exchange — your daughter for my son." 
 
 ** Your son ? " 
 
 *' To be sure ; didn't you remember that? 
 Affectionate brother ! Yes, you are quite 
 right, you did forget to inquire after Mrs.
 
 l6 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 William. Theresa is quite well, thank 
 you ; stouter than she used to be, but a 
 fine figure for maternal tragedy still. If 
 George could but play up to her — but he 
 is a stick, a mere stick. Ton my soul, 
 Thomas, I think we had better ex- 
 change." 
 
 *' Is that his name ? My cousin George ! 
 Is he like you ? How old is he ? Why 
 didn't you bring him ? " 
 
 In the new excitement Anne forgot the 
 depths of her disgrace. 
 
 '* I didn't bring him because he wouldn't 
 come. He is sixteen years old, and is my 
 exact antipodes in every respect. Think 
 of it, Thomas ; I assure you it is worth 
 thinking of. Going — an amiable youth 
 who would be a credit to any well-ordered 
 establishment, who would like nothing 
 better than to join, or cut out. Master 
 Henry Stephens with your younger daugh-
 
 A DISGRACE TO THE FAMILY. 1 7 
 
 ter, in those charming Sabbath hours of 
 Hterary recreation to which '* 
 
 '' Forbear this ribaldry, WilHam, at least 
 in the presence of my child. Master 
 Henry Stephens is one whom any parent 
 might gladly see his son copy, and next 
 heir to a baronetcy. And 77ty family do 
 not read profane literature on the Sabbath." 
 
 " There's your naughty uncle put his 
 cloven foot into it again, Nancy !" ejacu- 
 lated the unabashed actor in a stap-e aside. 
 
 o 
 
 There was a pause. Then Captain 
 Paton resumed — 
 
 " If by your extraordinary proposal you 
 mean to imply that you even now repent 
 of bringing up your unhappy son to follow 
 the degrading career on which you your- 
 self are embarked — I will consult Mrs. 
 Paton, and I have no doubt that arrange- 
 ments might be made. Of course, I could 
 not admit him into my family circle with- 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 1 8 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 out some probationary period, passed 
 among reputable surroundings. But I 
 cannot forget that the youth is my 
 brother's son, and that that brother can 
 still wish to save his child." 
 
 Will Paton shook a doubtful head ; the 
 twinkle rose again in his eye. 
 
 " Your words, Thomas, recall me, as 
 ever, to myself," he said seriously. '' You 
 are truly kind, as usual, but I see now it 
 can never be. You will not reckon with- 
 out Jane " (Captain Paton winced at the 
 familiarity) ; " I had all but reckoned with- 
 out Theresa. And Theresa would never 
 part from the boy. He is as little like her 
 as he is like me, except in looks ; but she 
 thinks him perfection in himself, and a 
 saving clause as regards us. It is as good 
 as a play, sir, to see those two together. 
 So, as I suppose you will scarcely give me 
 your Nancy here — good-bye, Nancy; good-
 
 A DISGRACE TO THE FAMILY. 1 9 
 
 bye, brother Thomas ; give my love to 
 Jane and kiss Hester for me. The eternal 
 wanderer passes from innocence and do- 
 mestic bliss, and from the home that ne'er 
 may smile for him, curse-driven forth into 
 the stormy night — en route for Brighton, 
 where the company is due on Wednesday 
 next, to have the honour of performing, 
 before the first gentleman in Europe, the 
 pleasing comedy of ' Paul Pry,' title-role 
 by Mr. W. Paton." 
 
 He shouldered his bundle once more, 
 jammed his battered hat firmly on his 
 head, passed his expressive hand across 
 his eyes, and prepared to sally forth. 
 Stiffer than ever, in a truly British 
 awkwardness of giving. Captain Paton 
 stopped him at the very door. 
 
 " I have many claims upon me," he said, 
 in an attempt at a hurried whisper ; " but 
 if you are going out to — to — homelessness 
 and starvation "
 
 20 SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 There was a certain crisp rustle, far less 
 unfamiliar to the actor's ears than his 
 brother supposed. He recoiled this time 
 with an unaffected start. 
 
 '' Bless your thick head and your kind 
 heart, Tom," he exclaimed, in unconven- 
 tionally clear tones. '' It always was a 
 shame to green you ; it is too disgracefully 
 easy. I can't take your money, my boy. 
 Don't you understand ? I'm no worse off 
 than you are." 
 
 ''Your coat, your hat ! " He could say 
 no more. 
 
 '' All properties, nothing else ; borrowed 
 to get a rise out of you, Tom. Don't 
 bear malice, old chap ; I am immensely 
 grateful, so is Theresa, so is George ; but 
 homeless, destitute — ha ! ha ! ha ! excuse 
 me ; ten thousand pardons, but — ha ! ha ! 
 ha!" 
 
 It was not in human nature not to slam
 
 A DISGRACE TO THE FAMILY. 21 
 
 the door then. Captain Paton did slam it, 
 hearing even through the closing crash the 
 inexpressibly hilarious laughter dying in 
 gusts along the garden path. It would 
 scarcely have soothed his feelings to have 
 seen his brother lying back in the hackney- 
 coach which awaited him just round the 
 corner, wiping the mirth-born moisture 
 from his eyes again and again, as he 
 rehearsed the whole interview as it would 
 appear to his appreciative wife. 
 
 Captain Paton could not trust himself to 
 speak, and in fact anger never made him 
 eloquent. With a gesture of dismissal 
 which his brother might have envied, he 
 waved Anne from him, and himself turned 
 into the parlour and took up the news- 
 paper ; but he did not read. His wife 
 looked up, at his entrance, from the netting 
 of a chronic green silk purse; she read 
 the storm-signal on his brow, and began to
 
 2 2 SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 think what there was for dinner. She 
 was a timid-looking-, willowy creature, like 
 a faint steel-engraving from the Ladies' 
 Keepsake, blonde to aggravation, and 
 dressed to intensify it. The orphan 
 heiress of an old merchant family, it was 
 she who had brought to her husband 
 wealth and social consideration ; but never 
 was gift less presumed upon by the giver. 
 It is doubtful whether she had ever 
 realized that he was in her debt. 
 
 Meanwhile Anne, still struggling with 
 the stormy sobs of a child's sense of hope- 
 less naughtiness and disgrace, climbed 
 slowly up the stairs to the nursery. A 
 pretty little brown-haired girl was sitting 
 demurely on a low stool at the extreme 
 edge of the hearthrug, her little bronze- 
 slippered toes kept religiously on the 
 virtuous side of forbidden ground, her 
 little mittened hands folded on her lap.
 
 A DISGRACE TO THE FAMILY. 23 
 
 She was dressed for dessert and might not 
 disarrange herself : an engaging Httle 
 figure in her white frock, with broad 
 yellow sash and amber beads. But be- 
 side Anne her brown and rosy, dove- 
 eyed prettiness faded into insignificance. 
 Hester was not formed for comparisons. 
 
 The sisters were on fair terms, but on 
 fair terms only. Anne had a consider- 
 able contempt for Hester ; Hester could 
 scarcely help feeling morally superior to 
 Anne. 
 
 "Oh! sister," she began, ''was father 
 very much displeased ? " 
 
 Anne choked down a sob in a silent toss 
 of defiance. 
 
 '' Dear Anne, I wish you were not 
 always getting into trouble." 
 
 "Well, I'm not going to get into much 
 more. I'm going to live with Uncle Will 
 and have Cousin George for a brother.
 
 24 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 I've had enough of sisters ; the stupidest 
 boy — even Henry Stephens — Is more 
 amusing than a girl." 
 
 " Do you think Henry is a stupid boy ? 
 I think he is nice ; and he is very good." 
 
 '' Ah ! you may say that, Miss Hester," 
 put in the nurse, in a tone that fore- 
 boded a moral. 
 
 " Is he good, nurse ? " asked Anne, with 
 sudden interest. 
 
 '' If yozi- don't know it, Miss Anne, I 
 don't know who should ; after what he has 
 to put up with from you." 
 
 '* Well ; but very, very good ? " 
 '' Yes." 
 
 '' I am glad," said Anne. " Really good 
 enough to die like the boys in books ? " 
 
 *' And if he does, you very wicked girl, 
 I wonder where do you expect to go to ? 
 And he consumptive, like his poor dear 
 pa 
 
 I"
 
 A DISGRACE TO THE FAMILY. 25 
 
 *' Oh ! if he did, would it be murder ?" 
 said Hester, her soft eyes growing round 
 with terror. 
 
 '' Of course not, silly," retorted Anne, 
 with more assurance than she felt. " Be- 
 sides, he isn't going to ; I know he isn't 
 really good enough for that. He hasn't 
 forgiven me yet, and the boys in books do 
 that when they are dying — send for the 
 wicked boy that killed them to forgive 
 him. Henry hasn't sent for me." 
 
 " Oh ! Anne, I'm sure he has forgiven 
 you. 
 
 '' I don't care ; he won't for the next 
 
 time." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 ^' Ah!" 
 
 " What are you going to do ? " 
 
 But neither threats nor entreaties could 
 extort from Anne anything but peals of 
 impish laughter. Finally Hester had to
 
 26 
 
 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 depart unsatisfied. As soon as she was 
 CTone Anne fluno^ herself on the floor In a 
 passion of tears and sobs. She did not 
 greatly value the privilege of dessert when 
 she had it ; but she felt bitterly the sense 
 of outlawry implied in its withdrawal, and 
 all the fierceness of her wrath centred 
 upon Henry Stephens.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HER son's mother. 
 
 In the wisdom of the East there is a 
 custom by which a man, upon becoming 
 the proud and happy parent of a son and 
 heir, merges his own identity in that of 
 his son, and from beino^ known as AH or 
 
 o 
 
 Yussuf becomes the Father-of-Adhem or 
 Selim as the case may be. ]\Irs. Stephens, 
 then, was known primarily, even to her- 
 self as the mother of the future Sir Henr\\ 
 Like the nimbus seen floating above the 
 cradles of certain future saints, the glory 
 of the coming title played around the head 
 of ]\Irs. Stephens' first-born, and its lustre 
 was reflected more faintly upon her. She,
 
 28 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 reverential by nature and doting by 
 maternity, scarcely realized her own share 
 in this glory : if it is possible to conceive 
 of an apologetic necessity, Mrs. Stephens 
 was that metaphysical phenomenon. Even 
 the heir to a baronetcy is under the vulgar 
 obligation of having a mother, but towards 
 him she so conducted herself as to render 
 his commonplace entrance into the world 
 as little galling to him, and as little obtru- 
 sive to the generality as might be. To 
 all her numerous family she was a devoted, 
 an absorbingly devoted mother ; but for 
 Henry, even at the early age of thirteen, 
 her devotion was tempered with respect. 
 
 The prestige was his alone ; he had 
 no rival to dread even in her memory. 
 Upon the late Mr. Stephens this light 
 had not risen ; he had never been the 
 future Sir Joseph. A series of family 
 catastrophes, in the first year after his
 
 HER SON S MOTHER. 29 
 
 death, had left the youthful Henry unex- 
 pectedly heir apparent. Even had it been 
 otherwise it would have detracted little 
 from the splendour of his position. Joseph 
 Stephens had not been the man to make 
 an impression under any circumstances. 
 He had been ; he was not : to the general 
 public his biography was comprised in 
 those words. To him might have been 
 applied the epitaph of a Prince of Wales — 
 
 "Since it is only Fred, 
 Who was alive and is dead. 
 Why, there's no more to be said ! " 
 
 The very disease which had shuffled 
 him gently and considerately off this mortal 
 coil owed its name to the doctors, who did 
 not choose to confess themselves unable to 
 assign it any local habitation. As a matter 
 of fact, it had been as vague as the rest of 
 him ; as he had dropped through life so 
 he finally dropped out of it, with no more
 
 30 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 tangible reason for the last step than for 
 any of the preceding ones. 
 
 Mrs. Stephens was left a widow, indif- 
 ferently provided for, except with children, 
 and with that splendour which had not 
 yet dawned upon her horizon. She wept 
 and gathered her children round her — 
 solemn five-year-old Henry, John, Mary, 
 Joseph, and James — all of them, down to 
 the two-months-old twins ; and looking on 
 them she was comforted. Henry requested 
 his dear mamma's permission to repeat a 
 hymn ; John and Mary made such cruelly 
 practical remarks about the pit-hole and 
 poor dear papa as only unimaginative 
 children of three and four can do. The 
 twins thrust aimless fists into her eyes and 
 clawed at her cap as they lay in her arms 
 on the sofa ; and she could not feel her 
 life to be a blank, felt it even less than she 
 would have wished. Free from all other
 
 HER SONS MOTHER. 3 1 
 
 ties she now first found her true vocation. 
 She had been an ordinarily good wife, but 
 first and foremost and above all things she 
 was born to be a mother, and to mother- 
 hood she henceforth devoted herself. So 
 soon as the financial situation was made 
 clear to her she rose to the situation. She 
 worked harder and with less sleep than 
 any two servants, and seemed to thrive 
 upon it. She was by turns cook, house- 
 maid, tailor and dressmaker, besides being 
 nurse always ; she had even handled the 
 mangle and the blacking-brush. Yet she 
 kept up with society and never degene- 
 rated into a household drudge. 
 
 This seems to be the description of a 
 clever, superior woman ; but intellectually 
 Mrs. Stephens was rather silly, and had no 
 pretensions to being superior. It is true 
 that she had come to Clapham encom- 
 passed by traditions of some uncommon
 
 32 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 degree of education, but no one knew 
 exactly the origin of the idea. It had 
 soon faded and died. By the end of her 
 first year of married life Maria Stephens' 
 conversation was considered below par 
 even by the not dazzlingly intellectual 
 society of Clapham. After the birth of 
 her first child she scarcely opened a book, 
 except the volume of sermons she went to 
 sleep over on Sundays. Her mind did not 
 become a blank, far from it ; she had a 
 well-stored and an active one. Only, one 
 by one, the more abstruse contents of her 
 mental library were consigned to the lobby 
 of oblivion to make room for whole ency- 
 clopedias of nursery and domestic lore and 
 endless files of Clapham chronicle. 
 
 This last possession no doubt helped 
 to make her what she was, a generally 
 popular woman. Not generally adored or 
 respected, indeed pretty generally laughed
 
 HER SON S MOTHER. 33 
 
 at, but every one was her well-wisher. It 
 has been said she was not generally adored, 
 yet she had her devotees. The rector of 
 the parish called her the Cornelia of Clap- 
 ham. Perhaps his appreciation was not 
 quite disinterested ; it increased perceptibly 
 in keenness and fervour during the holi- 
 days ; he was an elderly widower with 
 three big sons in the hobbledehoy stage of 
 objectionability, and it was thought Cor- 
 nelia might have added these jewels to her 
 own at any time within the last eight years, 
 had she so pleased. In a strictly platonic 
 and irreproachable fashion Captain Paton 
 was another of her admirers. He never 
 wearied of expressing his admiration ; her 
 virtues formed the text of so many domes- 
 tic lectures that Mrs. Paton might have 
 had as much reason for hating the very 
 sound of her name as Anne had for dis- 
 liking Henry s. Yet Mrs. Paton bore no 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 34 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 malice ; in a languid and colourless way 
 she was good friends with her exemplar. 
 They called each other Jane and Maria 
 and kissed at meeting, Maria smartly and 
 solidly, Jane dissolving as it were into a 
 sort of diluted caress. They were next- 
 door neighbours, their children had been 
 playmates from their cradles, they each 
 found servants for the other, and em- 
 ployed the same tradespeople. Mrs. Paton 
 lent Mrs. Stephens patterns of her chil- 
 dren's more fashionable clothes, and Mrs. 
 Stephens reciprocated with recipes for jam 
 or home-made wine and dodges in domes- 
 tic economy. Separately and together the 
 two families were an edification to the 
 parish. For eight years they had stood 
 the test of the closest neighbourhood and 
 stood it well. One reason might be that, 
 with all their familiarity, their intercourse 
 kept clear of the danger of unceremonious-
 
 HER SONS MOTHER. 35 
 
 ness. Nothing with which Captain Paton 
 had to do could possibly be other than 
 ceremonious. 
 
 When any friend of the family wished 
 to make himself particularly agreeable, he 
 would turn from watching the innocent 
 sports of Henry and Anne, to remark 
 with a smile what a charming pair they 
 made. So far as looks went, no doubt 
 they did. Not that Henry's good looks 
 were in the same style as Anne's ; where 
 she was piquant he was correct ; he was 
 no vision, unless the British aristocrat 
 can be called a vision. Patrician, conven- 
 tionally, spectacularly patrician, was what 
 he looked to the backbone — especially, per- 
 haps, in the backbone. Mrs. Paton, who 
 was poetical but unfortunately hazy as to 
 contexts in her quotations, had often mur- 
 mured that dear Henry was so clearly one 
 of Nature's noblemen. She meant no
 
 36 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 sarcasm, yet she perpetrated a pretty sharp 
 one. For every one knew that Henry's 
 aristocratic appearance was the result of 
 one of those freaks by which nature does 
 set believers in heredity at defiance. Mrs. 
 Stephens ancestry was respectable, but 
 far indeed from being distinguished ; nor 
 had the race of country squires, from 
 whom he traced his descent on the other 
 side, been of a kind likely to transmit any 
 superlative degree of refinement to their 
 posterity. The title itself, though sup- 
 ported by a suitable though not magnifi- 
 cent amount of landed property, was of 
 late creation and had no very exalted 
 account to give of its origin. Every 
 one knew this, but it was tacitly ignored, 
 and nature favoured such ignoring. 
 
 All the little Stephenses had more or less 
 of this unaccountable air of birth about 
 them. They were a family for any mother
 
 HER SON S MOTHER. 37 
 
 to be proud of, and they were not thrown 
 away upon this one. The time to see 
 them in their glory was at half-past ten on 
 Sunday mornings, when at the first sound 
 of the bell the whole train came two and 
 two, hand in hand, down the garden path, 
 to join forces with the Patons at the gate. 
 First, John with Mary soberly cheerful and 
 elder-sisterly. Then Joseph and James, 
 comely and unindividualized, as inseparable 
 as the real twins Susan and Sarah, now 
 just eight years old, but kept babies so 
 long that Anne looked down on them from 
 immeasurable heights, and even Hester, 
 though no older than they, felt almost 
 motherly towards them. The rear would 
 be brought up by Mrs. Stephens leaning 
 on Henry's arm, he carrying her reticule 
 and a large white shawl with a brilliant 
 border ; on threatening days the family 
 umbrella was substituted for the shawl.
 
 ^S so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 The day after William Paton's visit was 
 decidedly an umbrella Sunday, chilly with 
 fog and gloomy with the foreshadowings 
 of November. Henry was absent from 
 the procession ; his defection was attri- 
 buted to the results of Anne's hydropathic 
 treatment at the beginning of the week, 
 and she was condemned to walk behind in 
 solitary disgrace. Unwisely condemned, 
 as she improved the opportunity and re- 
 lieved her feelings by stepping lovingly 
 and carefully into every puddle she could 
 find on the way, with satisfaction only 
 tempered by the fact that she dared not 
 make any splash. 
 
 The walk to church was a dull and 
 rather long one, and Anne had an active 
 . mind which she gladly exercised on the 
 affairs of her elders and betters. It is 
 probable, however, that only the delights 
 of hearing what was not intended for her
 
 HER SONS MOTHER. 39 
 
 kept up her attention. Yet older people 
 might well have found something intrinsi- 
 cally funny in the conversation of three 
 people whose styles were at once definite 
 and antagonistic. Mrs. Paton's, indeed, 
 was not aggressive, but her remarks were 
 usually altogether unconnected with the 
 subject in hand, and dropped isolated 
 across the war of tongues like faint- 
 hearted minute-guns that scarcely expect 
 a reply. But with Captain Paton and 
 Mrs. Stephens Greek met Greek. His 
 style, especially on Sunday, was exhorta- 
 tory, hers was meandering, but neither 
 yielded to the other in fluency, and neither 
 was above taking the meanest advantage 
 in seizing an opening. 
 
 Mrs. Paton hoped dear Henry was not 
 seriously indisposed. Captain Paton saw 
 an opportunity of improving the occasion 
 to Anne, but Mrs. Stephens was aware of
 
 40 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 it too, and got first start on her own 
 subject. 
 
 " I hope not, my love ; no, I think I 
 should not say seriously. I was very 
 anxious about him on Friday evening ; in 
 fact, I am quite stiff this morning still. 
 He looked so flushed and feverish, I 
 wanted to send for Dr. Barclay ; but he 
 was so disagreeable last time I sent for 
 him at night, and of course we are all poor 
 frail mortals, but I do think that temper is 
 extra sinful in a doctor who, one may say, 
 is conversing daily with death. And if you 
 will take my advice, Jane, and send for Dr. 
 Lamb next time, you will find the difference 
 of being attended by a true Christian." 
 
 ** Ah ! if only doctors would realize as 
 you do the nature of their calling, dear 
 Mrs. Stephens, what a blessed change we 
 should see in the character of the profes- 
 sion. But, alas ! so true it is, as that very
 
 HER SONS MOTHER. 4 1 
 
 gracious young man, Mr. Jefferys, was 
 telling us only last Sunday " 
 
 '' Mary, my love, Sally's shoe-string has 
 come untied. Put her little foot up on 
 that step and bring her after us ; we will 
 go slowly and you can catch us up." 
 
 "Yes, we will run and catch you up," 
 said Sarah, with infantine deliberation of 
 utterance. 
 
 " No, dear Sally, we will walk fast, but 
 we must not run on the Sabbath." 
 
 Mary's mother lost the joy of edification 
 which this remark was calculated to afford 
 her, as she was already off at score with 
 the conversation in her own hands again. 
 Anne heard it, and lingered to show her 
 appreciation by a grimace more hideous 
 than it would have seemed possible for so 
 fair a face to produce. When she next 
 gave ear to the conversation Mrs. Stephens 
 was still in possession of the field.
 
 42 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 " And as I said to her : * Of course, 
 Mary Anne, when I engaged you I could 
 not say, to a pint, how much water you 
 would have to carry up every day ; you 
 can see for yourself that Master Henry is 
 very unwell ' ; (and really he was coughing 
 a regular churchyard cough, as people say, 
 at that very minute, and there is nothing 
 like putting the feet in mustard and hot 
 water, as I daresay you know, Captain). I 
 said to her that sickness was a dispensation 
 that might happen in any family, and no 
 notice given beforehand. But she was so 
 much put out, that sooner than have her 
 in the sulks for a week, and next day 
 Saturday and all, I said I would carry it 
 up myself if she would sit with the twins' 
 while they went to sleep; and I think I 
 strained myself a little with using the big 
 can. You see I was in a hurry to get 
 back, for really that girl can scarcely be
 
 HER SON S MOTHER. 43 
 
 trusted with the children. I hope Eliza 
 continues to give satisfaction, Jane." 
 
 '' Except for her hair," murmured Mrs. 
 Paton. " But of course these are matters 
 which are not in our own hands." 
 
 " True, Jane," interposed her overjoyed 
 husband ; '' most providentially true. How 
 far different might have been your lot and 
 mine, the lot of any one of us, had the 
 choice been left to our missfuided selves. 
 How often do we see the self-chosen path, 
 fair and smiling at the outset, slope swiftly 
 down to misery and degradation. Yes, 
 we know, Mrs. Stephens, the blessings of 
 a choiceless career. And how few need 
 choose ! In the days of our youth, fond 
 and careful parents settle our course of 
 action." 
 
 " Didn't you say, Thomas, that Mrs. 
 William Paton's little boy's hair promised 
 to be bright red ?"
 
 44 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 " There," said the captain courageously, 
 *' is a case in point. This, Mrs. Stephens, 
 is a case which has come under my per- 
 sonal observation. Two boys, the children 
 of poor but honest parents, were just 
 entering upon life ; that all important 
 moment had come in which their future 
 career was to be determined. The father, 
 a — a — in short a sea-faring man, had des- 
 tined both for his own profession. The 
 choice was not congenial to the tastes of 
 either youth ; the profits and the prospects 
 were small, the hardships many." 
 
 "Yes, that's what poor Uncle Ben 
 always used to say. ' More kicks than 
 halfpence.' Poor old man ! when he was 
 quite worn out they put him in a coast- 
 guard station on the Lincolnshire coast ; it 
 was a great place for Dutch smugglers, but 
 he caught cold and died the first winter 
 of it."
 
 HER SONS MOTHER. 45 
 
 ''He died, madam, in the discharge of 
 his duty ; what better fate could he desire ? 
 Had the youth of whom I was speaking 
 done the same, how far nobler and better 
 in every way might his life have been. 
 But he refused. Regardless of a father's 
 commands, a mother's tears, he chose his 
 own career among the miserable votaries 
 of the stage. His brother, who started in 
 life bare-footed and with one change of 
 clothing done up in a handkerchief, now% 
 under Providence, a comfortable house- 
 holder, saw him yesterday and scarcely 
 recognized him. I, dear friend, was that 
 poor sailor boy ; the strolling player, alas ! 
 was my only brother." 
 
 " I wonder how much he does get a 
 week," said Mrs. Paton reflectively. " I 
 know nothing about the way such people 
 live." 
 
 '' I trust not, Jane ; I sincerely trust
 
 46 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 not. My most earnest hope for any one 
 connected with me would be that such 
 ignorance should be theirs for ever." 
 
 *' His wife didn't bring him anything. 
 Wasn't it shocking, Maria? He married 
 her out of a strolling company on one of 
 their tours ; nobody knows even whether 
 she ever had a father or mother." 
 
 " Shocking indeed ; I know nothing 
 more unpleasant in a family than any 
 mystery about antecedents. There was 
 that strange story about Sir Archibald 
 Maxwell's second wife ; I was quite a girl 
 at the time, but I well remember the 
 impresssion it made upon me. You 
 know " 
 
 The conversation took another turn, but 
 Anne listened no more. Her imagination 
 wandered off along paths dim but some- 
 what awful. She knew next to nothing 
 of fairy-tales ; she had never been allowed
 
 HER SONS MOTHER. 47 
 
 to read, nor supposed to hear any, Captain 
 Paton being of opinion that such reading 
 was detrimental to a strict regard for 
 truth. She had few of the properties and 
 dramatis personae which are ready to the 
 imagination of most children. But to a 
 great extent she had supplied the want by 
 vague creations of her own. Every hint 
 gathered surreptitiously was a seed in 
 fertile soil. Like a child-nation, so this 
 individual child, thrown back upon her 
 own resources, developed myths of her 
 own. Even to a sympathetic listener she 
 could have given no clear account of them ; 
 but they were very real to her all the 
 same. 
 
 Now, this really incomprehensible dis- 
 course took its own legendary form in her 
 mind. The red-haired cousin, the aunt 
 who had never had parents, presented ideas 
 fraught with a weird mystery. There was
 
 4^ so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 something goblln-like in the red hair, but 
 it was nothing in comparison to the other 
 suggestion. If Uncle Will had taken her 
 at her word she might now have been 
 familiar with those beings whom he called 
 wife and child. She was almost glad for 
 a moment that she could not go ; would 
 they have been gracious to her ? Uncle 
 Will had spoken of them with affection. 
 She took the wonder with her into church ; 
 it occupied her sufficiently in the long 
 hours of seclusion and propriety in the 
 family pew, — hours through which she 
 seldom got with credit. It was a square 
 pew, and she sat with her back to the 
 pulpit, facing the musicians gallery at the 
 west end. There was a red-haired bassoon 
 up there ; he had a black patch over one 
 eye, and a green glitter in the other ; he 
 wore a faded bottle-green coat, and a 
 flame-coloured waistcoat, besprinkled with
 
 HER SONS MOTHER. 49 
 
 green roses ; and when he applied the 
 brazen serpent-coils to his mouth, and his 
 face reddened and blazed under his exer- 
 tions, he was a very awe-inspiring and 
 inflammatory spectacle. Anne did not 
 exactly fear him, but she cherished for him 
 a sort of superstitious veneration, as for a 
 being not quite human, whose nature might 
 require propitiation rather than affection. 
 Was the cousin anything like that ? The 
 idea was not pleasing ; but it was not its 
 absence of romance, its vulgarity, that 
 made it unpleasant to Anne. Common- 
 place, if cantankerous, John Watson was 
 not commonplace to her. 
 
 But neither awe nor mystery in his 
 belongings could affect her feelings towards 
 Uncle Will himself; to him, in one short 
 half hour, the child had fairly lost her 
 heart. He was certainly a queer object, 
 either for warm affection or hero-worship, 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 ^O so NEAR AKIX. 
 
 this Uncle Will. An unromantic ne'er-do- 
 weel, without so much as the tragedy of 
 failure to lend him pathos, at least, if not 
 dignit}' : a man who really deserved no 
 better character than he was generally 
 credited with ; who was considered some- 
 thing of a black sheep even among his 
 own none too scrupulous associates ; too 
 much of a buffoon to be a villain, but not 
 too much to be a scamp. 
 
 The still future years, as they slowly 
 revealed her horoscope, were to point 
 clearly enough to the red star of revolt as 
 that which had presided over poor Anne's 
 birth. But surely she began to dree her 
 weird early, when she found her first ideal 
 in William Paton.
 
 CHAPTER III, 
 
 AXXE S MIRACLE PLAY 
 
 On that same Sunday afternoon. Htnry 
 Stephens was enjoying all the invalid 
 privileges which a fairly severe cold and 
 couo^h could extort from an anxious and 
 adorino; mamma. A small, but cheerful 
 nre glowed pleasantly in the grate, behind 
 the towerino: fender ; the rather austere 
 horse-hair couch, brought up from the 
 dining-room for his especial beneht, was 
 decked with pillows ; beside it, on a little 
 round table, stood a jug of the amber-clear 
 toast and water for which ]\Irs. Stephens 
 was famous, and a blue and white plate 
 
 imiVERSlTY Of ILUHOn
 
 52 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 full of oranges in sections. A bound 
 volume of the Youth's Magazine lay on 
 the couch from which Henry had just 
 risen. It was his Sunday literature, but 
 perhaps it had begun to pall after some 
 hours almost consecutive reading ; at any 
 rate even the well regulated Henry seemed 
 to have had enough of it. He walked, 
 with becoming languor to the window, and 
 decorously smothered a yawn. 
 
 Henry was seldom bored ; to be so would 
 have been against his principles. He had 
 learned from Mr. Andrews, of " Eyes and 
 No Eyes," that no thoughtful, right-minded 
 boy ought ever to know a dull or un- 
 interested moment. But perhaps a rdgime 
 of sofa and oranges had slightly demoralized 
 him ; this afternoon, at any rate, he did 
 feel dull. 
 
 It is an instinct with the dull to look 
 out of the window, but in this case Henry
 
 ANNES MIRACLE PLAY. 53 
 
 could have expected no distractions. The 
 window looked on nothing livelier than a 
 small flagged yard, backed by a high wall 
 overgrown with ivy ; the points of the 
 leaves were grey with fog-drops, which 
 splashed monotonously into a puddle 
 among the worn stones. The drippings 
 into a water butt, just below the window, 
 joined the cheerful chorus ; the sky was 
 grey, and the flags were brown, and a 
 shabby sparrow, hopping about the yard, 
 would have harmonized with its surround- 
 ings if it were ever at all possible for a 
 sparrow to be harmonious. There was a 
 side door in the yard for the use of trades- 
 men, and beyond was a garden and more 
 ivied wall bounding the Patons' garden 
 next door. Certainly entertainment was 
 the last thing that could be expected from 
 such an outlook. 
 
 Henry looked, and yawned again more
 
 54 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 frankly. He counted the splashes made 
 by the falling mist-drops, which would not 
 keep time with the measured tick of an 
 aggressive clock. No other sounds broke 
 the stillness ; even the fire had subsided 
 into red glow and did not crackle. All at 
 once the handle of the side door rattled in 
 an evidently unpractised hand ; then the 
 door creaked upon its hinges — and, enter 
 Anne. 
 
 She did not proceed to the back door of 
 the house ; with unerring aim she sent a 
 small shower of pebbles pelting against 
 tbe nursery window — still so-called — 
 before she had noticed that the attention 
 of the occupant was sufficiently attracted 
 already. Certainly her appearance chal- 
 lenged attention. She was bare-headed 
 and in indoor dress, and bore the look 
 defined by nurses as being the result of 
 coming through a quickset hedge, for she
 
 ANNES MIRACLE PLAY. 55 
 
 was dishevelled, draggled, and awry. As 
 soon as she caught sight of Henry's 
 bewildered face, she called to him in tones 
 piercing with a sort of sweet shrillness. 
 
 ** Come down and let me in." 
 
 "Go to the back door," replied Henry, 
 supplementing his muffled tones with 
 pantomime. 
 
 Anne shook her head impatiently. 
 
 " There's nobody in," she screamed. 
 
 Henry nodded an emphatic contradic- 
 tion as he croaked out, 
 
 '* Mary Ann." 
 
 '' I tell you there isn't. I saw Mary 
 Ann go out with the butcher's boy, ever 
 so long ago," retorted Anne, conveying 
 the information to any one within a quarter 
 of a mile round. *' Don't be silly ; I'm 
 coming to amuse you, you know you want 
 me, and if you didn't, I should come all 
 the same, because you are sick, you know,
 
 56 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 and we ought to visit the sick. But you 
 do." 
 
 It was true ; till that moment Henry 
 had not realized how dull he was. 
 
 ''Make haste!" cried Anne, stamping 
 imperiously. 
 
 Henry hesitated, wavered — and fell. 
 Three minutes later Anne was established 
 in the nursery. 
 
 " Now, aren't you glad to see me ? " she 
 began. 
 
 '' You ought not to be here," said Henry, 
 conscience gaining the upper hand so soon 
 as his guilt was an accomplished fact. 
 
 " Then you oughtn't to have let me in," 
 retorted his unscrupulous visitor. '' Oh, 
 Henry, I should never have expected 
 this of you." She broke Into one of her 
 peculiarly mocking peals of laughter as 
 she watched his vain efforts to find a 
 crushing reply. " Never mind that now ;
 
 ANNES MIRACLE PLAY. 57 
 
 it will keep till they come back from 
 church. Now let us amuse ourselves. 
 You will never guess how much I ought 
 not to be here." 
 
 *' Indeed, dear Anne, if your own con- 
 science tells you the same thing, let me 
 entreat you to return while it is yet time." 
 
 ** I will — if I remember it, but I expect 
 I shall put it off till too late. Won't they 
 stare when they find me gone out of a 
 locked room ? Hester will think Bogy 
 has really come for me this time." 
 
 " A locked room ? " 
 
 '' Yes. Look here." She showed what 
 had been a dainty little sandalled shoe 
 with a yawning rent down one side. 
 " That was done by a nail I didn't see 
 among the ivy. I got down by the ivy 
 through the window. They locked me up 
 because I had spoiled my pelisse and my 
 clean stockings walking in the puddles this
 
 58 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 morning. Father said I was incorrigible ; 
 he said he must still do his duty by me, 
 but it was without hope. Don't look 
 at me like that, Henry. I hate you 
 and everybody. I wish everybody was 
 dead ! " 
 
 The boy, slow of comprehension by 
 nature, and made duller still by his carefully 
 cherished priggishness, was utterly taken 
 aback when Anne flung herself on her 
 knees by the sofa and her excitement 
 broke down into a storm of despairing 
 sobs. The boy's natural horror and dread 
 of tears, which prompted him to flight, 
 was combated by the prig's desire to 
 improve the occasion. He took refuge in 
 a prolonged fit of coughing. When he 
 had made himself breathless, he thought 
 seriously enough of his condition to feel 
 bound to offer advice. 
 
 " Dear Anne," he said, half rising from
 
 ANNES MIRACLE PLAY. 59 
 
 the pillows on which he had sunk ; "I 
 wish you would listen to me this once ; it 
 may be the last time. I sometimes fancy 
 I may not be here long " 
 
 ''You'll be here a great deal longer 
 than I shall, if you talk like that," said 
 Anne, angrily, but checking her sobs. 
 "If you don't make yourself pleasant I 
 shall go. I know what you were going to 
 say. But it's just no use at all my trying 
 to be good ; I wasn't made the right 
 shape, so I shan't trouble any more. 
 They had much better have given me 
 right away to " 
 
 She stopped short. The next instant 
 her volatile spirits broke out into laughter 
 again. 
 
 " Oh, Henry, you should have seen 
 Tompkins' boy just now. He had such a 
 dahlia in his button-hole — one of those 
 very red ones, you know, that grow in the
 
 6o so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 middle walk just at the beginning of the 
 strawberry bed. Does your mamma count 
 those dahlias every morning, like Mr. 
 Fairchlld used to count the apples on his 
 favourite tree ? " 
 
 *' My mamma says that Mr. Tompkins 
 Is a very serious person, and I am sure he 
 would bring up his household well." 
 
 '' Who said he didn't ? Well, I was 
 watching for Mary Anne to come out — 
 because she always does when he Is about 
 — and so by-and-bye she opened the door, 
 and when she saw him she gave such a 
 jump ! Like this." 
 
 She coyly opened the nursery door and 
 perpetrated a leap and yell that would 
 have done credit to a Red Indian on the 
 war-path. 
 
 '' Oh, Anne, remember what day it is." 
 
 '' I do remember. So then Tompkins' 
 boy was afraid she was going to fall down.
 
 anne's miracle play. 6 1 
 
 I suppose," continued the terrible child, 
 '' so he caught her so." She encircled the 
 taper waist of a high-backed chair with 
 one arm ; the rest of the description was 
 run through in a rapid pantomime, culmi- 
 nating in a sound slap on the unoffending 
 chair, which presumably changed roles for 
 the crisis. The immediate result was to 
 knock it over with a crash ; certainly the 
 room had not been depressingly quiet 
 since Anne had been in it. 
 
 Henry, who had listened more from 
 want of a chance to interrupt than from 
 any interest he took in the subject, gave a 
 deprecatory shudder, and again said : — 
 
 ''Dear Anne!" 
 
 '' What's the matter ? You can't have 
 a headache ; you aren't old enough. Only 
 grown-up people have headaches." 
 
 Henry was certainly young enough to 
 resent the implied slight to his age ; it
 
 62 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 made him a little stlffer and more moral in 
 the tone of his reply. 
 
 " I have not a headache, but you are 
 heard everywhere, and your tongue runs 
 away with you. Little girls should be 
 seen, and not heard." 
 
 " I suppose nobody thought it worth 
 while to say that about little boys ; they're 
 too stupid to know how to talk. Oh, how 
 glad I am that I'm not a boy ! " said Anne, 
 with more fervour than truth. '' What have 
 you been doing to amuse yourself all day ? " 
 
 '* It is not a day for amusing one's self. 
 I have been reading this very interesting 
 and, I trust, improving book. Pray, Anne, 
 since you are here, let us turn this visit to 
 some good account. Let me read you an 
 anecdote out of this." 
 
 Anne's face was not encouraging. 
 
 " You read like a sermon," she said ; 
 ''and I hate stories with morals, anyway."
 
 anne's miracle play. 63 
 
 " That is because you are too young 
 to know what is really useful and good," 
 said Henry, not sorry for a chance of 
 retorting the slight on his age, which still 
 rankled. 
 
 "Oh, am I, Mr. Old Daddy Long- 
 legs ? " exclaimed Anne, nettled in her 
 turn. Then, suddenly changing her mind, 
 ** No, don't let us quarrel. I tell you I 
 came to amuse you because you are sick. 
 If you really like that sort of thing" — 
 taking up the volume contemptuously — 
 '' I'll read you some. 'Where is something 
 amusing ? Oh, this will do." 
 
 For her age she was quick at reading, 
 and still quicker of perception, so she soon 
 mastered the drift of the article in question. 
 
 " Oh, this is nice. Listen ; this is all 
 about a good little boy that was bitten by 
 a mad dog, and died. He was a dear 
 little boy, just like you, only he was
 
 64 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 younger. His name was Frederick T. 
 Why do all the people in this book have 
 such funny names ? Did you ever know 
 anybody called T. ? 
 
 "That is not the whole of his name." 
 said Henry, mollified at once by the appeal 
 and by the idea that Anne had suffered a 
 temporary lapse into virtue and propriety. 
 •' That is only the first, or, to use the 
 correct word, the initial letter. It would 
 grieve his poor parents, you see, dear 
 Anne, to have their names promulgated in 
 a public magazine, though, being good and 
 magnanimous persons, they would not 
 withhold a narrative so likely to conduce 
 to edification." 
 
 He felt much better after that ; the 
 more long words Henry could get into a 
 sentence the better he did feel. 
 
 '' Oh." said Anne. She had been rapidly 
 reviewing- the details of the case in hand,
 
 axxe's miracle play. 65 
 
 and had not listened ; but this was beyond 
 Henry's powers of imagination, so that 
 It was in a tone of the most benign 
 condescension that he continued : — 
 
 " Well, dear Anne. I hope you will tell 
 me some more." 
 
 " Oh, yes," she said, waking up. " It 
 was his father's pet dog, and he was 
 
 playing with it,, and Suppose we 
 
 play at it. You shall be the little boy, 
 and when it comes to the dying part you 
 shall try how rio^ht vou can do the crood 
 talkinof, vou know, and I'll see how much 
 it is like the real Frederick in the book." 
 
 Anything that promised an opening for 
 discourse was a sore temptation to Henry ; 
 and, after all, why should it not be 
 improving, a chance for a word in season ? 
 Still he demurred. 
 
 " But we haven't crot a do^." 
 
 "Oh, I'll be the dog, I don't mind," said 
 
 VOL. I. 5
 
 66 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 Anne, magnanimously, and proceeded to 
 show two rows of very capable-looking pearls. 
 
 *' I think we had better begin further 
 on," said Henry, hastily. 
 
 *' Very well. One day at breakfast his 
 mamma noticed he couldn't drink his tea. 
 Vm your mamma now." 
 
 She seized the jug of toast-and-water, 
 and held it to his lips. Henry was not 
 blessed with a strong imagination ; he was 
 thirsty, too, and fond of toast-and-water. 
 At this point, therefore, he forgot his part, 
 and was proceeding to apply the draught 
 to its natural use. But Anne was too quick 
 for him. 
 
 " No, stop ; you mustn't drink it — you 
 can't, you know. Now, I shall encourage 
 you. What was it, lovey ? Wasn't the tea 
 nice ? " She experimented in a prolonged 
 sip. '' Oh, yes, it is very good. Look 
 at mamma, dear ; see how she drinks it."
 
 anne's miracle play. 67 
 
 And Henry saw. 
 
 Now toast-and-water does not approve 
 itself to the average adult mind as being 
 exactly nectar fit for the gods, not even 
 such toast-and-water as Mrs. Stephens's, in 
 which the soothing honey and the stimu- 
 lating lemon gave some sort of flavour to 
 the beverage. But when one is very 
 young, and when it is always represented 
 to one in the light of a privilege, toast and 
 water has attractions which are incompre- 
 hensible to our maturer age. And Anne 
 thoroughly appreciated toast-and-water, 
 and showed it. 
 
 " You're drinking it all," remonstrated 
 the invalid. 
 
 Anne shook her half-buried head. But 
 when she put down the jug with a long 
 breath, the remainder was so inappreciable 
 that Henry's face fell. 
 
 " I think this is a stupid game," he said
 
 6S so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 sulkily. " I shan't play any more. Vou 
 haven't got a cold, and It was you who 
 gave me mine. What am I to do now, 
 if my cough comes on ? '^ 
 
 *' There are the oranges," suggested 
 Anne, consolingly. But the game seemed 
 to have lost Its Interest for her too. She 
 began to wander about the room In quest 
 of more amusement for Henry and herself. 
 But the room was exquisitely tidy with 
 its Sunday tidiness, a Noah's ark, for 
 the benefit of the twins, being the only 
 hint of entertainment ; and Anne never 
 cared for Noah's ark, it did not leave 
 enough to her imagination. She pulled 
 all the animals out upon the floor, with a 
 running commentary on their appearance 
 the reverse of complimentary to the artist. 
 Suddenly, as she was ranging the patriarch 
 and his stolid family in a row before her, 
 her evil genius inspired her with another 
 bright idea.
 
 anne's miracle play. 69 
 
 " Oh, Henry, I have thought of a beauti- 
 ful game now ; it is quite a Sunday one, 
 too." 
 
 '* Play it by yourself, then," growled 
 Henry, glancing malevolently at the jug, 
 now lying suggestively on its side. '' I 
 don't want to play with silly little girls." 
 
 "Well, you needn't do anything. Just 
 let me put that shawl over the pillows for 
 a throne, and you can make yourself as 
 comfortable as you like, and needn't move 
 at all. Now, you are King Nebuchad- 
 nezzar. Sit still ; only, when you begin 
 to get very angry, you know, you must 
 make yourself look different. Do you 
 think you can ? You don't often look 
 different ; that day you thought old Mr. 
 Dobbins' big dog was coming after us 
 you did, though," she added reflectively. 
 " Somehow I don't think that would be 
 exactly the right sort of face for Nebuchad-
 
 JO so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 nezzar either ; but if you can't manage 
 anything else, that will do. Now then, 
 I am a big crowd. Here I come, dragging 
 them along." 
 
 •'What are you going to do?" asked 
 Henry, with sudden anxiety. 
 
 " Vm going to play at the three men in the 
 furnace. Look, there they are, just right ; 
 three of them, in their coats and in their 
 hats, you know. There's a lovely fire, 
 and as soon as I have brought them before 
 you, I'm going to make it up. Seven 
 times bigger it has to be ; how big should 
 you think that was ? Half way up the 
 chimney ?" 
 
 " Indeed and indeed, Anne, you mustn't 
 touch the fire. I mayn't go beyond the 
 hearth-rug myself." 
 
 " I don't want you to. Of course the 
 king wouldn't make up a fire for himself, 
 not if he was ever so angry. I dare say
 
 ANNES MIRACLE PLAY. 7 1 
 
 he wouldn't know how, and it would be 
 vulgar, wouldn't it ? My mamma always 
 says it is vulgar even to go into the 
 kitchen, and it must be worse to do that." 
 
 " Anne, you must not play with the fire." 
 
 " It's not your fire, and I'm not your 
 little girl." 
 
 "If you go any nearer to it I shall call 
 for Mary Ann." 
 
 *' You know she is out." 
 
 " There she is coming in ! " exclaimed 
 Henry in a tone of triumph, unwise, and 
 premature. Indeed, at that moment the 
 yard door was heard to open and a click 
 of pattens came across the flags. 
 
 '* She shan't come in here, then, if you 
 scream the house down!" cried Anne, 
 every instinct roused to revolt. And 
 before Henry could stop her, or even 
 guess her intention, she had sprung to 
 the door, and, with some difficulty, turned
 
 72 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 the seldom-used key in the lock. She 
 drew it out, flourished it once above her 
 head, then, as he made a dart at it, 
 dropped it deliberately inside her frock. 
 
 For one moment Henry glared at her 
 in speechless indignation. 
 
 " Go on, do ! " he exclaimed then. 
 *' Burn the house down if you like ; only 
 don't ask me to put it out. I won't be 
 answerable for any single thing that 
 happens any more." 
 
 He flung himself down on the sofa, 
 turned his face to the wall, opened the 
 Youth's Magazine with the air of a self- 
 acquitted victim to human depravity, and 
 — kept the tail of his eye fixed on Anne's 
 proceedings with an expression betoken- 
 ing at least as much interest as disap- 
 proval. This is a humiliating confession 
 for Henry's admirers ; but after all, he 
 was but human, and a human boy ; he
 
 ANNES MIRACLE PLAY. "J 2, 
 
 could not be altogether insensible to the 
 charms of a good flare-up. Since there 
 was no help for it, and he had protested, 
 might he not indulge at least in a little 
 curiosity ? 
 
 Anne had set to work in a manner at 
 once so business-like and so artistic as to 
 suggest considerable acquaintance with 
 the ways of fires. The coal-scuttle had 
 unfortunately been left in the room, and 
 the paper shavings from the Noah's ark 
 assisted her unhallowed designs. In a 
 very few minutes a good flare up had been 
 indeed attained ; long, aspiring, leaping 
 yellow flame-monsters were rushing up 
 the chimney with a sufficiently blood- 
 curdling roar. Henry had turned round. 
 Where now was the disapproval as com- 
 pared with the genuine interest that shone 
 in his once so languid eye } Alas ! where } 
 Dusty, coal-begrimed, crimson, the exe-
 
 74 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 cutioner stepped back, and surveyed her 
 preparations with pardonable pride ; too 
 much excited even to notice the transfor- 
 mation in Henry, she pounced upon her 
 stoically smiling victims. 
 
 "Ah-h!" she cried, 'Til teach you! 
 Come on, now ; see how you like this ! " 
 
 The reality of the business now again 
 flashed upon Henry. 
 
 " But Anne, you mustn't put in the 
 Noah's ark men ; they'll be burned." 
 
 '' Of course they won't be burned ! " 
 retorted Anne, with exactly how much 
 good faith let those who can remember 
 an imaginative childhood say. '' They 
 are the three men in the furnace. You 
 are a very wicked boy not to believe the 
 Bible." 
 
 " But this isn't real," remonstrated 
 Henry, fairly taken aback by this view 
 of the question.
 
 ANNES MIRACLE PLAY. 75 
 
 " You're a silly ! " said Anne, and pro- 
 ceeded to the sacrifice. 
 
 Now, whether the weight of the victims 
 disturbed the equilibrium of the fire, or 
 whether a sudden draught from Anne's 
 movements did the mischief, at that 
 moment a large piece of paper was caught 
 by the current and disappeared in a blaze 
 of glory up the chimney. Half a minute, 
 a minute, then a sudden, louder, and more 
 ominous roar from above, a cloud of smoke, 
 and a smothering smell of falling soot. 
 
 " Henry," said Anne very softly. 
 
 ''Well?" 
 
 " Has this chimney been swept lately ? " 
 
 The church-goers were nearly at their 
 own gate, on the way home. The drizz- 
 ling mist of the early afternoon had turned 
 at last into a definite though quiet rain, 
 and the family umbrella was in demand.
 
 76 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 Now the family umbrella was an institution 
 which did not admit of an extended view. 
 
 *' How the blacks are flying ! " said Mrs. 
 Stephens, '' and what a smell of soot. 
 There must be a chimney on fire some- 
 where." 
 
 Captain Paton looked up from under 
 his own umbrella to reconnoitre. Then 
 he said, ''Dear me!" Before Mrs. 
 Stephens could ask the meaning of an 
 ejaculation which was fairly equivalent to 
 ''good gracious," taking the tone into 
 consideration, the piercing screams of 
 Mary Ann rent the air, and Mary Ann 
 in person had flung herself into Captain 
 Paton s arms, gurgling hysterically — 
 
 " Oh, ma'am ; oh, sir ; the house is all 
 ablaze from top to bottom, and the young 
 lady and the young gentleman are being 
 burned to death alive inside, this very 
 blessed minute as ever is ! "
 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD. 
 
 All the excitement was over ; the quiet 
 of the evening in both houses was as 
 undisturbed as on any other Sunday. 
 Hester was sleeping quietly beside Anne ; 
 only Anne herself lay hopelessly awake, 
 despairing, miserable, smothering sobs In 
 the bed clothes. The profound darkness 
 which generally had no terrors for her, 
 was full of awe that night ; she thought it 
 was her own iniquities that peopled it with 
 indefinite horrors. In those days, still, 
 children were practically supposed to be
 
 78 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 as Innocent of nerves as an ascidian, and 
 neither Anne herself, nor any one else, 
 suspected that the events of the afternoon 
 had given her a pretty severe shock. 
 Yet she had been really frightened at the 
 result of her realistic stage-management, 
 more particularly in the moments that 
 elapsed between the discovery that the 
 door which had been difficult to lock was 
 impossible to open, and the arrival of the 
 rescue party. 
 
 The anger and reproaches which natur- 
 ally followed an explanation were almost 
 welcome at first, by comparison ; but at 
 last she began to feel worried, then despair- 
 ing, then reckless, and conducted herself 
 accordingly. Finally, she had been dis- 
 missed with a threat of punishment hang- 
 ing over her head, more terrible than any 
 present infliction. '' I shall consider what 
 must be done," Captain Paton had said,
 
 THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD. 79 
 
 in a tone that lent impresslveness to the 
 
 words. If the child could have known 
 
 that the remark pointed to nothing worse 
 
 than school, she mio^ht have been saved 
 
 a good deal of imaginative suffering at the 
 
 time, and much that happened in long after 
 
 years might never have come to pass at 
 
 all. The idea of being sent to school 
 
 would have had no terrors for her ; she 
 
 was a sociable child who did not know 
 
 what shyness meant, and though she might 
 
 have rebelled against the sentence as a 
 
 disgrace, when presented to her in the 
 
 light of a penalty, she would have secretly 
 
 looked forward to it as promising a certain 
 
 amount of excitement. But, though this 
 
 was indeed the whole meaning of Captain 
 
 Paton's words, she did not know it ; for 
 
 though her parents had often discussed the 
 
 matter before, with a sincere desire to do 
 
 their best by their uncongenial child,
 
 8o so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 Anne had no idea that such a plan had 
 ever occurred to any one. 
 
 There is always a certain terror in mere 
 vagueness to the mind of an imaginative 
 child ; to this was added the torments of 
 a child's conscience — pangs not to be 
 measured by the mere discomfort attending 
 the well-regulated remonstrances of the 
 conscience of later life. What would 
 happen to-morrow ? it must be nearly to- 
 morrow now. (It was about half-past 
 nine.) And not only to-morrow, but the 
 day after, and the day after that again ? 
 Could she ever get out of disgrace again ? 
 If it was not one thing it was another; 
 there was no end to it. Why had not 
 they let her go ? Uncle Will would have 
 been glad to have her. Oh, for somebody 
 who would not be shocked at her ; for a 
 life in which Anne might be always Nancy, 
 with all the privileges of lawlessness which
 
 THE WIDE, WIDE W^ORLD. 8 1 
 
 she somehow associated with that name. 
 How long the night w^as ; should she ever 
 go to sleep again ? How dark ! the dark- 
 ness seemed to have swallowed her. And 
 how quiet! Surely Hester must be more 
 fast asleep than usual ; not a movement, 
 not a sound. She had gone to sleep with 
 tears on her cheeks, poor Hester ! partly 
 for Anne's troubles, partly because Anne 
 would not kiss good-night. She had 
 spoken sharply, and pretended to be asleep 
 when Hester called. That was long ago 
 — hours and hours it must have been — and 
 since then there had been this dreadful 
 silence. Once, when she had quarrelled 
 w^ith Hester, she had been made to learn 
 a poem about two little sisters who quar- 
 relled, and before they made it up one 
 
 died. Suppose A horrible dread 
 
 took possession of her. She could not 
 bring herself to call lest she should get no 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 82 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 answer ; her sobs stopped from mere 
 excess of fear ; she held her breath in an 
 agony unspeakable that she might catch 
 the sound of Hester s breathing, and the 
 singing in her ears prevented her hearing 
 it. Then, just as it was getting beyond 
 endurance, there was a little sigh, a little 
 stir ; Hester moved slightly in her sleep. 
 Anne cowered down again in a perfect 
 ecstacy of relief. In the almost collapse 
 that followed on that strain, sleep, de- 
 spaired of, came, and when she next 
 opened her eyes, lo ! it was the grey dawn 
 of to-morrow. 
 
 The question of what was to happen 
 was not to be solved at once ; only Anne 
 found she was to be kept prisoner in a 
 room apart, a room from which no friendly 
 ivy offered the means of escape. She saw 
 no Hester, neither did father nor mother 
 disturb her solitude. Poor Mrs. Paton,
 
 THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD. 83 
 
 indeed, was in bed with a nervous head- 
 ache, due both to the fright of the preced- 
 ing afternoon, and to a motherly heart- 
 break over the approaching separation 
 from her ne'er-do-weel. For Captain 
 Paton, for his part, had started already 
 for Richmond, there to make arrangements 
 for bestowing Anne in a seminary for 
 young ladies, kept by a friend of the 
 family. He was not really in such a 
 desperate hurry to get rid of his daughter, 
 but he had recollected that it was now 
 close upon half-term, and the consideration 
 appealed at once to his sense of order and 
 to his instincts of economy. 
 
 The early morning hours passed on ; 
 from penitence Anne passed to anger, 
 from anger to a wild defiance. She kicked 
 and rattled at the door of her prison, but 
 no one came, and the silent unemployed 
 hours passed on till noon. Then the door
 
 84 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 was unlocked, and a maid brought In her 
 dinner. Anne had no right from theory 
 or prescription to expect anything more 
 festive than bread and water, and she was 
 a little surprised to see a repast in provid- 
 ing which her tastes might almost seem 
 to have been particularly consulted. In- 
 deed, so they had been ; with that sentence 
 of separation hanging over them, her 
 mother, not without a pang of conscience, 
 but gathering courage from the absence 
 of her husband, had worked her poor 
 throbbing brain to an unusual extent to 
 order that dinner for the poor little prodi- 
 gal, who was to be sent into the cold 
 world to learn repentance. But Anne, 
 little accustomed to such attentions, never 
 suspected this. 
 
 *' Mistress says that as soon as you've 
 finished your dinner you are to take half 
 an hour's walk in the garden, Miss Anne.
 
 THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD. 85 
 
 You are to walk up and down the middle 
 path of the kitchen garden, so as cook can 
 see you from the window all the time." 
 
 As Anne's heart secretly leaped within 
 her at the news, of course she replied : 
 '' I shan't." 
 
 "Oh, fie, Miss Anne! aren't you 
 ashamed to be such a naughty child again ? " 
 
 Anne vouchsafed no answer, and the 
 maid retired. When she came back with 
 Anne's outdoor garments Hester crept in 
 behind her, silent as a shadow. Poor 
 Hester ! she had caught rumours of the 
 destiny which awaited Anne, rumours 
 which had never reached the culprit her- 
 self, and her pretty eyes were swollen and 
 red with crying. 
 
 " Oh, Anne ! dear, dear Anne, it will be 
 too dreadful ; how will you bear it ? I 
 have been crying about it all the morning, 
 dear. I suppose it can't be cruel of papa,
 
 86 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 because it is wicked to be cruel, and papa 
 is good ; but I don't know how he can 
 bear to do this ! " 
 
 '' To do what ? " was the question of 
 Anne's mind. But pride and dread both 
 kept her silent ; she turned a little pale 
 and her heart beat quicker, but no words 
 passed her lips. 
 
 " Ah, Miss Anne, you see one can do 
 a thing once too often. My ! but this is 
 bad," echoed Betsy, no less enigmatical 
 and more ominous. " Well, I'm thinking 
 you had better take your walk now, while 
 you can get one." 
 
 A warder encouraging a criminal to his 
 latest breakfast could scarcely have spoken 
 in a different tone. What Anne suspected 
 from it, would be hard to say. But some- 
 how the very excellence of her dinner 
 suddenly acquired something ominous ; 
 there was the queerest jumble in her mind
 
 THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD. Sj 
 
 of fattening up for ogres and yet of a 
 solemn farewell to all dinners for an in- 
 definite period. Neither sister nor maid 
 guessed the extent to which she had been 
 frightened. But when she passed quietly 
 out into the garden she might have 
 been a little Quaker ghost, in her grey 
 frock, and the old black cape and bonnet, 
 the last relics of mourning for old Mr. 
 Paton, so sober was her demeanour, so 
 pale the angel face just lighted up by those 
 stray gold locks under her bonnet. But 
 in her heart was the resolution at once of 
 a great rebellion and of a great despair. 
 Down the middle walk she went, and up 
 again, the very picture of demureness. 
 In vain did whole families of snails spread 
 their attractions in her path ; she ignored 
 those illegal friends with the cool oblivion 
 of a Henry the Fifth. Cook sat darning at 
 the kitchen window ; when Anne reached
 
 SS so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 the medlar tree, halfway down, where a few 
 more or less damaged fruits lay In the soft 
 mud, she looked up prepared for remon- 
 strance. It was unneeded ; Anne passed 
 on with the air of one whom the vanities of 
 life can no longer even tempt. Two more 
 turns up and down ; under this unwonted 
 propriety her heart was beating more and 
 more wildly. Would cook never move r 
 Yes, at last ; thinking vigilance wasted on 
 Anne In her present mood, the watcher 
 rolled up the stockings, took up her work- 
 basket and disappeared. That was Anne's 
 moment. With the agility of a monkey 
 she scaled the back wall of the garden by 
 means of the climbing fruit trees, descended 
 by the Ivy on the other side, and stood In 
 the back lane unobserved and free. 
 
 It was but for a moment she stood, then 
 she flew noiselessly down the road. There 
 was no one In the lane, she fled on unseen,
 
 THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD. 89 
 
 devoid of any plan of action, only knowing 
 that she was going to Uncle Will. There 
 were fields the other side of the road ; she 
 got over the first stile and ran just inside 
 the hedge so long as her breath held out. 
 By degrees she began to slacken her pace. 
 The rain had passed over ; St. Luke's 
 summer had come with a misty brightness ; 
 the shadows of the fading elm trees in the 
 hedgerow seemed to lie asleep across the 
 damp fading grass. It was not proper 
 country, yet it was not town. It was a 
 patient attempt at the pastoral under 
 severe discouragement, but Anne had 
 always held it to be country. 
 
 The largeness of the world had never 
 so impressed itself upon her before. She 
 moved along in a kind of dance — some 
 sort of dancing movement was always 
 more natural to her than walking ; but for 
 fear of detection she would have sune.
 
 90 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 The colour had come back to her cheek ; 
 in utter luxury of recklessness she snatched 
 off her bonnet, and danced on, swinging it 
 in her hand. The first breath of freedom 
 had swept away all the terror and despair, 
 there remained only the first tumultuous 
 joys of successful revolt. She seemed at 
 once to be friends with the whole world, 
 of kin to nature. The sparrows in the 
 hedge nodded to her with a kind of free 
 and easy freemasonry, the very rustling 
 of dried leaf and twig, the faint whisper of 
 the breeze, had secrets for her, none the 
 less thrilling because she never exactly 
 discovered what they were. Surely the 
 tramp, like the poet, is born, not made. 
 What vagabond instinct, derived from what 
 far-off ancestors — ancestors whose claim 
 to the veneration of their posterity did 
 not at all lie in their respectability — w^as 
 stirrine in their unconscious descendant
 
 THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD. 9 1 
 
 then ? But when the first ecstacies were 
 over, Anne began to reflect that if Uncle 
 Will was to be reached, and with him 
 perpetual liberty, she must be practical. 
 She calculated that some time would 
 elapse before she would be missed, but 
 before then she must be beyond reach of 
 tracking or pursuit. How this was to be 
 accomplished she had very little idea. 
 Perhaps she meant to lie hidden in some 
 pathless jungle of blackberry bushes while 
 the cry and trampling of the chase swept 
 unsuspecting past her hiding-place. But 
 fortune or fate had better precautions in 
 store for her. 
 
 The fields ended at last in three cross- 
 roads, and at the cross-roads there stood 
 an inn, quite a pseudo-country inn, like all 
 the rest. Here was the first danger from 
 human beings which had yet come in 
 Anne's way. She crouched down behind
 
 92 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 the hedge to reconnoitre. Voices came 
 through the open door, but no one was to 
 be seen. At the door stood a horse and 
 a covered cart ; the horse, fastened by the 
 bridle to a hook in the wall, had been 
 left unwatched — the owner was probably 
 refreshing within. Spite of the very 
 original spellings Anne made out that the 
 cart was the property of William Higgins, 
 carrier. Between what places he carried 
 she neither knew nor cared ; for her all 
 roads led to liberty ; the horse's head 
 being turned away from Clapham, it 
 sufficed her. Quivering with excitement, 
 she rose from her concealment, stood a 
 moment irresolute, then, darting across 
 the road, scrambled into the cart, and in 
 an instant was hidden among the packages 
 and boxes at the back. 
 
 Light though she was, her sudden 
 entrance had disturbed the horse a little ;
 
 THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD. 93 
 
 it moved uneasily, trampled, and pulled 
 upon the bridle, the clumsy wheels creaking 
 as the cart shook. The movement seemed 
 to rouse William Higgins to a sense of 
 business, for shortly afterwards he came 
 out and resumed his seat. Anne, in her 
 dark corner, held her breath in a momentary 
 agony of suspense, but he did not even 
 look round as he hoisted himself to his 
 place. 
 
 They were off. Not rapidly, indeed, 
 but off they were, and as the slow steady 
 jog carried her further and further out into 
 the unknown, Anne began to breathe more 
 freely. It is true she was not comfortable 
 physically. Several hanks of yarn were 
 tickling her face ; the sharp corner of a 
 box of groceries dug into her shoulder at 
 every rougher jolt. The space into which 
 she had crept was only about half large 
 enough for her, so that even her supple
 
 ;94 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 young limbs got stiff and cramped at last. 
 Yet she did not mind. She did not dare 
 to make any considerable change in her 
 position for fear of noise, but she moved 
 her head cautiously, so as to get a back 
 view of the driver between the boxes. 
 She hoped to be able to guess whether he 
 was a kind man, likely to be forgiving, 
 perhaps even helpful in the event of 
 discovery. , But though there was a vague 
 suggestion of vegetative content about 
 that back view, she did not get much 
 satisfaction from it, on the whole. 
 
 She could not at all tell in what direction, 
 or through what country, they were going. 
 At long intervals she heard the heavy trot 
 of a horse, or the rumble or rattle of 
 wheels, but that was all. Now and then 
 the bough of a tree stretching across the 
 road came into sight; such glimpses had 
 all the excitement of incidents. Once,
 
 THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD. 95 
 
 after some two hours' journey, they drew 
 up. Anne was seized with a panic, 
 thinking it might mean a search among 
 the packages ; but it proved to be only a 
 toll-bar, and in a few moments they were 
 jogging on as before. On and on, till at 
 last, from the monotony of enforced silence 
 and immobility, she fell asleep, restlessly 
 at first, and rousing with uncomfortable 
 starts, but at last, in spite of cramp 
 and discomfort, she slept as soundly as 
 ever she had done in her little bed at 
 home. 
 
 Some two hours later, again, a sudden 
 paroxysm of jolting woke her with a start 
 from a troubled dream. She had a night- 
 mare of big rocks just tumbling on her 
 head, and, even as she woke, the dream 
 was fulfilled. With an irrepressible scream 
 — and she could scream — Anne disappeared 
 beneath a hamper of good things destined
 
 g6 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 for Master James Goodchild at Dr. 
 Twiggs' academy, Guildford. Betrayal 
 was bad, but not so bad as annihilation, 
 and her first shriek of instinct was followed 
 by a series of muffled cries for assistance. 
 But assistance did not come, though the 
 cart had stopped ; for, at the sound of the 
 first cry, William Higgins, answering it 
 with a yell of terror, had fled for dear life 
 towards the nearest cottage, carrying an 
 urgent appeal for help and a blood-curdling 
 narrative. Therefore it came to pass that 
 Anne, havingwith some difficulty extricated 
 herself, climbed out as unseen as she had 
 climbed in. By the time the carrier re- 
 turned with a couple of sturdy labourers 
 armed with pitchforks and other defences 
 against the supernatural, the little grey 
 ghost was already some distance away. 
 
 They emptied the whole cart, ransacked 
 every corner, and examined all boxes and
 
 THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD. 97 
 
 hampers that admitted of examination, but 
 of course they found nothing. Then one 
 of the men reminded the other that it was 
 close here that the pedlar's body had been 
 found four years previously. The other 
 man, though admitting that the pedlar 
 walked, inclined to hold him guiltless of 
 this particular disturbance, as, though he 
 had often been seen, he had never been 
 heard. His own opinion was that it had 
 been a warning. With some folks it was 
 knockings ; with others, music ; with others, 
 again, screechings, like this here. And 
 such was a very sure kind. Dogs was 
 sure, and death-ticks was sure. But they 
 might be heard by anybody, so to say, and 
 mean somebody else all the time. These 
 sorts always was for the party as heard 
 them ; well, for him, or some of his nearest 
 folk. To the tune of these cheering 
 remarks the cart was reloaded, and the 
 VOL. I. 1
 
 98 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 carrier proceeded on his darkening way, 
 a wiser but a sadder man. 
 
 But Anne, too, was feeling the first 
 horrors of eeriness creeping over her with 
 the creeping shadows. The catastrophe 
 had taken place at the foot of a small hill 
 covered with a young plantation of spruce 
 firs. Into this she had crept through a 
 gap in the hedge, and there she had the 
 resolution to wait till the cart went on 
 again. But the duskiness, peopled as it 
 seemed with ghostly stems, appalled her. 
 It was barely six o'clock, but the sun had 
 lately set, and that makes night to a child. 
 Moreover, it had gone down in clouds ; no 
 after-glow brightened the sky and pro- 
 longed the day. A chill air stole insidiously 
 through her inappropriate clothing. Anne 
 began to shiver with cold, and fear made 
 her yet chiller. She hurried on nervously 
 and painfully to escape from the uncanny
 
 THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD. 99 
 
 wood, where goblin legs stretched out 
 suddenly to trip her up, and goblin arms 
 made snatches at her as she passed. 
 
 Out of the wood she did get at last. 
 But even then she felt little inclination to 
 whistle, if whistling implies cheerfulness, 
 for she did not feel cheerful at all. Stand- 
 ing, as she did, at the very top of a hill, she 
 could see the wide, wide world before her, 
 and she felt unutterably unprotected and 
 forlorn. By daylight it was as fair a view as 
 need be wished, with its varied woods and 
 pastures, and far blue stretches of undulat- 
 ing land, the most homelike of farm houses 
 peeping out here and there among the 
 trees. But now it was the dreariest period 
 of dusk. The fields stretched out before 
 her grey and colourless, the woods looked 
 only dreary forests, while the ruddy glow 
 from cottage hearths, which is conven- 
 tionally supposed to cheer the wanderer at
 
 lOO so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 this hour, was conspicuous by its absence. 
 So she stood desolate on the hill top, 
 shivering in the falling dew, face to face 
 for the first time in her life with the ques- 
 tion of supper and bed, and finding no 
 answer in either case. The fields certainly- 
 promised least of all in that direction, so 
 she climbed the first gate that offered and 
 found herself in the high road again. She 
 walked on, but how differently ! Worn 
 out, heart and body, she sat down at last 
 upon a mile-stone, and watered the dust 
 of the world's highway with her tears. 
 
 "So! softly, softly! what's the. matter 
 with the old girl ? " 
 
 The post-chaise had come close up to 
 her before she perceived it ; the horse 
 shying violently at the mysterious figure 
 on the mile-stone was the first thing to 
 startle her, and she screamed out. The 
 driver sprang down to quiet the horse,
 
 THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD. lOI 
 
 while his companion looked through the 
 deepening twilight for the cause of the 
 disturbance. 
 
 " Well, what was it ? The pedlar's 
 spirit, or a spirituous pedlar ? Why, it's 
 a little girl!" He too jumped out with 
 a sort of good-natured curiosity. " Crying 
 too ! Beauty and innocence in tears ; the 
 orphan and the post-chaise. 
 
 " * What are you doing, child, I said, 
 By night along these lonesome ways ? ' " 
 
 " Oh, please," sobbed Anne, " I wasn't 
 doing any harm. I'm Anne Paton, and 
 they didn't want me at home, because I'm 
 such a naughty girl, so I'm going to Uncle 
 Will, and please is this the road to 
 Brighton, and where is Uncle Will ? " 
 
 The young man gave a long whistle, 
 between amusement and dismay. 
 
 " Paton did you say ? And you are 
 going to your uncle ? You poor little
 
 102 SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 beggar ! " He stood staring at her in 
 much perplexity till the driver called out 
 that they would be late, and the horse was 
 getting cold. " What am I to do ? I 
 can't leave her here all night, and I have 
 no means of sending her back. It will be 
 out of the frying-pan Into the fire to take 
 you on, Miss Anne ; still, scramble up 
 there, so ; I'll see you safe Into Uncle 
 Will's hands. George will see that you 
 come to no great harm, I suppose, and the 
 dowager will mother you to the best of 
 her ability, and if that doesn't happen to 
 be much, George will show her. She is 
 a docile pupil, is the dowager ; but forget- 
 ful, strangely forgetful." 
 
 '' Do you know my cousin George ? " 
 asked Anne, languidly curious, but too 
 sleepy, hungry, yet relieved, to feel much 
 surprise. 
 
 '* I have known him since I was about
 
 THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD. IO3 
 
 as tall as that whip, and he was a fractious 
 baby, or a very little old man, I scarcely 
 know which ; a parchment coloured crea- 
 ture, all wrinkles and scarlet hair. We 
 hated each other in those days, and we 
 each had some right on our side. He 
 was my rival, you see ; till he came I had 
 been leading juvenile, as it were, but he 
 quite cut me out. And I don't think he 
 can have loved me. At that period the 
 height of my ambition was to be a clown, 
 and whenever I had a chance I used to 
 get him to rehearse with." 
 
 '' I don't understand about that," said 
 Anne with a sigh. Such a new and 
 wonderful world seemed opening out to 
 her. " Are you a relation ? " she asked, 
 with a sudden hope. 
 
 " Oh, no ! I am only Charles, his friend." 
 *' I wish you had been. I like you, Mr. 
 Charles."
 
 I04 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 "Thank you. In the interests of truth, 
 I should perhaps mention that Charles is 
 not my name, it is only my title." 
 
 ** What is your name ? " 
 
 ** My name is Horatio Valentine." 
 
 " How lovely ! I didn't know there 
 were such beautiful names anywhere in 
 the world." 
 
 " I'm glad you like it ; it would scarcely 
 have been my own choice, but my dear 
 mother's acquaintance with Shakespeare 
 was slightly superficial. She thought the 
 names sounded well together ; alas ! she 
 forgot what a fall was there from Valen- 
 tine, to Timbs." 
 
 "Well, I think Paton is prettier than 
 that. But Mr. Hor " 
 
 " Pardon the interruption, but I would 
 really rather be Mr. Charles." 
 
 " Very well," said Anne, but regretfully. 
 " I hate my own name, at least I used to.
 
 THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD. I05 
 
 You called me Miss Anne, just now, and 
 I rather liked that ; I don't know why, 
 for it is just what nurse says twenty times 
 a day. But that was not so bad as ' dear 
 Anne.' That is what Henry Stephens 
 calls me.'* 
 
 '' Happy Henry," murmured Mr. Charles 
 — for practice sake. 
 
 '' Do you think so ? I think he is 
 miserable. If you only knew how stupid 
 he is, and how he likes best to be stupid. 
 Why, he wouldn't see the least fun in all 
 this. I think he is the most miserable 
 boy, and I am the happiest little girl. Oh, 
 I am glad I came. What delightful things 
 have happened already ! I have had a 
 ride in a cart, and another ride in a chaise, 
 and met you, and not had to come in to 
 tea, and been up hours after dark. And 
 perhaps ^if they haven't room for me at 
 Uncle Will's, I may have to sleep on two
 
 I06 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 chairs, or even on the table ! I think it 
 has been the very nicest day of my whole 
 life." 
 
 She ended with a little sigh of supreme 
 content, and lay still for a while. Presently 
 she asked sleepily — 
 
 '' Is it far still to Brighton ? " 
 
 **Well, rather. What made you think 
 of going to Brighton ? " 
 
 " Uncle Will said he was going there. 
 Oh ! " in sudden terror, '' aren't you taking 
 me to him ? Isn't my Uncle Will the 
 same as yours, after all ? " 
 
 ** Oh, yes ; there's no mistake. It is ' 
 true the company is going to Brighton, 
 eventually, but at present it is no nearer 
 that than Guildford. I should have been 
 with it, but I had to wait in London a day 
 or two on business of my dad's. He's the 
 manager. I assure you it is all right. 
 Alas ! you doubt me still ? "
 
 THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD. 
 
 107 
 
 '' No, I don't doubt you, Mr. Charles." 
 She felt for his hand with her little cold 
 one. Then she nestled down into his un- 
 accustomed arms as happily as if he had 
 been Uncle Will himself, and fell asleep. 
 Fortunately, Mr. Timbs was a versatile 
 genius. He resigned himself with a good 
 grace to his new role, and bore the con- 
 straint of motionlessness with creditable 
 patience for the rest of the drive.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 COUSIN AND AUNT. 
 
 The coffee-room of the Stag Inn, at 
 Guildford, was quite full that night. The 
 company that filled it was tolerably mis- 
 cellaneous looking ; but they all seemed 
 thoroughly to understand how to make 
 themselves comfortable according to their 
 own ideas. The attitudes even of the ladies, 
 of whom there were two or three, were, 
 as a rule, more distinguished for ease than 
 elegance. One end of the table was 
 covered with the remains of a nondescript 
 sort of meal ; there was a round of cold 
 boiled beef, cheese, pickles, and gooseberry 
 jam, while a teapot and cups mingled with
 
 COUSIN AND AUNT. IO9 
 
 pewter mugs and tumblers, suggestive of 
 stronger beverages, of which, indeed, the 
 fragrance still lingered lovingly about the 
 room. This was in course of being super- 
 seded by the pungent odour of tobacco 
 smoke, but nobody seemed to object to either. 
 
 Though comfortable, the society did not 
 seem to be particularly amused, and there 
 was a movement of satisfaction such as 
 suggests the lower depths of dulness, when 
 wheels were heard clattering over the 
 stones of the court-yard below. A large, 
 florid man, who had been studying the 
 county paper threw it down with an air of 
 some relief. 
 
 '* That's Horry, at last," he announced ; 
 and a general brisking up replied to his 
 words. *' Well, my boy," as his son entered 
 elaborately ; then, " What on earth have 
 you got in those rugs ? " 
 
 Horatio smiled mysteriously ; then he
 
 no so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 sat calmly down before the fire holding his 
 burden still covered up. Anne, in fact, 
 was still sleeping, too thoroughly exhausted 
 to be easily awakened. 
 
 *' Ladies and gentlemen," he said, '' it 
 would gratify me to allay your curiosity. 
 But the claims of friendship are paramount, 
 and there may be reasons why — ahem ! I 
 say, George, shall I tell them ? " 
 
 " What are you talking about ? " A tall 
 lad rose from a seat in a far off corner 
 where he had been studying a small book 
 by the light of a solitary candle. He 
 replaced the book in his pocket as he 
 came forward. 
 
 " What was that ? Slowbore on book- 
 keeping, or Diddler on stocks ? And then 
 to think of what I have here ! Could I 
 have believed it one short hour ago ? Oh ! 
 George, as a true friend and mentor, I must 
 tell you you are beginning much too early."
 
 COUSIN AND AUNT. I I I 
 
 *' These remarks strike one as singularly- 
 destitute of point, even for you." 
 
 " Ah ! the point, that is here," said 
 Charles, his friend, bestowing a cautious 
 pat on his bundle. **A11 the way from 
 Clapham for the sake of your beaux yeux ; 
 and but for me — it — might never have 
 reached you at all. And this is friendship, 
 this is gratitude ! " 
 
 George Paton turned on his heel with 
 an impatient gesture of contempt. 
 
 '' Never mind the Don, Charles ; if he 
 doesn't think it advisable to be interested 
 we are." 
 
 ** On his head then be the responsibility 
 of the revelation," said Horatio solemnly. 
 ** Unveil my sleeping beauty ! So. By 
 Jove you are /" 
 
 He had not seen his charge before so as 
 to distinguish her, and her beauty fairly 
 took him by surprise. Her bonnet had
 
 112 SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 fallen off, the loveliest flush was on her 
 cheeks, and as they crowded round to look 
 at her, her eyes opened, deepened with 
 sleep, widened with perplexity. 
 
 "Where am I ? Hester, oh, Hester!" 
 she exclaimed, and then memory came 
 back to her. She knew now where she 
 was, but too bewildered yet to speak she 
 sat on Mr. Timbs' knee, staring in silence 
 at the group around her. 
 
 '' Who is she ? " " Where did you find 
 her ? " " George, you lucky young rascal, 
 I congratulate you." " What eyes ! " 
 " There's a turn of the head for an 
 exit ! " *' Oh, you little darling dear ! 
 I must kiss her, Mr. Timbs, I must 
 indeed." 
 
 This from a gushing young lady who 
 had taken the ingdnues for a number of 
 years, which only the spiteful cared to 
 compute. Suiting the action to the word
 
 COUSIN AND AUNT. II3 
 
 she pushed through the group, and kneel- 
 by Horatio's side flung her arms round the 
 darling dear, and was about to honour her 
 with a rapturous salute. The sequel was 
 rapid. Anne, scared, worn out, stared out 
 of countenance, saluted Miss Clarke with 
 a vigorous box on the ear, and amidst a 
 roar of delight hid her head on her pro- 
 tector's breast in a storm of sobs. 
 
 " You said you would take me to Uncle 
 Will ! Where is Uncle Will ? I won't be 
 kissed by a lot of horrid old women. I 
 thought you were nice ! Oh ! why did 
 I ever come ? Papa, papa, take me back, 
 and I'll never be naughty again." 
 
 Mr. Timbs' expressive countenance be- 
 trayed a certain amount of discomposure ; 
 before he could quite recover his presence 
 of mind George came striding up. 
 
 " Who is this child ? " he said sharply. 
 
 Horatio meekly explained. 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 114 ^O NEAR AKIN'. 
 
 •' You idiot ! what made you bring her 
 here ? " 
 
 "So young and yet so hard! I knew 
 the bonds of friendship sat Hghtly on your 
 soul, but I thouorht vou mieht still be 
 sensible to the claims of kindred. I sup- 
 posed you would see to her, of course," 
 
 . I ? - 
 
 " Well;*' said the other, his usually fine 
 rt-T-^er giving way a little, "you or your 
 governor." 
 
 George deigned no reply in words, nor 
 were words necessary-. He turned abruptly 
 to the child, who was still cr}-ing quiedy, 
 though interest and curiosity* were fast 
 dr\-in^ her tears, and took her in his arms. 
 
 " Come, Anne," he said, '* you are over- 
 tired. Come with me, and my mother 
 shall give you some tea and find you a 
 bed.'- 
 
 " Ay ! marr}', that s/ia// she indeed ! "
 
 COUSIN -\ND AUNT. I I 5 
 
 cried out his irrepressible friend. Perhaps 
 it was somethinc: of a Parthian shot, for 
 George bit his Hp as he heard it ; but he 
 took no further notice and departed, with 
 Anne"s head resting confidingly upon his 
 shoulder. 
 
 The others were left to chaff Anne's 
 unlucky knight to their heart's content. 
 
 " Poor Charles ! I always feared you 
 would catch a Tartar."" 
 
 "' Oh ! Charles. I thought you were 
 nice ! '' 
 
 ''Are vou croino- to break her in vour- 
 self ? There will probably be various 
 breakages in your own person before you 
 have finished, but don't despair. Faint 
 heart — you know I '" 
 
 *' Rubbish ! "' exclaimed the persecuted 
 champion. " she'll go back to-morrow. I 
 sav. what a lovelv little terma^rant it is ! "" 
 
 " Don"t think of it. mv dear fellow : be
 
 Il6 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 sure the Don has made the running 
 already." 
 
 '' Yes, the sudden revelation of your 
 charms, it must have startled her. That 
 was it, my poor Mokanna ! " 
 
 This last from his father ; and the rest, 
 who might not perhaps have ventured it 
 on their own account before their manager, 
 roared appreciation. Certainly, if mascu- 
 line beauty is, in truth, a factor of any 
 great importance in the eyes of ladies, 
 other than those of the heroines of novels 
 and their biographers, Horatio would all 
 his life stand a poor chance beside his 
 friend. He was hideous, with the grotesque 
 hideousness of a gurgoyle. Lean, lantern- 
 jawed, and ill-complexioned, he had no 
 graces of form to atone for deficiencies in 
 feature, for he was stooping, overgrown 
 and shambling, looking as though his limbs 
 had come together by accident, and had
 
 COUSIN AND AUNT. TI7 
 
 never got accustomed to one another yet. 
 Spite of all which he was, and always 
 would be, ten times more popular with 
 man, woman, and child than was George 
 Paton, who looked as if he might have 
 walked out of a canvas of Giorgione, and 
 was merely masquerading in nineteenth 
 century clothes, yet rather to their glorifi- 
 cation than to his detriment. 
 
 As he stood for a moment at the door 
 of his mother s room, Anne contemplated 
 him in the dim lamp-light with a certain 
 amount of awe. For the first time in her 
 life she saw an imposing face and figure. 
 She had seen many that tried to be so, 
 but it had been half an imposition, half a 
 failure ; here she found it, not sought after 
 but inevitable — here in this boy, too 
 precocious by far, his elders said, for already 
 only on the borders of seventeen he had 
 something of the dignity of manhood, and
 
 I l8 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 no one could deny it. Her red-haired 
 cousin ! The little parchment coloured 
 old man ! The complexion was pale, 
 indeed, but ivory would have been a fitter 
 comparison ; the red hair had deepened 
 into chestnut, too pronounced to be com- 
 monplace. Neither curly nor wavy, there 
 was a sort of severity about its straightness 
 which set off better than wave or curl, the 
 severe beauty of form for which his head 
 was remarkable. Perhaps at this period 
 of his life severity was the most noticeable 
 feature of his whole bearing and expression. 
 George's rap was repeated with some 
 impatience, superadded to its peremptori- 
 ness, and this time a voice which seemed 
 to belong to someone in a chronic state of 
 unreadiness, entreated for one moment. 
 The request was granted with the most 
 literal exactitude, for the next moment 
 George did open the door.
 
 COUSIN AND AUNT. I I 9 
 
 Anne was aware of a sort of ponderous 
 flutter, a little moan of " Oh, George," and 
 saw a stout and comely woman, with 
 rumpled hair of a brighter shade than her 
 son's, rise from her seat on the edge of a 
 rumpled bed, and make a frantic clutch 
 at the unloosed fastenings of a rumpled 
 dressing-gown. The next moment she 
 was snatched from his arms and folded to 
 the ample bosom of Aunt Theresa, nor 
 did she resent this embrace. George 
 gave briefly the introduction which had 
 not been asked for, but which was ac- 
 knowledged by a yet more vigorous 
 squeeze, and then Mrs. William Paton 
 sat down with her on the bed again, and 
 Anne had leisure to look about her. 
 
 The bed-room was in a state of the most 
 glorious untidiness ; indeed the untidiness 
 attained to such colossal and unique pro- 
 portions, that it almost seemed a work of
 
 I20 SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 genius. Xo ordinary mind could have 
 evolved such a mess out of such limited 
 materials. Every available article was not 
 only in the wrong place, but in the most 
 wrong place that could possibly be. A 
 hair-brush was fraternizing with a tea-cup 
 in the easy-chair ; a bonnet was the most 
 conspicuous article on the tea-tray which 
 had been balanced across the water-jug; 
 the erim solid-lookino^ furniture seemed to 
 have been suddenly arrested in the midst 
 of a game of '' general post." Even Anne, 
 who professed to love disorder, felt more 
 bewildered than delighted ; George 
 wrenched round one or two of the dis- 
 sipated looking chairs into decorous angles 
 with an exclamation of disgust. 
 
 "Well, George, I know it isn't quite 
 tidy," said his mother apologetically ; " but 
 if you had given me a minute or two, I was 
 just going to put it straight"
 
 COUSIN AND AUNT. l2I 
 
 " I can do It," said George ; then, with 
 sudden recollection, '' mother, this child 
 is tired out and half starved ; hadn't you 
 better ring for some fresh tea and some 
 bread-and-butter ? Or, stay — nobody ever 
 answers this bell, I will go and see about 
 it myself. I dare say Anne would like to 
 brush her hair and put herself tidy," he 
 added. 
 
 His tone was fraus^ht with awful mean- 
 ing, but the implied rebuke was not aimed 
 chiefly at his abashed cousin. She, for 
 her part, felt small to a degree, but the 
 chief culprit only smiled benevolently as 
 she hugged her niece anew. 
 
 '*We will both be fit to receive the 
 Holy Father himself by the time you come 
 back," she said cheerfully. " One moment, 
 George ; was your father in the coffee- 
 room ? " 
 
 '' He has not been there all the evening."
 
 122 SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 "Well, then, my dear, I dare say you 
 may find him somewhere about. Be sure 
 you tell him about this sweet little visitor ; 
 say how Anne has come all this way to 
 see her dear uncle ; tell him he must be 
 sure to come up at once or we shall be 
 dreadfully angry." 
 
 The verbal message was supplemented 
 by a whole torrent of winks, becks, and 
 nods to which George answered with a 
 concentrated frown. 
 
 ** How could you let him go ? " he burst 
 out. 
 
 '' I couldn't help it ; really, George, you 
 expect impossibilities. You know your 
 poor father never could stand dulness, and 
 this is the dullest town I ever was in. A 
 man will amuse himself somehow, and 
 there's many men I could name worse ; 
 I'm sure no one ever knew /izm spoil a 
 part. And to-night — he can't have been
 
 COUSIN AND AUNT. I 23 
 
 gone very long, and a good chance of 
 getting him away at once. You will, won't 
 you, dear ? " 
 
 '' I shall do what I can for the best," 
 said George, darting a look of warning 
 towards Anne. But she had heeded little 
 of the conversation. In no case could it 
 have conveyed the slightest suspicion to 
 her mind ; but this, George, with his sadly 
 precocious enlightenment on many subjects 
 — enlightenment so precocious that he 
 sometimes felt as thouo^h he must have 
 been born knowing- — would never have 
 believed. 
 
 Left to themselves, the aunt and niece 
 soon became the fastest friends. Mrs. 
 William tidied up the room, Anne, and 
 herself, in a fragmentary sort of way, 
 giving a touch to each as the thought 
 struck her. Could it have been but two 
 nicrhts ao^o that Anne had rebelled at
 
 124 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 putting back her chair against the wall 
 after tea, and undergone all the tortures 
 of a brisk toilet at the hands of her nurse ? 
 Aunt Theresa's soft lazy touches were as 
 new as they were delicious. 
 
 For all George's presumable vigour, tea 
 must have been a long time coming, for 
 by the time it made its appearance, even 
 this desultory tidying had effected some- 
 thing approaching to order. Mrs. William 
 had squeezed herself with undisguised re- 
 luctance into a flowery gown, whose de- 
 ficiencies were not glaringly apparent, and 
 scrambled up her hair under an all-conceal- 
 ing cap. To do it elaborately indeed 
 would have been no slight undertaking. 
 It was many years since Theresa Paton 
 had had any claims to be considered a 
 young woman ; but many young women 
 might have envied her hair still. It was 
 so much brighter than George's that it
 
 COUSIN AND AUNT. I 25 
 
 only just escaped being aggressively red, 
 but the mass of it was marvellous. To 
 her niece, of course. Aunt Theresa was an 
 old lady, and her looks no more worthy 
 of consideration than those of other old 
 ladies. Yet she was a fine woman still ; 
 rather in the Rubens style now, but it was 
 quite possible that she might once have 
 been beautiful with a beauty rather splendid 
 than refined. 
 
 Tea came at last, but George did not 
 accompany it, rather to Anne's relief. The 
 meal, without the restraint of his presence, 
 seemed to her the most delicious she had 
 ever tasted. Her spirits rose ; she chat- 
 tered and laughed. Mrs. Paton plied her 
 with questions about home ; she answered 
 with indifference, not being troubled with 
 home-sickness as yet. But she was aston- 
 ished to find how much this quite unknown 
 aunt knew about them, and said so at last.
 
 126 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 " WTiy, my dear. Mr. Paton has always 
 felt veiy- kindly to your good papa, \ ery : 
 as for there ever having been any quarrel 
 that is just talk. There never was any- 
 thinof of the sort between the families, 
 never. Our ways of life are different, and 
 that has kept us apart, that is all. As for 
 your dear mamma, I was quite looking 
 forward to seeins: her mvself the dav vour 
 uncle called last week, but George thought 
 it better not." 
 
 "WTiy didn't Cousin George want you 
 to TO?" 
 
 •• Well, he was rather annoyed when he 
 found how your uncle had made himself 
 up. It was a pit}- he came to know of it : 
 he never quite understands that sort of 
 thing. We meant to keep it quiet, but I 
 had forgotten to lock my door at the last 
 — I q^-!!te thought I had done so — and just 
 as he came in your uncle was jagging up
 
 COUSIN AND AUNT. 12/ 
 
 his boots a bit with a table knife, and I 
 was rolHng up the bolster in a shawl (I 
 was to have come with a baby tied on my 
 back, my dear, like the women in picturesV 
 And he ^^ot to the bottom of it all in a 
 moment, he is so quick, and he seemed so 
 put out about it that I gave it up." 
 
 " Were you disappointed ? " 
 
 '' My dear, I think I cried a bit when 
 vour uncle had crone. It would have been 
 such fun, and I had taken such pains. 
 You thought your uncle looked the part 
 well, didn't you ? but it was only half the 
 show without me. However, it was not 
 worth while making George unhappy about. 
 He can't understand how these little jokes 
 are all so much pleasantness between 
 brothers and sisters. Bless me ! such 
 tricks as we all used to play off on one 
 another when we were bovs and orirls 
 together ; if we could meet now I don't
 
 128 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 know that we are quite too sorry and 
 sober for the old ways still. But I don't 
 know where to lay hands on one of them 
 — those that are left ; we never were great 
 folks for writing, any of us," she said 
 cheerfully. 
 
 Anne's curiosity was greatly roused. 
 
 " Then if you had brothers and sisters 
 you must have had a father and mother, 
 because if you had all come /oose^ you see, 
 how could you have known you belonged 
 to one another ? " 
 
 *' What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Why I mean if you had been just made, 
 like — like the tadpoles," said Anne, select- 
 ing the being whose genesis was to her at 
 once the subject of deepest interest and of 
 darkest mystery. '* I heard mamma say, 
 'nobody knew whether you ever had a 
 father or mother.' " 
 
 "Oh!" said Jane Paton's sister-in-law
 
 COUSIN AND AUNT. 1 29 
 
 with unruffled temper ; " but that was only 
 a way of speaking. My mother was Irish, 
 and we mostly favoured her, though I 
 sometimes think George must have taken 
 after my father. I scarcely remember him; 
 he was an Italian, that's how I came to be 
 called Theresa. I believe he had got 
 into trouble in his own country, and could 
 never go back. I often think. Nan," she 
 added reflectively, ''what would all poor 
 foreigners do without England ? " She 
 evidently looked upon her unknown father 
 as some one quite disconnected with her- 
 self, a poor and not too creditable exile 
 w^hom her mother had generously taken in 
 and done for by marrying him. 
 
 " Have I any other cousins except 
 Cousin George ? " asked Anne. 
 
 " No, my dear ; you ought by rights to 
 have had nine, eight more that is ; but I 
 never could make them do well." 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 130 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 '' Oh ! Aunt Theresa, how nice if they 
 could have Hved. Was George the 
 eldest?" 
 
 '' No ; he came — let me see — yes it was 
 sixth. There were the twins first. I'm 
 not finding fault with the ways of Provi- 
 dence, but it did seem hard to have begun 
 with twins. Nineteen years old I was, 
 nineteen and a month, not a day more. 
 Well ! the saints know I did my best for 
 you, my blessed jewels ; but they died, of 
 course. Beatrice pined from the first, and 
 Benedict somehow tumbled off the sofa 
 one day when I was getting up in a hurry, 
 and it seemed to touch him in the head. 
 He cried for about a week, night and day, 
 and then he had fits, and so he died. We 
 were at Norwich then, and they are buried 
 there. It shows you what a wandering 
 life I have had, my dear ; those two are 
 the only ones out of all the eight that
 
 COUSIN AND AUNT. I3I 
 
 are buried in the same place. One is at 
 Durham, another at Exeter ; my angel 
 Mike — the last he was — is at Lynn. 
 That's not so far from his brother and 
 sister as some of them." 
 
 Anne listened intently, and child though 
 she was almost wondered ; there was such 
 cheerful resignation, yet such indubitable 
 affection, in the tone of these reminiscences. 
 Time, indeed, had healed her wounds in 
 one way ; perhaps George had contributed 
 unconsciously to heal them in another. 
 For though she was not only content but 
 proud to live under his adored despotism, 
 yet she was in a way deposed from mother- 
 hood, so far as he was concerned. But the 
 eight dead babies, to them she was a 
 mother still ; they clung about her for ever 
 with phantom embraces which they would 
 never grow too old to dispense with ; she 
 hushed their voiceless wailings, and they
 
 132 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 smiled on, through all her wildest aberra- 
 tions of dress and manners. They never 
 looked a reproach, though indeed their 
 early deaths lay chiefly at her door, for 
 she had been the best meanino^ and the 
 most incompetent of mothers. One after 
 another those infants had succumbed to 
 sheer ill-treatment. Not vulgar brutality, 
 such as brings certain abnormal mons- 
 trosities into a police-court. On them no 
 touch save in the way of kindness had 
 ever been laid. They were only starved 
 spasmodically, from pure forgetfulness, and 
 such lapses of memory were atoned for by 
 a proportionate rush of plenty. Neverthe- 
 less they died — of late hours, of unsuitable 
 food, of irregularities of every description 
 — died as it were worn out by dissipation, 
 at ages varying between six weeks and 
 three months. It is probable that George 
 owed his life less to the inherent vigour of
 
 COUSIN AND AUNT. 1 33 
 
 his constitution than to the fact that cir- 
 cumstances had deprived him of his 
 mother's baleful care till he had attained 
 an age when the worst dangers of infancy- 
 were long past. In fact he was twelve 
 years old before he ever made his parents' 
 acquaintance. Mrs. William had just 
 begun a history of the circumstances when 
 the hero of the tale himself entered the 
 room.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE FAMILY SKELETON COMES OUT OF THE 
 CUPBOARD. 
 
 George's very look as he came in was 
 enough to check at once his mother's flow 
 of anecdote. 
 
 *' Your father ? " she said nervously. 
 
 George made a gesture of despair. 
 
 ''What could you expect?" he asked 
 almost fiercely. " There, don't cry," he 
 went on more gently ; " that's no use now. 
 I blame myself most. And he is not at 
 his worst, one may say that." 
 
 " Really not ? You're not just saying 
 so to comfort me ? " she said, checking her 
 tears as easily as she had produced them.
 
 THE SKELETON COMES OUT. 1 35 
 
 '' What would be the use of doing that ? 
 
 No ; he is quite quiet, if that is all, but 
 
 Good Heavens ! mother, isn't that child 
 gone to bed ? " 
 
 Mrs. Paton jumped up guiltily, more or 
 less tumbling Anne out of her arms on to 
 the floor, and the two stood staring, the 
 one helplessly, the other gloomily, at the 
 bewildered child, who stood uncomprehend- 
 ing before them. 
 
 " I didn't know where to put her," 
 faltered her aunt. " I'm afraid I forgot 
 all about it. Oh, George, what am I 
 to do ? " 
 
 '* Put her — oh, put her anywhere ; my 
 room if there is nowhere else. I can 
 sleep with Charles, or on the sofa in the 
 coffee-room, or on the billiard-table, if 
 that's all ; what does it matter ? Only 
 pray take her away at once. Would you 
 have the child see him ? "
 
 136 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 " Who am I not to see ? Oh, Aunt 
 Theresa, I came to see Uncle Will." 
 
 " Yes, dearie, and so you shall," said her 
 distracted guardian ; " to-morrow morning. 
 But it is time now for all good little girls 
 to be in bed. George, I don't like that 
 plan ; I know you won't really go to 
 Charles, and " 
 
 A step and a voice, at the far end of the 
 passage. 
 
 " Too late ! " he exclaimed. " Now 
 manage it yourself. Oh, mother, mother !" 
 
 There was a sound of wringing of hands 
 in his voice, but in this last emergency 
 his mother recovered her presence of mind, 
 and soared boldly on the wings of fiction. 
 
 " Nan, dear, I'm sorry to say your poor 
 uncle is not at all well to-night ; quite ill, 
 isn't he, George ? " she said, with vigorous 
 suggestiveness. George bent his soul to 
 sign the assent he would not speak. " You
 
 THE SKELETON COMES OUT. 1 37 
 
 must be a good little girl, and not tease 
 him to notice you, or — or — anything. Now 
 mind ! " 
 
 And, even as she spoke, George drew a 
 deep breath and clenched his hands in 
 impotent passion, for William Paton had 
 come in, 
 
 Alas! 
 
 George had been right ; he was far from 
 being at his worst. He had, indeed, only 
 reached the genial and sentimental stage, 
 and was still just so much master of 
 himself as to be hazily conscious of a need 
 for exerting over his actions a power of 
 control which was rapidly escaping him. 
 He did not hazard himself far into the 
 room, but stood by the door, smiling 
 faintly In silence. His wife stood helpless ; 
 at heart she was a good deal relieved, for 
 to her this did not seem much. George 
 stood like an Indian at the stake, resolved
 
 1^8 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 only not to blench for the very worst that 
 could befall. And from between the wife 
 and son, on whom his vag^ue benevolent 
 glances beamed alternately, Anne ran 
 towards him, innocent, pitying, sincere. 
 
 '' Uncle Will ! " she cried ; " I am come 
 to be your little Nan, after all. Oh ! I 
 forgot you were ill. Are you very bad ? 
 I won't tease you, I won't indeed; but 
 just kiss me good-night, and say you are 
 glad to see me after all ! " 
 
 She held up her sweet face for his 
 embrace, standing on tip-toe and holding 
 by his arm. It was too much ; George's 
 stoicism broke down. He sprang forward 
 with a smothered cry, and almost dashed 
 the child back into the room. She stumbled 
 and would have fallen, had not her aunt 
 caught her. George did not even look 
 to see what had become of her ; at that 
 moment he could almost have enacted
 
 THE SKELETON COMES OUT. 1 39 
 
 Virglnius to save her from the profanation. 
 Not that he cared for her ; Indeed he 
 hated her then, as he had scarcely been 
 stirred to hate before ; hated her for being 
 witness of a degradation which he felt 
 as his own ; yet more for her innocent 
 unconsciousness of the shame which was 
 burning into his very soul. Scarcely 
 knowing what he did, he grasped his 
 father's arm, so roughly that It was only 
 not a blow, and seemed about to thrust 
 him from the room. 
 
 " Oh, George, don't hurt him ; remember 
 he is your father," exclaimed Mrs. Paton. 
 She was neither tearful nor hysterical, not 
 excited in any way ; the remark was merely 
 an utterance of intercession. But George, 
 colouring to the roots of his hair, loosed 
 his passionate grasp and stepped back. 
 
 '' I beg your pardon, father ; I forgot 
 myself," he said.
 
 140 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 He Spoke with deliberate clearness in 
 a voice rather raised than subdued, and 
 for the rest of the time he interfered 
 neither by word nor act, but stood silent 
 and motionless, not allowing himself to 
 look away. 
 
 " Oh, my dear, I didn't mean that," said 
 his mother, much more distressed at the 
 atonement than at the crime, which, indeed, 
 she had merely looked upon as a rather 
 harsh exercise of legitimate authority. 
 
 But William Paton, suddenly roused to 
 a bewildered sense of Injury, tottered for- 
 ward, and subsided into a chair and tears. 
 
 "Heaven help me! even my own children 
 forsake me," he exclaimed, with more 
 pathos than originality. " Never mind. 
 Don't say anything. I deserve It. George, 
 my boy, your poor old father won't trouble 
 you long. I — shan't trouble any one long 
 — not long — not "
 
 THE SKELETON COMES OUT. I4I 
 
 ** Hold your tongue, William, do," said 
 his wife sharply. " Aren't you ashamed, 
 before the child ? Come along, Nan," she 
 continued, suddenly remembering her ex- 
 planation. " You see your poor dear uncle 
 is too ill to talk to you to-night. You 
 can't do him any good, dearie ; there's 
 only George and I understand his illnesses. 
 Come along to bed, and to-morrow you 
 shall see him quite a hearty, happy 
 Uncle Will." 
 
 She was dragging the bewildered child 
 from the room, but her fatally irrepressible 
 husband broke out again. 
 
 "You too!" he exclaimed sepulchrally. 
 *' What ! not a word ? not a look ? And 
 is this the end ? " 
 
 *' No, no," cried Anne, breaking from 
 her aunt's detaining hand. " Everyone 
 else may leave you ; other people " — with 
 an indignant glance at George — '' may be
 
 142 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 as horrid and unkind as they Hke ; but I 
 will always be your little Nancy ! If you 
 are naughty, you can put up with me ; and 
 I like naughty people best. Does your 
 head ache too much to understand ? " she 
 said anxiously, a headache being her one 
 idea of the ills that flesh is heir to. 
 
 ** Bless you, my child, bless you," he 
 wept. '' The blessing of a weary pilgrim 
 through this vale of tears, in which," he 
 went on, irrelevantly but impressively, and 
 quite oblivious of her existence, " the ways 
 of Providence are no doubt mysterious, 
 but they are good" — rapturously — ''and 
 
 to the humble believer who knows " 
 
 An imploring glance from George sent 
 Mrs. Paton out of the room with Anne 
 before he had got further. 
 
 As awkward as it was ever in her easy- 
 going nature to feel perhaps Theresa Paton 
 felt then, as she hurried her niece alonor the
 
 THE SKELETON COMES OUT. I 43 
 
 passages to a rather dreary little inn bed- 
 room, opposite George's, in a remote wing. 
 Talking incessantly herself, to prevent the 
 child talking, she scrambled her into bed 
 as rapidly as she might, and went away 
 with a sense of having escaped. 
 
 It was not she who came to the rescue 
 an hour or two later w^hen Anne woke, 
 startled and screaming, to the moonlit 
 awfulness of her first night of absolute 
 solitude. She, by that time, was sleeping 
 the sleep of the just, no anxiety as to her 
 niece having so much as occurred to her. 
 Yet Anne was not left unprotected. It 
 was indeed rather a fresh horror than a 
 comfort to her, at first, when the door 
 opened, and a tall figure seemed to step in 
 out of the darkness and come towards her. 
 But it w^as only George. His consolations 
 w^ere not exactly sympathetic, but he was 
 not harsh. He insisted on her defining
 
 144 ^O NEAR AKIX. 
 
 what was the matter. She wanted Hester; 
 she had dreamed she saw Hester some- 
 where in a lovely garden, and when she 
 wanted to run and kiss her Hester had 
 said, '* Oh ! Anne, you can't come." Then 
 she woke up, and there was a horrid moon 
 — Anne devoutly hated that admired lumi- 
 nar\- — and then she remembered that i\unt 
 Theresa had never heard her say her 
 prayers, and she was frightened. 
 
 Georee recognized the terrors of con- 
 science, and with the readiness of one 
 accustomed to every kind of emergency, 
 he volunteered to help her remedy the 
 omission, standing over her in the chill 
 moonlight of the small hours, as she knelt 
 up in bed and sobbed out after him some 
 child prayer learned by him — but not from 
 his mother — in his own infancy. If it was 
 not exactly identical with her own form it 
 satisfied her, and she ended quite consoled,
 
 THE SKELETON COMES OUT. 1 45 
 
 and as a matter of course with a kiss which 
 cost him more than anything else. Then, 
 discovering her pecuhar horror of moon- 
 light, he darkened the window to the best 
 of his power, and wrapping her in a shawl 
 walked up and down with her. till, in ten 
 minutes time, he could put her back, a 
 dreamxless bundle, among her pillows, and 
 return to his self-imposed watch in his own 
 room. 
 
 It cannot be said that any liking for 
 Anne in particular, or even a fondness for 
 children in general moved him in this 
 matter. It was merely a sense of duty, to 
 which a feeling of its being also a penance 
 gave a certain not unpleasant zest. For 
 he had been very much ashamed of his 
 ebulhtion of temper towards his father, he 
 always was ver}- much ashamed but it had 
 not cured him ; and his mind was ot the 
 order that finds a genuine satisfaction in 
 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 146 so NEAR AKIX. 
 
 penance. He was particularly annoyed at 
 havinof fors^otten himself before Anne. Xo 
 suspicion crossed his mind that she had 
 not been scandalized at all ; the fact was 
 that, to her. he seemed rather older than 
 his father and mother, — a being to whom 
 authority- had been committed bv rio^ht 
 divine. Had George known this, perhaps 
 his conscience would have troubled him 
 less, but neither did he suspect that Anne's 
 disapproval was an extra stimulant to his 
 penitence. At seventeen one is scarcely 
 expected to know fully what a deal of 
 human nature there is in mankind in 
 general and in oneself in particular. 
 
 But the whole affair had certainly not 
 tended to increase his love for his cousin, 
 for whom, from the first, his sentiments 
 had been rather the reverse of affectionate; 
 and the reflection that her hours, as their 
 guest, were numbered, came to him with a
 
 THE SKZIETIV ::vzs CV7. 147 
 
 very healing and soothing power. He 
 took early steps himself towards effecting 
 this desired con5"~:rstion, rightly judging 
 that if the arran^-tr:ient5 were left to his 
 parents Anne's departure might be almost 
 indefinitely postponed. He was prepared 
 for objections and remonstrance, would 
 admit of no difficulties, and was adamant 
 to entreaties. His mother he overcame 
 by a pathetic and highly imaginative 
 description of the desolation in Anne's 
 rater-.?.! hrl!? : Anne herself he simply 
 cveri..vei, rrs: from indignation to tears, 
 ari trer frn tears to qui^K:ence. The 
 whoie b. 5:rr5s had been arranored irre- 
 vocably as iate, long before Mrs. Paton 
 had contrived to get her niece and herself 
 ready for the more or less perennial break- 
 fast in the coffee-room, to which they 
 straggled down somewhere about ten. 
 The breakfast had a strong family resem-
 
 148 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 blance to the supper of the night before, 
 slightly re-arranged. Some of the com- 
 pany had breakfasted already, and the 
 meal looked none the more inviting. It 
 was a pouring day, moreover, so that those 
 who had finished were hanging about the 
 room, or strolled in and out, as fancy 
 prompted ; it was all really horribly un- 
 comfortable, and calculated to cool the 
 ardour of any merely romantic attachment 
 to an ideal life of unconventional freedom. 
 Mr. Timbs was talking politics, or rather 
 submitting to be talked to by some low- 
 spirited enthusiast; Horatio was superin- 
 tending another youth, who was engaged 
 in recording an uncomplimentary opinion 
 of Guildford, in halting verse, on the 
 window pane. Some of the ladies were 
 frankly mending their husband's stockings, 
 and these were the best off. 
 
 Under the circumstances, Anne natur-
 
 THE SKELETON COMES OUT. I 49 
 
 ally came in for a greater amount of atten- 
 tion all round than might otherwise have 
 fallen to her share. In fact she was out- 
 rageously petted and flirted with, and it 
 must be owned that, now that a night's 
 rest had restored her spirits and temper, 
 she rose to the occasion with an audacity 
 and enjoyment which added greatly to the 
 mirth of her audience. There was quite a 
 rivalry for her favour, and she coquetted 
 as though to the manner born. There 
 was nothing particularly humorous or re- 
 fined, perhaps, about the badinage on 
 either side ; the really remarkable thing 
 about her was her readiness. Possibly, 
 nay probably, education would polish her 
 style ; but there was a strong dash of 
 populace in her organization, an hereditary 
 taint which it would be difficult for any 
 education entirely to get rid of. At 
 bottom, in many ways, she was ingrainedly
 
 150 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 peuple ; she had that vigour of emotional 
 expression which laughs and cries, hugs, 
 hits out, blesses, and vituperates, in the 
 back regions of a fishing village or a sea- 
 port town. 
 
 George, looking on with as much dis- 
 gusted disapprobation as though instead of 
 nine she had been nineteen and \i\sfiancde, 
 merely added the joys of tormenting to 
 the general amusement, seeing which he 
 had the sense to withdraw, retreating in 
 good order. 
 
 ** There! Miss Anne, you have driven him 
 away. Aren't you sorry now ? Confess ! " 
 
 " No," said Anne, with decisive frank- 
 ness from her throne on the manager's 
 knee ; " I'm very glad. I don't like him. 
 If it hadn't been for him I might have 
 stayed here altogether." 
 
 " Going ! " There was a chorus of 
 regrets and protestations.
 
 TflE SKELETON COMES OUT. 151 
 
 "/ don't want to go ; I don't know 
 what they'll do to me when I get back," 
 said Anne, with plaintive resignation. 
 '' But George wouldn't care — not if it was 
 wild horses," she continued, with a vivid 
 reproduction of the style of Mary Anne. 
 ''He said you had no place here for little 
 girls ; but I can do ever so many things — 
 nice things, I mean, of your sort. I can 
 whistle, and I can dance, — not a hornpipe, 
 but I could learn anything ; I like it. And 
 I can sing." 
 
 " She can sing ! Won't you give us a 
 song ? " 
 
 '* Oh ! yes ; what shall I sing ? There 
 is, * O, that will be joyful ! ' That's a nice 
 tune, but I don't like it, because I always 
 have to sing it with Henry Stephens when 
 company comes. Bob — that's our boy, 
 Mr. Graves' boy — taught me ' I loves a 
 drop of good beer;' but Bob sings all
 
 J 52 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 queer, and I couldn't make It out very 
 well. Then there's the Old Hundredth 
 and ' Giles Scroggins' Ghost,' and ' Home 
 Sweet Home ' and * Cruel Barbara Allen,' 
 
 and Oh ! I know plenty. Shall I 
 
 sing you * Barbara Allen ' ? I learned that 
 from Emma ; she was our nurse-maid before 
 last. We're always changing our nurse- 
 maids. That's because nurse is a treasure ; 
 I heard mamma say that was why, but I 
 didn't understand. Shall I begin ? " 
 
 They laughed, as they encouraged her 
 with anticipatory applause ; but after the 
 first few notes they laughed no more, 
 for, technically appreciative audience that 
 they were, they felt themselves to be in the 
 presence of genius. Yet she sang with a 
 supreme unconsciousness of the effect she 
 was producing, as indifferent to her theme 
 as to her powers. Had the pathos, the 
 manifold inflections, the intense dramatic
 
 THE SKELETON COMES OUT. 1 53 
 
 Fuggestiveness of the performance been 
 one shade less undeniably instinctive, it 
 would have seemed purely mechanical, for 
 she was as far from seeing any particular 
 point or pathos in the song as ninety-nine 
 children out of a hundred would be. The 
 last note had scarcely died away when she 
 burst out laughing. 
 
 " Isn't it funny ? " she said cheerfully. 
 " ' Young man, I think you're dying ! ' I 
 wonder If her mamma had never told her 
 it was bad manners to make personal re- 
 marks ? That's what they would tell me 
 if I had said that to anybody." 
 
 It was a relief to the strange tension 
 consequent on the performance, and every 
 one laughed the louder for It. Then they 
 made her sing again and again. In every- 
 thing she sang there was the same instinc- 
 tive dramatic power ; it was even more 
 striking than was the quality of her voice, "
 
 154 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 which, of course, was merely that of a child, 
 though it was exquisitely sweet, true, and 
 fresh, and so flexible and sympathetic as 
 to give promise of a remarkable future. 
 
 No wonder Mr. Timbs audibly ejacu- 
 lated, '' Opera ! " He did not clasp her to 
 his heart with tears in his eyes, as the dis- 
 coverers of juvenile genius are generally 
 represented as doing. He did not do this, 
 because he was English, and because he 
 was not troubled with enough genius him- 
 self to give him a fellow-feeling. But 
 doubtless he groaned, in his managerial 
 soul, at the perverse fate which had re- 
 vealed such a treasure to him only to 
 snatch it away. 
 
 As for Mrs. Paton, she sobbed or 
 laughed as the sentiment required, and 
 overwhelmed Anne w^ith embraces. Ho- 
 ratio treated her to all the arts of fascina- 
 tion which singularly ugly men have so
 
 THE SKELETON COMES OUT. I55 
 
 often notoriously possessed. Altogether, 
 Anne was having a good time that morn- 
 ing — of a kind so utterly new to her, that 
 it was little wonder that her excitable head 
 was fairly turned. 
 
 It was turned, with the natural result. 
 When, about noon, George came with 
 wraps and provisions to carry her off, she 
 flew into one of her fits of passion, clinging, 
 sobbing, screaming, to the amusement of 
 most people, the compassion of Aunt 
 Theresa, and the intense disgust of George. 
 For the first time he came across a crea- 
 ture on whom his arguments and commands 
 made no impression at all ; perhaps, in the 
 sight of his discomfiture, some of the spec- 
 tators tasted the sweetness of revenge. 
 With Anne, anger, or strong emotion of 
 any kind, was a sort of madness while it 
 lasted ; no one had any chance with her. 
 So at last George was fain to carry her off
 
 156 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 bodily, kicking, struggling, protesting, and 
 unvanquished. 
 
 The sight of the carriage effected more 
 than all her cousin's exhortations. It 
 seemed to sober her with a sort of shock ; 
 she grew quiet, and subsided into silent 
 abysses of despair. She asked for no pity ; 
 she stood crushed and hopeless, submitting 
 without a struggle to the half-scolding, 
 half-sympathetic chamber-maid who was 
 getting her ready for her journey, as she 
 stood on the step of the side door of the 
 inn. George stood silent also, recovering 
 his own dignity and temper with an effort. 
 
 Just as she was ready, her escort, an 
 ordinary, good-natured looking, commercial 
 traveller, came out of the bar, followed by 
 William Paton. No traces of indisposi- 
 tion were discoverable in Uncle Will. He 
 might have had but dim recollections of 
 his interview with his niece the night
 
 THE SKELETON COMES OUT. 1 57 
 
 before, but the whole situation had since 
 been carefully explained to him by his 
 wife, so that he showed no surprise either 
 at her appearance or her departure. Of 
 course, this cost him no pang whatever ; 
 in fact, he had insisted, quite as strongly as 
 George, on her immediate return. But 
 Anne could not believe that his anguish at 
 the separation was one whit less poignant 
 than, for the moment, was her own. 
 
 *'I couldn't help It, Uncle Will," she 
 whispered, as he took her in his arnis. 
 " Oh ! I would have stayed with you If I 
 could." 
 
 She clung to him with a desperation that 
 made her quiver. He was really more 
 amused than touched, but was too good- 
 natured to let her think so. 
 
 " Never mind, Nancy ; we shan't forget 
 each other, shall we ? You must make 
 haste and grow a big girl, and then you
 
 158 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 can come and see me whenever you like. 
 Oh ! yes, you'll come back. Don't you 
 know I'm a great conjuror, and I can see 
 that you will ? " 
 
 " When ? " asked Anne, anxious and 
 interested. 
 
 " Oh ! in a few hundred days ; say five 
 hundred," he said boldly, in the certainty 
 that she would have forgotten before the 
 end of five. 
 
 ''And then George won't send me 
 back ? " 
 
 He looked at her with undisguised 
 admiration. 
 
 ''No, Nancy ; if I know anything at 
 all, George won't be in any hurry to send 
 you back then. Now, we mustn't keep 
 Mr. Jones waiting any longer. Mind I 
 don't say ' good-bye ; ' it is ' to our next 
 merry meeting ! ' " 
 
 She tried to get up a smile, and allowed
 
 THE SKELETON COMES OUT. 1 59 
 
 him to put her ^in the carriage. George 
 did not volunteer any farewell caress. 
 Then the door was shut, and they drove 
 off in the rain. 
 
 William Paton strolled to the end of the 
 arched gateway for the small excitement 
 of seeing the last of them. Looking round, 
 he saw that George was watching too. 
 When the chaise was finally out of sight, 
 they turned back together. 
 
 " Thank Heaven ! " exclaimed George, 
 with much fervour if little devotion. 
 
 His father chuckled. He was in an 
 aggravating mood ; not that that was 
 uncommon. 
 
 "All right, my lad," he said; '''it is 
 always best to begin with a little aver- 
 sion!'"
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME. 
 
 Anne's reception at home was not particu- 
 larly striking in any way. The fatted calf 
 was a merely negative quantity; that is 
 to say, she was not punished at all, nor 
 scolded to any serious extent, and very 
 likely this had been so far beyond her 
 expectations that it gave something of a 
 festive character to the occasion. Her 
 father, after a really affectionate, though 
 undemonstrative greeting, retired to enter- 
 tain Mr. Jones in the dining-room. Her 
 mother hugged her a good deal, and 
 went the length of threatening to become
 
 THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME. l6l 
 
 hysterical. But Mrs. Stephens happened 
 to be sitting with her at the time, having 
 come on a mission of consolation, and she 
 showed such energy in combating the 
 symptoms that the child found herself 
 pretty well forgotten, and felt small rather 
 than interesting. She somehow effaced 
 herself in a sidelong, hesitating retreat, 
 and proceeded a story higher, where she 
 found Henry Stephens performing the 
 same work of mercy as his mother towards 
 a really mournful looking Hester. 
 
 Here, indeed, she met with a certain 
 amount of enthusiasm, and her spirits rose 
 a little as she felt the delights of being a 
 heroine. Henry allowed curiosity so far 
 to smother his conscientious desire to 
 improve the occasion as to listen with Ill- 
 disguised interest to the story of her ad- 
 ventures, though he would not desert his 
 colours so far as to ask any questions, and 
 
 VOL. I. II
 
 I 62 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 from time to time would throw a sop to 
 Cerberus, his conscience, in the form of a 
 pious sigh. Little Hester clung to her 
 sister and would not let her go ; and when 
 at last a special tea, long after hours, was 
 brought in for her individual enjoyment, 
 Anne began to think that a home-coming 
 had its attractions. She did not go so 
 far as to admit to herself that the tidy 
 nursery, the cleanly meal, the general 
 impression of firelight and well-ordered 
 domesticity were intrinsically preferable to 
 the hugger-mugger of Aunt Theresas 
 room at the Stag. But it certainly struck 
 her as being less repellent than usual. 
 
 Probably this pleasant impression would 
 not have lasted long. In fact, it had 
 begun to wear off by the end of forty- 
 eight hours; but before she had time to 
 fret over much at the old yoke, the heavier 
 for her experience of absolute emancipa-
 
 THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME. 1 63 
 
 tion, the day came for her to go to school. 
 She had taken the sentence when it had 
 been announced to her, with a calmness 
 not unmingled with satisfaction, which 
 considerably surprised Hester and some- 
 what chilled her. But, indeed, the out- 
 burst of affection between the sisters, on 
 the first evening, had been merely pheno- 
 menal, and they had not been long in 
 returning to their old terms of affectionate 
 estrangement. But on the last day, Hester, 
 who was always easily moved by a senti- 
 mental crisis, showed a tearful clinging 
 devotion which ought to have touched 
 Anne. Perhaps it failed of this effect, for 
 on this occasion again, Anne found herself 
 the heroine of the hour, a position she was 
 quite capable of enjoying. As she was by 
 no means heart-broken herself, it was 
 rather pleasant to witness the emotion of 
 her acquaintance. She went off cheerfully
 
 I 64 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 enough, clasping in one hand the favourite 
 marble which Bob, her truest mourner, 
 had pressed upon her in the hour of their 
 surreptitious parting, and waving her 
 handkerchief to the effective group of 
 friends and kindred on the doorstep. The 
 last she saw of them, Mrs. Stephens was 
 offering Mrs. Paton a smelling-bottle, and 
 the weeping Hester was being led back 
 into the house between Henry and Mary 
 Stephens, who were bending over her in 
 attitudes of consolation. 
 
 So Anne entered on her school life, 
 which ran its even course thenceforth, in 
 the same seminary, till she was turned out, 
 formed and finished, at eighteen. There 
 is not much to relate about that period. 
 Records of school-days are apt to fall flat 
 on the general public above the age of 
 sixteen. Apple-pie beds and bolster-fights, 
 clandestine suppers of ginger-beer and
 
 THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME. 1 65 
 
 jam-puffs ; the grand passions inspired in 
 and by the young gentlemen of Dr. 
 Birchem's Academy over the way ; the 
 romantic friendships in which girls re- 
 hearse among themselves all the devo- 
 tions, the unrequited attachments, the 
 jealousies and lovers' quarrels of future 
 years : at the time it was all very funny 
 or very sad, sparkling comedy or heart- 
 breaking tragedy. But even to ourselves 
 the flavour soon goes, for it was youth 
 only which gave it in the first place. The 
 effervescence was the best part of the 
 champagne — perhaps it was only goose- 
 berry after all — and the effervescence is 
 gone. 
 
 Taking it all round, it may be said that 
 Anne enjoyed this period of her life. The 
 restraint was little less than that of home, 
 but there was congenial companionship, 
 and that inestimable safety-valve freedom
 
 I 66 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 of discussion ; it must be owned that, in 
 liberty of speech, when alone with her 
 contemporaries, Anne sufficiently dis- 
 tinguished herself. By the end of her 
 time she had, as it were, outlived several 
 generations of school-fellows, and had 
 acquired a sort of prescriptive right to 
 leadership. She did not avail herself of 
 the privilege to any great extent, perhaps 
 she could not do so. Her emotions, 
 though not very lightly stirred, were 
 strong; but her will was, if anything, 
 weak. She made a tolerable leader in 
 times of popular feeling, but she was no 
 ruler and had no ambition to rule. Nor, 
 though she liked to be liked, had she any 
 morbid cravings for affection. She took 
 her part in the incipient flirtations with 
 the Birchemite youth, partly from an in- 
 stinct of flirtation, but more because it 
 was a recognized fashion. It did not
 
 THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME. 1 67 
 
 absolutely bore her, but certainly it did 
 not amuse, much less agitate her. In 
 spite of occasional utterances of perversity 
 to the contrary effect, she did not greatly 
 care for boys ; as associates among her 
 contemporaries she preferred girls. With 
 grown men it was different; from thirty 
 upwards she was devoted to the sex, and 
 had exerted her fascinations on every 
 master in the establishment. 
 
 Perhaps this indifference to compara- 
 tively immature masculine homage helped 
 to keep things pleasant for her in the 
 school circle. Certainly she was, on the 
 whole, popular with her school-fellows. 
 She made no bosom friends, but she had 
 no enemies ; and there were plenty of girls 
 with whom she was on such terms as to 
 get an occasional invitation for the holi- 
 days. The least generous of them forgave 
 her her marvellous and growing beauty for
 
 r68 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 the sake of her want of interest in it. She 
 was not unconscious of it and never pre- 
 tended to be so ; but she seemed to care 
 little about it, and, though she would spend 
 over an hour at her toilet on any special 
 occasion, as a rule she was so careless of 
 her personal appearance as barely to miss 
 slovenliness. Her training had made this 
 a practically impossible fault, but these 
 combined instincts remained — an heredi- 
 tary legacy from the many-headed monster, 
 and not the only bequest of the kind either. 
 Among the ambitious of her little world 
 she excited as little jealousy as among the 
 frivolous. Her general mediocrity earned 
 the pardon of her particular genius. She 
 could not draw, she could not paint, though 
 her feeling for colour was good ; she could 
 not even play as an ordinary show pupil 
 should play, she had neither execution 
 nor expression. All her reports ended in
 
 THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME. 1 69 
 
 '' moderate " or " fair," at best " a slight 
 improvement ; " only her singing-mistress 
 and the little French dancing-master could 
 not find words to express their feelings. 
 Perhaps she did not actually dance better 
 than many other girls, but there was a 
 singular appropriateness, an expressiveness 
 about her movements, her gestures, her 
 whole deportment which made beholders 
 forgive a certain unconventionality in these 
 respects. But as for her singing! In 
 the last months of her school career, at 
 any rate, the maids would loiter cautiously 
 on the stairs, if chance led them past the 
 parlour at the time Miss Paton was having 
 her singing-lesson ; and when the windows 
 stood open on summer afternoons, the 
 distant tones of that voice would slacken 
 or arrest the steps of the casual passer-by. 
 Everybody knew this, but the envy it was 
 calculated to excite was soothed when
 
 iy^ so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 Anne came down, good-humoured and 
 cheerful, to make preposterous blunders 
 over the use of the globes, or to sit down 
 to the composition of the feeblest of essays, 
 with the help of a pocket dictionary, for 
 to the end of her days she never thoroughly 
 learned to spell. 
 
 The girls themselves were glad enough 
 to let her melt them into easy tears, when 
 she would stand leaning against the trunk 
 of the big walnut-tree, in the summer 
 twilight, while they settled down around 
 her on the grass like a flock of doves in 
 their white gowns, listening to " Home, 
 sweet home," sung with a pathos quite as 
 instinctive, quite as conventional if you 
 will, as that with which years before her 
 untrained voice had rendered " Barbara 
 Allen" in the coffee-room of the Stag Inn. 
 
 In point of fact, Anne was large-minded 
 and altogether cosmopolitan in her ideas
 
 THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME. 171 
 
 on the subject of home. The thought of 
 it, though no longer repugnant, awakened 
 no specially tender feeling in her breast. 
 It amused her to make the girls cry, so 
 she exerted every power of expression she 
 possessed to that end ; if the chorus was 
 choked in sobs she was triumphant. But 
 she did not feel at all inclined to tears her- 
 self and rather wondered what they found 
 to cry about. She was glad when the holi- 
 days came, and sorry when they ended ; 
 perhaps, from the mere force of tradition 
 and example, she imagined herself to be 
 both more glad and more sorry than she 
 really was, for Anne did not possess the 
 domestic instinct. 
 
 It would have been quite possible for 
 her to go home at last rather as a stranger, 
 a visitor on terms of ordinary cordial 
 politeness, than as a daughter returning 
 to her only natural place, under her father s
 
 172 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 roof. If she had been at school at any 
 considerable distance some such estrange- 
 ment would probably have grown up, for 
 school terms were not then the too brief 
 respite from holidays which parents and 
 guardians represent them as being now-a- 
 days. But being so near home Anne had 
 been saved from this. There was no 
 relaxation of the rule against incidental 
 holidays, but she was never out of touch 
 of her kindred, and felt she was not. 
 Hester, too, had been with her during her 
 last year of school-life, and in all that 
 regarded family feeling, as indeed in most 
 other points, Hester was the exact anti- 
 podes of Anne. Forgetfulness, at least, 
 was impossible, in the face of her constant 
 references and reminiscences, and the elder 
 sister was too good-natured to be other- 
 wise than amusedly pleased at her cooing 
 delight over a home-letter or the discovery 
 of a common friend.
 
 THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME. I 73 
 
 Therefore, when it was time for her to 
 go home for good, Anne found it quite 
 natural, and was content, not enthusiastic 
 but content. Natural indeed it was. The 
 Clapham to which she returned at eighteen 
 was practically the same place she had 
 known at eight. Births, deaths, and mar- 
 riages there had been, of course, but there 
 never seemed to be a vacancy anywhere. 
 Among the deaths must be counted that 
 of Joseph Stephens. A quiet, silent, some- 
 what ponderous boy, he had faded gently 
 out of life, at about the age of fourteen, 
 much as his father had done before him. 
 He had been loved, poor Joseph ; he was 
 mourned, sincerely mourned ; and he was 
 forgotten. It had been so easy to forget 
 him, even when he was alive and in the 
 same room with the rest of the family ; a 
 modest impersonality, whose final oblitera- 
 tion made no more sensible gap in the
 
 174 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 home circle than does the subsidence of a 
 wave, that never comes to breaking, upon 
 the surface of the ocean. Though the 
 Stephenses were still their next-door neigh- 
 bours, Anne had not seen much of any of 
 them during the years of her school-life ; 
 of Henry least of all. They had always 
 been in the habit of spending Christmas 
 with the head of the house of Barling — 
 Mrs. Stephens had been Maria Barling — 
 and Henry's summer holidays did not 
 coincide with those of his little friend. 
 That was how their fond parents spoke to 
 one another of Henry and Anne respec- 
 tively. When the adjective became mani- 
 festly absurd it was changed to '' young," 
 but no further alteration had been made 
 by the time Anne came home. 
 
 Henry Stephens was plain Henry still. 
 Sir Robert clung to life with the tenacity of 
 many weakly persons, and seemed almost
 
 THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME. 1 75 
 
 to get Stronger in his old age. If the 
 thought that this conduct was inconsiderate 
 ever did occur to his great nephew, Henry 
 never gave it utterance, even to himself, 
 waiting with a decorous patience which 
 disclaimed all idea of waiting. Yet there 
 were times when the situation caused him 
 a certain amount of perplexity, just enough 
 to make him respectfully plaintive with 
 Providence. The position of heir-apparent 
 is not altogether an easy one. Henry 
 was now nearly three-and-twenty. He 
 had just concluded a blameless career at 
 college. There he had made few friends 
 and no enemies, and had worked with a 
 steady diligence which seemed to merit 
 a higher reward than the respectable, but 
 not striking academical honours which 
 were all he actually achieved. Most of 
 his contemporaries had already started on 
 what was to be the career of their lives,
 
 176 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 while he still hung, like Mahomet's coffin, 
 between the earth of sordid money- 
 making and the heaven of landed pro- 
 prietorship. He had been idle at home 
 for some months on the strength of a 
 slight paralytic seizure of Sir Robert's ; 
 but the last accounts had reported a sur- 
 prising rally, and this indefinite idleness 
 did not at all suit the actual condition of 
 the family finances. He was a good deal 
 exercised on the subject. 
 
 " I cannot but feel," he said, " that there 
 are circumstances in my case which place 
 unusual difficulties in the choice of a 
 profession." 
 
 " That's true," • sighed Mrs. Stephens. 
 '' Of course a profession it must be ; you 
 could not go into business. No, not a 
 word, Henry ; I know what you are going 
 to say, you are going to allude to the 
 expense." (Henry had not thought of it.)
 
 THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME. I 77 
 
 " But you only pain me. Do you think I 
 grudge anything to keep you in the 
 position to which you are entitled ? And 
 indeed we can afford it now. Dear Mary, 
 as one may say, provided for ; Jack at 
 sea ; and your uncle Barling has pledged 
 himself to keep up his interest in Jim, 
 so long as he deserves it." 
 
 " Indeed, I have no wish to go into 
 business. I had not thought of it." 
 
 " I knew my own boy would agree with 
 me," said Mrs. Stephens with sublime 
 contentment. " And you wouldn't be a 
 doctor. My dear, promise me never to 
 think of being a doctor. It is not a 
 profession for one of yoiir expectations ; 
 in my young days it was scarcely con- 
 sidered a profession at all. I couldn't 
 bear to think of you driving about the 
 country lanes in a one-horse trap, rolling 
 pills, with a red lamp over the surgery 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 178 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 door. And if you should grow red 
 whiskers ! so many of them do, and I 
 think that is why I have such a horror 
 of red-haired men, from association you 
 know, because of young Dr. Higgins who 
 used to draw my teeth when I was a Httle 
 girl. He was a vulgar young man, and 
 untruthful I am sorry to say, always used 
 to tell me it wouldn't hurt, and he had red 
 whiskers. It would make me very un- 
 happy to think of you like that." 
 
 " / have a great respect for the medical 
 profession," said Henry, with the suavest, 
 most respectful suggestion of reproof; 
 " but I do not myself wish to be a doctor. 
 For the navy I am too old, for the army 
 I have neither the means nor the inclina- 
 tion. Were I to follow the natural bent 
 of my inclination I should enter the 
 church." 
 
 " The very thing, my dear ! It is a
 
 THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME. I 79 
 
 most gentlemanly profession, I'm sure ; 
 one which could never stand in your light 
 in any turn of events. And with your 
 uncle Barling's interest — Really I do not 
 see that you can do better." 
 
 ** I should be ungrateful indeed to doubt 
 my dear uncle's generosity, after the many 
 unmerited proofs of it which he has given 
 me for years past," said Henry, with 
 feeling. " Yet there is a certain irre- 
 vocability about the clerical profession 
 which is deterrent to me, in the unassured 
 condition of my prospects. Indeed, I 
 cannot but foreshadow to myself occasions, 
 when the double character of minister and 
 lord of the manor might become em- 
 barrassing." 
 
 "The Reverend Sir Henry Stephens. 
 It sounds very well, my dear." 
 
 '' In the matter of euphony it is 
 unexceptionable, as you say. Perhaps,
 
 l8o so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 indeed, my objections are unreasonably- 
 sentimental, but, such as they are, to me 
 they are insuperable." He paused a 
 moment, to let her feel the force of his 
 determination. She did not well know 
 what insuperable meant, perhaps, but his 
 tone so clearly meant " I won't," that she 
 gave up the pleasing vision with a sigh ; 
 and with a smile of respectful approbation 
 he went on — '* The power of ideas in the 
 world, dear mother, can scarcely be over- 
 estimated, and sentiment, in its influence 
 on the actions of mankind, is a factor of 
 such importance that it cannot be elimi- 
 nated without detriment to the correctness 
 of the calculation." 
 
 It will be judged from this speech that 
 Henry's early fondness for Johnsonian 
 diction, combined with admirable views, 
 had not diminished as he grew up. He 
 did not always talk like this — not quite
 
 THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME. l8l 
 
 always. But on the slightest opening for 
 a moral essay he could never resist the 
 temptation. For this reason he and 
 Captain Paton, though In feeling and 
 theory the best of friends, did not greatly 
 affect one another's society. Their styles 
 killed each other, and in the interests of 
 art they felt they were better apart. 
 
 '' For instance," continued Henry, being 
 now in the vein and encouraged by his 
 mother's admiring attention : " to take the 
 most typical of all sentiments, that which 
 the world is pleased to consider as the 
 passion par excellence, I allude to the 
 emotion of love. How, from the earliest 
 ages, has this sentiment, especially when 
 complicated by a sensibility to physical 
 beauty, shaken half a world to its centre. 
 I have read somewhere a striking remark 
 bearing on this subject." (He had found 
 it, as an anonymous quotation, In an old
 
 1 82 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 ** Gentleman's Pocket Book," where — 
 scissors and paste making authors ac- 
 quainted with strange bedfellows — it had 
 appeared between a couplet of Byron and 
 a recipe for milk punch ; and it might 
 have been by the man in the moon, for 
 all he knew, as he certainly had never 
 troubled the original). **'If' says this 
 ingenious author, ' the nose of Cleopatra 
 had been shorter, the face of the world 
 would have been changed.' The same 
 might be said of — Mother ! oh, good 
 gracious, look quick ; who, who is that ? " 
 
 This conversation had taken place as 
 the mother and son were strolling back 
 from the afternoon constitutional which 
 they took with praiseworthy regularity. 
 They were within sight of their own gate 
 when the carriage which had attracted 
 Henry's attention rolled past them. 
 Before Mrs. Stephens could collect her
 
 THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME. 1 83 
 
 senses enough to see or to understand 
 the cause of his unwonted excitement, the 
 carriage had drawn up a Httle further on, 
 and two young ladies sprang out. One 
 at once pushed open a garden gate, and 
 ran Hghtly up the path, but the taller of 
 the two lingered. 
 
 A great horse-chestnut tree grew near 
 the gate, a tree now all covered with the 
 waxen flower-tapers which are its votive 
 offerings at the shrine of summer, and the 
 girl, standing !on tip-toe, was struggling 
 with one great pile of blossom, wdiich 
 she w^as trying to pick. She had bent the 
 bough down to her with difficulty, and 
 was just breaking off her prize in triumph, 
 when the branch slipped from her grasp 
 and sprang back, getting entangled in her 
 bonnet and hair. She caught the bough 
 again in both hands, with a little cry of 
 amused dismay, and so stood helpless,
 
 184 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 but the next moment some one had 
 seized it and she was free to disengage 
 herself. This she did by simply untying 
 the strings and letting the bonnet go ; her 
 hair she shook free with an impatience 
 which released it, indeed, but sent all 
 flowing, a sudden shower of sunshine, 
 about her face. Whereupon she tossed 
 it out and laughed. There she stood, a 
 saucy dryad, creamy blossoms dropped 
 upon her green gown and tangled in 
 her golden hair, her eyes dancing with 
 laughter ; and there stood Henry, the 
 bonnet dangling in his hand and all his 
 eloquence put to flight. 
 
 ** Thanks," she said. Then her blue 
 eyes opened wider. ''Why! it — it is 
 Henry Stephens!" The laughter from 
 her eyes seemed to overflow and ripple 
 softly into silver sound. " Don't you know 
 me, Henry ?" she said. " I'm Anne."
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 BRINGS ABOUT ITS REVENGES. 
 
 Perhaps the fact had dawned upon Henry's 
 dazzled consciousness even before Anne 
 declared herself. Still he found nothing 
 more brilliant to say than that the pleasure 
 had been so entirely unexpected that — 
 that — in fact — when the arrival on the 
 scene of Captain and Mrs. Paton, fol- 
 lowed by Hester, relieved his embarrass- 
 ment. 
 
 Mrs. Paton, a little taken aback at first 
 by Anne's dishevelled appearance, yet, in 
 her mothers heart, blessed her with re- 
 joicing for her beauty, and kissed her the
 
 I 86 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 more tenderly if that could be. The im- 
 pression made on the Captain was much 
 less ecstatic; nevertheless, with a really 
 magnanimous effort, he suppressed all 
 rebuke and even comment, and Anne 
 acknowledged the magnanimity with a 
 pang of something like remorse. She had 
 come back with such excellent resolutions 
 of submission ; so careful she had meant 
 to be of all the little fetishes and respecta- 
 bilities of home ; and, before she had even 
 crossed the threshold, the vagabondage 
 latent in her nature had broken out. Here 
 she was, bareheaded, gloveless, with wild 
 hair, talking confidentially in the open 
 road to a young man, who was holding 
 her bonnet, and whom she had hailed 
 with silvery clearness by his Christian 
 name. She felt touched by the paternal 
 forbearance ; it really seemed to represent 
 a high ideal of fatherly affection. She
 
 BRINGS ABOUT ITS REVENGES. 1 87 
 
 coloured as she had not done for Henry, 
 and dropped her eyes, looking the more 
 divine. There was somethincr touching 
 in the serious, detailed resolutions of 
 mutual forbearance made to their own 
 souls by this father and daughter ; the 
 very painful minuteness of the care, the 
 heroism of the effort, only assured its hope- 
 lessness. 
 
 By the time the first introductions and 
 family greetings were over, Mrs. Stephens 
 had come up. She kissed Anne affec- 
 tionately (by this time they were in the 
 domestic sanctity of the garden), and 
 looked at Henry inexpressibly. But Henry 
 was lookinof at Anne. 
 
 '' I was just asking your son, dear 
 madam, if he would be able and willinor 
 to give us the pleasure of his company 
 to-morrow evening. Is it too much to 
 hope that you will come too ? "
 
 1 88 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 In all the fifteen years of their acquain- 
 tance, Captain Paton had never issued an 
 invitation in less ceremonious terms than 
 these. Later in the day a note would 
 follow ; it was a propriety never omitted. 
 
 "Just a few friends, dear Maria, to 
 celebrate dear Anne and dear Hester's 
 return. It seems like old days, doesn't 
 it, to see all the dear children together 
 again ? " 
 
 " Scarcely children now, Jane ; and, my 
 love, if you will excuse the hint, I think 
 you will do well to bear that fact in mind." 
 
 Henry was not scorched by the maternal 
 glare which accompanied the hint, and 
 Jane Paton misunderstood it. She raised 
 her weak faint blue eyes with a puzzled 
 expression. 
 
 ** You think this cap is too young look- 
 ing ? But I have ordered another for to- 
 morrow. What have I ever done, Maria,"
 
 BRINGS ABOUT ITS REVENGES. 1 89 
 
 she said plaintively, '* that you should 
 think me a mother to put myself in rivalry 
 with my own daughters ? " 
 
 Mrs. Stephens looked at Anne, on in 
 front, the resplendent substance of the 
 wan shadow her mother. She did not 
 smile, for she had absolutely no sense of 
 humour, but because she was good-natured 
 her heart smote her. 
 
 " I was not thinking of your cap, or of 
 anything of the kind," she said ; then added 
 hastily, '' What a sweet-looking girl dear 
 Hester has grown into !" 
 
 ** And Anne?" asked the mother anx- 
 iously. " She is untidy now, of course, but 
 I do think she is improved." 
 
 " My dear Jane," said dear Maria, 
 bracingly, to say the least, '' why on earth 
 should you treat me to false modesty 
 nowadays ? Of course we all know that 
 Anne is a beauty."
 
 igO so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 ''Do you think so?" said Mrs. Paton, 
 with an expression her friend mentally 
 stigmatized as an affected simper, so aggra- 
 vating to her that she could scarcely refrain 
 from a snap. 
 
 It did not please her to find Henry 
 entirely agreeing in her own expressed 
 opinion of Anne's looks. When, at tea- 
 time — the Stephenses still dined early — his 
 sister Mary asked him whether he had 
 found Anne as pretty as she herself had 
 always thought her : 
 
 " Your misapplication of words is absurd," 
 he said. ''A doll is pretty; a daisy is 
 pretty." 
 
 ''Dear me!" cried Mary, cheerfully. 
 " Then if Anne isn't pretty, what is she ? " 
 
 " If," said Henry, deliberately, " I were 
 obliged to qualify Miss Paton by any 
 epithet I should venture to say she is 
 radiant."
 
 BRINGS ABOUT ITS REVENGES. I91 
 
 " Miss Paton !" repeated Jim, irreverently. 
 -Oh, my!" 
 
 And the twins giggled, and then pre- 
 tended they were choking, and were told 
 sharply that, of the two, perhaps that was 
 the more entirely unladylike habit. 
 
 "Well," said Mary, perhaps hoping to 
 slip in the remark under cover of this 
 rebuke, *' I always did think you were a 
 real Christian, you know, and now you 
 have got so far as to meet one of the 
 shining ones " 
 
 "Are you aware what you are saying, 
 Mary?" said Mrs. Stephens, snappishly. 
 " I know you don't study your ' Pilgrim's 
 Progress ' with much attention, or in a 
 very proper spirit ; still I think you might 
 be sensible of the profanity of comparing 
 Anne Paton to an angel." 
 
 " Isn't she an angel, Henry ? " asked 
 Jim.
 
 192 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 *"A creature,'" quoted Henry with a 
 sort of solemn melody (he was rather great 
 at recitations of a serious kind), " ' a crea- 
 ture not too bright and good for human 
 nature's daily food.' " 
 
 *' No," murmured Mary, acquiescently ; 
 " not at all. I suspect not, at any rate." 
 
 Mrs. Stephens regretted the effect their 
 young friend's arrival had already had on 
 the tone of her family, and begged that 
 the discussion might be dropped ; and 
 dropped it was. Only after this night 
 Mary always used to inquire privately for 
 Anne as *' the shining one " ; and, in spite 
 of the profanity as well as of the incon- 
 gruity of the comparison, to which he could 
 not long be blind, Henry somehow liked 
 the nickname, and would let it pass without 
 rebuke. 
 
 It may be guessed from these facts that 
 a change had passed over Mary herself;
 
 BRINGS ABOUT ITS REVENGES. 1 93 
 
 she was, in fact, nearly emancipated. For 
 some months past she had been engaged 
 to a thoroughly eligible young stock-broker, 
 of a wealthy stock-broking family ; they 
 were to be married as soon as the house 
 her father-in-law elect was building for the 
 young couple should be ready for them. 
 The engagement, so eminently satisfactory, 
 gave her a certain tone of independence ; 
 it gave her a standing, even put her some- 
 what into the position of a benefactress to 
 her family. She was too generous to pre- 
 sume upon this, but the consciousness of 
 it was invigorating, and there were times, 
 now, when she could detach herself from 
 the neutral-tinted Stephens background 
 by some happy touch of individuality. 
 
 The next evening the Stephenses came 
 in a little late. Mrs. Stephens, who, pri- 
 vately, liked to drain the cup of every 
 entertainment from the brim to the dregs, 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 had been obliged to yield to Henry's 
 sense of fitness, to come fashionably late, 
 and to promise to retire respectfully 
 early. Notwithstanding, when they ar- 
 rived, they found the gathering had not 
 yet progressed beyond the circular stage ; 
 all the guests were seated round the room, 
 conversing in subdued tones with their 
 next neighbours. It did not look festive, 
 but this was the recognized first stage at 
 a party. Nor, in general, did the company 
 look exuberantly lively ; a solemn cheer- 
 fulness pervaded the scene, a sort of 
 autumnal serenity seemed to beam mildly 
 from many benignant matrons and elderly 
 gentlemen. By degrees, Henry made out 
 that there was a youthful element in the 
 room, but, with the one exception of the 
 daughter of the house, it was too well-bred 
 to come to the fore ; it diffused merely a 
 subdued, surreptitious vivacity, such a half
 
 BRINGS ABOUT ITS REVENGES. 1 95 
 
 melancholy breath of spring as lurks in 
 the perfume of autumn violets. Decidedly 
 the occasion was more or less serious. 
 Henry did not mind this himself; he shone 
 chiefly on serious occasions. But Mary, 
 after the first glance, experienced an awful 
 desire to laugh ; she was not yet so far 
 unshackled as not to feel the inclination a 
 little profane. 
 
 Mrs. Paton came to meet them. Ten 
 years before she had been still an elegant 
 woman, willowy and colourless yet not 
 without a certain slim grace. But time 
 had not dealt kindly with her. She was 
 now undeniably thin and reedy, colossally 
 lank ; she looked washed out, too, and 
 fairly bleached. She had never had much 
 taste in dress, but to-night, In addition to 
 the truly depressing cap which was to 
 mark her sense of approaching age, she 
 had arrayed herself in palest straw-colour
 
 196 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 silk ; it seemed to accentuate her dimness ; 
 with her parchment-like pallor, her faded 
 hair, her strangely over-grown look, she 
 somehow suggested images of a gigantic 
 sea-kale. Mrs. Stephens, in bugles — for 
 the general impression she made was 
 always rather of bugles than black — looked 
 healthy and invigorating beside her ; a 
 trifling exuberance of form and colour, 
 such as the years had brought to her, 
 seemed a fault on the right side when she 
 was placed over against her friend. 
 
 " You are late," said the hostess ; '' you 
 know, Maria, we never feel our little 
 gatherings complete till you have come. 
 None of us do." 
 
 She added that with a kind of spasm of 
 remembrance. Her eyes sought Anne, 
 and Mrs. Stephens' going the same way, 
 saw Henry already beside her. Anne 
 was standing, she very seldom sat ; and
 
 BRINGS ABOUT ITS REVENGES. 1 97 
 
 Mrs. Stephens' first impression was that 
 she was not anything so wonderful to look 
 at after all. In fact, she was dressed to 
 a character, and the character did not suit. 
 Hester, coming forward with her sweet 
 shy smile to greet Henrys mother, of 
 whom she was sincerely fond, was in per- 
 fect keeping with the implied conception. 
 With the soft plain braids of her nut-brown 
 hair, hair smooth as satin by nature, in her 
 simple white muslin and blue ribbons, 
 exquisitely fresh and neat from head to 
 foot, she looked a perfect type of youth 
 and goodness ; her whole being lent itself 
 to the situation. All Anne's rebelled. 
 It had not been a practical rebellion ; she 
 was far too indifferent to dress, so far 
 as it affected her looks, even to desire a 
 protest against any arrangement made for 
 her. But every curl of her hair, every 
 line of her figure, every flash and sparkle
 
 198 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 of her eye, seemed to call attention to the 
 infelicitous idea of making Anne Paton 
 represent that particular type. The effect 
 was not to make her insipid ; that was 
 an impossibility. But It gave her a certain 
 inappropriate, half-reclaimed appearance, 
 which did not show her off to advantage. 
 
 " I am afraid you have forgotten the 
 lessons of your childhood, Henry," she 
 said ; " I remember you used to be such 
 a punctual boy. But you are very late, 
 for you." 
 
 *' If I could have dared to hope that the 
 time would have seemed long to you," 
 simpered Henry. 
 
 " Oh ! it hasn't particularly." 
 
 " I cannot say the same," said Henry, 
 with a graceful suggestion of a suppressed 
 sigh. " The last twenty-four hours have 
 seemed very long to me, Miss Paton." 
 
 Anne opened her eyes upon him for a
 
 BRINGS ABOUT ITS REVENGES. 1 99 
 
 moment to their fullest extent, then broke 
 into one of her irrepressible fits of laughter. 
 
 '' Are you staying in Clapham, now ? " 
 she asked abruptly. " Oh ! I hope you 
 are going to stay." 
 
 There was a genuine earnestness about 
 her tone, which sent a serious thrill of 
 ecstasy through every fibre of the deluded 
 Henry's being. 
 
 ** Until I have decided upon my future 
 career there is nothing to call me to any 
 other spot. That decision is a serious 
 one ; I shall presume to hope for your 
 interest, perhaps for your guidance, in the 
 matter." 
 
 '' Oh, my guidance is of no use to any 
 body. But I shall like to hear about it 
 all the same ; your ideas are almost sure 
 to do me good. How do you always find 
 just the right words to express your 
 feelings in ? " said Anne, with the reverent
 
 20O SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 curiosity of a young and ardent disciple 
 thirsting for information. 
 
 " When the heart is moved the tongue 
 is taught," said Henry, and felt that was 
 rather neat. 
 
 But Anne shook her head. 
 
 '' I don't think that is always the case. 
 But you must come and see me often, like 
 you used to do, and tell me what you mean." 
 
 Truth compels the statement that she 
 was not looking at Henry as she uttered 
 this audacious invitation. Her sweet, 
 appealing eyes were engaged in focussing 
 Mrs. Stephens, who, free at last from dear 
 Jane's moral button-holing, was bearing 
 down upon them, and had just got within 
 hearing distance, as Anne spoke. In that 
 instant's interchange of glances the gage 
 was thrown down and taken up between 
 the woman and the girl, and Anne's 
 inmost heart leaped with the joy of battle.
 
 BRINGS ABOUT ITS REVENGES. 20I 
 
 " I am sorry to interrupt your first talk 
 with our little Anne," said Mrs. Stephens, 
 sweetly ; " but Miss St. Clare positively 
 won't begin to play unless you can turn 
 over for her. She says she is so ac- 
 customed to having you she cannot trust 
 any one else. These geniuses," she 
 beamed to Anne, *'you know, they must 
 be humoured." 
 
 '' Miss St. Clare," said Henry, with sup- 
 pressed fury, for Anne was looking at him 
 curiously, ** must be labouring under some 
 singular misconception. I may have 
 assisted at her performances twice, per- 
 haps." 
 
 ** Never mind, Henry ; go now," said 
 Anne. And in her tone was such a 
 mixture of sympathy, authority, entreaty 
 and mutual understanding, that the victim 
 went off smiling to the sacrifice, while 
 Mrs. Stephens began to lose her temper.
 
 202 SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 and therewith her last faint chance of 
 victory. Not that Anne's next remark 
 showed anything of a victor's insolence ; 
 on the contrary, her manner became child- 
 like and bland to a bewildering degree. 
 
 '' I am so glad I never have to trouble 
 anybody to turn over for me," she said ; 
 " I am sure they must find it such a 
 nuisance. But you see I don't play, 
 worth speaking of" 
 
 ** Oh ! you mustn't be shy," said Mrs. 
 Stephens, with a sudden increase of cordi- 
 ality. '' Perhaps you don't practise enough. 
 Susan and Sarah both practise for three 
 hours a day. 
 
 *' How nice that must be ! " admiringly. 
 " I suppose they generally play duets ? 
 No, I never practise if I can help it, and 
 ] always get Hester to play my accom- 
 paniments." 
 
 '' Oh ! you sing ? "
 
 BRINGS ABOUT ITS REVENGES. 203 
 
 " A little," murmured Anne. 
 
 " That will be a treat for Henry," put 
 in Mary, finding the temptation irresistible. 
 ** He loves nothing so much as singing." 
 
 *' I hope he didn't lose his voice when 
 it changed. I remember quite well the 
 little hymns we used to sing together, 
 before I went to school." 
 
 " You seem to have a good memory," 
 said Mrs. Stephens. It was a rash invita- 
 tion to a finishing thrust, but she was 
 beyond fighting scientifically. 
 
 '' I never forget," said Anne, gravely. 
 '' I remember even the names and words 
 of a good many of them. There was one 
 in particular — 'Oh! that will be joyful,' I 
 think. Am I right ? The one with a 
 chorus about ' meet to part no more.' I 
 always was fond of that one." 
 
 Mrs. Stephens suddenly saw a friend at 
 the opposite corner of the room, and was 
 obliged to run away.
 
 204 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 " Anne ! " remonstrated Mary, fanning 
 her flushed cheeks. '' You are every bit 
 as naughty as you used to be." 
 
 To her surprise, Anne answered with a 
 Httle sigh, impatient rather than penitent. 
 
 '' I know," she said ; '' and yet I did think 
 I should be good to-night. I always feel I 
 ought to be when I have on this gown. 
 I keep my most ' good ' songs to go with 
 it." 
 
 '' What do you mean ? " 
 
 *' Why, I always feel like what I am 
 dressed in. Don't you ? " 
 
 '' No ; I don't think so," said Mary, 
 reflectively. Her blue gown simply repre- 
 sented the fact that her Frank liked to see 
 her in blue. 
 
 " I suppose, then, you don't care for 
 dressing up ? I love, it ! But it got me 
 into the most terrible scrape at school only 
 a little while ago. You won't tell any-
 
 BRINGS ABOUT ITS REVENGES. 205 
 
 body ? I went down on my knees to Miss 
 Robinson to beg her not to let them know 
 at home ; — I wouldn't get up till she 
 promised. They must never even guess 
 it." 
 
 Of course Mary promised. Miss St. 
 Clare was in the thick of that bloody 
 engagement, the Battle of Prague ; and, 
 under cover of the rattle of musketry and 
 the groans of the dying, Anne told her 
 tale. 
 
 " I was just learning * Voi che sapete,' 
 and it struck me that I should get on so 
 much better if I were to practise it in 
 character." 
 
 '' ' Voyky ' What's that ? " 
 
 *' It is Italian : ' Voi che sapete che cosa 
 
 1> }} 
 
 amor. 
 
 "Do you know Italian?" said Mary, 
 
 somewhat impressed. 
 
 " Not a word — that's the beauty of it !
 
 206 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 Don't you see ? — if I had, I should never 
 have been allowed to learn that song. But 
 they thought, as I didn't understand, it 
 couldn't matter." 
 
 '^Why? Was it wicked ? '* 
 '' No ; only it is all about love. They 
 appear to think that wicked ; it only seems 
 silly to me. But I wasn't going to learn a 
 song that I didn't know the meaning of. 
 How could I ever sing it right ? It was 
 absurd ! 
 
 ** How could you find out ? " 
 ** There was an Italian master, who 
 comes for some of the girls — such a dear ! 
 He would do anything for me. They all 
 would do that ; but this one I loved best 
 of any of them almost. Mary, I think 
 the thing I should like best in the world 
 would be to go to Italy. Don't you like 
 Italians ? " 
 
 "They are papists," said Mary, doubtfully.
 
 BRINGS ABOUT ITS REVENGES. 207 
 
 " But that is rather interesting. I mean," 
 Anne added hastily, " of course it would 
 be wicked for us, but in them it seems 
 different, somehow. Well, I got Signor 
 Barberini to translate it to me — tell me all 
 about the story, and who sang this song. 
 I found out it was a page." 
 
 " A page ? '' 
 
 "Yes. So, after that, I spent weeks 
 making the dress — secretly. I copied it 
 out of one of the pictures in Mrs. Mark- 
 ham's * History of France : ' everything, 
 down to the shoes and — and those long, 
 long stockings, you know," said Anne, 
 between laughing and blushing. *' At last, 
 one Saturday afternoon, when every one 
 was out of the way, I put it on. There 
 was no one to see me, Mary, and I had 
 locked the door. Then I got into a right 
 sort of position, and began to sing. You 
 can't think how I sang that time ! I 
 never sang like it, before or since."
 
 2o8 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 '* Well, did she catch you ? " 
 
 ''It was worse than that ! Just as I was 
 beginning the second verse, I heard some- 
 body take it up — somebody in the street. 
 It was a man's voice ; not right for that 
 song, but oh ! Mary, it was lovely — more 
 than lovely ! I forgot all about my dress 
 and everything. The front windows have 
 little iron balconies to them there. The 
 window was open — I had forgotten that 
 when I began to sing. I rushed out on to 
 the balcony, in that dress, to look at the 
 voice, and Mary, it was George ! " 
 
 " I don't know whom you mean," said 
 Mary, faintly. She was beginning to find 
 these revelations a trifle too Bohemian. 
 
 " My cousin, George Paton. I knew 
 him at once ; he has not changed a bit. 
 Besides, I had seen their names — his and 
 Uncle Will's — up on the posters, to perform 
 at Richmond that week, so I was prepared
 
 BRINGS ABOUT ITS REVENGES. 209 
 
 to see either of them about. But he didn't 
 know me, I'm sure," she added hastily. 
 '' And just then, oh ! Miss Robinson drove 
 up to the gate with Lady Mary, Louisa 
 Ponsonby's mamma, and saw George 
 staring up at the window as if the house 
 were haunted. Of course they looked too, 
 — I was too frightened to move — and Miss 
 Robinson got quite yellow ; but Lady 
 Mary shouted ! They were always scold- 
 ing Louisa for the way she laughs ; they 
 said it was vulgar — but it is just like Lady 
 Mary's, and they never called that vulgar. 
 I've heard Miss Robinson say herself, ' I 
 do like to hear your dear mother laugh ; 
 there is something so genuine about it, 
 so — so spontaneous!' I'm sure Louisa's 
 was spontaneous enough ; at any rate, half 
 the times none of us could make out what 
 she was laughing about, and I don't believe 
 she knew herself." 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 2IO SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 " Well, but what happened ? What was 
 the end?" 
 
 " That was the end — that laugh. I 
 really don't know any more. I never felt 
 so dreadful in all my life. Only," she 
 added after a pause, " I knew for certain 
 that I could sing ' Voi che sapete ; ' I saw 
 it in George's face that one moment before 
 he caught sight of me." And, though she 
 was now covered with very permissible 
 blushes at the mere relation of her escapade, 
 it was evident that this was an abiding, 
 even a superabundant consolation. 
 
 Mary sat and reflected for a few moments. 
 Then she said — 
 
 '' Sing that to-night. ' 
 
 " No ; to-night I am going to sing 
 * Home, sweet home,' they will like that." 
 With Anne, ''they" always meant her 
 parents. " Don't talk to me any more," 
 she added suddenly ; ''I expect I shall
 
 BRINGS ABOUT ITS REVENGES. 2 11 
 
 have to begin in a few minutes, and I want 
 to think myself into it. I mean to sing it 
 really well." 
 
 Quite undisturbed by Mary's bewildered 
 stare, she put her hands together, composed 
 herself, and, with the rapidity of a con- 
 juring trick, entered into a state of pro- 
 found recueillement. By the time Henry 
 came up, beaming and hopeful, for his 
 expected reward, she was ready. Her 
 very voice was different ; there was no 
 trace of teasing or coquetry in the gentle 
 tones in which she repeated the explanation 
 offered before to Mrs. Stephens, quietly 
 rejecting his assistance. And when she 
 went to stand by the piano, at which 
 Hester was already seated, it would have 
 been hard to say which of the two looked 
 the more perfectly domesticated ! 
 
 During the few opening bars she stood 
 with her hands clasped loosely in front of
 
 2 12 SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 her, her eyes bent on the ground ; then, 
 with a sort of slow flash, she raised them^ 
 seemed to gather in the sentiment of home 
 with one luminous glance, which, finally, 
 rested on her mother. She sang till her 
 own eyes were positively filled with tears ; 
 then, as the last notes died away, she 
 slid through the storm of applause and 
 congratulation, with that same smiling, 
 tearful look, and sinking down before 
 her mother, who was furtively wiping her 
 eyes in a distant corner, she took up one 
 of the long, feeble-looking hands, and kissed 
 it. Then she recovered herself, jumped up, 
 and laughed a little, softly. 
 
 Was it at the world ? at herself ? She 
 had no idea. The extraordinary double 
 consciousness, which made her very in- 
 sincerity sincere, enabled her to laugh, with 
 one half of her being, at the other half, 
 even while that was still tremulous with
 
 BRINGS ABOUT ITS REVENGES. 213 
 
 passion or emotion — deliberately evoked 
 at first, then as deliberately surrendered to. 
 
 If her voice had excited admiration, her 
 tableau occasioned an amount of edifica- 
 tion v^hich would have amused her. Her 
 reputation as a reformed character, a 
 model daughter, was established for the 
 nonce ; happily, it occurred to no one to 
 imagine that she might be a finished 
 actress. The company then present, whose 
 idea of histrionic art was a compound of 
 the Beggar's Opera and a ranting Hamlet 
 in a barn, really did not know enough of 
 the drama to perceive that the action or 
 expression was dramatic. It was too like 
 nature to be art ; art, in their opinion, 
 being artistic in proportion to its unlike- 
 ness to anything on earth. 
 
 Perhaps only Mrs. Stephens was dubious, 
 and she kept her doubts, for the present, 
 to herself. Anne, who had really sung
 
 214 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 herself Into one of her transient fits of 
 virtue, was irreproachable all the rest of 
 the evening. To Henry she was sisterly 
 and unaffected ; but she made no further 
 attempts to monopolize him. She was 
 working diligently round the company ; 
 talking to shy girls, with the prattling 
 naivete of a newly-emancipated school- 
 miss ; avoiding their brothers ; listening 
 to all the old ladies and gentlemen, with 
 a sympathetic grace which It is not given 
 to all to assume. 
 
 Nevertheless, in the maternal confidence 
 of her chamber, Mrs. Stephens thus 
 summed up the moral lessons of the 
 evening. 
 
 *' Well, if this is what comes of your 
 fine boarding-school education, I am truly 
 thankful that no daughter of mine has 
 ever left my roof ! A humble roof It may 
 be, but, under it, my precious girls have the
 
 BRINGS ABOUT ITS REVENGES. 215 
 
 advantage of a mother's eye, a mother's 
 watchful care ; and as I look round upon 
 them, I can say, with a thankful heart, that 
 there is not one but is growing up to be 
 a blessing to her mother now, and to her 
 husband by-and-bye. And what are all 
 the airs and graces, and shakes and trills, 
 ever taught by some poor benighted papist 
 for his daily bread, to such qualites as that ? 
 And so have I said to Jane Paton, scores 
 of times ; and I pray that she may not live 
 to say I was a true prophet," she concluded, 
 with oracular and impressive incoherence. 
 
 *' I thought," said Mary, '' you were 
 rather anxious at one time to send Sue 
 and Sally to boarding-school ? " 
 
 '' Yes, I was ; and remember it, my dear, 
 as an example of the short-sightedness of 
 our poor weak nature. To-day you see 
 me thankful— thankful on my knees, that 
 a want of means, against which I foolishly
 
 2l6 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 rebelled, prevented me from sending those 
 two innocent babes to receive a training 
 more fitted to turn out a — a — an opera- 
 singer than anything else." 
 
 " Mamma, pray don't say anything about 
 opera-singers to Henry ! " 
 
 *'Mary, I must beg you to leave off 
 these foolish jokes." 
 
 " I didn't mean it for a joke." 
 *' Then I am sorry to think you have 
 such a poor opinion of your brother. I 
 am surprised at you. Henry is a young 
 man of sterling principles, and excellent 
 expectations, and for both reasons is 
 scarcely likely to stake the happiness of 
 his future on a little affected minx, who 
 positively throws herself at his head." 
 
 '' Do you think Anne Paton is that, 
 mamma ? " 
 
 " I name no names," said Mrs. Stephens, 
 with a sniff.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 AFTER THE CONQUEST. 
 
 Anne had been little more than a week 
 at home before she discovered, first, that 
 Henry was in love with her, and — for 
 him — very much in love ; secondly, that, 
 for reasons into which she did not trouble 
 to inquire, Mrs. Stephens was exceedingly 
 annoyed at his attentions to her. Henry's 
 devotion might have affected her but little, 
 had not his mother's opposition acted as 
 a stimulus. Had Mrs. Stephens but known 
 it, she, and she alone, was the cause that 
 Anne even tolerated her admirer. Left 
 to herself she would scarcely have done
 
 2l8 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 even this ; roused by opposition, for a time 
 she almost led him on. 
 
 But as for Captain and Mrs. Paton, so 
 soon as their eyes were opened to the 
 situation, Anne's reputation with them 
 went up with a bound. All at once she 
 found herself in the novel position of the 
 good child of the household. In every 
 way, short of words, she was made to feel 
 that she had deserved well of her family, 
 and that they were not ungrateful. At 
 first this state of affairs was so new that 
 it amused her ; but by the end of a month 
 or so she grew very weary of it. 
 
 And if her reputation became weari- 
 some, so, far more, did Henry. She had 
 rung all the changes on him ; she knew 
 all his little ways. She had flattered him, 
 and he had swallowed every bait ; she had 
 snubbed him, and he had subsided without 
 a murmur. She had posed as a disciple,
 
 AFTER THE CONQUEST. 219 
 
 and had found his eloquence only increased 
 and exalted by love ; finally, she had done 
 her very best to scandalize him, and had 
 realized, with secret rage, why it is that 
 love is painted blind. 
 
 At last one day, to her infinite relief, he 
 informed her that he was shortly leaving 
 Clapham for London. After a lengthy 
 balancing of pros and cons, he had settled 
 to begin to read for the bar. Certainly, 
 viewed as an immediately, or even pros- 
 pectively, remunerative profession, this left 
 something to be desired ; in fact, the direct 
 result of the move was a heavy call on the 
 family purse. But no one who knew Henry 
 or his mother would have doubted of the 
 end of the debate. The practical question 
 was indeed purely, even pressingly, finan- 
 cial ; the sentimental question was social ; 
 and if they were incapable of receiving a 
 simultaneous answer, there could be no
 
 2 20 SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 hesitation as to which should have the 
 preference. 
 
 On the day preceding his departure 
 Anne was in the garden picking rasp- 
 berries, and humming '' Cherry Ripe " 
 thereto, when she saw Henry coming down 
 the path. By this time she had got so 
 desperately tired of him that his approach 
 was usually the signal for her departure ; 
 and Henry thought this a good sign. But 
 to-day she wanted to finish her fruit- 
 picking; she reflected also that his time 
 was getting very short, and, in that belief, 
 prepared to receive him cordially. She 
 offered him some raspberries ; he accepted 
 them with a mysterious solemnity, eating 
 them impressively, as though he were 
 drinking a pledge. They strolled down 
 to the end of the garden together ; Henry 
 seemed nervous, and his nervousness 
 affected Anne in spite of herself. Across
 
 AFTER THE CONQUEST. 22 1 
 
 the corner of the walls was a board, once 
 a stand for bee-hives, and on this they 
 seated themselves. 
 
 " I have come to say good-bye, Anne," 
 said Henry, solemnly ; then, after a pause, 
 ''May I call you Anne?" 
 
 '* Why not ? " she said a little sharply, to 
 hide some failing of heart. ''You always do." 
 
 And, in fact, after the first day or two, 
 he had fallen into the way of it again. 
 
 *' But — if I have permission to do so 
 still, it will be with, may I say a higher ? 
 I cannot say a sweeter, significance." 
 
 Again he paused, but Anne did not reply. 
 
 " I have just come from an interview 
 with your parents. It was very gratifying 
 to me to perceive that their sympathetic 
 instincts had already partly divined what 
 I had to say. They gave me their per- 
 mission to address you ; will you give me 
 your own ? "
 
 22 2 SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 Anne looked up stormily. 
 
 "If you have settled it all with them 
 beforehand, I don't know what more you 
 want." 
 
 ** How can it be settled ? " he said, 
 deprecatingly. " Without your consent 
 that of your parents can only legally justify 
 me ; morally, as a man and a gentleman, 
 I should be indeed unjustifiable in forcing 
 upon you a distasteful suit." 
 
 " Then," said Anne, rising, '' that is 
 finished." 
 
 ''How so?" 
 
 ** Because what you mention would be 
 exceedingly distasteful to me." 
 
 Henry's face fell. 
 
 " Am I to understand that you refuse 
 to allow me even to plead my cause ? " 
 
 Anne was inexperienced, good-natured, 
 above all profoundly indifferent. 
 
 '* Oh ! plead it if you Hke," she said
 
 AFTER THE CONQUEST. 223 
 
 cheerfully. "A speech is always practice, 
 
 isn't it.^ I don't want to be unkind, I'm 
 
 sure ; only let this be the last." 
 
 Was it his good or his evil genius that, 
 
 for once in his life, prompted Henry to do 
 
 the right thing ? 
 
 '' I have no speech to make," he said 
 
 with a certain dignity ; '' only this : I love 
 
 you." 
 
 Now Anne had not expected this. She 
 had fully believed that he would have 
 come primed with a tolerably lengthy, 
 cut-and-dried discourse, unimpeachable in 
 sentiment, faultless in expression, of which, 
 once he had delivered his soul, he would 
 be able to go upon his way, if not rejoicing, 
 at least satisfied. And behold ! he had so 
 expressed himself as to leave no opening 
 for mockery, for subterfuge, for anything 
 but explicit declaration or flight. She was 
 disconcerted, and could not conceal it.
 
 2 24 SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 '* That is all ; I fear you do not under- 
 stand how much it is, to me at least. It 
 is little enough to you, I suppose." 
 
 It was — very little ; but how could she 
 say so ? She was too young to be de- 
 liberately cruel, though she could be so 
 on impulse. Therefore, in the shame and 
 fury of defeat, she began to cry. It was 
 the worst thing she could have done ; she 
 knew it, and the knowledge made her cry 
 worse-^weep till all power of speech was 
 gone. Now it was always very hard to 
 bring home to Henry a sense of defeat. 
 Moreover, with the singular infatuation 
 of men who know women, if at all, ex- 
 clusively from books, he was under the 
 firm impression that a girl's " No," in such 
 cases, was merely a conventional intro- 
 duction to " Yes." Therefore he gathered 
 not so much hope, which he had not lost, 
 as courage from Anne's tears, and ventured
 
 AFTER THE CONQUEST. 225 
 
 on the next conventional move. He 
 dropped on one knee before her, seized 
 her unresisting hand and kissed it fer- 
 vently. And as the fates would have it, 
 suddenly upon this group came Hester. 
 Neither of them had heard her light 
 footstep upon the garden walk. 
 
 " Anne, Anne ! " she cried, as she turned 
 the corner ; ** father wants — Oh ! ! " 
 
 She stood transfixed. But Anne, crim- 
 son, panting, dishevelled, fled like a flash 
 up the path and vanished into the house. 
 Henry, looking, as he could not but look, 
 a little foolish but not ill-satisfied, stood 
 where he was and, after all, it was Hester 
 who made the first move. 
 
 " Is it so ? " she said, coming up to him 
 with outstretched hands. " Oh ! I am so 
 glad, so glad ! " 
 
 And then she too turned, and dis- 
 appeared after Anne. Henry was left to 
 
 VOL. I. 15
 
 2 26 SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 get himself off the scene as he might, and, 
 without knowing it, experienced something 
 of the feeHng of an actor when the curtain 
 refuses to fall on a situation. He could 
 not bring himself to go back through the 
 house ; he went out, through a door in 
 the wall, into what had been a lane when 
 Anne rushed along it to liberty years 
 before. Now it was a road, between 
 garden walls, for houses had sprung up 
 in the fields of former days. He walked 
 along for some time reflecting, partly with 
 satisfaction, partly with a certain per- 
 plexity as to what his position really 
 was. On the whole, he felt what would 
 have been triumph in a man of stronger 
 emotions. With Henry, it scarcely attained 
 to this ; he was not devoid of feelings, 
 but they were all rounded off and muffled, 
 never salient or distinct. He sincerely 
 believed himself in love with Anne ; but,
 
 AFTER THE CONQUEST. 227 
 
 in truth, he was only infatuated with her. 
 There was nothing about her that his 
 mind or even his heart recognized as really 
 desirable, and yet he, not ardently, but 
 earnestly desired her. She had bewitched 
 him, so far she ruled him ; yet even so 
 there was no passion in the affair, nor 
 ever could be. 
 
 Meanwhile the fate about which he 
 was uncertain was being decided. When 
 Hester had flown into the house, it had 
 been with the intention of seeking Anne ; 
 but her mother waylaid her in the hall, 
 fluttered and anxious for news. She had 
 heard Anne's entrance, but had not dared 
 to attack her on the subject : now the two 
 women enjoyed nearly half an hour of 
 perfect bliss in mutual confidences and 
 speculations. At the end of that time 
 Captain Paton entered and bade Hester 
 call her sister.
 
 228 SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 Anne had long since recovered both 
 from her tears and her agitation ; and had 
 begun to reflect on the difficulties of her 
 situation. But serious as the scrape 
 seemed, she could not, strange to say, 
 summon up any other feeling than one 
 of amusement. With the levity of youth, 
 of natural disposition, of an untouched 
 heart, she recalled the episode with a 
 sense of something irresistibly funny ; now 
 and again, as she pictured the climax, she 
 went off, all by herself and for the pure 
 comedy of the thing, into stifled peals of 
 laughter. She forgave Henry hours of 
 boredom for the sake of the present mirth. 
 One thing only she regretted, with a 
 quaint, unformulated regret : that she 
 could not have been in the body and 
 out of the body at one and the same 
 moment, so as to see the tableau as Hester 
 must have seen it. This extraordinary
 
 AFTER THE CONQUEST. 229 
 
 desire to see her one self with the bodily 
 eyes of her other self was rather often 
 present to Anne in this still undeveloped, 
 badly dove-tailed period of her life. 
 
 At Hester's summons she did begin to 
 get a little nervous ; she felt that if, now, 
 she did not brace herself to hold her own, 
 the whole morning's work might be wasted. 
 And she was always rather afraid of her 
 father, with a fear which had not enough 
 of veneration in it to result in only deeper 
 love. Yet even so the excitement was 
 pleasant. Anne really delighted in sensa- 
 tions ; even disagreeable ones she preferred 
 to none. It was a pleasure to her, when- 
 ever her infant passions, of whatever kind, 
 seemed to feel their legs ; she liked to 
 quiver with their struggles to escape. The 
 mere knowledge that they existed, a know- 
 ledge often dormant for months at a time, 
 had a sort of charm for her.
 
 230 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 Captain Paton was sitting in his study 
 chair before his writing-table ; in the back- 
 ground Mrs. Paton was hovering in- 
 definitely, like a benevolent spiritualistic 
 manifestation. 
 
 '' Sit down, my daughter," he began. 
 And Anne sat down on the edge of a 
 chair, wondering what, and how much, he 
 knew. Mrs. Paton floated up and kissed 
 her. 
 
 '' Don't frighten her, Captain," she said. 
 '' Hester tells me the dear child has been 
 quite upset. She is very young — younger 
 than I could have wished to have ex- 
 periences of this kind. Yes, Anne " — lift- 
 ing a hand of playful reproof — '* at your 
 age I should never have thought of such 
 things. Should I, Captain ? Now, don't 
 be flurried, darling " — with another kiss. 
 " I'm here. I shall understand all about 
 it."
 
 AFTER THE CONQUEST. 23 1 
 
 Anne, thus encouraged, felt a choking, 
 hysterical desire to laugh. The longing 
 for the relief, the horrible anticipations of 
 the result, brought tears to her eyes, and 
 this absurdity made her want to laugh the 
 more. Nobody ever imagined that Anne 
 was a nervous girl ; she would have been 
 furious with any one who should have 
 suggested the idea. But then nobody 
 knew the extent to which she possessed 
 the artist temperament. She herself, as 
 yet, was only feeling at this fact in the 
 dark, catching glimpses of the truth with 
 a flash which rather bewildered than re- 
 vealed. 
 
 '* A little emotion," said the Captain, 
 condescendingly, *' is natural, and not un- 
 seemly, under the circumstances. But the 
 heart, though it may claim a temporary 
 remission, cannot altogether exempt us 
 from the necessity of attending to mere
 
 232 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 worldly affairs ; and it Is from a practical, 
 a business point of view, that I have to 
 speak to Anne now. No doubt" — he 
 smiled in a way which to his wife an- 
 nounced a coming playfulness, and she 
 laughed feebly — ''no doubt Henry has 
 had too much of greater interest to say ; 
 I must speak of the practical side of the 
 question." 
 
 "Anne, dear, you mustn't think your 
 father in any way disapproves of your 
 choice. No ; you have made us both very 
 happy. Dear, dear Henry ! " 
 
 Anne tried to speak, but could by no 
 means steady her voice. 
 
 " You have, indeed, been fortunate in 
 thus — at this early period of your life — 
 securing the regard of a most worthy and 
 excellent young man, and I rejoice to find 
 you are sensible of this yourself. Still, you 
 are both young. Henry's prospects — as he
 
 AFTER THE CONQUEST. 233 
 
 admits himself— are more satisfactory than 
 are his present means ; therefore it is my 
 wish — as I have already explained to 
 Henry, who concurs entirely in my reasons 
 — that your marriage should not take 
 place " 
 
 " My marriage ! " shrieked Anne, spring- 
 ing to her feet. " I'm not going to be 
 married." 
 
 " Compose yourself, Anne ; such agita- 
 tation is unreasonable. Marriage is woman's 
 natural vocation ; without it she is incom- 
 plete, if not abnormal ! But, as I just said, 
 you are not to be married at present." 
 
 Anne had sat down again. *' I beg 
 your pardon, father, but there has been 
 a complete misunderstanding. I refused 
 Henry Stephens. Yes," she went on, 
 in answer to a fragment from Mrs. Paton, 
 audible on the ebb-tide of what the news- 
 papers, with expressive vagueness, call a
 
 2 34 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 "sensation;" — ''yes, Hester did see, but 
 she has explained it wrong." 
 
 Whereupon, not too coherently, but still 
 comprehensibly, she proceeded to explain 
 it right. To herself, now that it was 
 related, it sounded horribly silly ; what is 
 worse, the ambiguity of her position be- 
 came even more glaringly apparent. It 
 was rather to confirm than to confess her 
 faith that she concluded, ''He quite under- 
 stood." 
 
 There was an awful pause ; through it, 
 Mrs. Paton's tears might be heard patter- 
 ing on the newspaper upon her knee, like 
 the drops that usher in a thunder-storm. 
 It broke. 
 
 " I, however," said Captain Paton, begin- 
 ning piano somewhere very low down in 
 the bass, but gathering a fine crescendo as 
 he proceeded, " I am far from understand- 
 ing. But what I would give you to under-
 
 AFTER THE CONQUEST. 235 
 
 Stand is that such — such — I may say such 
 playing fast and loose with a young man 
 whom you have conspicuously encouraged 
 for weeks past, is not the conduct I ex- 
 pected from my daughter, or will tolerate 
 in her. What, pray, has been the meaning 
 of your behaviour towards him ever since 
 your return ? " 
 
 Anne was crying now, feeling, too, as 
 simply naughty as ever she had done at 
 eight. 
 
 *' I'm not a young man," she sobbed, 
 twisting her lovely shoulders. " Nobody 
 has any right to ask a young woman, what 
 are her intentions ? " 
 
 In a war of words between a man and a 
 woman, there usually comes a moment of 
 signal defeat. Happy he who, in such a 
 case, can fall back, simply and with dignity, 
 on his authority, without fear of being dis- 
 obeyed. That is what Captain Paton did.
 
 236 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 After the brief but all-confessing silence 
 which followed Anne's last remark, he 
 announced that the discussion was un- 
 becoming and unprofitable, bade Anne 
 retire to her chamber and consider her 
 ways, and wound up with a vague threat 
 of renouncing her in case of disobedience, 
 and a much more explicit reference to 
 various far worthier young women who 
 were at that moment earning, as gover- 
 nesses, the daily bread embittered by the 
 supercilious sneers of their haughty em- 
 ployers. Mrs. Paton would have followed, 
 but he sternly forbade it. 
 
 Anne went off crying, and. In her own 
 room, she sat down and cried for a while 
 still. Yet was she cheered, as only a 
 woman can be, with the sense of having 
 had the last word. She knew the victory 
 was barren ; but it is wonderful how many 
 women will yield the substance of a dis-
 
 AFTER THE CONQUEST. 237 
 
 pute with a comparatively good grace, if 
 the verbal victory be confessedly left with 
 them. If men understood this better, they 
 could oftener get their own way ; it is be- 
 cause they will insist, not merely on being 
 in the riofht — which ou^ht to content anv 
 reasonable being — but on making their 
 womankind acknowledge them to be in 
 the right, that they fail. 
 
 Thus Anne was really in a more 
 favourable frame of mind for reflection 
 than she could ever have been had her 
 father possessed a brighter genius for 
 repartee. At first, of course, she vowed 
 to herself that he might do his worst ; 
 never, never would she be the wife of 
 Henry Stephens. This was heroic ; but 
 when she let her imagination raise the 
 picture of what that worst might be, she 
 began to wonder whether, in good truth, 
 the game was worth the candle. She no
 
 238 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 longer shuddered at vague terrors ; she 
 did not shudder at the governess idea at 
 all, but she shrugged her shoulders and 
 slightly tip-tilted her nose. Few prospects 
 could have been more distasteful. She 
 cared little for the haughty employer, or 
 for the spite and stings of the envious 
 misses who would, of course, be her rivals ; 
 for these things she cared little, for she 
 felt a not unjustifiable confidence of being 
 able, under any circumstances, to give as 
 good as she got. Nor was it the insolence 
 of the equally haughty menials that she 
 feared ; for there never was a servant 
 yet, in any establishment known to Anne, 
 who was not her devoted follower and 
 friend by the end of three days. What 
 she recoiled from was, first, the children, 
 next, the dulness — the solitude ; not the 
 loneliness, a fact of which she had no 
 experience, but the mere withdrawal from
 
 AFTER THE CONQUEST. 239 
 
 the sight and intercourse of human beings. 
 People she must have. To be surrounded, 
 crowded, filled with the consciousness of 
 humanity and of human interests ; this, 
 however vaguely, entered largely into 
 her visions of an ideally enjoyable 
 existence. 
 
 Thus reflecting, not on her ways, but 
 on her prospects, she shook her head 
 more vehemently ; got to feel more and 
 more, as the hours passed by, that 
 strength of mind was an unpractical 
 quality ; that, her recent victory being 
 taken into account, such odds would 
 justify a carefully guarded surrender. She 
 would capitulate, on no other condition 
 than that of being allowed to march out 
 with the honours of war ; this much she 
 thought she could extort. 
 
 Yes ; she would capitulate. She sprang 
 up, unagitated and decided, and went to
 
 240 so N~EAR AKTX. 
 
 tbe wind: :: ~ ::^ it wide open. She 
 bent far : e golden afternoon, if 
 
 so she r_ :: ::,::': :■. ^..::.i^z :'. that 
 hmn^r which, for ^ :: 
 
 four hours. 5 r fr secluded. Four 
 
 hours, in fact : but hr-sr many drear}' 
 weeks and months in :";reshai:win^ ! She 
 was rewarded only by a r'impse c: £ 
 bakers cart and a couj t ^ : s on the 
 side-walk, ^a^nrimpntaliyinor over a toy- 
 terrier one held in her arms ; but, like 
 the Ancient Mariner, she blessed them 
 _ni" ires. Yes : she would capitulate, 
 
 If any should consider such a conclusion 
 weak and beneaih ti~e dignity of history 
 (and Anne i-r. 1 : herself), let them 
 
 «X)ns:irr :>i: : ist . . : nes of romance 
 w> It: even unto fainting and semi- 
 s:i- 1: r :he fur\' of the srev rvxant 
 : : tr i i :he m\"sterious terrors of the 
 eLsrem : i; had each and all one
 
 A r . JL J. . ?:^ COXQtJEST. 2 ^ ! 
 
 powerful sustaining motive. They had 
 some cne in the background — that being 
 whon^^ :ht melodramatist calls Aw&fker; and 
 
 t h is r-. a ' : - 5 ^ . the differs r. : e -. : : . - had no 
 one, not e. tr. ar. iita. ; a:. _ :: s not easy 
 to sacrih : - : - 5 5 - . : 5 imply for a n^rative. 
 It is :r - sa-, iia a:: v-a: :: :a-r;a But 
 then she did not know v. hi: 5 a- a:^ i 
 ir.steaa, Xot to be an old ntaid — a cin- 
 \eaa aai a^ are in black bomba^::.- ^ 
 ^ ey front ringlets, with flabby fingers and 
 a shabby reticule bursting with tracts. 
 A a : ; d not think of herself like that ; 
 she V as cf a tea Trament to which death 
 i t s e : : a ^ s - : - -Ugh thoi^t of, 
 V aaa yet see a aia a as iess unnatural 
 aa i ia:: a r rhras ::r aia ae. What 
 
 did she wan: ti-.a ' , ai had 
 
 she tried to formulate her va^ s : 
 
 but continually she failed. E 
 was brought back to a 
 vol. L 16
 
 242 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 by dint of repetition, began to seem un- 
 reasonable to herself. 
 
 She did not want to marry. Still, she 
 had always supposed that some day or 
 other she would have to do so. School- 
 life, without awakening her heart, had 
 enlightened her understanding on this 
 point, or she thought it had. This being, 
 then, her natural end, Henry, so far as 
 she knew, was no worse than another ; so 
 far better, perhaps, that she had satis- 
 factory experience of being able to manage 
 him. The fact was that there was some- 
 thing Amazonian about Anne's moral orga- 
 nization ; she was absolutely devoid of 
 sentiment, as it is understood at her age. 
 Flirtation she could understand, friendship 
 she could understand ; but to ordinary 
 sentiment, to love of the quality that 
 satisfactorily furnishes forth ninety-nine 
 per cent, of young couples for their matri-
 
 AFTER THE CONQUEST. 243 
 
 monial voyage, to this no fibre of her 
 being responded. It was at once a great 
 deal too much, and infinitely too little. 
 For the rest, of course, she was profoundly 
 ignorant of what married life would prac- 
 tically be like. What girl is not ? That 
 it could, in any case, seriously interfere 
 with her liberty was the last thing that 
 occurred to her. 
 
 Once her mind was made up to an 
 idea, Anne was not the girl to defer its 
 execution. • Still, there were difficulties in 
 the way. But, for the first time that day, 
 the fates were propitious to her. She was 
 still debating how to let her parents know 
 of her surrender, and yet guard her dignity 
 and independence, when she heard a hall 
 door open. It was the Stephens' and, 
 flying again to the window, she saw 
 Henry come down the path and turn in 
 at their gate. In point of fact, he had
 
 244 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 forgotten his umbrella, and was come to 
 fetch it. 
 
 The family were dressing for dinner ; 
 the servants, should they appear, were 
 her sworn friends. Anne's resolution was 
 taken. Silent as a bright shadow she 
 slipped from the room, flew downstairs, 
 and opened the door herself before Henry 
 had time to ring. 
 
 There was a moment's awkwardness 
 about the meeting, but Anne would do 
 nothing to break it. She had had one 
 look into Henry's face, and had got her 
 cue. After one saucy flash on opening, 
 she stood with eyes drooping and demure. 
 She did not ask him what he had come 
 for ; she gave him no word of greeting — 
 only waited. 
 
 ** Dear Anne ! " said Henry. 
 
 " Yes, Henry ? " 
 
 *' Surely we understand one another at
 
 AFTER THE CONQUEST. 245 
 
 last. Not a word ? Silence, they say 
 gives consent. Ah, then, keep silence for 
 ever!" 
 
 Anne's lips quivered, but she was silent. 
 
 ** At least give me a sign." 
 
 The laughter had already died away ; 
 yet she neither wept, blushed, nor 
 trembled. For a moment longer she 
 stood, then all of a sudden she lifted her 
 eyes to his. In them was a strange 
 mixture of levity and seriousness ; the 
 eyes of the girl prophetic of the woman. 
 She sighed a little, but smiled through it, 
 a little shaking her head. 
 
 " I know you're not wise, Henry, and I 
 suspect I'm not. But, since they wish it, 
 and you will have it so " — with a sudden 
 frank, almost boyish gesture, she put her 
 hand into his — '* there, it's a bargain ! "
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 "people in society." 
 
 For the first few months of her engage- 
 ment Anne was allowed to feel that virtue 
 is its own reward. She had not looked 
 forward to much active satisfaction from 
 the step she had taken, therefore she was 
 all the more agreeably surprised. For 
 there was a sudden recognition of her 
 independence, a relaxing of the discipline 
 of pupilage, which was very pleasant. 
 Then, on the first day on which he could 
 conscientiously allow himself a holiday, 
 Henry brought her a really handsome ring
 
 "people in society." 247 
 
 — ruby and diamond, rather commonplace, 
 but in good taste and effective — and Anne, 
 who deHghted in ornament, and who had 
 but very, very little jewellery, was in 
 ecstacies, and rejoiced over it to his heart's 
 content. 
 
 She was really very well-behaved during 
 his occasional visits, quite as much so as 
 he required. For in a certain primitive 
 fashion Anne was conscientious ; when she 
 had said it was a bargain she meant that 
 it should be an honest one, honestly stood 
 by. So far as her lights went, she meant 
 to do her duty by Henry. The corres- 
 pondence, which he expected to be fre- 
 quent and regular, was a trial at first. But 
 she used to take Hester into her confi- 
 dence, under pretence of getting help with 
 the spelling, and by judicious management 
 would draw her on to compose the chief 
 part of the letter. Hester, to whom all
 
 248 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 this was as thrilling as that first novel she 
 had not yet read, was nothing loth, and 
 Henry got many epistles which had little 
 in them of Anne except the handwriting. 
 
 One of Anne's first steps was to try to 
 conciliate Mrs. Stephens ; but here, though 
 she honestly did her best, exerting all her 
 powers of adaptation, she was scarcely 
 even partially successful. She put it all 
 down to her future mother-in-law's objec- 
 tion to her personal character, and would 
 come back from her daily visits despondent, 
 wrathful, or perplexed, as the case might be. 
 
 '' I think she hates me worse the more I 
 try," she would complain to Hester. '' I 
 have tried everything, even to asking for 
 a second helping of rice-pudding, and 
 getting the receipt; but it is all no use. 
 One day I offered to help the twins with 
 their singing. They haven't such very 
 bad voices ; there's not much in them, but
 
 " PEOPLE IN SOCIETY. 249 
 
 they don't distract you. Of course I put 
 it more politely than that to her." 
 
 " Was she pleased ? " 
 
 ''You would have supposed she would 
 be, wouldn't you ? You know how she is 
 always going on about her dear girls having 
 had so few educational advantages as 
 r^gditds fashionable accomplishments. Well, 
 she wasn't. She looked like — like — most 
 like pickled thunder-cloud." 
 
 " Did she refuse ? " 
 
 '* I suppose she meant it for a refusal ; 
 but she made it into such a rigmarole about 
 the misuse of talents, and the snares of the 
 world, and the fate of the flatterer out of 
 the ' Pilgrim's Progress,' that I scarcely 
 know. She is so fond of quoting the 
 ' Pilgrim's Progress ' ; but, if she meant 
 that for me, she was out this time. I 
 looked when I got home, and it was the 
 pilgrims who came to grief, and not the
 
 250 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 flatterer at all. Nothing seems to have 
 happened to him. It is my belief she 
 scarcely ever does get the moral quite 
 right ; I mean always to look for the 
 future. But what am I to do ? " 
 
 '' You mustn't get out of heart, dear ; 
 she is sure to come round at last. I'll go 
 with you to-morrow If I can, and see if I 
 can't keep things straight. Perhaps she 
 is a little jealous over Henry ; you see 
 she has been accustomed to be first with 
 him for so many years." 
 
 ''She needn't be jealous of me, if that 
 is all," said Anne, with candour. " Had I 
 better tell her so ? Shall I ask Henry not 
 to give me more than an hour next time 
 he comes ? I don't mind," she added 
 magnanimously. 
 
 "Oh no, dear!" said Hester, hastily. 
 " That will only make matters worse. 
 Take no notice ; go on as you have been
 
 251 
 
 doing; you have been just sweet these 
 last weeks." 
 
 Hester, indeed, was able to do a good 
 deal towards keeping things straight, for 
 Mrs. Stephens liked her as much as, ever 
 since the night of the party, she had dis- 
 liked Anne. Her first objections indeed 
 had arisen from social ambition ; but the 
 personal objection had long since put that 
 into the shade. Henry might have married 
 Hester, and welcome. He might have 
 married Cophetua's beggar- maid had he 
 so pleased, for up to the date of her 
 marriage that young lady is the most per- 
 fect instance on record of a silent woman. 
 After her marriage we do not hear of her 
 either. But Anne, in the first encounter, 
 had proved herself anything but speechless 
 or unready of speech, and, so far as she 
 could hate, Mrs. Stephens hated her. 
 
 Anne's patience, never her strong point,
 
 252 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 was failing at last, and a battle-royal 
 seemed imminent, when, fortunately, an 
 invitation came to both girls to spend a 
 week or so in London. The invitation 
 was from that very Lady Mary who had 
 witnessed Anne's fancy-dress exhibition on 
 the balcony at Richmond. She had taken 
 one of her impulsive fancies to her on the 
 spot, and made her daughter's acquaintance 
 with the girls a pretext for carrying out 
 her sudden whim. 
 
 The invitation did not tend to smooth 
 matters between Anne and her mother-in- 
 law elect. That her Mary's highest flights 
 could but aspire to Hampstead, while 
 Anne, certainly not her social superior, 
 should be wafted, without effort, to the 
 empyrean of Belgravia was galling enough. 
 That Mary should not feel her wrongs 
 was worse. When she found that the 
 visit was to be made, she sent the girls a
 
 " PEOPLE IX SOCIE-n'. 253 
 
 ceremonious invitation to the usual high 
 tea, and proceeded to make things un- 
 pleasant for them. Even Hester could 
 not win forgiveness, and Hester felt the 
 particular form of aggravation much more 
 than did xAnne, for she had just the gen- 
 tility instinct which Anne lacked. When 
 Mrs. Stephens, by means of a judiciously 
 worded message, called up ]\Iary — hot, 
 untidy, and rather smutty, covered with 
 a kitchen apron, and faintly odorous of 
 the coming toast — Anne jumped up. with 
 unbecoming alacrity, from a genealogical 
 disquisition on Lady Mary Ponsonby, and 
 begged to be allowed to go and make toast 
 too. 
 
 Poor Hester shrank, and wished herself 
 fathoms underground, when ^Nlrs. Stephens 
 said, with a sigh chastened with a resigned 
 smile — 
 
 " Indeed, my love, you mustn't think of
 
 2 54 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 it. I couldn't conscientiously let you ruin 
 yo2i7^ complexion." 
 
 "Oh, nothing hurts me!" said Anne, 
 cheerfully. It was true enough to make 
 Mrs. Stephens more irritable. 
 
 " Still, for you, there Is no occasion even 
 to run the risk. I make no apology for 
 dear Mary ; she is doing her duty. I 
 wish, my dear, you would remove that 
 smudge. A lady should try not to look 
 like a kitchen-maid, even if she has to be 
 
 one." 
 
 Mary obediently applied her apron to 
 her cheek with a glance at Anne, which 
 was returned with interest as regards ex- 
 pression and intelligence. 
 
 *' Oh, Mary, Mary, you have put on 
 your best gown already ! What is to 
 become of you when you are married, my 
 poor child, I can't think ! I suppose you 
 fortunate young people" — smiling with
 
 ''people in society." 255 
 
 playful cordiality at the Patons— '' scarcely 
 know what it is to have to think of such 
 matters. Has that charming demi-toilette 
 (is that the right name ? I am so little in 
 the way of hearing these things), that 
 sweet gown your dear mother was choos- 
 ing from those patterns the other day, has 
 that been packed up yet, Anne .-^ If not, 
 it would be such a treat to Mary just to 
 have a peep at it. People in society "■ — 
 the tone here is simply indescribable — 
 "have little idea at how small a cost to 
 themselves they can give pleasure to their 
 less favoured friends." 
 
 "If you don't think it would make dear 
 Mary jealous," said Anne, sweetly. 
 
 " Are you afraid, my child ? " said the 
 mother searchingly, taking Mary's floury 
 hand with anxious tenderness in her own. 
 
 " No, oh ! no," exclaimed poor Mary, 
 darting a look of pathetic remonstrance at
 
 256 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 Anne. '* I — I think I hear the cake — I 
 mean the kettle — boihng over or some- 
 thing. Excuse me, dears," and she fled. 
 
 Anne felt herself very good for not 
 going after her, but in pity to Hester she 
 could but stay. At tea-time it was the 
 same thing. Mrs. Stephens was apolo- 
 getic over the muffins, and resigned over 
 the raspberry jam. The wretched twins' 
 lives were, for that hour, made a burden 
 to them. Their dress, their manners, their 
 silence and their speech, were not so much 
 reprehended as compassionated, while the 
 Paton girls were constantly appealed to 
 as the inspired organs of the aristocracy. 
 By the time they left the house, Hester 
 was not far from tears ; Anne relieved 
 her feelings with a brief and uncompli- 
 mentary allusion to their hostess, then 
 laughed and, almost as she did so, forgot 
 all about it.
 
 '* PEOPLE IN SOCIETY. 257 
 
 The next afternoon they were in 
 London. They met with quite an enthu- 
 siastic reception. Lady Mary was nothing 
 if not cordial ; Louisa welcomed them 
 with the same broad and genial smile 
 with which she looked out upon the bright 
 side of everything. She had never been 
 ''particular friends" of the Patons, that 
 idea was entirely due to her mother, but 
 she was general friends with all creation, 
 and it with her. At dinner the girls met 
 Mr. Ponsonby, of whom it is sufficient 
 to say that he was gentlemanly, handsome, 
 and intelligent, with a certain dignity of 
 manner, partly acquired from the supposed 
 necessity of making up for his wife's 
 deficiencies in that respect. 
 
 Irish and impulsive. Lady Mary 
 altogether was a good deal like her laugh ; 
 she was spontaneous. She found no 
 difficulty in attaching herself with equal 
 
 VOL. I. ^7
 
 258 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 vehemence to characters and quahties the 
 most dissimilar ; and she was soon as 
 much enchanted with Hester as if she 
 had never been attracted by her exact 
 antipodes. She was gushing, and mar- 
 vellously devoid of tact ; but she was 
 quite genuine, and Hester, who liked ex- 
 pansiveness in the affections, returned her 
 devotion. Anne, to whom she was no less 
 effusive, remained almost unmoved. It 
 is improbable that she was unsusceptible 
 to flattery, but the key to that weakness 
 of her nature had not yet been found ; 
 her heart did not open to Lady Mary's 
 rather clumsy fumbling at that lock. The 
 girl was not proud of her inherent 
 Bohemianism ; she saw nothing piquant 
 or effective in it. She accepted it, as a 
 condition of her being ; it did not distress 
 her, but she did not admire it. Lady 
 Mary's skittish attempts at assuming the
 
 "people in society." 259 
 
 sentiments and deportment of a stage 
 artist, (such as she conceived them,) 
 though she knew it was done in her 
 honour, merely moved her to good-natured 
 contempt. She feh as she might have 
 done if, to spare the feeHngs of a carroty- 
 guest, her hostess had come out in a red 
 wig and waxed eloquent on the artistic 
 merits of the shade. The affectation was 
 kindly and well-intentioned, but it must 
 be affectation, and, as such, she despised 
 it. Socially and artistically, Bohemianism 
 and red hair were still at a discount, and 
 there was nothing prophetic in the soul 
 of Anne. 
 
 Lady Mary was very happy in her two 
 guests. Each was nearly perfect in her 
 own style, and their styles were diametri- 
 cally opposed. They kept her in a per- 
 petual moral see-saw, and she enjoyed the 
 sensation. Louisa made no effect any-
 
 26o so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 where ; but the almost creative joy of a 
 discoverer, which was hers when she 
 brought out Anne in worldly society, 
 scarcely surpassed the delights of showing 
 off Hester at a Dorcas meeting, or taking 
 her round the '* district." For Lady Mary 
 had a district, and from time to time 
 would remember it in a rush of spasmodic 
 energy. The house was always supplied 
 with a certain number of half-covered 
 tracts and half-made pinafores. For, when 
 the outburst of remembrance came, she 
 would clear off one lot and get half through 
 another, which was thus only just in want 
 of finishing off when the next spasm of 
 recollection occurred. Hester was very 
 happy in the work, and probably it was 
 the suggestiveness of her very personality 
 that made Lady Mary take up her parochial 
 iron from the fire once more. 
 
 " It is just like the Wildgrave in the
 
 26l 
 
 poem, when the two huntsmen joined 
 
 him," she said one day, with engaging 
 
 frankness, to the girls themselves. "You 
 
 recollect the lines — 
 
 " * Who were those strangers, left and right, 
 Well may I guess but dare not tell ; 
 The right-hand steed was silver-white, 
 The left the swar — ' 
 
 Ah ! yes ; dear me ! something about 
 the horse being in black and the rider 
 too, wasn't it, Louisa ? ' as well,' you 
 know ; " this with frantic signallings and 
 palpable confusion. 
 
 Hester, whose acquaintance with the 
 poets was strictly limited to L. E. L., and 
 Mrs. Hemans, only wondered why Louisa 
 went off into one of her fits of laughter. 
 Anne tried to look as if she liked it, 
 but with no marked success ; and Henry 
 Stephens, coming into the room at that 
 moment, begged to be initiated Into the 
 joke. But no one gratified him.
 
 262 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 Henry was on such terms with the 
 family by this time that he could permit 
 himself the inquiry. As soon as Lady 
 Mary knew of Anne's engagement, she 
 had insisted, in the kindness of her heart, 
 on making Henry free of the house ; and 
 in his own discreet way he had availed 
 himself of the freedom. Whether Anne 
 had exactly counted on this turn of affairs, 
 in anticipating the joys of London, may 
 be doubted ; but she had at least so much 
 self-respect as to conceal her want of 
 enthusiasm. Nevertheless, the first in- 
 troduction to Henry sufficed to make the 
 engagement a standing w^onder to Lady 
 ]\Iary. She would have supposed it to 
 be merely the result of a family compact, 
 had not certain allusions of Anne's to her 
 future mother-in-law seemed incompatible 
 w^ith such a solution. She tried to eet 
 some clue to the situation from Hester,
 
 " PEOPLE IN SOCIETY." 263 
 
 but Hester did not even understand what 
 it was she wanted to discover. Of course 
 Anne loved him ; she was going to be 
 married to him, that must settle the 
 question. 
 
 Lady Mary, who privately found Henry 
 an insufferable bore, was less entirely 
 satisfied. In truth, she had her own plan 
 for her protdgde — a notable one it was, 
 nothing less than a match between Anne 
 and the half-proscribed cousin, whom she 
 had seen and made a note of in the 
 balcony-scene which had been her first 
 introduction to both. There was no par- 
 ticular reason why she should desire it ; 
 she knew nothing either of his means or of 
 his character ; but the idea of the ddiioue- 
 ment struck her as romantic, and, as such, 
 she would have liked to see it carried out, 
 would have done her best to help carry it 
 out, from a purely disinterested satisfac-
 
 264 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 tlon in romance. Unfortunately she was 
 far more romantic than was her rather 
 unmanageable heroine. Anne showed so 
 little interest in her cousin that Lady 
 Mary gave up the attempt at moulding 
 her mind and heart in despair. Even she 
 could not persuade herself that the girl's 
 indifference was anything but perfectly 
 genuine. It seemed strange that Anne, 
 caring so little, should remember so well ; 
 yet so it was. 
 
 That stolen visit to Uncle Will and 
 Aunt Theresa had been the one adventure 
 of a featureless childhood, and she re- 
 membered it with the vividness natural in 
 such a case. But, except in comparatively 
 rare moments of rebellion, it may be 
 doubted whether it seemed as charming 
 in recollection as it had done in fact. If 
 it had been given to William Paton, in 
 one of his happier moments, or even to
 
 ** PEOPLE IN SOCIETY." 265 
 
 Aunt Theresa, to be the first figure to step 
 into her Hfe again out of the picture of 
 the past, the effect produced might have 
 been different. But it was George ; 
 George to whom all her memories pointed 
 as to something totally antagonistic to his 
 surroundings. There was nothing in him 
 which could idealize a memory, which her 
 maturer understanding felt to require a 
 good deal of idealization. 
 
 Of course Lady Mary knew all there 
 was to be known, and perhaps some more, 
 about the family history. i\nne had never 
 been reticent on the subject at school ; her 
 actor uncle, and all his belongings and 
 surroundings, had been the stock romance 
 in real life of successive generations of her 
 school-fellows; and Lady Mary had learned 
 it all from Louisa. Of course the story 
 had lost nothing by transmission, especially 
 after the time that Anne got tired of
 
 2 66 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 telling it herself, and left it to be pro- 
 mulgated by whomsoever listed. By this 
 time It was quite a fine study in myth- 
 development. Coarse and unpleasant 
 detail had disappeared ; all the characters 
 and circumstances were clothed with senti- 
 ment, and had assumed heroic proportions, 
 and this just when, for Anne herself, the 
 disillusion was becoming complete. She 
 would have lauorhed, could she have oruessed 
 what the story had grown to ; but she 
 never even referred to It enough to have 
 a chance of findinor this out. 
 
 In one way, however, the fact that 
 George had been the hero of her escapade, 
 was a consolation. Had it been a stranger, 
 the constant allusions to troubadours, 
 serenades, Romeo and Juliet, and similar 
 brilliantly novel comparisons, would have 
 been intolerable. As it was, the evident 
 absurdity amused till it began to weary
 
 ''people in society." 267 
 
 her. All this about George! the very 
 man, as she felt by instinct, who, even if 
 there was not another woman in the world, 
 would never think of her ! 
 
 Finally, Lady Mary settled down to 
 calling Anne, Blondel, and George, King 
 Richard. She was always trying unsuccess- 
 fully to hum " O Richard ! O mon roi! " in 
 an allusive manner. Anne fervently con- 
 gratulated herself on never having learned 
 or met with the song ; but she congratulated 
 herself too early, for Lady Mary, finding 
 her own attempts abortive, procured it for 
 her, and the girl had to sing it whenever 
 her hostess felt good-humouredly maligne. 
 Yet it was all done with such genuine 
 unconsciousness of offence, that she could 
 scarcely seriously resent it; and, in most 
 ways, she was enjoying herself so thoroughly 
 that such trifles could not noticeably detract 
 from her happiness. . As for Lady Mary's
 
 268 
 
 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 dramatic intentions on her behalf, she 
 never once suspected them. Nevertheless, 
 that lady still vaguely cherished hopes and 
 plans, having little suspicion, on her part, 
 of the peculiar development of her romance 
 which fate was preparing. 
 
 Nr-
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 HESTERS CONVERT. 
 
 One morning, when the girls' visit was 
 fast drawing to a close, Hester got a letter 
 which caused her considerable consterna- 
 tion. In it, Mrs. Paton informed them 
 that mumps had broken out in the house- 
 hold. She herself was writing in bed, and 
 Captain Paton, she grieved to say, was 
 already showing symptoms impossible to 
 mistake. She had written to Miss Robin- 
 son, at their old school, and she had kindly 
 consented to receive them, and keep them 
 till it should be safe for them to go back. 
 
 But Lady Mary scouted the idea of 
 Miss Robinson. The girls must stay on
 
 270 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 with her ; she sat down to write to that 
 effect on the spot. Hester, to whom the 
 letter of any law was very dear, had 
 scruples, indeed ; but eventually gave in, 
 without much resistance. From that day, 
 however, she began to droop. She was 
 one of those people who cannot hear of 
 a visit of the doctor to one of their friends 
 without supposing it a prelude to that of 
 the undertaker ; between being unwell and 
 being dangerously ill she saw^ little or no 
 difference. 
 
 Lady Mary was distressed, and as, by 
 this time, Anne was well launched upon 
 the world, and could get chaperons for the 
 asking, she devoted herself more to Hester. 
 The very next afternoon, seeing that the 
 girl had been fretting quietly all day at 
 not getting another letter, she offered the 
 distraction which seemed to suit her visitor's 
 taste the best — a visit to the district.
 
 HESTERS CONVERT. 27 I 
 
 Hester accepted with some approach to 
 alacrity, and they set out accordingly. 
 They left Anne, all bedecked and radiant, 
 waitino- to be called for by one of her now 
 numerous fashionable acquaintances. She 
 was in her best gown, and her highest 
 spirits ; Hester, slightly shabby and sub- 
 dued. The contrast was striking, but it 
 was Lady Mary alone who felt like Cinde- 
 rella, and, absurd though it seems, she 
 really did look down at her old mantle 
 with a sort of pang. She was too good- 
 natured actually to repent the sacrifice ; 
 but she was absent and abstracted for 
 some time, and her disjointed conversation 
 betrayed a lingering of heart among the 
 giddy haunts of pleasure. She did not 
 quite recover till they were within a few 
 streets of their destination. 
 
 It must not be supposed that Lady 
 Mary's district was of the lowest type.
 
 272 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 The region which enjoyed her spasmodic 
 benevolence was one of small public-houses, 
 and still smaller indefinite shops. Here and 
 there, between the display of winkles and 
 superannuated apples, a yellow spotted 
 card, in a dingy window, announced a 
 mantua-maker or a chimney-sweep, an 
 undertaker or a monthly nurse. 
 
 It was moderately respectable, and not at 
 all exciting ; but Hester, who had no crav- 
 ing for sensation, was well satisfied with it. 
 Still, respectable though the neighbour- 
 hood was, she had never yet ventured a 
 step in it out of Lady Mary's sight, and 
 it was with some dismay that, on this 
 afternoon, she found herself obliged to do 
 so. They were about to visit an old 
 pensioner on an upper story when, at 
 the very door of his room, Lady Mary 
 suddenly remembered that she had pro- 
 mised to bring him a packet of his greatest
 
 HESTERS CONVERT. 273 
 
 remaining consolation — snuff, and had 
 completely forgotten all about it. 
 
 " Will you go, my dear, and just get me 
 two pennyworth, and bring it up, while 
 I go up to Mrs. Wilkins ? I wouldn't ask 
 you, only I really cannot get up all these 
 dreadful stairs again, and he will be so 
 disappointed." 
 
 *' But," faltered Hester, '' I can't go and 
 ask for snuff." 
 
 " Oh ! at any of the shops," said Lady 
 Mary vaguely, rummaging in her bag for 
 an Infirmary ticket for Mrs. Wilkins ; 
 "you know things are so mixed together 
 in those little places, I have even seen 
 oranges and dried herrings side by side. 
 Dear, dear, where can the thing have got 
 to ? " She was working her way up the 
 stairs as she spoke, and the last Hester 
 heard of her was a triumphant : " Ah ! 
 here ; I thought I couldn't have forgotten 
 
 VOL. I. 18
 
 2 74 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 that!' Their a door above opened, and 
 she was left alone with her commission. 
 The very strongest instinct in her nature 
 was obedience, passive and unquestioning, 
 and now, with inward trembling, she 
 descended to the street. 
 
 She passed several shops, with the 
 excuse to herself that it could be no use 
 asking there ; at last she fixed on one 
 differing in no respect from the others, 
 simply because she had gone further than 
 she meant and felt frightened. Ill-luck 
 usually pursues the timid, and it pursued 
 Hester. The shop of her selection was 
 served by a hobble-de-hoy, at the age 
 when veneration is smallest and the love 
 of tormenting strongest. Business being 
 slack, a like-minded friend had dropped 
 in to keep him company, and was lounging 
 against the counter, looking into the street. 
 Hester came on with that air of uncer-
 
 HESTERS CONVERT. 275 
 
 talnty as to her intentions which irre- 
 sistibly attracts notice. At the window 
 she paused, and contemplated the contents 
 with the feeblest pretence of making up 
 her mind, then desperately entered. 
 
 ''I want . . . Do you keep snuff?" 
 she asked in a sort of gasp. 
 
 The youth addressed winked at his 
 friend, who casually took up a position at 
 the door. 
 
 " Sorry to say we don't, miss — leastways, 
 not the quality as you're accustomed to," 
 he said facetiously. 
 
 *' Oh ! " said Hester hastily, too des- 
 perately eager to get it, and go, to realize 
 what she was saying, '' I dare say what 
 you have will be quite good enough ; it 
 isn't for myself I want it." 
 
 The friend at the door burst into a roar 
 of exquisite mirth, which convulsed his 
 whole figure.
 
 276 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 " Hold your noise, Willum," said his 
 comrade severely. '' Never mind him, 
 miss." 
 
 *' Will you be so kind as to let me have 
 it at once ? " said Hester, the tears already 
 in her voice. " I am in a hurry." 
 
 ** Oh ! didn't I say we hadn't got any ? 
 Well, now, how forgetful of me." 
 
 " Could you tell me where to get 
 some ? " 
 
 " Certainly, miss. Take the first to the 
 left beyond the third right-hand lamp-post, 
 then the second to the right, and the first 
 to the right again, and the third but one to 
 the left, and there you are." 
 
 " Oh ! thank you," said the victim, as 
 fully and evidently bewildered as he could 
 have hoped ; '' I'm sorry to have given 
 you so much trouble." 
 
 '' Nothing else we can show you to-day? 
 Oranges ? nuts ? gingerbread ?" thrusting
 
 HESTERS CONVERT. 277 
 
 each article before her with lightning-like 
 rapidity. " Here ; these conwersation 
 tablets : ' Do you love me ? ' ' Ask papa ! * 
 Ah ! " smacking his lips as he consumed 
 the suggestive dainty with a strong odour 
 of peppermint, ''don't I wish I could!" 
 
 Another outburst of hilarity from the 
 doorway. 
 
 " How dare you ! " cried Hester. " You, 
 sir, let me out." 
 
 For William was so posted in the 
 narrow doorway as to render egress im- 
 possible. 
 
 *' Must pay toll first," he said ; and with 
 an expressive labial pantomime conveyed 
 to her the nature of the required tribute. 
 Hester, her eyes wide with horror, turned 
 for protection to the other, but he was 
 gazing abstractedly at the ceiling. And 
 then William put a hand on her shoulder. 
 Hester screamed.
 
 278 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 Almost simultaneously with the scream, 
 the astonished youth felt himself seized 
 by the collar, violently shaken, and hurled 
 some way into the street. There he fell, 
 and lay for some seconds more mentally 
 than physically stunned. When he re- 
 covered he deemed it advisable to walk in 
 another direction. 
 
 Inside the shop, his assailant turned 
 sharply to the accom,plice. 
 
 " Go and get the lady a glass of water, 
 and be quick about it, if you don't want 
 the best thrashing you ever had in your 
 life." 
 
 Then, as the boy disappeared, he turned 
 to Hester who was crying helplessly with 
 choking, half-suppressed sobs. He drew 
 an old box out of a heap of odds and 
 ends and gently made her sit down. He 
 showed no discomposure at the sight of 
 her tears, and said nothing to try to check
 
 Hester's coxvert. 279 
 
 them. In fact, he did not speak at all till 
 his messenger came back with the water ; 
 then, in a voice which Hester recognized 
 as the voice of authority, he said : " Now 
 drink some of this." 
 
 She obeyed, with an instantaneousness 
 which seemed to please him, for he smiled. 
 
 '* Now you must rest here for five 
 minutes, then you shall tell me where 
 I am to take you to. No, never mind 
 thanking me ; don't try to talk yet at 
 all." 
 
 Somethinof in his manner checked her 
 tears as much as, or more than, the water 
 had done. Before two of the five minutes 
 were up she had dried her eyes ; then she 
 looked up at him, in obedient silence, with 
 a tremulous but eloquent smile. The 
 surroundings were the reverse of romantic, 
 yet the hero of the scene, at least, looked 
 fit for a hero of romance — or so Hester
 
 2 8o so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 thought, as she half furtively contemplated 
 the tall figure standing above her, the 
 chestnut hair with eyes to match — eyes 
 which took but little light from the smile 
 which was relaxing the rather stern lines 
 of the mouth ; features almost ideally 
 correct, and the bearing and gesture of a 
 ruler by divine right. Presently he said : 
 
 '' And now where am I to take you ? 
 Surely you have not come to this part 
 alone ? " 
 
 Hester explained, but could not refrain 
 from defending the character of the 
 district. 
 
 " I know everybody there ; none of our 
 people would behave so. Indeed you 
 mustn't think it. This part does not 
 belong to Lady Mary." 
 
 Then she turned to the shop-boy, who 
 had been a sufficiently subdued third in 
 the scene.
 
 Hester's convert. 281 
 
 " I believe your friend William was 
 thrown — fell down just now. I should be 
 sorry to think he had been hurt on my 
 account, and you may tell him so. I 
 suppose neither of you quite understood 
 how much you were annoying me ; but 
 I hope you will act differently for the 
 future. I believe you are in Mr. Clarke's 
 parish ; there is a very excellent class for 
 young men at his house on Thursday 
 evenings, which I hope you will attend, 
 and take your friend too. I will try to 
 find out who your visitor is, and ask her 
 to speak to you about it. Good after- 
 noon." 
 
 It was all said with such orentle con- 
 descension, the feeling of being on her 
 own ground gave such an air of spiritual 
 authority to her tone and manner, that her 
 champion looked at her with wonder, half 
 venerating, half amused.
 
 252 SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 " I hope he wz// go," she said anxiously, 
 as soon as they were in the street. *' I 
 have a Httle leaflet here which would have 
 been just the thing for him, but I never 
 like to give things in other people's dis- 
 tricts ; it so often makes unpleasantness 
 and misunderstandings. There was almost 
 a quarrel over something of the kind, at the 
 last visitors' meeting." 
 
 " Professional jealousy is a great trial to 
 the single-minded in any calling," he said, 
 with becoming gravity ; " but it is a thing 
 that has to be counted on." 
 
 " It seems hard to call it jealousy," 
 sighed Hester ; *' but I suppose it must 
 really be something of the kind. You 
 speak as if you understood about it, too. 
 Do you work much in this part ? " 
 
 '' I have never been here before to- 
 day." 
 
 " Oh ! I thought, perhaps You
 
 Hester's convert. 283 
 
 aren't the new Scripture-reader ? " she 
 asked shyly. 
 
 He stopped short. The look of amuse- 
 ment that had flashed for a moment across 
 his face faded, and was succeeded by one 
 almost of pain. 
 
 " I cannot allow you to think so much 
 better of me than I deserve," he said. 
 *' My experience was learned in a very 
 different school. I came here to-day simply 
 on a matter of most worldly business. One 
 of our scene-shifters lives in the next street ; 
 he has absented himself without explana- 
 tion for two nights past, and I was sent to 
 look him up." 
 
 *' One of those men that change the 
 scenes at — a theatre ? " said Hester, the 
 soft light dying out of her face. 
 
 ** At the theatre, with which I am con- 
 nected. Yes." 
 
 She walked on in silence.
 
 284 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 " Now I have shocked you," he said 
 rather savagely. 
 
 " No ; I'm not shocked. But I am 
 sorry — I am very sorry," she added, after 
 a pause. '' But very Hkely you have never 
 thought." 
 
 '' Perhaps not. Is not that your friend's 
 carriage ? No, thank you ; you will be quite 
 safe now, and I would rather not come on." 
 
 " Are you angry with me ? " said Hester, 
 rather wistfully. '' I ought to have had 
 nothing for you but thanks." 
 
 ''No, not with youl' he said. ''You 
 spoke as you thought right." 
 
 " And — don't be annoyed with me, now 
 — you will think ? Will you let me give 
 you this ? " 
 
 Shyly, and with rosy blushes, she drew 
 out of her reticule a little tract. She 
 scarcely dared to offer it ; but he put out 
 his hand, and took it from her.
 
 HESTERS CONVERT. 285 
 
 " Thank you," he said gravely ; " I shall 
 not forget." 
 
 He bowed, and left her, turning back 
 along the street. In another minute Lady 
 Mary was listening with delighted excite- 
 ment, to Hester's account of her adventures. 
 But when she would have extracted a full 
 and particular description of the deliverer, 
 she found the girl vague, and rather short 
 in her answers. 
 
 Meanwhile, George Paton was walking 
 slowly down the street, a sort of smile on 
 his lips, and a good deal of bitterness in 
 his heart. By-and-by, he gave a look at 
 the leaflet he still held loosely in his hand. 
 It was entitled : *' What are you to-night ? " 
 and seemed to be addressed to the profes- 
 sion. But he did not read it then ; to tell 
 the truth, though he kept it for long, he 
 never did read it at all. 
 
 As a dissuasive, he certainly did not
 
 286 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 need it ; never had needed it. It was no 
 prickings of conscience on that score that 
 made him thrust it out of sight, with an 
 exclamation of impatience. He had dis- 
 claimed, and perhaps at the time truly, any 
 vexation with Hester. But the whole 
 incident had annoyed him exceedingly, 
 and now, as he recalled it, she came in for 
 a share in his annoyance. But this was 
 so manifestly unjust that a reaction soon 
 set in. For how could she have known ? 
 And really she had been very brave about 
 delivering her testimony, according to her 
 lights ; it had not been done without an 
 effort. Considering her unmistakeable 
 conviction that every member of his pro- 
 fession must needs be a hopeless reprobate, 
 she had, indeed, spoken with much for- 
 bearance and moderation. Of course he 
 was aware that he was no more a reprobate 
 than he was a Scripture-reader. But he
 
 HESTERS CONVERT. 287 
 
 could repel the flattery, whereas a repudia- 
 tion of that tacit assumption of guilt would 
 have lacked both force and grace. The 
 result was, no doubt, an unfortunate mis- 
 understanding ; but he was accustomed to 
 mortifications arising from the nature of 
 his calling, there was no reason why he 
 should take any special notice of this one. 
 And yet he did. He began to feel 
 thoroughly out of humour with himself. 
 Many men in his place would have blamed 
 circumstances, but that was a satisfaction 
 George did not allow himself, though he 
 would have had considerable justification 
 for doing so. 
 
 He thought he would relieve his feelings 
 by giving a bit of his mind to Hester's 
 persecutor ; an expression of opinion very 
 different to that with which she herself 
 had favoured the offender. He recalled 
 that speech with some amusement : how
 
 288 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 child-like she was in her womanliness, how 
 quaint in her demureness ; yet beyond a 
 doubt she was as unaffected as she was 
 quaint, and as good as she was pretty. 
 
 When he got to the shop the boy greeted 
 him with irreproachable civility — his tribute 
 to that physical superiority which, alone, 
 he valued or recognized. 
 
 **You have come for the young lady's 
 purse, sir ? " he said. " I found it on the 
 counter just after she left." 
 
 George took the purse, but was not to 
 be thus dissuaded from delivering his 
 lecture, which he did with sufficient affecta- 
 tion of bluster to impress his auditor con- 
 siderably. Perhaps he really felt happier 
 after this, at least it was with some appear- 
 ance of interest that he proceeded to 
 examine the purse for a clue to its owner's 
 address. 
 
 The purse happened to be Lady Mary's,
 
 HESTERS CONVERT. 289 
 
 and one or two of her cards were In an 
 out-of-the-way compartment It was too 
 late for him to return it that night, he had 
 to hurry back to be in time for the perform- 
 ance ; but he looked forward with a certain 
 pleasure to restoring it on the morrow\ 
 
 The first person he met as he was making 
 his way to the dressing-room, on his return, 
 was that popular favourite, Miss Florrie 
 Mortimer. She was to appear that night 
 in a new part, which meant a new dress : 
 both part and dress were, to say the least, 
 dashing, and both exactly suited her ; 
 consequently she was in the highest spirits. 
 She greeted George with some familiar 
 chaff; he thought it exceptionally vulgar, 
 even for Florrie. As he was taking off 
 his coat, a paper fell out of one of his 
 pockets ; picking it up hastily, he just 
 caught sight of the heading as he thrust it 
 back : " What are you to-night ? " 
 
 VOL. I. 19
 
 2go so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 What was he ? He did not hesitate for 
 epithets : trifler, buffoon, mountebank, these 
 were the best titles he allowed himself, 
 and he had so applied them often enough 
 before. " What are you to-night ? " The 
 old bitterness of impotent degradation, old 
 yet ever new, came over him with tenfold 
 force ; but, with it, this time, something 
 which might be the germ of a resolution. 
 
 The next afternoon, Anne, coming back 
 towards dusk from one of her Innumerable 
 engagements, saw two extra hats In the 
 hall. One was Henry's, and like him ; 
 the other was strange to her. A rapid 
 questioning of the footman resulted in 
 a discovery which set her whole being 
 dancing with delight ; there was a con- 
 junction to be seen above which promised 
 sport of a kind she could thoroughly 
 appreciate. 
 
 She was ready in about two minutes,
 
 HESTERS CONVERT. 29 I 
 
 and reached the drawing-room door just 
 as the servant was going in with the tea- 
 tray. She came in softly behind him, and 
 stood for a moment in the doorway to look. 
 
 Lady Mary was beaming ; this Anne 
 had foreseen. Hester was looking shy, 
 but pleased, and Henry interested, with 
 the aggravating interest which a philoso- 
 phical philanthropist may feel in a converted 
 bargee. George, it was clear, had taken 
 the measure of him and his interest, but 
 seemed to have found some attraction 
 strong enough to overcome his repulsion 
 in that direction. 
 
 Anne stood where she was, and, very 
 gently, allowed herself to laugh. Silvery- 
 sweet as her laugh was, there was always a 
 curious ring about it; it was rather the laugh- 
 ter of a sprite than of a mortal. George 
 and Henry both looked round. Henry, 
 with a touch of pride, turned his eyes.
 
 2 92 SO NEAR AKIN. 
 
 half unconsciously, towards the other man, 
 for in sooth the girl was a dazzling vision. 
 But George looked more puzzled than 
 anything else ; some memory was haunting 
 him. All at once it took shape ; Lady 
 Mary saw it flash into his eyes, and, most 
 unreasonably, rejoiced. He had it now : 
 a memory of a suburban road on an after- 
 noon in spring, a sunny afternoon, sweet 
 with lilac and hawthorn blooms ; of a voice 
 ringing from the prim-looking house ; then, 
 standing transfixed on the balcony, a dainty 
 figure in doublet and hose, the betraying 
 gold already rolling in waves from under 
 the white-plumed cap. A sort of smile 
 passed over his face, comparable, for 
 frigidity, to a gleam of sun on an iceberg. 
 Anne saw it, and knew that her secret 
 was known, knew also that, if only from 
 sheer indifference, he would not betray it, 
 and she was rather glad.
 
 HESTERS CONVERT. 293 
 
 Lady Mary caught it too, and warmed 
 it from the glow of her own imagination. 
 
 " I think, Mr. Paton," she said dehght- 
 edly, '' I need not introduce this cousin ; 
 she has often told me how you met before." 
 
 Anne did not trouble to refute this 
 astounding statement. She smiled sweetly 
 and gave him her hand. 
 
 " I have not forgotten how kind you were 
 to me," she said, " and I think you must 
 have been Hester's champion yesterday." 
 
 Hester nodded, with pleased eyes. 
 
 " She is very unlucky," Anne went on ; 
 '' and she doesn't care for adventures, like 
 I do." 
 
 Lady Mary giggled ecstatically, and tried 
 to catch the visitor's eye. Anne thought 
 it time to change the subject. 
 
 " Uncle Will is still on the stage, I know," 
 she said. " Does Aunt Theresa act still ? " 
 
 '' Not often. I do not think she ought
 
 294 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 to do it at all. The excitement and fatigue 
 are too great for her now ; she suffers for 
 it afterwards." 
 
 " Do you find it wildly exciting ? " asked 
 Anne. 
 
 '' Nearly as exciting as the treadmill, 
 and quite as enjoyable." 
 
 " I can understand that," said Henry, 
 benevolently. *' Yet I would not have 
 you suppose that I am of those who have 
 an absolute and uncompromising prejudice 
 against the stage. On the contrary, I 
 conceive that it may be the vehicle of 
 much moral instruction ; slightly to parody 
 the words of the poet, ' a play may catch 
 him who a sermon flies.' It is a great 
 pleasure to me to have this opportunity ot 
 gathering the opinion of one who has had 
 such exceptional opportunities of studying 
 the question. What is your estimate of 
 the stage as an educative force ? "
 
 HESTERS CONVERT. 295 
 
 " So far as the audience is concerned the 
 idea is a complete fallacy ; what its educa- 
 tional value is to the actors themselves — 
 I scarcely care to enter upon that subject 
 here." 
 
 " Dear me, I am sorry to hear this ; 
 very sorry. May I not hope you are pre- 
 judiced ? Surely, to commune as it were 
 in the intimacy of daily life with the spirit 
 of the immortal Shakespeare " 
 
 *'We don't," said George, drily ; ''not if 
 we can help it." 
 
 "Indeed? You surprise me!" He 
 brightened considerably, nevertheless. 
 "But that accounts for it; no doubt that 
 accounts for it." 
 
 Here a peculiar smile on George's face, 
 boding no good, induced Henry to leave 
 off with this decorous semblance of victory. 
 He had been secretly trying to win Anne's 
 admiration by this exhibition of large-
 
 296 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 mindedness ; and it was trying to have 
 been large-minded for nothing, after all. 
 For her part she understood enough to be 
 willing to be gracious. 
 
 " I have learned the accompaniment to 
 that song of yours, Henry," she said, by 
 way of a reward. " Shall I play it for 
 you r 
 
 The piano was in the further room, an 
 arrangement which worked well at small 
 musical entertainments, as neither talkers 
 nor performers interfered with each other. 
 Henry went off willingly. He possessed 
 a good uninteresting baritone voice, of 
 ordinary drawing-room power. There was 
 nothing in it to hold the attention, and, 
 after the first moment of complimentary 
 silence, Hester had no scruple in resuming 
 the conversation, only slightly lowering 
 her always soft low voice. 
 
 Generally speaking, Hester was a shy
 
 HESTERS CONVERT. 297 
 
 girl ; but two things that day set her at 
 ease. She saw in George at once a pos- 
 sible convert, and a relation ; towards the 
 convert shyness would, in any case, have 
 been swallowed up in zeal, towards the 
 relation it could not exist. The idea of 
 the family, even to the thirteenth collateral, 
 was as strong in Hester as in any Scotch- 
 man, and implied, through all its degrees 
 of distance, a share in the safe and familiar 
 liberties of home. She was glad George 
 was her cousin ; she was neither more nor 
 less glad of it because she had first been 
 interested in him as her deliverer. The 
 claim of blood spoke louder than the claim 
 of personal gratitude. 
 
 " It must be dreadful having to go on 
 day after day doing a thing you hate," she 
 said sympathetically. 
 
 George laughed, not very cheerfully. 
 
 "Oh, you must not take it tragically.
 
 298 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 It is all in the day's work ; and we are a 
 gay, light-hearted set. Every one says so." 
 
 Hester gently shook her pretty brown 
 head. 
 
 " I would rather hear you say you hate 
 it," she said, with the manner she would 
 have used to an erring and defiant Sunday- 
 school boy. ** I can see that the life does 
 not really make you happy." 
 
 " How should it ? To lie down, night 
 by night, with the agreeable consciousness 
 that you have been spending some hours 
 in making a conspicuous fool of yourself; 
 to pass your days killing time as best you 
 may, till the time comes round for making 
 a fool of yourself again." 
 
 Hester was a little shocked at the 
 strength of his expressions, but reflected 
 that his conversion was but new, and 
 refrained from rebuke. 
 
 " I am very sorry for you," she said,
 
 HESTERS CONVERT. 299 
 
 gently, *' and yet I cannot help being glad 
 to see that it disgusts you. Anything must 
 be better than not even to feel the degra- 
 dation." 
 
 Often as George had used that identical 
 word himself, he did not altogether enjoy 
 hearing it from her. 
 
 "You are rather severe," he said. 
 
 " I did not mean to be," faltered Hester. 
 But already George had changed his mind. 
 
 *' You ought to have meant it, then. 
 What can it be but degradation ? To be 
 so habitually and deliberately unreal that 
 unreality becomes a second nature, and it 
 is natural to be affected. To outrage self- 
 respect, by flaunting before the world a 
 counterfeit mockery of every sentiment 
 and situation which a man should seal up 
 in most sacred reticence. An actor may 
 have nothing sacred ; for him everything 
 has been rehearsed and publicly exhibited ;
 
 300 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 everything, even up to love and death. 
 And the object of his simulated passion 
 may be a scorn and horror to him behind 
 the scenes ; while the dying parent cracks 
 a whispered joke, between his gasps, to 
 the son who kneels to receive his blessinof. 
 A degradation ! " 
 
 '' But then," said Hester, pleasantly im- 
 pressed by his vehemence and absolutely 
 uncomprehending his words, " seeing it 
 all so well, and feeling it so strongly, why 
 should you not break away from it all ? 
 Oh, do ! " she went on, with increasing 
 animation as she seemed to see him hesi- 
 tate. ** I'm sure papa would help you in 
 any way he could; he would do so in any 
 case, because you are his nephew ; and 
 when he knows all you did for me " 
 
 Here George fairly laughed. 
 
 *' Well, you did ; it was no laughing 
 matter to me, and never will be," she said,
 
 HESTERS CONVERT. 30! 
 
 with gentle warmth. " Won't you write 
 to papa, and tell him how you want to get 
 free of all this sad unsatisfactory life ? 
 Just put it before him, will you ? " 
 
 Even if his own mind had been made 
 up on the subject, he could not have been 
 ready with an affirmative answer at such 
 short notice. But he was spared the 
 awkwardness of a refusal, for just then 
 the music ceased ; an instinctive move and 
 murmur of thanks made an excuse for 
 breaking off a dialogue which was becom- 
 ing embarrassing, and a few minutes later 
 he took his leave. 
 
 There was a moment's pause after he 
 was gone. With him, Lady Mary, with 
 a slight interior sigh, was dismissing the 
 shadow of a coming romance. 
 
 '' Shall I sing ' Oh, Richard ! ' ? " said 
 Anne, amiably. 
 
 Some vague suspicion of what Lady
 
 302 so NEAR AKIN. 
 
 Mary's expectations had been had dawned 
 upon her. 
 
 '* No, child," said her hostess, and the 
 sigh came to the surface. " I won't be 
 selfish about it, and I am sure you are 
 quite tired of it. Sing something else." 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
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