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 PEERESS AND PLAYER. 
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 THE HEART OF JANE WARNER. 
 
 UNDER THE LILIES & ROSES. 
 
 MY OWN CHILD. 
 
 HER WORLD AGAINST A LIE. \ MY SISTER THE ACTRESS. 
 
 By ANNIE THOMAS (Mrs Pender Cudlip). 
 FRIENDS AND LOVERS. I ALLERTON TOWERS. 
 
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 MATED WITH A CLOWN. I SWEETHEART AND WIFE. 
 
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 A PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY. | THE MATCH OF THE SEASON. 
 
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 LOVE, HONOUR AND OBEY. | NOT EASILY JEALOUS. 
 
 ONLY A LOVE STORY. 
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 POISONED ARROWS. 
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 A NORTH COUNTRY MAID. | A DEAD PAST. 
 
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 OUT OF EDEN. I KEITH'S WIFE. 
 
 By NELLIE FORTESCUE HARRISON, Author of " So Runs my Dream." 
 FOR ONE man's PLEASURE. 
 
 By EDMUND LEATHES. 
 THE A C T O R'S WIFE. 
 
 COLSTON AND COMPANY, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
 
 G R I S E L D A 
 
 A NOVEL. 
 
 BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF " THE GARDEN OF EDEN," 
 
 ETC., ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : F. V. WHITE & CO., 
 31 SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C 
 
 1886. 
 
 {All Rights reserved.]
 
 COLSTON AND COMPANY, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
 
 
 V 
 Si 
 
 5^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 G R I S E L D A 
 
 CHAPTER I, 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 URE white snow everywhere. 
 Lying- thick on the hill-tops 
 against the slate-coloured sky, 
 in drifts on the fields, where the hedges 
 were mere lines in the whiteness, in 
 patches on the red tiles of the village- 
 houses — snow clinging to the grey 
 church-steeple, clustering upon the green 
 ivy, which was black in contrast to the 
 
 VOL. I. A
 
 2 Griselda. 
 
 dazzling, sparkling crystals — snow melt- 
 ing slowly from the sloping roof of the 
 vicarage close by. 
 
 It was a wintry Christmas Eve at the 
 little village of Crowsfoot, in Midland- 
 shire. Crowsfoot nestled in a grassy 
 valley under the Langton Hills. There 
 were farms here and there about, but no 
 villao^e for three or four miles. The 
 small population of Crowsfoot consisted 
 of farm-labourers, a few tradespeople to 
 supply these with bread and living neces- 
 sities ; the doctor, Mr Mayne, — and the 
 vicar, the Reverend John Black. 
 
 There was no squire ; there were no 
 * gentlemen farmers.' The Crowsfoot 
 folk were rough and ready, living from 
 hand to mouth. A hard, toiling life, but 
 pleasant because it was lived out in the 
 lap of Nature. And ignorant — stupid.
 
 Griselda. 3 
 
 perhaps, as those hard-handed, rough 
 men and women were, there was the 
 charm of Nature upon them, the rude 
 sweetness of her big babies that have 
 never been weaned from her bosom. 
 
 When ' Parson Black,' or ' Parson,' as 
 his rural flock called him, came to live 
 among them, there was a tinge of 
 savagery about these tillers of the 
 ground. He felt it, and determined to 
 tone it down. 
 
 John Black was strong in soul and 
 body. He had been a friendless orphan 
 of mysterious origin ; he had never known 
 exactly how he came to be one of the 
 struggling, passionate atoms called men. 
 He had come into consciousness, living 
 with an old nurse and her husband, but 
 treated by them as their superior. It 
 was 'Master John' with them, and they
 
 4 Griselda. 
 
 waited upon him, not he upon them. 
 Their name was Hobbs ; but he was 
 ' Master John ' till he was fetched away 
 to school — a strict boarding-school, where 
 he found, to his astonishment, that his 
 name was ' Black.' 
 
 Self - contained, thoughtful, naturally 
 surly, his school-life would have been 
 unhappy had he not worked with all his 
 might, carried off prizes, plodded up- 
 ward doggedly till, as captain of the 
 school, he won a scholarship and went 
 to Cambridge. Here he continued his 
 persistent efforts, took a good place 
 among the wranglers, and went in for 
 Holy Orders. 
 
 His life had been utterly friendless. 
 Except poor old Hobbs and his wife, 
 he had neither kith nor kin. He had 
 known no father's pride, no mother's ten-
 
 Griselda. 5 
 
 derness. When he won honours, there 
 was no one to be pleased. If he had 
 an illness, no one cared. He might have 
 died — he sometimes told himself, with a 
 desolate sensation which is a bitterness 
 happily known to few in this world — he 
 might have died, and it would have 
 been as if a fly had dropped dead from 
 some wall upon the ground. 
 
 Little wonder that he looked beyond 
 this petty world for his life ! They called 
 him the ' star-gazer.' He had certainly 
 one peculiarity — he had never learned to 
 laugh. Happy mothers teach their loved 
 babies to laugh, as they sprawl, young 
 monarchs, upon their gentle knees. But 
 John had not had a happy mother, nor 
 had he been a loved baby. He neither 
 laughed with his lips nor in his heart. 
 Therefore he was a ' wet blanket,' a ' kill-
 
 6 Griselda. 
 
 joy' — at cricket, or boating, or football 
 — in fact, at all those times when those 
 who have learnt happiness practise it, 
 and when those who have not, wonder 
 what it is, and slink away abashed at 
 not knowing such a simple thing. John 
 Black could read Greek as if it were 
 the plainest English ; but happiness — oh, 
 that, he confessed, ' floored him ! ' 
 
 As he was not one to be checked or 
 worsted, he determined to conquer this 
 great science of Nature, which he con- 
 sidered quite as necessary to him as 
 mathematics. He had grasped difficult 
 problems most closely when explaining 
 them to others ; so he reasoned that he 
 might possibly learn this glorious un- 
 attainable thing, which flushed dimpled 
 cheeks and brightened eyes, and made 
 creatures sine and dance and love and
 
 Griselda. 7 
 
 be patient, and which seemed the very 
 essence of young Hfe, — by watching and 
 assisting at its birth in others. After 
 pondering, he concluded he could do this 
 best as a minister, or priest, or clergyman, 
 or parson, as even he, from old Hobbsian 
 habit, called the interpreter of heavenly 
 matters. He had thought of being a 
 doctor, but, as his nurse Hobbs expressed 
 it, ' hadn't no call that way.' ' No,' he 
 resolutely said to himself, ' I will doctor 
 their souls and cure miseries.' And so 
 he did. 
 
 Although without relatives or friends, 
 he was, strange to say, not without a 
 solicitor. The firm, Messrs Everest & 
 Everest, of Lincoln's Inn Fields, had paid 
 Hobbs and his wife for taking care of 
 ' their client ' in his infancy ; had paid 
 ' their client's ' school-bills and the trifling
 
 8 Griselda. 
 
 expenses not covered by his scholarship 
 during his college career. When John 
 Black Informed them by letter that he was 
 about to enter the Church, he received a 
 formal reply that any fees could be had on 
 application. Once, and only once, did 
 John have an Interview with these lawyers. 
 He Intended to find out who he was and 
 where his money came from. All he could 
 discover from these gentlemen, who v.^ere 
 coldly polite, as to the merest stranger who 
 might have called upon them without pre- 
 knowledge or introduction, was that he, 
 John Black, had four thousand pounds, of 
 which they were the trustees. Where that 
 money came from, or who had placed it in 
 their hands, he could not find out. 
 
 That hour was the crisis of his life. The 
 waif, the discarded creature, the disowned, 
 utterly alone, must either hate mankind or
 
 G rise Ida. 9 
 
 love them. He endured a brief agony of 
 shame, resentment, desperation, and came 
 out of it full of pity, sympathy, compassion, 
 ready to forget self and fight for others — 
 in fact, a real, honest, good man. 
 
 His sound heart was felt through his 
 gruff, ungainly manner. People began 
 to feel instinctive confidence in him. 
 One of his former tutors, now a country 
 parson, invited him to stay, before he 
 began to look about him for a curacy. 
 The delicately pretty Evelyn Vane, 
 this kindly clergyman's eldest daughter, 
 was greatly interested in John. The in- 
 terest became love — strong, deep love on 
 John's part. Mr Vane did not object to 
 John's peculiar position, so John Black 
 and Evelyn Vane were married. Messrs 
 Everest & Everest made no demur about 
 providing the necessary money; more than
 
 lo G7nselda. 
 
 this, on his wedding-day, John received 
 an intimation from them that he would 
 shortly be appointed to the living of 
 Crowsfoot, in Midlandshire, a living 
 which was worth some three hundred and 
 seventy pounds yearly. 
 
 ' These Everests are not the stones they 
 would have us think them,' was John's 
 idea. He had a stern simplicity about 
 him. With him it was wrong or right, 
 good or bad. He saw no middle paths, 
 and was absolutely free from suspicious- 
 ness. But Mr Vane, double his son-in- 
 law's age, had seen mankind without a 
 veil. He knew now that behind the 
 Everest protection was the mystery of 
 John's birth and parentage. But he kept 
 these notions to himself. 
 
 After a short honeymoon in the High- 
 lands, John Black and his young wife
 
 Griselda. 1 1 
 
 returned to install themselves in their 
 future battle-field. They had to fight 
 ignorance, semi-savagery at first. The 
 people of Crowsfoot had been neglected. 
 The living had been one of many held 
 by one man. It was looked after by any 
 curate who chose to bury himself tempor- 
 arily for a consideration. There was no 
 school. Children tumbled up as they best 
 might till they were big enough to work, 
 w^hen they went into the fields. They 
 looked upon church as they looked upon 
 carriages and servants, — as something 
 belonging exclusively to the rich ; and 
 they were very poor. The church, when 
 John Black ' read himself in,' was literally 
 in ruins. It smelt of damp, like a vault. 
 No one had been forthcoming to mend the 
 organ, so there was a poor old wreck mil- 
 dewing away in a corner. The very cover
 
 1 2 Griselda. 
 
 to the Communion-table was in rags. At 
 first John was raging ; he was possessed 
 with anger and indignation till he had hard 
 work to control the outward man — to seem 
 calm. Evelyn, his wife, respected his 
 righteous wrath. She agreed with him 
 to put aside half their income till matters 
 were mended. Then both — steadily, ear- 
 nestly, patiently — began to stem against 
 this tide of idle, wanton neglect. The 
 church was repaired. John went the 
 round of the parish. He went into the 
 cottages as an old friend, come to help 
 everybody and fight their battles for them. 
 His firm hand grasped the toil-worn hands 
 with a grasp of possession. Once their 
 hands were grasped, their hearts soon 
 followed John's strong, tender heart. He 
 was no apostle, no saintly idol, among 
 them. He was not even their shepherd.
 
 Griselda, 1 3 
 
 No — he was the head of the flock, 
 leadlno: them as one of themselves. As 
 such, he soon led them in the right path 
 towards happiness. Dirt, idleness, list- 
 lessness and their attendant vices gradu- 
 ally dropped away. On this snowy 
 Christmas Eve, seven years after John 
 Black's instalment as vicar of Crows- 
 foot, there was not a more thriving, pros- 
 perous village in Midlandshire. 
 
 Yes, there it lay, half-buried under the 
 snow. The two chubby little boys born 
 to John and Evelyn Black during those 
 seven years had been busy in the frosty 
 garden making a snow man. The vicar 
 was out ; he had gone to a farm some 
 two miles away, where the house- mis- 
 tress was dying. Mrs Black and the 
 one old servant were so busy preparing 
 the Christmas meat and puddings for
 
 1 4 G rise Ida. 
 
 the poorer parishioners, that they had 
 wrapped the little boys up like mum- 
 mies, and had sent them out to that great 
 enjoyment of childhood, wallowing and 
 messing in the snow, to be rid of them. 
 
 What a pleasant kitchen was the kit- 
 chen at Crowsfoot Parsonage ! It was 
 small, but the walls and ceiling and floor 
 were so white, the pots and pans so 
 bright, the crockery ranged on the 
 dresser shelves so shining and spotless, 
 every tiny bit of steel on the big grate 
 so brilliant! Now a glowing red fire 
 was urging the pots to hiss and boil. 
 There was a warm odour of hot pastry 
 — Jemima, the plump servant, had just 
 drawn out one batch of smoking, light- 
 brown mince-pies from the oven, and 
 was pushing in another tin. Mrs Black, 
 seated at the table, was rolling out paste
 
 Griselda. \ 5 
 
 with her delicate thin hands. She had 
 the face of an angel, the village-folk said. 
 And, though thin and pale and tired — 
 for the vicar's active helpmeet was in 
 delicate health, and little Doctor Mayne 
 had been ' dropping in ' by his request 
 very often of late — there was a true 
 spiritual beauty on the fair face and in 
 the tender blue eyes of the mother of those 
 bold boys who were shouting outside. 
 
 * There is someone at the door, Jemima,' 
 said Mrs Black, as Jemima shut the oven- 
 door with a clang. ' Go and see ; there's 
 a good girl.' 
 
 Jemima hurried out, and came back 
 round-eyed with horror. 
 
 ' It's young Wright. Says his mother's 
 dead ; but don't you go for to believe 
 him, ma'am.' 
 
 ' Oh, dear!' Mrs Black was out of her
 
 1 6 Griselda. 
 
 chair, through the passage, and at the 
 open door In a moment. 
 
 There,, on the stone pavement outside, 
 stood a great boy in a smock-frock, 
 bhibbering. He had gone home from his 
 farm - work In the middle of the day, 
 and had found his mother on the floor 
 lifeless. He had hoisted her on to her 
 bed, covered her up, and rushed off 
 
 Mrs Black was accustomed to be ready 
 at a moment's notice. 
 
 ' Run for Doctor Mayne,' she told the 
 lad, ' and I will be with your mother as 
 soon as ever I can.' 
 
 She seemed to make one spring back 
 into the kitchen. She collected brandy, 
 beef-jelly, cordials into her basket, giving 
 Jemima rapid orders the while. Then she 
 flew upstairs, regardless of pain, of loss of 
 breath. She had tied on her bonnet, had
 
 Griselda, 1 7 
 
 wrapped herself In her huge grey soft 
 shawl, and was back again in the kitchen 
 before the old servant recognised what 
 her mistress's intentions were. Then she 
 stood aehast. She knew that Mrs Black 
 took an intense interest in this poor soul, 
 who was slowly dying of consumption. 
 But she did not dream that the vicar's 
 wife would risk going out to-day thus in 
 her precarious state. 
 
 ' Why, you are never dreaming of going 
 out, ma'am?' Jemima lost her breath 
 from horror, and stood gazing at her mis- 
 tress as if petrified. ' Master'll be back 
 directly, or I'll go.' 
 
 The maid implored, coaxed. She well 
 knew that the vicar and Doctor Mayne 
 were both anxious about Mrs Black, whose 
 energy seemed to grow stronger as she grew 
 weaker with a weakness brought about by 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 1 8 Griselda. 
 
 overwork among the people and in her 
 home. But the more Jemima fumed, the 
 more determined her mistress became. 
 
 'Nonsense!' she said. 'A bright 
 winter's day Hke this ! It will do me 
 good. A matter of life and death, too ! ' 
 Then she gave a dozen different orders, 
 and hurried off down the back garden 
 towards the gate leading to the fields. 
 
 The sky seemed clear, it was true ; 
 but a slight breeze was scattering the 
 snow from the branches. Behind the 
 vicarage, a bank of heavy grey clouds 
 was slowly but steadily rising. As she 
 trod the narrow gravel path where the 
 man who attended to the Vicar's cob 
 and to the one cow had swept aside the 
 snow, a bird gave a gasping chirp and 
 fell at her feet. It was one of the poor 
 robins who came to the window for
 
 Griselda, 1 9 
 
 crumbs. She picked up the panting bird, 
 and called ' Tom — Harry ! ' 
 
 The little boys left their snow man 
 and ran to her. She bade them take the 
 poor bird indoors, and put it in a little 
 box lined with wadding, near the fire. 
 
 ' There are lives to be saved to-day,' 
 she said, so gravely that the red-faced 
 little urchins were sobered. 
 
 Long after, they remembered that day, 
 and how they stared after their mother 
 as she hurried away over the untrodden 
 snow, across the field, she and they so 
 unconscious of the terrible meaning of 
 her words. The little lads' boisterous 
 spirits were gone. They went quietly 
 into the warm kitchen with their bird. 
 
 * Lawks a daisy ! You don't mean to 
 say as you've brought a dead robin into 
 the house ? ' said Jemima sharply, as
 
 20 G rise Ida. 
 
 she bustled about. ' I ain't one for 
 old wives' tales, as your dad calls 
 'em ; but I'd sooner see corpse-lights 
 a-hoverin' about them graves in the 
 churchyard ! ' 
 
 However, 'mammy's' orders were law ; 
 and Jemima, feeling that life was sud- 
 denly going askew on that particular 
 Christmas Eve, helped the boys to 
 lay the shivering little bird on the 
 wool, and let them squat on the 
 corner of the broad fender watching 
 the little heaving red-breast and the 
 filmy round eyes, while she went un- 
 easily about her work getting their 
 tea. 
 
 ' Your dad is a time ! ' she said, as she 
 clattered the teacups and cut hunks of 
 bread-and-butter. ' You'd better have 
 your tea here, and get it done.'
 
 G rise Ida, 2 1 
 
 Shades of coming twilight were gradu- 
 ally settling upon the snowy landscape 
 outside. Althouofh the ^lare of the snow 
 made a white lio^ht of its own in the 
 kitchen, warmer red reflections on the 
 bright copper, pewter, and tin utensils 
 from the leaping flames were ruddy, 
 cheery spots in the pleasant interior. 
 The boys clambered to their seats on 
 either side of the kitchen table, and, 
 while they buried their noses in their 
 mues and ornawed at their bread-and- 
 butter, they kept up a subdued chatter 
 — subdued, because Jemima was 'worried' 
 — the vicarage term for tempers and 
 humours incidental to humanity. 
 
 ' I seen him flutter a wing ! ' mumbled 
 curly-haired Harry, with three-year-old 
 grammar. 
 
 'He's all right enough!' said Tom,
 
 2 2 G rise Ida. 
 
 with the superior wisdom of knlcker- 
 bockered six. * By the time mammy 
 comes back — Halloa, there's snow ! ' 
 he suddenly shouted. ' Jemima, it's 
 snowing ! ' 
 
 Both boys shot themselves upon the 
 kitchen floor, and clambered to the win- 
 dow-seat, and with noses flattened against 
 the panes, were staring out watching 
 ereat soft flakes flutterinor to the ground 
 before Jemima — who, with the excuse of 
 ' seeing to the parlour fire,' had been to 
 watch for her returning master — came 
 back. 
 
 'Hurrah! It's snowing ! ' The quick- 
 eninor snowfall meant a big-aer snow man, 
 finer snowballs, to the boys. In their joy 
 they forgot Jemima's ' worry.' Tom was 
 just shouting — ' They're bigger than the 
 feathers out of mamm)''s bolster that
 
 Griselda. 23 
 
 day we played at sea-serpent,' when he 
 turned and saw such a grey horror 
 on Jemima's face, that, after pausing 
 one moment, he sHd down and set 
 up a howl. 
 
 ' It's enouorh to turn the mask of one's 
 
 o 
 
 blood to see you two a-gloating over 
 the snow and your mammy out in 
 it,' said Jemima, with deep disgust, 
 which completely upset little Harry, 
 who followed suit and began to sob 
 and cry. ' Ah, you may well cry ! ' 
 And in the anxiety which hardened 
 her against the lusty boys, who took 
 all their delicate mother's devotion as 
 a right, and who seemed so brutally 
 unconcerned ' about her so long as they 
 had all they wanted, Jemima left them 
 to sob and cry. 
 
 She went to the front door that opened
 
 24 G rise I da. 
 
 upon the lane. As she did so, a gust of 
 wind came dashing the whirHng, circHng 
 snow into the narrow passage. The sky 
 was inky black above the white hedge 
 opposite. No sign, no sound of the re- 
 turning Vicar, or of any other human 
 being. 
 
 She went back to the children in dis- 
 may. The snow was coming down with 
 a vengeance now, twisting, curling, and 
 drifting. In a few minutes it was many 
 inches hiofh on the kitchen window- 
 ledge. 
 
 ' Can't see 'im now,' said Tommy, in 
 a subdued voice, alludino- to the snow 
 
 man. 
 
 ' No, nor you won't see yer mammy 
 neither, if this goes on ! ' said Jemima. 
 Then, immediately repentant, she went 
 and cuddled the boys, and, kissing
 
 Griselda. 2 5 
 
 their scared little faces, told them she 
 did not mean what she said. 
 
 ' The angels come out nights like this 
 to look after them as can't look after 
 themselves,' she said. ' There — go and 
 see to your bird ! He's flutterin'.' 
 
 But the two small faces were glued to 
 the cold window - panes, w^atching for 
 angels. 
 
 ' If they're goin' to look for mammy, 
 p'raps they'll fly past here,' suggested 
 Harry. His elder brother was absorbed 
 in thought, gravely sucking his thumb. 
 
 Then came a sharp rapping at the 
 door and sounds of voices. Jemima, run- 
 ning, opened the door. There stood the 
 tall Vicar, stamping the clinging snow 
 from his hioh boots, and calling out, 
 ' Mind you don't forget the warm mash, 
 William, and eive him a regular brisk
 
 26 Griselda. 
 
 rub down/ to the man who was dimly 
 visible through the falling flakes trying 
 to lead the steaming horse with the chaise 
 round to the stables through a drift 
 which had collected during this last bad 
 half-hour. 
 
 ' Shut the door, quick, there's a good 
 lass ! '. The Vicar came in, contentedly 
 shook the snow from his macintosh, and 
 hung it on its accustomed peg. Then 
 he walked briskly into the kitchen, this 
 tall stalwart man with the square face, 
 dark hair, keen though kindly eyes, and 
 firm mouth. 
 
 ' Dad, dad ! ' The boys were down 
 and about his knees. The confidence 
 brought about by their father's presence 
 cast away thoughts of angels, robins, and 
 a benighted mammy. But he kissed 
 them and put them aside.
 
 Griselda. 2 7 
 
 ' Where's the mistress ? ' 
 
 Jemima incoherently related the after- 
 noon's occurrences. ' She would go, 
 master — she would go ! ' was her refrain. 
 
 ' You say young Simmonds went for 
 Doctor Mayne ? ' As Jemima nodded 
 assent, John Black walked out of the 
 kitchen, put on his macintosh, thrust his 
 clerical felt hat over his brows, and 
 went through the beating snow to the 
 
 other end of the village, where the doctor 
 lived. 
 
 The neat litde house came upon him 
 suddenly, as it were, with its brown 
 door, red lamp, and well-swept frontage. 
 Even the laurels loomed greenly in the 
 whiteness, Doctor Mayne's gardener hav- 
 ing shaken them free from their snow 
 burdens an hour before the storm began, 
 and the chill crusts of wind continuino^
 
 2 8 G rise Ida. 
 
 to empty the glossy leaves. John rang 
 the clanging night-bell, and was impa- 
 tiently shaking the snow from his hat, 
 when the door opened, and there stood 
 the cheery little doctor, with his round 
 face redder than ever. 
 
 ' Halloa ! Mrs Black none the worse, 
 I hope?' 
 
 The Vicar's heart sank suddenly, un- 
 accountably. He was always fighting 
 against superstition in others. Now he 
 was unexpectedly called upon to fight it 
 in himself. 
 
 He walked in, shut the door. 
 
 ' Where is my wife ? ' he said. 
 
 ' Where — is — ' stammered the doctor, 
 amazed. Then, with the readiness which 
 is an absolute essential in a medical 
 man, he went on, ' Why, Mrs Black 
 is at home long ago, of course !
 
 Griselda. 29 
 
 She left poor Mary SImmonds 
 some time before the snow set in. 
 Come in — ' 
 
 * And have a glass of wine,' he would 
 have said. But, as he saw the strange 
 expression, the sudden pallor on the 
 Vicar's face, he stopped short, and added, 
 ' Perhaps, though, she did not go home 
 when the first flakes began, but took 
 shelter half-way.' 
 
 The Vicar shortly said that there was 
 no house on the lonely road between 
 the Vicarage and Mary Simmonds' 
 
 cottage. 
 
 * She is not home ; we must go and 
 look for her,' he added. 
 
 ' Certainly, my dear fellow.' Doctor 
 Mayne, trying to conceal his misgivings, 
 — that delicate creature, with a time 
 of trouble imminent, out in weather like
 
 30 G rise Ida. 
 
 this ! — hustled on his thick coat. ' I will 
 go with you. We had better go in my 
 
 gig-' 
 
 ' We cannot get round — she went 
 
 across the fields.' There was anguish in 
 
 the Vicar's voice. 
 
 ' My dear sir, we can get round 
 by the waggon-road that leads through 
 Rawkins's fields to Watt's Wood,' said the 
 doctor. * We had better have the trap.' 
 
 He gently forced the Vicar into his 
 consulting-room, then went off post-haste, 
 ordered the gig and his pluckiest mare, 
 and, with his wife, who was in con- 
 sternation at the thought of Mrs Black, 
 ' in her state,' lingering or lost in the 
 snow-storm, packed blankets, brandy, and 
 a hot bottle under the seat. In the 
 bottle was beef-tea, which was a perennial 
 pot-au-feu at Doctor Mayne's.
 
 G rise Ida. 3 1 
 
 The Vicar, as the brave little mare 
 went struggling through the storm, knew 
 nothing of these preparations. It was 
 all the two men could do to keep seated. 
 The shrieking wind carried heavy masses 
 of snow hither and thither, as it went 
 howling across the white fields, roaring 
 in the tall tree-tops, raging among boughs 
 and chimneys, catching up whole hun- 
 dredweights of snow and, fiercely wield- 
 ing them as a weapon, dashing them 
 against hedges or gates or other obstacles. 
 
 ' She's a brave old gal ! ' said, or rather 
 shouted, the doctor, as the mare stemmed 
 against wind and snow, and dragged the 
 gig over the drifts and through the loose- 
 lying mounds. ' She'll do it ! ' 
 
 They called at the vicarage, found 
 that Mrs Black had not returned, and 
 then urged the panting, labouring horse
 
 3 2 Griselda. 
 
 up the lane which would bring them 
 near to the fields the Vicar's wife must 
 have passed through on her way home. 
 Between the gusts they caught sight of 
 the white slopes, bare, smooth, unbroken 
 by a footstep. The pathway was burled. 
 Doctor Mayne grew more uneasy. ' I 
 wonder where she Is ? ' he was just think- 
 ing, when the mare stopped dead. 
 
 They cheered her on ; the doctor shook 
 the reins, tickled her smoking flanks, then 
 got out and tried to lead her. It was of 
 no use. The black mare stood with 
 drooping head, as if she were riveted to 
 the ground. Not a step would she move. 
 Doctor Mayne smoothed and patted her 
 steaming sides ; she only shivered. He 
 lifted up her hoofs and looked for stones. 
 There were no stones, and, as he replaced 
 her listless limbs, there the}^ remained.
 
 Griselda. 33 
 
 / She's done up ! ' said the doctor. ' The 
 only thing I can suggest is for me to wait 
 here while you explore.' 
 
 ' But you will be snowed up in a few 
 minutes,' said the Vicar, springing down. 
 They were on the brow of the slope, 
 exposed to the full fury of the storm. 
 He looked this way and that. He hardly 
 dared remember that she, his wife, so 
 loved, so closely bound up with his life, 
 till it sometimes seemed as if she were 
 never less than part of his very soul and 
 body — was somewhere, somewhere — here 
 — in this dead cold, this biting wind, this 
 heavy, freezing snow. 
 
 ' I can be dug out,' said Doctor Mayne. 
 ' Go — go, man — go through the woods 
 to Simmond's cottage, then track her 
 homewards. When you call out, I will 
 go to you ; then, if necessary, we can 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 34 Griselda. 
 
 carry her here, and, if I turn Bess round, 
 no fear but that she will go fast enough 
 towards home ! ' 
 
 Track her ? How should he track her ? 
 There was the skeleton copse through 
 which he must pass to reach the cottage. 
 One look, and with head steadily bent 
 down, he literally burrowed his way 
 through the deep-lying snow, stumbling, 
 for here it lay perhaps two feet thick, and 
 half-a-dozen yards farther on was up to 
 his elbows. He flung himself over the 
 stile and was on comparatively free 
 ground. Then he ran — ran as if escap- 
 ing from an enemy, and in a few minutes 
 was knocking at the cottage door. 
 
 The door opened. 
 
 ' Mother's better, sir,' said the lad, 
 looking surprised to see the Vicar in this 
 weather. Mrs Black had revived the
 
 Griselda. 35 
 
 fainting woman, and had left her com- 
 fortably settled for the night. The little 
 sitting-room, with its homely furniture — 
 its neat bed, where the invalid was lying 
 on the pillows as the Vicar's wife had 
 deftly piled them, its Dutch clock tick- 
 ing steadily away in the corner — looked 
 cheery, comforting — coming upon it sud- 
 denly from the external bleakness, as 
 the Vicar did. 
 
 He stepped quickly in, shut the door, 
 and, after a word to the sick woman, 
 asked for his wife. 
 
 ' Lor', sir, she left this two hour ago ! 
 She's home by this time.' 
 
 ' Which way did she go } ' John 
 Black's voice was hard, stern, in his 
 anxiety. 
 
 ' It wor fine enow when she started,' 
 said the lad, frightened at the Vicar's
 
 36 Griselda. 
 
 abrupt manner — he who was always 
 so gentle with his poorer brethren. 
 ' Doctor'd been here a couple of minnits 
 — ay, less nor that — then off she went 
 down by Mrs Jones', Nurse Jones', to 
 get her to stop th' night wi' mother.' 
 
 The Vicar went out, shut the door, 
 and left young Simmonds all agape, 
 looking after the striding figure as it 
 disappeared into the white cloud. It 
 was coming down more heavily than 
 ever — and she, his delicate flower, in 
 this ! John Black forgot all in his one 
 wild hope that she might be at nurse 
 Jones' ! Doctor Mayne might wait 
 there on the hillside — there was more 
 at stake than the snowing up of the 
 doctor and his black mare. Down the 
 hilly lane he rushed, meeting the storm, 
 dashing the blinding snow from his face
 
 Gr is el da. ^y 
 
 with his half-numbed hands — down, till, 
 in his fierce haste, he leaped the garden 
 gate. 
 
 Nurse Jones, a gaunt, but pleasant- 
 looking widow, had just come in from 
 seeing to a sick person in the village, and 
 was shocked to hear from her son's 
 wife, with whom she lived, that Mrs 
 Black had been there and would not 
 be persuaded to stay. She was drink- 
 ing a cup of tea, and revolving in her 
 mind whether she should go out into 
 the storm again to follow the delicate 
 lady, when the Vicar rushed in, and, 
 looking wildly round, cried, — 
 
 'Good God! — Mrs Jones — where is 
 she ?' 
 
 The three started up — young Jones 
 was there. Nurse Jones, seizing a 
 shawl and tying a comforter round her
 
 ^S Griselda. 
 
 head, said cheerily, though inwardly 
 dismayed, — 
 
 ' She's been and gone, sir. But I'll 
 stake she took shelter like somewhere. 
 I'll lay w^e'll find her in that old barn in 
 the captain's field. 'Tis a snug place 
 on a day like this. Here, Luke, you 
 get out the lantern, and bring a couple 
 of blankets. We'll be down the lane 
 and through the gap in the hedge and 
 across that ploughed field in next to no 
 time. Don't you come, Mary.' 
 
 While she talked, she pushed the Vicar 
 gently towards the door. Then she w^as 
 off into the snow with huge strides. 
 Nurse Jones boasted she'd be ofT to a 
 patient as quick as anyone else could 
 ride. 
 
 ' But the barn is a Qrood half-mile out 
 of her way home ! ' came in a tone of
 
 G rise Ida. 39 
 
 anguish from the tall figure speeding 
 along beside her. 
 
 * Ah, we women-folk ain't like the 
 men, sir. We ain't so fool - hardy. 
 Mrs Black knowed that a bath of 
 this sort of thing might be bad, like 
 she is — and, though she don't care 
 for herself — thinks less of herself than 
 I do of that Old cow of mine 
 Farmer Watts giv' me when his 
 missus o^ot better of the fever — she's 
 got it in her heart to think of 
 them as has got to come after — the 
 little uns.' 
 
 But even while she spoke, as if 
 Mrs Black's delay were of little or 
 no moment. Nurse Jones had mis- 
 givings. She had thought the Vicar's 
 wife looking unusually ill. Even to 
 her strong nerves, the idea of the
 
 40 Griselda. 
 
 tender - hearted little wife and mother 
 everyone loved so — fainting, falling, 
 and buried under these cold drifts — 
 was a strain. As they turned into 
 the field where the old disused barn 
 was, and she saw the blackened tumble- 
 down structure loominof darkly throupfh 
 the giddy mass of falling white atoms, 
 she shuddered. She fancied the doors 
 were shut. If Mrs Black were not 
 there — what would it mean ? 
 
 She must spare the Vicar that awful 
 moment of calling into dark silence and 
 hearing nothine but his own voice. 
 
 ' You stay here, sir, please, and watch 
 for Luke with the blankets — ' 
 
 Without another word she ran on- 
 wards. 
 
 The doors were shut ! Padlocked ? 
 No, 'Thank God for that!' she said, as
 
 Griselda. 41 
 
 lier chilled fingers fumbled with the door. 
 Oh, why were they numb, dead, just when 
 she wanted them most ? She rapped with 
 her knuckles, put her lips to the crack of 
 the crazy door, and called, ' Mrs Black, 
 Mrs Black ! ' 
 
 Again she tried the door. Then she 
 cried out loudly. Then she put her ear 
 to the rusty keyhole. 
 
 Heavens ! What did she hear ? That 
 curious little cry — not a bleat, not a chirp, 
 not a whine, but one she knew so well 
 that It set all her blood leaping with eager 
 energy, and, almost wild with different 
 feelings, she gave one strong tug, and 
 stumbled into the barn. 
 
 The Vicar waited Impatiently under 
 the trees. There was a certain comfort 
 in the knowledge that Nurse Jones had
 
 42 G rise Ida. 
 
 gone on ; he fully saw the necessity of 
 waiting for Luke with the lanterns and 
 the blankets — still, it was a cruel ex- 
 perience. He stamped about ; he tried 
 to stifle his fears, to believe that, all 
 this while he was ferreting in the snow, 
 that dear wife was safely home. He 
 tried to think of comforting words he 
 had told his fellow - strivers from the 
 pulpit a few Sundays back — just after 
 the frost set in, and many would be 
 out of work — that it was the shorn 
 lamb which felt the tempered wind, the 
 labouring ewe that was gently led by 
 Providence, the forsaken plants, and the 
 homeless birds that were housed and 
 fed, no one could see or find out how. 
 Only it was so ! 
 
 ' Dare I insist upon this to others, 
 and not believe it myself ? ' John Black
 
 G rise Id a. 43 
 
 asked himself, with anger at his own 
 perturbation. He looked, peered through 
 the falling snow, but he could not see 
 the barn. The moments seemed hours. 
 He prayed with all the passion of his 
 soul that his one love — his only friend, 
 his wife — might be spared to him. It 
 was a time of temptation, struggle ; but 
 he gained the batde. When young 
 Luke Jones came up to him in the fast- 
 growing darkness, he was calm. 
 
 They went along, the lighted lantern 
 casting fitful rays about. As they came 
 near the barn, a voice was heard shout- 
 ing, ' All right ! ' in a triumphant femi- 
 nine tone. The Vicar stopped short. 
 
 ' God fororive me ! ' was the short 
 prayer that went up to Heaven. Then 
 he knew — he had not suspected it — that 
 in those recesses of the soul which are
 
 44 Griselda. 
 
 never rightly known by human percep- 
 tion, he had doubted, almost despaired, 
 of the very Providence he had steadily 
 preached to others. 
 
 But there was some excuse ! This 
 wife of his was the one woman in his 
 whole life. He had not known mother, 
 sister, or feminine relation. So soon as 
 earliest childhood was over, he had 
 almost resented the homage of ignorant, 
 matter - of- fact, but well - meanino^ Mrs 
 Hobbs. Evelyn's love had come to 
 him, a sudden heaven ; and he had 
 thought she was lost, killed. God would 
 forgive him, ' worm though I am, and 
 no man,' he thought in his new abase- 
 ment, as he and Luke struggled towards 
 the barn. 
 
 ' You must not come in yet ; here, 
 give me that lantern and them blan-
 
 G rise I da. 45 
 
 kets ! ' That, in an extremely every-day, 
 business-like tone of voice, was the 
 order given by Nurse Jones, who took 
 in the lantern and the armful of woollen 
 wraps, and disappeared. 
 
 * Oh, this is all nonsense ! ' said the 
 Vicar, roused, reanimated. ' Keeping me 
 from my own wife indeed ! ' He tried 
 the barn door. It was fastened from 
 inside. He knocked impatiently. 
 
 * You must wait a moment, sir, if you 
 please,' called out Nurse Jones' voice, 
 pitched at its most peremptory height. 
 ' I'll come to you presently, safe enough. 
 Mrs Black's here all right; but we can't 
 let you in just now.' 
 
 'Oh, very well!' said the Vicar. He 
 supposed his darling had been wet 
 through, and that the nurse was rub- 
 bing her into warm life again, or some-
 
 46 Griselda. 
 
 thing of that sort. He drew his coat 
 closer, crowded down his hat, and leaned 
 up against the barn door, advising Luke 
 to do the same. ' Let us present a fair 
 front to the enemy, my boy,' he said, in 
 the hilarity of sudden relief. 
 
 The wet, cold snow pelted them more 
 unmercifully than ever as night came on. 
 
 ' How I am to get the mistress home 
 I don't know ! ' said the Parson. 
 
 Luke, in his slow bucolic way, was 
 suo-orestinor that he and his wife could 
 sleep on the cottage floor, and that Mrs 
 Black was more than welcome to their 
 little room under the thatched roof, v/hen 
 the Vicar started, — 
 
 ' Good Lord ! what was that ? ' he said. 
 He felt his hair bristle on his brow. 
 Fear, wonder, hope, joy — all crowded 
 upon him.
 
 Griselda. 47 
 
 Then the barn door scrooped, and 
 Nurse Jones said, ' You may come in ! ' 
 in that queenly manner she assumed 
 at crucial moments in the lives of 
 families, when women are all, and men, 
 if not exactly nothing, are ' next door 
 to it,' as she could have said. 
 
 And Parson John Black stepped out 
 of the snowstorm into the dim barn. 
 The lantern on the floor lighted up a 
 corner, where he saw Evelyn's sweet, 
 pale face among a pile of blankets, hay 
 beneath her, hay around her. 
 
 ' Before you go to her, look at your 
 dear little daughter, sir!' said Nurse 
 Jones proudly, uncovering the bundle 
 in her arms just enough to show a 
 sweet little pink face, like some pretty 
 rosebud, in her rough wraps. ' If she 
 hadn't ha' been the dearest, patientest
 
 48 Griselda. 
 
 little soul, you'd ha' been a widower 
 now, instead o' having the sweetest 
 little daughter on the face of the 
 earth. Now don't you go making a 
 fuss with the mistress, sir — she's got 
 to stop here yet-a-while. But we'll 
 make a fine bedroom o' the old barn 
 afore we've done. And we don't care 
 for snowstorms, nor for nothing, now 
 that we've got two, instead of losing 
 one ! ' 
 
 Nor did the Vicar care. And he 
 thought that the moment when he 
 reverently knelt by the side of his 
 wife, lying so sweetly contented on her 
 bed of hay, the happiest moment of 
 his life. 
 
 ' Baby was so good — oh, so good, 
 John ! ' said Mrs Black, as her hus- 
 band took her chill, frail hands into his
 
 Griselda. 
 
 49 
 
 warm strong ones. * I could not have 
 believed that it was in a tiny, uncon- 
 scious creature to be patient like that.' 
 
 It was the patience of the little in- 
 fant, prematurely born in a barn, that 
 led John Black to name his one and 
 only daughter — Griselda. 
 
 VOL. 1. 
 
 D
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 HE babe born in the barn 
 that snowy Christmas Eve 
 was to Hve. 
 They called her * Griselda.' She was 
 a quiet, patient infant. She never, 
 during the first five years of her 
 little life, had much attention. For 
 the tender young mother, who would 
 have been as devoted to her first eirl- 
 babe as she had already been to her 
 sturdy sons Tom and Harry, was an 
 invalid. 
 
 Mrs Black did not rightly recover
 
 Griselda. 5 r 
 
 from the exposure to the cold that 
 night when Griselda was born in the 
 •snowstorm. She became gradually para- 
 lysed. When Griselda was six years 
 •old, she was helpless, carried from her 
 bed to her sofa by her husband, and 
 -dependent upon Jemima as a child upon 
 its nurse. 
 
 John Black's right hand — his helper, 
 his active second self — was physically 
 dead. But her sweet mind and bright 
 brain remained. Mrs Black's sofa in 
 the Vicarage parlour was the centre 
 of the house. The Vicar and Jemima 
 planned and worked together for the 
 fragile creature. Tom and Harry, rough 
 boys though they were, trod softly, and 
 hushed their loud young voices in the 
 house for mother's sake. 
 
 John Black bore his trouble well — 
 
 hLl"fl,TV Of >a.MO«
 
 52 Griselda, 
 
 and not well. He said nothing about 
 it to anyone. Outside his home, he 
 was more brusque, more commonplace. 
 Within his home, he was gentle, firm, 
 tender, and worked unceasingly. Up 
 at sunrise, he got his reading and 
 writing, and his sons' lessons for the 
 day over, often before breakfast. Then 
 came a precious hour devoted to his 
 wife, when all the strong wealth of 
 love in his deep nature was lavished 
 upon his stricken darling. His parish 
 duties were fulfilled to the letter. But 
 there was something wanting. People 
 said that John Black was * not the 
 same man at all.' They felt a change,- 
 though they could not describe it. 
 The outward change had a deep-seated 
 cause. John Black rebelled against his 
 fate. His deepest feelings — those that
 
 Griselda. 53 
 
 belonged to him as a creature in Eter- 
 nity — were bitter, hard, daring. He 
 bore his cross in sullen anger. 
 
 Life at the Vicarage had proceeded 
 quietly for six years. Mrs Black's con- 
 dition was an accepted fact. People 
 were kind, sending books, flowers, and 
 newspapers, and presents of game and 
 fruit. The proud Lady Romayne, of 
 Feather's Court, would often send over 
 a groom on horseback with some little 
 delicacy. Then came a time — a time of 
 change. 
 
 It was spring. Mrs Black lay on 
 her holland - covered sofa in the neat 
 little drawing-room which Jemima kept 
 carefully arranged and dusted. Choice 
 hothouse flowers were in a china bowl 
 on the centre table. A spreading fern 
 hid the little grate. The children had
 
 54 G rise Ida. 
 
 been for their morning ' talk to mammy/ 
 as they called it. 'Mammy' was a little 
 tired. But it was a pleasant languor 
 rather than actual fatigue. As her 
 gentle blue eyes wandered from object 
 to object — all her little treasures, her 
 girlish possessions, her wedding-presents, 
 carefully placed where she could see 
 them to the best advantage — she 
 thought how kind everyone was, — 
 how good it was to live. Then, as 
 she looked without into the glorious 
 sunshine, and saw the great chestnut 
 trees a blaze of bloom, and the trees 
 in the orchard showered with delicate 
 pink and white blossoms, she felt it 
 would also be good to die. If there 
 were such peace, such beauty in this 
 little world, they must exist in other 
 globes among the countless millions of
 
 Grzselda. 5 5 
 
 planets as well. She listened to the 
 children's voices in the orchard, — to the 
 bleating of the young calves staggering 
 knee-deep in the waving grass, to the 
 busy twittering of the parent birds busily 
 feeding their young — the hedge be- 
 tween the Vicarage and the field was a 
 favourite resting-place with the birds, 
 — and she was perfectly happy. 
 
 Meanwhile, an adventure was hap- 
 pening to little Griselda in the orchard. 
 
 Griselda's life was not all pleasant- 
 ness and peace. Jemima was fond of 
 her nursling ; but Jemima was always 
 busy, — her work was rarely forward, and 
 never over. So she grew brisker and 
 rougher, and Griselda's bathings and 
 dressings were times of torture. The 
 fair child had long, beautiful golden 
 hair. Jemima had a quick way of
 
 56 Griselda, 
 
 combing out the tangles which was 
 positive anguish, and brought the tears 
 to Griselda's eyes. She bore this 
 patiently. How it had come about that 
 she had a sense of being in some way 
 a culprit — of deserving all that was 
 bad and nothing that was good — was a 
 mystery. 
 
 Perhaps it was from her father's man- 
 ner to her, which varied and was 
 constrained, or from stray confidential 
 sayings of Jemima to her village friends 
 in her presence, alluding to her as ' poor 
 unfortunate little soul ! ' — or perhaps it 
 came from Harry and Tom's imperious 
 ways. 
 
 They liked their pretty little sister, 
 but she was their victim and slave. 
 They played with her instead of with 
 the old dog, because, when the old dog
 
 Griselda. 57 
 
 felt he was being taken liberties with, 
 he snarled and bit, and Griselda only- 
 shed silent tears. They used to bind 
 her with the clothes-line, and carry her 
 about, pretending they had captured a 
 robber or bandit. They knocked to- 
 gether a little go-cart, and would rush 
 about the garden dragging it at full 
 speed, with Griselda crouching in it, till 
 it capsized. Often and often she was 
 scratched and bleeding. She was always 
 a mass of bruises, for which Jemima 
 called her a naughty tom-boy. For 
 Griselda never betrayed her tyrants' 
 secrets. They would haul her up into 
 an apple-tree, and go off on some mis- 
 chief or another, and she would sit there 
 quiedy, perhaps softly singing to herself, 
 or thinking beautiful thoughts about the 
 clouds — those wonderful round white
 
 58 Griselda, 
 
 glories sailing across the blue sky — or 
 dreaming over a fairy tale. 
 
 For * mammy ' read fairy tales to 
 them sometimes In her sweet, weak voice. 
 She wished the children to believe there 
 was more in the world than hard, com- 
 mon, every-day life. She fancied — 
 poor lady — that stories of knightly 
 prowess might give Harry and Tom 
 a sense — a vague sense — of chivalry, and 
 she knew that a romantic soul looked 
 through those blue windows, Griselda's 
 eyes. But the knights' exploits only 
 made Harry and Tom more warlike. 
 It was Griselda who was comforted by 
 the old tales. She dreamed that a 
 prince came and delivered her from her 
 brothers. The dream became an idea, and, 
 dwelt upon in those lonely hours among 
 the apple-branches, grew to be a belief.
 
 Griselda. 59 
 
 He would not come, she fancied, 
 till Harry and Tom had grown far 
 more cruel. But he would come, she 
 felt sure. 
 
 To-day her brothers were in their 
 wildest humour. Griselda, sent out into 
 the orchard to play upon the daisied turf, 
 went off quietly to a corner, with an old 
 doll with a battered nose, and pins instead 
 of the glass eyes the boys smashed in long 
 ago. Its wig had departed the first day. 
 Its gauzy clothes had been torn up for 
 a kite-tail. The mutilated effigy was 
 wrapped in one of Griselda's old pina- 
 fores, and was about the most miserable 
 apology for a doll that ever was. But 
 the child loved it with a deep passionate 
 love — battered nose, pin eyes, bald pate, 
 and all. 
 
 She was a picture, as she sat there
 
 '6o Griselda, 
 
 on an old horse-cloth, her delicate oval 
 face with the great wondering blue eyes 
 and the grave sweet mouth peeping 
 out from her blue cotton sun-bonnet, 
 her little figure like some huge flower 
 against the background of rough red- 
 brick wall. She was watching the 
 boys holding a mysterious conversation 
 as they stood by the tool-house. The 
 gardener had forgotten to lock the 
 door when he fetched out his scythe. 
 She watched Tom, a plain dark lad 
 with a hard forbidding face, hand out 
 two spades to curly-haired Harry with 
 dismay. What was he going to do ? 
 
 She soon found out. Tom came 
 across to a bed, lately made for some 
 cuttings of peach and apricot trees pro- 
 mised to the Vicar by a richer neigh- 
 bour who had a fine assortment of
 
 GiHselda. 6i 
 
 wall-fruit, and began to dig a deep 
 hole near the wall. When she asked 
 what it was for, he told her to mind 
 her own business. So she sat clasp- 
 ing her doll tightly to her little heav- 
 ing chest, suffocated with dread lest 
 Tom should mean to bury her doll. 
 
 The idea of parting with her ' baby/ 
 as she called it, was so dreadful that 
 it was almost a relief when Tom stayed 
 his digging, and, throwing off his cap, 
 for he was hot, told her, — 
 
 * If you particularly want to know 
 what this is, it's your grave.' 
 
 * I may have baby buried too ? ' lisped 
 Griselda. 
 
 * Oh, yes ; and then there'll be an 
 end of the horrid ugly thing ! ' 
 
 As Tom glanced contemptuously at 
 the doll, Griselda thought hopelessly
 
 62 Griselda. 
 
 that there would be an end of her 
 too. She wondered what it would be 
 like, to lie in that hole and feel the 
 shovelfuls of earth coming down upon 
 her body, till she was covered in, and 
 the blue sky would be gradually shut 
 out, and how long it would be before 
 her body changed and she flew out. 
 The Vicar had once shown her a new- 
 born butterfly struggling out of its 
 chrysalis shell, and had told her that 
 dying was like that. The dead people 
 he read the service over were the mere 
 shells ; they had changed and flown up 
 to a beautiful place, where they would 
 live, far more lovely to look at than 
 the most splendid butterflies. Griselda 
 believed everything she was told. She 
 did not know a lie. So she knew 
 Tom would bury her, because he had
 
 Griselda, 63 
 
 -said it ; and she knew she would fly 
 out again like that butterfly flew when 
 his weak wings were shaken free, be- 
 cause her father had told her so. 
 
 Still, she felt sad. Mammy would 
 miss her. Jemima would not be both- 
 ered with her washing and dressing 
 and clothes-mending ; but when she 
 thought of that hearty kiss — of that 
 honest ' God bless you, my darling ! ' 
 after Jemima had tucked her into her 
 little bed at night — she was sure 
 Jemima loved her, and would, be as 
 sorry that she was dead and buried as 
 she herself would be if her doll-baby 
 were taken away. 
 
 It would be better if Tom would 
 change his mind. Or perhaps some- 
 one mieht come ! Then she would 
 certainly not be buried !
 
 64 Griselda, 
 
 She sat watching the green door in 
 the red wall, and listening breathlessly. 
 She heard distant sounds of opening 
 and shutting of doors. Then she heard 
 Jemima's voice, and another which she 
 did not recognise, then footsteps, the 
 click of the lock of the door in the wall. 
 
 She stared, amazed. 
 
 A lad, younger than Tom, dressed in 
 a dark-green velvet riding-suit, stepped 
 down into the orchard — a handsome lad, 
 with dark-curling hair. He wore high 
 leathern boots and a fantastic low- 
 crowned green velvet cap, which he 
 touched lightly with his gauntleted hand 
 as he saw Griselda. 
 
 ' I am Hal Romayne,' he said, with 
 a stare of his dark brown eyes at these 
 children, who looked to him as rough 
 as any of the village * cads.'
 
 G rise Ida. 65 
 
 Tom stopped digging, and said, ' Oh, 
 are you ? ' — looking the intruder up 
 and down. Tom had his ambitions. 
 He had heard of pubHc schools. He had 
 hated young Romayne for his father's 
 wealth and position before he had seen 
 him. He hated him, now he did see him^ 
 for his dress and his good looks and his 
 slight manner of haughty condescension. 
 
 ' I have come from Lady Romayne 
 to ask your sister to spend the day 
 at Feather's Court to - morrow^' Hal 
 Romayne said, carelessly playing with 
 his hunting - crop, and thinking that 
 Griselda's face was the prettiest little 
 face he had seen. ' Will you come ? ^ 
 he said to her. 
 
 Griselda had stood up, still clutching 
 her old doll. ' Are you the prince ? * 
 she asked with awe. 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 66 Griselda. 
 
 * What prince ? ' Hal Romayne 
 smiled encouragingly upon this little 
 maiden with the quaint ideas and the 
 silvery, innocent voice. 
 
 Griselda went to him, and, standing 
 on tiptoe, whispered, — 
 
 ' The prince come to save me from 
 Tom and Harry.' 
 
 Hal reddened, and stared disgustedly 
 at the boys, who did not look inviting 
 to his fastidious taste in their rough 
 clothes, flushed, with soiled faces and 
 hands. Hal had delicate white hands, 
 which he kept white with the most 
 zealous care, and, if there happened to 
 be a speck upon his linen, it was re- 
 jected as unwearable, 
 
 ' Are not your brothers kind to you '^ ' 
 asked young Romayne, loftily protect- 
 ing.
 
 Griselda. 67 
 
 * They want to bury me — and my 
 l3aby too.' Tears welled up into Gris- 
 elda's eyes. The corners of her lips 
 drooped and quivered pathetically, as 
 she nodded her head towards the 
 grave. 
 
 ' I don't suppose they would have 
 hurt you, ' said Hal, with an air of 
 supreme contempt. * Do you always 
 amuse yourself frightening your little 
 sister ^. ' he said, in a drawling way, to 
 Tom. Then he offered his hand to 
 Griselda. * Come indoors to your 
 mamma,' he said. ' She is to say if 
 you may come.' 
 
 Griselda went with this extraordinary 
 being who had suddenly appeared in 
 her life. Hal cautiously handed her up 
 the steep step, closed the garden door 
 after them, still holding her little hand;
 
 68 Griselda. 
 
 then they walked side by side along the 
 narrow garden paths, between the tall 
 lilies with their close-shut green buds 
 — between the bushes of moss - rose, 
 which next month would exhale a 
 wealth of perfume from their pink round 
 blooms, Griselda, gazing at her prince, 
 arrived at last, in a species of ecstasy. 
 They walked through the narrow pas- 
 sage into the drawing-room. 
 
 Mrs Black looked up with a faint 
 smile as they came in — the tall, well- 
 dressed lad and her litde Griselda in 
 her roueh cotton frock and old sun- 
 bonnet. Outwardly an incongruous pair ; 
 but the delicate lady had perhaps grown 
 to be a dreamer in her suffering 
 solitude. She thought no more of Hal 
 than that he was a fitting escort for 
 her little maiden.
 
 Griselda. 69 
 
 She had determined to refuse Lady 
 Romayne's invitation for Griselda. 
 
 ' Griselda is too young to go out,' 
 she said to the boy, amused to see 
 how his face fell at her remark. ' You 
 know she's only six years old.' 
 
 ' But I will take care of her/ said 
 Hal valiantly, his dark face reddening. 
 ' I assure you, Mrs Black, that no harm 
 shall possibly come to her. She shall 
 be my special charge.' 
 
 Mrs Black was amused. Little Gris- 
 elda at Feather's Court ! The notion 
 was absurd. But there was some pe- 
 culiar power about that boy. She 
 hardly knew she had consented before 
 he had taken leave — a courtly farewell — 
 and had mounted his pony, and had 
 ridden off, followed by his attentive 
 groom.
 
 70 Griselda. 
 
 He doffed his hat and bowed low as 
 he passed the Vicar in the village. 
 John Black glanced back, and won- 
 dered at that boy. 
 
 ' A strange lad ! ' he mused. * What- 
 ever did he mean by that Don Quixotic 
 business?' He wondered still more 
 
 when his wife told him of Lady Ro- 
 mayne's invitation. * Whatever can 
 have put it into her head ? ' he re- 
 marked. ' Griselda at Feather's Court ! 
 Too ridiculous ! ' < 
 
 He grew grave when he heard Mrs 
 Black had accepted. But his wife's 
 decision was his law. Griselda was 
 destined — or doomed to make her ddbut 
 in the fashionable world early in her 
 simple life. 

 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ;OHN BLACK, that very day 
 when Griselda and Hal Ro- 
 mayne first met, happened to 
 be in very good spirits. His humble 
 friends seemed unusually prosperous. 
 At the smithy on the village green, 
 Hugh Wells, the blacksmith, had come 
 out, his swarthy face broadly smiling, 
 * to tell t' parson the missus had had 
 a letter from the son out in " Australy." 
 He was gettin' on capital at the sheep- 
 farming. Says we shouldn't know him 
 if we was to come across 'm, parson.
 
 7 2 Griselda. 
 
 He's got a long beard, and weighs 
 twelve stun.' 
 
 This was pleasant news for the Vicar, 
 who had been instrumental in the emi- 
 gration of Wells' consumptive son, 
 when Doctor Mayne had said a sea- 
 voyage was his last chance. After 
 congratulating the blacksmith, and stand- 
 ing for a minute or two watching 
 the lads at cricket — it was a half- 
 holiday at school — he went on to the 
 school, a brick building under the 
 chestnut - trees. The door was open, 
 and he heard scrubbing. He passed 
 the village charwoman, who moved her 
 pail for him, and, going through the 
 soap - and - watery odours — w^hich were 
 odours grateful to his nostrils, with his 
 hatred of dirt — he knocked at the door 
 of the schoolmaster's sitting-room. The
 
 G7dselda. 'J2> 
 
 schoolmaster and mistress were partly 
 paid by him, partly by subscription, 
 and the weekly pence contributed by 
 the parents. Here John Black spent 
 a happy half-hour, looking at maps, 
 drawings, exquisitely neat sums and 
 copies, the work of the rough children, 
 who but a very few years ago were 
 running about, ragged, unkempt, bare- 
 foot, and, if not actually in mischief, 
 with hopeless aimlessness. Then, com- 
 ing out, he met a young woman with 
 a beautiful child in her arms, and 
 she blushingly curtseyed deeply as she 
 shyly, reverentially glanced upward at 
 the man who had been her good 
 genius. He had come across her two 
 years ago in the darkness, crouching 
 near a deep pond. She had been 
 ill-treated and forsaken by the son of
 
 74 Griselda. 
 
 the owners of the village inn. John 
 heard her tale, or rather extracted the 
 wretched old story from her unwilling 
 lips ; then he took her to stay at 
 the Vicarage to help Jemima till he 
 had stormed at, threatened, and shamed 
 the young man and his parents into 
 acknowledgment of a promise of mar- 
 riage which had evidently been given. 
 He had had a hearty delight in 
 marrying that couple. He often had 
 a hearty joy when he saw the happy 
 young wife and mother serving in the 
 bar, a favourite with her husband and 
 parents-in-law, whom she helped and 
 served with the energy of grateful 
 love. 
 
 Strange that this day, of all days, 
 when he was to receive a crushing 
 blow, he should first be confronted
 
 G rise Ida. 75 
 
 with facts that caused his happiness ! 
 As he went through the village, noting 
 the neatness of the cottages In their 
 fertile little gardens, and remembering 
 what a wilderness — what a tumble- 
 down, poverty-stricken place this was,. 
 but how, by docile following of his 
 lead, these honest folk had raised them- 
 selves and had thriven — his heart 
 swelled in his breast, and he began 
 to meditate whether indeed there was 
 any ill in life which could not be 
 conquered by good will and work. 
 Sin, disease, poverty, idleness — he and 
 the people of Crowsfoot had success- 
 fully fought against these. 
 
 ' Of course there is death,' he thought,, 
 with a sigh. That was the great un- 
 definable thing which conquered man. 
 He had seen them die — frail infants^
 
 76 Griselda. 
 
 peacefully breathing out their souls ; 
 strong men, fighting desperately with 
 the creeping, numbing influence ; young 
 girls and youths, talking of life as 
 it fled from their weakening lips ; and 
 he had stood by, powerless. 
 
 Curiously enough, just as he was 
 thinking of death. Doctor Mayne came 
 driving along the road homewards. 
 The Vicar prepared to pass the gig 
 with a smile and a lifting of his felt 
 hat ; but the doctor drew up, and, 
 alighting, told the man to drive home 
 and tell Mrs Mayne he would be 
 back in less than an hour. 
 
 ' I've been wanting a talk with you 
 for some days,' said the cheery, bustling 
 little doctor. ' But you are such a 
 busy man, and those long legs of 
 yours are like seven - leagued boots.
 
 Griselda. yy 
 
 You're from one end of the parish to 
 the other in a minute. There's no 
 catching you ! ' 
 
 'Nothing wrong, I hope?' asked 
 the Vicar. ' I understood that scarlet- 
 fever case was all right, and that 
 nothing further was threatening.' 
 
 ' Oh, that's all ri^ht enouo^h ! ' said 
 the doctor. ' No ; I'm just going 
 round to the captain's ; he's got a 
 touch of the gout — that port wine 
 again, you know — and I thought you 
 wouldn't mind going part of the way 
 with me.' 
 
 John Black followed Doctor Mayne 
 gravely through the ' kissing gate ' 
 leading to one of the captain's grass 
 fields. Gravely, because he had met 
 this Captain Battersby, a naval captain 
 who had retired and farmed his little
 
 7 8 G^Hselda. 
 
 property, that very morning. The 
 captain was irascibly grumbling at some 
 labourers, but had not complained. This 
 visit was some excuse. 
 
 He hardly knew what the doctor was 
 talking about as they strolled along the 
 path across the fields, till they came 
 in sight of the old barn, when Doctor 
 Mayne stopped short and began speaking 
 about it. 
 
 'Wretched old shed!' he said almost 
 vindictively. ' To think what it has to an- 
 swer for ! ' Then he went on talking about 
 that day when little Griselda was born. 
 
 ' I never advised keeping them there, 
 if you remember/ he said. ' It was Nurse 
 Jones who frightened you about the 
 possible consequences of moving them. 
 Nurse Jones is an estimable woman in 
 her way. I don't deny that she is pru-
 
 Gidselda, 79 
 
 dent, clever — all that. But she is too 
 strong-minded, to positive for me. If 
 I had had my way, I should have had 
 a litter knocked together on poles, and 
 four men would have carried Mrs Black 
 and the baby from the barn to her own 
 room at once.' 
 
 ' All's well that ends well,' said the 
 Vicar uneasily.' 
 
 * Of course ! But in this case it is 
 pxOt well. How could it be, with an 
 icy wind, enough to cut you in two, blow- 
 ing through those crazy planks upon a 
 delicate creature like that '^ My wonder 
 Avas, and is, that she ever rallied at all. 
 By the way, have you noticed any par- 
 ticular change in her lately ? 
 
 * She is more cheerful, more lively, 
 and I think eats more than she did,' 
 began the Vicar eagerly.
 
 8o Griselda. 
 
 ' Ah,' Interrupted Doctor Mayne, * I 
 don't mean that ; it is other physical 
 signs.' He stopped ; his voice died upon 
 his hps. He had braced himself for 
 some Httle time past to say to this com- 
 rade of his in the hard battle of life 
 what he must say ; but at the very 
 crucial moment his courage failed him. 
 
 Perhaps his faltering, his hesitation,, 
 told the truth less cruelly than raw words. 
 
 The Vicar's heart gave a leap ; then 
 he felt as one feels who is suddenly^ 
 unaccountably, mortally wounded. He 
 closed his eyes, he groped and would 
 have fallen, but for Doctor Mayne's 
 timely outstretched arm. The world 
 seemed to wheel round him, while his 
 life stopped short — stood still. 
 
 When he opened his eyes, they sought 
 the doctor's — dazed, agonised.
 
 Ginselda. 8 r 
 
 ' Don't let us beat about the bush,' he 
 feebly said. ' You are going to tell me 
 something — for mercy's sake be quick, 
 quick ! ' 
 
 The doctor wiped the moisture from 
 his kindly eyes. ' Look here, old man,' 
 he stammered ; * you've always been 
 talkingr to us about Home from the 
 pulpit, and a good thing too — this hole 
 of a world, with all due reverence to 
 Him who made it, is no home for us. 
 Well, she is going Home, and going 
 very fast ; now, you know, you've only 
 been preaching as yet ; you've got to 
 show us — and you will too, if you hold up.' 
 
 ' Is there nothing to be done 1 ' v/his- 
 pered the miserable man. 
 
 The doctor looked round, as if appeal- 
 ing to the fair spring landscape, so full 
 of life, to yield up some, if only a breath, 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 82 Griselda, 
 
 to fan the waning life so precious to 
 this poor good man. 
 
 * You might take her — by slow stages 
 — to some more bracing spot/ he fal- 
 tered. But — oh — Black, how can I ad- 
 vise it, when she might die on the way } 
 Will you understand that these years 
 since that snowstorm have been a slow 
 dying ? You have kept her alive, like 
 a plant without roots ; hers were cut 
 off that dreadful day.' 
 
 'Don't — say — any — more!' said the 
 Vicar, with a gasping sob. * Thanks ! ' 
 
 The two men gripped hands, looked 
 at each other, and parted. 
 
 Doctor Mayne, unstrung, * not himself,' 
 w^ent up the slope to the captain's 
 house — the cheerful white building with 
 the gay green shutters, where he found 
 some little relief in talking over the
 
 Griselda. 83 
 
 Vicar's impending loss with the captain 
 over a pipe and a glass of grog, and 
 listening to the captain's oft-spoken 
 remark that if he'd known that that old 
 barn was wanted as a patent hospital, 
 he'd have seen to it ; but, as nobody- 
 told him, it wasn't his fault, he didn't 
 guess — was it ? ' 
 
 And John staggered off the opposite 
 way. He turned his back upon the 
 barn, although it had given its rude 
 shelter to his wife and babe in a sore 
 strait. He went blundering on till he 
 came to a clump of Scotch firs that 
 grew on the knoll where he had stood 
 waiting, w^hile Nurse Jones went on- 
 wards, that terrible Christmas Eve six 
 years ago. It was a bright warm 
 evening ; a vivid sunset shone through 
 the dark pines. He flung himself down.
 
 84 Griselda. 
 
 upon the spongy earth, strewn with 
 layers of the dead needles, studded with 
 brown cones. He was cold, sick, trem- 
 bling-. He dared not realise what Doctor 
 Mayne had said — he fought off the 
 thought of death. 
 
 ' If God made Eve from Adam's rib, 
 he made her my own out of my heart,' 
 he fiercely told himself. * She is my 
 heart ; I have no other. If she goes, 
 I shall turn to iron, to stone.' 
 
 He thought back upon his lonely, 
 harsh boyhood — upon that interview with 
 the lawyers, who showed him by speech 
 and manner that he was merely a matter 
 of business, that his very existence and 
 how it came about was a matter of 
 business, and nothing further — upon that 
 dreadful hour when he went out of that 
 office, repulsed, thwarted, disowned — and
 
 Griselda. 85 
 
 fought out the short fierce battle from 
 which he must emerge mankind's close 
 friend or desperate enemy ; he remem- 
 bered his first glimpse of Evelyn, when 
 she came fluttering into the peaceful 
 parlour of that quiet country parsonage 
 in her white dress, with an angel's pity- 
 ing sweetness in her soft eyes for the 
 solitary youth. He thought of the first 
 time her gentle arms had clung to his 
 neck, her fair head had rested on his 
 shoulder, and then he started with fear, 
 for he fancied he heard a terrible cry 
 go out from near to far and echo in 
 the distance. 
 
 But he had not cried with his poor 
 human voice ; it was only the fierce cry 
 of his agonised soul going up to God. 
 
 How would he declaim God's com- 
 mandments from the Communion - table
 
 86 Griselda. 
 
 with his soul a rebel ? How would 
 he preach love, forbearance, faith, hope 
 from the pulpit when her fair body was 
 lying meekly in the earth outside the 
 church, cold and senseless ? How 
 could he work and sympathise and con- 
 sole and be patient when his house was 
 no home, empty, solitary ? God forgive 
 him ! At that moment the little beings 
 who called him father were, in his an- 
 guish, less than the dust out of which 
 they came, and to which they must return. 
 Then, with quick revulsion, a wild 
 hope sprang up within him. After all, 
 a man, a fallible man, had said this. It 
 was only the fiat of one human voice — 
 he would have the advice of the first 
 physicians. Everything that could be 
 tried should be tried ; nothing that 
 could be done should be left undone.
 
 Griselda. 8 7 
 
 But — the money to do this ? 
 
 No one, not even Evelyn — the con- 
 fidant of his schemes, his hopes, his 
 perplexities — knew how hard and how 
 difficult it had been to provide for the 
 actual necessities at home, while he was 
 ready - handed to meet each valid call 
 upon his income from without. His life 
 had been a perpetual struggle to make 
 one sovereign do where two would 
 scarcely have sufficed. 
 
 He would not get into debt. The 
 children's wants had been supplied with 
 close economy. As for himself, he 
 went about almost threadbare. The 
 lofty Lady Romayne, who professed to 
 admire ' character,' had even remarked 
 that it was a pity Mr Black went 
 about so shabby. She really could not 
 ask him to dine ; it was more than she
 
 SS Griselda. 
 
 could risk. It was now May. He 
 had money in hand that would, could 
 only last till midsummer, with the strict- 
 est economy. 
 
 How were these expensive physicians 
 to be paid ? How was any plan for 
 saving his darling's life a little longer — ^just 
 a little longer — how hungrily he caught at 
 that straw of hope ! — to be carried out ? 
 
 There seemed to him but one way, to 
 sell out part of his little capital — that four 
 thousand pounds. Until now he had 
 merely drawn the interest. 
 
 These practical thoughts had brought 
 balance. He went home with an aching, 
 heavy heart ; but the sharp torture was 
 relieved. It was twilight when he walked 
 into the Vicarage. He heard the boys' 
 voices in the stable-yard. Griselda had 
 stayed indoors, following Jemima about,
 
 G 7^86 Ida. 89 
 
 some inward warning telling her to avoid 
 Tom. She came into the passage a fair 
 dream-child, saying, ' Father, will you 
 have some tea ? ' 
 
 He bent and kissed her, saying, ' No, 
 darling, thank you ; ' then he went into 
 that bower — as he felt his wife's sitting- 
 room to be — sanctified by her sweet 
 presence. 
 
 ' Oh, dear, it is you ! ' There was such 
 a soft content, such a luxury of relief 
 and satisfaction in that dear weak voice ! 
 
 He went to her couch, as he always did ; 
 he knelt beside her, took those frail, chill 
 hands in his, and leant his burning head 
 upon them. 
 
 ' It has seemed such a long time to-day,' 
 she began. ' I hope nobody is ill, dear ? 
 Your head — it is so hot ! ' 
 
 John schooled his voice, and gave her a
 
 90 Griselda, 
 
 brief account of all he had seen and heard 
 that was cheery. 
 
 ' How splendid ! ' she said, her slight 
 strength flickering up with satisfaction. 
 *Oh, John, how happy, how thankful — 
 we ought to be — how grateful to God ! ' 
 
 She spoke these words — she sent home 
 those bitter stabs to the grief-stricken man, 
 with reverence, with loving awe. 
 
 ' Yes,' he said. That was a strange 
 sound, that * yes,' half- suffocated, half- 
 daring. 
 
 He dared his own emotions. He took 
 a bold moral leap, as it were, into a higher 
 stage, which just now he did not believe 
 he could possibly reach, the state of cheer- 
 ful resignation. 
 
 ' Put your hand on my head,' he said. 
 And once more Evelyn Black laid her 
 thin hand on her husband's head, and
 
 Griselda, 9 r 
 
 smoothed his rou2:h hair with a caressinor 
 touch. How that gentle touch had com- 
 forted him, soothed his fatigue, calmed his 
 over-tired brain all these hard-working 
 years ! To-night it awakened a new agony, 
 for he thought of the possible long weary 
 years when he would have lost it — when 
 never more in the flesh should Evelyn 
 speak, or touch, or look at him. 
 
 He could not endure the strain. He 
 laid her hand gently back, rose, and paced 
 the room, his usual thoughtfulness for her 
 comfort gone. 
 
 She thought, ' Poor dear, something 
 has vexed him, and he is too considerate 
 to tell me ! ' So she began to talk to him, 
 with some amusement, of Hal Romayne's 
 visit. He listened, as he always listened 
 to anything she said, till she mentioned 
 little Griselda. Then he started.
 
 92 Griselda. 
 
 * Oh, don't talk about Griselda ! ' he 
 said, in a tone of such anguish that, if Mrs 
 Black had not seen her little daughter a 
 few minutes previously, he would have 
 alarmed her. 
 
 As it was, she merely thought he had 
 one of his fits of hopelessness about 
 her paralysed state, when he avoided 
 the subject of the Christmas Eve when 
 Griselda was born, and everything con- 
 nected with it. So, after getting an im- 
 patient 'Yes, yes, dear — just as you 
 think best,' to her demand for his sanc- 
 tion of Griselda's visit to Feather's 
 Court to-morrow, she changed the sub- 
 ject. 
 
 After John Black had carried his wife to 
 bed that night, he went to his study and 
 wrote to Messrs Everest & Everest, the 
 Lincoln's Inn lawyers.
 
 G rise Ida, 95 
 
 ' Gentlemen, — I am anxious to realise 
 as much money as possible.' — Then he 
 detailed his wife's illness. — ' In these 
 circumstances, I feel myself compelled to 
 sell out at least one thousand pounds of 
 the four thousand you have Invested for 
 me. I place the matter entirely In your 
 hands, to sell out where and when you 
 deem best, and have the honour to remain, 
 — Your obedient servant, 
 
 'John Black.' 
 
 That letter safely posted, John felt 
 less completely miserable. In a week 
 or two It would be In his power to do 
 all that could humanly be done to pro- 
 long his darling's life. Doctor Mayne, 
 whom he dally visited In the forlorn 
 hope of getting a stray scrap of re- 
 assurance, talked of some months before
 
 94 Griselda. 
 
 the dread power, Death, could finally 
 conquer them. John hung upon the 
 word ' months.' Never had it seemed 
 a shorter span, a more lightning-like 
 flash of happiness, than it did to this 
 man, who must — so God willed — lose 
 his all ! 
 
 But he must hope against hope; he 
 felt that. * If I am cheating myself, I 
 must do it, or I cannot work ; I can- 
 not hold up my head ! ' he cried out 
 within himself. So he went about his 
 daily tasks doggedly, with a fair front, 
 and a soul propped up with stray reason- 
 ings and impromptu fallacies. 
 
 Messrs Everest & Everest waited 
 three days ; then they telegraphed, — 
 
 ' Please arrange interview on subject 
 mentioned in your favour of 13th inst. ; 
 we should prefer it.'
 
 Griselaa. 95 
 
 In his highly-strung state he could 
 not imagine what this could mean. 
 His money was his own. Why hesitate 
 — why delay — why demur } 
 
 ' It has been their way, I expect, 
 since time immemorial, and they cannot 
 •change it,' he bitterly said, alluding to 
 the gentlemen of the long robe. Then 
 lie telegraphed back an appointment for 
 next day. 
 
 Evelyn looked wistfully into his eyes, 
 and clung to him more tenderly than 
 ■ever when he said good-bye that morn- 
 ing, when he brushed up his worn 
 ■clothes, tied his white neckerchief with 
 greater care than usual, and started for 
 town. 
 
 He said he ' must go,' but there he 
 stopped. It was not her husband's 
 ^ way ' to conceal anything. So Evelyn
 
 g6 Griselda. 
 
 wondered, put two and two together,, 
 feared, and arrived at no result, except 
 a dread lest John should have lost some 
 of that little capital of his, on the sub- 
 ject of which he had always been so 
 reserved, if not taciturn. 
 
 Meanwhile, John went express to town 
 — went, bewildered by the noise and 
 racket, straight into the leisurely stagnant 
 atmosphere of the great legal quarter, 
 and was at once ushered into the pres- 
 ence of the junior partner, ' our Mr 
 Walter Everest,' as the clerks alluded 
 to him when writing in the name of 
 the firm. 
 
 The tall, ungainly man, whose lanky 
 legs always knocked together, as if he 
 had seldom or ever left the library-chair 
 he seemed pretty well to live in through 
 the long office hours, half rose, half
 
 Griselda. 97 
 
 nodded, half waved John to a seat, and 
 ended by saying solemnly to the clerk 
 who ushered in the client, — 
 
 ' A chair, Mr Jones, if you please.' 
 
 Then, while John looked round with 
 a feeling of dull pain, — for each chair, 
 each item in the bare room — the very 
 pattern of the carpet, and the stains 
 upon the old blind — recalled that cruel 
 interview six or seven years ago, — ' our 
 Mr Walter Everest ' looked closely at 
 the Vicar through his spectacles, then 
 leisurely removed them and laid them 
 upon the office-table before him, then 
 said slowly and severely, — 
 
 ^ Mr— John— Black ? ' 
 
 As if, indeed, the name were not 
 only new and strange to him, but that 
 it was not legally proved that this gentle- 
 man here present was entitled to it at all. 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 98 G7^iselda. 
 
 ' I am John Black,' said the Vicar, 
 almost roughly, plunged back, as he 
 felt, into these painful recollections. ' I 
 came — ' 
 
 ' One moment, if you please, sir,' 
 suggested Mr Everest, taking up a 
 bundle of papers, and applying one 
 corner of his spectacles to the writing 
 thereupon. ' I have reason to believe 
 — ah, yes, I see — that our Mr Henry 
 Everest is concerned in this matter 
 equally with myself; I will therefore 
 postpone any discussion thereupon until 
 I can ascertain that he is unable to be 
 present.' 
 
 ' Certainly,' said John. Upon which 
 Mr Everest sounded a gong, and when 
 a clerk appeared, and, in answer to his 
 inquiry as to whether Mr Henry 
 Everest was v/ithin, replied, that he
 
 Ginselda. 99 
 
 did not know, but he would see ; he 
 ordered that if Mr Henry Everest were 
 to be found, he was to tell him, with 
 his compliments, that he would be 
 greatly indebted to him if he could 
 arrange to spare him a few minutes. 
 
 The clerk disappeared, and Mr Walter 
 Everest, with an air of being profoundly 
 occupied with some crisp new whitey- 
 blue papers at his right, shot a remark 
 now and then at John — the spring 
 seemed promising ; he hoped the far- 
 mers would do well, etc. — until the door 
 was opened, a little man came abruptly 
 in, and, with an air of annoyance at 
 being thus unceremoniously fetched, said, 
 ' You sent for me 1 I am just engaged 
 in that Butcher v. Butcher case.' 
 
 ' I will not detain you a moment,' 
 blandly said the junior partner, rising
 
 I oo Griselda. 
 
 and offering his senior his chair, which 
 he at once impatiently turned his back 
 upon. This gentleman, a Mr — John — 
 Black — perhaps you recollect we were 
 trustees during his minority for a small 
 capital settled upon him — wishes to sell 
 out.' 
 
 ' The papers ? Of course you have 
 the papers,' irritably said the sharp little 
 man, stretching out his hand. Then 
 there was a short silence while he flicked 
 open some blue sheets and John's letter, 
 which was fastened to them. 
 
 'You — are — Mr John Black?' he said 
 almost brusquely, after he had finished 
 their perusal. 
 
 John, who felt as if his position with 
 these lawyers was at a greater disad- 
 vantage than ever, reminded him that it 
 was but a few years since their inter-
 
 G rise Ida, lor 
 
 view, when both gentlemen now present 
 refused to give him any information re- 
 specting the relations or guardians who 
 had provided for him. 
 
 • My — dear sir ! ' began the little senior 
 partner, with an evident effort to toler- 
 ate this most unlegal talk. * Really, if 
 our clients place matters of sentiment 
 before us, we cannot be blamed if we 
 respectfully decline to enter upon mat- 
 ters which are entirely without our 
 sphere of action. I have some slight 
 recollection of some previous interview ; 
 but in the interests of business, interests 
 which are paramount, I naturally made 
 no mental note of an interview which 
 had no bearing on any case I happened 
 to be concerned with. As to this pro- 
 position of yours — to sell out part of 
 the four thousand pounds we have in-
 
 102 G rise Ida. 
 
 vested for you — we are really not in 
 the habit of arranging for the disposal 
 of such extremely small amounts. I am 
 right ? ' he added, turning to his lanky 
 brother. 
 
 ' Certainly,' said * our Mr Walter.' 
 Upon which John's heart sank. 
 
 ' But, let me consider,' went on the 
 sharp-eyed little gentleman, poising his 
 chin upon his hand. ' I think, Mr 
 Black, we might possibly meet your 
 wishes another way. We are always 
 more than ready to meet the wishes of 
 our clients when it is in our power to 
 do so. Now, v/hat I suggest is this : 
 that, as you are in want of ready-money, 
 you will draw upon us from time to 
 time, as occasion demands, up to the 
 sum of four thousand pounds ; mean- 
 while, you may continue to draw the in-
 
 G^nselda. 103 
 
 terest of your Invested four thousand, 
 which will remain undisturbed. Do you 
 understand?' 
 
 John Black did not. He stared. He 
 tried to think, to calculate, to cope with 
 these wily lawyers. His brain seemed 
 in a fog. As he understood it, Messrs 
 Everest & Everest were actually offer- 
 ing to lend him money. 
 
 He frowned. He stared into vacancy, 
 pondering. Meanwhile the sharp eyes 
 of the little senior partner were stealthily 
 watching him. 
 
 * At what rate of interest ? ' said John 
 suddenly, turning upon the two. 
 
 ' My dear sir, we are not Jews, nor 
 are we usurers,' said Mr Everest, senior. 
 ' We wish to serve you, and at the 
 same time to save trouble to the firm 
 — that is all. Of course, it rests with
 
 1 04 Griselda. 
 
 you to accept or reject. As for per- 
 centage, that is out of the question. We 
 hold your four thousand pounds. That 
 is sufficient security for us.' 
 
 There was further talk. John Black 
 left Messrs Everests' office puzzled, dis- 
 comfited, unhinged, although with a 
 cheque for one hundred and fifty pounds 
 in his pocket. 
 
 * What does it all mean ? ' he asked 
 himself, unable to find any explanation 
 for the easy generosity of these cut-and- 
 dried solicitors, who were not only ready, 
 but pressing with their cheques. 
 
 'It is a mystery — a strange, cruel 
 mystery ! ' he mused, as he returned to 
 Crowsfoot. All the bright buoyancy of 
 his life, since he met Evelyn, seemed 
 obscured by a heavy cloud. If he could 
 have seen those lawyers after he left
 
 G rise Ida. 105 
 
 their office, could he have been en- 
 lightened ? 
 
 The impatient little senior partner 
 bowed him out, then, closing the door 
 carefully, returned to his brother, grave, 
 and anxious. 
 
 ' He could not possibly have thought 
 anything, could he?' he said, in a low 
 tone — how different from his 'hectoring* 
 voice a few minutes back ! — * I am sure 
 it must be all right ? ' 
 
 ' Quite so,' said the lanky Everest, in 
 a satisfied tone, stretching out his long 
 limbs, and beginning to pick his teeth. 
 ' It was an awkward situation, very. 
 But you steered us through — you steered 
 us through ! ' 
 
 ' To think he never suspected any- 
 thing,' said the little man, on whose 
 features a sweet smile was gradually
 
 1 o6 Griselda. 
 
 spreading-. ' That is what I cannot un- 
 derstand. The man must be a dunce — 
 an absolute idiot ! ' 
 
 ' My dear boy, he is a parson in an 
 agricultural neighbourhood, ' returned his 
 brother, who seemed vastly relieved. ' It 
 was a case of assimilating his intellect 
 to theirs, and you know what that means, 
 or of leaving the place in disgust. Well, 
 he has stayed.' 
 
 ' You may say what you please, Walter, 
 but he is a fine fellow,' said Mr Everest, 
 senior, energetically. ' That nose — so 
 wonderfully like, you know — then that 
 powerful chin — he will make his mark 
 when his time comes.' 
 
 ' Ay, when his time comes, if it 
 comes ! ' observed his brother sardoni- 
 cally. ' You know well enough that on 
 this point you and I differ.'
 
 Griselda. T07 
 
 * We shall see,' said Mr Everest drily, 
 as he went off. 
 
 Meanwhile, John Black was home, one 
 hundred and thirty pounds in his pocket. 
 The other twenty was with the great 
 physician, Sir Geoffrey Boole, who was 
 to see Evelyn at Crowsfoot in three 
 days from that date. 

 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 RISELDA slept very restlessly 
 the night after Hal Romayne's 
 visit to Crowsfoot Vicarage. 
 She had strange dreams. She was a 
 princess shut away in a dismal cavern, 
 guarded by a horrible dragon, which had 
 eyes like Tom's, when his temper was 
 at its worst. She was weeping and 
 mourning in her terror when Hal Ro- 
 mayne, dressed in cloth of gold, with a 
 gold helmet on his long brown curls, 
 came flying through the air on his long- 
 tailed grey pony and thrust his spear
 
 Griselda. 109 
 
 into the dragon, which shrivelled up 
 into nothing at the first touch. 
 
 Poor little maiden ! There was a 
 worse dragon watching at the Vicarage 
 doors to claim its prey — one which no 
 mortal eye could see, no mortal hand 
 could touch. 
 
 Meanwhile, her father lay awake with 
 his great grief, of which Griselda was 
 the innocent cause. 
 
 Years after, he remembered and bit- 
 terly blamed himself for his injustice to 
 the tender little girl. She went into his 
 study, the morning of her visit to 
 Feather's Court. Jemima had told her, 
 with great pride, to go and show herself to 
 her ' par.' Jemima had clear-starched and 
 ironed a white frock with minute care, 
 had bought four yards of blue ribbon at 
 the general shop in the village, and had
 
 I TO Griselda. 
 
 tied up her sleeves and shining hair, 
 besides hanging her Httle silver locket 
 round her neck. Griselda had never 
 been so 'fine.' She went to her father, 
 blushing with the conscious feminine 
 pride of ' looking ni(je. ' The woman- 
 babe was innocently happy, till her 
 father, who was writing, looked up, and 
 at her. 
 
 That look she never forgot, any more 
 than she forgot what followed — a look 
 worse than the dragon's in her dream, 
 for it was dark, harsh, unfathomable, 
 expressing, as it did, the battle that was 
 raging in the man's soul. In another 
 man it might have meant hate ; but in 
 John Black it meant fierce struggle. 
 
 'Well, Griselda?' he said, awkwardly 
 leaning back in his chair. 
 
 The child paused a few moments, won-
 
 Griselda. 1 1 1 
 
 dering what It was which had changed 
 her father. Was it childish instinct or 
 a foreshadowing of the beautiful coming 
 woman's nature which made her forget 
 her own pain in sympathy for his ? 
 
 She went up to him and laid her little 
 hand upon his knee. Her great elo- 
 quent eyes seemed to say, — 
 
 ' I am not afraid of you.' Then she 
 prattled about her spending to-day at 
 ' Fevver's Court ' as she called it, end- 
 ing almost with awe — for Griselda 
 thought even a halfpenny a consider- 
 able sum — ' the ribbon cost fourpence- 
 ha'penny a yard ! ' 
 
 ' Ah/ said John Black, whose brain 
 was unsteady after the shock and his 
 sleepless night, ' pretty things cost a 
 lot, Griselda ! You cost me' — then he 
 checked himself — and, passing his hand
 
 112 Grtselda. 
 
 across his forehead, felt that his mind 
 was clouded to-day, and it behoved him 
 to be on guard. 
 
 ' Did you buy me, papa ? Did you pay ' 
 — Griselda paused to think of a large sum 
 — 'did you pay a whole shilling for me?' 
 
 John Black got up, laughed — what a 
 laugh ! — and said, ' Go, child, go ! ' Never 
 before had he spoken to his only little 
 daughter like that. She gave him one 
 yearning grieved look, and crept away. 
 
 Jemima, when the smart waggonette 
 drove up, and a portly nurse appeared at 
 the door, and pompously informed her 
 that she had ' called to fetch Mr Black's 
 little girl,' could not find Griselda. She 
 was not in the study, not with her mother. 
 At last she found her sitting on the floor 
 in the bedroom, pale, her big eyes 
 luminous with repressed tears.
 
 G^dselda. 113, 
 
 ' Are you scared ? Would ye rather 
 not go, my lamb ? ' asked Jemima, thinking 
 the ' darlinof was friorhtened at ofoine out 
 all alone.' But Griselda shook her head. 
 So Jemima tied on her Sunday straw 
 hat trimmed with watered-silk ribbon, and 
 fastened her little black silk cape, then 
 watched her drive off among the carriage- 
 ful of smart nurses and children, like 
 some little stray bird that had flown by 
 mistake into a superior nest. 
 
 There were two girls, Lydia (aged 
 seven) and Mabel (five), their nurse 
 and nursemaid, and a handsome strong- 
 limbed baby-boy on his own nurse's lap. 
 This kindly countrywoman, who had 
 children of her own far away, made room 
 for the stranger, and, seeing that the 
 other nurses contemptuously scanned the 
 child's coarse clothes, and that Hal's 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 114 Griselda. 
 
 fashionably-dressed sisters looked askance 
 at her, she made the baby-boy smile and 
 coo and pat her face with his fresh dimpled 
 hands. 
 
 Feather's Court was a great castellated 
 grey-stone pile, with many mullioned 
 windows. It stood in a large deer park, 
 and its turrets had for background those 
 purple hills Griselda had longed to see 
 when she sat gazing at them from her 
 chair in the orchard. There was a moat, 
 now dry and full of shrubs and ferns. 
 When Sir Hubert Romayne bought the 
 estate, eighteen months ago, to please 
 his rich wife, one of whose ancestors was 
 supposed to have built the house, he found 
 the neglected place — which had belonged 
 to a spendthrift — going to rack and ruin. 
 He spent a small fortune on repairs and 
 improvements. It was now as nearly
 
 Griselda. 1 1 5 
 
 perfect as a rich g-entleman's country-seat 
 could be, from the wrouofht-iron orates and 
 stone lodges at either side of the park 
 to the Italian garden that sloped upwards 
 behind the Court towards the heath- 
 covered hills. 
 
 Griselda felt as if she had become part 
 of a fairy tale. She stood on the steps 
 of the great building, gazing upwards with 
 astonishment. This was a palace indeed 
 — a fitting home for yesterday's prince. 
 
 The little girls had run up the steps 
 and had disappeared into the great hall, 
 where statues gleamed white through the 
 long, narrow window panes. The nurses 
 were taking the parasols and wraps and 
 the picture-book, with which the languid 
 little Lvdia beeuiled the tedium of the 
 drives, out of the waggonette, while the 
 coachman leant back and indulged in such
 
 1 1 6 Ginselda. 
 
 complimentary badinage as he dared with 
 Mrs Walters, the stout pompous nurse, 
 who was a power in the kitchen-regions 
 of Feather's Court. 
 
 Meanwhile, ' baby's nurse,' as she was 
 called, bethought herself of the child with 
 the up-turned wondering gaze. Had she 
 been suddenly gifted with second-sight — 
 had she known how, when, and in what 
 manner this roughly-clad little maid would 
 share in the weal and woe of the important 
 family she served — she might have been 
 more deferential in her treatment of Gris- 
 elda, but she would scarcely have been so 
 spontaneously, genuinely warm-hearted. 
 
 * Look here, Mrs Walters,' she said 
 impatiently, turning round, the baby 
 in her arms. ' What's to be done with 
 this good little soul ? Is she to go to- 
 her ladyship ? '
 
 Griselda. 117 
 
 * Oh, dear me. no ! ' said Mrs Walters, 
 coming panting up the wide steps. ' My 
 lady to be bothered by a parcel of children 
 indeed ! She had better go straight to 
 the nursery, and Mary '11 look her out 
 some old toys to play with.' 
 
 Now, a certain slumbering resentment 
 in the baby's foster-mother against the 
 autocrat of the nurseries was suddenly 
 wakened into active life by Mrs Wal- 
 ters' words. She flashed a look at 
 her from her fine black eyes, then 
 she said to Griselda, — 
 
 ' You come along with me, my dear.' 
 
 Griselda put her little hand into 
 the nurse's. They went up a wide, 
 shallow staircase between banks of 
 rare hothouse plants, then along a 
 dimly-lighted corridor, where fleecy rugs 
 were spread before closed doors, and
 
 1 18 Griselda. 
 
 where there were cabinets and tables 
 full of china and curiosities from 
 foreign lands, till they came to an 
 alcove, where the nurse pushed aside 
 a curtain, and, after someone within 
 had called out, ' Come in,' in reply 
 to her knock at the door it concealed, 
 pushed the door open, and Griselda 
 found herself in a bright room all 
 flowery chintz, gilding, and mirrors, 
 where a lady was writing at a fanciful 
 escritoire near one of the windows. 
 
 ' I have brought little Miss Black 
 to see you, my lady.' 
 
 *0h!' Lady Romayne, a stout, florid, 
 but good-looking woman, glanced up, 
 concealing her annoyance at ' Porter's 
 taking such a liberty,' for this foster- 
 mother of her second son's must not 
 be annoyed. Even Sir Hubert nodded
 
 G^'iselda. 119 
 
 to her when he met her, and praised 
 his boy, and hoped she had good news 
 of her children, et-ccetera. 
 
 ' Go and speak to her ladyship, my 
 dear.' said the nurse. 
 
 Griselda went across to Lady Ro- 
 mayne, and lifted her face to be 
 kissed. Lady Romayne, slightly taken 
 aback by ' the little creature's cool- 
 ness,' just touched her forehead with 
 her lips, when she was still further 
 astonished by the child's asking if 
 she were Hal's mamma '^ 
 
 * What do you know about Hal '^.' 
 she asked, thinking there was some- 
 thing eerie-looking about those deep, 
 dark eyes and that pale, golden hair. 
 
 ' He came to the orchard yester- 
 day.' Griselda tried to speak very 
 plainly, without lisping, as her mother
 
 1 20 G rise Ida. 
 
 taught her to do. ' Is he here?' — look- 
 ing round. 
 
 ' Hal Is out riding,' said Lady Ro- 
 mayne. ' But, if you go to the nurs- 
 ery, they will give you some nice 
 toys to play with. Ask Miss Lydia 
 to let her play with the doll's house, 
 Porter, or Miss Mabel will lend her 
 a doll.' 
 
 Lady Romayne turned to her writing, 
 thinking somewhat hardly of the Vicar 
 of Crowsfoot for his child's ' want of 
 manner.' ' Dressing her like that, too ! 
 Those men who are all philanthropy, 
 and who pet up and spoil the labour- 
 ing population, are just those who 
 neglect the duties that lie at their 
 very doors,' thought her ladyship se- 
 verely, thinking that next time she 
 was asked to subscribe to the Crows-
 
 Griselda. 1 2 1 
 
 foot school she would tell that Mr 
 Black what she thought of him. 
 
 Meanwhile, Griselda went to the 
 day nursery — a huge lofty room in 
 the new part of Feather's Court — 
 which had large windows overlooking 
 the marble terraces and bright flower- 
 beds, and where there were gay pic- 
 tures and a rocking-horse, and bears 
 that ran about when they were wound 
 up, and all sorts of expensive toys 
 which had amused the children on 
 one or two occasions, but which were 
 discarded with disgust by them on the 
 third. 
 
 But when it was suggested to Lydia, 
 who was lying supine on the soft 
 carpet, seemingly trying to bore holes 
 in it with her shoe - heels, that she 
 should show the visitor her doll's
 
 122 Griselda, 
 
 house, she gave a wild Indian yell, 
 and had to be pacified. And when 
 Mabel, the round-faced and amiable one 
 of the two girls, brought her magnifi- 
 cent wax doll, which had as many fine 
 clothes as Lady Romayne herself, and 
 laid it in Griselda's lap, Griselda shook 
 her head. 
 
 It was too 'grand' — she felt she could 
 not play with such a wonderful creature 
 — that, if she did, that pink waxen 
 forehead might pucker into a frown, 
 and those blue glass eyes, with the real 
 eyelashes, flash sudden anger at her. 
 
 So she sat with her hands in her lap, 
 watching the nursemaid brushing the 
 girls' hair and putting on gossamer 
 lace and muslin pinafores through the 
 open door leading to the night-nurseries, 
 — and listening to the nurses' talk.
 
 G rise Ida, 123 
 
 'Where is she going to have her 
 dinner ? ' asked the baby's nurse. 
 
 ' Here, with us, of course,' said the 
 head-nurse, just as the footman who 
 attended upon the nurses made his ap- 
 pearance to ' lay the cloth.' ' She can't 
 go down, with Sir Hubert and all there^ 
 dressed like that.' 
 
 Griselda had heard and understood, 
 and her face had flushed — just when a 
 boyish voice said, 'Halloa! There you 
 are ! ' — and Hal walked straight up to 
 her. 
 
 'Come along down!' he went on, 
 taking her hand. 'What!' — for Mrs 
 Walters came bustling up to prevent 
 him — ' going to stop up here ? Stuff 
 and nonsense ! I am going to look 
 after her. Don't any of you trouble 
 your heads about her.'
 
 124 Griselda. 
 
 *But, Master Hal' — the fat nurse's 
 tone was conciliatory, for the son and 
 heir of the Romayne's was not to be 
 trifled with, and it was as much as any 
 servant's place was worth to interfere 
 with him — 'she hasn't brought her pina- 
 fore.' 
 
 * Here — Mary ! ' Hal unceremoniously 
 took Griselda to the open door and 
 told Mary to * lend her some of Mabel's 
 things.' So Griselda went from the 
 nursery in a pretty muslin overdress, 
 escorted by the eldest son, who, looking 
 critically at the broad blue sash Mary 
 had tied round her waist, called out to 
 ask why they hadn't put her on some 
 better ties. 
 
 * Because she wouldn't have them, 
 Master Hal,' said the nursemaid spite- 
 fully.
 
 Griselda. 125 
 
 * Jemima bought the ribbon ; it cost 
 fourpence - halfpenny a yard,' said Gris- 
 elda, looking up with big eyes at Hal. 
 He looked more splendid to-day, she 
 thought, even than yesterday. He was 
 dressed in black velvet, with glittering 
 steel buttons. 
 
 ' How are those cads, your brothers ? * 
 asked Hal, with an air of lofty pro- 
 tection, as they went downstairs, he 
 leading Griselda by the hand. ' Have 
 they tried to hurt you ? ' 
 
 Griselda shook her head. ' What are 
 cads ? ' she said, feeling that the word 
 was disparaging, and that, however 
 roughly her brothers treated her, she 
 must defend them, even in this exalted 
 atmosphere. 
 
 ' Oh, I don't know ! ' said Hal care- 
 lessly. Then he opened the dining-
 
 126 Griselda, 
 
 room door, where Sir Hubert, Lady 
 Romayne, the two elder little girls, the 
 tutor, and the governess were at lun- 
 cheon, and led her straight up to his 
 father, saying, ' Mr Black's daughter — 
 papa, Griselda.' 
 
 'Well, you are a pretty little maid, 
 with a pretty name!' said Sir Hubert 
 kindly. He was a stout man, slightly 
 bald, very well-meaning and practical, 
 althoueh not clever. His weaknesses 
 were his fatuous admiration of his wife, 
 who ruled him — and of his eldest son, 
 who ruled her. 
 
 'Just let her sit by you, pa, and see 
 that she eats something, will you ? ' asked 
 Hal coolly, walking off to his seat by 
 his mother. ' I think I shall take her 
 round the place after luncheon,' he con- 
 tinued, as the men-servants hastened to
 
 Griselda. 127 
 
 offer to him his favourite entries. ' Beer, 
 Williams, please ! I promised her mother 
 to look after her, you know. What dy'e 
 call these things ? Quenelles ? Take 
 them away. Mother, that cook of yours 
 gets worse and worse. She'll give us 
 nothing to eat presently. I wish you'd 
 get a man. Towerden says he can't eat 
 anything cooked by a woman.' 
 
 ' My dear boy, Towerden's father is 
 a duke!' said Sir Herbert, smiling, 
 for, strange to say, he appeared to like 
 his little son of barely eleven to talk 
 like an airy young man of twenty or 
 more. ' By the way, my dear, isn't this 
 the heroine of the snowstorm story you 
 were telling me the other day ? ' 
 
 Lady Romayne assenting, he looked 
 at Griselda with more interest, and asked 
 her if she had any brothers and sisters.
 
 128 G rise Ida, 
 
 *Two — brovers/ said Griselda. Then^ 
 almost before she knew what she was 
 saying, she added emphatically, ' Brovers, 
 not cads.' 
 
 'Not what?' said Sir Hubert, startled, 
 while Hal's tutor — a young B.A., whose 
 tutorship to this scion of an ancient 
 house was sweetened by a heavy salary 
 — looked meaningly at his pupil. 
 
 * Oh, I know what she means ! ' said 
 Griselda's prince, by no means abashed. 
 ' I called 'em that. So they are ; they 
 threatened to hang her or something.' 
 
 * To wring my neck,' interrupted 
 Griselda. 
 
 'Well, to hang you or to wring your 
 neck — it comes to the same thing! I 
 threatened to give 'em a thrashing.' 
 
 ' Harry says you and Tom'll have to 
 fight properly with swords father's got,*
 
 G rise Ida, 129 
 
 went on Griselda ; while the two girls 
 looked wonderingly at this curious out- 
 spoken and fearless young person, and 
 Lady Romayne compressed her lips and 
 looked unutterable things. 
 
 * What a warlike personage ! ' said Sir 
 Hubert, amused. ' It ought to suit you, 
 Hal. But, Withers' — to the tutor— * you'll 
 have to see they play fair.' 
 
 ' Harry says he's got to see they p'ay 
 fair,' said Griselda. But Lady Romayne 
 told her that little girls ought to be seen 
 and not heard. She could not prevent Hal 
 from taking Griselda about the gardens 
 afterwards, showing her the horses and 
 dogs, and getting her strawberries and 
 peaches from the hothouses. But she 
 determined to do better, in her human 
 short-sightedness, for, if she could have 
 foreseen the future, she would have almost 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 130 Griselda, 
 
 rather have broken the children's ac- 
 quaintance roughly — cruelly, if need be. 
 She resolved to do what she could to 
 make Griselda a fit companion for her 
 children. No sooner was this good 
 resolution formed than she began to put 
 it into practice. 
 
 ' Hubert, we must really try to reclaim 
 that little heathen,' she said to her 
 husband, after Griselda had driven off 
 home with the escort of the nursemaid 
 Mary, laden with fruit and flowers for 
 her mother, ordered by Hal. 
 
 ' My dear, she is a most amusing little 
 creature, I am sure,' said the good-natured 
 baronet. 
 
 ' She has a soul to be saved.' 
 
 * Well, I really think Black is the person 
 to see to that,' said Sir Hubert. 
 
 ' He looks so far abroad in that parish
 
 G rise Ida. 131 
 
 of his, he is always worrying one about 
 that he doesn't see what is going on 
 just under his very nose,' said Lady 
 Romayne severely. ' I am sure that 
 household must be something quite 
 shocking, with the wife an invalid, and 
 no one to look after it.' Then she pro- 
 posed her really kind idea — to offer Mr 
 Black teaching from her own governess 
 for Griselda two or three times weekly. 
 
 ' I should send Miss Lone over to 
 Crowsfoot in the waggonette, and pay 
 her something extra,' she added. 
 
 ' My dear, would it not be much simpler 
 to have the child here ? ' suggested Sir 
 Hubert. 
 
 Lady Romayne could not hear of that, 
 she said, till the child was ' less of a 
 savage.' So she had an interview in the 
 schoolroom with the meek Miss Long,
 
 132 Griselda. 
 
 who was always ready to further her 
 patroness's views, and a day or two later 
 she wrote to the Vicar of Crowsfoot, — 
 
 ' Dear Mr Black, — You must excuse 
 my writing to you on a somewhat delicate 
 subject ; but, as a mother, who naturally 
 feels and sees matters connected with 
 children which would escape the notice of 
 any man, however well-intentioned, I feel 
 it my duty to do so. 
 
 ' It really grieved me to see so nice a 
 child as your little daughter so absolutely 
 neglected and entirely wild ; and I felt it 
 my duty, in her temporarily motherless 
 condition, to consider what could be done 
 for her. A plan occurred to me to lend 
 you my governess, Miss Long, for some 
 hours each week. We will send her to 
 you, and the carriage can be put up at the
 
 Griselda. 133 
 
 '' Lion ' while the lessons are given. With 
 kind wishes, — Yours sincerely, 
 
 ' Gertrude Romayne.' 
 
 Now Lady Romayne wrote that letter 
 in all good faith — in fact, with a tinge of 
 the noble satisfied feeling she had when 
 sending a large donation to a missionary 
 fund, or putting herself out by lending her 
 handsome drawing-room in town for some 
 meeting connected with the conversion of 
 the heathen. 
 
 If she could have seen John Black, and 
 could have known his feelings when he 
 received it, she would have been aghast. 
 It is true that the letter arrived, as such 
 letters frequently will, at the most inop- 
 portune moment — on the very morning of 
 the day when the great London physician, 
 Sir Geoffrey Boole, was to visit Crowsfoot
 
 134 Griselda, 
 
 Vicarage and consult with Doctor Mayne on 
 the state of health of the Vicar's dear wife. 
 
 John Black had passed a sleepless nighty 
 and Mrs Black was much worse. 
 
 Two or three times during that warm 
 starlit spring night, when the plants 
 seemed poised in sleep in the genial 
 darkened atmosphere, and the air that 
 came in through the open windows was 
 laden with the heavy perfume of the 
 flowers in the garden-beds and the 
 chestnut-blooms in the fields, a yellow 
 waxen pallor had spread itself upon 
 Evelyn's calm restful face, and she had 
 given that sigh — a mixture of moan and 
 sob — which the Vicar had so often heard 
 coming from dying lips. 
 
 How could he sleep ? He sat watching 
 her, growing more miserable, more hope- 
 less, each minute. Then in the mornings
 
 Griselda. 135 
 
 after he and Jemima had succeeded In 
 rallying her from the faintness that en- 
 sued upon her awakening, and those 
 sweet blue eyes had looked fondly into 
 his once more, he went, staggering with 
 mental and physical exhaustion, into his 
 study, to find that letter. 
 
 It seemed an aggravated insult to the 
 unhappy man then, there, at that moment. 
 He just read it through, and, letting it 
 drop from his hand upon the floor, he 
 leant his tired head upon his arms with a 
 stifled sob. 
 
 ' From the very first that child has been 
 our curse ! ' he thought of poor helpless 
 little Griselda. Poor little maiden, born 
 in the snow, born into the coldest of the 
 cold moods of the changeful world ! 
 
 Then came a sweet little voice at his 
 elbow, ' Papa, I have brought your coffee ! *
 
 136 Gi'iselda. 
 
 and, looking up, there stood Griselda hold- 
 ing a little tray with a cup of steaming, 
 fragrant coffee, and with a world of love 
 and sympathy in her tearful eyes. For, 
 baby that she was, she knew what Jemima's 
 abrupt ' much worse,' when speaking of 
 her mother, meant ; and her poor little 
 heart seemed to hurt her at every throb — 
 she felt so very sad. 
 
 Her dear, beautiful mother — and that 
 father, who seemed to Griselda so great 
 and noble and grand that her young mind 
 did not place him among men at all — if 
 she could have been interrogated, it would 
 have been found that she ranked him 
 above and beyond ' every one in the 
 world ' — her own little expression. 
 
 If he had seemed stern the other day, 
 his expression this morning was severity 
 itself
 
 G rise I da. 137 
 
 He took the cup and put it aside with- 
 out a word. Then he questioned her 
 closely, bitterly. What had she done — 
 what had she said, that day at Feather's 
 Court, to bring about this, which he in- 
 wardly called * that woman's insolence.' 
 
 He slathered nothini^- from Griselda's 
 replies. Many a child not yet six years 
 old would have been frightened into in- 
 coherent acknowledgments, into sobs and 
 tears. But Griselda stood opposite her 
 father, firm, composed, only a deep grief 
 in those wonderful eyes which looked 
 straight into his. 
 
 In any but this hard, wild mood, brought 
 about by mental torture, that look of silent 
 reproach would have gone straight to his 
 heart. As it was, it maddened him. He 
 felt suddenly that he had better be out 
 and away ; if he stayed much longer here,
 
 138 Griselda. 
 
 in his suspense and misery, he might be 
 betrayed into some words or actions he 
 would repent. 
 
 Looking at his watch, he saw that, 
 if he walked to the station, a 
 mile and a half distant, he would be 
 just in time to meet Sir Geoffrey Boole. 
 
 Doctor Mayne was to meet the great 
 man and to drive him to Crowsfoot 
 Vicarage. But the vicar felt that 
 it would be quite as well to be there 
 himself. 
 
 He rose abruptly and left Griselda. 
 
 The child stood there cold, mis- 
 erable, suffocated with a new emotion 
 she did not understand. Then she 
 crept away upstairs to her mother's 
 room. 
 
 Here it seemed so different, — so 
 peaceful !
 
 Griselda. 139 
 
 Mrs Black, white as one of the 
 June Hlies whose green buds were 
 beginning to swell upon their tall 
 stems in the garden below, lay in 
 her bed. Jemima had ' tidied ' the 
 pretty room, which was always fresh 
 and neat, with its white dimity hang- 
 ings. Some bird was singing on a 
 tree outside. The invalid was drifting 
 into a drowsy, dreamy content. She 
 just unclosed her eyes, smiled at her 
 fair-haired little child, and made a 
 weak gesture which Griselda knew 
 meant that she should come and 
 lie down near her mother, as she 
 had so often lain before. 
 
 She clambered upon the bed, and 
 creeping close to the still form, nestled 
 against it. She had learned not to 
 talk while mother * was resting.' So
 
 1 40 G rise Ida. 
 
 she lay quietly there, feeling an inde- 
 scribable comfort from her nearness to 
 her gentle, loving mother. 
 
 Then Mrs Black, dimly feeling some 
 thought arise in her gradually clouding 
 mind, groped mentally among the soft 
 calming shadows, and half unconsciously 
 spoke it. 
 
 ' Darling — Griselda,' she dreamily said. 
 ' Tell — Hal — little Hal Romayne — to 
 remember — his promise.' 
 
 Then her eyelids drooped ; she ebbed 
 slowly — deliciously onward — towards the 
 peace, the rest — where no human 
 thought, no human word, can reach. 
 Griselda's ' Yes, mamma,' seemed float- 
 ing about somewhere. But she had 
 ridded herself of that last fragment of 
 earthly thought. 
 
 And Griselda fell asleep also.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 HE vicar found Doctor Mayne 
 talking to the station-master 
 on the empty, breezy plat- 
 form. 
 
 * Hullo ! you here ? ' said the doctor, 
 to whom this was a field day. Deeply 
 sorry as he w^as for the Blacks, he 
 could not help feeling excited, even 
 elated, at the prospect of a consul- 
 tation with the great Sir Geoffrey. 
 ' Well, old man, it's a lucky thing 
 I brought the four-wheeler! If I 
 hadn't listened to Mrs Mayne, who
 
 142 Griselda. 
 
 was in a consternation at the idea 
 of Sir Geoffrey being fetched in a 
 gig, you'd have had to foot it back 
 through the fields. What's that — 
 train signalled ? By Jove, it is ! Here 
 she comes ! 
 
 The little black serpent was wind- 
 ing round a corner, heralded by the 
 puffing white steam. There was a 
 bell-ringing and a general excitement 
 Two or three men in smock - frocks, 
 with bundles, stood by, open - eyed 
 and open - mouthed, as the station- 
 master, whose brisk eye had caught 
 sight of a portly male passenger in 
 one of the two first-class compart- 
 ments, rushed full tilt at the door and 
 opened it. 
 
 ' How are ye, doctor — Doctor Mann, 
 did ye say? How are ye?'
 
 G rise Ida. 143 
 
 The great physician descended affa- 
 bly, if a trifle wearily, from the stuffy 
 carriage where he had spent a couple 
 of hours reading, and wondering why 
 respectable clergymen's wives couldn't 
 contrive to have these desperate ill- 
 nesses nearer town. Sir Geoffrey was 
 one of those distinguished and pro- 
 minent personages who can afford to 
 be amiable on all occasions. 
 
 Small talk, and much obsequious 
 attention on the part of the station- 
 master and Doctor Mayne, and the 
 doctor's mare was trotting briskly 
 towards Crowsfoot, the doctor driving 
 her, Sir Geoffrey seated on his left, 
 and the Vicar trying to crouch him- 
 self in the back seat by almost doub- 
 ling up his long legs. 
 
 ' What a pretty little place ! ' conde-
 
 1 44 Griselda. 
 
 scendlngly observed the great man as 
 he alighted at the Vicarage door. ' Ah, 
 my dear sir ' — to the vicar — ' you 
 country clergymen do not half appre- 
 ciate your surroundings. How you 
 can study here ! ' 
 
 'How you can die — slowly — here, 
 rather,' said John Black, almost fiercely. 
 At which Doctor Mayne gave Sir 
 Geoffrey a respectful but significant 
 look ; and the authority on the subject 
 of disease glanced critically at the Vicar, 
 who in his eyes had suddenly be- 
 come a patient — a subject — therefore an 
 entity. 
 
 * I will go up and prepare her for 
 your visit,' said John uneasily, after 
 he had conducted Sir Geoffrey into 
 the ' parlour,' which, till so very lately, 
 had been Evelyn's sitting-room. ' She
 
 Ginselda. 145 
 
 has no idea of any danger — has no 
 idea that I asked you to see her.' 
 
 ' Break it to her gently, my dear 
 sir, but quite as a matter of course,' 
 said Sir Geoffrey, who had assumed 
 his spectacles, and was, as it were, 
 'in full uniform.' * Be as short and 
 as practical as possible.' 
 
 The Vicar went upstairs. He 
 opened his darling's door with slow, 
 cautious nicety. Then he paused ; 
 she was evidently asleep, with Griselda 
 held close to her breast. The two 
 faces were sweet, pale, peaceful, and 
 strangely alike. As he stood there, 
 gazing at the mother who had 
 gathered her child so closely to her 
 heart before she fell asleep, a sudden 
 reproach smote him. He had dared 
 almost to hate that daughter of his 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 1 46 Griselda. 
 
 whose birth had brought about her 
 mother's suffering ; and there, now, 
 he saw and reahsed that this child 
 was very bone of his beloved wife's 
 bone, flesh of her flesh. 
 
 He turned, struck by remorse, and 
 went softly downstairs. 
 
 ' She — and Griselda — are both asleep,' 
 he said, with a pitiful, appealing glance 
 at Sir Geoffrey. 
 
 After some discussion, it was agreed 
 that Sir Geoffrey and Doctor Mayne 
 should visit their patient while in this 
 pleasant slumber. 
 
 ' When she wakes, the sight of me 
 will make it all right,' confidently said 
 Doctor Mayne. Then, as they went 
 upstairs, he and his superior, he told 
 Sir Geoffrey that this was quite the best 
 thing that could have happened.
 
 G rise I da. 147 
 
 * She is intensely nervous,' he said ; 
 * and he is wound up, through his 
 anxiety, to such a pitch, that the more 
 he is kept out of it all the better.' 
 
 He turned the handle softly. There 
 lay the two, the sleeping mother and 
 the sleeping child. 
 
 ' Asleep '> ' 
 
 Sir Geoffrey said that one word. 
 Then he looked at Doctor Mayne, and 
 Doctor Mayne at him. 
 
 Yes, asleep — asleep ! 
 
 John Black waited impatiently below. 
 How slow they were — how quiet! The 
 moments seemed hours to his racked 
 mind. Then he heard ponderous foot- 
 steps cross the floor above, and come 
 down the stairs cautiously, heavily. 
 One of them coming down to fetch 
 him — or what ? He started to his
 
 148 G rise Ida. 
 
 feet as Doctor Mayne came into the 
 room, carrying Griselda, asleep. 
 
 The doctor's ruddy face was dis- 
 composed. His colour came and went 
 unhealthily. His voice was hoarse, and 
 trembled as he said, — 
 
 ' You must bear up, my friend.' 
 
 Then he sat down and called his 
 attention to the pale little child. ' She 
 is not strong,' he said ; ^ poor little 
 darling ; your wife's legacy to you ! ' 
 
 Then he turned away his head, 
 dreadine to see the effect of his words. 
 He knew this old, oft-repeated scene 
 in life's drama so far too well. Some 
 would fall down, shrieking. Others 
 would curse and rave, and afterwards 
 would not guess how they had blas- 
 phemed Death, the thief who had 
 robbed them of their treasures. As
 
 Ginselda. 1 49 
 
 a rule, the weak women bore their 
 blows the best, because they had not 
 the instinct to fight and evade them, 
 and a mental shock knocked them 
 down and disabled them at once. 
 
 ' She is dead ? ' said John Black, 
 with perfect composure. 
 
 The doctor looked round in fear. 
 But the Vicar, though pale with an 
 ugly leaden pallor, seemed to hear his 
 '' Yes ' followed by the assurance that 
 her precious soul must have fled — 
 quietly, peacefully, as a bird starts on 
 its homeward flight — as if it were some 
 ordinary acquiescence. 
 
 * I will go upstairs ; you had better 
 come too,' he said. Then he took a 
 cushion from a chair, arranged it upon 
 Mrs Black's sofa, and, taking the 
 sleeping child from Doctor Mayne with
 
 1 50 Griselda. 
 
 minute care, placed her there, and 
 covered her with the knitted rug" 
 which had so often covered her dead 
 mother. 
 
 Then he led the wa}^ and joined Sir 
 Geoffrey, who was awaiting him, and 
 who greeted him with genuine sym- 
 pathy. Looking at that pale, dead 
 beauty, the celebrated physician had 
 felt that this man's loss was great 
 indeed. 
 
 Both doctors, by a common human 
 instinct, walked away and conversed in 
 whispers at the window, while John 
 Black took his first look at his wife — 
 in death. 
 
 What he felt — what he thought, as 
 he kissed the half-opened eyelids close 
 upon those lovely eyes, which would 
 never gaze into his with deep, confid-
 
 Griselda. 1 5 r 
 
 Ing love again — was no one's — no human 
 beinor's rieht to know. It was not 
 long before he joined the two doctors, 
 and, Inviting them to remain for a 
 while In the parlour — Evelyn's parlour 
 — went to break the news to Jemima 
 and to the boys. 
 
 /I like to see pluck,' said Sir Geof- 
 frey, as Doctor Mayne was driving 
 him back to the station an hour after- 
 wards. ' 1 like to see character. Now, 
 there was character In the way that 
 man took his loss. He Is a fellow with 
 a great deal In him, and, under favour- 
 able circumstances, should make his 
 mark in the world.' 
 
 But the little Crowsfoot doctor — 
 who, although he had not written 
 scientific works, or had ' made his
 
 152 G rise Ida. 
 
 name, ' had a natural shrewd insight 
 into human nature born of much 
 practice — shook his head. 
 
 ' You don't know John Black,' he 
 said. Then he told Sir Geoffrey all 
 he himself knew of the Vicar's peculiar 
 position in life. ' Now, if he had 
 stormed and raved — if his brain had 
 given way — I should be full of hope 
 for him. But he is too strong, that is 
 the fact — too strong. He fights fate ; 
 and when once a man begins to do that 
 — well, he is no longer fit to help his 
 fellow-creatures, for it will take all his 
 time, and all his energy, and all his spirit, 
 and in the long run he must be worsted.' 
 
 ' True,' said Sir Geoffrey. ' But I 
 should hope that that very beautiful 
 little girl would be a softening influence 
 in his life.'
 
 G rise Ida. 153 
 
 ' Let us hope so,' said Doctor Mayne 
 doubtfully. ' But, in my poor opinion, 
 we may be said to have lost our 
 genial, whole-hearted Vicar. The John 
 Black I have walked hand - in - hand 
 with — who has been, as it were, a living 
 storehouse of help, and sympathy, and 
 counsel, and strength — will be buried 
 in his wife's erave. The man I have 
 seen to-day — well, I would rather not 
 think of what that man, with his brain- 
 power, in his position, might become.' 
 
 It was a pleasant, drowsy summer after- 
 noon. Hot sunshine was tempered by a 
 fresh breeze, that swayed the leafy boughs 
 in the churchyard, and, waving the long 
 grass upon the green graves, made the 
 sturdy ivy-leaves that clung to the head- 
 stones or railings shiver and tremble.
 
 T54 Griselda. 
 
 Crowsfoot Church, the grey - stone 
 edifice which the Vicar had changed 
 from a tumble-down, whitewash-smeared 
 building into a comely little place of 
 prayer, stood on a slope above the 
 Vicarage — above the village. The 
 graves that lay in rows about the 
 churchyard were fanned by summer winds 
 and beaten upon by winter storms. 
 
 The turf laid on Mrs Black's grave 
 was green, after the rain of many days. 
 The wreaths and nosegays sent by 
 sympathising parishioners — whose hearts 
 were full of gratitude to John Black, 
 their constant friend, as well as their 
 hard-working pastor — had been beaten 
 into masses of light-brown pulp, and 
 had been swept oft, and cast upon a 
 growing heap of dead leaves in the 
 churchyard corner by the sexton.
 
 G7^iselda. 155 
 
 The grave was close to the path. 
 Mrs Black, who had loved life and 
 the living, had once said to her hus- 
 band in their early marriage days, 
 ' If I die before you, John, don't 
 have me put away in a damp corner, 
 where no one goes ; at least, let me 
 feel the tread of footsteps, and hear 
 human voices.' 
 
 And in the midst of his stony dry- 
 eyed anguish — smiling a grim smile of 
 unbelief in the idea that the soulless, 
 senseless clay could knov/ or feel — 
 the Vicar remembered his wife's curious 
 fancy, and chose her grave where the 
 villagers must pass each Sunday as they 
 went to church. 
 
 The first Sunday there were little 
 groups of silent mourners. He saw 
 them — once more smiling that crude,
 
 156 Griselda. 
 
 repellent smile. * I gave them two or 
 three Sundays at the utmost,' he said 
 to himself. On the fourth Sunday he 
 looked out from the vestry window. 
 He watched them go down that path 
 in twos or threes. He saw them pass 
 the grave. Some went carelessly by ; 
 a few cast a cursory glance that way. 
 One or two only stayed a second, 
 making some remark, then walked 
 hastily on. He did not blame them ; 
 but his heart was hardening. He went 
 that night by moonlight to the place 
 where the cold body that had contained 
 the spirit he had loved lay hidden away. 
 He tried to feel that Evelyn, or part of 
 what had been Evelyn, was there. He 
 could not. He went home, feeling 
 more petrified than ever. 
 
 Others felt the change in him also.
 
 G rise Ida. 1 5 7 
 
 A worthy young couple in the village 
 lost their only child — a bright, vigorous 
 little lad. He died of rapid convulsions 
 in his mother's arms. Formerly the 
 Vicar would have been overflowing with 
 sympathy. Now he strode in, and 
 whatever he found to say aggravated 
 the grief of the bereaved parents. He 
 had no orentle reminders of the beautiful 
 death-tales in the Gospel to give. He 
 did not talk of the slicrhtness and short- 
 ness of life till the aching hearts of the 
 mourners were solaced, as he used to 
 do. He told a few harsh truths — that 
 these things were — therefore they must 
 be accepted. ' It was hard to kick 
 against the pricks,' and the sooner they 
 stifled their grief, and found comfort in 
 actfve life and forgetfulness, the better 
 for them.
 
 158 G^'iselda. 
 
 The poor young parents looked 
 blankly at one another after he had 
 gone. Then the young mother flung 
 herself into her husband's arms, and, 
 in weeping out her heart's grief in his 
 arms, those sceptical hard sayings flew 
 harmlessly over her poor little head — 
 brainless, perhaps, but a sound auxiliary 
 in her honest, every-day life. 
 
 Meanwhile, Evelyn Black's chief mour- 
 ner was the little daughter who had lain 
 on her breast when she gave back her 
 sweet life to Heaven. 
 
 Griselda had kissed her mother's coffin. 
 She had watched it carried out of the 
 house under the silk and velvet pall, her 
 father, Tom, and Harry, following. She 
 had sat watching while Jemima, with 
 swollen eyes and heaving chest, had ar- 
 ranged her mother's room to look as
 
 G rise Ida. 159 
 
 little like it was wont to look as pos- 
 sible. Then, feeling as if home were 
 removed to the churchyard, as it were, 
 she had stolen off to her mother's erave. 
 
 That earth-mound was not to her the 
 mere mound of earth it was to others. 
 The very first time she saw it, it seemed 
 familiar and natural. When she crouched 
 by it, and clasped the rough lumps of 
 clay with her little arms, she was com- 
 forted. Perhaps her dear mother had 
 never seemed so much her own mother 
 as she did buried down there and left 
 all alone. 
 
 ' Mother, dear,' she whispered, her soft 
 lips close to the holes in the earth, ' I 
 am here — Griselda.' Then she would 
 stick a row of flowers from the Vicarage 
 garden along the head of the grave, and 
 v/ater them with water she brought in
 
 1 60 Griselda. 
 
 the little green watering-can her mother 
 gave her on her last birthday. 
 
 On this bright June afternoon she had 
 stolen out ; she had brought two little 
 pots of musk the old gardener had given 
 her, and had nestled them against the 
 grave. Then she sat crouched up near 
 to them, sheltered from the wind by a 
 tall head-stone close by, and began to 
 knit a garter for Harry, whose stockings 
 were always coming down. 
 
 'You and I'll have to be mother to 
 those boys now ; it'll be all the mother 
 they're likely to get,' Jemima had said to 
 Griselda, soon after her mistress's death. 
 And Griselda had thought a good deal 
 about that already. She pitied ' the 
 boys,' and ran about to fetch things for 
 them, and put her jam on Harry's plate 
 when he was not looking, and stole up-
 
 G rise Ida. 1 6 1 
 
 stairs and picked up Tom's clothes, which 
 he had a trick of flinging about the room, 
 to save him a scolding from Jemima. She 
 never once thought that it was she her- 
 self who had suffered the greatest loss. 
 
 As for her father, she had hardly dared 
 think of him, much less look at or speak 
 to the gaunt haggard man who crept in 
 and out of the house like a black shadow 
 of his former self. 
 
 She only thought of him here — at the 
 grave. She longed to be grown up, a 
 woman — to talk to her father and make 
 him laugh, as her mother used to do. 
 It was not to be expected that a little 
 child like she was could be anything but 
 a trouble. 
 
 She was thinking hard, her baby lips 
 pressed close together, her earnest eyes 
 riveted on the knitting her unaccustomed 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 1 62 Griselda. 
 
 fingers were struggling with, when Hal 
 Romayne came along the path towards 
 her. 
 
 He had ridden over twice since Mrs 
 Black's death — the first time with in- 
 quiries, when Jemima, who had found 
 out something about that inopportune 
 letter of Lady Romayne's, only half 
 opened the street door, and sent him off 
 as quickly as possible ; the second time 
 with a letter of condolence, one day when 
 Griselda happened to be spending the 
 day with Mrs Mayne, the doctor's wife. 
 
 To-day he had dressed in black out 
 of compliment to Griselda, and looked 
 slightly awe-stricken as he went to seek 
 his little friend at her mother's grave, 
 according to Jemima's recommendation. 
 Death had not been brought before him 
 until now ; and he had a lively remem-
 
 G rise Ida, 163 
 
 brance of the beautiful woman on the 
 sofa in the Vicarage parlour, who talked 
 to him with such winnincr seriousness. 
 
 They had a French picture, Les Deux 
 Orp/ielines, in one of the drawing-rooms 
 at Feathers Court, and he had un- 
 consciously expected to see Griselda 
 with her tearful eyes lifted to the sky, 
 after the manner of those dismal litde 
 beings. So that when Griselda, hear- 
 ing a footstep, looked up, dropped her 
 work, and ran to meet him with a joy- 
 ous ' Oh, Hal ! ' he felt decidedly re- 
 lieved, although he tacitly resisted when 
 she pulled him towards the grave, and 
 he suggested going back to the Vicarage. 
 
 ' But you must come to the grave,* 
 she insisted. ' Besides, mother told me 
 to tell you something.' 
 
 * But she is not there,' said Hal, look-
 
 1 64 Griselda. 
 
 ing askance at the mound. * Don't you 
 know she is far away — in heaven ? ' 
 
 * Heaven is not far away,' said Gris- 
 elda decidedly. ' It is just over the tops 
 of the trees, that's all.' 
 
 ' Not the heaven where the angels 
 are,' said Hal ; ' that is ever so far off.' 
 
 ' There are not two heavens,' said 
 Griselda. ' And up there, where the 
 birds fly and the larks go up singing, 
 isn't earth, so it must be heaven.' 
 
 'But — ' began Hal. Then he for- 
 got what he meant to say — in fact, he 
 was somewhat puzzled how to teach 
 Griselda that her notions were wrong, 
 so he went on, ' What was it your 
 mother said about me ? ' 
 
 ' It was just before she went to sleep 
 for good,' said Griselda, kneeling down, 
 her little hand laid protectingly upon the
 
 G rise Ida. 165 
 
 grave, and her great violet eyes lit up 
 by the recollection. * She said, " Tell 
 Hal Romayne to remember his promise."' 
 
 Hal was but a young boy, and he was 
 sensitive. This message from the grave, 
 as it seemed to him, was unnerving. 
 For a moment he was scared — what 
 promise — when — how — where made, 
 and to whom ? Then suddenly it all 
 came back to him — the day he went first 
 to the Vicarage, his visit to the orchard, 
 Griselda's introduction of him to her 
 mother, and her pleading voice as she 
 confided little Griselda to his care. He 
 had promised the dead woman who lay 
 in that grave to take care of her child ; 
 and in boyish impetuosity he said to 
 himself, ' And they may say what they 
 like, but I'll do it too.' 
 
 He looked down at the fair little crea-
 
 1 66 G rise Ida. 
 
 ture, who was wonderingly watching the 
 changing, varied expressions as they flit- 
 ted across * her prince's' handsome face, 
 with a new interest and tenderness. She 
 belonged to him in some way, not yet 
 defined ; he had pledged his word that 
 she should do so. 
 
 ' Griselda,' he said, forgetting his awe 
 of graves and the dead in this new 
 solemnity, and kneeling down beside 
 her, ' do you know I came to-day to 
 tell you that I am going away — I am 
 going to school ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, dear ! ' said Griselda, distressed. 
 ' And I thought you would come again 
 — very soon.' 
 
 ' So I will, in the holidays,' said HaL 
 Then he told her how he must go to 
 school, to learn to be a man. ' You 
 can't spend all your days with girls and
 
 G rise Ida. 167 
 
 women, you know,' he added, with a 
 tinge of disdain when alluding to her 
 sex, which impressed Griselda more 
 than any words would have done with 
 the supremacy and glory of manhood. 
 * If I grew up a molly-coddle, I shouldn't 
 be fit to take care of you. And I am 
 going to.' 
 
 He rose and drew a long breath. 
 Griselda gazed up at him with round, 
 admiring eyes. He looked a handsome 
 lad, with his curly head thrown back ; 
 so slim and straight, too, in his black 
 velvet suit. 
 
 ' I shall marry you when I grow up,' 
 he said, with a feeling that he had to 
 take a plunge, and the sooner it was 
 over the better. ' What do you think 
 of that ? ' 
 
 Griselda shook her head.
 
 1 68 Griselda. 
 
 ' They wouldn't let you,' she replied. 
 * Besides, if they did, I couldn't leave 
 father/ 
 
 ' Oh, I shall be able to look after 
 him!' said Hal, with a spice of con- 
 tempt. Lady Romayne had not in- 
 veighed against Mr Black's culpable 
 neglect of his children, within earshot 
 of her precocious son, without effect. 
 
 ' Would you marry him too ? ' asked 
 Griselda, to whom marriage was another 
 word for home and companionship. 
 
 ' I can't tell what I shall do. It is 
 such a long time off,' said Hal loftily. 
 ' I shouldn't have told you 1 meant to 
 marry you, only I thought it might be 
 something for you to look forward to, 
 if * those boys are rude, or you feel 
 lonely, or anything.' 
 
 He knelt down again, and took her
 
 Gf is el da. 169 
 
 little hand. She was looking serious, 
 half-pleased, half-doubtful. If she had 
 appeared overwhelmed by Hal's magni- 
 ficent statement, he would not have 
 liked her half so much as he did at 
 that moment, when he found that, this 
 simple, almost rustic, little maiden was 
 not so easily dazzled and surprised out 
 of the even tenor of her way, although 
 she admired him, he knew, as much as, 
 if not more than, she had ever admired 
 anything throughout her little life. 
 
 * You must give me something to 
 keep,' he said — 'something of yours.' 
 
 ' I haven't anything,' she said. She 
 was dressed in a plain black frock, and 
 in an old white pinafore. She wore the 
 same blue sun-bonnet as when he first 
 saw her. It was not mourning, but 
 Jemima had not thought well to ask
 
 1 70 G^dselda. 
 
 her master for money to buy another. 
 * I haven't anything", really,' she re- 
 peated earnestly. Then she remem- 
 bered her little silver locket which 
 Jemima kept in a top drawer in her 
 room. But Hal would not take this 
 solitary jewel of his lady-love's. He 
 would have a spray of musk. He took 
 out his russia-leather purse, and she 
 dropped the tiny green sprig with the 
 yellow flower into one of its many 
 compartments. 
 
 ' Now I must give you something,' 
 he said, as he replaced the purse in his 
 breast-pocket. * It wouldn't be fair to 
 the governor to give you my watch ; 
 he had my monogram put upon it in 
 diamonds ' — taking out his watch, and 
 showing the glittering case to the as- 
 tonished Griselda. * You can't have the
 
 Griselda. 1 7 1 
 
 seal either — it's a signet — but you can 
 have this.' 
 
 He detached the seal and watch from 
 his chain, and tossed the gold cable into 
 her lap. 
 
 She did not want to take it. She 
 was distressed. But he insisted, and 
 she allowed him to take her home to 
 the Vicarage, holding her promise that 
 she would not show that watch - chain 
 to anyone — not even to Jemima. 
 
 ' If you do, there'll be the deuce and 
 all to pay,' he assured her — a threat 
 which made her tremble, for, in her 
 ignorance of ' the deuce and all,' she 
 imagined a crew of hobgoblins pursuing 
 and haunting her for this undefined but 
 evidently terrible reckoning. 
 
 ' I won't,' she assured him sturdily, just 
 as they carne in sight of the Feathers
 
 172 Griselda, 
 
 Court groom walking Hal's new roan pony 
 up and down. ' But you'll come in ? ' 
 
 * No, ' said Hal, with a qualm of 
 conscience, although he was firmly 
 persuaded of his own rectitude, if not 
 generosity. ' No ; I don't think I will 
 — to-day.' 
 
 Then he asked her to write to him 
 from time to time. But she could only 
 print a little bit, and that would scarcely 
 do. He suggested Jemima for a scribe. 
 But, according to Griselda, Jemima could 
 only ' make crosses.' 
 
 ' Never mind ; I know what to do,' 
 were Hal's final words, as, carefully re- 
 fraining from the kiss which on a former 
 occasion had cost him much chagrin, 
 he mounted his pony ; and he rode 
 straight away to Doctor Mayne's house, 
 at the further end of the village.
 
 Griselda, 173 
 
 * Can I see Mrs Mayne, if you 
 please ? ' he asked of the buxom house- 
 maid who appeared in answer to his 
 rinor. 
 
 ' I will see, sir,' she said, reddening as 
 she recognised ' little Master Romayne/ 
 And she sped away, returning almost 
 immediately to say, * Would you walk 
 this way, if you please, sir ? ' 
 
 Hal was ushered into the doctors 
 dining-room, which was all red and 
 mahogany, with a faint odour of old 
 sherry and fruit and jessamine — there 
 was a climbing jessamine just outside, 
 where Mrs Mayne sat at work, piles of 
 fair, white linen on the table, on the 
 sofa — everywhere. 
 
 * How do you do. Master Romayne ? ' 
 Plump, comely, little Mrs Mayne was 
 just a trifle flattered by this unexpected
 
 1 74 Giaselda. 
 
 visit. ' I hope your dear mamma and 
 papa are quite well ? ' 
 
 Hal assured her that they were, with 
 a preternatural gra<^Ity which he con- 
 sidered appropriate to the occasion. 
 
 * I have not come on account of the 
 family, Mrs Mayne,' he said, ' with the 
 grandeur of a young Hamlet,' as Mrs 
 Mayne afterwards described him. ' I 
 have come to you as the friend of poor 
 Mrs Black.' 
 
 'Oh, of course, certainly!' said Mrs 
 Mayne, almost as much surprised by 
 this mature talk from the young heir 
 of Feather's Court as if her favourite 
 tabby, who was blinking at her from 
 the white wool hearthrug, had suddenly 
 found human speech. ' But do have 
 some cake. Master Romayne, or a glass 
 of home-made wine.' Mrs Mayne hesi-
 
 Griselda. ' 175 
 
 tated to offer such a boy claret or 
 sherry. 
 
 * I thank you ; no/ repHed Hal, copy- 
 ing the manner of a well-known dean, 
 lately a visitor at the Court. ' I do 
 not eat between meals ; I thank you ! 
 No, Mrs Mayne ; the truth is — can I 
 really trust you ? ' he went on, with a 
 sudden change to the manner of an 
 eager boy. Then, upon Mrs Mayne's 
 earnest assurance that he could, he told 
 his story — how he had made Mrs Black 
 a promise to look after Griselda, and 
 how she had sent him a reminder 
 from her death-bed. 
 
 ' And now I am going away to 
 school,' he went on ; ' and I want to 
 know how she gets on. She can't 
 write, you know, and she says that ser- 
 vant of theirs can only make crosses,
 
 1 76 Griselda. 
 
 so I thought perhaps you would write 
 to me now and then.' 
 
 Mrs Mayne, although somewhat 
 startled by this very ' grown-up ' little 
 boy's talk, undertook to do what she 
 could in the matter. 
 
 It was only after Hal had ridden off, 
 solemnly saluting her, that she began 
 to realise what this meant. 
 
 ' It was so strange, my dear, a boy 
 talking like that, that I forgot it would 
 be scarcely right to the parents, and 
 that I really ought not to do anything 
 of the sort,' she assured her husband 
 later on. 
 
 'My dear, the parents would only 
 laugh,' said her good-natured spouse, 
 who was hugely amused. ' I don't mean 
 poor Black ; there doesn't seem to be 
 a laugh left in him. But the Romaynes
 
 Griselda. 177 
 
 — why, they know they can afford to 
 give their son rope. Some years hence 
 he will have forgotten that poor little 
 maid.' 
 
 'Not he!' said Mrs Mayne warmly. 
 * There's a good deal more in that lad 
 than you give him credit for, Thomas.' 
 
 ' Ah, well, I shall never be astonished 
 at anything that happens to that poor 
 little mite Griselda ! ' said the doctor. 
 ' If I were superstitious, I should have 
 all sorts of strange notions about her. 
 She has been the innocent cause of her 
 mother's death ; the innocent cause of 
 poor Black's wreck — for it is nothing 
 more nor less than a moral wreck — any 
 fool can see that. What is there sur- 
 prising, after this, that she should be- 
 witch a bov, and make him behave in 
 
 that curious way .^ Nothing could be 
 VOL. I. M
 
 lyS Griselda. 
 
 stranger than her birth — nothing ; and 
 I have heard and read that as people 
 are born so they go on through Hfe, 
 and so they die ; and, small though my 
 own poor personal experience is, it 
 points to the truth of that.' 
 
 Mrs Mayne sighed. 
 
 ' Poor child ! ' she said. ' I believe 
 that unlucky incident of being born in 
 the snow, in that barn, will stick to 
 her through life, and perhaps spoil it.' 
 
 * It might, only there happens to be 
 such a thing as Providence,' said the 
 doctor dryly. 
 
 ^^^^m.
 
 CHAPTER VI, 
 
 T was ten years later ; early 
 autumn in a German cathedral 
 city. The broad Rhine flowed 
 between the busy towns — for the city was 
 divided, and linked by a curious bridge 
 of boats. The g^reat tower of the un- 
 finished cathedral rose high above the 
 masses of quaint houses. It came upon 
 you as a surprise, a monster edifice de- 
 corated with scaffolding, as you turned 
 some corner, after losing yourself in a 
 maze of narrow, winding streets. Hal 
 Romayne, now a slight, handsome young
 
 1 80 Griselda. 
 
 man, about to come of age, was pass- 
 ing through on his way to Switzerland 
 with Sir Hubert, Lady Romayne, and his 
 sisters. It was 'the girls" first trip, 
 Hal had been abroad twice before ; his 
 third visit bored him. He could not 
 understand how Mabel, the brighter of 
 the two girls, could ' gush ' over every- 
 thing — from the churches with their 
 tawdry chapels, to the old market- 
 women with their quaint caps and great 
 earrings, shouting and chattering amid 
 their piles of purple plums and yellow 
 apricots or green cabbages, under their 
 gay umbrellas. The noise and clatter 
 tired him. This morning he had left 
 ' the girls,' meekly attended by Sir 
 Hubert, whom they 'managed' — as the 
 languid Lydia termed their subjection 
 of their good-natured father — buying
 
 Griselda. 1 8 1 
 
 rosaries, pictures, medals, as mementos, 
 and had returned to the hotel to ' moon 
 about ' by himself. Lady Romayne had 
 eone for a drive. The courier was 
 bustling about, fussing over the arrange- 
 ments for their further journeying. Hal 
 felt the first symptoms of one of those 
 fits of enmd which he dreaded, and 
 which nothing would cure, because they 
 arose from overdoing the thing called 
 Pleasure — in fact, from satiety. He 
 threw open his window and leaned out. 
 Sailors were shouting as the slim-masted 
 crafts heaved on the river waves. Men 
 swarmed up and down the vessels' 
 sides, loading ; trollies were noisily clat- 
 tering about the rough stones of the 
 wharves. Then the steamer came puff- 
 ing in, and tourists, mostly English in 
 their eternal tweed suits and veiled hats
 
 1 82 Griselda. 
 
 and serge costumes, came herding hastily 
 upon shore, rushing and crushing as 
 they would scarcely have cared to do 
 at home, followed by bloused porters 
 shouldering luggage. 
 
 It was vulgar. 'Those British tourists 
 are like a plague of locusts over the 
 face of the globe,' Hal disgustedly told 
 himself. Then he ill-temperedly seized 
 his hat and hurried out. 
 
 The narrow, untidy streets were quiet 
 now, in this city where the natives rose 
 at sunrise and went to bed while it was 
 still day. Wandering aimlessly, he came 
 upon the very side-door of the cathedral 
 where he had left his father and sisters 
 an hour or two ago. But the spot was 
 deserted ; the market was over. Only 
 the refuse scattered about the stones, 
 and a pile of empty baskets in a corner,.
 
 Griselda. 183 
 
 remained of this morning's busy scene. 
 An old dog lay wearily under a little 
 image In a niche, as if he had sheltered 
 there from his tormentors, the boys. 
 As Hal came towards him, he half 
 opened his tired eyes and limped away. 
 There was a great sore on his lame 
 leg. Hal felt a choke in his throat at 
 the sight of the forlorn, ill-used creature. 
 He stooped and patted him, with kind 
 words. He felt he would have given 
 treble its price for a piece of meat for 
 that homeless mongrel who looked up 
 so abjectly Into his face. At that mo- 
 ment a sad chant arose in the church, — 
 
 ^ Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata 7nundi, miserere.^ 
 
 It was the choir rehearsing a requiem 
 mass which was to be given to-morrow 
 — the requiem of a good priest who died 
 of malignant fever, caught from a sick
 
 184 . G rise Ida. 
 
 person to whom he had ministered. The 
 chant came floating out. Hal feh curi- 
 ously wretched, alone, as a Pariah among 
 his kind, who cared little for him, as he 
 cared little for them. 
 
 He held a commission in a 'swell' 
 regiment. He had gone into the army 
 full of military enthusiasm, to find that 
 to seek to study the science of war 
 was considered ' bad form,' and that the 
 only officers who deserved the name 
 were one or two conceited martinets, 
 who, being detested and scorned, did 
 more harm than good. 
 
 He would have embraced his profes- 
 sion with ardour ; but he found it a 
 mere shadow. There was no substance 
 to embrace. Parade, drill, mess — this 
 was the life. The more dissipated and 
 reckless a fellow was, the more popular.
 
 Griselda. 185 
 
 There was nothing between a watery 
 atheism and a fanatic sectarianism, which 
 was so Pharisaical that blasphemy seemed 
 sounder and more honest. In his own 
 words, he ' felt as if he had been flung 
 upon a dunghill,' an exaggerated sensa- 
 tion, which Lady Romayne exerted what- 
 ever influence she possessed to combat. 
 
 ' Because, my dear,' she said to her 
 husband in private, ' Hal is so impetu- 
 ous and excitable that he really must 
 have an occupation. Now, there are only 
 three professions for us unfortunates — 
 the bar, the church, and the army. Hal 
 has no taste for the law. There are 
 such riff-raff in the church now — that it 
 ranks very low in my estimation. But 
 while commissions are to be bought, and 
 they keep up the mess, we shall at least 
 have officers who are pubUc-school men.'
 
 i86 Griselda, 
 
 So Hal Romayne attended his sove- 
 reign's lev^e as a commissioned officer^ 
 and, as heir to an old as well as a 
 rich baronetcy, was so pestered with 
 invitations to dinners, balls, and society 
 entertainments of every description, that, 
 in his own words, * one season sickened 
 him of the lot' 
 
 Yes, that promised to be his bane in 
 life — his capacity to be easily sickened. 
 He found the verb 'to loathe' far easier 
 to conjugate than the verb ' to love.' 
 Yet here he was nearer a feeling of 
 love than he had been for years, and 
 that love for a poor ugly, wounded old 
 dog. 
 
 He longed — he could not tell why or 
 wherefore — to take that poor canine 
 cripple tenderly in his arms, and carry 
 it into the church. He stood looking
 
 G rise Ida. 187 
 
 at the dog-, and listening to that lovely, 
 mournful music. The tired animal's 
 head had drooped upon its paws, and 
 it had dozed off. Sleep — death — these 
 were the highest blessings for creatures 
 such as this. He wanted to hear that 
 music nearer. ' And the poor beast 
 won't move,' he thought. So he went 
 into the old porch, past the grim sculp- 
 tured saints and martyrs who seemed 
 to grow out of the stone looking 
 heavenward with folded hands, — and, 
 pushing open the heavy carved oaken 
 door, found himself in the church — 
 from the hot glare into cool, pleasant 
 shade. At first sight, the great grey 
 interior seemed deserted. The shadows 
 came and went high up above among 
 the lofty arches. The mournful chant- 
 ing rose, fell, and echoed. There were
 
 1 88 Griselda, 
 
 two or three figures flitting about be- 
 yond the great screen, near to the high 
 altar. He stood, hat In hand, for a 
 few minutes, thinking strange thoughts 
 of Hfe and death. Such a dissatisfied, 
 restless nature as his was not super- 
 ficial. His continual discontent led to 
 mental Inquiry, then to thought. There 
 had been some strong Impressions made 
 upon him In his boyhood. One of 
 these was his acquaintance with the 
 dying Mrs Black. He remembered 
 that episode In his young life as little 
 as he would remember a scar. But, 
 like a scar-producing wound. It had left 
 its mark. 
 
 He had neither fororotten nor neo-lected 
 
 o o 
 
 Griselda all these years ; but chance, or 
 fate — largely assisted by Lady Romayne 
 — had ordained that they should meet
 
 Griselda. 189 
 
 but seldom. In the summer holidays 
 the Romaynes went to the coast for 
 sea - bathing. Christmas they generally 
 spent with General Sir Joseph Manton, 
 Lady Romayne's father, at his old- 
 fashioned Welsh retreat. Since Mrs 
 Black's death, Hal had met Griselda 
 about a dozen times. 
 
 He was not one to dream and ponder 
 over past sensations. So, although he 
 thought kindly, even tenderly, of the 
 little maiden he had determined, when 
 he was a boy, to marry some day, 
 Griselda was an exception in his life. 
 She had never been farther from his 
 thoughts than to-day, when, wandering 
 into a chapel to see an old Italian pic- 
 ture — a Mater Dolorosa that had made 
 an impression upon him the first time 
 he visited the cathedral a year or two
 
 IQO Griselda. 
 
 ago — he suddenly came upon Griselda 
 herself. 
 
 Two old market-women were kneel- 
 ing, bowing, and muttering, their rosaries 
 in their hands. Griselda was standing, 
 bending — her arms resting upon the 
 balustrade of the altar-rails — gazing into 
 the picture he had come to see. 
 
 It was unmistakably Griselda. She 
 was dressed in a cotton gown, with no 
 attempt at fashion in its make ; but even 
 her little straw hat could not hide that 
 golden glory of hair, or the shape of 
 her perfect little head. 

 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 IS Hal Romayne recognised 
 Griselda, with her hands rest- 
 ing on the altar-rails of the 
 little chapel — the pretty fair profile with 
 the short upper lip and softly-rounded 
 chin dark against a stray sun-ray which 
 was peeping in — he felt a certain shock. 
 This meetincr here like this, so unex- 
 pected, seemed to him to have something 
 uncanny in it. Then, when the beautiful 
 young girl turned her head, and, at once 
 recognising him, merely smiled, he felt as 
 if this were more uncanny still.
 
 192 Griselda. 
 
 ' Did you know we were here ? ' were 
 the first words he spoke to her, in the 
 hushed voice of one whose respect for 
 the house of God is not yet dead, as 
 they touched each other's hands cere- 
 moniously. 
 
 ' No,' she said. 
 
 She was not surprised — not agitated, 
 in fact. Signs of emotion were entirely 
 absent in her, while he was chilled, and 
 trembled. 
 
 ' You are not alone ? ' he asked. 
 
 * My father is going round with the 
 sacristan,' she said. ' Of course, we have 
 not seen you for so long, you do not 
 know ; my father — is — taking pupils.' 
 
 'Indeed!' said Hal, wondering at the 
 tone of anguish with which she informed 
 him of an every-day fact. 
 
 * Yes,' said Griselda, her fair eyeHds
 
 G rise! da. 193 
 
 veiling her beautiful eyes. *' my father's 
 voice threatens to give way. He has 
 left off preaching for some time, and 
 perhaps soon he will not be able to read 
 the prayers ; so, with this threatening, he 
 has had to engage a curate. This expense 
 has had to be met by his taking pupils.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Hal respectfully, himself 
 chivalrous again, once the surprise and 
 its effect over. ' No one could coach 
 better than your father, I am sure ; he 
 is dreadfully clever.' 
 
 * You have seen the reviews ? ' said 
 Griselda, suddenly raising those big 
 violet eyes, and fixing them with a 
 strained, anxious expression upon the 
 young man. 
 
 ' Reviews .^ ' he repeated, with an 
 ' utterly-at-sea ' sensation. What could 
 she mean ? 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 194 Griselda. 
 
 ' The antagonistic reviews upon his 
 book — Certain Passages in Holy Writ 
 Examined by a Clergyman of the Church 
 of England' said Griselda. The quarter- 
 lies were simply scorching. The bishop 
 wrote very kindly, but severely. Surely 
 you have heard all about It?' 
 
 Hal shook his head. 
 
 ' I am afraid vv-e military fellows are 
 so degenerate that we neither read 
 controversial books nor the comments 
 of the quarterlies,' he said, with a 
 short laugh. ' But, Griselda, If this 
 book and pupil business has been a 
 trouble to you, that Is another affair 
 altogether.' 
 
 Griselda smiled. It was a curious 
 smile to see upon a young fresh face — 
 the smile of one who is asked some 
 absurdity, such as a senior wrangler
 
 G rise Ida. 195 
 
 just loaded with laurels might give if 
 a boy asked him if he had ever learnt 
 rule of three, or a bibliomaniac, if some 
 one ignorant of his craze asked him \{ 
 he was fond of books. 
 
 ' Trouble to my father, you mean ? ' 
 she said. ' I am only a girl. Girls don't 
 have troubles.' 
 
 * Xo ; you are scarcely one to go into 
 hysterics if a new gown doesn't fit 
 according to your liking, like Lydia, 
 or to come home from hunting in a 
 rage because some other lady got the 
 brush, like Mabel,' said Hal. ' But, 
 trouble or no trouble, is your father 
 ill, or merely knocked over by disap- 
 pointment ? ' 
 
 ' Look at him ! ' said Griselda ; and 
 there was a hopelessness in her voice. 
 
 While speaking, they had strolled out
 
 1 96 Griselda. 
 
 of the side-chapel into the nave. Hal^ 
 shading his eyes with his hand from a 
 long sunbeam that fell straight upon the 
 pavement in front from a side window, 
 saw three fiofures comine towards them. 
 One was the stooping form of the grey- 
 haired old sacristan, tottering along in his 
 black gown, his bunch of keys dangling 
 from one of his withered hands ; another 
 was John Black, thinner, but still holding 
 up the head which was now sparsely 
 covered with straggling grey hair. There 
 was a fierce, determined look on his gaunt 
 face ; you would have judged him to be 
 a man of will, purpose, strength, who 
 had been worsted, hunted down by Fate, 
 and now stood morally at bay. And 
 such a guess would not have been alto- 
 gether wrong. The third was a young 
 man, somewhat squarely, if slightly, built.
 
 Griselda. 197 
 
 with sharp, busy grey eyes in a face 
 which was pleasant, if not handsome. 
 His hair was rough ; his summer grey 
 suit hung helplessly upon him ; his hands 
 were gloveless, sunburnt — in fact, he looked 
 what he was, a mathematician. 
 
 ' Is that Hugh Blunt, your father's 
 pupil?' asked Hal, with astonishment 
 and distaste. ' Why, he was reading 
 with my tutor, and was going into the 
 army ! ' 
 
 'Well, he is reading for his " B.S.C." 
 now,' said Griselda. ' He likes my 
 father.' 
 
 There was an ineffable tenderness in 
 that sentence, just as there was the very 
 reverse in the nods and ' how are you's ? ' 
 of the young men when they met. 
 
 ' I did not know that you two were 
 acquainted,' said the Vicar of Crowsfoot,
 
 198 G rise Ida. 
 
 elancinof from one to the other with a 
 certain grim amusement 
 
 ' We met at Robarts' rooms,' said Hal 
 coolly ; the fact being- that Blunt — who 
 distanced Romayne in study as a flash 
 of lightning a slow-travelling cloud — had 
 spoken contemptuously of Hal to the 
 mathematical coach, Mr Robarts, as a 
 ' howling swell,' while Hal had languidly 
 wondered to the tutor why it was that, 
 when a fellow was clever, he ceased to 
 comb his hair and brush his nails. ' It 
 only takes five minutes, you know,' Hal 
 had said. ' There is no excuse on the 
 oTound of time.' Those two were an- 
 tagonistic. John Black knew it at a 
 glance. Griselda felt it. An awkward- 
 ness came to the four English people so 
 strangely met thus to-day in a foreign 
 cathedral. Their disjointed talk meant
 
 Griselda. 1 99 
 
 nothing. They were adversaries, till 
 they shut the oaken door and went out 
 into the warm air, the gay sunshine, with 
 great heaven as their dome instead q{ 
 men's carvings in hard, cold stone. 
 
 Here Hal remembered the dog, told 
 Griselda about the poor lame cur, and 
 together they went across to the corner 
 where he was dozing, crouched against a 
 buttress. 
 
 ' Poor, poor creature ! ' said Griselda. 
 Then her father came up, and was im- 
 mediately interested. He had not lost 
 pity for humanity's weaknesses in his 
 scorn for humanity's callous selfishness. 
 One of humanity's weaknesses, in his 
 eyes, was its carelessness of animals. 
 
 ' Another unfortunate victim,' he said ; 
 and, turning the timid, wounded creature 
 gently over, he appraised its condition.
 
 200 G rise Ida. 
 
 ' Three-quarters dead of starvation/ was 
 his verdict. ' Stoned, hunted, and fright- 
 ened, perhaps, into rabies.' 
 
 Up came Hugh Blunt, who loved his 
 own retriever at home better than any 
 other living creature, and the four grew 
 friendly in a common sympathy for a 
 low-bred outcast among dogs. Friendly — - 
 animated even. They discussed a pos- 
 sible owner, and were unanimous in their 
 decision — -none. Then came the problem, 
 what was to be done with him ? Solved 
 by Griselda pleading to take him back to 
 their hotel. She would find a home for 
 him. Griselda's adoption of the cur pro- 
 posed, seconded, and passed, the next 
 question was how to convey him to the 
 hotel. Griselda coaxed him, and he 
 limped painfully into the road, but stood 
 blinking his sore, tearful eyes so piteously
 
 G rise Ida. 201 
 
 at one after the other, his whole attitude 
 so expressive of, 'Why torment me? why 
 not leave me to die ?' that impetuous Hal, 
 feeling a rush of pity, simply stooped, 
 and, lifting the dirty creature, cradled him 
 in his arms. 
 
 ' Show me the way,' he said, striding 
 off Griselda — hurrying along at his side, 
 directing him to turn to the left, throueh 
 this narrow street, and to bear round to 
 the right up another — had never admired 
 Hal Romayne more, not even when he 
 had suddenly appeared in his green velvet 
 splendour as her promised prince in the 
 orchard of Crowsfoot Vicarage. 
 
 ' Oh, your coat ! ' she ventured to say. 
 It seemed to her such a delicate garment, 
 and already it was getting smeared and 
 hairy. 
 
 'Bother my coat!' said Hal. 'I am
 
 202 G rise Ida. 
 
 beginning to detest coats. I am sick of 
 the same eternal old pattern. Why don't 
 they invent something new ? I don't 
 want to wear a coat. I would wear any 
 mortal thing — for a change.' 
 
 Ay, for a change. To Hal change was 
 as welcome as ice to the fever-parched, 
 drink to the thirsty. 
 
 It was a change, carrying that old dog 
 through the streets, Griselda, sweet, fresh 
 as a mountain daisy, speeding along 
 eagerly at his side — a change to see the 
 old women stop short and watch the 
 strange procession, arms akimbo on their 
 broad hips, their eyes slioht with admiring 
 astonishment ; strange to go into the 
 humble inn, ' Die Weisse Rose ' (the white 
 rose), where a rose, like a pictured super- 
 annuated turnip, presided as signboard, 
 where it was all very neat and tidy, but
 
 G rise Ida. 203 
 
 where passages, coffee-room, and staircase 
 were alike pervaded by a strong odour of 
 sauerkraut and roasting coffee, and where 
 the house-mistress and the two red-faced 
 red-armed women her assistants, talked 
 to their guests, — however distinguished 
 those guests might be, and they had had 
 some learned, ay, some great men, with 
 w'orld-wide-known names, here, — with an 
 equality and fraternity which did them 
 honour. 
 
 It w^as all new, thought Hal, as Griselda 
 told the old dog's story in German to the 
 woman with the gigantic flaxen plaits, the 
 blue, blue eyes ; her father, Hal, and 
 young Blunt standing by — but newest of 
 all was Griselda herself — so lovely, so 
 pitying, and so supremely unconscious of 
 being anything, anyone, anybody — in- 
 deed, an entity at all.
 
 204 G rise Ida. 
 
 It was very new — to face the great 
 hotel, with its exdusive fashionable air, 
 its 'stand off' grandeur — after this; to 
 arrive just as his mother was aliehtine — 
 discontentedly, for she had not been 
 amused by her drive — and to hear her 
 fretful ' Dear me ! Where have you 
 been ? You might have come with me 
 to direct the coachman. He has taken 
 me along the most uninteresting road,' 
 et c cetera. 
 
 ' Do you know what I have been 
 doing ? ' said Hal, with a saucy coolness 
 which he assumed for his women relatives 
 — a coolness which meant that they might 
 kick against his will, they might struggle, 
 resist, upbraid, reproach, weep, shriek, or 
 faint — and he would not * care a rap.' ' I 
 have been to the cathedral, worshipping a 
 picture — nearer saying my prayers among
 
 G rise Ida. 205 
 
 the old women mumbling over their beads 
 than I have been for months. After 
 which, I carried a mangy old dog right 
 from one end of the town to the other, 
 followed by a select but somewhat ragged 
 crowd of admiring natives ; and I ended 
 up by drinking small beer and smoking a 
 clay pipe in a cheap and nasty public- 
 house with a British parson, who has come 
 abroad to pursue his studies in Atheism 
 among the Roman Catholic heathen.' 
 
 ' Good gracious ! ' gasped Lady Ro- 
 mayne, with a little start. 
 
 ' Ah,' said Hal meaningly, ' I see you 
 know all about it ! Now, mother, it is 
 shabby — mean of you not to have told me 
 about the Blacks.' 
 
 Lady Romayne disgustedly said there 
 was nothing much to tell, only ' that man 
 had turned out just as she had expected —
 
 2o6 G rise Ida. 
 
 just like those men who ideahse and spoil 
 the uneducated poor always did. They 
 begin by knowing better than their betters, 
 and end by knowing better than their 
 Creator.' Lady Romayne grew quite sar- 
 castic in her annoyance that, after all her 
 plans and precautions to prevent Hal from 
 seeing or knowing anything of the Blacks, 
 they and Hal should actually have met in 
 this untoward and out-of-the-way manner. 
 ' The man got tired of flaunting his 
 Radicalism in people's faces, especially 
 when he got no encouragement from the 
 county people,' she went on ; 'so he wrote 
 a book, a vulgar attack upon the Epistles. 
 It was just what such a man would do. 
 However, his arrogance met with its just 
 reward. The papers put him down with 
 a calm contempt ; the bishop gave him 
 a good scolding. He was treated like
 
 Griselda. 207 
 
 a naughty little boy or a silly, snar- 
 ling puppy. He was cautioned not to 
 preach — ' 
 *What?' 
 
 ' That was the very least the bishop 
 could do, I am sure,' said Lady Ro- 
 mayne, placidly pursuing her way up 
 the grand staircase to her private 
 apartments. 'If it had not been for 
 the loss of his wife vears ao^o, and 
 that fuss about it, I am quite sure 
 the bishop's duty would have been to 
 suspend him altogether.' 
 
 ' Defend me from women's spiteful, 
 venomous tongues ! ' 
 
 'Hal, you forget yourself!' 
 ' I do not forget poor Griselda.' 
 * Poor Griselda, as you call her, 
 is, in my opinion, a remiarkably silly 
 young person,' said Lady Romayne,
 
 2o8 G7Hselda. 
 
 panting a little as she gained the 
 sitting-room, which was all crimson 
 velvet and gilding, and as she sank 
 among the cushions of the nearest 
 sofa, — ' I have always noticed that 
 people who get called " poor " are 
 foolish, useless creatures, from Sterne's 
 imaginary " Maria," who was doubt- 
 less drawn from life, down to that 
 lady your grandpapa Is so kind to 
 — Lady Gladys Lewis — who weeps at 
 everything that happens to her, good^ 
 bad, or indifferent.' 
 
 ' Mother, you ought to have been 
 a friend to Griselda,' said Hal hotly. 
 He had grown pale, and his dark brows 
 w^ere knit, which meant anger. 
 
 Lady Romayne was determined not 
 to lose her temper. Coolness was her 
 only chance with her spoilt boy.
 
 Griselda, 209 
 
 ' I am a good friend to Griselda 
 Black,' she said, ' but I cannot 
 approve of her. I am told that she 
 sat up with her father night after 
 night helping him in the concoction of 
 that vile book.' 
 
 ' You cannot approve of such a 
 glorious thing }' 
 
 ' You young officers are unfortunately 
 such a set of unbelievers, that I can- 
 not expect you to understand me, Hal ! 
 We do not feel surprised when you 
 men go off at a tangent and be- 
 lieve in nothing. We know that, 
 at the very first blow from the Al- 
 mighty, you w^ill be down grovelling — 
 cowards at heart, as you all are ! But 
 a woman is quite a different affair. 
 She must be very bad — or a fool — if 
 
 she does not believe. So that girl is 
 VOL. I. o
 
 2 TO Griselda. 
 
 evidently a fool. I expect her mother 
 was, before her, or the man would not 
 be in this strait.' 
 
 * I must not argue with a lady,' said 
 Hal, with a mock bow of respect ; 
 then he went off downstairs to the 
 smoking-room, and got a chair near 
 the window, and a Galignani, and 
 sat smoking and dreaming of Griselda 
 — Griselda, who looked like some 
 perfect statue come to life and mas- 
 querading in a cotton frock — Griselda, 
 who had sat up nights with her father, 
 who dared front the world side by side 
 with him, no matter what his opinions. 
 ' If creatures such as she lived in 
 the early days of this poor old 
 silly globe, no wonder they worshipped 
 them as gods and goddesses ! ' he 
 thought.
 
 Griselda. 2 1 1 
 
 A sudden feverish lonorino- arose 
 to see her again soon, as soon as 
 possible. Hal had certainly not been 
 the master of his desires. He had 
 been far nearer beine their slave. 
 Should he waive the interminable, stupid 
 table d'hote, and go off to the ' Weisse 
 Rose' aofain ? Ponderino-, he resolved 
 that it was quite possible that he 
 might be de trop there. No ; he would 
 not go. 
 
 ' I will stay here and endure the bore/ 
 he decided. ' If I am such a good boy 
 to-night, I deserve reward to-morrow. 
 Old ^luller, the courier, doesn't mean us 
 to start again till to-morrow evening. I 
 may spend some hours with them before 
 I eo-' 
 
 Then he smoked away, dreaming of his 
 next meetine with Griselda. He was de-
 
 212 Griselda. 
 
 termined to reassert that right which had 
 become his by Mrs Black's dying request,. 
 — the right to protect and care for sweet 
 Griselda. He blamed himself for having 
 drifted with the tide, for having allowed 
 himself to be almost estranged from his 
 little love all these years. But now was 
 the time. He would soon be of a^e 
 — his own master — and Griselda seemed 
 to be in a sore strait. 
 
 ' If Black had private property, he 
 might write any number of Atheistical 
 books and come out all right,' he niused. 
 * But the poor beggar hasn't ! So they are 
 all at his heels, like a pack of hounds.' 
 
 Hal was not good company for his 
 family that night. He sneered at every- 
 thing. His father looked at him in mild 
 wonderment ; his mother held her head 
 high, and, attributing his ill humour to
 
 G7^iselaa. 2 1 3 
 
 * those Blacks,' comforted herself that 
 they would be all far away up the 
 Rhine in twenty-four hours out of ' those 
 people's ' path ; his sisters defended them- 
 selves by saying as many sharp things as 
 they could in return for his teasing. Dis- 
 agreeing constantly among themselves, 
 they found that union was strength, and 
 that it was necessary to make common 
 cause against their spoiled elder brother, 
 or, as Mabel expressed it, they would 
 be ' nowhere.' 
 
 But next morning he was in a better 
 temper. He seldom rose till noon, hav- 
 ing accustomed himself to keep late hours. 
 But to-day his breakfast was over, and 
 he was out and traversing the bridge 
 before twelve had struck from the church 
 towers. 
 
 It was a pure, clear summer morning.
 
 214 G rise Ida. 
 
 The great river rippled and danced 
 in the sunshine. Boats went to and fro 
 — the steam-ferry came throbbing across 
 with its freight of a couple of gaily- dressed 
 market-women and an old priest, who sat 
 in the stern, his chin resting on his hands 
 that were clasped upon his long staff He 
 had come from the requiem mass in the 
 cathedral, and his dim eyes gazed vaguely 
 out upon the stream, as he sat dreaming 
 and wondering why a good, great man 
 everyone had loved should have been 
 suddenly snatched away, and he, poor, 
 simple, old, useless body, left. Meanwhile, 
 a big dog ran backward and forward on 
 the quay, howling, barking, restlessly 
 wagging his shaggy tail. The river lay 
 between him and his master, who had 
 gone across in the last ferry-boat. There 
 seemed a curious mixture of joy and sor-
 
 Griselda. 215 
 
 row in the scene about Hal — just as he felt 
 that there was in life. Perhaps, if he 
 had been ten years older, he would have 
 thought that trite thought — how ' all would 
 be the same a hundred years hence.' 
 But his young heart beat too passion- 
 ately, his young pulses were too active, 
 even vehement, for him to be passive. 
 
 As he went along, he swung his 
 cane, and his thoughts were busy about 
 * that poor old fellow,' as his youth 
 designated the Vicars middle age. ' He 
 has had a hard fight, if all be 
 true,' he mused. Rumours anent John 
 Black's parentless state had reached 
 even to rural Crowsfoot. ' First, a 
 wretched boyhood, for fellows don't 
 mince matters in a public school, or 
 in a private one either ; I expect he 
 must have had a bad time of it.
 
 2 1 6 Gi^iselda. 
 
 Then he was awfully fond of that 
 beautiful woman, his wife. I should 
 say all the love in his nature was 
 concentrated and given right over to 
 her. It must have been a frightful 
 blow when she died. Small wonder 
 it should shake his faith ! It certainly 
 was a mistake to go and stick his 
 doubts into a book ; for, as he de- 
 pends upon the Church for his in- 
 come, it is quarrelling with his bread 
 and butter! But a man's makinor a 
 mistake is no reason for his friends 
 to turn their backs upon him — just 
 the contrary. At any rate, I sha'n't ; 
 I can afford to stick by him, and 
 the governor can always be brought 
 to follow my lead — the mother too, 
 by a little management. Onl}^ those 
 women are not to be trusted. They'll
 
 Griselda, 2 1 7 
 
 agree with you to your face, and, 
 the minute your back's turned, will 
 go plotting and planning against you. 
 There's no honour in them ; they 
 don't know what it means. But 
 Griselda — well, she's not like a woman, 
 as I know women — that's all.' 
 
 The young fellow went on more 
 quickly. Then the ' Weisse Rose ' came 
 into view. He slackened his steps, 
 and approached the quaint old hostelry, 
 — which occupied a corner where three 
 of the narrow, unsavoury streets met, — 
 more leisurely, as if he were saunter- 
 ing by. He did not wish to seem 
 hasty or undignified in Griselda's eyes. 
 And who could tell '^, She migfht be 
 looking out of a window. At that 
 very moment those great eloquent 
 eyes might be fixed upon him. It
 
 2 1 8 G rise Ida. 
 
 was an uncomfortable sensation ; and, 
 as he walked towards the crooked 
 building, with the overhanging second 
 storey and the heavy wooden roof, 
 he felt as if he had never before 
 noticed what troublesome and un- 
 graceful appendages arms and legs 
 were, especially when you were trying 
 to walk with unconscious airiness. 
 
 There was something wrong at the 
 * Weisse Rose.' As he neared the open 
 door, he heard eager voices chattering 
 away loudly in German. Then one 
 of the fair -haired, blue -eyed wenches 
 rushed out, cried, ' Ach — aber der Hebe 
 Herri' with a certain horror-stricken 
 surprise, and rushed back again. Then, 
 although Hal walked in and stamped 
 about the little room where he had 
 smoked and drunk with the Vicar of
 
 Griselda. 219 
 
 Crowsfoot only yesterday, no one came 
 to him. He coughed, he knocked an 
 empty glass with his pocket-knife, he 
 whistled he even came out and cried, 
 'Hi — here — somebody!' He knew no 
 German. There was only a subdued 
 but eager muttering of that guttural lan- 
 guage somewhere ' behind the scenes.' 
 No one answered his summons. 
 
 * This is a fine state of affairs ! ' 
 he said to himself, annoyed and 
 nettled at being, as he considered^ 
 treated with disrespect. ' I do won- 
 der at Black bringing his daughter 
 here.' Then he found a hand-bell, 
 and, walking out into the desolate bar^ 
 rang till the red-faced landlord came out, 
 vociferating in German and gesticulating,, 
 his bristly hair seeming to stand on end,, 
 his eyes starting out of his head.
 
 2 20 G^'iselda. 
 
 After a volley of what Hal con- 
 sidered * gibberish,' the young man 
 made the landlord of the ' Weise 
 Rose ' understand that he understood 
 — nothing. 
 
 *■ Madame speek — leetle English,' he 
 stammered. And, after a prolonged 
 absence, during which Hal was dis- 
 turbed by strange fears of he knew 
 not what, the plump proprietress ap- 
 peared, evidently greatly disturbed. 
 
 It was indeed a very little 'English' 
 that she spoke. But, after great 
 efforts on both sides, Hal learnt that 
 something serious had come to pass 
 since yesterday. 
 
 * De gentleman mad, mad ! ' said 
 the woman. ' He try kill. We never 
 "ave so persons in die '' Weisse Rose." ' 
 She almost thrust Hal out in her
 
 G rise I da. 221 
 
 excitement. He could find out nothing^ 
 further. He could not gather whether 
 Mr Black had gone suddenly crazy^ 
 whether he and his daughter were 
 still there, or, Indeed, what had taken 
 place. He tried to mount the crazy 
 little staircase, up which Griselda had 
 flitted after she bade him eood-nl^ht the 
 previous evening. He was resolved to 
 know the worst at all costs ; but the 
 landlord came out, and he and his wife 
 jabbered in German, and opposed his 
 further entrance ; finally, by their united 
 efforts, pushing him towards and out 
 of the door, which, so soon as he was 
 fairly outside, they shut and barred against 
 him. 
 
 There he was, hustled, treated rudely, 
 if not roughly turned out into the street, 
 and in ignorance of what had happened
 
 2 2 2 Griselda. 
 
 to Griselda and her father. It was more 
 of an annoyance than a consolation to 
 think that they had the companionship 
 and assistance of Hugh Blunt. 
 
 ' A fellow like that — who thinks of 
 problems all day, and dreams of them 
 all night — is simply useless in every- 
 day life,' he thought. ' Oh, my poor 
 Griselda, who said so sweetly that " girls 
 had no troubles," what fresh burden has 
 fallen upon you ? ' 
 
 He knocked at the bolted door 
 of the inn ; all remained quiet. He 
 gazed up at the windows ; they were 
 blank. And, even as he looked, some 
 one came and drew down the blinds. 
 
 * It strikes me that this is a case 
 for the police,' Hal said to himself. 
 ^ Before half-an-hour is over, my good 
 people, you shall be interrogated by
 
 G rise I da. 223 
 
 someone against whom you dare not 
 bar your doors.' 
 
 And he strode off, full of ardour, which 
 was nevertheless tempered by a secret 
 dread which he tried to hide from 
 himself, but which grew stronger each 
 moment. 

 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 HE Rhine steamer Der Edel- 
 mann was steaming gaily up 
 the river against wind and 
 tide. A motley crowd of passengers 
 was sitting on camp-stools or lounging 
 on the benches under the awning. It 
 was too hot to pace the deck. Only 
 the little children ran about playing 
 and chattering baby - talk, pretty little 
 Parisians dressed in the height of 
 fashion, attended by their neat white- 
 capped bonnes; sturdy, stolid Ger- 
 mans ; one or two English children^
 
 Griselda. 225 
 
 brought by venturesome parents. The 
 ladies were knitting or reading newspapers 
 and guide-books. The men stared about, 
 yawned, smoked. Most of these tourists 
 ' had seen it all before,' and were more 
 interested in the vendors of the piles 
 of purple plums or bunches of grapes, 
 tastefully arranged with vine-leaves in 
 flat, round baskets, — who came on board 
 at one landing-place and left at the 
 next, — than in the scenery. 
 
 Only one fair-haired girl stood lean- 
 ing over the bulwarks, gazing steadfastly 
 at the beautiful panorama. It was Gris- 
 elda — a little plaid cloak half hiding 
 her cotton dress. She was pale and 
 sad. The great circles round her violet 
 eyes showed fatigue. Yet, tired, miser- 
 able as she felt, the grand mountains 
 
 rising solemnly before her, the forests of 
 VOL. I. p
 
 2 26 Griselda. 
 
 vines that clung to the slopes at their 
 base, the rocky heights of the Drachen- 
 fels looming In the distance, appealed 
 to her love of the beautiful ; and as she 
 v^as borne slowly onwards against the 
 strong current of the rapid river, and 
 watched the ruined castles perched 
 among perilous crags up aloft, or the 
 red-roofed villages clustering down be- 
 low among the green orchards, she felt 
 as If personal sorrow In such a scene 
 were scarcely sinless. 
 
 Yet she had good cause to be sorrow- 
 ful. Yesterday, after Hal Romayne left 
 them, her father opened letters from 
 England which had arrived while they 
 were out. The first was an Imperative 
 demand from Mr Black's publisher for 
 the Immediate settlement of all claims 
 for the unfortunate book. Certain Pas-
 
 Griselda. 227 
 
 sages in Holy Writ Examined by a 
 Clergyman of the Church of England, 
 which, according to Messrs Cotton & 
 Woolstone, of Paternoster Row, who had 
 undertaken to pubHsh the much-abused 
 volume for its author, had proved as 
 complete a financial as it had seemed 
 to be a literary failure. 
 
 This Mr Black had read with a cer- 
 tain bitterness ; but it would have 
 disturbed him less had Messrs Cotton 
 & Woolstone refrained from enclosing 
 certain scurrilous reviews cut from papers 
 ecclesiastical and secular, which had ap- 
 peared since he left England. He had 
 tossed these to Hugh Blunt, who laughed, 
 and said, — 
 
 'You are just such a red flag to the 
 Anglicans as Luther was to Rome.' 
 
 But the words were scarcely out of
 
 228 Griselda, 
 
 the young man's mouth before John 
 Black rose to his feet with the hoarse 
 cry one hears sometimes from a wounded 
 beast. Then he sank back in the chair 
 from which he had risen — muttering 
 and crying out — seized with sudden 
 dehrium. 
 
 His second letter was from his soli- 
 citors, Messrs Everest & Everest, curtly 
 declining to make any further advances 
 (he had drawn upon them according 
 to their proposal ten years ago — this 
 time for the education of his sons, Tom 
 being at Cambridge and Harry in a 
 surveyor's office), and giving as their 
 reason his most peculiar position, 
 openly attacking the religion whose 
 emoluments provided his daily bread. 
 Such a position, Messrs Everest con- 
 sidered, could scarcely be long maln-^
 
 Griselda. 229 
 
 tained, and they regretted to state that, 
 should the matter come into the Ecclesi- 
 astical Courts, they must decline acting 
 for their whilom client in any way what- 
 soever. 
 
 The third letter was from his bishop, — 
 a bitter, scornful epistle. He stated that, 
 after consultation with supreme authority, 
 he must call upon John to recant, to 
 withdraw his work with public apology, 
 and to disclaim his ' vain and profane 
 disquisitions,' or take the consequences, 
 which consequences, he assured him, 
 meant as surely temporal ruin here 
 as such profanity meant eternal ruin 
 hereafter. 
 
 These sharp, unexpected blows upset 
 the Vicar of Crowsfoot's weary brain. 
 Fortunately for him, his daughter was 
 as cool and collected as she was tender
 
 230 G vis el da. 
 
 and loving, and Hugh Blunt, whose 
 opinions were even more unorthodox 
 than his tutor's, and who therefore 
 heartily sympathised with him, proved 
 a valuable nurse and help to Griselda. 
 They at once summoned the first medi- 
 cal man in the German city, and in a 
 few hours John Black was sufficiently 
 recovered from his transient delirium to 
 pursue his journey. The physician in- 
 sisted upon change of scene. But even, 
 had he not done so, out of the ' Weisse 
 Rose ' they must have gone ; for the 
 landlord, who had once before had some 
 painful experiences with a lunatic, was 
 frightened out of his wits, and was 
 therefore to be to a certain extent ex- 
 cused for his churlish treatment of Hal 
 Romayne that morning. 
 
 Hugh had been, as Griselda was grate-
 
 Griselda. 231 
 
 fully thinking, while she gazed wonder- 
 ingly at the great hills, at the soft 
 cloudlets poised in the rich deep blue 
 of a German sky — at the clear deeps of 
 the grand old river — well — he had been 
 everything to her these last twenty-four 
 hours. Remembering her brothers — self- 
 ish Tom and weak-willed Harry, the 
 only young men she had had any real 
 experience of — she wondered at the 
 self-control, thoughfulness, and delicate 
 sympathy of her father's pupil, who was 
 ordinarily ' short,' rough indeed, in his 
 manner. 
 
 He was now sitting by her father — 
 who had fallen into an uneasy doze, 
 stretched upon a cabin sofa. Hugh had 
 insisted upon Griselda's remaining on 
 deck. He had assumed a certain filial 
 and fraternal command, and, unaccus-
 
 232 Griselda. 
 
 tomed as she was to resistance, she 
 meekly obeyed. Half-an-hour ago, she 
 had gone below to see how they were 
 getting on. Her father was asleep. 
 Hugh, sitting on a camp-stool, reading, 
 smiled and silently shook his head at 
 her. So she returned to her corner on 
 deck — where she was hidden by the 
 man at the wheel — and, turning her 
 back upon the little world on board, 
 faced the greater world of Nature. 
 
 Just as she was thinking of Hugh, 
 she heard his voice behind her. 
 
 ' I have come to look after you.' 
 
 * How is he ?' 
 
 ' Sleeping like an infant. I expect 
 It is the reaction. He Is utterly ex- 
 hausted.' 
 
 * Was It not all — awful ? ' 
 
 * Yes, It was,' said Hugh candidly,
 
 G rise I da. 233 
 
 leaning his elbows on the rail, and gazing 
 down into the cool green depth of the 
 rushing w^ater. * It was almost a fight. 
 I never expected he would rally so 
 soon. But what I feel about it is this, 
 Griselda : only one difficulty is over. 
 When his head is clear and steady again, 
 he must face the situation. How will 
 he do it ? That shrewd old Doctor 
 Schwenk foresaw that. He said your 
 father had certainly weakened his brain, 
 either by overwork or loss of sleep. Of 
 course, I told him of impending trouble. 
 He said, in his old quaint way, " Das 
 muss aber nicht sein " ; in which I 
 agreed, but asked, How could it be 
 averted ? He gave me what schoolboys 
 call a "regular dressing." He asked me 
 what I thought I had been given youth 
 and strength for, and what you were for,
 
 234 Griselda. 
 
 if not to act and make use of youth 
 and Its powers when called upon. He 
 suggested I should assume the command.. 
 I told him I was nobody — merely your 
 father's pupil. " Then you have helped 
 overtire this poor man's brain," he said^ 
 *' and you refuse to help it to rest ? " 
 At this he looked at me through his 
 spectacles like some old owl, in a cynical 
 way I shall not easily forget ; he evi- 
 dently felt great contempt for me. I was 
 goaded into speaking out — ' Hugh gave 
 a laboured sigh, and hesitated. 
 
 * What did you say ? ' Griselda spoke 
 gently. As Hugh spoke, her heart sank. 
 She had recognised Doctor Schwenk's 
 cleverness when he attended her father, 
 and she knew what his hints meant. 
 
 ' I told him that I would lay down 
 my life for you and your father,' said
 
 Griselda. 235 
 
 Hugh, his voice husky with suppressed 
 emotion, ' but that interfere in such a 
 matter I dared not. You, Griselda, you 
 are the only one who can do anything. 
 Your brothers — well, they mean well — 
 but Tom is a fresh-man, and naturally 
 rather raw, and — well, of course poor 
 Harry, good-natured though he is, is of 
 no earthly use in an affair of this kind/ 
 
 Griselda, her eyes fixed vaguely on 
 the beautiful mountains, heard and un- 
 derstood that a great weight of responsi- 
 bility was slowly settling down upon her 
 young shoulders. 
 
 'What could I do ? ' 
 
 She clasped her hands, and looked 
 earnestly up into Hugh's face. There 
 was something so firm, so calm, in that 
 hand-clasp, in that sweet but steadfast 
 look, that, admiring her as Hugh had
 
 236 G rise I da, 
 
 constantly admired her since he first saw 
 Griselda in her simple home, he had 
 never admired her as now. 
 
 ' Your duty lies in a nutshell/ he said, 
 trying to speak dryly. 'He is for the 
 present, till his brain recovers power, in- 
 capable of acting for himself You are 
 his natural regent here ; now you must 
 take the reins.' 
 
 They talked earnestly and long. Hugh 
 simply stated what he thought must be 
 done. They would continue travelling 
 until the Vicar showed signs of recovery. 
 He himself would furnish the ready 
 money ; the Vicar could repay him any 
 day. ' He is only too anxious to pay 
 for and repay others/ he said. ' Money 
 burns a hole in his pocket, as they say.' 
 Hugh had no fear that his and Griselda's 
 nursing among these exquisite scenes.
 
 Griselda. 237 
 
 where nature seemed constantly at work 
 to excel herself, would bring health of 
 mind and body to John Black. 
 
 Meanwhile, he suggested that Griselda 
 should reply to those letters which had 
 brought about the climax of her father's 
 brain trouble. 
 
 He thought she should write to the 
 publishers, the lawyers, and the bishops 
 stating that her father was seriously ill, 
 but that, so soon as he would be suffi- 
 ciently recovered, he would reply to their 
 communications in person. Griselda was 
 ready, but diffident. 
 
 ' You must write simply, just as you 
 feel,' said Hugh. ' I have no doubt but 
 that it will be all riorht.' 
 
 Then he sent her down to sit by her 
 father. He felt the want of being alone. 
 Looking downwards into the clear, rush-
 
 238 Gf^iselda. 
 
 ing water, where he could see the silvery 
 fish and the green weeds carried along 
 by the strong current, he drew in long 
 breaths of the fresh, sweet air. It almost 
 seemed to him as if he had not had time 
 to breathe since Mr Black had been 
 seized with that strange but happil) short 
 delirium — no, nor time to think — only 
 time to feel. 
 
 Now, as he was gently carried along 
 the great river, the mountains towering 
 above — each minute bringing him face 
 to face with one or another of Nature's 
 works, all so beautiful that his progress 
 was a series of surprises — he felt as one 
 who is in an enchanting dream. Men 
 and women may cheat themselves about 
 themselves in every-day life ; but they are 
 generally truthful in dreams. And even, 
 as if in a dream, Hugh felt, now, that
 
 Griselda. 239 
 
 lie loved this innocent young girl with 
 the one love which moulds a man's life. 
 It was a revelation. For he had as- 
 sured himself that he had a fraternal 
 feeling, an honestly manly admiration for 
 Griselda Black, but that this was all. He 
 was merely beginning life, the eldest of 
 a large family. And, although his father, 
 the well-known Justice Blunt, was well 
 off, he expected his sons to help them- 
 selves, and create their own careers, even 
 as he had done. So Hugh Blunt would 
 have no drag in the shape of a ' love- 
 affair.' He had assured himself of this 
 w^hen he became Mr Black's pupil. As 
 for a ' love-affair ' with the grave young 
 girl who presided with such old-fashioned 
 simplicity over her father's household, he 
 would as soon have thought of a ' love- 
 affair ' with the good-hearted but pur-
 
 240 Gidselda. 
 
 blind and garrulous Jemima. He felt the 
 chivalrous sensations when Griselda was 
 in question that he felt when his own 
 sisters were implicated. Yet to-day, here,, 
 after the night's violent excitement, 
 seeing Rhineland for the first time, over- 
 tired, unhinged, a moment when sober 
 truth asserts herself, his heart said, ' I 
 love her.' 
 
 The leap into life of a slumbering sen- 
 sation, which he had not even suspected, 
 was like any other shock. It stayed the 
 ordinary, quiet course of his practical 
 nature. 
 
 ' Anyone would love her,' he said to 
 himself almost angrily. He tried to per- 
 suade himself that his feeling was great 
 admiration, lively sympathy, deep, hon- 
 est friendship. He partially succeeded. 
 ' That stupid passion which rules boors,
 
 Griselda. 24 1 
 
 fools — the lowest of mankind — It Is a 
 desecration to connect it with her name 
 and w^Ith mine,' he said to himself ' As 
 for me, I shall never marry ; and as for 
 her — well, her life-work lies pretty plainly 
 before her, and she is not one to shrink 
 from it.' 
 
 Then he thought practically, tersely, 
 of the situation. He was staunch, ready. 
 He would not shirk one Item of the 
 immediate duty he considered specially 
 his — that of nursing the Vicar of Crows- 
 foot until he regained his mental vigour. 
 
 He rejoined the father and daughter. 
 Mr Black was awake, and calm. He 
 arranged that they three should dine on 
 deck while the table-d' hote was proceed- 
 ing below. He fee'd the waiter who 
 was to attend upon them, in advance. He 
 made his way to the kitchen, and had a 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 242 Griselaa. 
 
 brief but successful interview with the 
 white-capped chef. 
 
 There had scarcely been a more deli- 
 cately - arranged dinner on board Der 
 Edehnann than this, which was served on 
 the deserted deck that bright summer 
 evening to the gaunt, pale clergyman, 
 his anxious daughter, and the determined 
 young man, Hugh Blunt. 
 
 As they ate and drank and talked, 
 the Vicar occasionally relapsing into 
 semi-vacuous thought, the giant shadows 
 thrown across the river by the high 
 hills deepened into darkness. Bright 
 stars came out one by one on the 
 dusky blue overhead. Then came the 
 bustle of returning diners, the clatter of 
 busy feet pacing the deck, sounds of 
 music from the saloon below. 
 
 A deep stillness was settlino- down
 
 G rise Ida. 243 
 
 upon the mountains, which were gradu- 
 ally growing black against a luminous 
 sunset, when the steamer slackened 
 speed, and stopped at the landing-place 
 of Goarshausen, where Hugh thought it 
 best they should stay a while. 
 
 It was a quiet little place. A few 
 houses and two good-sized hotels glim- 
 mered white against the sombre back- 
 eround of wooded hills. 
 
 The Vicar walked from the pier to 
 the hotel, leaning heavily on Hugh's 
 arm. Griselda, following with the lug- 
 gage - porter, noticed how her father 
 stooped and tottered. She was deeply 
 anxious. But, as she gazed up into 
 the vast star- sprinkled heavens, the 
 thought of the great universe with its 
 multiplication of huge planets, brought 
 that sense of her own insignificance,
 
 244 G rise Ida. 
 
 of the infinitesimal smallness of human- 
 beings, with their selfish hopes, fears, 
 joys, and sorrows, which Is a comfort 
 to certain minds while suffering. 
 
 The ' Goldenes Kreuz ' was a neat, 
 airy building, with a general aspect 
 of polished floor, gleaming white china 
 stoves, aloes and palms In huge red 
 pots, shining white damask - covered 
 tables, and flitting black forms, busy 
 waiters deftly carrying high piles of 
 covered plates, napkin on arm. The 
 rooms allotted to the party were square, 
 somewhat solemn apartments, overlook- 
 ing the Rhine. 
 
 ' I mean to get him to bed at once,' 
 said Hugh to Griselda In an undertone, 
 as the three mounted the slippery stair- 
 case (Hugh Insisted upon, at least for 
 to-night, sharing the Vicar's room), ' and,.
 
 G7^iselda. 245 
 
 If you take my advice, you will go too. 
 Remember, you have not been In bed 
 since the day before yesterday.' 
 
 But Griselda had those fateful letters 
 on her mind. Once shut Into her quaint 
 bedroom, with the massive, box-like bed 
 looking uninviting to English eyes — 
 almost as un-English as the species of 
 milk-jug planted In a slop-basin on the 
 mahogany table, which did duty as 
 wash-stand — she felt disinclined for bed, 
 and as far from sleep as If she had 
 but just risen from a long night's rest. 
 
 She unpacked her writing - desk and 
 re-read the three letters which had had 
 such a terrible effect upon her father. 
 
 There — In the calm silence, the 
 Rhine splashing against the pebbly 
 river - bank below, the murmuring of 
 voices, the rustle of a dress, the crack-
 
 246 Griselda. 
 
 ling of a footstep audible In the wide 
 stillness — Griselda, her elbows poised on 
 the polished surface of the round table 
 in the centre of the room, pored over 
 those letters once more, and seemed to 
 receive and assimilate their bitterness. 
 
 No, she could not sleep till they were 
 replied to. The question was, How to 
 do it? 
 
 Griselda had not practised the art of 
 correspondence. The few letters she had 
 written had not taxed her faculty for 
 composition. She had occasionally writ- 
 ten to her brothers. She had written 
 letters at her father's dictation, and 
 even from notes jotted down by him. 
 
 All these years John Black had done 
 his utmost to educate his daughter. 
 Of course he refused that obnoxiously- 
 worded offer of Lady Romayne's, that
 
 Griselda. 247 
 
 arrived so inopportunely at the time of 
 his wife's death — the offer to lend him 
 the children's governess, without payment, 
 two or three days weekly. The Vicar 
 was weak in modern languages, ' but 
 she will do with what I can teach her/ 
 he resolved. Griselda had learnt Latin, 
 Greek, Algebra, Euclid, as her brothers 
 had. Perhaps this mental training had 
 helped to preserve that quaint simplicity 
 which made some persons call her ' odd,^ 
 and others 'stupid.' The Vicar had 
 allowed her to read much bygone litera- 
 ture, that he particularly liked. But now, 
 at this juncture, little of her training 
 seemed of use. In a puzzled, anxious 
 way, she went to the windows and 
 leaned out, gazing at the rippling rivA* 
 studded with star-reflections. Two men 
 — Englishmen — were walking up and
 
 248 G rise Ida, 
 
 down below, in the hotel garden. Their 
 cigar-ends were spots of red light in the 
 darkness. As Englishmen will, with 
 some notion that their language cannot 
 leap the Channel, they spoke loudly 
 and without reserve. They were talk- 
 ing of some acquaintance. One said to 
 the other impatiently, — 
 
 * What could you expect ? Anyone 
 who cannot face a situation must look 
 for ruin. Such creatures ought to be 
 strangled, or put out of the way some- 
 how by Act of Parliament. They are 
 more useless and more of a nuisance 
 than these abominable gnats.' 
 
 It was a chance — a coincidence, per- 
 haps — that brought those men within 
 earshot of Griselda just when she had 
 ' to face a situation ' — an important one 
 for her father.
 
 Griselda. 249 
 
 * Such creatures as I am, while I am 
 a coward about writing, ought ' — she 
 paused to recall the exact words — 
 ' ought to be strangled — put out of the 
 way. They are more useless and more 
 of a nuisance than those gnats. Oh 
 dear ! What a very peremptory man 
 that must be ! I am glad I don't know 
 him. What would he think of me ? ' 
 
 Poor Griselda bit her lip as she re- 
 membered Tom's threat when she was 
 but a baby-girl — that, if she would not 
 obey him in this or that, he would 
 wring her neck. * I wonder why our 
 poor necks are so badly treated?' she 
 thought, instinctively protecting her soft 
 fair throat with her hands. ' They used 
 to be hacked at with an axe ; now they 
 dislocate them with a rope.' 
 
 Then she turned bravely back to her
 
 250 Griselda. 
 
 desk, and began the worst first, the 
 letter to the bishop. 
 
 Hugh had said, * Write simply — ^just 
 as you feel.' 
 
 * Well, I couldn't do anything else ; I 
 am not clever enough,' she told herself,, 
 as she resolutely mended a pen and 
 began, — 
 
 ' GOARSHAUSEN, AugUSt — , 1 8 — . 
 
 * My Lord, — Your letter to my father 
 has made him very ill. It is true that it 
 arrived by the same post as one from 
 his publisher, asking payment for print- 
 ing his book, and one from his lawyers, 
 saying that they could not advance him 
 any more money. But those letters 
 would not have brought on this brain- 
 attack, for he is accustomed to disagree- 
 able letters about money-matters. It was
 
 Ginselda. 251 
 
 your lordship's letter that he talked of 
 in his delirium. I cannot think what he 
 will do about this when he gets well ; 
 but one thing- I do know, that, whatever 
 he wrote in that book, he will never 
 withdraw, for each word and sentence, 
 each thought, came from his heart, — and 
 if, when convinced, he were to deny his 
 convictions, he would be false to God 
 and to himself, which my father will 
 never be. 
 
 * We are doing our best to make him 
 well, when we shall immediately return 
 to England. As soon after as possible, 
 my father will call upon your lordship at 
 the palace, and I am, — Obediently yours, 
 * Griselda Black.' 
 
 Without daring to read over what she 
 had written, she took another sheet, and
 
 252 Griselda. 
 
 in a few dignified words informed the 
 publishers, Messrs Cotton & Wool- 
 stone, that the Vicar was indisposed, but 
 would reply to their communication as 
 soon as it was prudent for him to write. 
 Then she laid this aside, and prepared 
 to address Messrs Everest & Everest. 
 
 This was a more difficult matter. She 
 sat biting the feather of her pen and 
 reading that letter of theirs over and over 
 again. 
 
 * If I told them the truth,' she thought, 
 ^ it would be that they are cold-blooded, 
 and that I think them cowards for thrust- 
 ing their help upon him when he did not 
 want it, and suddenly withdrawing it just 
 when he wants help more, I expect, 
 than he ever wanted it in his life. No ; 
 I must write the merest commonplaces 
 to those lawyers.'
 
 Griselda. 253 
 
 She dashed off a note in her boldest 
 handwriting — 
 
 * To Messrs Everest & Everest. 
 
 * Sirs, — Your communication addressed 
 to my father, the Rev. John Black, 
 reached him in Germany; I, his daughter, 
 reply for him, as he is at present too ill 
 to write, or indeed to be consulted about 
 business at all. As soon as he may with 
 prudence undertake the management of 
 his affairs again, he will consider the 
 contents of your letter, and will most 
 likely forward you his reply ; and I am, 
 sirs, — Yours, etc., Griselda Black.' 
 
 She felt satisfied with * yours, etc' — it 
 might mean anything. Griselda had an 
 antipathy for — something akin to a fear 
 of — these lawyers, the Everests. Young
 
 2 54 Griselda, 
 
 child that she was when she first heard 
 their names, she was observant ; and she 
 soon found out that her father depended 
 upon them in some way. He either re- 
 turned from a visit to their offices in 
 high spirits, or moody and distrustful. 
 
 If, as she undressed and crept wearily 
 to bed, worn out with fatigue, anxiety, 
 and the natural excitement of a first visit 
 abroad among all the beautiful strange 
 siehts and sounds, she could have ofuessed, 
 even in some degree, what her father's 
 actual connection with the Lincoln's Inn 
 solicitors really was ! 
 
 But, as the moonlight crept in and lay 
 in blue-white patches on the polished 
 floor — as strange shadows, cast by pass- 
 ing clouds flitting across the night sky 
 or by the tree-branches waving in the 
 warm wind — flickered mysteriously upon
 
 Griselda. 255 
 
 the walls, she fell into a sleep untroubled 
 by dream or vision. 
 
 She did not even think once of ' to- 
 morrow ' — to-morrow, which was to kindle 
 a fire in her gentle soul which could 
 only die when that soul fled from her 
 body — perhaps not even then ! 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 -COLSTON AND COMPANY, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
 
 x^