LOVE 
 
 AND 
 
 Liking 
 
 BY 
 
 The Author of 
 
 TIT FOR TAT
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/lovelikingnovel01smit
 
 
 LOVE AND LIKING.
 
 LOYE AND LIKING. 
 
 H ^ot)cI. 
 
 M. E. SMITH, 
 
 AUTHOR OP 
 
 TIT-FOR-TAT," " IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN," " THE PITi' OP IT,. 
 ETC., ETC. 
 
 " Tell me, where is fancy bred, 
 Or in the heart, or in the head 
 How begot, how nourished ? " 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 F. V. WHITE AND CO., 
 31, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C. 
 
 1887.
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 KELLY AND CO., GATE STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS, W.G. 
 
 AND MIDDLE MILL, KINGSTON-ON-THAMES.
 
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 I 
 
 »^ CHAPTEE I. 
 
 ^ "Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee mirthful jest and 
 
 S joUitT."' 
 V^ 
 
 ^Sakdycot was on the sea and a favourite 
 
 resort in the winter of impecunious and ener- 
 
 -,vated fashion, for Sandycot was salubrious 
 
 and cozily sheltered from the east wind. There 
 
 were hills behind and on each side, and in the 
 
 , front a broad sea-level of golden sand circhng 
 
 '^ the outhne of the town and stretching away 
 
 J^ for miles to right and left till abruptly closed 
 
 ^in by overhanging cliffs. The town did not 
 
 ^ touch the picturesque or the sublime. It 
 
 cJ was built of dazzling white stone, was orderly 
 
 ^jand reo^ular in its arrangement, and intenselv 
 
 ^modern in its aspect. Its architectural aspects 
 
 had only achieved the commonplace. 
 
 VOL. I. 1
 
 2 LOVE AND LIKINa. 
 
 It had been called into existence by the 
 railway, \Yhich brought it into direct com- 
 munication with London ; but Sandycot was 
 three hundred miles from the metropolis, a 
 fact which kept it select in the excursion 
 train and tourist season, and enforced ex- 
 ceptionally moderate rents during the winter. 
 A long imposing pier shot out into what was 
 popularly termed the harbour, but no sea- 
 ffoins: craft ever cast anchor in its shallow 
 waters, w^hich at the ebb of tide receded 
 to the extent of fully a mile. But when the 
 tide flowed high, pleasure boats came and 
 went, and small trawlers to supply the pis- 
 catory needs of the inhabitants. 
 
 Little more than a generation ago Sandycot 
 had been the merest fiction of a village, a 
 little unknown hamlet, with but one small 
 church of no particular period or architec- 
 ture, of no genteel traditions, and with only 
 headstones and rough-hewn slabs, with here 
 and there a death's-head and crossbones for 
 monumental sculpture. A handsome edifice 
 now stood on its site, and in the stead of the 
 drony old parson who had held on Sundays
 
 LOVE AND LIKIXa. 3 
 
 regulation ritual within its dreary walls, and 
 had on week-days tilled his glebe land with 
 his own hands, a smart ecclesiastic and two 
 smooth-faced curates ministered to the spiritual 
 wants of the people. Modern, commonplace, 
 and traditionless, Sandycot left nothing to be 
 desired by its conventional frequenters. 
 
 The principal country town of the district, 
 Nettlethorp, lay some miles inland, but it was 
 now deserted by the gentry, who with one 
 consent kept their high-days and holidays in 
 gay Sandycot, only once in the year rallying 
 under the old flagstaff of its venerable town- 
 hall, on the occasion of what from time im- 
 memorial had been known as the county ball. 
 This ball was as exclusive as ancient Almack's, 
 and Sandycot was sparsely represented. To 
 have been at the county ball seemed tan- 
 tamount in the eyes of Sandycot to a pre- 
 sentation at St. James'. It was the lino^erinCT 
 element of a departing assumption, one of the 
 still recognized prerogatives of a class help- 
 lessly drifting towards extinction. 
 
 One of the few remaining mansions still in 
 possession of the original owners was Egbert 
 
 1—2
 
 4 LOVE AND LIKINa. 
 
 Hall. This old manor-house had been in the 
 Egbert family for five hundred years, during 
 which period a male heir had not failed in the 
 direct line. With the failure of such heir 
 the strict entail would end. 
 
 This evil day had been more than once im- 
 minent, and some curious family traditions 
 existed of how the calamity had been averted, 
 but these belonged to the " good old times " 
 and according to the simple plan — 
 
 " That they should take who had the power, 
 And they should keep who can." 
 
 The present proprietor of the manor-house, 
 Edgar Egbert, or " the Squire " as he was 
 commonly called, was a widower with three 
 maiden daughters of a certain age. His only 
 son had been drowned when a lad, and the 
 dreaded day had at last arrived when Egbert 
 House should cease to be represented by one 
 of the nobler sex. 
 
 In hopes of still averting this misfortune 
 the squire had been urged by his daughters 
 to marrv acain. but his heart was true to the 
 one love of his life, his dead wife, and he 
 refused to call another by that sacred name.
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 5 
 
 " I would rather see a stranger in my chair 
 than in hers," was his conclusive answer to 
 his daughters' pleading. 
 
 It was not aversion to matrimony that had 
 kept the Miss Egberts single, it was mischance. 
 They had all been in their early youth good- 
 looking, and had not lacked wooers, but an 
 ill-fate had attended their several engage- 
 ments, and now, at the period when this tale 
 begins, they had, to all appearance at least, 
 settled resignedly down into a state of single 
 blessedness. 
 
 Mabella was the name of the eldest Miss 
 Egbert, Dulcibella of the second, and Sybella 
 of the third. Sybella was six years the junior 
 of Mabella. 
 
 They lived the year round at Egbert Hall, 
 with an annual interregnum of two months at 
 Sandycot, where they owned one of the few 
 old houses that lingered on the outskirts of 
 the town. 
 
 This house was named Egbert Lodge. It 
 was square, of grey stone, unpretending, but 
 substantial-looking, and to the last extreme 
 comfortable with old-fashioned comfort with-
 
 6 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 in. About two acres of ground were laid out 
 in an old-world garden and orchard, with, in 
 the front, concession to the modern needs of 
 a lawn, which had done duty for a croquet- 
 ground when that game held its day, but was 
 now transformed into a lawn-tennis inclosure. 
 Much hospitality was observed in Egbert 
 Lodge. 
 
 The Sandycot season had just commenced. 
 It had opened propitiously, the weather being 
 exceptionally favourable. Every house was 
 occupied and the hotel crowded. 
 
 The Miss Egberts had arrived at the Lodge 
 a week earlier than their wont, in anticipation 
 of a visitor in the person of a fair young girl 
 of some eighteen summers to whom they bore 
 a distant cousinship. 
 
 This cousinship, which from its remoteness 
 might in families prolific in offshoots have 
 been ignored or lightly regarded, was by 
 the Miss Egberts invested with the impor- 
 tance attached to articles of vertu which, if 
 destroyed, can never be replaced. 
 
 Eelationship in the Egbert family had, with 
 few exceptions, become traditions.
 
 LOVE AND IJKING. 7 
 
 Judith Aylmere — " Judy " lier intimates 
 called her — was, however, no tradition ; she 
 was a reality, and to her far-away Egbert 
 cousins a very tangible link to a place among 
 the living. The cousinship was distilled 
 through the squire's grandfather, whose 
 brother had married a Mabella Aylmere, and 
 the only issue of this marriage, a daughter, 
 having married an Aylmere cousin, gave to 
 posterity one son, Edgar Egbert Aylmere, the 
 father, dead of late years, of the Judy of our 
 tale. 
 
 Judy, too, was an only child, and from the 
 present position of things it seemed not at all 
 unlikely that she would succeed the last of the 
 Egberts in possession of the old family pro- 
 perty. There were none with nearer claim of 
 Egbert blood, and with the present squire 
 the strict entail ended. It was, in fact, in the 
 squire's power to re-entail the lands, or to 
 leave them absolutely to whom he would. 
 Judy's possible inheritance was an eventuality 
 greatly considered by her mother, a widow on 
 a small jointure. To Judy herself it was as a 
 far-off vision, a possibility of a future she did
 
 8 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 not care to anticipate, even in thought. She 
 was not given to castle-building, and youth 
 with its golden present was hers. 
 
 This visit to Sandycot was the first in her 
 character of debutante ; hitherto she had been 
 received as a holiday schoolgirl, and her 
 bondage accruing to that status had not been 
 pleasant. 
 
 The day of her arrival at Egbert Lodge 
 happened to be the day the Miss Egberts 
 received — their day at home according to the 
 now accepted custom. 
 
 The room was full when Judy entered it, 
 and, somewhat bashful, she hesitated as she, 
 self-announced, opened the door. Her travel- 
 ling-hat was in her hand, and her hair, tied in 
 a loose bunch behind, fell below her waist. 
 Judy was not shy by nature, but she was not 
 always self-assured, and the sudden sight of 
 the gathered company, talking, moving and 
 laughing, for the moment checked her ad- 
 vance. Mabella was the first to notice the 
 new arrival ; she was seated near the 
 door, talking with rather a conscious air 
 to a distinguished -looking man, whose
 
 LOVE AND LlKINa. 9 
 
 bearing pronounced him of tlie military 
 profession. 
 
 " Judy ! " slie said, rising and holding out 
 both hands in warm greeting, which was em- 
 phasized by a kiss on either cheek. In this 
 Dulcibella and Sybella followed suit, and then 
 Judy was formally introduced to such of the 
 company as were her cousins' intimates, but 
 among these the gentleman in question was 
 not included. Leaving Judy with Sybella, 
 who distributed the tea in a recess, Mabella 
 returned to her seat and her companion. 
 
 " Who is that Mabella is making herself so 
 agreeable to ? " asked Judy of Sybella. 
 
 " Major Tyler," was the curt reply. 
 
 The asperity of Sybella's tone warned Judy 
 not to pursue her inquiries. She merely added : 
 
 " A handsome man, but not over pleasant - 
 lookin^f." 
 
 " Oh," said Sybella, who was given to de- 
 traction, " outward looks and inward graces 
 don't always go together." 
 
 She could not tell why — she was, indeed, 
 unconscious of the fact — but by some unre- 
 cognized but all-powerful magnetic force her
 
 10 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 eyes constantly turned to Mabella's chair and 
 the dark commanding strancfer bendinjr to- 
 wards it, and as often, as if by an equally 
 sympathetic power of attraction, his eyes 
 at the moment sought hers. Judy became 
 flushed and angry with herself. 
 
 "He'll think I'm admiring him," she said 
 to herself with a switch round of her banded 
 locks, " and I'm only wondering what he and 
 Mabella can have to say to each other all this 
 time." 
 
 'Not one of the company broke in on that 
 tete-a-tete ; discreetly all eyes were turned in 
 other directions. Judy began to move about 
 the room and to greet acquaintances. She 
 received congratulations on her emancipa- 
 tion from school bondage and compliments 
 on her blooming countenance, which was 
 ruddy with youth and happiness. The face 
 was a rounded oval, and the features, though 
 not actually irregular, were still too piquant 
 to be deemed of any distinct form of beauty. 
 The small arched mouth, straight but abruptly 
 pert-looking nose, soft laughing eyes, and low 
 broad brow, over which the hair fell in
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 11 
 
 natural flakes and little feathery curls, made 
 a very lovely and unique picture of fresh 
 innocent maidenhood, pure Euglish in type 
 and country in breeding, for there was nothing 
 of the town miss about Judy. The incidental 
 whispers that connected her possible future 
 with the old Eo-bert estates invested her with 
 a certain marketable value in the eyes of 
 Sandycot matrons, and, in the regards of 
 
 the grandes dames par excellence of shire^ 
 
 with a consideration and appreciation a city 
 heiress with treble the amount in present and 
 hard cash had failed to elicit. For the rest, 
 she was of middle height, almost defiantly 
 erect, every line rounded, every curve graceful. 
 
 In her progress round the room she arrived 
 at the corner occupied by Mabella and Major 
 Tyler, when, at a whispered request from the 
 latter, Mabella caught her by her pendent 
 parasol, saying : 
 
 " Judy, child. Major Tyler wishes to be 
 introduced to you," which intimation Judy 
 received with a stiff little courtesy and, to her 
 extreme mortification, an intense blush. 
 
 Now Judy was rather given, when unduly
 
 12 LOVE AND LIKINa. 
 
 repressed, to forcible expression. She had a 
 little repertory of her own, a demonstrative 
 but in no way an offensive one. On this she 
 drew as occasion gave rise. " My safety valve," 
 she called this reserve, with which, however, 
 she never flagrantly transgressed either refined 
 sensibilities or honest prejudice. They had 
 come to be regarded by her intimates as a bit 
 of Judy, and so not to be judged on their own 
 merits, and Judy was, as every one knew, 
 quite unlike any one else. To her mother, 
 who was both commonplace and narrowly 
 conventional, they had come to be a relief 
 also, for Judy was of a fiery nature, and one, 
 or two at most, of such expletives invariably 
 dispersed a summer cloud. 
 
 Tlie major returned her frigid obeisance 
 with a low bow and, as her quick eye ob- 
 served, a self-satisfied smile. 
 
 " I thouorht it was one of the Nereids when 
 I saw you enter the room," he said, " a vision 
 of the sea." 
 
 " Bosh ! " muttered Judy ; when, feeling re- 
 lieved, she said simply, " A watery compli- 
 ment, is it not, Mabella ? "
 
 LOVE AND LIKINa. 13 
 
 Evidently used from the same quarter to 
 something of stronger flavour, Mabella looked 
 at the major with a conscious simper and said, 
 " I am afraid Judy, like her name, is not 
 poetical." 
 
 " Judith is poetical enough," said the major 
 deprecatingly ; " it is redolent of poetical 
 associations." 
 
 " Which I am not," replied Judy ; then 
 turning sharply, as if on a pivot, she 
 added, "Where is cousin Egbert, Mabella? 
 I shan't feel I've come till I get his double 
 kiss." 
 
 " Would a substitute do ? " slyly whispered 
 the major. 
 
 " Ask Mabella," was the mischievous reply, 
 and then Judy catching sight of the squire 
 through the windows which opened to the 
 ground walked impetuously awa}^ and the 
 next minute was seen clasping her cousin 
 round the neck, returning with interest his 
 double salute. Again by the same occult 
 force she turned her eyes in the direction 
 of the retired corner where sat Mabella and 
 her slightly distrait major, and again over
 
 14 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 the gentleman's countenance passed the same 
 irritating smile of conscious power. 
 
 " Judy's impulses carry her out of herself," 
 said Mabella apologetically ; " she will tone 
 down in time." 
 
 "She could not have better models of all 
 womanly graces than in her cousinhood of 
 Egbert Lodge," was the low^ and somewhat 
 stilted reply — a reply, though, eminently ju- 
 dicious, as it implied that in the major's eyes 
 extreme youth lacked the womanly graces of 
 maturer years. 
 
 " Who is Mabella's friend, cousin Egbert ? " 
 asked Judy, subsiding on the squire's arm and 
 drawing him towards the back of the house, 
 that she might, as she said, shake hands with 
 Tim — Tim beino- a small bull-terrier who on 
 
 o 
 
 receiving days was not allowed to mix with 
 the family. 
 
 " Were you not introduced ? " asked the 
 squire. 
 
 " Of course we were," she answered sharply, 
 " and we're both as wise as before. He had 
 never heard of me, I saw that at a glance, 
 and I most certainly had not heard of him, so
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. ]5 
 
 all I know is that he is a Major Tyler, and I 
 suppose he thinks me a bread-and-butter 
 miss." 
 
 " Well, Judy, you know about as much as I 
 do," and the squire's kindly face took a shade 
 of care. " He was in the 6th Dragoons, saw 
 some service in India, I believe, and sold out 
 just before the new Army BilL Who the 
 Tylers are, goodness may know, but not I." 
 
 " Do you like him, cousin Egbert ? " 
 
 " He is an agreeable companion," was tlie 
 evasive reply. 
 
 " Does Sybella like him ? " 
 
 " Dulsie does." 
 
 " Oh, cousin Egbert, you sinuous evader, 
 just as if you could elude me," and Judy's 
 laugh rang out in a silvery key, to which 
 came a response in the shape of a sharp yelp. 
 "That's Tim, downright Tim," she cried, 
 quickening the squire's movements by a 
 vigorous pull, at the same time putting to 
 her lips a tiny gold whistle suspended to her 
 watch-guard, and blowing a shrill blast. By 
 the time they had arrived at the little out- 
 house in which for the nonce Tim was con-
 
 16 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 fined, the flooring was strewed with fragments 
 of the panelUng of the door, torn off in the 
 frantic efforts of the dog to Hberate himself to 
 greet his well -beloved playmate. 
 
 *' No two words about liking or disliking 
 with Tim," cried Judy, lifting the little animal 
 and kissing him between the eyes. 
 
 The squire laughed. 
 
 " The major knows that to his cost," he 
 said. 
 
 " How does he get over the difficulty with 
 Mabella ? " asked Judy ; " it's ' love me, love my 
 dog,' you know, and I'm afraid it's only the 
 few who appreciate Tim." 
 
 "The very few," said the squire, looking at 
 the animal now " doing statue " as Judy said ; 
 that is, he had subsided into fixed stillness 
 against the shut door of his prison. He was 
 seated on his hind legs, perfectly erect, his 
 front legs stuck straight out and wide apart, 
 his little round bull-head, with its thick under- 
 shot jaw, fierce nostril, and protruding eyes of 
 fiery black, turned up at Judy, imploring, 
 adoring and defying. 
 
 " I think you had better put him up now,"
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 1*7 
 
 suggested the squire, and he put out his hand 
 to open the door. A low determined growl 
 dared him to effect his purpose. 
 
 " Timothy," said Judy. 
 
 Back went all that was left of ears, but only 
 a quiver from nose to tail answered to the 
 remonstratino' utterance. 'k m: 
 
 "Timotheus." '■ -m:- 
 
 Another quiver, but not a stir. ■ f.;; 
 
 " Cousin Egbert — open, please." 
 
 The squire lifted the latch, bending guardedly 
 across the animal,which now quivered violently, 
 but still stirred not an inch. ' 
 
 " Tim," said Judy in a tone of appeal, and 
 Tim made a spring forward. Xot in time 
 though, for the latch lifted, the door swung 
 back, and suddenly losing his support he 
 rolled over backwards. Before he could re- 
 cover himself the squire had once more closed 
 the door. . j 
 
 " Kinder mean that," cried Judy, laughing ; 
 " another minute and he would have walked 
 in of his own accord ; now there'll be no 
 quieting him." r - 
 
 "Get him a bone," said the squire. 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 18 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 " A bone indeed ; Tim lias a soul above 
 bones ; treat me fair, is all he asks. Oh, cousin 
 Egbert, there are dog souls as well as human 
 souls ; it's a very responsible world is this." 
 
 She then cautiously opened the door and 
 let herself in, drawing it after her. In a few 
 moments Tim's indignant howls had subsided 
 into an occasional fretful yelp ; then these, too, 
 ceased, and when Judy issued forth he had 
 retired to his basket in the corner and had 
 curled himself up in obedient resignation, to 
 wait, as Judy had admonished him, " till the 
 quality had gone." " You may look at him, 
 cousin Egbert." This from a prudent distance 
 the squire did, observation which Tim returned 
 with a snarl of disgust. 
 
 The company had all dispersed wdien Judy, 
 accompanied by the squire, re-entered the 
 drawing-room ; all but two. Major Tyler and 
 a youth apparently about twenty-three years 
 old. The name of this youth was Eawson, 
 Edward, otherwise Ned Eawson. 
 
 Judy and Mr. Eawson were evidently no 
 strangers to each other, and they w^ere as 
 evidently pleased to meet again ; but while
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 19 
 
 Judy's greeting was frank, Mr. Eawson's was 
 constrained ; and as if from, what did not 
 appear to be liis temperament, sliyness, he 
 blushed. 
 
 " Father dear," said Mabella, " Mr. Eawson 
 will dine with us," an announcement which 
 seemed to please the squire. " I am surprised, 
 Judy," said Mabella, " that a young man like 
 Mr. Eawson should blush upon being intro- 
 duced to a girl like you, a mere schoolgirl." 
 
 " Now, Mabella, that is spiteful," cried 
 Judy with unruffled good-liumour ; " and I 
 had my portfolio on the top of my trunk to 
 show this very night, now I shan't. A school- 
 girl indeed! Why, my head of Socrates in 
 chalks would turn you white with envy ; and 
 as for my Melrose Abbey by moonlight, no 
 room for masterly strokes there to finish off, 
 it's all master strokes," and she laughed. 
 
 " I should think it was," said Sybella ; 
 " why, child, you never could draw even a 
 stick." 
 
 " J^ever tried," said Judy slyly, looking 
 from under her eyes at the youngest Miss 
 Egbert, who was thin of visage and formal. 
 
 2—2
 
 20 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 " But, you see, tliat is the advantage of a 
 boarding-school," she continued, as if afraid 
 of being anticipated ; " there our deficiencies 
 are suppUed. Now you had governesses at 
 home, just another name for self-develop- 
 ment." 
 
 "Well, Judy, there is one thing I'm glad 
 of," said Squire Egbert as he opened the door 
 at the sound of the warning gong for dinner 
 and with old-fashioned courtesy bowed his 
 daughters and their merry young cousin 
 out. 
 
 " What's that, cousin Egbert ? " she asked. 
 
 " That, for your tongue's sake, you hadn't a 
 governess at home." 
 
 " Well," she retorted, determined to have 
 the last word, " self-development and self- 
 creation are sometimes convertible terms." 
 
 "Judy dear," said Mabella as she looked 
 into the former's room to see that all was, as 
 she expressed it, " comfortable," " whatever 
 will Major Tyler think of you ? " 
 
 " He has no notion of thinking of me," was 
 the pointed answer ; " he's thinking of some 
 one else. Why didn't you tell me about him
 
 LOVE AND LIKIXG. 21 
 
 in your letters ? — not even Dulsie gave me a 
 hint." 
 
 " A hint of what ? " and Mabella tried to 
 look dignified and repressive, but only suc- 
 ceeded in looking important and conscious. 
 
 " Why, that there was such a handsome fas- 
 cinating stranger in Sandycot. You didn't 
 wish to turn my head in prospective, I sup- 
 pose. But no fear, cousin mine, this little 
 knowledge-box," and Judy shook the organ in 
 question till the small flaky curls on her brow 
 danced up and down as if in derision, "is too 
 well weighted to be easilv overbalanced." 
 
 "Ah, Judy dear," said Mabella, suddenly 
 relaxing, and at the same time hastening away, 
 " the heart and the head are different things." 
 
 ^<E^ 

 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 '^ Love me, love my dog." 
 
 " By Jove," said Judy to herself as the door 
 closed on the substantial spinster, " by Jove, 
 she's bit." 
 
 A very few minutes sufficed to make Judy's 
 simple toilette, and then waiting for Mabella's 
 maid to add some finishing touches she 
 threw herself into a low easy-chair, to have 
 a " think," as she phrased it. 
 
 Judy's eyes were arch and blue ; these 
 she closed, that nothim? miofht distract her 
 introspective vision. Her lips were arched 
 in a true Cupid's bow ; she pursed them 
 firmly, that they might not easily relax into 
 a frivolous smile. Her chin, which had a 
 decided cleft in the centre, rested on the 
 partially folded fingers of one hand, while 
 the other lay under her recumbent head. 
 One tiny arched foot was crossed over the
 
 LOVE AND LIKINa. 23 
 
 Other, but these, as the nimble thoughts 
 flew through the busy httle bram, changed 
 place contmuously ; in her stillest of moods 
 there was no motionless rest in Judy. And 
 as she pondered, light and shade chased each 
 other over her bright child-like countenance, 
 the only tell-tales of the active ao^itation 
 within. Insensibly tlie shadows came thicker, 
 the little feet ceased their motion, the finorers 
 grasped the cleft chin closer, and the eyelids 
 wrinkled till the long silken lashes quivered 
 as in sympathy. 
 
 Suddenly the gong boomed out its summons 
 to dinner, and with a start and a jump Judy 
 returned to the outer world. 
 
 For one minute, no longer, she stood before 
 the long mirror in her toilet-table, light 
 stru2"G[lin£f back on her disturbed visao^e ; 
 then turning abruptly on her heel she said 
 in a sharp self-contemptuous tone, "Bosh!" 
 and evidently much relieved and quite her- 
 self again, she opened the door and ran 
 singing downstairs, kissing her hand gaily 
 to Tubbs, Miss Egbert's maid, in token that 
 she was too late to be of service.
 
 24 LOVE AND LIIvIXG. 
 
 But that night, before retiring to rest, she 
 wrote in the seclusion of her bedchamber 
 a httle note to her mother, destined for the 
 early morning post, and supplementary to the 
 post card she had despatched by the evening 
 mail to tell of her safe arrival. 
 •. The note was as follows : 
 
 - " My dearest Mammy, — 
 
 " As I promised to tell you if Xed " — 
 here she altered the Xed to Mr. — "Mr. 
 Eawson appeared on the S3ene, I send you 
 a little note to say he has, looking, too, as 
 
 stu ," another alteration — " steeped in 
 
 nothing as ever." (" That's a happy phrase," 
 she said to herself complacently, " but it will 
 be lost on mamma," and she sighed ; " mamma 
 is so matter-of-fact.") She then resumed : "He 
 has not arranged a career yet, he tells me." 
 (" She'll understand that ; ' arrange ' is a stock 
 word of mamma's.") "He is ' too old' for the 
 army, fears it is rather late to begin for the 
 Church, would rather die than be a doctor, 
 and has no opinion of- farming as a paying 
 industry ; and the provoking part of it is,
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 25 
 
 there is a ring of true metal in the man " — 
 another erasure, and " lad " substituted ; — " for 
 when Major Tyler — I'll tell you about him 
 directly — sneered and said, ' He must invent 
 an occupation to suit this young gentleman,' 
 he replied quite simply, ' Civilization has 
 anticipated you ; I think of politics.' ' And I 
 wonder what politics will think of you ? ' 
 answered the major, very impudently I say. 
 ' Just what metaphysics and philosophy and 
 all the rest of it did,' cried I, like a quixotic 
 idiot. 'Why, he is B.A. of Oxford, an honour- 
 man, too, and was stroke-oar in the last race 
 as well.' I knew I had made a e^oose of 
 myself, for ^ed — Mr. Eawson — looked so 
 dehghted, and there really was no substantial 
 cause, and Major Tyler so viciously pleased. 
 * Miss Aylmere,' he said to Mabella, whose 
 side he never leaves — but more of that 
 hereafter — ' Miss Aylmere would make an 
 invaluable special pleader. I advise her to 
 study the law if she, like our young friend 
 here, wants a career.' Then before I could 
 even fire up, Ned (Mr. Eawson) turned him 
 over — metaphorically of course — so neatly.
 
 23 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 ' I have known many a woman who would 
 liave been an ornament to any profession, 
 he said, ' and I am sure if Miss Aylmere '^- 
 he very nearly said Judy — ' chose such a 
 Career she would never stop short in the 
 middle.' 
 
 " Oh, mammy, it was splendid, though I 
 don't think Mabella quite took it in ; but 
 Sybella did, and, I fancy, cousin Egbert too. 
 As for Mabella and Didcie, they make a 
 perfect deity of the major, and who he is 
 beyond his profession, which he has cut short 
 in the middle, no one seems to know. You 
 know I am witchy about people and believe 
 in first impressions, so before going down to 
 dinner I had a good think over this Major 
 Tyler, and analyzed my feelings about him ; 
 for, you see, he is not an ordinary man, to be 
 looked at in an ordinary way and forgotten 
 or remembered in an ordinary fashion. He is 
 distinguishedly handsome and at a very fasci- 
 nating age, under forty, and has a manner of 
 perfect breeding, and a self-assertive dignified 
 rather than high-bred air ; but that is, I fancy, 
 because he is too self-conscious to be im-
 
 LOVE AND LIKIXa. 27 
 
 mobilely indifferent. One can feel the sort 
 of air ; that is, a sort of tip-toe celestial eleva- 
 tion in an abstractedly unconscious look from 
 tip of toe to tip of nose. I should like to 
 prick one of those Large whipcord veins on 
 the back of his handsome hand and see if 
 it really has blue blood. Xed's — that is, Mr. 
 Eawson's — have, I'm sure ; perhaps if they 
 hadn't he'd understand about ' getting on ' 
 better, for I do believe, mammy, that it 
 requires a certain amount of vulgarity to 
 get on in this pushing, crowded world ; it is 
 onlv creniuses that soar, and o^eniuses, alack-a- 
 day, don't grow like brambles ; but there's a 
 dash of genius in Xed, if he only knew it. 
 Perhaps politics will tell him. I think I'll 
 study Stewart Mills' and Smith's political 
 economy, just to see what it's like. 
 
 "But here I am, rattlinc^ awav. I was 
 telling you my first impressions of this Major 
 Tyler ; I think he's clever, determined, am- 
 bitious and cold-hearted, and I'm quite sure, 
 though he has three medals, that he is 
 very far from brave. I am sure, as a piece 
 of outside observation, that he is laving
 
 28 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 siege to Mabella, and that cousin Egbert 
 knows it and does not approve. Mabella's 
 eye when it meets mine is full of portent. 
 Dulcie is evidently in love through sympathy, 
 and she is sure to tell me all about it to- 
 morrow ; but Mabella won't, unless she wants 
 my help. To tell you the truth, the situation 
 is exciting. I should be sorry to see dear old 
 Mabella unhappy, and if she is foolish enough 
 to marry this fortune-hunting major, unhappy 
 she will be. 
 
 " Your loving daughter, 
 
 " Judy. 
 
 " P.S. — Tim doesn't like him one bit ; he 
 likes Ned — Mr. Eawson — though. Is it not 
 odd what good judges of character dogs 
 are ? " 
 
 This letter reached its destination, Eingwood 
 Terrace, Casterham, a town in Suffolk, some 
 fourteen hours' journey by rail from Sandycot, 
 by an early post. Mrs. Aylmere, who was 
 methodical to tediousness, waited till her 
 breakfast was over and her simple household 
 arrangements for the day completed before
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 29 
 
 she broke the cover. Accustomed as she 
 was to Judy's confidential and discursive 
 epistles, this one seemed more difficult to 
 construe, as she expressed it, than usual, 
 for Judy's mother was slow of understanding. 
 But as is the case with persons not quick at 
 immediate apprehension, once she had taken 
 in a point, or fully understood a situation, her 
 judgment was sure to be clear and her action 
 judicious. Between mother and daughter 
 perfect affection and trust existed, tempered 
 on the mother's side with a slight uncertainty 
 as to the possibilities of youth. Judy had 
 never had a secret from her mother, and if 
 the mother had not always been equally open 
 her reticence arose only from a wise discretion, 
 which could bear necessary burdens in silence. 
 But disposition, too, in this particular had its 
 sway, for while Judy was too apt to wear her 
 heart on her sleeve, Mrs. Aylmere was by 
 nature secretive. She was never averse to 
 a mystery, and rather enjoyed attaining a 
 coveted end by the exercise of what she 
 termed "a little diplomacy." She was, too, 
 at heart not a little worldly, and overvalued,
 
 30 LOVE ASD LIKING. 
 
 in a higher degree than her daughter under- 
 valued, the good things of this Ufe. 
 
 To see Judy well married, the ivell having 
 no possible limit, and her more than probable 
 inheritance of Egbert Hall an established fact, 
 were the two great ambitions of the lone 
 woman's life. To aid and abet the further- 
 ance of these ambitions in ever}' honest and 
 feasible manner was the work she had laid 
 out for her right hand to do when the 
 necessity should arise and the opportunity 
 occur. Occasionally during her late hus- 
 band's life she had spent a Christmas at 
 Egbert Hall, but since her widowhood she 
 had not left her home, which with reduced 
 means she had made in the small country 
 town of Casterham. With the Miss Egberts 
 Mrs. Aylmere was by no means a favourite. 
 They had, though they said little about it, 
 intense pride of birth and a mere civil toler- 
 ance for what they were pleased to regard as 
 the inferior professions. Mrs. Aylmere had 
 been the daughter of a country surgeon, a 
 clever and a good man, but to the Egberts 
 of Egbert Hall of no separate individuality,
 
 LOVE A^'D LIKING. 31 
 
 professionally considered, from a chemist ^or 
 small apotliecary. This, Judy's mother knew 
 well, but there was too much at stake for 
 reprisals or even quiescent resentment ; she 
 quietly accepted the position of an inferior 
 for her child's sake, keeping herself as much 
 in the background as possible, and investing 
 Judy on every occasion with everything that 
 could tend to strengthen her connection with 
 her cousins. For this purpose some old lace 
 of distinct Egbert origin had proved useful, 
 some pieces of doubtful Sevres china, but un- 
 doubted Egbert traditions, and some other- 
 wise valueless trinkets. Pew women with such 
 slender stock-in-trade had already achieved so 
 much. These few relics, judiciously employed, 
 had very materially strengthened the slender 
 cousinship and helped to bring the far-away 
 point at which it had begun into present 
 reality. So an old ring of yellow topaz, en- 
 circled with pearls, and engraved inside with 
 the initials " M. E.," Judy regarded with the 
 reverence in which a talisman might be held, 
 so earnestly had her mother enjoined her to 
 hold it as a possession and to wear it always.
 
 32 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 Its history, as instilled into her by her mother, 
 she had told Mabella. The M. E. stood for 
 the Mabella Egbert, wife of the squire's 
 grand-uncle, whose only daughter had married 
 an Aylmere and had become the mother of 
 Judy's father. She had been Mabella's god- 
 mother. It pleased the Miss Egberts to see 
 the reverence in which Judy held the ring, 
 and disposed them to think approvingly of 
 her mother. To it they added other relics in 
 kind, but of a liigher value, an earnest, Mrs. 
 Aylmere beUeved, of Judy's inheritance in 
 the future. 
 
 Mrs. Aylmere's blood ran cold when Judj^'s 
 letter was mastered ; she let it fall in her lap. 
 She shuddered: "And to think that Judy doesn't 
 see the consequences ! It's all that Mr. Eaw- 
 son, with his ' stroke-oar ' indeed and ' blue 
 blood,' his empty college honours and pockets; 
 just the hero for a romantic girl in her teens. 
 And this Major Tyler — Judy's sure to make 
 an enemy of him with her sharp tongue, and 
 of Mabella too. I must go to Sandycot." 
 
 This determination, sudden as it was, was 
 none the less a fixed resolve ; it only remained
 
 LOVE AND LIKIXG. 33 
 
 to bring it about naturally. In this the 
 diplomacy Mrs. Aylmere affected served her 
 well. She resolved to let her house. 
 
 It was full summer, and Casterham being 
 within easy distance by rail of London was 
 a favourite resort of city toilers, who took 
 the small houses offered for the vacation 
 weeks by residents also in need of change, 
 and paid liberal prices. Eingwood Terrace 
 was favourably situated for letting : the houses 
 were semi-detached, each with a pretty con- 
 servatory in front and good-sized garden at 
 rear. It was also within ten minutes' walk of 
 the railway station, and an equal distance from 
 the river, which was much resorted to for boat- 
 ing purposes. Circumstances favoured Mrs. 
 Aylmere's wishes. The local agent provided 
 her with a suitable tenant before the week 
 was out, and then she indited a well-weighed 
 though seemingly hasty epistle to MabeUa. 
 The epistle we shall see later. 
 
 In the meantime the little drama at Sandy- 
 cot moved slowly on the boards. The squire 
 had lost much of his old heartiness, and 
 now seldom stayed at the Lodge more than 
 
 VOL. L 3
 
 34 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 two days at a time, the crops, or young stock, 
 or other farming excuse taking him frequently 
 to Egbert Hall. 
 
 " The very next time you go, cousin 
 Egbert," said Judy on the occasion of his 
 last somewhat sudden departure, " I go with 
 you." 
 
 *'And so you shall, Judy; mind, it's a 
 promise," was the hearty answer as he 
 mounted his dog-cart to drive to the 
 station. 
 
 When the squire was absent the dinner- 
 hour at the Lodge was two, but at eight there 
 was always a substantial supper, wliich prac- 
 tically was a dinner. To this meal, being 
 informal, casual guests were often invited. 
 There was, however, one guest who, though 
 he had ceased to be invited, yet was never 
 absent ; this was Major Tyler. Mr. Eawson 
 was also a frequent addition, but always by 
 express invitation, given invariably by Mabella 
 from interested motives. She found that 
 when that gentleman was present Judy was 
 subdued both in manner and speech, and 
 apparently not so keen in observation — con-
 
 LOVE AND LIKIXa. 35 
 
 ditions certain!}' by no means normal in that 
 lively young lady. 
 
 " I do not tliink you should encourage Mr. 
 Eawson, Mabella," Sybella had urged; "Judy 
 seems inclined to Uke him, and he has no 
 prospects." 
 
 " Oh, Judy likes to amuse herself, but she's 
 quite heart-vrhole ; that I'm sure of," said 
 Mabella. 
 
 " Well, I, for one, set my face against any 
 man without a calUng, and Judy is too good 
 to be Avasted." 
 
 "You did not always, Sybella." 
 
 " Xo, but I learnt wisdom, and I should be 
 sorry to see Judy taught in the same school." 
 
 "You are not so wholly on the shelf, 
 Sybella, that you need speak of yourself in 
 that way," said Mabella tartly. 
 
 " Not wholly learnt wisdom, do you mean?" 
 was the retort given acridly. " Oh, yes, 
 Mabella, my days of glamour were all over 
 before little Judy was born ; I wish I Qould 
 say the same for others." 
 
 Mabella flushed. 
 
 " Mr. Eawson is trying for a secretaryship 
 
 3-2
 
 38 LOVE AND LIKIX&. 
 
 to some statesman or public man," she said, 
 to turn the edge of the subject aside. " Papa 
 says he is a born politician." 
 
 " With opinions on the wrong side, eh ? " 
 
 "I don't know that; papa says it is difficult 
 to know what he is ; he himself says he does 
 not believe in party, and that great questions 
 have always been settled from a single point 
 of view, one master-mind directing." 
 
 " And so forming party." 
 
 "You are captious, Sybella; but of this rest 
 assured, that Judy will have nothing to say to 
 a man who has no calling or profession, and 
 if Mr. Eawson makes politics his profession 
 he will have no time to fall in love." 
 
 " He has done so already." 
 
 " Well, you know it is easy to fall out 
 again." 
 
 " And I," said Sybella acidly, " hope you 
 will find it as easy." 
 
 "When I have occasion to try, I shall," 
 was the frigid answer. 
 
 At that instant a low growl from Tim's 
 basket in the corner gave warning of a 
 strange step, and in a few seconds Major
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 37 
 
 Tyler and Mr. Eawsoii were seen coming up 
 tlie garden walk. 
 
 " Oil, Mabella," cried Judy, coming quickly 
 into the room, " Grant, the butler, said you 
 were out, and I have been looking for you 
 everywhere. Here is a note from Mrs. Horse- 
 man ; she wants us all to go to tea to-night. 
 Frank has got a Catherine wheel which he 
 wants to let off. We re to banquet on the 
 lawn, have a turn at lawn-tennis, a Miss 
 Eber is to recite, and Madame Madoc to sing. 
 The great beauty, too, Mrs. Beaumorris, is to- 
 be there, and when it is quite dark — there's 
 no moon this quarter luckily^ — Frank will let 
 off his wheel." 
 
 "How long has Mrs. Horseman been getting 
 this up?" asked Sybella curtly ; " I don't like 
 being an after-thought." 
 
 " Only since the morning," said Judy 
 eagerly. "I went with a message from 
 cousin Egbert to Mr. Horseman and found 
 her in a state of ferment. It had all happened 
 at once, she said. Frank arrived last night 
 with his Catherine wheel and a store of 
 rockets, and Miss Eber came witli him ; then
 
 3S LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 there was a note from Mrs. Beaumorris, 
 asking lierself to spend the afternoon — 
 they're old friends, you know — and lastly, 
 Madame Madoc, who has been in retirement 
 here, and who is also an old friend of Mrs. 
 Horseman, came in to say ' Good-bye.' So 
 on the spot the party was improvised and I 
 was sent off with this note, and oh, Mabella, 
 you are to bring any gentleman friend you 
 like." 
 
 By this time Major Tyler and Mr. Eawson 
 had been announced, much to Tim's disgust. 
 Mr. Eawson Tim approved of, if in a good- 
 humour, obtrusively, but at no time would he 
 tolerate the least notice from the major, who 
 had learnt to keep at a respectful distance 
 from the fiery little animal's quarters. 
 
 Tim was, however, too well tutored to do 
 more than snarl and growl, and even these he 
 ceased at a warning word from Judy, evincing 
 his disquietude as he lay curled in his basket 
 by an occasional shiver, accompanied by a 
 scarcely audible whine. 
 
 At such times neither kind word from Judy 
 nor dainty from his mistress, Mabella, could
 
 LOVE AND LI KIN' a. 39 
 
 induce him to change his posture or look up. 
 For Mabella he had a very worldly affection, 
 only obeying her when it suited his interests. 
 To the rest of the family he was variably 
 amiable, and in their cause would show good 
 fight, but for Judy the little animal would 
 have laid down his life. 
 
 *' The onlv thimz I don't like about the 
 programme," said the major on Glabella 
 recounting the different items for the evening's 
 amusement, " is the recitation. Eeciting is 
 like singing without an accompaniment, not 
 one in a thousand can do it. It is a social 
 amusement now, and a verv f^reat social 
 nuisance.'' 
 
 " I agree with Major Tyler," said Xed Eaw- 
 son ; " it is all of the class of stump oratory 
 and oueht to be voted out of societv." 
 
 " I wish ]\Iiss Eber heard you," said Judy. 
 
 " Miss who ? " said the major with a start ; 
 but Judy had gone, taking with her a hastily- 
 written note of acceptance from Miss Egbert. 
 
 " AVhat was the name Miss Aylmere men- 
 tioned ?" asked the major of the company 
 present ; but none seemed to have heard
 
 40 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 distinctly, one saying Heber and another 
 Eden. 
 
 "Mrs. Horseman," said Mabella indifferently, 
 " has some relation named Heber, I daresay it 
 was Heber." 
 
 " There is a Miss Eber who recites," ob- 
 served Ned Eawson ; " she was at Cowes the 
 other day. I never heard her, but I was told 
 she was a stunner. She does it for money 
 though, so I should fancy she's not the same." 
 
 Ned then went to meet Judy on her return, 
 and Sybella with an angry glance at her 
 sister, who was pinning a carnation into the 
 major's button-hole, flung out of the room, 
 leaving the pair to themselves. 
 
 As the door closed the major seized Ma- 
 bella's hand and kissed it. A chano-e had 
 come over him. He was no more the mys- 
 teriously cool and haughty individual sugges- 
 tive of a Plantagenet ancestry and a " history," 
 as Judy liad expressed it ; no longer either 
 the languid and somewhat indifferent wooer 
 who, though making his matrimonial inclina- 
 tion pretty evident to Mabella when rare Fate 
 gave him unobserved opportunity, had yet
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 41 
 
 never taken a lover's licence or whispered a 
 lover's tale ; now he had thrown off restraint 
 and was going, as he said to himself, " to 
 make a dash at it." 
 
 Mabella's days for blushing were over, but 
 maiden modesty evidenced itself in a russet- 
 red on the plump cheeks. 
 
 *' Major Tyler," she said with a nervous 
 start, " 3^ou know I am not a young girl ; " 
 and she drew her hand away with a jerk. 
 
 " Xo, Mabella, you are not ; you are a 
 sensible woman in the autumn prime of life, 
 fresh and mellow. I hate bread-and-butter 
 misses ; all real men do." 
 
 Suddenly the major gave a little hop, at 
 best of times an undignified movement, and 
 caught at a small pendent hearth-brush as a 
 weapon of defence. 
 
 " The brute," he cried, " the little vicious 
 brute, I believe he has bit me ; " and he ran 
 his unoccupied hand down the calf of his leg^ 
 keeping Tim, whose blood was thoroughly 
 roused, at bay with the broom. But this 
 Tim seized with vicious force, and a contest 
 ensued, more equal than dignified. Tim was
 
 42 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 agile and in terrible earnest, primed with 
 long-nourislied hate and jealousy ; the major 
 was not agile, but his blood also was up, and 
 he, too, was primed with hate and rage at 
 the untimely interruption to his dash at 
 fortune. 
 
 Not a sound escaped the dog's throat, but 
 his eyes literally shot fire, and his back was 
 bristled like a hog's ; he was not an enemy to 
 be despised. The major backed by degrees, 
 somewhat in the manner of a rink-sweeper 
 with a besom before an approaching curling- 
 stone. At last he fairly jumped on to a sofa, 
 which had its place against the wall, and still 
 grasping the brush with one hand, with the 
 other levelled down cushions at his enemy's 
 head. In the meantime Mabella had threat- 
 ened, exhorted, and entreated her favourite 
 to desist. She might as well have spoken to 
 the stuffed effigy of Tim's predecessor, a 
 rather mangy-looking poodle under a glass 
 cover on the top of a high bookcase. Tim 
 had a long score of sly kicks and pushes aivd 
 grudges of jealousy to pay off, and as it never 
 occurred to him in his best of humours to
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 43 
 
 give tlie least heed to his mistress's orders, he 
 only treated her shrill commands as an addi- 
 tional aggression. 
 
 , But Tim had one vulnerable point, which 
 had more than once in similar assaults proved 
 a vantage-ground to the enemy ; it was 
 jealous and aggressive attachment to his 
 basket-house. Not even Judy dare have 
 taken him out against his will, and it was 
 a bold hand that laid itself on the roof. If 
 out walking, no matter what the distance 
 from home, it sufficed to say, '• I'll take your 
 house," when with head well down, but tail 
 stiffly erect, home he scudded, deaf to any 
 voice calling^ him back. Tim's domestic creed 
 was fixity of tenure and defiance of eject- 
 ment. 
 
 Suddenly Mabella recollected the tyrant's 
 master passion, and seizing the little basket- 
 house she held it aloft. Only one moment's 
 hesitation, and major, brush, and degrading 
 fusilade of cushions all to the winds, Tim 
 with a fierce growl made one vigorous leap 
 and gained the inside of his castle. The 
 suddenness of the jump nearly overbalanced
 
 44 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 Mabella, but she recovered herself, and quick 
 as thought put the basket down with the door 
 end against the wall. This was effectual. Tim 
 knew he had been caught in a trap, and, 
 perhaps not a little ashamed of his discom- 
 fiture, kept perfectly still, as if in contemp- 
 tuous silence ; but a peep through the open 
 basket-work of the roof would have shown 
 the little belligerenl: beast sternly erect on his 
 hind quarters, his fore legs stiff and straight 
 before him, his lips curled and displaying his 
 testli, and his eyes two balls of fire. 
 
 " Did he bite you ? " asked Mabella with 
 solicitude ; '* I hope not ; " and she held out 
 her hand to her rufflsJ visitor as if asking 
 pardon. But for his purpose in view that 
 plump be-ringed hand would have fared 
 roughly ; as it was, it was rejected, and the 
 major reached the ground unassisted, but he 
 had no desire to renew the burden of his tale ; 
 the steam which had propelled him to his 
 " dash at fortune " had been rudely let off. 
 Not twice in the same hour could any amount 
 of moral propulsion generate sufficient for 
 another attempt. But he felt that he had cut
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 4') 
 
 a poor figure, and though at the moment he 
 had lost all desire to recommend himself as 
 a lover to Mabella, he felt almost viciously 
 eager to vindicate his valour. 
 
 *' Xo," he said with a forced laugh, " he has 
 not bit me, but his intentions were good," and 
 he exhibited a gap at the bottom of his 
 trousers. '' I hope cloth does not disagree 
 with him ; he is probably used to it." 
 
 *'0h. Major Tyler, I am so sorry," and 
 Mabella looked ready to cry. " It's all Judy's 
 fault ; she spoils the dog. At the Hall he 
 really is as good as gold, and except at 
 tramps or bad characters he never even 
 growls ; it is sheer jealousy. I'll send him 
 back to the Hall while you — I mean, until we 
 return." 
 
 To this the major had no objection. His 
 eye had caught in the distance Judy's hat, and 
 before she reached the hall door he had only 
 time to say : 
 
 " I have a mortal horror of a doi^'s bite. 
 My only brother died of hydrophobia — a pet 
 spaniel of my sister bit him. None of us 
 have owned a dog since."
 
 46 LOA^E AND LIKING. 
 
 Then shrinking from hearing his igno- 
 minious affray expatiated on before Judy, he 
 bade Mabella a hasty good-bye, giving her 
 hand, however, a fervent squeeze — a palliative, 
 soothing^ and maofnanimous one. Much com- 
 forted, Mabella forebore to recount Tim's 
 misdemeanour, which she, unknown to herself, 
 considered almost justifiable on the ground of 
 the dog's jealous attachment to herself. That 
 she did so may be received as indicative that 
 the major had made only surface w^ay as yet 
 in her affections — that her vanity rather than 
 her heart had been touched.
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 
 " Love gilds the scene, and woman guides the plot." 
 
 The pleasantest parties given in Sandycot were 
 given by Mrs. Horseman, who, tliougli herself 
 of an old territorial family, had mixed too freely 
 in continental and metropolitan society to re- 
 tain much of the prohibitive element of narrow 
 county circles. As would naturally happen, 
 people got "mixed up"' a little at times, and 
 shoulders rubbed that in other assembhes had 
 diverged with the cold edge pointed towards 
 each other. But Sandycot forgave Mrs. Horse- 
 man all infringements of the social code ; she 
 was the life and soul of the place in vivacity, 
 good-nature, hospitality and wealth, and being 
 in herself — that is, in her birth and breeding — 
 all that the strictest social guild could require, 
 she was in a manner privileged. 
 
 Mr. Horseman had been in parliament and^ 
 distinguished by his enthusiasm in agricultural
 
 48 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 questions : ill health had driven him to the 
 Chiltern Hundreds. 
 
 There were children of this favoured house- 
 hold, but in nursery and school durance still. 
 
 In a charming demi toilette Mrs. Horseman sat 
 in a basket-chair, sipping an afternoon cup of 
 tea ; her husband, comfortably ensconced in a 
 pillow}^ lounge, followed her example, but was 
 greatly absorbed in the Times, which had just 
 arrived; and in the window, a little drawn 
 back from the balcony, sat Mrs. Beaumorris, of 
 whose advent Judy had apprised her cousins. 
 
 The public in general were very familiar 
 with Mrs. Beau morris's features, and in attitude 
 she had exhausted every pose consistent with 
 modesty. Seated as she now was in the decline 
 of the day's vivid light, the mellow hue of a 
 golden sunset tinging her somewhat pale cheek, 
 a fairer woman had never graced this little sea- 
 side retreat of Sandycot. Severe simplicity 
 characterized her costume, which, however, 
 was strictly in accordance with the fashion of 
 the day. Her eyes were large and deer-like, 
 and she had a trick of opening them suddenly 
 to their full extent with a startled innocent
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 49 
 
 look, then, as if quickly reassured, she would 
 slowly droop the lids and with languishing 
 softness close them over the now filmy orbs. 
 Many a quarry had this wingless shaft laid 
 low. As to her domestic circumstances, she 
 was happily married — that is, she and her hus- 
 band saw as much and as little of each other 
 as they wished. Neither was over-burdened 
 with brains ; both loved pleasure, which they 
 took in different ways ; there were no children, 
 and Mr. Beaumorris's means were ample. The 
 love that had brought them together was still 
 strong enough to keep them in a loose fashion 
 together, but to the husband the wife had long 
 ceased to be a beauty, and to the wife the 
 husband had long been little more than a 
 convenient and not disagreeable household 
 appendage. 
 
 " I don't believe Mrs. Beaumorris has love 
 or likinf? for a human beinc^," said Mr. Horse- 
 man to his wife on one occasion, " or vitality 
 enough to conceive iniquity. I hate luke- 
 warm women ; the virtue that is above temp- 
 tation is beneath contempt." 
 
 " Much you know about it," was his wife's 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 50 LOVE AND LIKIXa. 
 
 reply, nodding her comely head knowingly. 
 " Creamy Beaumorris is no fool. If she had 
 an affair no one would suspect it who did not 
 know her, and no one does know her as I do, 
 and I can assure you my friend Creamy can 
 be vicious. She is jealous of her empire of 
 beauty, and she hates distraction. She is 
 clever enough to know she is not clever, and I 
 know she fears and hates a clever pretty woman 
 as you hate a Tennessee farmer." 
 
 •' How ever came it then," asked Mr. Horse- 
 man, laughing, " that she even tolerated you ? '' 
 
 *' Because, dear," she replied simply, " I only 
 cared to be beautiful to you, and any little 
 talent I have is at everybody's service. Creamy 
 will want a friend some day, or I mistake, and 
 you know I am quixotic." 
 
 To-day Creamy (the diminutive for Cremona, 
 the fanciful baptismal name given Mrs. Beau- 
 morris by her violin-loving father) was more 
 than usually languid and indifferent. 
 
 " I suppose you won't dance ? " she said, in 
 relation to the approaching party. 
 
 " No," replied Mrs. Horseman, " lawn-tennis 
 will be attraction enough till dark ; then we
 
 LOVE AND LIKIXa. 51 
 
 shall have you as centre-piece ; Madame Madoc 
 will sing ; a Miss Eber will recite ; the sky 
 will be ablaze with stars. A professional 
 beauty, singer, and reciter ; I ought to be 
 proud." 
 
 " You haven't many here, have you ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ; Major Tyler is a host in himself, 
 and young Mr. Eawson is audaciously amusing. 
 I hear Major Tyler and Miss Egbert are 
 en^ae^ed." 
 
 " What, old Miss Egbert ? Why, she is sixty 
 if she is a day, and he is certainly under 
 forty." 
 
 " Oh, you know Major Tyler ; we are all so 
 curious about him. But poor Miss Egbert has 
 not sinned much beyond fifty, and Major Tyler 
 looks to have lived quite forty." 
 
 " I only know him, as I know a score of 
 others, by meeting him in society. He is 
 very handsome." 
 
 " Nobody seems to know anything more of 
 him, and though he is very comme il faut and 
 agreeable I can't say I feel attracted towards 
 him." 
 
 " Wlio will Egbert Hall go to ? "asked Mrs. 
 
 4—2 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ttUNOIS
 
 52 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 Beaumorris. " I am told there is no male heir 
 and that the entail expires with the present 
 squire." 
 
 " To the daui^hters of course in the first 
 place, after them all is conjecture. The 
 Egberts are singularly devoid of relations ; 
 pretty little Judy Aylmere is, I believe, the 
 nearest. Her great-grandmother was an 
 Egbert and collaterally related to the present 
 family. The squire is very fond of her." 
 
 "I wonder Major Tyler did not try his 
 chance with youth first ; he used to be a 
 worshipper of beauty, and you say the young 
 lady is pretty." 
 
 "Yes, sweetly pretty, but quite a sylvan 
 flower, brimful of fun, shrewd and out- 
 spoken." 
 
 Mrs. Beaumorris was naturally reticent ; 
 she hazarded no further remark. 
 
 " I'll tell you what," said Mr. Horseman, 
 looking up from his paper; "the major is wise 
 in his generation. Mabella Egbert is certain, 
 if she outlives her father, to hold the place 
 for the remainder of her natural life, and the 
 squire is breaking rapidly. The major knows
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 53 
 
 this, and if one can believe club gossip the 
 fortune might come too late for his necessities." 
 
 The arrival of Miss Eber turned the con- 
 versation into another channel ; Mr. Horseman 
 took his newspaper into another room. 
 
 Miss Eber was small and dark, insignificant 
 to the casual observer, but an observant eye 
 that looked once would look twice and not 
 readily forget what it saw in the sensitive 
 colourless face, which seemed to shrink from, 
 rather than court, the notice which the repu- 
 tation of her histrionic gift attracted. Only 
 to the eye of no speculation was Elsie Eber 
 insignificant. Her dress, never in slavish 
 conformity to the fashion of the day, was as 
 individual as herself. It was always black, 
 flowers only supplying colour. 
 
 Mrs. Beaumorris, innately conventional, 
 relaxed under the influence of Elsie's un- 
 obtrusive but gentle assumption of equality ; 
 she knew of old that in society self-assertion 
 was necessary. Behind the " professional," 
 and beneath that quiet demeanour, there 
 might be both birth and connection. There 
 was refinement enough for the presumption,
 
 54 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 SO Mrs. Beaumorris argued mentally ; in any 
 case tliere was no end to be served by reserve 
 or hauteur, and if " dear Mrs. Horseman was a 
 little Bohemian in lier proclivities she was, 
 however, indisputably within the very inner 
 ring of exclusive society, and if she did take a 
 little latitude in her choice of associates she 
 was the most unlikely of any one to make a 
 mistake." That she had taken slightly risky 
 liberties with society was well known, but. 
 never one that was not defensible in itself. 
 
 Mrs. Beaumorris had what is closely akin 
 to an intellectual gift, she had tact, and that- 
 tact led her to avoid allusion on this her first 
 introduction to Miss Eber to that lady's semi- 
 professional calling ; she even avoided the 
 subject of poetry or literature in any form. 
 
 "Well, Elsie," said Mrs. Horseman, ''you 
 have had a long walk ; what do you think of 
 Sandycot, and was Frank attentive to you .^ " 
 
 " Devotedly so," and Elsie smiled. " Frank 
 is an arrant little flirt in embryo. As for 
 Sandycot, the one only term that describes it 
 is ' model.' Sandycot is model from the top of 
 its cliffs to the level of its sands. Look down
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 65 
 
 on the white decorous town from the highest 
 diff, and not a romantic memory will be 
 stirred, for there are none to stir ; or look up 
 at the cliffs from, say, this sweet amphibious 
 eyrie, and not a line of poetry will suggest 
 itself to you." 
 
 " That is its charm," said Mrs. Beaumorris 
 languidly ; '• even aspiration can rest ; it only 
 wants one thing to make it perfect." 
 
 " Ah," returned Elsie with what might be 
 either satire or flattery, and with professional 
 pose and tone — 
 
 " 'I have no men to govern in this wood, 
 That makes my only woe.' " 
 
 Creamy gave an indifferent shrug of her 
 lovely shoulders. 
 
 " Oh, no, not a woe, a charm," she said, 
 smiling. " My roc's egg is a harbourage for a 
 yacht ; there is none here, the water is too 
 ghallow at fullest. One can never feel the full 
 force of solitude on shore." 
 
 "I don't know about the full force, 
 Creamy," said Mrs. Horseman slyly, "but I 
 do know the full need of solitude at sea ; there
 
 56 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 * man delights me not, nor woman neither.* 
 One of the greatest charms of this little seaside 
 nook to me is the very one thing that fails to 
 make it perfection to you — its shallow waters. 
 The very sight of a ship at anchor, rising and 
 falling with the ceaseless motion of the water, 
 never still on the stillest day, gives me very 
 unromantic qualms. Just fix your eye on the 
 point of a mast in a dead calm, and you will 
 see it describing swaying gyrations in mid- 
 air against the blue ethereal. If you are not 
 a good sailor, as the stock phrase is, that blue 
 will soon change to green, and you will feel 
 inclined to lie down." 
 
 Elsie laughed. " I love the sea," she said. 
 " I agree with Mrs. Beaumorris, there is no 
 place like it for abstraction. I can study 
 best at sea, and, if my piece is suitable, in a 
 storm." 
 
 " It is a capricious monster," returned Mrs. 
 Horseman, "full of invidious favouritism. 
 Two greater opposites than you and Creamy 
 could not be, and it loves you both." 
 
 " Oh, we're not friends in a storm," said 
 Creamv, " we're fair-weather friends. I culti-
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 57 
 
 vate a tranquil spirit ; there is no tumult in 
 my nature." 
 
 " The very secret of preserving beauty, 
 according to Ninon de I'Enclos," laughed 
 Elsie. 
 
 " Oh, Creamy," said Mrs. Horseman half in 
 earnest, " a tranquil spirit is often another 
 name for a cold heart. But it is nearly seven ; 
 if you have any finishing touches to put to 
 your toilette you have only ten minutes." 
 
 " A heart is like silver plate, dear Mrs. 
 Horseman," answered Creamy as she swept 
 from the room, "too risky for a small menage. 
 Electro is an excellent substitute." 
 
 "And you," whispered Elsie to herself as 
 she flitted after her, " you hall-mark yours." 
 
 The table at which was served the hetero- 
 geneous meal known as severe tea was a 
 perfect parterre of flowers, among which 
 nestled bonbons and fruit. The more material 
 needs of the company were supplied by 
 servants from a bountiful buflet. In the 
 centre was a magnificent azalea, the winner 
 of the first prize at an adjacent flower- 
 show of the previous week. The adjustment
 
 58 LOVE AND LIKINa. 
 
 of all tlie other flowers was low, so as not to 
 obscure a vis-a-vis. 
 
 By some unpremeditated arrangement Judy 
 was brought m by Major Tyler, and Elsie by 
 Ned Eawson, who seated his charge at one side 
 of the table facing the azalea, while Judy in 
 enthusiastic admiration of the plant placed 
 herself exactly opposite Elsie, the major 
 obediently filling the chair by her side. 
 
 To Judy, who, never guilty of mauvaise honte, 
 was yet apt to be affected by disturbing cir- 
 cumstances which would scarcely be felt, or at 
 any rate evidenced, by a girl used much to 
 general society. Major Tyler was an element 
 of this quality. She shrank from the indi- 
 vidual with yet scarcely pronounced dislike, 
 but the notice of the man flattered her. Her 
 heart beat fast when he bent down on her his 
 eloquent gaze, so vocal with repressed ad- 
 miration, but not one throb was love's. He 
 talked well, and she loved to listen, and some- 
 how to him she was not averse from letting 
 her ignorance on the graver subjects of every- 
 day converse appear ; he seemed to think it 
 natural, if not actually seemly, that she should
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 59 
 
 bracket politics with algebra, and ask, as she 
 once did, if the budget was kept in the wool- 
 sack. He had the art of imparting knowledge 
 as if he were in some degree receiving it like- 
 wise. Already she knew the different functions 
 of government and the broad principles of 
 opposing parties. Hers was no frivolous 
 nature; this the major early divined, and 
 whenever opportunity offered he gave her the 
 instruction she indirectly asked for. 
 
 Judy was grateful and perhaps a little over- 
 rated her instructor's gifts. She had begun 
 by calling and believing him a fortune-hunter ; 
 now she seemed to find excuses for him, which 
 in reality were excuses for her own increasing 
 liking for him. 
 
 " Men are not always what they seem," he 
 said one day when, returning from a saunter 
 in the garden with Mabella, he found Judy 
 alone in the drawing-room, and he had been 
 received with a rather contemptuous bow. 
 " Some day I should like to tell you the 
 history of my life. It is difficult to take back 
 a false move." 
 
 " He has compromised himself with Ma-
 
 60 LOVE AND LIKIXa. 
 
 bella," thought Judy. "More's the pity for 
 both," and then she dismissed him from her 
 thoughts, not, however, with acerbity. 
 
 But her relations with Ned Eawson were 
 more complicated. 
 
 " You are not half as clever as Major Tyler," 
 she once said petulantly to the young man, 
 but only once, for at his quiet answer to her 
 invidious depreciation, and the somewhat 
 humorous look in his deep grey eyes, a 
 quick-winged thought crossed her brain, that 
 perhaps she had mistaken lacquer for gold. 
 
 ** I should not like to be thought clever," 
 he said, " when I have yet so much to learn ; 
 a clever man is one who knows things in- 
 tuitively ; Major Tyler does." 
 
 " I didn't mean that he was a born genius. 
 I daresay I shouldn't know a genius if I met 
 one," and she pouted ; " only he always knows 
 the reason of everything I ask him, and he 
 never laughs at me." 
 
 " Perhaps he has a reason for that, too," the 
 young man replied, whether in earnest or 
 not Judy could not telh She flushed angrily. 
 
 " Thank you, Mr. Eawson," she said, " that's
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 61 
 
 as much as to say that I am ridiculous. But I 
 tell you what, if I am, he must know it ' in- 
 tuitively,' for whatever I may have done to 
 you, ' most grave and learned seigneur,' I 
 never made myself ridiculous to him — there 
 now." 
 
 ^' Oh, Judy, what a rocket you are ; off 
 you go, without i^ match even. As if you 
 could ever be anything to me but the sweetest, 
 
 loveli " But Xed was not destined to 
 
 hurry on his fate. He was left with his half- 
 finished avowal, looking not a little foolish, 
 Judy calling back to him over her shoulder 
 as she flitted away, laughing merrily, " If I 
 am the rocket, I wonder who's the stick." 
 
 Beneath the luxuriant azalea Judy recog- 
 nized her vis-a-vis. To that circumstance 
 Major Tyler owed the sweet smile she be- 
 stowed on him as she said, loud enough to be 
 heard across the table, " We can talk better 
 in the shade." 
 
 " It is the azalea that is in the shade," he 
 whispered. 
 
 Nothing irritated Judy so much as com- 
 pliments, except from a favoured few. She
 
 62 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 looked upon tliem in the light of liberties. 
 Now remembering Ned's irritating innuendo 
 she thouofht, " He is ridiculincr me," and 
 espying Mabella, who had been delayed by 
 some toilet mishap, coming into the room 
 escorted by young Horseman, she said quickly 
 and with latent mischief, " Oh, Major Tyler, 
 there is Miss Egbert. Is there no seat re- 
 served for her ? She had better have mine." 
 
 But room was made beside the major, who 
 with much empressement stood back until 
 Mabella had subsided into her chair. As he 
 resumed his seat Judy with a mock dispirited 
 look whispered, " I know who's in the shade 
 now." 
 
 There was no answer. She turned her 
 eyes on his face inquiringly. It was pale to 
 o^hastliness. Ordinarilv there was no colour 
 to come and go, but a steady bronze, which 
 told of foreign climes and a fervid sun ; one 
 does not look on such a visage for varying 
 hues of every-day manly cheeks. But it was 
 the sudden pallor only that betrayed the 
 sudden emotion ; not a nerve quivered, nor 
 did the eyes quail. He knew by Judy's start
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 63 
 
 as slie turned to him that her quick eyes 
 noticed the pallor. " Do not observe me," he 
 said quietly ; " an old enemy, spasm in the 
 heart." 
 
 " Mabella's vinaigrette," she whispered, 
 turning^ her face aside. He understood, and 
 with a spark of real gratitude he bent forward 
 and lifted unobserved a massive gold vinai- 
 grette, pungently charged, lying at ^Mabella's 
 ricrht hand. It had the desired effect. 
 
 "I could not resist it," he said as she 
 looked round inquiringly. " The perfume of 
 these flowers is overpowering. I was quite 
 overcome. Incense used to make me faint." 
 
 " Oil," said Mabella tenderly, " a sensitive 
 orofanization." 
 
 But on the opposite side of the table, shaded 
 also by the specious azalea, was another face 
 over which a death-like pallor had spread. 
 Those cheeks, too. owned no roseate bloom 
 to flush and fade ; what colouring there was, 
 lay veiled beneath the delicate olive of the 
 transparent skin. Judy, not to embarrass her 
 companion by even a quiet observance, had 
 leant her head a little sidewavs to reconnoitre
 
 64 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 her vis-a-vis. Catching Ned's eye she smiled, ^ 
 and then looked at his companion. Ned, 
 noticing her countenance change, followed 
 the direction of her eyes. 
 
 "Did you speak?" said Elsie, meeting his 
 startled gaze with perfect self-possession, but 
 her voice had a hollow sound. 
 
 " Are you ill ? " he asked. 
 
 " No ; why ? " was the reply as she bent 
 forward and looked into the mirrored plateau 
 which ran down the centre of the table. " Ah, 
 I am pale ; that is it, I suppose," and then 
 taking the tiny bouquet which had fallen to 
 her share, she picked out a spray of stepha- 
 notis and threw it to the ground, adding, 
 "That flower always has a strange effect 
 on me ; another moment and I should have 
 fainted. Hush," putting her hand on his 
 arm, which was stretched towards a tiny 
 decanter of wine, " please don't make a fuss ; 
 I shall be myself in a few minutes." 
 
 Ned obeyed. 
 
 These little scenes on either side of the 
 table had passed in the space of two minutes, 
 unobserved by all those around.
 
 lo^t: and LIiaXG. 65 
 
 The business of the feast went on unin- 
 terruptedly. Jest and badinage, repartee and 
 gay sail}', with low rippling laughter, plati- 
 tude and fustian, sentiment and bathos, gossip 
 and innuendo, flowed from the full vein of the 
 moment, each in its turn index of individual 
 cast. But neither flash of wit nor piquant 
 tale, nor the generous wine and viands of 
 which both partook, chased from Geofi'rey 
 Tyler's face that night its pallid hue, nor 
 restored to Elsie Eber's olive cheek its rich 
 underglow of colour. And Judy Aylmere 
 had taken notes. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " The leaves of memory seemed to make 
 A mournful rustling in the dark." 
 
 The night was sultry and the stars dim. 
 Lawn-tennis fell flat, and at Mrs. Horseman's 
 suggestion a walk to the pier, distant about a 
 quarter of a mile, was carried with acclaim. 
 As Judy passed through the hall in search of 
 a wrap she saw Major Tyler writing hurriedly 
 on a scrap of paper, which he folded and 
 placed in his waistcoat pocket. 
 
 " I am waiting for Mrs. Beaumorris," he 
 said as Judy approached ; " Mrs. Horseman 
 has placed her under my care. Will you join 
 us?" 
 
 "Oh, no," cried Judy, not staying one 
 instant, and looking back to finish her sen- 
 tence, "you mustn't be greedy; one beauty at 
 a time." 
 
 " Mayn't I choose then ? " he called after 
 her, but she had disappeared.
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 67 
 
 He went to the open door, and in a short 
 space of time Mrs. Beaumorris joined him. 
 
 " Life is full of surprises," she said, declin- 
 ing his proffered arm as she languidly moved 
 towards the pier. "Do you know you gave 
 me the first supernatural sensation I ever 
 had ? " 
 
 '' I ! " he returned in a tone of indifferent 
 banter. " I, so matter-of-fact and realistic, 
 so tlioroughly of the earth, earthy ! " 
 
 " I won't contradict you," she replied care- 
 lessly, " but I approve of worldly people ; 
 they can look after their own interests, and 
 generally succeed. They entail as little as 
 they carry responsibility." 
 
 " Creamy," he whispered, looking down on 
 her with warm reproachful eyes, " how 
 bitter you are ; it was your own fault." 
 
 " What was my own fault ? " she answered, 
 meeting his gaze with a wide-eyed look of 
 wonder, cool and contemptuous. 
 
 The major bit his moustache. 
 
 "That we parted when we did and as we 
 did," he replied hotly. 
 
 " Parted ! " she repeated with a low mock-
 
 68 LOA'E AND LIKING. 
 
 ing laugh. "It is only friends and enemies 
 who part ; casual acquaintances pass on, and 
 that, I think, we did." 
 
 " I understand," he said, his lip curhng ; 
 " but, lady fair, remember this : love's golden 
 chain is strong ; its links, though dropped, are 
 never lost ; sweet lips pressed, soft hands 
 clasped, warm looks mingled, and fond words 
 spoken — these do not pass on." 
 
 " No," she said significantly, " they remain 
 stationary." 
 
 As she spoke the entrance to the pier was 
 reached, where they were joined by Judy, 
 Miss Eber, and Ned Kawson. 
 
 "I was just telling Major Tyler," said Mrs. 
 Beau morris, addressing Elsie, " that he has 
 given me the only supernatural sensation I 
 ever experienced. I had heard he had gone 
 to Africa exploring, and that he had been 
 murdered, or drowned, or something of the 
 sort, and here, in this little out-of-the-way 
 nook, he appears in the flesh. I have had to 
 pace him through a crucial catechism to es- 
 tablish his identity. I shall call him Pepper's 
 ghost, I think."
 
 LOVE AND LIKINa. 69 
 
 " What an unkind re/lection,'' said Judy. 
 
 They all laughed. 
 
 "Shall I introduce you?" whispered Mrs. 
 Beaumorris to Elsie ; and without waitinsf for 
 an answer she did so. 
 
 "I think we have met before," said Major 
 Tyler as he bowed without looking up. 
 
 "I did not know that you were in England," 
 she replied, drawing her veil down, but only 
 Judy noticed the white quivering lips. 
 
 The party then in straggling order pro- 
 ceeded up the pier, where Frank Horseman 
 was preparing to " turn off," as he expressed 
 it, his Catherine wheel. In the applause that 
 followed the boy's successful venture, Judy 
 noticed Major Tyler, inadvertently as it were, 
 approach Elsie, who was standing apart by 
 herself, very quiet and abstracted. The only 
 sign she gave that she even saw the brilhant 
 'Scintilla was a start at the acclamation that 
 followed, and a few feeble claps of her hands ; 
 but a close observer, which Judy was, could 
 see that the action was mechanical. Quietly 
 as the major moved, Elsie felt his approach. 
 She drew her wrap closer round her neck.
 
 70 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 sinking the lower part of her face in its 
 folds, and steadied herself to statue-like 
 stillness. 
 
 " You have dropped something," he said 
 as he stooped down by her side ; then 
 straightening himself he gave her a piece 
 of paper, wliich she received without remark. 
 
 Judy, fascinated, fixed her eyes on Elsie's 
 face, wliich by the light of the gas lamps she 
 could see distinctly. 
 
 "I wait your answer," he whispered, and 
 as if constrained Elsie opened the paper and 
 read it. 
 
 " Very well," she said in a harsh sharp 
 voice, " I will." 
 
 He did not move. 
 
 With an impatient gesture, as one in pain, 
 she raised her hand and turned the palm 
 towards him. 
 
 " Elsie " 
 
 • " Silence ! " she said in a low hollow tone, 
 with an outward motion of her hand. 
 
 • Then without a look, but with a dignity 
 that seemed to Judy's eyes to make her tower 
 above the, what she read to be, deprecatory
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 71 
 
 figure before her, she ghded away and slipped 
 her hand into Mrs. Horseman's arm. 
 
 " Why, Elsie, you are tired," said Mrs. 
 Horseman ; " I forgot your journey to- 
 day." 
 
 Madame Madoc had sung her splendid best, 
 Judy had warbled her sweetest of ballads, 
 and Mrs. Beaumorris had graciously posed and 
 languished from various coigns of vantage, to 
 the utter bewitchment of the Sandycot con- 
 tingent, before Mrs. Horseman approached 
 Elsie, who was seated in a quiet corner talk- 
 ing at intervals to Mr. Eawson, whose obser- 
 vations were regulated in their pertinency by 
 Judy's movements. 
 
 " Are you rested enough to give us some- 
 thing, dear ? " she asked, taking her friend's 
 hand in hers ; " something simple, something 
 that won't tax you much." 
 
 Elsie rose instantly, gently smiling com- 
 pliance. 
 
 " That is the great reciter Miss Eber," 
 whispered Mr. Green, one of the Sandycot 
 curates. 
 
 " What, that little atom ? " returned Miss
 
 72 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 Prance, a tall stout female, with a remark- 
 ably curved neck. 
 
 "Little!" exclaimed Miss Turner, a slight 
 spiral girl who affected mind ; " why, she is 
 great, grand ! Look at her eyes ; they lift 
 her off the ground. Call her little ! " 
 
 "There certainly is something about Miss 
 Eber," timidly observed Mr. Green, " that 
 gives one the idea of loftiness." 
 
 " Maybe so," and Miss Prance sneered ; 
 " but I am afraid I am distressingly matter- 
 of-fact. I don't mind betting you — in gloves 
 of course — that she is not one inch over five 
 foot two." 
 
 " Measured by vulgar flesh," said the spiral 
 young lady, twisting round and fixing her 
 eyes for a moment with vicious point on Miss 
 Prance's lavish award of that substance, "I 
 doubt if she is even that ; by her soul she 
 soars above inches." 
 
 Mr. Green had a keen sense, if not of 
 actual humour, yet of the ridiculous, and he 
 laughed. Miss Prance arched her neck with 
 a forward jerk of the chin, and put out her 
 foot with the action of a horse pawing ; she
 
 LOVE AND LIKI^vO; 73* 
 
 evidently m3ant miscliief. But suddenly 
 attracted by some swift movements at the 
 upper end of the room, she and her com- 
 panions turned round, and in the deep embra- 
 sure of the window, beneath the lace curtain's 
 snow}^ arch, they saw the subject of their dis- 
 cussion standing forward and alone. Some of 
 the lights in various parts of the room had 
 been extinguished, others moved forward, and 
 on either side of the slight figure, whose atti- 
 tude and calm upward look told of concen- 
 trated and conscious power, a silver lamp 
 with painted shade and deep pink fringe 
 had been placed. Her dress was of some 
 light material, soft and sheeny, with a partial 
 train. She stood, her slight hand poised like a 
 white butterfly on the fragrant flowers on her 
 breast. 
 
 The piece chosen was Tennyson's " Victim." 
 Her voice, almost tremulous at first, swelled 
 into fuller volume as she proceeded, till it 
 seemed to fill the silenced chamber with a 
 pervading and most musical cadence. There 
 was little of action in the recital, which owed 
 its force to the marvellous voice and yet
 
 74 LOVE AND LIKINO. 
 
 more marvellous eyes, " which filled with 
 light the interval of sound." 
 
 When she had finished she slipped out to 
 the balcony and joined Mr. Horseman, who 
 was indulging in a mild cigarette. 
 
 " The poet touched a subtle truth, friend 
 Elsie," he said ; " a woman loves her child 
 deeper than her husband." 
 
 " Because she died to save her child," and 
 Elsie turned her pale face to her companion. 
 " blind of heart and slow to understand all 
 that woman has shown you, had she had to 
 choose between husband and son for a victim, 
 with her own hands she would have offered 
 the son. A woman may have many sons of 
 her youth, but only one husband. It was the 
 sublimity of vicarious love, she never thought 
 of self." 
 
 " There are a good many exceptions to your 
 transcendental rule," returned Mr. Horseman, 
 not taking the slight cigarette from his lips. 
 
 "I always avoid the exceptions," she 
 answered with a sly smile as she made way 
 for Mrs. Beau morris. 
 
 '' I have been avowing a heresy, according
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 75 
 
 to Miss Eber," said Mr. Horseman, addressing 
 the newcomer. " I say tliat a woman loves 
 her child above her husband. What say 
 
 you?" 
 
 " I was never good at puzzles,"' she answered 
 languidly ; " the sort of love one sees on the 
 stage is verv exhaustino^ ; life is too short for 
 anything stronger than affection ; very strong 
 emotions are vulgar, but I suppose if it ever 
 did come to a question of choice, which is 
 not likely in real life, the child would carry 
 the day." 
 
 Ignoring the offensive points of this speech 
 Elsie said, " We are three presumptuous per- 
 sons, answering a question out of our power 
 to determine. I have no husband, Mrs. Beau- 
 morris no child, and Mr. Horseman is not 
 a woman." 
 
 " My experience as a legislator taught me," 
 said that gentleman, " that abstract questions 
 were always best answered by those who 
 knew least about the matter in practice. The 
 finest speech I almost ever listened to was on 
 patriotism by an Irish member of the govern- 
 ment, whose boast it was that he had not set
 
 76 LOVE AND LIKINQ. 
 
 foot in liis native country for twenty years, 
 and yet he drew a large income from his 
 estates there." 
 
 " Not a case in point," said Elsie ; " the 
 sister-kingdoms are so nearly allied, a man 
 simply born in Ireland, but reared in Eng- 
 land, and solely by English people, may be 
 excused for haziness about his nationality, or, 
 I should say, for running one into the other, 
 as it were." 
 
 " I can forgive an Irishman trying to get rid 
 of his nationality," observed Mrs. Beaumorris. 
 
 " An Irishman who does that," said Ned 
 Eawson, who had joined the little group unno- 
 ticed; " and who claims adventitiously English 
 habitat and citizenship, is a state foundling." 
 
 '* He never can shake off race," said Elsie ; 
 " that is, presuming he is not a mongrel, and 
 even then the characteristics of his combina- 
 tion will cleave to him with irradicable 
 pertinency. It is said that hybrids inherit the 
 most distinctive evil qualities of their parents." 
 
 " I hope my parents were not very wicked," 
 laughed Ned, " for my mother was Irish." 
 
 " The House " — Mr. Horseman always called
 
 LOVE AND LIKINa. 77 
 
 Parliament " the House " — " would be very 
 flat without the Irish element," he said. 
 
 " There have been some grand Irishmen in 
 Parhament," observed Ned. 
 
 " Yes, orators, propagandists, and patriots, 
 too, proud of their nationality ; but," and Mr. 
 Horseman, as if to give force to his words, 
 threw away his half-finished cigarette with 
 a conclusive gesture, " but not one states- 
 man." 
 
 " Castlereagh ! " exclaimed. Xed. 
 
 " No statesman, and no Irishman in the 
 sense of race." 
 
 " Palmerston," put in Mrs. Beaumorris," was 
 an Irish peer." 
 
 '- Palmerston ! " said Mr. Horseman ; " a 
 thorough Englishman in blood, in every at- 
 tribute— a representative Englishman in fact. 
 The Temples were Saxon earls before the 
 Conquest." 
 
 " I think," said Elsie, wlio had a quiet way 
 of putting things that suggested knowledge 
 and authority, " I think Sir Charles Dilke in 
 his ' Greater Britain ' was right, and that the 
 soil has much to do with race. He says that
 
 78 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 the white race who have taken the place of 
 the aborigines in America are gradually also 
 taking their physical type, and that he believes 
 in course of time they will become Eed 
 Indians." 
 
 " Xow, Miss Eber, " exclaimed Mrs. Beau- 
 morris, posing so as to display her liberal 
 charms with anything but oriental reserve, 
 " do you mean to tell me that even cycles of 
 Kathay could have made me a Chinese ? " 
 
 " You are a ' celestial ' nevertheless," said 
 Mr. Horseman with an admiring bow. 
 
 " They might have made you a Tartar," 
 said Judy, who had come on the scene un- 
 observed. Every one laughed, even the beauty 
 smiled, but she was not to be so silenced. 
 
 " And what ^vould cycles of Kathay have 
 done for you? " she asked of Elsie still. 
 
 " What cycles of every land but our own 
 have done," she answered proudly, " left us as 
 we were." 
 
 " And that was, what ? " 
 
 The words tripped from Mrs. Beau morris's 
 lips airily, but incisively ; insolentl}', Judy 
 thought.
 
 LOVE AND LIKINa. •?» 
 
 " Jews ! " was the answer given in a voice of 
 proud disdain. 
 
 " Oh ! " and Mrs. Beaumorris opened her 
 eyes as if disagreeably surprised, and then, 
 apparently disgusted with the subject, she 
 returned to the drawing-room. 
 
 " Did you notice," whispered Ned to Judy, 
 " she wanted to make Elsie, in accordance with 
 her own theory, ' a squalid savage ? ' Oh, 
 Judy, I am so glad you are not a 'real 
 beauty,' you'd have been so vicious." 
 
 " I wonder who gave you leave to call me 
 Judy," she answered. "I've come out now, 
 and I must say you're not very gallant." 
 
 There was a pout in the sweet mouth, but 
 arch fun in the eyes. 
 
 " I mean beauty by patent, you know," 
 apologized Ned. " I hate beauties, and hus- 
 bands get so tired of them." 
 
 " How odd ! " she said. " Now I dote on 
 handsome men, particularly when over thirty 
 and dark. They remind me of the old 
 Paladins and Crusaders and chevaliers. 
 Don't you think Major Tyler singularly hand- 
 some? "
 
 80 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 She spoke witli a little gusli ; Ned could 
 see it was put on. 
 
 " Singularly so," lie replied gravely ; " but 
 wives get so tired of handsome husbands." 
 
 " Then what a faithful wife you'll have, 
 Ned," she whispered, and tripped oif to Mr. 
 Horseman's side. 
 
 " Oh, no, Mr. Horseman," Elsie was saying, 
 " I only adopt Sir Charles's theory in part. 
 Eace is race to the end of time ; but I think 
 the physical characteristics may undergo some 
 sort of transmutation in course of generations. 
 The surroundings, traditions, habit of eye, 
 atmosphere, food, all must insensibly mould, 
 as they moulded before, upon a certain model, 
 how given or conceived, who can tell ? " 
 
 " Well," said Mr. Horseman, " your theory 
 would account for the seeming change in the 
 Saxon characteristics of families who are now 
 thoroughly Irish — modern Irish — in tempera- 
 ment as well as physique. In this way Lord 
 Palmerston received his airy lightness of dis- 
 position, his espihjlerie in fact ; in all else he 
 was English." 
 
 " Yes," said Judy, who had always some-
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 81 
 
 thing to say on every discussion, " and natur- 
 ally so, for not so very long ago it was the 
 custom of the Irish gentry to give out their 
 children to the peasants to nurse, not taking 
 them back till they were two or three years 
 old, just as they do still in France. I remem- 
 ber uncle John, mamma's uncle — he was a navy 
 surgeon — telling me that he had been given 
 out to nurse in that way in Tipperary ; his 
 father was Irish, and I always used to think 
 him so like a fine mealy potato, a regular 
 ' smiler,' always at hand, happy-go-lucky, 
 good-natured and homely, and I know he was 
 very fond of whisky." 
 
 " That is conclusive," cried both Mr. 
 Horseman and Elsie, returninof to the drawinor- 
 room, the latter adding, " I think Miss 
 Aylmere not very un-Irish herself in some of 
 these qualities, barring the whisky of course," 
 and the latter smiled at Judy, one of her rare 
 sweet smiles. Judy's heart was won from 
 that moment, and for a wonder she had not a 
 read)' answer. 
 
 Whispering a hasty good-night to Mrs. 
 Horseman on the score of fatigue, Elsie 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 82 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 glided almost unobserved out of tlie room by 
 a side door, but, stopping an instant to dis- 
 engage her skirt, which had caught in the 
 legs of an ornamented table, she overheard a 
 ■woman's voice, which to her ear sounded a 
 little querulous, say, " I'm very downright 
 myself, major, and I like my friends to be 
 the same." 
 
 Quickly came the reply, and scarcely 
 knowing she did so Elsie turned her head to 
 ihe side from which the voices came, and held 
 the handle of the door a second before she 
 turned it. She could see no one, but a lace 
 curtain shading a window-nook moved. 
 
 Well she knew the voice. 
 
 "Downright! Free-spoken, you mean," said 
 the major in a low melancholy tone ; "' that, ex- 
 cept to a chosen few " — a pause — " I cannot be. 
 I have often wished to tell you the story of my 
 life ; some day I will, for I know you will not 
 judge me harshly. Oh, Mabella, oidy to find 
 one faithful trusting breast on which to lay 
 my weary head." 
 
 The door was opened, as if by sudden 
 impulse ; it closed of itself with a slam, which
 
 LOVE AND LIiaNa. 88 
 
 startled the occupants of the window-nook and 
 made tlie " weary head " turn with a lively 
 motion and reconnoitre suspiciously. At the 
 same instant Mabella with a little shame-faced 
 womanly dignity issued from her retreat, 
 saying aloud, " We must be going ; I wonder 
 where Mrs. Horseman is." 
 
 There was another sharp slam, of a distant 
 door, an unusual sound in that refined and 
 perfectly ordered house, but it reached, or 
 seemed to reach, only one ear, for the company 
 w^ere one and all making their adieux with the 
 usual rustle and flying phrases and preoc- 
 cupation. 
 
 That ear was Major Tyler's. 
 
 Then Seapinks hospitable doors closed, and 
 the inmates retired to rest. 
 
 The night was very still and sultry, and the 
 windows of the sleeping apartments were open 
 to their utmost. It was the custom of Mrs. 
 Horseman to steal from this quiet interlude 
 of her busy life one " precious hour," as she 
 called it, for solitary reading or study. The 
 charm of a quiet, unbroken by the sound of 
 a human voice or foot, or the lazy stir of 
 
 6—2
 
 84 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 Sandycot's leisurely traffic, the muffled music 
 of the rippling tide stealing in on the blank 
 sands, and the slow chime of the church clock, 
 quickened thought and fancy, while it filled 
 the senses with an unutterable calm. To-night 
 in her little sanctum, as she termed the tiny 
 boudoir leading out of her bedroom, she sat, 
 but with neither book nor pen in her hand, 
 only a small lunar telescope with which she 
 almost idly swept tlie heavens, now and again 
 resting on a star. 
 
 There was not a planet whose name and 
 earth history she did not know, on whose 
 habitat she could not at once turn her lens. 
 They were her panacea for the distractions of 
 the day, 
 
 " The words of God, the scriptures of the sky." 
 
 But to-night her panacea failed her. She 
 could not feel the sweet influence of the 
 " Pleiads ; " she could only see that they were 
 *' tangled in a silver braid." There was 
 unrest in her spirit. The friend of all friends 
 she held dearest, most akin to her deeper 
 nature, Elsie Eber, vexed and troubled her.
 
 LOVE AND LIKIXa. 85 ^ 
 
 for she divined by lier rare sympathy that Elsie 
 had a great sorrow, passion, care, or what it 
 might be, she could not or would not share 
 with her. For a little that thought pained 
 her, but her nature was too large for narrow 
 judgments, the spirit of her friendship too 
 pure for one unworthy suspicion or even the 
 shadow of a doubt. It was her keen sensitive- 
 ness, with no taint of jealousy, that suffered; 
 her friend's hopes and fears she claimed for 
 her own. Keenly she thought over every 
 incident connected with Elsie that had come- 
 under even her passing notice that evening,, 
 till at last, faintly as the first gleam of a 
 slow dawn, a light rose on her mental vision 
 — Elsie is standing apart in the gay assem- 
 blage, coldly regardful of strangers, as is her 
 wont. She turns constrainedly as Major 
 Tyler addresses her, not before, and takes 
 with a frigid bow a scrap of paper from his 
 hand. She does not even look at it till, 
 apparently obedient to his lowly-uttered re- 
 quest, she indifferently opens and reads. 
 
 Mrs. Horseman remembers how she watched 
 this incident with a sort of quiescent curiosity,
 
 LOVE AND LIKING, 
 
 attaching to it at tlie time no undue meaning, 
 scarcely thinking it had a meaning. She re- 
 membered, though, being struck witli the 
 glowing splendour of the girl's ej^es and the 
 more than usual olive clearness of her face. 
 
 Then Elsie, to again a whispered request 
 from her companion, utters some cold words 
 and turns away, tearing the piece of paper 
 into atoms. 
 
 She called to mind, too, that she had 
 glanced at Major Tyler's face, and that she 
 had fancied, smiling at her fancy, that there 
 was a craven scare in his eyes. 
 
 " There has been more than mere acquaint- 
 ance between these two," she said to herself. 
 " I do not trust that man." 
 
 Again and again she passed each point of 
 this incident before her mind's eye, till once 
 more it became indistinct and indefinite, in 
 some such way as a dimly-seen star in the far 
 offing gleams and fades, and fades and gleams, 
 till it seems to vanish into nothingness. 
 
 The gas-lights were still lit on the pier, 
 which stretched out in a direct line from Mrs. 
 Horseman's point of observation, so that by
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 87 
 
 aid of her telescope she could command it to 
 its very end. The night, too, was clear if 
 sultry, for though the newly-risen moon was 
 yet in her first quarter the heavens were 
 ablaze Avith " clear tapers without number." 
 
 In disquietude of spirit Mrs. Horseman rose 
 to retire for the nio-jit. For a minute she 
 stood gazing at the pier with thoughts far 
 awav. 
 
 It was not unusual for smokers, when the 
 tide was full, to linger till the small hours at 
 the extreme end, strolling leisurely up and 
 down, or lounging dreamily over the rails ; 
 but to-night the tide was still in the far dis- 
 tance, and at such times the pier was gene- 
 rally deserted. As if to say good-night to the 
 placid scene she raised her telescope and 
 levelled it at the pier. The next minute she 
 threw herself into her low chair and covered 
 her face with her hands. 
 
 "Oh, Elsie," she said aloud, "you might 
 have trusted me." 
 
 Then, without even a glance outward, she 
 half closed the window and retired to bed ; 
 but not one unworthy thought of her friend
 
 88 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 entered her leal heart, not a shadow of dis- 
 trust, not a jot or tittle of disapproval. Now 
 that she had discovered what was not meant 
 for her to know, she would not speculate 
 again on Elsie's relation to Major Tyler ; to 
 have done so would have seemed prying, if 
 not dishonourable, and as she laid her head on 
 her pillow she whispered to herself, " She will 
 tell me all in her own good time." 
 
 Sleep, though she wooed it, did not come 
 soon. Unknown to herself her ear waited for 
 perhaps a light foot on the stair, or in the 
 room overhead, which was Elsie's, some gentle 
 movements ; and long before her lids were 
 lieav}^ so acute had been her unconscious 
 watch, she heard a light trailing sound like a 
 soft breeze on the floor above ; backwards and 
 forwards it passed. 
 
 " Poor soul, she is pacing up and down and 
 suffering," she thought, and then she fell 
 asleep ; but the stars were dimming in the 
 faint dawn of day before the soft sweeping 
 motion of Elsie's lono^ trailinsf skirt ceased. 
 
 "You pledged me your word when we
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 89 
 
 parted tliat you would never judge me un- 
 heard. In the name of that pledge I ask you 
 to meet me to-night at twelve, when all is 
 quiet, at the end of the pier. 
 
 " Geoffrey." 
 
 These were the words written on the scrap 
 of paper which drew Elsie Eber from her 
 friend's house at dead of night to meet the 
 man whom only yesterday she would have 
 sought the furthest quarter of the globe to 
 avoid. 
 
 
 ^Si^^fe-..^^<-j4
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " And the -vvreck'd heart lies cold." 
 
 '' Ix the smallest iota I never swerved from a 
 promise," slie said to lierself as slie spoke the 
 cold words of assent, " and I will redeem this 
 bitter pledge now." 
 
 He was leaning over the rails at the furthest 
 end of the pier, smoking a cigar ; he did not 
 hear her light tread till she was close behhid 
 hun, then he turned round, throwing his 
 cigar away, but paused for a moment, hesitat- 
 ing how he should greet her. 
 
 A lars^e black lace shawl was all the cover- 
 ing she wore over her evening dress, which 
 she had stripped of the flowers on breast 
 and arms. A black laoe kerchief on her head 
 was tied under her chin, its peak resting on 
 her arched brow. 
 
 '' I am here to redeem my pledge," she 
 said clearlj^ and coldly, a world of pent-up 
 pain and pride in her great lustrous eyes, of 
 scathing contempt on her curved lip.
 
 LOVE AXD LIKING. 91 . 
 
 A minute before he thought he had his tale 
 by heart; a moving, tragic, pleading tale, that 
 could not fail, he deemed, to quicken again 
 the principle of love, which, once implanted in 
 a woman's heart — so his rallying belief ran — 
 could never, but with lier life, be wholly extin- 
 guished ; but now not a word of the specious 
 fable could his lips utter ; in that presence he 
 did not dare to lie. 
 
 Judged, convicted, dumb, he stood before 
 the woman whose life he had blighted. Self- 
 deception was at an end, for in her cold 
 unimpassioned face he read that the love he 
 had deemed imperishable was as dead as the 
 drift-wood lying on the barren shore. And 
 at that moment of such shame as his soul 
 could know, he vrould have risked something 
 of the sordid venture he had yet to put to the 
 hazard could he have seen even a faint tremor 
 of the scornful lip, or, better still, a flush of 
 anger, if not of hate itself, in the cold star-like 
 eyes that looked level into his. 
 
 He opened his lips — not a word would 
 come. 
 
 He felt his. hands grow powerless, the
 
 92 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 sinews of his neck relax, and liis head droop, 
 struck to the core, not by her just indignation 
 and upbraiding — whatever there might be in 
 the bosom of the deep, the surface was cahii 
 to stagnation — but by his own utter vileness ; 
 and yet though he quailed before her in 
 abject silence he could not take his eyes 
 from hers. 
 
 " Perhaps," she said in a very matter-of-fact 
 tone, " perhaps I am not of the chosen few to 
 whom you can dare to be ' downright and free- 
 spoken,' to whom you can intrust the ' story 
 of your life ' ? " 
 
 Whatever the craven had left of the man 
 was stung to life and action by these few 
 simple words. 
 
 Xo need of a mask now ; he could not be 
 more vile in her eyes. 
 
 To the winds with the plausible reason and 
 lying excuse, the role of vicarious martyr, the 
 secret enemy, mercenary relatives; all the arch 
 phantasmagoria of the well-rounded scheme 
 vanished like the baseless fabric of a dream 
 before the cold searcliini]^ i?aze of the frag^ile 
 girl they had been conjured up to deceive.
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 93 
 
 But the wrong lie had done lier in the days 
 that were gone, its callous treachery and 
 cruelty, rising in accusation through the vista 
 of the veiling years, seemed almost a sin to 
 which with a bold front a man miofht answer 
 at a man's tribunal, for the pleas that to her 
 would be lying sophistry would with many 
 men be justifying pleas. 
 
 But he had no sophistry to gloss over, even 
 to himself, the meanness that could make him 
 whisper love's sweet vocabulary in the ears of 
 a vain old woman, and so barter his comely 
 manhood for a mess of pottage. 
 
 His determination was taken, he would tell 
 her the truth, that is of his relations with 
 Miss Egbert ; as for the past, why, " let the 
 dead bury its dead ;" to that, if need came, he 
 would plead guilty. 
 
 With almost a recklessness of resolve he 
 drew from an inner pocket a small leathern 
 case, and taking therefrom a letter handed it 
 to her. 
 
 *' Eead," he said ; " I am on my defence, 
 and those who judge must hear the pleas." 
 
 She obeyed him.
 
 94 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 The letter was from a law3^er demanding 
 inf?tant payment for an overdne bill of two 
 thousand pounds. Its date was eight months 
 -old. 
 
 She gave it back to him, simply observing : 
 
 " In what is this a plea ? " 
 
 Then his tongue was loosed. 
 
 " Not a plea for my faithlessness to you," he 
 cried, speaking almost passionately; "for that 
 I have none to urge. But whether I sinned 
 from a shallow nature, or from fickleness, it 
 little matters now, for you, I am glad to see, 
 have learned to forget ; but I did not know till 
 to-night that I had that lesson still to learn." 
 
 She made a contemptuous gesture. 
 
 " Forgive me," he continued ; " I am, for a 
 wonder, speaking trutli, and the heart too will 
 have its word. In the days when you first 
 knew me I was very reticent, you may remem- 
 ber, as to my family, and you as to your race, 
 matters of little moment then. I was reserved 
 because I did not care that you should know 
 that I was only a retired tradesman's son, 
 that I had no patrimony, and that my mother 
 was at intervals mad. When we parted I
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 95 
 
 went to Homburg, played heavily and won 
 largely. I came back to England to find my 
 father dead, my only brother also, and my 
 mother insane. There was only a bare 
 pittance for her support, and my sisters had 
 to earn their own living. Out of my gains I 
 settled two thousand pounds on my mother, 
 and then at once, leaving my address with no 
 one, went to Africa. I returned alone a few 
 months ago, all my money gone. My mother 
 had recovered and lived with one of my 
 sisters, an invalid, in our old home. The 
 doctors said that if kept tranquil and free 
 from any anxiety her malady might never 
 recur. She is a tender mother, Elsie, and she 
 loves me better than life. With the hope of 
 being as fortunate as before, I went toMonaco, 
 as the German tables were all closed. I won 
 largely at first, but luck changed, and — it is a 
 common tale — I played on recklessly till I had 
 lost ail. A friend who believed in my star 
 lent me money to go on, and I rose at last a 
 ruined man and two thousand pounds in debt. 
 I gave him a bill ; it became due ; I had no 
 funds to meet it. A writ was made out as-ainst
 
 96 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 me, my mother heard of it, she wrote to the 
 holder of the bill, and offered to become 
 security if he would renew it for six months ; 
 he agreed, and now it is overdue eight months 
 and I have no funds." 
 
 He spoke rapidly, for him recklessly. "I 
 came here — do not judge me too harshly — 
 I came in despair, to hide myself ; I could not 
 face my mother's ruin. I met Miss Egbert, 
 and like a drownincf man catchinof at a straw 
 I tried my luck, as I said to myself. It was 
 soon evident that I could win. I wrote to 
 the holder of the bill and told him the 
 position, and, scorn me as you may, he came 
 down and saw for himself, and agreed to hold 
 over what was my mother's death-warrant till 
 I had staked and won. I have not thrown 
 the die yet. It rests with you to consign my 
 mother to a pauper asylum, or to be generous 
 and forgive." 
 
 For a few moments after he had ceased 
 speaking Elsie stood in the same position 
 without a sim of emotion. Then with a 
 sudden passionate gesture as of loathing and 
 repudiation in one, she struck out her hands
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 97 
 
 to ware! s the abject suppliant before lier and 
 cried, looking at liim with eyes ablaze : 
 
 " My ! And I have loved that 
 
 thing ! " 
 
 The major shuddered. " I have lost," he 
 said to himself ; " she clings to the rags of her 
 love. Curse her and all women." Then in an 
 eager deprecatory voice he said aloud : 
 
 " If she had been a young woman I would 
 not have asked it of you, Elsie ; you cannot 
 for a moment suppose that I love her," and he 
 made a step forward as if to approach her. 
 
 " Back, Geoffrey Tyler," she cried ; " one 
 touch of your hand would be the crowning 
 insult of this night of humiliation. You 
 mistake me ; but you could not understand if 
 I told you. But rest assured, so far as I am 
 concerned, there are no birds in last year's 
 nest." 
 
 He winced. *' Can it be revenge, then ? " 
 he thought. 
 
 " Listen ; you have gambled and lost. You 
 are in a strait, but you are a man of schemes, 
 and you have one that will free you. In this 
 scheme you ask my aid. Am I right ? " 
 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 98 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 "Not your aid," lie said huskily, "your for- 
 bearance." 
 
 " A quibble," slie returned in a tone of 
 abhorrence and placing herself so that he 
 could not escape her eyes. " My forbearance, 
 as you term it, is passive aid. The Egberts 
 are strangers to me, but I know they are an old 
 and honourable family. You shall not befoul 
 them. Hush, I am not in a mood to pick my 
 phrases ; there are certain things that only 
 certain words can express. I do not know 
 how it is that I believe your story of your 
 mother ; perhaps I recognize the baseness 
 that let her risk her all. But as I do accept 
 it, in part at least, I also accept a responsi- 
 bihty from which in God's sight I cannot 
 be absolved. It is — so you have said — ■ 
 for your m^other's sake only that you would 
 marry this woman fifty years old and 
 more." 
 
 " Only, only," was all the answer he could 
 give. He had the o-race to shrink from even 
 his own voice. 
 
 " Then if you pledge me your Avord to 
 leave this place to-morrow, never to return, I
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 99 
 
 will pay this debt and free your mother. If 
 you refuse — you know the consequences." 
 
 "You!" he cried, fairly off his guard, 
 '' you are only romancing ; but perhaps it is 
 only a icomans revenge," and he turned on 
 his heel in sullen despair. 
 
 " Then I understand," she said, " you refuse 
 my terms and accept the alternative. It is 
 perhaps as well," and she gathered her shawl, 
 which had fallen to the ground, about her 
 shoulders and turned to go. 
 
 " Stop," he cried fiercely ; " what warrant 
 have I that you are able to do this ? " 
 
 " That I have said I am," was her proud 
 answer as she paused to give him a minute's 
 grace. 
 
 "It will only be a loan, remember." He 
 spoke as if it were he who conferred the 
 benefit. " Wliat was the two thousand 
 pounds," he said to himself, " to Egbert Hall 
 and its broad acres ? " 
 
 She did not deign him an answer, she 
 merely drew her wrapping closer. " When 
 you have left Sandycot," she said, — " I 
 give you till to-morrow afternoon — I will
 
 100 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 remit the money to my solicitor with instruc- 
 tions to take up the bill and release your 
 mother. You need not give me the address ; the 
 holder of the bill is a well-known usurer." 
 
 "You will keep this secret?" he asked 
 falteringly. 
 
 " That I pay the money, yes," and she was 
 gone. 
 
 " Curse her," he muttered to himself as he 
 slowly followed. " She'll warn the old one, 
 but I'll be before her." 

 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 "A fool at forty is a fool indeed." 
 
 "Any letters for me?" asked Judy as slie 
 tripped round the breakfast-table, dispensing 
 lier ofood-mornino' kisses. " I didn't know it 
 was so late, but the little Horsemans kept me. 
 I took Tim for a run on the beach, and there 
 they were playing at Catherine wheels." 
 
 " Yes, there is one from ])apa, I see ; it's on 
 your plate," said Mabella. " What can he be 
 writing to you about ? " and she smiled. 
 
 " Oh, it will bs about the chestnut mare," 
 cried Judy, flying at the letter like a bird ; 
 " he said if she hadn't been unshod and 
 turned out to grass he would bring her here 
 and let me ride her." 
 
 "I don't think Peters," said Dulsie, naming 
 the stud-groom, '• will let her out of his care. 
 He expects great things of her at the show." 
 
 " Oh, that's not till October," said Judy.
 
 102 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 " Peters and I are great friends," and she 
 opened her letter. 
 
 " Oh, what a bore," she cried, for the mo- 
 ment ruffled and disappointed. " Just listen ; 
 this is a note cousin Egbert incloses from 
 Peters himself : 
 
 " ' Honoured Miss, — 
 
 " ' Seeing as how the mare's not had the 
 exercise she oughter to 'ave had owing to the 
 young stock being extra troublesome-like, 
 she's got aside of herself quite, and takes both 
 bit and bittoon to keep her in, it's not the 
 oats as the squire thinks, it's the mettlesome 
 devil in her, — saving your presence, and it's 
 nothing but a rare mastersome hand'll suit her 
 tantrums for a bit, and she's not been set to 
 the sea or sea ways, the sand aneath her foot 
 'ud set her wild, and I'd not answer the con- 
 sekenceSj nor be 'sponsible either, so Honoured 
 Miss I says to the squire as I can't be spared 
 at this time noways, the foaling coming on such 
 like, as you'd best come up here a bit, you 
 see she is a rare beauty, she is, and I knows 
 vou wouldn't for all the sea-breezes and
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 103 
 
 curley mows in the world go agin her 
 chances at the show. The squire said as you 
 was so bent on 'aving her, I'd best give you my 
 reasons in written, and beggin' pardon for all 
 mistakes seeinof as it's writ to order and 
 hurried like, I'm honoured. 
 
 " ' Miss your humble servant, 
 
 " ' Ted Peters. 
 " ' Stud-groom to Squire Egbert. 
 " 'P.S. — She's Glory Hannah now, as your 
 orders was, we changed her name in running 
 water for luck. T. P.' " 
 
 By the time Judy had come to the post- 
 script her momentary disappointment had 
 vanished and she was laughing heartily. 
 
 " Gloriana, he means," she cried ; " but 
 what shall I do, Mabella ? Here's cousin 
 Egbert's letter," and she handed a short note 
 which accompanied the longer epistle to 
 Dulsie, seeing^ Mabella intent on her own cor- 
 respondence, which she had laid aside until 
 she should have poured out the tea. 
 
 " Well, I suppose one of us must go with 
 you," and Dulsie handed on the note to
 
 104 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 Sybella ; " papa seems to wish it very 
 much." 
 
 " I can't," said Sybella ; " I am taking 
 Turkish baths and I couldn't possibly break 
 in on the series." 
 
 " What is this ? " asked Mabella with a start 
 as she took the note from Sybella's hand. " I 
 have just had a letter from your mother, 
 Judy," but she did not offer to give Judy the 
 letter ; then she read the squire's few lines, 
 "leant, that's certain," she added; "just 
 look at these," and she pointed to the mirror 
 over the chimney-piece, the frame of wbicli 
 was full of envelopes and cards of invitation. 
 " Dulsie's always glad of an excuse for a peep 
 at her flowers. What do you say, Dulsie ? Will 
 you go with Judy ? " 
 
 Dulsie assented, and it was arranged that 
 Judy and she should start next morning for a 
 week or ten days at Egbert Hall. 
 
 " What is mamma writing about ? " asked 
 Judy ; " may I see her letter ? " 
 
 Mabella hesitated, and then drew the letter 
 out of her pocket. " You can read it aloud," 
 she said, which Judy did :
 
 love and liking. 105 
 
 " ' My dear Cousin, — 
 
 " ' You will be a little surprised at the 
 contents of this letter, which, I hope, will not 
 be wholly displeasing to your party. I have 
 not been very strong lately. I wanted change 
 and could not manage it, as of course Judy 
 was my first consideration ; but very oddly, 
 just after Judy had gone to you I got an 
 offer on very advantageous terms for my 
 house for two months. The family are very 
 quiet and ricJi and few in number ; so, as I 
 had to decide at once, I said yes. This kept 
 me very busy getting ready, so I had no time 
 to write to Judy, and as before I put my 
 wishes in force I was anxious to know how 
 far they would meet those of your party, I 
 thought it best, instead of making her the 
 medium of communication between us, to 
 write to you direct myself. I purpose then 
 to come to Sandycot for a part of my holiday, 
 and if agreeable I should be glad if 3^ou 
 would look, or let your maid help Judy to 
 look out for two quiet rooms for me some- 
 where near you. I wish to be quiet, and 
 prefer lodyings to an hotel, as, living so long
 
 103 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 alone, I may say I prefer my own hours and 
 humdrum ways. After a week or two of 
 
 Sandycot air I shall go into shire, where 
 
 I have some relations, one a retired naval 
 officer. 
 
 " ' With kind regards to your circle, 
 
 " ' Believe me yours sincerely, 
 
 " ' Mary Aylmere. 
 
 " ' P.S. — I have written hastily, or should 
 have said how much I appreciate your good- 
 ness to Judy. I never feel uneasy when she is 
 with you, or I should he just now, as I heard 
 from some one who was in Sandycot latel}^ 
 that the notorious frambler Major Tyler was 
 there. I fear he is a mauvais sujet and has 
 ruined many.' " 
 
 " I am sure," commented Mabella when 
 Judy had finished, " I am quite sure that 
 that is slander. I know Major Tyler plays 
 whist well, and to your mother and her puri- 
 tanical circle at Casterham a game of beggar- 
 my-neighbour would be gambling." 
 
 "That's the major's game, according to 
 mamma," laughed Judy.
 
 LOVE AND LIKINa. 107 
 
 They all laughed. 
 
 " Well," continued Mabella, " the mauvais 
 sujet is going away. I have a civil note of 
 adieux and regrets. Here i^ is ; a servant 
 brought it early this morning ; ' a sudden sum- 
 mons to a sick relation,' he says, that is all." 
 
 And that was all the note which now went 
 round the table stated, but a small inclosure, 
 not intended for that anticipated " round," 
 had been read by the only eyes for which 
 it had been indited, and destroyed. Even 
 Dulsie looked at Mabella's beaming and a 
 little conscious face with surprise, but only 
 Sybella with suspicion. 
 
 For the moment Judy was conscious of 
 a fleeting feeling of disappointment, if not 
 regret. She had laughingly called the major 
 her " improver ; " she had enjoyed her little, 
 sly, " grown-up " flirtations, as she dubbed 
 her short tete-a-tete with the handsome 
 soldier, which he had imbued with the 
 charm, to a romantically inclined nature, of 
 a slight mystery, and on which he had left 
 the flattering impression that she had been a 
 little more than pleasant to his world-weary
 
 lOS LOVE AND LIKINQ. 
 
 soul. For the man himself she had not even 
 the shadow of a regret, perhaps, had she 
 known it, an indefinite sense of relief. Only 
 Dulsie made lament. 
 
 " Oil, dear, I am so sorry," she said ; "just 
 as we had got to like him so much, the life 
 and soul of the place, and so attentive here. 
 It Avas onlv last nio'ht he told me that he 
 didn't know what he should do at the end of 
 the sea-bathing season, for that it was only 
 since he had known us that he had ceased 
 to regret the army." 
 
 Mabella sighed, a restful sympathetic sigh, 
 and smiled a bland and altogether innerly 
 satisfied smile, and Sybella's keen eyes trans- 
 lated their dumb language aright. But Judy, 
 always keenly alive to bathos, laughed outright. 
 
 " From arms of steel to arms of ilesh," she 
 cried, and then with exquisite mimicry of 
 Elsie Eber's still, impassioned manner, her 
 hand airily and flutteringly alight on the 
 sweet-scented bunch of flowers stuck care- 
 lessly in her bosom, she said : 
 
 " ' Oil, for a falconers voice, 
 
 To lure this tassel-gentle back again.' "
 
 LOVE AND LIKlNa. 109 
 
 Even Sybella laughed. Judy's 2^1ay was 
 demoralizing, slie was used to say ; and then, 
 to make amends for her frivolity, she added, 
 not a little viciously : 
 
 " Xot a very complimentary quotation, 
 Judy : a hawk is a bird of prey." 
 
 " I said a tassel-gentle, Sybella." 
 
 "Which stands for hawk if you want a 
 falconer's voice to lure. Oh Judy, Judy, 
 
 " ' Many a shaft at random sent, 
 
 Finds mark the archer never meant.' 
 
 But test it dear, whistle from Egbert Hall." 
 
 Mabella, inured to Sybella"s gibes, took not 
 the least notice, and Dulsie, naturally slow of 
 comprehension, did not qnite understand, she 
 only knew that Sybella was at her " cuts " 
 again. Judy's heart was tender, and she 
 loved Mabella. 
 
 " Sandycot will miss him," she said kindly ; 
 "it's not well off in tassel- gentles. But there's 
 somebody who won't," and she laughed a 
 merry peal of laughter. "Indeed, now I 
 think of it, he has something to do with his 
 sudden departure." Another peal.
 
 110 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 " Who are you talking of, Judy ? " asked 
 Mabella. 
 
 "Ned," said Sybella. "I thought he was 
 jealous." 
 
 "Ned, indeed," and Judy tossed her head. 
 "I sliould Hke to know what right Ned woukl 
 have to be jealous of me with an3^body." 
 
 "Then who? Mr. Green?" This from 
 Dulsie. 
 
 Judy rang another peal, and Tim, who was 
 discussing a chicken bone, thinking it a chal- 
 lenge for a romp, rushed out of his house and 
 seized her skirt with his teeth, barking and 
 worrying. 
 
 " That's right, Tim, speak for yourself," and 
 she lifted the little animal up by the shoulders 
 and turned his small defiant muzzle towards 
 his mistress. 
 
 " Oh, Tim, you are the ingrate," said 
 Mabella; "after all the sweet biscuits he 
 brought you, too." 
 
 "And which he took with a snarl and ate 
 with his back to him," said Sybella. 
 
 "It was jealousy," and Mabella took a piece 
 of sugar and held it up to her pet. Judy had
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. Ill 
 
 to put him down in sharp haste, sugar was 
 one of Tim's weaknesses ; then hfting the 
 envelope of Major Tyler's note from the 
 table, she passed it across her face, saying : 
 
 " How fond he was of cedar ; " and with a 
 sudden impulse she added, " I wonder if Tim 
 would know it." 
 
 Tim ran to her call, expectant of some 
 delicacy. 
 
 " Whose is that, Tim ? " and she put the 
 envelope down before him. One snift", and 
 the next instant it was in shreds. The hair on 
 his back stood up like a hog's bristles, and 
 his breathing was smothered by rage. 
 
 " Ah, Timothy, better have you for a friend 
 than a foe," said Judy, resuming her break- 
 fast. " Now go to your house," which 
 Timothy did with a rush, where, bringing 
 himself up on his hind quarters, his forelegs 
 stiff and straight before him, he sat on the 
 offensive letter and growled. 
 
 It was arranged that Mabella should look 
 for rooms for Mrs. Aylmere, and that Judy 
 and Dulsie should go to Egbert Hall in the 
 morning for a short stay.
 
 112 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 At twelve o'clock, tlieir letters written, 
 each went her se])arate way, to meet again at 
 two for luncheon ; Sybella to her Turkish 
 bath, Dulsie to her room to give packing 
 directions to her maid, Mabella on a lodf]^inof 
 quest ostensibly, Judy to Seapinks by appoint- 
 ment. 
 
 Unless within their own domicile, the door 
 shut and the Venetians down, Sand^xot had 
 the happy knack of making every one feel en 
 evidence. Trees, which in far more exposed 
 places by the sea grow with care and nursing 
 into gratefully shaded fulness, at Sandycot never 
 attained the proportions of even a moderate 
 pollard. So unrelieved by arboreous ameni- 
 ties, the stiff terraces stared at each other ; 
 the four sides of a solitary square, with their 
 pretentious porticoed mansions, looked scorn- 
 fully over the head of the meagre shrubbery 
 in the centre at their monotonous replicas 
 opposite, and the somewhat narrow streets, 
 with tlieir bay windows, seemed part of an 
 idle community for ever agape for news. 
 But it was the boast of Sandycot that there 
 was not a house within its precincts that
 
 LOVE XSB LIKING. 113 
 
 from some given quarter could not command 
 a view of the sea. " It is tlie only summer 
 resort," said Miss Turner, tlie spiral young 
 lady, " that does not boast a lover's lane." 
 
 Yet the " old, old story " managed ever and 
 again to make itself heard by the ears for 
 which it was meant, and many an hour fled 
 on wings too swift for happy hearts, beating 
 under the lee of a derelict coble, or better far 
 wandering by the long, long stretch of golden 
 sand rounding to the base of distant battle- 
 ments of clifis, their silence broken only by 
 the murmuring music of the sea, their soli- 
 tude by " gleams of curlews ; " better, fitter 
 place than even woodside covert or woodbine 
 lane for that mutual transmutation of self 
 which the world calls delusion, religion idol- 
 atry, and heaven love. 
 
 The favourite lod^inojs for the itinerant 
 were in Shore Street, which, some feet above, 
 faced the sea. In this street were Sandy cot's 
 principal shops, its club, and its chief hotel. 
 Here, over the circulating library, Mrs. Beau- 
 morris had her pleasant rooms. 
 
 The tide would not be at the full till two 
 
 VOL. L 8
 
 114 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 o'clock, but the streets were at this hour, a 
 little after twelve, emptied of strollers, who 
 were either in the shade of their habitations or 
 under improvised tents on the shore. 
 
 Mabella with a three volume novel in her 
 hand entered the library. There she found 
 Mrs. Beaumorris, turning over the leaves of a 
 book of poems, and opposite her, his back 
 against a centre stand of photograplis, and 
 making: idle licrures on the ground with his 
 stick, Major Tyler. A rapid glance told lier 
 he was a prisoner against his will. Mabella, 
 who was singularly void of tact, and to-day 
 not a little flustered, only acknowledged Mrs. 
 Beaumorris's presence with the stiffest of 
 bows, but shook hands warmly with her 
 companion. 
 
 " I'm a little late," she whispered, or in what 
 she believed to be a whisper, which reached 
 Creamy 's ear. A gleam of mischief and spite 
 combined contracted her sleepy eyes. 
 
 " An assignation evidently," she said to her- 
 self. 
 
 "What have you been reading, Miss Egbert?" 
 she asked, taking up one of the volumes Mabella
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 115 
 
 had laid down ; then anticipating the reply, 
 " Oh ! ' Not Wisely, but Too Well.' Don't you 
 think that titles of novels are often very 
 suggestive texts ? A world of romance, reality, 
 and warning^' she emphasized the last word, 
 " lie in these simple words. Ah, major ! " she 
 turned her eyes convictingly on that gentle- 
 man, who was anything but at his ease, ''I'm 
 afraid it is the reverse with men, they generally 
 love wisely, but not too well." 
 
 The major was not in a mood to be trifled 
 with. The rebuff the beauty had given him 
 the previous night was not forgotten — it had 
 been scored aoainst her. His des^radincc 
 position to the woman he had despised and 
 wronged, his enforced and humiliating de- 
 parture, now at hand, the imminent risk he 
 was now^ running of losing his last chance of a 
 few words with Mabella, words on which, if 
 only spoken to-day, his very fate depended, 
 all working together roused the savage, perhaps 
 never very latent in him. He turned quickly 
 so as to again face his enemy, and sneering as 
 he took off his hat in adieu, at the same time 
 holding back a chair to let her pass out, he
 
 116 LOVE AND LIIQNG. 
 
 said, " It was from philanthropy I used to make 
 love, belle Creamy, for you know the best 
 thing to keep a woman from playing the devil 
 is to encourage her in playing the fool." 
 
 He had spoken between his teeth, and only 
 to the ear for which the words were intended. 
 Just for a second, as if stunned, Mrs. Beau- 
 morris stayed her exit, then the blood left her 
 face — Creamy never flushed — and with a 
 supercilious astonished look, as if the man, 
 hat in hand before her, was some presumptuous 
 lacquey, some inferior social creature, she went 
 slowly and composedly out of the shop, slightly 
 bowing to Mabella. 
 
 Just then the librarian brought the exchange 
 books for which the latter had asked, and 
 Major Tyler taking them, said he would carry 
 them so far as their roads laid together. 
 
 When they got into the street he said, pre- 
 serving an indifferent manner with cautious 
 regard for the points of observation in the 
 upper windows opposite : 
 
 " I have something of vital importance to 
 say to you ; is there any place where I can see 
 you alone ? "
 
 LOVE AND LIKING, 117 
 
 " They are all out at the Lodge," she said, 
 '* and luncheon is not till two." 
 
 " My train leaves at two," he said ; *' I'll 
 desire a fly to call for me at the Lodge ; my 
 lugga^re will go with the hotel omnibus." 
 
 This he did. Tim had accompanied Judy, 
 the coast was clear. Just for one moment, 
 when the door closed and Glabella stood in ex- 
 pectant attitude before him, Major Tyler felt 
 his confidence fail him. He had drawn a rougli 
 mental outline of his intended statement ; was. 
 clear as to the absolute fiction and the more- 
 deceivimr half truths, had weighed well the 
 exact amount of fervour and passion that would- 
 be fittingly necessary to press his suit, and had 
 sorted out for ready use his repertory of moral- 
 platitude, chivalric fustian, and religious- 
 patter ; but though thus cap-a-pie he was at 
 fault — he did not know where to be^rin, whether 
 to put the vital question at once and leave 
 the awkward explanations till the prize was 
 secured, or to tell the "story of his life," 
 judicioush^ edited, and trust to pity and love 
 for the rest. 
 
 The musical clock on the chimney-piece
 
 H8 LOVE AND LIKINCt. 
 
 struck up its horary tune, and told the hour 
 of one. He had only twenty minutes to dare 
 and do. 
 
 "You are in trouble, Major Tyler," said 
 Mabella ; " I hope your sick friend is not a 
 very near relative." She had given the cue ; 
 Geoffrey Tyler was himself again. 
 
 His story is best told in his own words — 
 words of rapid utterance, now his tongue was 
 unloosed, but each duly proportioned and 
 harmoniously coloured, making a narrative of 
 perfect mosaic, artfully designed. 
 
 " We have been something more than 
 friends, Mabella," he said. '• /, at any rate, 
 have found, I fondly believe, rest for my soul 
 in your sympathy and womanly tenderness, so 
 unlike the selfish absorption and exacting ex- 
 clusiveness of raw girls. Even in my reckless 
 days, when I was ready to vow away my very 
 life at the foot of beauty, I knew that my 
 heart could never be reached but by a ' per- 
 fect w^oman, nobly planned, to warn, to com- 
 fort and command,' a woman Avhom time and 
 perhaps trial had mellowed and elevated, who 
 could in short understand a love apart from
 
 LOVE AND LlKINa. 119 
 
 passion, and give in return a generous, be- 
 lieving, and forbearing love. The Cupid in 
 me was never blind, Mabella, and so it came 
 that when I saw too clearly, and sickly passion 
 palled me, when I turned aside in very weari- 
 ness of soul, that my lovers became my 
 enemies. You know 
 
 " ' Heav'n has no rage like love to hatred taru'd, 
 Nor hell a fury like a woman scorn'd.' 
 
 And such relentless hatred has followed me 
 for ten long years. To free myself from its 
 consequences I left my profession, for she had 
 sworn my disgrace, and she had a tongue of a 
 syren and the cunning of a serpent. I was 
 helpless in her hands. Then to escape the 
 range of her power I expatriated myself, and 
 buried myself in Africa. It was only a 
 few months since I returned, trusting, like a 
 fool, that time had softened her rancour. I 
 did not hide myself in my own country ; I 
 went to my club, showed myself in my 
 old haunts, and at last came here, an idle 
 wanderer in quest of bracing air — and, 
 Mabella, last night we, that woman and /, met.''
 
 120 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 " Mrs. Beaumorris ? " said Mabella. 
 
 "No, no, though I sighed at her feet too, 
 not her ; Creamy has not vitality enough to 
 nourish a stronger than passive and spiteful 
 hate ; she discourages emotions, they leave 
 wrinkles, she says, but she will do her vicious 
 best to injure me if it comes in her way." 
 
 " Then who ? " asked Mabella throwins: off 
 her bonnet, her face flushed and her eyes 
 moist. 
 
 " Miss Eber ! " 
 
 " Oh, that mysterious, colourless, cold, 
 abstracted girl. Oh Geoffrey, I could believe 
 anything of that woman. Did she love you ? "' 
 
 " Yes, with a savage love. Oh, how I 
 sickened of her, but I had trusted her in the 
 first warmth of my delusion with every secret 
 of my life, and when I broke from lier she 
 vowed to use her poAver to blast me. She be- 
 lieves she has supernatural power. It looks 
 like it." 
 
 " But what can she do to you ? " 
 
 " I am coming to that, but I wished you to 
 understand something of my youthful nature. 
 I am forty-four now ; that my one bitterly
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 121 
 
 repented misdeed might not seem so heinous 
 in your sight, it was at any rate not sinned 
 against you. My first regiment was the 6th 
 Dragoons ; it was quartered in Ireland. I was 
 barely twenty. I could not hunt like the others, 
 for I was not rich ; I would not gamble, for 
 I had no money to lose; there was nothing 
 but shooting for leisure — shooting and my 
 lady's bower. I chose the latter. The 
 colonel's wife was a handsome woman ; she 
 rushed from one intrigue into another. The 
 colonel was a bully, and detested by men and 
 officers, but he was not master at home. He 
 was a little wizened martinet, mean of soul, 
 but a good barrack soldier. ^Men who ad- 
 mired her pitied her, but she had plenty of 
 consolation. I was green ; I did not pull up in 
 time. The colonel discovered our intimacy, and 
 we ran off: to be more accurate, she ran off 
 with me. Well, the usual course of things 
 happened. She was divorced and I married 
 her. I exchano-ed into another refjiment and 
 went to India. Of course there was no love 
 between us, but I was chivalrous in those 
 days, and I bore a great deal ; bore till my
 
 122 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 honour was compromised, and then I came 
 home and sued for a divorce. Before the 
 case came on I received a letter telling me. she 
 was dead — had been killed by a fall from 
 her horse. Oh, Mabella, the awful feeling of 
 relief that came over me when I realized that 
 I was free ! It was then that I met Elsie Eber 
 — there is no time to say where or how. She 
 was very lovely. There was something sooth- 
 ing to me in the thought that she was only a 
 simple maiden ; that her name had never been 
 before the world, that no one knew of our 
 relations to each other. I told her everything 
 in the reckless trustfulness of my nature. I 
 even gave her letters that ought to have been 
 sacred : I hid nothinsf of mv life from her. 
 I was deeply in debt and in the hands of the 
 Jews, for the divorce and all that had followed 
 had involved me deeply. I told Elsie I could 
 not take her to a home of shameful shifts and 
 privations, that any day might see me in a 
 debtors' prison. Then her brother — I do not 
 believe now that he was her brother — offered 
 to lend me two thousand pounds, to be repaid 
 when I sold out of the service. He did so, I
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 123 
 
 giving liim simply my I.O.U., and at the same 
 time a pledge to marry his sister, who was to 
 know nothing of the contract. This promise 
 I mvQ in writincf. When I came to think 
 over my bargain coolly I saw the trap into 
 which I had fallen. I discovered too that 
 she was a Jewess, a race which I abhorred. 
 The fancy I had called love had been worn 
 out by her vehemence, and my heart was 
 as dead to her as to a stone. But there was 
 no f.^'oinor back." 
 
 '• Did she not see you had ceased to care 
 for her?" asked Glabella tremblingly. She 
 was naturally keen of perception, and dimly 
 she felt the weak points of her wooer's 
 specious narrative, but she was as yet too 
 much under the glamour he had thrown over 
 her to do more than meekly indicate that her 
 faculties were only dormant. 
 
 '• She was too self-absorbed in her own 
 fierce passion," he replied ; " she believed in 
 herself — outside herself she had no rancfe. 
 The day was fixed for our marriage, when 
 I received a letter that my ivife was still living 
 and in London. She had caused the report of
 
 124 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 her death to be sent liome to stay the divorce 
 proceedings. It was a terrible position, and 
 yet I was sensible at the moment of a feeling 
 of relief, for I knew that she who was still my 
 wife would never claim me, and she who would 
 be my wife could not. 1 left the place where 
 we were and wrote to Elsie, sending her the 
 letter stating the fact of my wife's existence. 
 I have only a dim remembrance of what 
 followed ; I know she followed me to London 
 and that she reproached me with wild rage. 
 I was over-wrought, a brain fever ensued. 
 When I recovered I was a wreck, but Elsie's 
 persecutions had begun. She refused to be- 
 lieve that I did not know that my wife was 
 living when I met her first, and accused me 
 of getting money from her brother fraudu- 
 lently. In despair I sold out and repaid 
 her brotlier the two thousand pounds. A 
 week after I had done so he died. I had 
 omitted to get back my I.O.U., and this Elsie 
 row held and refused to give up. I went 
 to Africa, but before I went I stood by my 
 wife's dead body in her sister's house, and 
 obtained a le£]fal certificate of her death from
 
 LOVE AND LIKIXa. 125 
 
 the doctor. Then, free at last, I rushed into 
 savage life. If I had then been forced to marry 
 Elsie Eber, I would have put a pistol to my 
 head. Last night we met on the pier by ap- 
 pointment. She gave me twelve hours to 
 leave Sandycot, and swore that if I refused she 
 would sue me for the two thousand pounds ; 
 not, she said, for the sake of the money, but to 
 blast me in the eyes of every friend I pos- 
 sessed, and she can do so. Few would be- 
 lieve, even on proof, that I was misled as to 
 my wife's death, and except the letter stating 
 the fact, which I had received from a friend 
 and on which I stopped the divorce proceed- 
 ings, I had no proof. Then who would believe 
 my version of the two thousand pounds ? No, 
 Mabella, there is no mistake, she has me 
 hemmed in. Many names would be compro- 
 mised, dishonourably, for she kept letters I had 
 shown her. You see I tell you everything, 
 not palliating one jot or tittle of my folly, and 
 you know yourself the world will condemn 
 me because I did not redeem my promise to 
 marry the girl when I found I could." 
 
 Mabella had wept copiously during the
 
 128 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 major's recital. Her tears liad encouraged 
 liim. There was a pause. 
 
 " It is nearly half past one," she sobbed ; 
 '^ what are you going to do ? " 
 
 The wheels of the fly were heard in the 
 avenue. 
 
 " I am going away, hke a hunted deer, 
 a hopeless outcast, but if you would only say 
 that when this indignation is overpast a'ou 
 will see me once more, I shall not despair." 
 
 Mabella looked up ; her nose was very red, 
 her eyes also ; tears always made Mabella 's 
 features swell. 
 
 " Geoffrey," she said, " come back when you 
 like, you shall be welcome ;" and she held out 
 her hand, shading her weeping eyes with the 
 other, which held a handkerchief. 
 
 He seized the offered hand, kneeling on one 
 knee, and kissed it. 
 
 " One moment, Mabella" — the door bell rang 
 loudly — "give me your word that you will not 
 let Elsie poison your mind against me. I have 
 told you all without reserve, but she has 
 powerful influence ; I dread her." 
 
 " Geoffrey, she shall not tell her story to
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 127 
 
 me ; I believe you, that suffices. I am a true 
 woman," and bending down she kissed his brow. 
 
 " And promise me," he spoke in a fervid 
 whisper, " that you will be my wife, my 
 beloved, trusting, adored wife." 
 
 And Mabella, fairly overcome, her full 
 motherly bosom heaving with sympatliy, lier 
 heart soft with pity and her senses glamoured 
 and blinded by vanity and a spurious emotion 
 she mistook for love, gave her promise. 
 
 The servant to announce the fly was heard 
 approaching the door. The major, collected 
 and unruffled, took his hat, and as the door 
 opened held out his hand in formal adieu. 
 " I shall be there in a minute," he said, and 
 the man disappeared. 
 
 Mabella, to hide her tear-stained face, had 
 turned her back. When the door closed, she 
 turned round and smiled through her tears. 
 
 "We are one now, Geoffrey," she whis- 
 pered, a little shamed ; " this is my first pri- 
 vilege," and she handed him a cheque for a 
 hundred pounds. 
 
 With almost nervous eagerness his fingers 
 closed on the flimsy piece of paper. Cheques
 
 128 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 had grown in these later precarious years un- 
 familiar to him. The crisp touch reanimated 
 hope — it was as a dram to a worn man. 
 
 " For love's sake," was his sole answer ; and 
 as if from an uncontrollable impulse, he sud- 
 denly wound his arms round Mabella's portly 
 form, and kissed her full round cheeks. 
 
 " My wife, my rest, my love, my salvation," 
 he cried ; then with another farewell kiss he 
 hastened away. 
 
 As the Hy issued from the Lodge gate, Elsie 
 Eber and Judy, who had stood aside to let it 
 pass, entered. The major, well back in the 
 corner, his hat over his brow, with his usual 
 '• cursed luck," he said to himself, caught a re- 
 cognizing glance from Elsie's eyes and received 
 a valedictory snarl from Tim, who struck by 
 some sudden thought set up his bristles and 
 scampered home, not once drawing breath till 
 he found on inspection that his own particu- 
 lar residence had not been invaded by the 
 enemy. Elsie, whom Judy had brought to 
 luncheon, met with a repulsively cold recep- 
 tion from Mabella, and so the words of warn- 
 ing remained unuttered, the story untold.
 
 LOVE AXD LIKING. 129 
 
 " He has been before me," she said to 
 herself, " but he cannot hurt me. When 
 pressing need comes then I will speak," and 
 strolling in the garden with Judy, she wove a 
 little plan, to be dependent on the progress of 
 the rcatter, to take Judy into her confidence, 
 but not yet. 
 
 [5) 
 
 VOL.
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 " Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure, 
 Thrill the deepest notes of woe." 
 
 " To him that in love of nature holds communion with her 
 visible forms, she speaks a various language." 
 
 It would be liard to say to wliicli this im- 
 promptu visit to the country brought the 
 greatest pleasure, to Dulsie or to Judy ; to 
 Judy, perhaps. Youth has a capacity, a brain 
 and physical power of enjoyment, that wlien 
 years have run over the third, in rare cases 
 the fourth, decade, fail in intensity. Euhng 
 passions, strong proclivities, are seldom sub- 
 dued by time ; but in ordinary natures, with 
 no pronounced extremes, when the daughters 
 of music are low and the windows darkened, 
 desire fails, and the cup of pleasure is as wine 
 from which the spirit has gone. But there is 
 a placid enjoyment known only to that period 
 when the brook and river meet, when the 
 hair is a little more than gray and the eye
 
 LOYE AND LIKIXG. 131 
 
 a little less than bright, when the step is firm 
 as ever, but with no elastic spring, when the 
 voice, strong and sweet as of old, never 
 wakes love's echo. Then the pulses beat with 
 rhythmical tranquillity, sensible of no depres- 
 sion in Autumn's dull sorrowing season, or 
 quickening in Summer's golden prime. Not 
 insensible, not cold, we take the goods the 
 gods provide, with serene unruffled enjoy- 
 ment, vibrating to, but no longer sounding 
 notes of rapture's diapason. 
 
 There was not a haunt of bird or flower 
 in the wood and coppices and the outlying 
 lands of the Egbert domain that Judy did not 
 know. The shepherd, old Giles, an honoured 
 servitor of fifty years' standing, and Judy, 
 were firm friends. From him she had learnt 
 wonderful secrets of outdoor life, secrets 
 which he never wearied in the telling 
 and she never wearied in the hearing. 
 While the slow sheep browsed from point 
 to point, sometimes in the hollow, sometimes 
 in the turf of the slope, Giles had to sit still, 
 keeping them always in view, leaning on his 
 crook or reclining against a friendly tree. 
 
 9—2
 
 132 LOVE AND LIKINO. 
 
 There he would ponder, reading curiously in 
 Nature's book. In Scotland, on the bleak 
 hill-sides, the shepherd, moving or standing, 
 plies his knitting-pins, but in the sheltered 
 south there is more to distract his mind in 
 the herbaceous coppices. Green lanes and 
 bridle tracks, Giles knew them all for miles 
 round, short cuts to evade the turnpike tolls 
 and springs that in drought were never dry. 
 He was a herbalist, too, in a narrow way, 
 knowing chiefly those of medicinal properties. 
 He knew the wild flowers, too, calling them 
 by quaint old names. To some were attached 
 stranofe tales tingled with witchcraft — not the 
 wild romantic legends of the north, but weird 
 evil stories, the outcome probably of some 
 slight incident, that breaking in on the dull 
 monotony of old pastoral life had made 
 a stir in the district and so gradually, from 
 tongue to tongue, had gathered and grown 
 till they stood forth in all the proportions of 
 a rural tradition, and by the curious were 
 added to the ingeniously gleaned records of 
 folk-lore. 
 
 He knew the hiding-places of the pink
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 133 
 
 pimpernel, just on the verge of the ripening 
 corn : tlie moist drives of the mead, where 
 show the pale lilac cuckoo flower and maw- 
 thorn, and where the wind anemone blows 
 in the copse. Spots, too, were known to him 
 where gay groups of double buttercups grew, 
 and loamy ditch shores rich with the lovely 
 blue crane's bill and the herb " Eobert," 
 with its changing fohage, lying " like crimson 
 lace" on the coarse herbage of the bank. 
 The foxglove, crimson and white, was there, 
 red clover in patches, the claut (marsh ranun- 
 culus) and blue bell. Bright gleams, too, of 
 the white violet, and in places where the 
 water rose to a certain height, a stately flag- 
 lily could be found. And like a gay vesture 
 over the thick-set hedge on the far side were 
 flung the woodbine and briar-rose, inter- 
 mingled with the silent bells of the white 
 and striped wind-bind (convolvulus). Giles 
 knew, too, mossy glades where rare ferns 
 lurked, and stubbly ridges where tall grasses, 
 many hued, clustered in sheaves. He would 
 gather them for the "little Miss," the term 
 by which he was wont to designate Judy in
 
 134 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 her earlier girlhood, and to wliich he always 
 held. Gorgeous bouquets Judy reared from 
 these wild spoils of covert and open, dashing 
 in, in brilliant effects, the scarlet poppy, the 
 " blue-bottle," and time old " eggs and butter" 
 — bow she loved the archaic names. Many a 
 strange flower talk she and Giles had together 
 in terms that would have puzzled the learned 
 botanist. 
 
 Of the world and the world's ways old Giles 
 knew little. He had never been taught to 
 read, and the stories of foreign battles, kings 
 overthrown, famines, and earthquakes, pre- 
 sented no more reality to his mind than the 
 chapters from Eevelations to which on occa- 
 sion he listened in the dreary old parish 
 church. The outer world Avas as dim a world 
 to Giles as that to us where are leviathan and 
 creeping things innumerable. Of doctrinal 
 or doo*matic religion he knew as little as the 
 untaught heathen, but somehow, from the 
 unlearned cottage preacher, perhaps, Giles 
 had got, as the Methodists phrase it, the 
 " real thinc^ " into his heart, and as much of 
 it as was necessary into his head. It needed
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 135 
 
 but very simple words to express old Giles' 
 simple creed, that all men were sinners — 
 how, he could not quite " tackle," but he be- 
 lieved they were, for God said so, and he 
 knew he was one ; and as they were born 
 sinners, sin came so natural-like to them that 
 they never could shift themselves of it, so God 
 sent his own Son to wash them clean by His 
 blood and to tell them how to keep clean. 
 That was about all. 
 
 He liked the cottage preachings, which were 
 full of rural images and vivid illustrations 
 from cottage life, but he had a great respect 
 for the gentry and a duty to the squire, so he 
 bared his head every Sunday morning on his 
 wooden seat in the dim, dusty, high-pewed 
 church and repeated the responses to prayers, 
 made, he supposed, for the gentlefolks, they 
 were " so grand like." The religion of his 
 every- day life was uprightness in word and 
 deed, and a watchful independence that made 
 him " owe no man anything." This was his 
 rendering of what he supposed his relations 
 to God required of him. What God was to 
 him ten thousand voiced nature alone could
 
 136 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 have told. Giles saw Him in the meanest 
 weed that grew and heard Him in the voice- 
 less stars. He knew Him in the teeming life 
 of the animal world, that living evidence of 
 mysterious creative power and tender fatherly 
 care. 
 
 They were red-letter days to Giles when 
 the little miss was at the Hall, the one bond 
 of sympathy being Judy's preference for the 
 simple wild flowers of the field over the gor- 
 geous and perfume-laden exotics of the green- 
 house, and her great love for the wild denizens 
 of the trees and fields. 
 
 They arrived at Egbert Hall by an early 
 train, and after luncheon her first visit was 
 to the stables to see Gloriana. She was 
 accompanied by the squire. 
 
 *' Isn't she a born beauty, miss," said 
 the proud Peters, as scarcely held in by 
 the light bridle he had thrown over her 
 head, the mare came prancing out of her box 
 stall. 
 
 '• And isn't she well named ? " cried the 
 delighted girl ; "her skin is like cloth of gold. 
 Can I ride her to-day ? "
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 137 
 
 " She be's uncommon fresh, miss ; but I 
 knows you're a tight one, and she knows it 
 too, and if you'll be content with tlie ring for 
 the first try, I think, if the squire's agreeable, 
 it'll be safe enough." 
 
 By this Judy had quietly sidled up to the 
 proud-looking, splendid animal, now pawing 
 the ground with impatient hoof. Her gentle 
 strokes, like mesmeric passes, calmed the fire 
 and fret, and Gloriana bent her lofty head to 
 the young girl's face, held fearlessly up, and 
 smelt her hair, which her hat tipping off had 
 left uncovered. 
 
 " Give me the bridle," said Judy, which, a 
 little fearing, Peters did. Then she kissed the 
 still drooped head between the eyes and spoke 
 sweet nonsense, words of cheer and endear- 
 ment, and lastly she slipped out of her pocket 
 a piece of sugar, which Gloriana ate as peace- 
 fully and with as much enjoyment as a two- 
 year-old babe. The sugar finished, the 
 mare whinnied, and just holding the reins 
 lightly in her left hand, her right entwined 
 in the glossy mane and her cheek pressed up 
 against her favourite's arched neck, Judy led
 
 138 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 the way to tlie ring, Gloriana deporting her- 
 self Hke a himb. 
 
 " She remembers miss," said Peters, follow- 
 ing with the squire in rapt admiration of the 
 pair. " She's martel fond of me, too, in her 
 way, but 'cause she knows she can't play her 
 tantrums with me she's fond o' showing off a 
 bit, an' if I got aback o' her now she'd mebbe 
 up with her head and try 'elusions (conclu- 
 sions) with me. But she ain't got a hounce 
 o' vice ; it's just with horse-flesh same ways 
 as women-flesh ; it's the sprack ones as is 
 easiest managed, and safest, too, in the long 
 run." 
 
 Peters, tliough a cockney born and bred, 
 had yet lived so much in the provinces that 
 he had made his own many a quaint word of 
 dialect and old form of speech. 
 
 Arrived at the ring — a large inclosed field 
 so called, with turf}^ bordering — a groom 
 brought Judy the trainer's skirt, an im- 
 promptu substitute for her habit, and thus 
 simpl}^ accoutred she sprang from Peters' 
 hand like a bird into the saddle. 
 
 Judy could ride. She had had a few initia-
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 139 
 
 tory lessons by lier mother's desire, who be- 
 lieved only in things according to pattern ; 
 but Judy's riding had nothing of conventional 
 riding about it ; she was as much at her ease 
 in her saddle — or without it, as Peters could 
 tell had he been given to tell tales out of 
 school — as on the hio^h swino^-bouo-h of the 
 old elm, on which she always declared she 
 had got her best lessons. She was, as the 
 common phrase is, a piece of her horse. 
 
 To-day, Gloriana had onl}" a snaffle, but to 
 every touch of the sHght hand that held the 
 rein she answered with the precision of a 
 lio:ht skiff to the helm. At the first 2:0 ofl 
 Judy's rebellious hat slipped backwards, but 
 she caught it deftly and secured it by the 
 string to her crutch. Her hair was tied, as 
 usual when she was, as she phrased it, on the 
 loose, in a bunch behind, or, as Peters horsily 
 termed it, in a bang tail. This floated and 
 feathered and streamed at will of the light 
 breeze and swift motion. At starting, just 
 to remind Gloriana of somethinc: she knew a 
 little of before — her strength of will — she kept 
 the reins firmly in hand and made the first
 
 140 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 round of the ring in a slashing trot ; then 
 with a whisper of commendation and an en- 
 couraging pat she relaxed her tension very 
 slightly and made the second in a wanton 
 canter, the splendid animal beneath her 
 boundincf and curvetim?, startinor in affected 
 timidity at a familiar blackbird, and switch- 
 ing her tail in " show off," Peters said, " agin 
 miss." Not a movement of Judy could be 
 detected apart from her horse ; it was a 
 perfect harmony of motion, and the mare's 
 frolic, fun, and pranks, her gay revelry of 
 freedom, were to the lookers-on the sporting 
 of two liappy beings in exquisite unison each 
 with the other. 
 
 So when, at the third round, Judy gave the 
 reins a jubilant shake and drew her lithe 
 figure in closer form, the mare with fiery 
 response dashed off in an abandoned gallop 
 that sent the turf beneath her feet flying 
 over her head and Judy's blood coursing 
 with wild fervour through every vein of her 
 body. 
 
 Two such rounds the pair took, and then 
 with a firm decisive check Judy drew up
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 141 
 
 sharp to a stand beside the proud Peters and 
 just a little nervous squire. 
 
 " You've no fears now, Peters," she said as 
 she alighted on the ground, "just for all the 
 world," he afterwards told his wife, " like a 
 bit o' thistledown." 
 
 " I only wish," was his reply as he touched 
 his cap, " I only wish, miss, as it could be 
 mannerly-like for you to ride in the ring at 
 the show, an' she'd fetch a price as 'ud make 
 the countryside's mouth water." 
 
 " Oh, cousin Egbert," cried Judy in real 
 distress, "you promised me never to sell 
 Gloriana." 
 
 " And I never shall, Judy," he replied. 
 "Peters must be content with her taking a 
 prize, and Pm sure she'll do that." 
 
 " A prize, the prize, you mean ; nothing 
 short of the medal will satify either Peters or 
 me, will it, Peters ? " 
 
 "There's narra one'll touch her, miss; an' 
 it's known too, it is, don't you be feared," and 
 he led the mare away, not a hair turned, as 
 he pointed out, but whinnying with backward- 
 glances at Judy.
 
 142 LOVE AND LIKlNa. 
 
 *' Now, cousin Egbert," she said, her eyes 
 dancing in the sunshine, " my scamper has 
 put me in such very high feather I'll be off to 
 old Giles and the birds. I'm bound to go to 
 him sharp, for he's sure to find out I'm here 
 by hook or by crook^' and she was off. 
 
 The squire stood, as she flitted across the 
 fields like a gay butterfly, watching with 
 loving eyes till she was lost in a copse, at the 
 far end of which he had told her she would 
 find the old shepherd. 
 
 The weather had been exceptionally dry, 
 and the meadows were in parts parched and 
 brown, but outside the copse, on the rise of 
 the hill, there was a little streamlet that, 
 according to tradition, had never, even in 
 seasons of severest drought, been known to 
 dry up. The grass on the hill, too, over- 
 shadowed in parts by the copse, was green 
 and luxuriant. 
 
 Here Giles had his trusty dogs Sam and 
 Beck at his side. 
 
 From this point of observation he could 
 command the movements of his fleecy trea- 
 sures further than the eye could see. They
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 143 
 
 were some four hundred in number, not more 
 than two hundred of which lay within his line 
 of vision. 
 
 But Giles knew that any disturbance of 
 those beyond his ken would be immediately 
 communicated to the rest of the fiock, and a 
 word to Sam and Beck would send succour 
 on wings. 
 
 The quiet streamlet mile by mile widened, 
 till issuing from the boundary of the Egbert 
 estates it became a broad river. 
 
 Here it was the ever fresh sparkling stream 
 babbling over tiny flints ; but the sheep, 
 grazing at will, cropped the herbage too 
 closely to admit of flowers^ except under 
 some boulder, or in the cleft of a decaying 
 tree-root. 
 
 An osier bed was near. Here was the first 
 of many hundreds of pollards, that sparsely at 
 first, and thickly afterwards, clothed the banks 
 of the broadening stream for miles down the 
 valley. 
 
 Not far from the osier bed was a pool of 
 clear limpid water, to wdiicli in the meridian 
 heat of the day the cattle from the uplands
 
 144 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 came to slake tlieir thirst, and not a stone's 
 throw from the pool stood Giles' cottage. 
 
 "Did you know I had come?" asked Judy 
 after a friendly greeting of her humble 
 friend. 
 
 "A was back the stable-yard first thing 
 tha day," replied Giles, " an' a zeed Mr. 
 Peters rubbin' down the chestnut mare. He 
 zed nar a word but the time o' day, but 
 a' zays to myzen as tha little miss wud be o' 
 cummin', an' I vor on the watch. There's a 
 rare lot o' nests about an' a lot o' 3^oung 'uns 
 on the wing." 
 
 Then Judy patted the grave Sam and 
 indifferent Beck in cfreetinf^, too, which atten- 
 tion they acknowledged by the scarcely per- 
 ceptible movement of the feathery termination 
 of their tails ; ordinarily they recognized 
 acquaintance with nothing living outside the 
 shepherd and their charge. 
 
 " Well," she said, " they're as dry and 
 crusty as any old bachelors ; they're not like 
 Tim." 
 
 " Ackerdish times vor the ship if they wos 
 like that varmint," said Giles dryly. " No
 
 LOVE AND LIiaXG. 145 
 
 vurtlier nor thick lambing, when Miss Egbert 
 vor athin tha housen there with tha missus," 
 he indicated the cottage by a side nod, " he 
 skinks athert unconsared hke, on a' happens to 
 zee hin, an' in a yap he had a riddhn lamb as 
 vor in tha garn by the drewt. Miss, she 
 coomes running out, an' Sam here vor on hyn 
 like a flash. It would ha' gone hard with the 
 varmint only a' chokes hyn off, an' then there 
 vor a shindy, but I'm boun' to say as Sam got 
 the worst on it." 
 
 " And the lamb ? " asked Judy. 
 
 " A' did noa good ; the mizzus kept it a bit 
 by the fire, an' worked with it, but a' died. 
 And just to zee Miss Egbert carryin' tha 
 little doovel away in hern arms. Ye haven't 
 brought Tim, miss, hev ees ? " 
 
 Jud}' reassured her friend on that point, 
 and then asked had he fulfilled an old promise 
 and found her a cuckoo's egg. This Giles had 
 done. 
 
 And then followed what Judy called her 
 bird-chatter. Giles had to give an account of 
 mutual friends ; if the old swallows had come 
 back to the cottage porch, the starlings to the 
 
 VOL. 1. 10
 
 146 LOVE AXD LIKIXa. 
 
 cliimney. Had he seen a kingfislier on t.lie 
 stream, and how many pah's of water wagtails 
 had he counted ? 
 
 He had to tell, too, of the nest of the red- 
 breast he had found at the root of the old 
 elm near the sheepcote, and how he tended it 
 on Sundays when lads got into the park, and 
 at last saw the fledglings safe on the wing and 
 able to take care of themselves. 
 
 Many a story of the blue-tit and the cole-tit, 
 of the yuckills in the sallywithy he had to 
 tell, of the white blackbird that found a mate 
 and built in the laurels, and which the game- 
 keeper killed (Judy echoed Giles' still warm 
 indignation at the senseless deed), and of the 
 venerable pair of ravens, great intimates of 
 the shepherd and his little miss, who this 
 year, as before, had reared their small family 
 undisturbed on the centre of the great cedar's 
 topmost branch in the deer park. He had 
 taken the old pair a dead rabbit now and 
 again ; they never now, he said, moved a 
 feather when he came on them. 
 
 When Judy had exhausted her questions, 
 Giles rose with an air of mystery, and desiring
 
 LOVE AND LIKING-. 147 
 
 Sam and Beck to lie close lie bade her follow 
 liim cautiously. 
 
 " It bees late for them," he said, " but 
 they've bin more than loike disturbed at some 
 other bit. They're dogged cute rustics, too, 
 but there's no bein' up to ' varmint,' " a term 
 applied by Giles to all dogs outside collies. 
 "Tha gamekeeper he vor after a stoat he'd 
 started fram the edder (hedge), and I vos 
 watching him dodging it, when I seed some 
 o' the rubble — dead leaves and the like — move. 
 A kep' still as Sam there, an' then a zees hyn 
 come out, it vor zunset, and up he flies on 
 thuck branch." 
 
 They had reached a hedge beside an old 
 elm with a sweeping branch drooping over, 
 and to this Giles pointed. 
 
 " And themmiii he besfins an' zino^s till the 
 copse is as still as death froom nought but 
 jealousy." 
 
 " Oh, Giles, is it a nightingale ? " 
 
 "That's about it, little miss," he replied, 
 his keen sunken eyes gleaming with pleasure 
 at his companion's delight. " Ees guessed 
 it ; it bist the daintest loike nest a' ever zeed, 
 
 10—2
 
 148 LOVE AND LIIvIXG. 
 
 an' there vor five eggs, a greeny-brown. A' 
 kep' one, but tlia hen her laid another. Tha 
 j^oung 'uns hev bin out 'em two weeks, an' 
 I've my eye on one I'll take and tiddle for 
 ees." 
 
 Just one peep, taken on tiptoe, Judy 
 allowed herself. The parent birds were ab- 
 sent, and she could see the fledglings huddled 
 together in terror, and almost outgrown their 
 nest. Giles, with tender, careful hand, scat- 
 tered dry leaves and grasses to hide any 
 marks of disturbance, and then the pair 
 returned to the stream-side and stood awhile 
 by the shady pond to watch the moor- 
 hens and dab-chicks skim and dive. After a 
 little Judy drew from her pocket a goodly- 
 sized parcel, the aroma of which instantly 
 attracted Giles' notice. 
 
 "It's the best I could get at Sandycot, 
 Giles. The shopman did declare he'd had it 
 through some one who had got into trouble 
 about it, so he said. He wanted me to 
 believe it was extra good because it was 
 smuggled. I suppose you see it is labelled 
 pure A^irginia ? "
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 149 
 
 " And zo it bees, little miss," and Giles 
 applied liis nose to it with the gusto of a con- 
 noisseur ; " it's bist prime Virginny," and he 
 took off his hat Avith grateful courtesy to the 
 smiling girL 
 
 Judy had a word for the shepherd's wife, 
 querulous and feeble with age and rheuma- 
 tism, but the cottage was clean and snug, and 
 Giles was " used to her caddie." He was out 
 most of the day, he said. She was a tidy 
 woman still, and, the Lord be praised, he was 
 growing deaf. 
 
 Judy threaded her way home by herself, 
 keeping, as a change, close by the brook. 
 Its downward course was checked at intervals 
 by hatches, which forced the water out into 
 the meadows and into small ponds. These 
 hatches were movable. One Judy knew 
 well. It was moss-grown and in a quiet 
 shady corner ; there the kingfishers resorted 
 for food, which they find readier in brooks 
 and in such like small watercourses than in 
 the mere and broader expanse of waters. 
 Over the brook, beside this mossy hatch, 
 were overhanging branches, where they could
 
 150 LOVE AND LIKIXG. 
 
 perch and watch for their prey. Without 
 this wary survey they do nothing. The day 
 was nearing to evening ; it was clear and still. 
 Judy stood apart, for perched on a slender 
 twig arching over the water was a halcyon, 
 as she loved to call the kingfisher. There it 
 sat in kingly guise. Seen from the distance it 
 looked like a gay water-flower. Judy kept 
 the utter stillness the bird loves ; there was a 
 movement in the clear depths below, and like 
 a rainbow-flash the bird descended, and then, 
 darting upwards with a small trout in its 
 beak, flew swiftly to the distaut pond, where 
 its nest lay hid among the rushes, the red 
 and azure of its plumage glancing in the sun- 
 shine. 
 
 All things lovely and at peace Judy had 
 seen that day, and with her innocent heart 
 full of love and praise she wended her way 
 on, singing now and again snatches of songs 
 and erratic bars of church minstrelsy. Sud- 
 denly, as she put her hand on a turnstile 
 which led her out of the last field of her 
 progress, she heard a sharp shrill note of 
 terror, and right at her foot, as if for
 
 LOVE AXD LIKINa. 151 
 
 shelter, fell, rather than alighted, a green 
 linnet. Its head was turned upwards and its 
 beak open, not in defence, but paralyzed fear. 
 She stooped to pick it up, but before her 
 hand could touch it a shrike, or butcher bird, 
 swooped down and carried the quarry off in 
 triumph. Judy reached the door of Egbert 
 Hall pale and silent, the voice of music hushed 
 in her heart and her sweet eyes still moist 
 from the April shower that gushed forth at 
 the fate of the hapless linnet. 
 
 " But it was strange," she said to herself as 
 she mounted the broad flight of steps to the 
 house, " I w^as not a bit sorry for the trout 
 the kingfisher caught, and that was a life, too. 
 Oh, it is all a tangle and a puzzle. It's a 
 cruel world, it is."
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 " The towers^ in different ages rose, 
 Their various architecture shows 
 The builders' yarious hands." 
 
 DuLCiBELLA Egbert's vocatioii in life was 
 exotics ; not tliat liers was an exotic existence, 
 for Dulsie loved tlie open air, and wet or dry, 
 took a constitutional walk in the breeziest 
 parts of the demesne. She believed in the 
 invigorating qualities of the wind, and in a 
 waterproof ulster she defied the rain. That 
 she was not a little rheumatic she laid at the 
 door of the hereditary Egbert gout, and it was 
 generally understood in the family that it was 
 no manner of use cautioning Dulsie against 
 damp or chill ; she would observe her own 
 regime as long as she could hobble. 
 
 The numerous greenhouses and the great 
 conservatory, which the late Mrs. Egbert had 
 added to the old hall, were Dulsie's especial 
 care and pride ; care from Jove for the fragile
 
 LOA'E AXD LIKINa. 1.53 
 
 existences of ardent climes, and pride from 
 enchanted admiration of their regal growths 
 and sun-dyed colours. 
 
 But there was no innate love of flowers for 
 the flowers' selves in Dulsie's nature of limited 
 sympathies. A daisy was .only a pretty weed 
 to her, and the so-called common garden 
 flowers, hardy roses, sturdy hollyhocks and 
 dahlias, little more. Their coarse beauty, she 
 said, was suitable to our vigorous climate, and 
 their proper place was the homely garden. 
 For her own preserves, as the squire called the 
 greenhouses, Dulsie had her particular gar- 
 dener, who, like his charges, was a very fine 
 piece of high culture. Between this func- 
 tionary and the head-gardener there was con- 
 stant war. But there was no denying the fact 
 of the rare beauty of the greenhouse plants 
 and flowers of Egbert Hall ; yet it was but 
 seldom that any were sent to compete for hor- 
 ticultural prizes. Dulsie could scarcely be 
 tempted to risk a change of atmosphere for 
 her favourites. It was pretty well accepted 
 as a foregone conclusion by the country for a 
 vast horticultural area round, that when Miss
 
 154 LOVE AND LIKIXG. 
 
 Dulcibella Egbert's name appeared as an ex- 
 liibitor it was also as a victor. 
 
 But she was not churlisli in oivina. It 
 pleased lier to give seeds or cuttings ; whole 
 plants she rarely parted with. She had reared 
 and loved them, she said, and old friends ought 
 to be fixtures. 
 
 Her vocation suited Dulsie's temperament, 
 which was of the dolce far nienle type, and 
 except in her believing love and trust in 
 Mabella, and her ancestral creed of Egbert 
 optimacy, colourless. She loved her father 
 placidly, and in the same way endured Sybella, 
 whose gibes never even ruffled her serenity, and 
 whose deeper nature was a hidden mine to 
 her intelUgence. 
 
 " Live and let live " was Dulsie's motto, and 
 so fully did she adapt her life to that maxim 
 that the records of her past 3'ears told of 
 neither a love nor a friendship that had left a 
 sorrow or a joy behind. 
 
 '"• I think," said Sybella once, enraged at her 
 failure in an attempt to rouse Dulsie's anger 
 against the misdeed of a friend, "I think it 
 liicfh time the Egbert race should come to
 
 LOVE AND LIKIXa. 155 
 
 an end when its stock shows evidence of 
 lymph." 
 
 " Better lymph than virus, sister mine," was 
 Dulsie's smiling answer. 
 
 " Dulsie's a good woman," said Mabella, 
 defending her, though she herself had resented 
 that particular misdeed ; " she loves her neigh- 
 bour as herself." 
 
 "A poor compliment to self when that 
 neighbour has broken nine-tenths of the 
 Decalogue, eh ? " 
 
 " A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind," 
 and Sybella spoke as if her mouth was dry. 
 
 Dulsie's guards to her assailant's arrows 
 were generally bags of sand, but she was not 
 wanting in a sort of quiet aggression when 
 fairly put to it, and more than once Sybella 
 had been rather neatly, as the squire would 
 say, turned over. 
 
 To-day she was just a trifle roused. This 
 misdeed of this especial friend of the family 
 had been flagrant — of that there was no ques- 
 tion, but Dulsie had argued, " Why let us cast 
 stones ? She passes from our circle naturally ; 
 let her be."
 
 156 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 Not SO Sybella ; she had made her own 
 protest loudly, so had Mabella, and she was 
 indignant, yet perhaps a little conscience- 
 touched at Dulsie's forbearance, and so, too 
 angry to weigh her words, uttered the veno- 
 mous and unsisterly insinuation. 
 
 "My dear," said Dulsie with just sufficient 
 spirit to give point, "better that than to 
 compound for sins you are inclined to, by 
 damning those you have no mind to." 
 
 But usually the sisters lived in tolerant 
 amity, and Sybella did not often lay herself 
 open to be so worsted by her own weapons. 
 Departed youth had left in Sybella seeds of 
 bitter regrets for misused matrimonial oppor- 
 tunities, and slowly creeping-in age presented 
 only a jaundiced vista of the future. She did 
 not know it herself, poor woman, but gradually 
 even love of kin was chillinsf in her embittered 
 
 o 
 
 heart. 
 
 There was, however, one affection, if so it 
 could be termed, which had become a ruling 
 passion, and that was family pride. She liked 
 the gay pretty Judy, and acquiesced in the 
 arrangement the squire had made, that, failing
 
 LOVE AND LIKIXG. 157 
 
 direct lieirs, the place and name sliould pass to 
 lier. 
 
 But it was a grief nevertheless that no male 
 Egbert should be left of the once many- 
 branched family tree. She dimly conceived it 
 a blot on the escutcheon. 
 
 It had, however, been a comfort to feel, as 
 she and her sisters settled down in resigned 
 spinsterhood, that only an Egbert would rule 
 during their time in the old place ; that if she 
 and her sisters had missed the crowning joy of 
 a woman's life, or, as some might think, had not 
 fulfilled the object of their creation, they had 
 over them no lord to call himself master of 
 Egbert Hall. 
 
 She was not naturally keener of perception 
 than Mabella, but she laid herself more out to 
 observe, till as a natural corollary supposition 
 and assumption became ingrained habits. 
 
 But though her perceptive capability was 
 sharpened, her power of acumen was not 
 broadened. A complex character was far 
 beyond her ken ; its weaknesses or salient 
 proclivities she might grasp, but nothing 
 more. From one narrow standpoint she made
 
 158 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 her deductions, and by these she judged a 
 whole. 
 
 Little weaknesses had no chance of escape 
 from Sybella's notice. Naturall}^ small of 
 soul she was gradually becoming mean of 
 spirit and an influence of insensible irritation 
 in her family circle. 
 
 Had Major Tyler selected Sybella instead 
 of Mabella as his quarry, it is more than 
 probable that her perceptive powers would 
 not, in his case, have made adverse deduc- 
 tions. She was six years younger than 
 Mabella, and in the colour of her hair and 
 lightness of figure had still distinct remains of 
 a personable youth ; but Mabella was what 
 the Scotch call " sonsie," that is comely and 
 good-humoured, and, too, in a bargain of this 
 kind, the major contemplated her additional 
 years as a score in her favour — he looked 
 forward with equanimity to an early widower- 
 hood. Sybella's nose was long and tipped 
 with red, she was spare of person, and she 
 was not sympathetic. A " Tartar," he called 
 her to himself. 
 
 But he was grievously mistaken in his esti-
 
 LOVE AND LIKIXa. 159 
 
 mation of Glabella. At present slie was 
 glamoured by his influence. She had always 
 been susceptible to the tender passion, but in 
 her youth not over constant. Xow that so 
 suddenly she had again succumbed to the 
 soft impeachment, with the usual contrariety 
 of human nature she gave evidence of a 
 dogged constancy, which promised effectually 
 to blind her acute intuition. Her family 
 pride, however, with which in even a greater 
 degree than Sybella she was imbued, retained 
 its normal conditions — a pure unreasoning 
 superstition, fierce almost in its nature — out- 
 side and above every other consideration ot 
 life in her heart. 
 
 In the nature of events she knew that she 
 should succeed her father in the life-tenancy 
 of Egbert Hall ; he had told her so, and it 
 pleased her in thought to anticipate the 
 generous things she would have it in her 
 power to heap on the man of her choice ; but 
 that he should ever be master of the old hall 
 never entered into her speculations. A 
 doubt of his worthiness to stand by her side 
 as partner in her greatness — more than a
 
 160 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 partnership she never in her tenderest ima- 
 ginings awarded him — not once crossed her 
 heart. It would be an hapless day for the 
 arch designer when the " foolish old woman," 
 as he called her in his silent communings, 
 should know him as he was. Courteous and 
 kindly as the three Miss Egberts were in their 
 manner, well dressed too, and refined in their 
 occupations, they had lived such an utterly 
 rural life, had mixed so little in the gay 
 world, that they were what that gay world 
 called old-fashioned. Their manner had not 
 the habit of society. The repressive conven- 
 tionality of modern society inhibits nature in 
 speech and emotion, degrades movement to 
 an art and attitude to a trick. Like the 
 outer heathen, its votaries carry their symbol 
 of caste on their faces, but not in efiaceable 
 pigments ; their distinguishing marks are a 
 certain vacuity of expression and conformity 
 of line, as if in indication that they are a 
 peculiar people and not, like the vulgar herd, 
 made after God's image. This dumb shibbo- 
 leth was not written on the homely visages of 
 the Miss E^-berts. Of louix descent and ex-
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. IGl" 
 
 alted traditions, few within the aristocratic 
 ofuild had more definite claims to the distinc- 
 tion of blue blood, few less to the significant 
 terms " high-bred and comme il fautJ' But 
 it sufficed for the ^liss Egberts that they were 
 Egberts, and for their county, too. 
 
 Egbert Hall did not stand on a command- 
 in gf heio'ht ; it was situate in a hollow, where 
 it had once been surrounded by a moat, the 
 necessity for which means of defence in 
 troublous times had probably determined the 
 choice of site, as it was the only place on 
 the demesne where sufficient water could be 
 found to supply a moat. But the conduit 
 from which the water had come had long ago 
 been filled up and the water diverted into 
 another channel, thou£:]i its boundary was still 
 marked by the stone arch which had at a 
 later period replaced the drawbridge, and by 
 the gate-houses, whose date, as cut over the 
 arched stone doorway, was 1380. The hall 
 was a large castellated structure of a quad- 
 rangular form, erected in the reign of Edward 
 the Second, so that for more than five hundred 
 and fifty years it had braved time and tempest, 
 
 VOL. T. 11
 
 162 LOVE AND LIKIXG. 
 
 and had been the silent witness of tlie fortunes 
 and misfortunes of the Egberts. The exterior 
 had been little altered, but some of the 
 windows had been modernized and addi- 
 tional doorways in the walls opened. 
 
 The height was generally two storeys, and 
 the whole structure was built of limestone. 
 The original windows had pointed arches, and 
 a battlement ran round and nearly concealed 
 the roof. A winding stair led from the base- 
 ment into many of the rooms, and also to the 
 outside of the roof, where it terminated at the 
 base of a very graceful turret. The west 
 front commanded the finest view of the 
 country and was flanked by four tall but- 
 tresses extending up to the battlement. This 
 front was three storeys in height, except where 
 the chapel was situate, and there it was only 
 two. Various additions in intervening cen- 
 turies had been made to the house, but the 
 original style had been pretty closely ob- 
 served, though not the same solidity. The 
 roof was many gabled, slated, and with wide 
 leaded gutters. The view from the battle- 
 ments was extensive and over a fair and
 
 LOVE AND LIKINa. 163 
 
 fertile country, full of historic associa- 
 tions. 
 
 The interior retained many of its ancient 
 features, and the kitchen, ^vhich was spacious 
 but not lofty, had still the original arch of the 
 wide fireplace. The rooms on the same base- 
 ment also retained their orisrinal va ultimas. 
 Above these was the great banqueting-hall, 
 a noble room, lighted on each side by two 
 large windows. It had been the pride of 
 successive Egberts to preserve this hall with 
 no more than requisite change. The flooring 
 was recent, and the glass in the windows had 
 been replaced by other with the armorial 
 bearinofs and q uartering^s of the familv in rich 
 colouring. It was furnished with black oak 
 furniture and tapestry hangings ; with old 
 firearms, matchlocks, arquebuses and cross- 
 bows ; with spears, swords, sabres, poleaxes, 
 daggers, truncheons and shields, relics of 
 many a doughty warrior whose first breath 
 had been drawn within the venerable walls. 
 There were spoils of the chase, too, from 
 distant lands, rich furs, shining ivories and 
 fierce heads of beasts and fish. Here, too, hung 
 
 11—2
 
 164 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 the family portraits of ancient date, grim 
 valour and gentle beauty, stern justice and 
 courtly grace. When the full sunshine 
 streamed in through the superb windows the 
 old hall showed with a stately grandeur, 
 worthy of the brave antecedents of the race 
 it had nursed ; but when it knew no light save 
 that of the pale moon and chilly stars, it was 
 a gruesome place, ghostly to the superstitious 
 and portentous to the timorous. 
 
 There was a projecting wing on the north 
 side of the great hall in which were now the 
 living rooms of the famil}^ These had been 
 partially modernized by late generations, 
 but the ceilings were low and in all the recep- 
 tion rooms, save one bright little boudoir, the 
 walls were oak-panelled. The windows com- 
 manded a wide prospect of undulating lands, 
 melting into the distant hills ; a great wood 
 belted the house in on the east, giving shelter 
 from the spring winds, and far away to the 
 south could be seen the broad river of Pell, 
 the outcome of the silvery stream by whose 
 banks Giles fed his flock. 
 
 The chapel, though carefully preserved
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 165 
 
 almost ill its entirety, was now seldom used, 
 but there, in tlie old crumbling font — so said 
 family traditions — every Egbert born under 
 the roof of the Hall had been christened, and 
 every Egbert who within its precincts had 
 shuffled off their mortal coil had laid in state in 
 its narrow chancel. There the sentinel tapers 
 kept watch and ward until the prescribed five 
 days had run, and the velvet palled coffin took 
 its place in the great vault outside the parish 
 church. The entrance door to the chapel from 
 the outside was under a pointed arch. It had 
 long since been closed up. It was only opened 
 on the occasion of a funeral of one of the 
 family, but since that of the present squire's 
 wife, an event now thirty years old, its rusty 
 locks and bars had remained undisturbed. A 
 broad path, though, which led round to the 
 front avenue from its very postern was kept 
 carefully trimmed and gravelled, for there 
 was an old superstition attached to the country 
 round that should a corpse be ever carried 
 through any path, that path could not be done 
 away with. Since the Eeformation the Egberts 
 had professed the Protestant faith, and the
 
 166 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 family annals told of more than one brave 
 scion that had given his life for conscience 
 sake. That thev had become Protestants from 
 conviction and not expediency was one reason 
 perhaps why the old chapel had fallen into 
 disuse, why also it had no relics to tell of its 
 once Popish habitude. In all the subsequent 
 mutations of the reformed church, of ecclesi- 
 astical 'isms and canonical doxies, of zeal and 
 lethargy, the head of the family had preserved 
 an even tenour, his simple creed that of its 
 unadorned ritual. And though on occasion 
 it would happen — notably on the present- 
 ments of certain advowsons in the gift of the 
 family — that a biblical bishop or sacerdotal 
 prelate would denounce him as heterodox, 
 none were ever found to accuse him of luke- 
 warmness : the Squire Egbert of the period 
 was ever a staunch, if a moderate. Churchman. 
 As yet, her possible heirship had been only 
 indirectly intimated to Judy, but when it defi- 
 nitely presented itself to her mind, it seemed 
 such a far off and painful contingency that 
 she dismissed it once for all from her thoughts. 
 It had almost frightened her, in some such
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. l67 
 
 way as a child would be frightened were a 
 cumbersome and dazzling bauble placed in 
 its hands. The place had been to her a play- 
 ground of infinite variety, the old Hall an 
 enchanted castle of Otranto. She loved the 
 inmates dearly, each in a different way. The 
 squire she reverenced, yet did not fear, and 
 year by year the little Egbert off-shoot, as he 
 called her, rooted herself deeper into his heart. 
 He had regarded her at the first as of necessity 
 his heir ; then her charm, her gaiety, her pretty 
 manners and delicate beauty, touched his pride ; 
 and her genuine commonsense seemed to the old 
 man almost a touch of genius, and her shrewd 
 remarks as the wisdom of Solomon. Full of 
 fun and frolic as she was, she could be grave 
 and sympathetic in his sad moods, to which he 
 was much inclined. At these times she would 
 walk quietly by his side and lead him insen- 
 sibly to talk of his dear dead wife ; of his son 
 he seldom spoke, his death had been too 
 sudden and tragic for the wound ever to heal 
 even enough to allow of the gentle touch of a 
 pitying hand. But not so with his wife. She 
 had gradually faded under his eyes, and when
 
 168 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 her chair was vacant it seemed as if only a 
 shadow had risen from it to follow the bright 
 existence that had vanished so longf asfo. 
 And as the years wore on and the time drew 
 nearer when he, too, should turn his face 
 heavenward, this loving retrospection became 
 to him as the converse about some one from 
 whom he had parted but yesterday, and so 
 gradually grew to be less a pain. \ya3 it 
 because in the tale of time his earthly vista 
 had shortened to a span, and he knew that 
 his lonely journey was near its close, or that 
 perhaps beyond that narrowed vista his long- 
 ing eyes had caught the " gleam of a Avhite 
 pinion spreading " in the faint glimmer of the 
 coming dawn ? Who can tell ? As earth 
 crumbles from us, things that are not appear 
 nearer than things that are, and life measured 
 by limited existences seems longer, for its very 
 weariness, than eternity.
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 " Whene'er ye feel your honour grip, 
 Let that be aye your border." 
 
 The next morning at breakfast the squire 
 asked Judy if she were inclined for a very- 
 long ride. He wanted, he said, to see some 
 young stock at Marlby Grange, Lord Albany's, 
 distant about twelve miles, and he proposed 
 that they should start immediately after 
 luncheon and return in time for the seven 
 o'clock dinner. 
 
 " Dulsie," he added, " has her hands full, I 
 know, and she will be glad to be left to 
 herself." 
 
 Judy agreed to the arrangement with 
 delight. She had never been to Marlby 
 Grange, but she had often heard of its 
 beauties and grandeur from her cousins, who 
 at the same time were always careful to add 
 that the house vras only two hundred years
 
 170 LOVE AND LIKIXG. 
 
 old and the title a creation of tlie second 
 George's reign. 
 
 '' It is quite a made place, I may say," 
 Mabella would add, "it grew with the fortunes 
 of the Albanys, who were small gentry at 
 first." 
 
 Dulsie affirmed her father's statement that 
 her hands were full, and congratulated herself 
 that she had come to the Hall at this particu- 
 lar juncture, when a flower-show was coming 
 off at Nettlethorp. 
 
 " For you see, dear," addressing Jud}^ " it 
 would never have done if ^yeaver had put 
 Parton in the shade ; I'd never have heard the 
 end of it." 
 
 Weaver was the squire's head gardener 
 and Parton was Dulsie's special functionary, 
 and as before mentioned the two were con- 
 stantly on the verge of open war, The 
 chance of Weaver putting his rival to the 
 blush had happened in this wise. As Dulsie 
 rejected from her conservatory common plants, 
 or plants she called common, it seemed almost 
 impossible that the two gardeners should 
 clash, but it appeared that Weaver, fired
 
 LOVE AND LIKIXG. X71 
 
 by ambition, had cultivated in an ordinary 
 forcing liouse some cuttings of choice pelar- 
 goniums given him by a friend. The season 
 was favourable, and the plants were this year 
 in great and vigorous beauty. There was to 
 be a flower-show at Xet tie thorp, and Weaver 
 had obtained leave of the squire to exhibit 
 his treasures. Xow Parton had in the con- 
 servatory, just moved from a greenhouse, 
 also some rare and exquisite pelargoniums, 
 against which he felt convinced nothing could 
 stand. He had no objection that Weaver 
 should exhibit ilowers in his own line, such 
 flowers as owed their nurture to the open 
 air, but that he should dare to represent 
 Eo;bert Hall with crreenhouse growths was 
 just a thing he would not stand, and if Miss 
 Dulsie didn't assert her proper position, which 
 in reality meant his, " he should transfer his 
 services to some one who could uphold, in a 
 proper manner, .proper floral dignity." This, 
 uttered respectfully, but resentfully, was the 
 pith of his appeal made on the previous 
 evening to Dulsie, and to which Dulsie had 
 yielded, induced by the favourable aspect of
 
 172 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 the weather, but more by the fear of losing 
 a person who so thoroughly " understood the 
 constitution" of his charges. 
 
 She had therefore before her a good day's 
 work in writing notices, as she was all but 
 too late in entering^, and in arrangfinof the 
 modes of conveyance. It was so rarely that 
 Dulsie did exhibit, that the fuss of prepara- 
 tion was always out of proportion to the 
 occasion. 
 
 " There is a young Albany, Judy," and 
 Dulsie nodded and smiled. 
 
 "Yes," said the squire thoughtfully, "and 
 there's money wanted there, too." He spoke 
 with an arriere pensee in his tone, and as if in 
 some way the subject was familiar to his 
 mind. 
 
 " The old story, I suppose," observed 
 Dulsie ; " every succeeding generation of 
 Albany s has to ba set on its legs by an 
 heiress. A vast absorbing element in that 
 family." 
 
 " Ah, you see," said Judy gravely, " heiresses 
 have peculiar privileges. I'm very glad I'm 
 not. an heiress."
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 173 
 
 " Why?" asked the squire sharply. 
 
 " Because no one who wants setting on his 
 leg^s will trouble me. I have rather a leaninof 
 to sound constitutions." 
 
 " Young Le Pole is a very sensible fellow, 
 and quite sound," said the squire, a little 
 inconsequently. 
 
 " He has been throus^h three London 
 seasons," added Dulsie, " without securing a 
 ' dol.' I am told he puts a high figure on 
 himself." 
 
 " Seasoned goods, you see," laughed Judy, 
 " he ought to try the States ; he'd get some 
 big offers there. Lords are at a high premium 
 with Brother Jonathan. They're the only 
 manufacture in which he can't compete with 
 us, so he sends us some of the raw material 
 for wefty 
 
 " And Sybella declares," said Dulsie, " that 
 in the interests of heraldry alone this invasion 
 of Yankee brides is serious ; they bring no 
 quarterings." 
 
 " Ah, cousin Dulsie," Judy spoke senten- 
 tiously, "history repeats itself; it's not the 
 first time we got no quarter from the Yankees."
 
 174 LOVE AND Lliaxa. 
 
 "Judy," cried the squire, laugliing heartily 
 as he rose, and placing his hand on the young 
 girl's head, " come up to the battlements and 
 exhaust yourself. The lights and shades 
 to-day are marvellous, and there's not a sheaf 
 cut yet." 
 
 In a few minutes Judy returned with her 
 hat on. 
 
 " We'll go up by the staircase here," 
 she cried, " and come down by the great 
 hall," and she slung a small telescope she had 
 brought from the outer hall, where also she 
 had got her hat, round her neck. 
 
 "With a great sigh of rest and enchantment, 
 Judy brought up beside the squire on the 
 summit of the turret, disdaining the partial 
 view afforded by the embrasures in the battle- 
 ments. 
 
 For some minutes neither spoke. The old 
 man's gaze wandered far away to the hills, 
 traveUing along their ridges, till the highest 
 point reached he ceased to look on earth and 
 tixed his eyes on the light beyond. 
 
 Judy, a little subdued and more than a 
 shade graver, had turned her telescope in
 
 LOVE AXD LIKIXG. 175 
 
 search of her friend Giles. There in the 
 narrow hollow the sheep were feeding, dotted 
 hither and thither near ridges of security over 
 the surface of the rising orround, down the side 
 of which the silvery stream ran dancing to 
 the placid river. Upon a distant down her 
 eyes lit on another flock packed close, rising 
 towards the ridge like a soft fleecy cloud 
 fallen from mid-heaven, slowly toiling back to 
 its place. Xow and then a little quiver of the 
 fleecy mass told her that Sam and Beck were 
 on duty and that Giles was not far off*. In a 
 little she caught a glimpse of a shadow-like 
 fiorure folio wins: the flock in the distance. 
 She could see him with his crook climbing 
 the ascent. 
 
 " He's getting feeble," she thought; "even 
 the sheep are too fast for him now." 
 
 Slowly she brought her telescope round to 
 a commanding down, which the powerful lens 
 laid almost at her feet. She could see the 
 bees sail heavily-laden over the wild thyme, 
 and the bennets and the dry leaves shiver at 
 the rush of a fresh wave of the wind. Then 
 she followed with childish eaoferness the whirl-
 
 176 LOVE AND LIKING 
 
 ini? flioiit of two butterflies, till in their 
 gambols they fell foul of each other and 
 tumbled to the ground. Anon she traced the 
 sweep of a descending lark to see if she could 
 determine the spot where it would alight, but 
 it o-lided with outstretched winsfs, shot for- 
 ward, and was lost to sight. At that moment 
 a flock, it seemed to her, of larks, sprung into 
 the air, paused to gather impetus, and in one 
 loud chorus, unheard bv her, burst into sono^ 
 and were lost in the blue dome. 
 
 Her telescope travelled downwards and 
 dwelt on others of less ambitious flight rising 
 but some eight or nine yards from the earth, 
 and floating forward on wide-spread wings, 
 but the low sweet note they uttered in this 
 gentle play could not reach her ear. 
 
 On a hifrh down were the remains of an 
 ancient earthwork, a grassy mound and earth- 
 works, and within its inclosure were withered 
 tufts of grass left untouched by the sheep. Judy 
 knew the place well. She swept her glass over 
 it to find, if she could, some of her sylvan 
 friends at home within their forms. The arched 
 grasses moved, and in and out she watched
 
 LOVE AXD LIKIXG. 177 
 
 the hares pass secure from alarms. Xow and 
 again one, as if struck by a sudden thought, 
 would rise on its hind legs and listen for a 
 second, then leisurely leap on its way. She 
 followed their tracks across the green till her 
 attention was arrested by two, weirdly erect, 
 indulging in a boxing-match. It was a merry 
 game. Eound and round they went as if 
 waltzing — advancing and retreating, striking 
 with their fore legs with rapid action. At 
 last, struck by the absurdity of the combat, 
 Judv burst into a riuCTino- lau^h, which had 
 the effect of rousing the squire from his 
 reverie. 
 
 " Look, cousin Egbert," she cried, giving 
 him the telescope and adjusting the focus. 
 
 The squire laughed also. "I have often 
 stood," he said, " and watched them at their 
 gambols ; the rabbits, too — ^just a lower world 
 of children, without a thought of to-morrow. 
 The mere sense of living is to animals an 
 intense enjoyment, the intenser perhaps be- 
 cause their very existences are so fragile and 
 their enemies so many. But now, Judy, I 
 want you to follow me to another world, and 
 
 VOL. L 12
 
 178 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 to give me all your attention. I brought you 
 up here for a purpose. Take the telescope 
 and put the focus right again." 
 
 She did so. 
 
 " Now follow the line of w^ood beginning at 
 your left and curving gradually round the 
 hills. You have come to the Pell now." 
 
 Judy said she had. 
 
 " Then bring up sharp by the pollards, 
 and follow me to the hollow where you see 
 the sheep." 
 
 " Giles is over the rids^e of the down " she 
 said, " but most of the sheep are in the 
 hollow. I see them." 
 
 " Leave them," he went on, " to your left 
 and trace the boundary wall — you know it — 
 at the far side of the cornfields till you come 
 to the cottages." 
 
 The obedient telescope stood still at the spot 
 indicated. 
 
 "You are at the conduit now, are you 
 not ? " 
 
 "Yes, cousin Egbert, or rather what was 
 the conduit." 
 
 " Well, track the course of the sedges and
 
 LOVE AND LIKINa. 179 
 
 the green fosse — you know it by the ' rowelty ' 
 grass and herbage, the sure signs of under- 
 lying water ; track till you come to the first 
 trees of the wood again, then you can see 
 without the glass." 
 
 " What next ? " she asked. 
 
 "Put down the telescope and listen to me. 
 You have followed acre by acre the boundary 
 of what was once the Egbert demesne, a 
 sweep of twelve miles ; five now incloses all 
 that is left to our name. You know, Judy, I 
 am the last male of our line, and that when I 
 die women must succeed me, the first time a 
 woman has heired an Egbert." 
 
 Judy silently assented. 
 
 "I'm very near the top of the hill now, 
 Judy, and I want my mind to be at ease 
 about the old place. I used to be very proud 
 of it once ; I suppose I am still, or I should 
 not be disturbed about its future. Often and 
 often I've come up here alone and traced 
 and retraced the old boundary with vain 
 longings to call all within its magic ring ours 
 once more. And it might have been, child ; I 
 might have had my wish if I had chosen to 
 
 12—2
 
 183 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 give my dead wife's seat to another, but I 
 could not. I think it would have been a sin, 
 Judy, for marriage was not instituted to 
 further mercenary contracts. I'm not a 
 sentimental man. Sybeha says I am. She, 
 and the others too, wanted me to marry 
 Harriet Le Pole, that is Miss Le Pole of the 
 Manor House, Lord Albany's aunt. She 
 owns all the lands within the boundary I 
 have shown you, all that is not ours still. 
 She inherited them from her mother, whose 
 family acquired them two centuries ago. It 
 is too long a story to tell you now, but it was 
 a Commonwealth job and the first time in 
 the history of the Egberts that the property 
 had been divided. Miss Le Pole has never 
 married, and her natural heir is of course her 
 nephew the earl. He got the earldom from 
 the present administration — it was only a 
 barony before." 
 
 Judy faintly surmised her cousin's drift. 
 
 " Now," he continued, " what passes be- 
 tween us to-day is in confidence." 
 
 Judy nodded gravely. The squire was un- 
 demonstrative, and she knew bis moods.
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 181 
 
 *' At my deatli the place will pass in suc- 
 cession to my three daughters. At their death 
 it goes to you witliout any restriction what- 
 ever, except that you and all who come after 
 you bear the name of Egbert." 
 
 " Oh, cousin Egbert," that was all Judy 
 could say ; she felt frightened, grieved, and 
 shy. A delicate sense told her thanks would 
 be out of place, for thanks expressed gladness 
 in a manner, and how could she feel glad at 
 the prospect of a gift that entailed the death 
 of those she loved ? It did not occur to her 
 to depreciate herself, her nature was too open 
 for finesse ; neither did her usually ready tongue 
 prompt her to expressions of extravagant 
 appreciation of the honour intended her, or 
 florid pledges for the future. But the tone of 
 her " Oh, cousin Egbert," spoke to the squire's 
 heart all that that heart wanted. They under- 
 stood each other ; she had held out her hand 
 and he kept it close in his grasp as he went 
 on : 
 
 " I have not given out that you are to be 
 the eventual heiress, child, because I would not 
 have you a mark for fortune-hunters, and so I 
 
 4#
 
 182 LOVE AXD LIKING. 
 
 have not spoken to your mother eitlier, for 
 she is ambitious, and you, dear, might suffer." 
 
 The little palm in his fluttered. The ten- 
 derness of the old man gave to Judy's heart a 
 sense of pain. 
 
 "But if it should so chance, Judy — only 
 of chance now, not by my bringing about or 
 Sybella's managing — that you and young Le 
 Pole should like each other, will you promise 
 me that you will not throw any impediment 
 in the way to his choosing you for yourself, 
 for your own self, Judy, not for the few acres 
 of this old earth's crumbling crust your cousin 
 Egbert willed you to have ? " 
 
 Judy's tears were falling like pitiful rain, 
 but she did not speak, only once again she 
 said, " Oh, cousin Egbert." 
 
 The squire looked curiously into her down- 
 cast face. This time the tone of the simple 
 words did not speak to his heart all that that 
 heart wanted. Struck by a sudden fear he 
 recoiled. 
 
 " Judy," he said, dropping her hand, " Judy, 
 child, it's not Mabella's major ? " 
 
 For the third time Judv uttered the same
 
 LOVE AXD LIKING-. 183 
 
 words, " Oh, cousin Egbert," and once more 
 the tone spoke to the squire's heart what that 
 heart desired. Then she burst into a ringing 
 laugh, stopping on the highest note to ex- 
 claim with derisive merriment : 
 
 "Major Tyler!" 
 
 The next instant, as if in penitence, the 
 ready tears burst forth, and she Hung her 
 arms round the squire's neck and buried her 
 face in his breast. 
 
 '• I didn't mean to hurt you, Judy, darling," 
 he said simply. " You see, I know the world 
 so well, and these handsome militaires, par- 
 ticularly when not too young, a year off forty 
 or so, are very insinuating. Indeed, dear, I 
 was afraid poor Mabella was going to be 
 foolish about him, she used to be always 
 fallincr in love loner aGfo." 
 
 Judy unwound her arms and dried her eyes. 
 Usually she had great command over her 
 emotions, but to-day she had been taken by 
 surprise in a very unfamiliar fashion. 
 
 " He has gone away," she said, " and Ma- 
 bella does not seem to care much." 
 
 '* And I hope he'll stay away," added the
 
 184 LOVE AXD LIKING. 
 
 squire. There was a pause, and then he re- 
 turned to the charge. " I have your pro- 
 mise ? '' he said with an infliction of doubt in 
 his voice. "You won't put any impediment 
 in the way of young Le Pole if he should come 
 wooing ? " and he smiled almost coaxingly. 
 
 "Dear cousin Egbert, what impediment 
 could I put ? " she began. 
 
 " Oh, I mean you won't be too sharp with 
 him ; he's not as clever with his tongue as you 
 are. And — and you won't flirt — you know 
 what I mean — with any one else ; you'll give 
 him a chance, won't you ? " 
 
 There was something inexpressibly touching 
 in the old man's deprecatory manner, in his 
 almost pleading tone. Judy's heart filled with 
 sympathetic pity and yearning. Only a little 
 word and a few kisses, that was all that was 
 wanted, and the squire would go gladly on his 
 way down the darkening vale. He would not 
 ask for pledges, she knew that ; her faintly, 
 whispered " yes " would be as a solemn vow 
 to him, for his faith in her utter truth was as 
 that of a little child in its mother. 
 
 And after all, why should she not let him
 
 LOVE AXL LIKING. 185 
 
 have the simple assurance he sought ? It was 
 only to give this as yet unknown youth a 
 chance, if he so minded to seek that chance ; 
 and — and she must not forget this, not to flirt 
 with any one else ; that meant not to listen to, 
 not to give any one else a chance, just to keep 
 herself passively open for the advances of this 
 young noble, whose great recommendation in 
 the squire's eyes was his imminent heirship of 
 the old Egbert lands. 
 
 She would wait until she had seen the youth, 
 and then she would answer her cousin. That 
 was a happy thought ; it gave her time. He 
 might take a sudden dislike to her, that would 
 spare her the onus of refusing the squire's 
 request ; or she might to him, and then she 
 would find it less difficult to disappoint cousin 
 
 Eo'bert. 
 
 *_ 
 
 In any case she would have time to think 
 over the matter, and somehow, if you did not 
 fuss and worry — so Dulsie always said — things 
 rio^hted themselves, and the result would be 
 just the same. She had almost forgotten that 
 the squire was beside her, patiently waiting 
 her answer.
 
 186 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 Her little hands were clasped before lier, 
 and Iter eyes looked wistfully out on the 
 sunlit hills, almost as if expectant of aid in her 
 strait. Her soft mouth had a line of care, and 
 the smooth brow showed more than one 
 wrinkle. Then, prompted by an undefined 
 impulse, with absent action she raised the 
 telescope and once more levelled it at the fair 
 lands beneath, at the meadows green with 
 aftermath, at the fields of golden grain, over 
 which went " waves of shadow," at the wood 
 on the east with its undulating line of tree- 
 tops quivering beneath the rays of the sun 
 rising to its meridian, at the silvery Pell, and 
 so on to the peaceful hollow and the quiet 
 sheep. 
 
 " Judy," whispered the squire, " it may all 
 be yours." 
 
 Down fell the telescope, and again in 
 an impulsive significant tone she uttered 
 for the fourth time the words, " Oh, cousin 
 Egbert ! " then, before he could add a word, 
 she seized his hand with both of hers and 
 said, stopping now and again, when she 
 feared she gave pain, to lay on it a kiss
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 187 
 
 of penitence, '' Oh, cousin Egbert, you can't 
 think so meanly of me as to imagine that 
 I was appraising the promised land " — she 
 smiled through the fast-oratherinor tears — 
 " that I was weighing it in the balance 
 against the promise you would have of me ? 
 I thought }ou knew me ; but you know, dear, 
 don't you, that I never told you a lie ? " 
 
 Judy used honest words when greatly in 
 earnest. It was the squire's turn to kiss the 
 small firm hand. 
 
 " I thought so ; but I want you now, darling, 
 to understand that I would not even trifle with 
 the direct truth. Cousin Egbert, just for a 
 flash it seemed possible to me to speak the 
 truth and yet give you the pledge you asked. 
 I thought I could easily promise not to 
 ' flirt ; ' you mean that I am not to let any 
 one else woo me — that's a good, old, plain- 
 meaning word, and so it suits me — that I am 
 to keep myself in every way free for Lord Le 
 Pole only ; that is what you want of me ? Xo, 
 dear" — another kiss on the brown hand — 
 *' don't please explain away. We're in a very 
 solemn place, above earth as it were, with only
 
 188 LOVE AND LTKIXG. 
 
 tlie blue sky overhead, and the great eyeless 
 sun -watchinof us. We're standing under the 
 Egbert flag." 
 
 She pomted upward to the top of the tall 
 staff from which the gay pennant flaunted m 
 the lio^ht breeze. 
 
 " I think if I played you false it would curl 
 itself round the pole and never wave again. 
 I cannot give jou this promise." 
 
 The eloquent blood rushed to her face as, 
 to veil her eyes, she bent lower than before 
 and leant her brow on her clasped hands. 
 There was a painful pause, broken at last by 
 the squire. He spoke in a constrained voice, 
 with a tremour, but gently and lovingly 
 withal. 
 
 " Xever mind, child, it was but an old man's 
 whim. It was only while you were fancy free 
 I asked it of you ; " and then he withdrew his 
 hand from her keeping and laid it gently on 
 her head, saying, " God bless you, Judy dear ; 
 the old name is safe in your keeping, and when 
 the time comes that you are no longer fancy 
 free, may God give you the desire of your 
 heart, for I know vou will not choose un-
 
 LOVE AND LIKIXG. 189 
 
 worthily. But, child, do not let idle dreams 
 possess your soul ; the waking will be rough, 
 and pain you. I shall never come up here 
 again, never look on that wide boundary 
 more. God's best gifts are often denials." 
 
 Life might never have for Judy a more 
 anguished moment, or subject her brave true 
 spirit to a more crucial test. 
 
 Each word of the old squire stabbed her to 
 the quick, for she was young and tender, and 
 over her vital emotions time's crust was yet 
 thin. 
 
 A weaker nature would have yielded ta 
 its affections ; the request in itself seemed 
 such a very little thing, sophistry whispered, 
 and did not entail any binding pledge in the 
 future. 
 
 But Judy's nature was not weak, or she had 
 not felt so keenly. She wept though, what 
 stern souls would have called, weak tears, they 
 fell so plentifully, and in her turmoil of soul 
 she felt that there was yet one word she must 
 speak ; she had hoped the squire would have 
 understood that unspoken word. Even in 
 her dumb pain she vrondered at his blindness.
 
 190 LOVE AND LIKINa. 
 
 But she must give it voice now, or — so 
 clearly she reasoned — in a little while, when 
 the first sharpness of his disappointment had 
 softened, he might begin to hope again and 
 say to himself that while she was fancy free 
 tliere was a chance for him still. So she did 
 not falter or temporize. 
 
 She raised her sweet eyes, lustrous with 
 tears, in which in the sunlight stars seemed 
 to come and go, and with a vain effort to 
 steady her voice said : 
 
 " But, cousin Egbert, I am not fancy 
 free." 
 
 Her confession made, as if in very shame 
 her head again dropped. So often it is that 
 the victory won, the brave spirit quails before 
 its own deed. 
 
 But somehow, although unknown to him- 
 self a latent hope may have lurked in the 
 squire's heart, the bitterness of disappointment 
 had passed. 
 
 And now, though the simple words were 
 a revelation and made him start, they 
 brought no added pain, only a consciousness 
 that suddenly in the place of his little gay
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 191 
 
 friend Judy, a noble woman stood, the same 
 and not the same. 
 
 He took her hands and kissed her downcast 
 face with a quiet reverence. 
 
 " Is it so ? " he said ; " you will tell me all 
 about it in your own good time, dear ; to 
 doubt you, would be to doubt goodness itself. 
 And Judy," he went on, for the tears still 
 fell, " don't fret about disappointing cousin 
 Egbert; not to sweep the Egbert boundary 
 round the whole county would I have had 
 you cross the boundary-line of honour. Do 
 you remember the summer nio'ht last year in 
 the old banqueting-hall when we all amused 
 ourselves by choosing chivalric mottoes, and 
 you chose for yours the words of the Scotch 
 poet Burns : 
 
 " ' V^'here'er you feel your honour grip, 
 Let that be aye your border ? ' " 
 
 Judy smiled remembrance, as her weeping 
 ceased. 
 
 " And, Judy, just as you looked then in 
 your white frock, standing in the moonlight 
 so grave and earnest when we all laughed, 
 you look now, when, true to your chosen
 
 192 LOVE AND LIKLNG. 
 
 motto, you toppled over the old man's castle 
 in the air." 
 
 She looked up still ruefully, but there was 
 no pain in the squire's eyes, only a great love 
 and peace. They then kissed each other in 
 silence and turned homewards. 
 
 As they issued from the banqueting-hall to 
 reach the dinino^-room bv the lonoj corridor, 
 Judy said, smiling, the squire thought, sadly : 
 
 " Cousin Egbert, do you think the day of 
 real chivalry will ever come, when to be simply 
 natural will only be to be simply true ? " 
 
 "Yes, dear," he replied, " but not here." 

 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 " Soft words, with something in them, make a song." 
 
 The confidences on the turret had left such 
 a disturbing element in Judy's mind, that 
 but for the seductive attraction of a gallop on 
 Gloriana she would have evaded the visit to 
 Marlby Grange. 
 
 With Gloriana, however, as a decoy, the 
 visit gradually resolved itself into a duty 
 to her cousin and her deUcate scruples into 
 self-conscious prudery; so faultlessly turned 
 out in a short dark blue habit, well-poised 
 top-hat, under which her hair appeared in 
 a shining coil, and a very fiction of a whip, 
 she tripped down the broad stone stairs and 
 mounted her impatient horse. 
 
 By the advice of Peters the squire had 
 elected to ride on this occasion his brown cob, 
 well known for its splended trotting powers 
 and steady stay. 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 " He can take care of liisself, can Bob," 
 Peters had urged ; " and you'll want to keep 
 close to miss, and have your eyes sharp, 3^0 u 
 will ;" hints the squire appreciated thoroughl3^ 
 
 It was a ride long to be remembered by 
 the gay Judy and grave squire. Gloriana 
 deported herself, as his mistress afterwards 
 assured Peters, " like an angel ; " as the 
 squire said, " like St. Vitus himself." Her 
 light canter was a succession of playful jumps 
 and curvetings, Avhich seemed like arch 
 raillery of the sober Bob's short swift trot. 
 
 There had been rain recently, and the turfy 
 side of the liifrh road was cool and soft to the 
 horses' feet ; the arching branches of the trees, 
 too, gave shade from the sun, wdiich shone 
 prone from a cloudless sky. 
 
 Only once they drew rein, and that was 
 perforce at a toll. 
 
 Then Judy had the grace to ask her cousin 
 if he w^ere tired and \vould like a slower pace 
 for a while. 
 
 He looked at his watch and said smilingly, 
 " Not so bad for Bob, seven miles in fifty- 
 five minutes."
 
 LOVE AND LIKIXa. 195 
 
 " Just half way," replied Judy. '' We'd 
 better walk the next mile, Bob's too fat." 
 
 With a little coaxing and gentle manipula- 
 tion, Gloriana reduced her airy prancing to 
 airy trippings, and Bob, nothing loth, brought 
 his sharp trot to a quick determined step, 
 which kept ])ace with his ambitious com- 
 panion's lighter movement. 
 
 The squire sat loosely, his reins slack and 
 his head bent. He was thinking. Judy eyed 
 him uneasily and a little remorsefully, but 
 Gloriana kept her on the alert. 
 
 There was no room for sentiment; there 
 was, however, for discursive chat, and Judy 
 loved erratic converse. 
 
 To urge the squire out of himself, as she 
 mentally intended, she said, taking advantage 
 of a meek mood of Gloriana : 
 
 " Cousin Egbert, did I tell you that Mrs. 
 Beaumorris has a rival at Sandycot ? " 
 
 " N"o, Judy, you did not," answered the 
 squire smiling ; " tell me all about it ; you're 
 the queen of gossips." 
 
 " You know the Trelawneys, don't you ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 13—2
 
 196 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 " I know one family of that name, but 
 there are Trelawneys and Trelawneys. The 
 name is widely represented now." 
 
 " This is an Admiral James Trelawney, an 
 old man of seventy at least." 
 
 *' Cornish?" 
 
 " No, Sybella asked him, and he said he be- 
 longed to a distant branch of the ' old stock,' 
 and that he was born at sea. That was all 
 the account of himself he vouchsafed. How- 
 ever, his wife's pedigree is distinct enough. 
 She was a Fitzmure of Fitzmureland, but she 
 hadn't a penny, and her father hadn't an acre. 
 The old property was gambled away a century 
 ago, but the head of the family always kept the 
 old designation up. Sybella says the people 
 who have the property now gave it their own 
 name, and it is now Fitzmytheland — an in- 
 genious way of accounting for the patronymic 
 of Smith." 
 
 " As how? " The squire looked mystified. 
 
 " Oh, you see their name was Smith. They 
 
 owned by purchase a farm and some land 
 
 besides. They built a fine house and called 
 
 the place Smytheland. Wasn't it a stroke of
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 197 
 
 genius dropping the ' i ' ? And so when they 
 got Fitzmureland the transposition was easy. 
 I admire ingenuity." 
 
 " So do I," said the squire, and he laughed. 
 Jud}^ laughed also then. 
 
 "Well, it's Sybella's ingenuity, not mine," 
 she said. " In any case the name of the 
 place now is Fitzmureland ; not inappropriate, 
 is it ? It will be in ' Burke's Landed Gentry ' 
 some day." 
 
 " Did the family drop the ' S ' from their 
 name too ? " 
 
 " Yes ; they're Myths now. Some of them 
 have made good marriages. When the family 
 tree is enough grown to exhibit, that little 
 transaction will read something like this : 
 'Mortimer Smith, son of Grosvenor Smith, 
 eminent ship-owner ' — there's an ancestry in 
 ships — 'and descendant through a collateral 
 branch of the ancient family of Smith- 
 Smythes, obtained a patent for incorporating 
 the ancient lands of Fitzmureland and Smith- 
 land into one entire barony, to be designated 
 by the name of Fitzmytheland.' That'U be 
 about it." And Judy laughed such a merry
 
 198 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 peal, to which the squire added a hearty- 
 bass, that Gloriana flung up her head and 
 swung out in a dashing trot. They were with- 
 in two miles of their destination before the 
 mettlesome animal condescended to return to 
 the only approximation to a walk she vouch- 
 safed when Judy was at the helm — a light 
 tripping step. 
 
 " Judy," said the squire, taking up the 
 thread the mare's impetuosity had snapped, 
 " you are a little Eadical, I fear. I wonder 
 who your Gamaliel is." 
 
 Judy blushed. In the sunlight, on her 
 slightly averted face — 
 
 "... the lilj and the rose 
 For mastership did strive." 
 
 And the rose had the best of it, but she gave 
 her head a little toss and answered : 
 
 " I have my own opinions, cousin Egbert. 
 I sit at no one's feet. I am not a bit of 
 a Eadical in a levelling sense, but I do hate 
 shams, and half the pedigrees in that great 
 tome of gentry are shams." 
 
 " Sweeping, rather," said the squire archly.
 
 LOVE AND LIKlNa. 199 
 
 " but youth is sweeping and compreliensive ; 
 young folks liate details. They are magnifi- 
 cent generalizers and gallant jumpers to con- 
 clusions." 
 
 " I was telling you," said Judy, to lead her 
 cousin back to their starting point, "about 
 Mrs. Beaumorris's rival, Mrs. Trelawney. She 
 is so handsome, not a bit like Creamy, as 
 Mrs. Horseman calls her ; a fine tall, dashing 
 woman, very fair, full of fun and what you 
 would call devilment — just a Gloriana in fact." 
 
 "I don't care for very tall women," ob- 
 served the squire, " unless they are soft and 
 i^entle. A tall fine woman sounds bold." 
 
 " Oh, she's not a bit bold. She's half Irish, 
 you know, and can't help her spirits ; but I'm 
 afraid she is a born flirt. The poor little 
 admiral knows it too, but I've no pity for 
 liim ; he must have married her from pure 
 ])rLde, just to show her off and make younger 
 men envy him. Poor old goose ! I suspect 
 a great many are ver}^ much obliged to him ; 
 they like flirtations that don't compromise — I 
 mean where no cliaiax is expected in the way 
 of matrimony — and then you see women of the
 
 200 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 -world like Mrs. Trelawney know liow far to 
 go. They're the very material, Xed says, 
 'poiir i^asser le temps with." 
 
 "I'm afraid Xed, as you call him, is a 
 Eadical," said the squire slyly. 
 
 Judy looked round sharply, a little abashed. 
 "I should have said Mr. Eawson," she half 
 whispered. Then in her natural voice of light 
 gaiety, " Don't you think horse-flesli catch- 
 ing ? I always feel just a little fast in the 
 saddle. But oh, cousin Egbert, if you only 
 saw the beauties together ! They each put on 
 a spurt. Creamy languishes and poses and 
 does oriental sunrise and sunset, as Xed — Mr. 
 Eawson — says, ' to bewilderment.' That is," 
 answering the squire's look of inquiry, " she 
 opens her eyes with a flash, and just when her 
 victim is dazzled to giddiness she lets down 
 her lids and he's all in the dark. The ' ad- 
 miral's craft,' as Xed calls her " (Judy was off 
 the rails now), " sees it all, and doesn't she 
 take the wind out of Creamy's sails ? I was 
 standing beside them on the pier one night ; 
 there was quite a little group, and somehow 
 the conversation drifted into marrying for
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 201 
 
 love. Mrs. Beaumorris sighed with her lids 
 down, and then suddenly flashing them open 
 she said, ' A true woman could never marry 
 for anything else.' The admiral was standing 
 close to his wife, a poor weather-beaten little 
 fellow, pompous and acid ; it was plain no 
 one could ever have married him for love. 
 Every one felt uncomfortable, every one but 
 the one whom the shaft was aimed at, and 
 she laughed — you should have heard her," 
 and Judy stopped to laugh in sympathy. 
 " We all laughed, too ; we couldn't help it, 
 though we hardly knew at what, and then, 
 putting her hand on tlie admiral's shoulder — 
 he only comes up to hers — she said, ' Jonas, 
 dear, didn't I marry you for love ? ' Oh, 
 cousin Egbert, if you could have heard her 
 voice, all of a sudden as soft and beguiling as 
 Creamy's ! She was mimicking her, I know. 
 ' You said you did,' he answered with a spit 
 like a toad. ' And don't I get what I married 
 for ? ' looking at the gentlemen from under 
 the corner of her eyes, which were brimful of 
 fun. They all took off their hats, and Ned 
 added, ' I should think you did ; good measure.
 
 202 LOVE AND LIKINa. 
 
 runninoj over.' Then the admiral fired off a 
 feeble joke. 'She gave me double measure, I 
 know,' he said, ' for she only got a tar in me, 
 and I a Tartar in her.' " 
 
 Again the squire laughed. " Now, Judy, 
 pull up," he said. " Keep a little fizz for old 
 Albany." 
 
 Then, the gates sighted, the groom trotted 
 briskly up and rang the postern bell, and in 
 a few minutes the cob and Gloriana trotted 
 gaily up the great avenue, arched over by 
 interlacing elms and bordered by high em- 
 bankments of mossy turf. 
 
 The approach was nearly a mile in length, 
 as it wound with the tortuous river. Seen at 
 iatervals through the lace work of green foli- 
 age the house was pretentious and imposing, 
 but though it bore date of two centuries 
 back it had no look of the antique. The 
 facade had riciily ornamented Corinthian 
 pillars, and on each side a handsome flight of 
 stone steps led to the entrance door, which 
 opened into an outer hall or vestibule, richly 
 dim with stained oflass windows bearing^ the 
 Albany arms and quarterings. There were
 
 LOVE AND LIKINO. 203 
 
 no turrets or battlements as at Egbert Hall, 
 but the architecture was altogether more dis- 
 tinctly of a period, and regular. 
 
 It might have been evident to a professional 
 eye that the idea had been to impart an 
 appearance of the antique, which had not 
 been successful. As a dwelling it was much 
 more conveniently commodious than the 
 venerable pile of the Egberts. The ceilings 
 of the living rooms, too, were lofty and the 
 banquet-hall a pleasant and lifelike chamber. 
 The walls of this gay hall were hung with 
 the family portraits, but though there were 
 ermine-robed peers, many- medalled heroes, 
 and fat and well-looking lawn-sleeved church 
 dignitaries, cavaliers also with rakish love- 
 locks, and more than one count^^-palatine, 
 there were none of the crusaders of the grand 
 days of chivalry, of Plant agenets and Tudors, 
 that graced the venerable walls of the great 
 banqueting-chamber of Egbert Hall. The 
 site of the house was on rising ground, sunny 
 and open, and if with no historic memories to 
 boast of, a pleasant, luxurious home withal, 
 fitting housing for a peer or a millionaire.
 
 204 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 Judy was a neophyte in the great world. 
 She had seen grander places than Egbert Hall, 
 for she had been used to accompany her 
 cousins on their formal visits in the county, 
 but on these occasions she had remained in 
 the carriao^e and had sio^hted the s^randeur 
 and circumstance from the outside only. She 
 was to-day not a little subdued and serious 
 as she followed the squire up the stairs and 
 stood before the massive door which gave 
 entrance to the many-hued vestibule. There 
 were only the old lord and a married daughter 
 at home, besides his elder son, Lord Le Pole. 
 The rest of the pretty numerous family were 
 in London. Lord Albany was in expectation 
 of the squire, but Judy was a pleasing sur- 
 prise. 
 
 " We are keeping house together." said 
 the squire, as he introduced the blusliing girl 
 to the somewhat stiff nobleman, who however 
 relaxed graciously, if not with empressement, to 
 his pretty, graceful visitor, who returned his 
 kind greeting with a shy look and a timid 
 curtsey. There might have been a faint 
 deprecatory glance in Judy's eyes, shot from
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 205 
 
 her consciousness, an imperceptible evidence 
 of self-reproacli in her sHght obeisance, as the 
 remembrance of the morning's occurrence 
 momentarily recurred to her. Judy shrank 
 from giving pain, and disappointment she knew 
 was pain. She thought too that the stately old 
 nobleman's face showed lines of care, and as 
 her tender heart was touched with pity, she 
 was conscious of a strange feeling of impatience 
 at the unsought for responsibilities which had 
 been so suddenly, as it were, thrust upon her. 
 A fretful shade shghtly clouded her brow, and 
 a grave look gave just a tinge of questioning 
 thought, rather than of sadness, to her usually 
 mirthful eyes. 
 
 " My daughter. Lady Margaret Dredger," 
 said Lord Albany, as a small and rather 
 common-looking woman entered from a side 
 door. By her side was a little boy, clinging 
 to her skirts — a little chubby-faced, curly- 
 headed urchin of about four summers, attired 
 in a sailor costume of white duck bordered 
 with blue. 
 
 *' Miss Aylmere, of Egbert Hall," he added, 
 with a slight tone of reminder in his voice.
 
 206 LOVE AND LIKIXG. 
 
 Lady Margaret with a start came up to Judy 
 and shook hands with her, with, that young 
 lady thought, not a little unnecessary cordi- 
 ality. Judy detested gush. 
 
 " Ormsby, dear," said Lady Margaret to the 
 child, "give this pretty lady a kiss," which 
 after a minute's scrutiny of Judy's face Master 
 Ormsby did. 
 
 " What is oor name ? My popper name is 
 Cricket," he said ; immediately adding, as he 
 put out his hand with a confiding action for 
 his new friend to take, " Me like oo." 
 
 Judy stuck her fairy whip in a button-hole 
 and lifted the child from the ground. 
 
 " M}^ name is Judy," she said, accompany- 
 ing the information with a perfect shower of 
 kisses. 
 
 " Oh stop, please, what prodigal waste — 
 there'll be none for any one else," cried a 
 strange voice. 
 
 Judy set the little fellow, who was slight of 
 make, on her arm, and looked in the direction 
 of the open door, whence the words seemed to 
 issue. 
 
 " My son," said Lord Albany, who with the
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 207 
 
 squire was in the act of leaving the room for 
 the purpose of inspecting some stock on the 
 home farm, the ostensible object in fact of the 
 latter's visit, and turning back he introduced 
 the individual in question with considerable 
 significance to Judy. 
 
 <^TMri^ 

 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 " A proper man as we shall see in a summer's day." 
 
 With her rather demonstrative burden, whose 
 arms were round her neck, Judy could only 
 give a slight inclination of the head to the 
 new arrival. Her cheeks glowed, and she was 
 conscious of feeling utterly missish and rustic. 
 A glance had given her keen perceptibility a 
 pretty accurate rendering of the outer and 
 inner man of the heir to Marlby Grange, as 
 on the surface he presented himself. 
 
 " A dawdling dandy," she thought, " walk- 
 ing as yet with aimless feet, handsome though, 
 and with the air of a thorough-bred." She 
 felt at once a little drawn to him, but her 
 very shyness compelled her to assert her 
 composure, and the inkling she had gathered 
 of the latent designs on her as a well-endowed 
 heiress prompted her to impress them with 
 her perfect indifference and independence.
 
 LOVE AND LIKINa. 209 
 
 So after her bow, converted into a nod by a 
 hug from Master Ormsby, or the Cricket as 
 he was generally called, she returned to the 
 child and called him an arch little flirt. 
 
 "I wish I could be Ormsby for just five 
 minutes," said Lord Le Pole softly. 
 
 Judy took no notice. She had sat down, 
 and the child, apparently fascinated with his 
 new acquaintance, was stroking her face with 
 his little dimpled hands. 
 
 " Have 00 a little boy, too ? " he asked, 
 staring intently into her starlike eyes. 
 
 She shook her head laughing. 
 
 " Tause I see 'ittle boys in oose eyes," he 
 added gravely. 
 
 " Ormsby sees himself," she said ; " eyes are 
 like lookin^-CTlasses sometimes." 
 
 o o 
 
 " May I see if I am there, too ?" asked Lord 
 Le Pole, " or is it a question of privilege ? " 
 
 Judy laughed. The sound of her voice in 
 its natural element of mirth restored her self- 
 possession, and she looked quickly round in 
 the direction of Lady Margaret, who was 
 presiding at a little tea-table with a dainty 
 service of exquisite china, and said : 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 210 LOVE AXD LIKING. 
 
 " I should like to run off with him for the 
 week. I am at Egbert Hall. Cousin Dulsie 
 is very fond of children." 
 
 Lady Margaret shook her head. 
 
 *' He's not very strong for all his rosy 
 cheeks," she said, " and he is a precious littk 
 pickle." 
 
 " Will you try a substitute," again put in 
 Lord Le Pole. This time his sister laughed. 
 
 " Will you give Miss Aylmere some tea, 
 Le Pole ? " she said, holding out a cup full of 
 the fracrrant beverage. " Tea and Cricket 
 
 D O 
 
 won't do together, Miss Aylmere," she added ; 
 " put him down, he mustn't be troublesome." 
 
 But Cricket had been foraCTino^. He had 
 got his hand into the small pocket where 
 Judy kept her handkerchief and had found a 
 lump of sugar. 
 
 " Look ! " he cried, as he held it up in 
 triumph to his uncle, who had put the cup 
 down and was evidently bent on dethroning 
 the small usurper, an intention which was 
 frustrated by the sudden abdication of the 
 minute individual himself. "Look!" he re- 
 peated, and then popped the lump into his
 
 LOVE AND LIKIXa. 211 
 
 mouth, scrambled down, and placed himself in 
 ambush under his mother's skirts. 
 
 " I suppose sugar is your natural food," 
 drawled Lord Le Pole as he brought Judy 
 her tea. " I wish I were a iollypop. Don't 
 you think I would make a nice one ? " 
 
 Judy's eyes turned as they slowly traversed 
 the young man's person with an appraising 
 look. 
 
 " No," she said at last, '• only syllabub." 
 
 Perfectly unruffled, but with evident amuse- 
 ment, he gave the retort courteous in the same 
 languid voice. 
 
 " And you ? " 
 
 " Oh, something candied," she answered, as 
 if to atone for her sharp wit by turning it on 
 herself. 
 
 " No, manna," he whispered. " It is 
 heavenly ! " 
 
 Compliments in any guise ruffled Judy, and 
 perhaps the insouciant young man might have 
 fared a little roughly at her hands had not 
 the small child, Ormsby, suddenly presented 
 himself and tendered a miniature sugar-basin 
 for her to make good his petty larceny. 
 
 14—2
 
 212 LOVE AND LIiaXG. 
 
 " Take a big one," lie said magnanimously. 
 Judy obeyed his bidding and paid liim with 
 a kiss. 
 
 Then Lady Margaret proposed a stroll in 
 the grounds, to which Judy gladly assented. 
 
 "Ah — h — not a bad move," said Lord Le 
 Pole ; " haven't been out to-day ; too hot for 
 anything so vigorous as walking," and he led 
 the way to a door which opened direct on the 
 hall. 
 
 " No, this way, Jje Pole," cried his sister ; 
 " we'll go out through the billiard-room ; Miss 
 Aylmere would like to see the flowers, I'm 
 sure." 
 
 Lady Margaret was a good strategist. The 
 route she indicated led through the entire 
 superb suite of rooms which occupied the 
 front and two sides of the house — a bewilder- 
 ing progress to the simple Judy. Even the 
 Cricket was oppressed by their magnificence 
 and kept close to his mother's side. The 
 principal drawing-rooms were encased in 
 brown holland, so was also the vaulted 
 music-room, and in part the banquet- 
 chamber. The orildins^s were somewhat
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 213 
 
 faded, and Judy could see that the designs 
 of the furniture were of the formal period, 
 now superseded by the grotesque, the fan- 
 tastic, the aesthetic, and what afFectors of 
 the archaic are pleased to term the Eenais- 
 sance, but of what, they do not always 
 condescend to define. The chairs were in 
 sets, so also were the lounges and tables. 
 The carpets had not been rolled up as yet, 
 and these were rich crimson velvet pile, with 
 gay borderings, but in the line of traffic and in 
 the middle slightly worn and faded. On state 
 occasions fancy rugs of oriental fabric covered 
 the ravages of time. The painted panellings 
 of the walls — groups of flowers and sylvan 
 deities — had a look of yesterday's bouquet, 
 the bloom gone and the colours fading. 
 
 "You see us en papillote,'' Lady Margaret 
 said ; " the little room you found us in is the 
 afternoon tea-room, and the one papa uses 
 when he is here en garconJ' 
 
 " A httle room ! " thought Judy. " Why it 
 is nearly as large as the great drawing-room 
 at Egbert Hall ; no wonder they want a suc- 
 cession of heiresses."
 
 214 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 " I tliink," she said aloud, feeling called 
 upon to make some observation, but too well 
 bred to either remark aloud or ask questions 
 in the manner of one going through a show 
 place attended by a cicerone, " I think 
 Ormsby is wise to keep close to us ; if he 
 were lost here lie would not be easil}^ found 
 again." 
 
 " Ah — h — I see we are kindred souls," 
 drawled Lord Le Pole, " vastness wearies me, 
 too. You must see my retreat. Just room 
 for two and quite up to date — as Dredger 
 would say — which he declares this labyrinth 
 of immensity is not." Mr. Dredger was Lady 
 Margaret's husband, a retired and wealthy 
 stock-broker, with a mania for bric-d-brac 
 and an authority on art furniture. 
 
 "Xever mind," retorted Lady Margaret 
 good-humouredly ; she was proof against 
 shafts at her " city partner," as her husband 
 was called in the family. " When your time 
 comes and you set about refurnishing, you'll 
 be very glad of Adam's help. He has ideas." 
 
 " Eight, Margy, but it's only Dredgers can 
 afibrd ideas. They can cultivate Morrisses,
 
 LOVE AND LIiaNG. 215 
 
 and ridicule nature with impunity. Fortu- 
 nately for the family purse I prefer time- 
 hallowed " — drawling out his words — 
 *' fashions." 
 
 At the far end of the great drawing-room 
 which closed the reception suite, double glass 
 folding doors opened into the conservatory. 
 This formed one side of the house and faced 
 south. The shading blinds had been drawn 
 up, and the rays of the sun, mellowed from 
 the west, lit up the windows with ruddy 
 sheen. A perfect bewilderment of colour 
 burst on Judy's sight, arched in by swaying 
 festoons of rare jasmine and fragrant stepha- 
 notis and trailing branches of the white and 
 the crimson passion flowers, with here and 
 there, in light flakes, deep blue and snow- 
 white convolvuli. 
 
 " How beautiful ! " was all she could utter. 
 
 " Perpetual Eeudissance here," whispered 
 Lord Le Pole. 
 
 " The best pelargoniums have been set 
 aside for the show," observed Lady Mar- 
 garet ; " Miss Egbert seldom exhibits now, I 
 suppose ? "
 
 216 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 " She is sending some pelargoniums this 
 time," answered Judy. 
 
 . " Do you hear that, Dicks ? " cried Le Pole 
 to the gardener, "Miss Egbert is going to 
 exhibit too." 
 
 " Then I maun be content with second, my 
 lord," was the reply, " but I think this will 
 rin her close," and Dicks lifted forward a low- 
 sized but splendidly-blossomed plant, as yet 
 not in full flower. 
 
 Only one of the blooms was perfect, and 
 showed a rare tint of golden-red, shaded to a 
 pale hue of gold at the edge, which was heavily 
 fringed and curled outwards. Judy clasped 
 her hands in ecstasy, and Lord Le Pole was 
 roused to honest and ardent admiration. 
 Lady Margaret exclaimed with surprise, and 
 the Cricket demanded to be held up that he 
 might " mell de rose " — all flowers were roses 
 to Ormsby as yet. 
 
 " I haven't hit on a name, my lady," was 
 Dicks' reply to Lady Margaret. "There's a 
 Sunrise and a Sunset already ; what do ye 
 think of Phoebus ? " 
 
 "Oh, call it Gloriana," cried Judy; "it's
 
 LOVE A^'D LIKING. 217 
 
 the same colour shaded off to golden sun- 
 
 light." 
 
 Judy had to explain who Gloriana was, 
 which she did, a little abashed at her own 
 boldness, adding : 
 
 " She's going to the show, and Peters says 
 she is sure of the medal, so she will bring you 
 luck." 
 
 " What will Miss Egbert say ? " asked Lord 
 Le Pole. 
 
 " Oh, she would be the first to place it first 
 if she thought it deserved it," she answered ; 
 " cousin Dulsie is not small." 
 
 "I like the name real well, Miss," said 
 Dicks, " it sounds grand-like." 
 
 Dicks was a Scotchman. And Gloriana the 
 geranium was named. 
 
 Judy had to take a hasty survey with Dicks 
 of a few of his special prides. She felt, she 
 told the squire afterwards, as if she had woke 
 in the garden of Eden and was gliding on a 
 rainbow. Then into the fernery and so through 
 a side door embowered in Cape jasmine and 
 clematis into a small ante-room devoted to 
 hardy green plants, with a fountain playing
 
 218 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 in the centre and gold-fish gleaming beneath ; 
 a cool and restful retreat for the eye dazzled 
 by the garish brilliance of culture's triumph 
 over nature. Double doors, kept open in the 
 summer, gave entrance to the aviary, stocked 
 with home and foreign birds of sweet song 
 and rich plumage. 
 
 Fain would Judy have lingered and chat- 
 tered her bird language to the pretty inmates, 
 who, accustomed to the human form divine, 
 scarce moved a feather as she passed from 
 one wired division to the other. It was their 
 bedtime. The bright wings were folded, and 
 among chirrup and twitter they were settling 
 down to rest. 
 
 ''What are your favourite bird and flower?" 
 asked Lord Le Pole in a tone of inviting 
 confidence. 
 
 Judy turned a quizzical look on him. She 
 was always ready to tilt at sentiment, which 
 she called sham. 
 
 " My affections are far too impartial for a 
 confession album," she said ; " I'm a very 
 commonplace young person. I love wild 
 flowers and wild birds best."
 
 LOVE AXD LIKING. 219 
 
 He looked at her with an amused expres- 
 sion, as one might look at a saucy child. 
 
 "Not without art, but yet to nature true ;" 
 and he smiled, Judy thought, a smile of 
 condescending approval. 
 
 There are few thino^s more irritatincr to the 
 person at whom it is levelled than an apt 
 quotation — a truth Judy experienced. She 
 was in part aware of an aggressive feeling 
 from their first encounter towards this languid 
 iiLSOuciant young man, a feeling born of her 
 cousin's revelations of the morning ; and yet 
 she could not tell why, so subtle are the 
 workings of the heart, she felt impelled 
 towards him, and her ready retorts at fault. 
 Only in a blind way she was cognizant of 
 those internal monitions, but she was pain- 
 fully conscious of a suspicion that she had 
 given warrant to be set down as a social 
 failure. It was on her toni?ue to tell her 
 disquieting companion that she only loved 
 things with which she was familiar, and that 
 she knew wild birds and flowers best, but she 
 checked her utterance with prideful dignity. 
 
 " I am not going to explain myself," she
 
 220 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 said in lier heart ; " anything natural is a 
 curios to him." And then she wondered what 
 the room he called the Eetreat was like ; 
 " luxurious and artificial," she supposed, " the 
 ideal of a young man of the period." 
 
 Eeturning to the fernery they issued by 
 double doors of glass, corresponding to those 
 that gave entrance to the conservatory, into 
 the library, a conventional room in red 
 leather, with an orthodox and voluminous 
 collection of literature in the usual book- 
 cases ; busts, and appropriate conveniences for 
 study in science and art. A pretentious, un- 
 famihar room, Judy thought, the very books 
 looking as if they could never be more than 
 stiff acquaintances. Silently she traversed its 
 lenofth, feehnof relieved when she found her- 
 self in a cheerful room, next in order, known 
 as the old hall. There were two handsome 
 pillars in the centre ; the furniture, par- 
 tially draped, was oriental in its character 
 and the walls were covered with china. This 
 finished up the lengthy communicating suite, 
 a massive door facing the pillars giving egress 
 without to a lawn-tennis ground. Lady
 
 LOVE AXD LIKING. 221 
 
 Margaret opened tlie door, but her brother 
 said : 
 
 "We'll go through the billiard-room, 
 Margy ; I want to show Miss Aylmere my 
 retreat." 
 
 Judy was not a little curious. 
 
 " Do you play ? " Lord Le Pole asked as he 
 took up a cue and made a cannon. 
 
 " xi little with cousin Egbert." 
 
 He offered her a cue. 
 
 " I could not trust myself," she said as she 
 passed on. "It is a very enticing game." 
 
 " Just one stroke." 
 
 She retraced her steps laughing, and enter- 
 ing into the spirit of the moment took the 
 offered cue, and with the firm pose of an 
 accustomed player bent to her aim and made 
 with easy effort a double cannon. 
 
 " Not another stroke," she cried, " that was 
 a fluke." 
 
 The light grace of the girl as she bent to 
 the table, and the careless skill of her stroke, 
 drew from the young man a hearty " Bravo ! " 
 and a warm look of admiration. 
 
 " It is getting late," said his sister, who had
 
 222 LOVE AND LIKIXG. 
 
 marked with inner satisfaction tlie deepening 
 impression made by the heiress on her usually 
 indifferent and supercilious brother. 
 
 " We'll have a battle royal some day," he 
 said, as he took out a small golden key and 
 opened a door in the wall that had all the 
 appearance of a panel. 
 
 Judy had been prepared for an array of 
 meerschaums if not clays, of sporting para- 
 phernalia, trophies of field and mere, and 
 racing literature. 
 
 What was her surprise to see a small well- 
 proportioned chamber, plainly but comfort- 
 ably fitted up with camp furniture, and in an 
 alcove, a hammock. The light was subdued 
 by crimson blinds and shading curtains of 
 muslin. The walls were fitted with shelves, 
 with here and there a space filled in by a 
 picture, and literally crowded with books. 
 On a table in one window was a microscope, 
 and in another, which looked north, an easel 
 and an unfinished painting. A small deal- 
 cased pianoforte stood well out from the wall, 
 and at the other end a harmonium, near 
 which was a stand laden with music. In one
 
 LOVE AND LIKINO. 223 
 
 corner of the room was a rifle, in another 
 a fishing-rod and creel. 
 
 A minute or so Judy stood in the window 
 beside the easel, a tumult of strange thoughts 
 in her brain. 
 
 "And this is the man I judged," she said 
 to herself. " This is the careless dandy on 
 the look-out for a well-dowered bride to 
 rehabilitate his pretentious home ! " 
 
 There was a touch of deference in her 
 manner as she asked him if he painted from 
 nature; she hardly knew she had spoken. 
 
 He replied he did, and then he said : 
 
 " What do you think of the wild beast's 
 lair ? " 
 
 Her eyes were scanning the book-shelves. 
 
 " All my own favourites," she half whis- 
 pered, so intent on her scrutiny she did not 
 notice that the young man's head looked over 
 her shoulder. Down the rows her eyes 
 travelled till they came to works on art, 
 tomes on science, and stately classics with 
 marks of honourable usage. 
 
 With a great sigh she turned fairly round 
 and said, just a little warmly :
 
 224 LOVE AND LIKINa. 
 
 "A lair, indeed! It's just the snuggest 
 little beeliive I ever saw." 
 
 " I call it the Hermitage," added Lady 
 Margaret; " it spoils him for society." 
 
 " Do you think so ? " he asked in a confi- 
 dential whisper. 
 
 She blushed, and then as if angry at her 
 mauvaise honte, and not a little brusquely, 
 she said as she walked towards the pianoforte : 
 
 "I've only begun to come out, so I'm no 
 judge, but if this sort of thing," casting a 
 warm appreciating glance round, " unfits 
 people for society, I think I'll go in again."
 
 CHAPTER XIT. 
 
 " Who ever loved that loved not at first sight ? " 
 
 Lady Margaret laughed and opened the 
 outer door on to the lawn-tennis ground, but 
 again, and this time at the instance of the 
 Cricket, her egress was delayed. That enter- 
 prising juvenile had reached the pianoforte 
 before Judy, and with some loose and flying 
 leaves of music in his clutch was perched on 
 the music-stool. 
 
 " Trew (screw) me up," was the imperious 
 order. Judy obediently brought him by that 
 giddy process to the level of the key-board, 
 when he got on his knees and fluttered the 
 leaves on to the ground. 
 
 " Now Uncle Leppo, ting," he cried. 
 
 " You young Philistine," cried his relative, 
 as he stooped to pick up some of the pages 
 which had fallen ; " why, it's my ' Israel in 
 Egypt.' " 
 
 VOL. I. 15
 
 223 LOVE AND LIKIXa. 
 
 " Not the first time tlie Philistines have 
 scattered Israel," cried Judy, her wit irresistibly 
 provoked by the opportunity. 
 
 A bright smile lit up Lord Le Pole's 
 lano^uid visao^e' banishino^ for the moment 
 what seemed its chronically languid expres- 
 sion. His eyes, dark and deep-set, glowed 
 as they sought hers with such a command- 
 ing force she could not help but meet their 
 ga.ze, but only for a second, and then her 
 long lashes swept down on the tell-tale 
 blushes. 
 
 " The gods are prodigal," he said ; " beauty 
 and wit in one." 
 
 " Ting," repeated the Cricket imperiously. 
 
 " Ormsby, sir, come away ; you know Uncle 
 Leppo never sings before people," cried his 
 mother. 
 
 " Then I suppose I needn't ask," said Judy 
 shyly and evidently speaking to assist her 
 composure. 
 
 For answer he took the child on his knee 
 and struck some preluding chords. 
 
 Lady Margaret sat down on the stone steps 
 of the door.
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 227 
 
 " Do you sing ? " he said to Judy, '' but of 
 course you do." 
 
 " Only ballads," she replied, " but I love old- 
 fashioned songs — classic, I suppose, is the 
 correct term ; will you sing one ? " 
 
 "I never sing but in the mood, and I own 
 to a dislike of silly words," and then while she 
 stood before him, her shyness for the moment 
 o^one, he saner in a rich tenor : 
 
 " The fountains mingle with the river 
 
 And the rivers with the ocean, 
 • The winds of heaven mix for ever 
 AVith a sweet emotion. 
 Nothing in the world is single, 
 
 All things by a law divine 
 In one another's being mingle — ■■ 
 Why not I with thine ? " 
 
 When he had reached the last line Judy 
 had moved aside, he could no longer see her 
 face. He rose and set the child down. 
 
 " Turn about is fair play," he said, " just 
 one verse too ; I love ballads — old-fashioned 
 ballads." 
 
 She had no will to resist. Her heart was 
 still vibrating with the searching melody, she 
 felt spell-bound. She could sing anything she 
 
 15—2
 
 228 LOVE AND LIKINa. 
 
 had once heard without the aid of the printed 
 notes, so the young lady's excuse that she had 
 not her music never occurred to her. 
 
 " I see papa and Mr. Egbert," cried Lady 
 Margaret. 
 
 But obedient to the expectant eyes, in which 
 she fancied the ardent question of Shelley's 
 song craved answer, Judy sat down. 
 
 " A ballad is too long," she said, " and I 
 haven't time to choose, so I'll sing whatever 
 comes first ; " and that was " Allan-a-Dale." 
 
 Only the first and third verses she sang — 
 sang like a young thrush, clear and full, with 
 a trill that in the feathered songster's melody 
 tells that its mate is nicrh. 
 
 " Allan-a-Dale has no faggot for burning, 
 Allan-a-Dale has no furrow for turning, 
 Allan-a-Dale has no fleece for the spinning, 
 Yet Allan-a-Dale has red gold for the winning. 
 Come read me my riddle, come hearken my tale, 
 And tell me the craft of bold Allan-a-Dale. 
 
 " Allan-a-Dale to his wooing has come, 
 His mother she asked of his household and home : 
 
 ' Though the castle of Richmond stands fair on the hill, 
 My hall,' quoth bold Allan, ' shows gallanter still ; 
 'Tis the blue vault of heaven with its crescent so pale 
 And with all its bright spangles,' said Allan-a-Dale."
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 229 
 
 The sound of her voice gave her confidence 
 and the stirring air fired her spirit. As she 
 finished she Ufted her eyes, now full of fun, 
 and met her corapanion's admiring gaze with, 
 he thought, a mischievous sparkle. She did 
 not wait for compliments, but snatching up 
 her gloves joined Lady Margaret, who had 
 gone on a few yards in advance to meet her 
 father and the squire. Lord Le Pole followed 
 leisurely. He was once more the listless, apa- 
 thetic exquisite, whose sole desire seemed to 
 be to convince the world that man delighted 
 him not nor woman either. 
 
 There was no time for the proposed stroll 
 in the grounds ; that was reserved. Lady 
 Margaret hoped, for another not far distant 
 day. The horses were already at the door, 
 and after an interchange of kisses with the 
 Cricket and frank adieux to the rest of the 
 party, Gloriana received her light burden and 
 pranced with impatience for the road. 
 
 " Perfect, absolutely perfect," drawled Lord 
 Le Pole, as he took off his hat. 
 
 " Isn't she ? " cried Judy with a backward 
 glance of delight.
 
 230 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 " A combination of perfection," he replied ; 
 a compliment which returned Judy's head to 
 its frontal condition with a toss of disdain and 
 brought down on Gloriana's shoulder an airy 
 tap from the feathery wand she was pleased to 
 call a whip. 
 
 A start, a quiver, and the fiery animal 
 bounded from the ground with an impetuosity 
 that would have tried a veteran in the saddle ; 
 but Judy kept her seat without apparently 
 the slightest effort. 
 
 " Softly, my beaut}^ softly," she cried coax- 
 ingly. Then relaxing the repressive rein she 
 gave the mare her head and was off, the 
 squire doing his noble best to pick her up. 
 
 " I wonder Egbert trusts her on such ex- 
 plosive material," said Lord Albany. 
 
 " Trust her ; " exclaimed his son, " I never 
 saw anything finer, the mare gave to her hand 
 like a supple bough. Her seat is magnificent." 
 
 Then turning? to a o^room who had brouojht 
 round the cob and who was standing agape 
 with delight and admiration at the young 
 lady's horsemanship, he asked would the mare 
 be for sale when exhibited.
 
 LOVE AND LTKINa. 231 
 
 " No, my lord," the man answered. " Mr. 
 Peters, the squire's stud groom, ses as the 
 mare is the miss's, she's only to be showed ; " 
 and then he added confidentially, " they do say 
 as she rides better wanting the saddle." 
 
 With a slow step and abstracted mien the 
 young lord turned silently away and strolled 
 towards the wood at the north end of the 
 mansion. 
 
 It took the best part of an hour to reduce 
 Gloriana's response to the unintentional tap 
 on her shoulder to a sober pace. Then tlie 
 lengthening shadows pointed to the sunset 
 hour. The long, broad, dusty road had lost 
 its white glare, and the scent from the 
 gaily-vestured hedge-rows of hawthorn and 
 honeysuckle, and from the fields beyond, of 
 meadow-sweet and fragrant grasses, filled 
 the air with a dreamy perfume. In tlie 
 meadows the ^rass rose strong^ and thick 
 and richly green, or gleamed with refreshing 
 coolness amid tlie massed buttercups like 
 cloth of gold. In parts most exposed to the 
 sun the crop had been cut, and the young 
 aftermath showed a sickly yellow fainting
 
 232 LOVE AND LIKINa. 
 
 for a shower ; in others the brown tints and 
 the ripening seed, with here and there a tinge 
 of dull red, where the sorrel rose high, marked 
 the course of the scythe for the morrow. Up 
 from the hoUow meads the rising slopes were 
 clothed with the young wheat, each stalk 
 tipped like a sceptre. It was nearing seven, 
 and but a few stragglers were seen on the 
 road. Here and there a weary horse cropped 
 the succulent herbage by a ditch, or a donkey 
 stood in the middle of the road patiently 
 flapping his ears and tail at vain issue with 
 the flies. The very cottages behind the 
 hedges had an air of idleness, and over the 
 snug farmsteads a spirit of peace and repose 
 seemed brooding. Great ehn - trees over- 
 shadowed the old thatched cattle-sheds and 
 rick-yards, and by one homely cluster of 
 venerable buildino-s a stream from a descend- 
 ing slope broadened into a wide deep brook, 
 thickly fringed with green flags bearing 
 erratically great yellow leaves. Beside the 
 cattle-shed under the elms a dam crossed the 
 water, forcing it into a pond for the cattle 
 and harbourage for the ducks. Now and
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 233 
 
 then a dog would trot leisurely out of the 
 thatched gate at the sound of the horses' 
 feet, make silent scouting, and trot leisurely 
 back ; the passers-by, he saw, were not within 
 the range of his duty, which was to keep 
 tramps at bay. 
 
 At turn of a rising hill the show vicarage 
 of the county, as Judy irreverently called it, 
 came into view. A quaint, profusely-gabled 
 old house, literally covered with ivy except on 
 the frontage, which was one gorgeous sheet 
 of Gloire de Dijon, the pride of the vicar's 
 wife. 
 
 The circling wood divided the vicarage 
 from the Egberts' parish church, a venerable 
 structure, whether of Anglo-Saxon or early 
 Norman architecture archa3ologists could not 
 determine. Before the parsonage, on which 
 the sun smiled all day long when smile he 
 did, a time-old garden, centred by a velvet 
 lawn, sloped down to a little river, across 
 whose still breast beeches arched their top- 
 most branches, and whose banks were clothed 
 with a thick vesture of blue forget-me-nots. 
 
 Nearing the peaceful home of the living
 
 234 LOVE AND LIKIXa 
 
 and the dead, Judy said softly, the calm even- 
 ing influence on her spirit : 
 
 " I do not know any spot where life and 
 death seem so beautifully blended.'* 
 
 " To the outward eye, Judy." 
 
 " One would like to sleep there," and she 
 pointed to a mound under two yew-trees, 
 whose interlacing branches had been cut into 
 a shrouding arch. 
 
 " No one is ever buried there now," said 
 the squire, halting for a second. " Fifty years 
 ago there was a murder in the village. It 
 couldn't be brought home to the suspected 
 person, a woman. She died in her bed and 
 was laid there. A year or so after a paper 
 was found in an old desk she had left to her 
 orrandson, which he had sold. It contained 
 the confession of the murder, so her family 
 took away the headstone and broke it up, 
 and her grave has remained undisturbed by 
 strang^er or kin ever since. But you see, 
 Judy, the sunset's glow lights up the dark 
 arch, and the daisies and coltswort are as 
 bright and fresh on the turf beneath as on 
 that mound beside the east window where
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 235 
 
 the saintly Mar}^ Marlwood, the vicar's mother, 
 lies." 
 
 "He maketh His sun to shine on the evil 
 and on the good," whispered Judy. 
 
 They pursued their homeward way without 
 further speech, but each intent on the day's 
 dying splendours. To the young spirit they 
 spoke of life and hope, filling it with a glad 
 worship and yearning for some great thing 
 to do. To the worn and weary spirit they 
 seemed an earnest of that land so full of rest, 
 which eye hath not seen, nor whose deep 
 songs of joy ear hath not heard. 
 
 When the grey old walls of Egbert Hall 
 came close in sight a trembling star stood out 
 refulgent, and sunset glow bathed the upper 
 windows and tipped the still tender green of 
 the wood. 
 
 As they trotted up the drive the squire 
 said a little meekly, " How did you like your 
 visit, Judy ? " 
 
 ■ " I don't think I ever enjoyed a ride more," 
 she answered, blushing ; and the squire was 
 satisfied.
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 " A chiel's amang us takin' notes." 
 
 By the middle of the week on which Judy had 
 gone with Dulsie to Egbert Hall, Mrs. Aylmere 
 was pleasantly lodged in the same house 
 where Mrs. Beaumorris had apartments. She 
 had come from quiet respectable Casterham 
 fully prepared to make or mar a plot, and one 
 of the principal dramatis per sonce had vanished. 
 But Mrs. Aylmere was of an inquiring mind, 
 and she set herself to work to collect materials 
 in the event of fresh opportunities occurring 
 for her interposition. To do this it was 
 necessary to become mistress of the situation. 
 She was of rather a timid nature, though 
 persistent, a quality by no means inconsistent 
 with that temperament. She therefore pre- 
 ferred reaching a desired end by a circuitous 
 route, taking care with a kind of feline 
 instinct to mark points of vantage for escape,
 
 LOVE AND LIKINa. 237 
 
 and to keep the way clear for retreat if occa- 
 sion called. 
 
 The evening of her arrival she spent at the 
 Lodf^e, and there bv an inadvertent remark of 
 Sybella she gathered that the major's depar- 
 ture had been sudden, if not mysterious. 
 Mabella's aspect was, however, so serene, 
 her answer to the widow's purposely inad- 
 vertent question, " If he would return this 
 season," so indifferent in its negative, that a 
 less experienced inquisitor would have been 
 misled. 
 
 " If," she said to herself, " if their ac- 
 quaintanceship had not been a little more 
 than ordinary Mabella would not have come 
 out so pat with that ' no ;' neither would 
 Sybella have watched her face when I asked 
 the question." 
 
 Then she thought that Sybella turned a 
 slightly inquisitorial eye on herself, and 
 anxious to ward off observation from her con- 
 cealed purpose she, like the lapwing when 
 her nest is threatened, trailed a wounded wing, 
 slowly circling away to lure the intruder from 
 her treasure.
 
 238 LOVE AXD LIKING. 
 
 " I heard he was very fascmating," she 
 said, " and I feared for Judy. You see, she 
 is a little impressionable, and has made me 
 uneasy in another quarter." 
 
 The rase succeeded. 
 
 " Mr. Eawson," exclaimed Sybella in a tone 
 of a foregone conclusion. 
 
 " My dear Mary," this from Mabella, " it is 
 only calf-love. Calf-love is a species of vac- 
 cination; it guards you from the vital disease, 
 or if you do take it, you take it mildly. I 
 never saw a gayer girl than Judy ; she's just 
 as heart whole as I am." 
 
 "I think that kind of vaccination very 
 risky," said Sybella, " and very far from 
 effectual. You are very liable, when you 
 are well up in years, to have an attack of 
 the real thing, and then it is all up with you, 
 for your elasticity is gone and you succumb 
 without a struggle." 
 
 "What a picture," cried jMrs. Aylmere, 
 perfectly understanding the covert allusions ; 
 " but prevention is better than cure, you 
 know. Judy may not be fancy free, but I 
 aijree with Mabella she is heart whole, and
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 239 
 
 I want her to r jmam so. Is Mr. Eawson still 
 here?" 
 
 " Yes, but lie leaves next week," said 
 Mabella. " He called to-day to tell us of a 
 tempting offer he has had. Some uncle — a 
 London merchant, I believe — has written to 
 propose he should stand for Oxminster ; the 
 seat is vacant by death." 
 
 " Why, he hasn't two hundred a year," 
 exclaimed Mrs. Aylmere, " and no pro- 
 fession." 
 
 "And no creed," added Sybella. "But youth 
 is omniscient ; it surmounts the impossible 
 by the impossible. Mr. Eawson will charge 
 the windmill without even the traditionary 
 sword." 
 
 " His uncle," said Mabella, " offers him an 
 allowance of five hundred a year, but he 
 makes one proviso, his politics must be ultra- 
 Liberal." 
 
 " I know who his uncle is," observed Mrs. 
 Aylmere ; " he is a city knight. Sir Janitor 
 Tomlinson, a very pretentious man, im- 
 mensely rich and extremely mean ; a widower 
 with no family, an entirely self-made man.
 
 240 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 Mr. Eawson is fortunate. Of course he 
 accepts." 
 
 " No ' of course ' about it," said Mabella. 
 " The young man is no time-server. He has 
 written to say that he should wish to take 
 advantage of his uncle's liberality, but that 
 he must stand on perfectly independent prin- 
 ciples, pledged to no party." 
 
 " I suppose," observed Sybella carelessly, 
 "Mr. Eawson, like his uncle, has no preten- 
 sion to good blood." 
 
 " His mother's name was Tomlinson, but 
 I believe his father comes of a good though 
 decayed family," returned Mrs. Aylmere. 
 
 " Then take my advice and keep Judy out 
 of the way until you see how he gets on. 
 Don't lose sight of him though ; these are 
 degenerate days, and a city fortune is not 
 to be despised. In this case it may have a 
 high mission," but what that mission might 
 be Sybella did not say. 
 
 " Ah, yes," sighed Mabella, letting in a 
 little light on her sister's train of thought, 
 " nothing like building up an ancient house 
 for taking the alloy out of money made by
 
 LOVE AND LIKING. 241 
 
 trade. But I can't say the name of Eawson 
 strikes me as having the true ring in it." 
 
 Mrs. Ayhnere did not pursue the subject. 
 Whatever the name of Eawson might sound 
 to the Miss Egberts, to her it had now, and 
 for the first time, a true metalHc ring. 
 
 "I hear," she said, "that the famous beauty 
 Mrs. Beaumorris has rooms next to mine. Is 
 she a pleasant person ? " 
 
 '•To gentlemen, very," said both sisters. 
 
 " She is an income to Cook the photo- 
 grapher in Winmore Street," said Mrs. Ayl- 
 mere. 
 
 " A mutual benefit," remarked Sybella ; " he 
 pays her a royalty. If nature were not so 
 artfully assisted and so liberally adorned, she 
 would hardly pass so well. Her chief beauty 
 is her grace, and that, you know, is the secret 
 of her effective poses. I wonder what keeps 
 her here ; the London season is just in its 
 height." 
 
 " I heard," said Mabella, " that she had no 
 house in town this year, that she would 
 not go into rooms, and that she could not 
 afford a hotel. Mr. Beaumorris hired a yacht 
 
 VOL. I. 1 6
 
 242 LOVE AKD LIKING. 
 
 instead. I lieard her say sometliing about 
 making up a party for a cruise." 
 
 " A party, Mabella ! Men and a good chef, 
 you should say. She openly declares her pre- 
 ference for the societ}^ of men. Miss Prance 
 says she never goes near a woman unless she 
 wants a blind or a foil. But she has a rival 
 here who is running her close, Mrs. Trelaw- 
 ney, a dashing Irish belle, witty and good- 
 humoured ; Miss Eber, too, is much admired. 
 So the London beauty hasn't it all her own 
 way in out-of-the-way little Sandycot." 
 
 " M iss Eber ! Why, you wouldn't name her 
 in the same breath with either Mrs. Beaumorris 
 or Mrs. Trelawney?" cried Mabella warmly. 
 "In the first place she is insignificant, then 
 she lias no style, and she is an adventuress." 
 
 " She is lovely, I think," returned Sybella ; 
 " and as for the rest, one can't be hypercritical 
 in Sandycot. She is a great friend of Mrs. 
 Horseman, and that suffices for her respecta- 
 bility, I think." 
 
 " Or her notoriety ; " Mabella spoke viciously 
 for her. 
 
 " Judy took a great fancy to her. She is
 
 LOVE AND LIKINa. 
 
 quite young, and yet she has no look of inner 
 3^outh ; I should say she had come through 
 some great trial." 
 
 " People with histories are to be avoided." 
 Mabella looked acrimoniously exclusive. 
 "Mrs. Horseman may take what liberties she 
 chooses with London society, that can take 
 care of itself, but with small communities like 
 this, where every one knows every one and 
 intimacies are so easily formed, she ought to 
 be very careful who she is responsible for. 
 There is quite enough latitude already. We 
 are constantly meeting people, pleasant 
 enough and very well in their way, but who 
 would be inadmissible into county society ; 
 there we make a point of knowing who's who. 
 I know what you are going to say, Sybella ; 
 that Miss Eber is a Jewess and beyond a 
 pedigree in our sense of the word ; but Jews 
 as yet have no independent social status ; 
 they force their way into society adventi- 
 tiously by wealth or genius. As a proof of 
 the truth of what I say, name me one family 
 who, like ourselves or even the Brownlies — 
 and they can only go back a hundred years — 
 
 16—2
 
 244 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 take their place anywhere in society as a 
 matter of course and apart from individual 
 qualifications. My dear, it takes three gener- 
 ations to make a gentleman and the Jews' 
 DisabiUties Act has not covered one yet." 
 
 Sybella named several eminent Jewish 
 names. 
 
 " Cases in point, my dear ; adventitious 
 adventurers, every one." 
 
 " Oh, Mabella, that is going too far ; you 
 can't call the Wrathsbairns adventurers, or 
 the Duke of Tancred. Why, these people are 
 as much above society as society is above a 
 retired greengrocer." 
 
 " Sybella, an adventurer does not cease to 
 be an adventurer because he is successful, 
 any more than a usurper ceases to be a 
 usurper because he reigns. The Wrathsbairns 
 are a dynasty now, I grant you, but who 
 knows anything of the family apart from the 
 heads and the heiresses who have married 
 well? Then as for the Duke of Tancred, 
 though I reverence his very name, for he is 
 the bulwark of our old institutions, yet I am 
 sure, had he been in the purple he would not
 
 LOVE AND LIKIXCr. 245 
 
 have liad tliat over-appreciation of rank and 
 circumstance lie shows so palpably." 
 
 Mrs. Aylmere smiled to herself. " Over- 
 appreciation of rank," she thought to herself; 
 " sitting in judgment on that as an evidence 
 of alienship. And these women look down 
 on every one as pariahs who cannot claim 
 descent from some old Xorman robber or 
 Saxon boor," but in a mild tone of recon- 
 ciliation, intended for both sisters, she said 
 aloud, " I never knew a Jewish family." 
 
 " You would not be likely," Mabella re- 
 marked obtusely, though with no intention of 
 giving pain. " Jews, as I have been trying to 
 prove, have only place among the very upper 
 circles and the artist and city classes ; they are 
 never met with among the middle-class gentry, 
 small professionals and people of that kind." 
 
 " A distinction," retorted Mrs. Aylmere 
 blandly, " that ought to commend itself to 
 tne small professionals ; they escape both 
 successful adventurers and old clo' men " 
 
 " You see," said Sybella in a bantering 
 tone, " respectability has its advantages, and 
 extremes are to be avoided."
 
 ?46 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 As Mrs. Aylmere, atteiidsd by a page, 
 walked lioms to lier lodo'ingjs in Shore Street 
 she felt grateful to the calm mooiiUght, it 
 soothed her ruffled susceptibilities. " It is 
 always the same," she said to herself ; " I am 
 never half-an-hour in their company but they 
 manage to remind me that I am not of their 
 order ; to keep me in my proper place, T 
 suppose. If it weren't for Judy" — at that 
 name the widow's irritation passed away, and 
 fair in the soft still air of nio[lit there rose 
 soon a stately castle, whereof a bright-haired, 
 bright-eyed, and, to the builder's sight, peerless 
 maiden reissued chatelaine. The smile that 
 accompanied the coin with which she feed 
 the page on reaching home compensated that 
 usually mercenary youth for the smallness of 
 its value. 
 
 " I never thought the old 'un like Miss Judy 
 before," he said as he whistled himself across 
 the sands back to the Lod^e. 
 
 o 
 
 The next morning Mrs. Aylmere entered 
 her name as a subscriber to the library over 
 which she had her habitation. The book- 
 seller, Mr. Tims, who was her landlord, she
 
 LOVE AND Lliaxa. 247 
 
 found taciturn, but his wife a gossip of tlie 
 first water. 
 
 Mrs. Aylmere's voucher having been Miss 
 Egbert, she was treated witli deference. 
 
 The major's attention to Miss Egbert had 
 been the talk of the place. Many a discussion 
 concerning his intentions and his probable 
 success had been held in that little shop and 
 eagerly caught in by Mrs. Tims' quick ears. 
 She was sharp, and she saw that her new 
 lodger was inclined to be " conversable," as 
 she phrased it, and as she herself was at all 
 times ready to be communicative a good deal 
 of small talk was interchang^ed between the 
 two. Both had a certain latent object in their 
 affability. Mrs. Aylmere wished to hear if 
 her cousin's flirtation had attracted public 
 notice, also in what estimation Major Tyler 
 was held. Mrs. Tims, on her part, was 
 curious to know how far the matter had 
 really progressed, and above all what had 
 caused the handsome major's sudden depar- 
 ture. The fencing^ was admirable. Common- 
 places about Sandycot were exchanged, a few 
 of the principal visitors named by Mrs. Tims
 
 248 LOVE AND LIKING. 
 
 discussed, and a photograph of Mrs. Beau- 
 morris, "By the sad sea-waves," bought by 
 Mrs. Ayhiiere. 
 
 "You ought to get Miss Ayhnere done, 
 ma'am," Mrs. Tims said. " Major Tyler — you 
 liave heard of the handsome major, I sup- 
 pose, he was a great friend of the squire ? " 
 
 Mrs. Aylmere gave a significant nod. 
 
 "Major Tyler wanted her to be taken as a 
 mermaid, so Miss Dulsie told me, sitting on a 
 rock and combing her beautiful hair. She is 
 quite the belle of Sandycot, ma'am, if I'm not 
 too bold in saying it." 
 
 Mrs. Aylmere smiled as if gratified. 
 
 " An only daughter is a great anxiety," she 
 said. " I think young girls ouglit to be kept 
 in the background. This public sale of 
 private gentlewomen's photographs jars on 
 my old-fashioned notions. Have you one of 
 Major Tyler ? " 
 
 Mrs. Tims searched her collection. 
 
 "I'm afraid," she said, "Miss Eo^bert i^ot 
 the last." 
 
 "Miss Egbert?" and Mrs. Aylmere shook 
 her head gravely.
 
 LOVE AND LIKINTa. 249 
 
 " Yes, ma'am. People do say — but Sandy- 
 cot is such a place for gossip — that the major 
 was very sweet on her. It doesn't seem 
 likely, does it, ma'am? No one seemed to 
 know much about him. Mrs. Beaumorris 
 knew him, for I heard her say she had danced 
 with him." 
 
 " Is there any gambhng at the club here ? " 
 Mrs. Aylmere asked with apparent inconse- 
 quence, but a meaning glance, 
 
 Mrs. Tims was quick ; she nodded con- 
 fidently. 
 
 " A deal," she answered ; " well now, how 
 strange things do turn up. I always said he 
 wasn't a man to be trusted, and I know," 
 another nod, " he was sometimes very flush of 
 cash ; yet from all I've heard he never once 
 cashed a cheque while he was here. But I'm 
 bound to say he was always very punctual 
 paying everybody, and he didn't look like a 
 sporting gent. It must have been cards, and 
 cards is the ruination of hundreds. Well, 
 I've known the old family at the Hall since I 
 wasn't the height of that counter, and I'd be 
 main sorry to see any harm come to it. But
 
 250 LO\'E AND LIKING. 
 
 he'll be a great miss at the Lodge, though as 
 for Miss Egbert ever thinking of him, it's just 
 clack." 
 
 Mrs. Tims looked confidently and inquir- 
 ingly at her customer, but with no satisfactory 
 result. Mrs. Aylmere had got more than the 
 worth of the photograph she had bought, but 
 the vendor not one fraction over its value, 
 beyond an ambiguous question, a portentous 
 shake of the head, and a significant nod, out 
 of which, however, she managed to make 
 some not insignificant capital. And now, her 
 end accomplished, Mrs. Tims' customer allowed 
 herself to become suddenly conscious that she 
 was compromising her dignity, if nothing else, 
 by encouraging idle talk. She noticed, too, 
 the gradually familiar tone into which her land- 
 lady was lapsing, and drew up, she hoped 
 in time, taking care to keep, as she mentally 
 expressed it, her instrument well in hand for 
 future use if needed. So with a look of stiff 
 surprise and the slightest knit of the brows, 
 suggestive of distaste, but in a conciliatory 
 voice, she said : 
 
 '^You are interested in the old family, I
 
 LOVE AND LIKIXa. 251 
 
 know, or you would not have named such an 
 absurd report to me, and I am sure you will 
 take every opportunity to contradict it." 
 
 She then asked her way to the baths, and 
 left with a friendly good morning. 
 
 EXD OF VOL. 1.
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 KELLY A^D CO., GATE STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS, ^V.C. 
 AND MIDDLE MILL, KINGSTON-ON-THAMES.