-tm^m ^v", TTING FOR Partners IsJ.CORDY JeAFFRESON. '■Wi 1 1 ! ^. illH^^i' i ^ ; i :iilM:::-::!i!:i:Nliilii;-:.illH^ i ;-: !fl m^^'-wi '11' ;.-■■■';; I ^gW^tef*^^Nv>^^~-!^^: ^^^^Wi^' ^^^^g '^"''^I B R. A R. Y ^"■~ OF THL UNIVERSITY or ILLINOIS 8^5 J54c v.l ^H ■*.at#«':-ar« A -./y CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. VOL. I. NEW AND POPULAR NOVELS AT ALL THE LIBRARIES. TILL THE GREAT ASSIZE. By Veke Clavehing, author of 'A Modern Delilah,' ' Barcaldine, ' &a -i voIb. ADA TRISCOTT. By Captain Andrew Haggard, D.S.O., author of ' Dodo and L' 'J vols. CROSS-ROADS. By May Crommelin, author of 'Queenie,' 'Orange Lily,' 'Miss Daisy Dimity,' &c. 3 vols. PART OF THE PROPERTY. By Beatrice Whitby, author of ' The Awakening of Mary Fenwick.' -i vols. DULCIBEL. By Gertrude M. Havward. :^ vols. LONDON: HURST & BLACKETT, LIMITED. CUTTING FOR PARTNERS BY JOHN CORDY JEAFFRESON AUTHOR OF LIVE IT DOAVN,' 'NOT DEAD YET,' 'LOTTIE DARLING, ETC., ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. L LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED, 13. GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1890. All rights reserved. ^6H<^ CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. Dr. Challoner's Sons The Two Sisters-in-Law Words out of Season Gossip Corner It's all Out It may be for Years, or Off to Sea A Daylight Ghost . Past and Present Aunt and Niece Feeling and Conduct Work the Comforter Hope and Feap. Why is it? Touching a Certificate The Plan of Imposture A Congenital Peculiarity On Guard 1 J-i 37 65 77 93 112 127 143 159 177 196 206 230 251 274 293 313 CUTTING FOR PARTNER^. CHAPTER I. DR. CHALLONER S SONS. Lemuel Challoner, M.D., President of the College of Physicians of London, had been a widower for three years and two months, when he died in his fifty-second year at his house in Mayfair. Dying prematurely in 1790, the scholarly physician left only two children, and twenty-five thousand pounds, to be divided equally between them. These children were sons, — Lemuel, who at the time of his father's death had crowned a brilliant career at Cam- bridge by winning a Trinity fellowship, and Geoffrey, who at the same time was a little boy cetat.lO, at a Blackheath boarding-school. To VOL. I. B 2 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. account for the great difference of twelve years between the ages of Dr. Challoner's two sur- viving children, it may be remarked that the physician had failed to preserve the majority of his own offspring from early death. Fate had not approached the physician with- out warning. Aware for thirteen months of the nature of his disease, Dr. Challoner had antici- pated its certain event by arranging his affairs with delicate care for the feelings of his friends, and for the interests and sensibilities of the two individuals who w^ould suffer the most from his death. Continuing to visit his patients, so long as he could be useful to them, he bore a calm and even cheerful face to the world, whilst he watched the gradual failure of his powers with scientific curiosity. Knowing that he should not be alive to welcome the little fellow on his return from Blackheath, he sent Geoffrey off to school, without letting the child suspect that his father w^as out of health. Lemuel had enjoyed his elevation to a Trinity fellowship for a fort- night before he received the pathetic letter which summoned him from Cambridge to his father's bed-side. DR. CHALLONER'S SONS. 3 ' I have arranged my affairs,' Dr. Ohalloner said to his elder son, when the latter had hasten- ed to Mayfair from the university, ' so that they may cause the least possible trouble to my survivors. I have appointed you to be one of my executors, and one of the trustees of Geof- frey's half of my modest estate. I wish it had seemed good to the Almighty to prolong my life, so that I could have accomplished my hope of leaving each of my boys a fortune of twenty thousand pounds. But you must take the will for the deed, and be content with a clear twelve thousand pounds. It will be enough to start you well in your professions.' 'More than enough, father. The smaller sum will do as well as the larger.' ' You must be thoughtful for Geoffrey.' * I am not likely to be less than dutiful, sir, to everyone who is dear to you!' returned the young Fellow of Trinity, who at moments of strong emotion was apt to revert to a practice of his boyhood, and to address his father with the old-fashioned ' sir.' * Good boy !' said the father, smiling tenderly as he pressed Lemuel's hand. ' I like that " sir "; b2 4 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. it reminds me of the time when you were at Eton. But,' he continued, after pausing to gather energy, ' you must be venj good to httle Geoff. For more than three years I have done my best to be mother as well as father to him. And noAv, Lem, you must take him in hand, and be everything to him, — brother, mother, father, friend. He may cause you trouble ; for, though he is an affectionate, gentle, brave little fellow, he has a vein of the Challoner bad temper, as well as a richer vein of the Challoner Idndliness. And you, Lem, you are quick-tempered at times. Yes, yes, you saucy fellow, I know what you are thinking ! Of course, the heat of your blood came to you from me. Heaven knows you didn't get it from your dear mother ! Should little Geoff ever worry you and be a bit mutinous, be patient with him, especially patient as he passes from boyhood to manhood. You will always be the older and stronger.' ' I will remember, sir, I will remember,' was all that Lemuel could trust himself to say for the moment. A minute later ho inquired, in a steadier voice, ' Sha'n't I send for him, sir? You would like to see him again ; and we can DE. CHALLONER'S SONS. 5 fetch him from Blackheath in a few hom's.' 'I should hke to see him again ; but I should not hke him to see me in this state. He is a nervous and dehcate child, though so brave ; and the pain of seeing me might be too acute and enduring. He may not attend my funeral, and my death had better be kept from his knowledge till the funeral is over. Don't you think that will be best V ' Yes, sir, — T agree with you.' 'Though be is delicate and highly nervous/ resumed the physician, after another and longer break in the conversation, ' and will never be such a big fellow as you are, he bids fair to escape from the particular constitutional weak- ness that deprived me of so many children. If proper care be taken, he may live to be a strong man. His intellect may not be forced. You cannot do better than send him to Henslowe's school till he is fourteen ; for Dr. Henslowe has the most important qualities of a good school- master, he is a sufficient scholar, and he is an intelligent, sympathetic, just man. Moreover, he is under great obligations to me, and will be no less grateful to me when I am gone than he 6 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. has been ever since I made his school successful/ ' xA.nd now, dear father, you have talked enough, at least for the present. You see, sir, the tables have turned, and I have become your doctor.' ' A few words more, — for I may not again be strong enough to talk, — Geoff must be reared tenderly till he is fourteen. Then he must rough it with other lads. If he holds to his present fancy of being a sailor, put him into the navy. Encourage the fancy, without forcing it. The sea will give him the best chance of be- coming a strong man. Yes, I have talked enougli. Thank God, I have nothing more to say. I will sleep a little.' A quite young man's regard for his much younger brother is seldom deficient in tenderness and sympathy. Lemuel only resembled many another big brother in covering his httle Geoff with benignant patronage. But the solemn and pathetic circumstances under which the child was committed to the charge of the youngest Fellow of Trinity imparted for some years an almost sacred devotion to Lemuel Chall oner's care for his brother and ward. DR. CHALLONER S SONS. 7 So long as Geofifrey remained at the Black- heath school, the tall and stalwart Lemuel was often seen in the playground of Dr. Henslowe's pupils, who soon learned to honour Challoner's big brother for his height, strength, and athletic address, his affable manners, and his consum- mate mastery of all the games and sports that are especially interesting to the young gentle- men of a superfine preparatory boarding-school. In the interval between his father's death and his first cruise, Geoffrey had his 'home' (or rather his ' homes ') at his brother's Cambridge rooms and his brother's London chambers, and passed his holidays either at the university, where he lived on easy terms with the elite of Trinity, or at the Inner Temple, where his big brother was soon spoken of as a young barrister, who would make a quick march to the fore in Westminster Hall. At Cambridge, big Lemuel took little Geoffrey daily on the river; in London, besides being taken on the Thames, Geoffrey was introduced by his magnificent brother to every place of amusement to which a lad of his tender age could be taken with propriety. When small Geoffrey entered the 8 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. navy, it was big Lemuel who brought him to his first ship and to the presence of his first captain at Plymouth. Four years later, when the lad returned to England from his first cruise, Lemuel was waiting at Portsmouth to grasp his hand and welcome him ashore. This reunion of the brothers was joyful, for each could congratulate the other on events that had occurred during their separation. A foot taller than he was on joining his ship, Geoffrey had come back with a ruddy-brown face, dark down on his lip, and vigour in every muscle of his body. Overflowiug with enthu- .siasm for * the service,' he had won the personal regard of his captain (Captain Fullalove, in later time Rear-Admiral Sir Andrew Fullalove, K.C.B.), and could point to an honourable scar on his right forearm. Already a man of mark in Westminster Hall and on circuit, Lemuel had taken chambers on a ground-floor of his inn, and strengthened his hold on the attorneys east of Temple Bar by marrying Dorothy Fisher, daughter of Sir Frederick Fisher, Knt., merchant of Mark Lane, and whilom Lord Mayor of the City of London,— a DR. CHALLONER S SONS. 9 rather attractive but essentially commonplace young woman, whose appearance was chiefly commendable for the animation of her round face and merry brown eyes, and the silky fine- ness and profusion of her dark browm tresses. To Lemuel Challoner this scarcely beautiful Dorothy, with her round face, short neck, and trim figure, was the lovehest of English w^oman- kind ; and, out of generous sympathy with his idolized brother, Geoffrey would have taken the same extravagant view of her title to masculine homage, even if she had welcomed him less cordially to her house in Great James Street, Bedford Kow, — from which sufficiently ample dwelling the Lemuel Challoners migrated three years later to one of the grandest houses of Queen's Square, Bloomsbury. Partly because she wished to gratify her husband, of whom she was immensely proud, and partly because the young sailor's worshipful bearing to his brother's enchantress tickled her self-complacence, Doro- thy Challoner made much of her brother-in-law, who deemed himself a superlatively fortunate fellow in being allowed to attend so charming a woman to theatres and the Vauxhall Gardens, 10 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. to civic balls and to routs in * The Law Quarter/ little imagining how in course of time he would come to regard her as the most insincere and most cruel of women. In their affectionate intercourse, from the season of their father's death to the doleful time when they passed almost in the twinkling of an eye from love to enmity, it was Geoffrey's de- light to admire a brother whom he regarded as immeasurably superior to himself in every respect, and it was Lemuel's pleasure to be idolized by a brother who in the senior's opinion took only a reasonable view of their respective merits. Delighting in Geoffrey's admiration, when he was only a little fellow who needed beneficent protection, Lemuel was even more delighted by Geofirey^s idolatry, when the latter had grown to manhood. On the other hand, time quickened the intensity of the young sailor's admiration for his marvellous brother. It is needless to say that, whilst Lemuel thought somewhat too well of himself, the idolater thought very much too highly of his idol. When Geoffrey had completed his DR. CHALLONER'S SONS. 11 twenty-seventh year, his inferiority to Mr. Lem- uel Cballoner of the common-law bar was less manifest to fine and impartial judges of the two men, than it was to the brothers themselves. Lemuel Challoner, whose mots flash so bright- ly in books of legal ana, and whose finer wit appears to even greater advantage in the comedies of his nameless pen, was unquestion- ably more amusing, and in every mental respect far stronger than the modest and unobtrusive Geoffrey ; but, in all the forces and virtues that constitute true nobihty of nature, the sometimes silent and always sincere sailor was greatly superior to the loquacious and brilliant lawyer. Whilst Lieutenant Challoner, R.N., no less in his lightest than in his severest moods, was considerate for the feelings of his neighbours, and precisely veracious, Mr. Challoner of the common-law bar was ever quick to sacrifice his friend to a jest, or the truth to a specious fallacy, if the sacrifice promised to win him a round of applause or a controversial victory. As a mere acquaintance, the elder was distinctly better company than the younger brother. But, for a 12 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. daily and life-long companion, who would not prefer a plain man of average intelligence and sterling goodness to a wit, incessantly sot on shining ? In respect to the unfavonrable opinion, which be held of Dorothy Challoner from the com- mencement of his quarrel with liis brother, Geoffrey did his sister-in-law great injustice. Lemuel Challoner was not more wrong in think- ing (as he did to his dying day) that the quarrel arose wholly out of Antoinette's perversity, discontent, and untruthfulness, than Geoffrey Challoner was wrong in attributing the discord to Dorothy's mahce and cruelty. Possibly the brothers would never have quarrelled had the two ladies never been born. But, whilst the essentially commonplace Dorothy was not de- ficient in the commonplace virtue of kindliness, the finer-natured Antoinette was wholly incap- able of saying or doing anything with the deliberate intention of setting her husband and his big brother by the ears. Though they were each in some degree accountable for the rupture, the two wives were far less guilty in the affair than their husbands ; and, if either of the two DR. CHALLONER'S SONS. 13 women refrained from exercising her influence to bring abont a settlement of the quarrel, she refrained only from the fear of making matters worse by untimely meddling. 14 CHAPTER II. THE TWO SISTERS-IN-LAW. From its inception in the Plymouth Assembly Rooms to its celebration by wedding-bells, the attachment of Geoffrey Challoner to Antoinette Endsleigh was a rather quick affair. On Geof- frey's side, at least, the passion was love at first sight. The engagement was announced within six weeks of the passion's birth, and the an- nouncement was followed in another six weeks by the wedding. It came about in this manner. In these poor days, when dancing is not honoured as it ought to be, the navy can still dance the army out of breath, and go on smiling for another hour. Seventy years since, the officers of the British Navy were the best and most enthusiastic dancers in the whole world. It was, therefore, in accordance with naval THE TWO STSTERS-IN-LAW. 15 usage that, on the evening of the day following their arrival in Plymonth harbour, Geoffrey Challoner and divers other officers of H.M.S. Atropos appeared at the ball in the Plymouth Assembly Rooms. Coming early to the assembly-rooms, Lieu- tenant Challoner, wearing his full-dress uniform, in accordance with the fashion of the period, arrived in time to see the master of the cere- monies introduce a young cavalry officer to a charming girl for the first quadrille, and to watch the same young gentlewoman throughout the dance, as she moved to and fro with her graceful figure and happy face. As he had no partner for this first dance. Lieutenant Challoner was well pleased to stand in a corner and play the modest part of a spectator; and in that character he watched the young lady from the beginning to the end of the quadrille, and then saw the fortunate cavalry officer restore his partner to the tall, thin, handsome old chaperon, from w^hose care he had taken her. 'You think her rather good-looking?' in- quired a familiar voice close behind the admiring Geofirey. 16 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. *I think her lovely!' returned Lieutenant Challoner, with a significant note in his bell- like voice, and an even more significant bright- ness in his big eyes, that caused Captain Fullalove to smile cheerily. * I should think so, if I were as young as you, — and I do think so, though, unfortunately, I have entered my forty-eighth year. There, — does that satisfy you V 'III my whole life,' said Lieutenant Challoner, in a low voice, but with an earnestness that was comical, ' I never saw, never imagined so elegant and stately a girl !' ' Then come round Avith me to the other side of the room, and I will introduce you to her,' said the handsome captain of H.M.S. Atropos to his favourite lieutenant. ' What, sir, — do you know her V ' Intimately, — and, what is better, I think she rather likes me. There, there, don't be jealous I I have a wife in London town, and in honour I could not even flirt with Antoinette Endslcigh, my old friend Endsleigh's daughter. She is the late Colonel Endsleigh's daughter, and I am her guardian. The tall, thin, handsome gentle- THE TWO SISTERS-IN-LAW. 17 womau, under whose wing my ward is sitting, is my dear old friend Miss Kebecca Endsleigh. Fancy finding them here, when they ought to be at Bath ! Yes, my ward is a lovely creature, — no taller than when I last saw her, but changed from a too shght slip of a thing into a rare beauty. The Endsleighs are great people in this W'Cst country, as you probably know^ Antoinette's grandfather was Sir Joshua Ends- leigh, sixth baronet of Scoone's Court, who de- scended from one (I forget which) of the Lords Endsleigh of Shalford. The Scoone's Court family have lost a goodish bit of their former estate; but the Shalford people, with their barony from Henry the Seventh and their earl- dom of William the Third's creation, are a mighty house. So my Antoinette has enough blue blood in her veins. I wish the dear child had more of ''the siller." She has a little fortune, and will get something more from her aunt ; but she is no heiress. I may as well tell you that before you lose your heart to her.' ' You speak too late, sir,' rejoined Geoftrey Challoner. ' I lost it full half-an-hour ago.' 'Then, come this way,' said Captain Fulla- VOL. I. C 18 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. love, as he began to thread his way through the rapidly-growing assembly to the rout-scat, on which the aunt and niece were sitting. In another minute Geoffrey Challoner had a new view of his enchantress, as she sprang from her seat with a cry of delight on her lips and a blush of joyful surprise in her face. ' Dear guardian, this is a surprise ! Where did you spring from? The Atropos isn't at Plymouth?' ejaculated the young woman, extending both hands to her father's friend. ' 'Tis clear you haven't read the morning's paper with due care. But we are here to dance. Have you a partner for " The Lancers" V ' No, — fortunately no. I shall so enjoy dancing with you.' * Nonsense, Netta ; — you are laughing at my gouty feet ! Here is your partner, child; — my particular friend, Lieutenant Challoner — Miss Antoinette Endsleigh.' For a moment Antoinette looked as though she wished her guardian's particular friend were on board his own particular ship ; but the look was followed by a complaisant smile, and the two young people went off for the dance, THE TWO SISTERS-IN-LAW. 19 leaving Captain Fullalove to gossip with Aunt Eebecca, who soon learned from the captain a good deal about Lieutenant Challoner, and no- thing to the young man's discredit. A son of the well-descended court-physician, wlio died some twenty years since, and younger brother of the well-known barrister, Lieutenant Chal- loner, was a gentleman by birth, Avho carried on his person three honourable marks of his gallan- try in action. The earliest of the scars was a mere scratch from a splinter. But the shot that struck him at Copenhagen would have cost him his right arm, and possibly his life, had it hit him a barley-corn higher or lower. The Avound he received at the glorious battle that crowned the great Nelson's career was an even more serious affair. The young man, who w^as in every respect an exemplary officer, could not fail to rise to eminence in the service. A man of inexpensive tastes, though free-handed enough with his money in matters touching his dignity, he possessed a small patrimony that yielded him something over six hundred a-year. If Antoinette, with her three hundred a-year in hand, and possibly as much more to come to c2 20 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. her by-and-by from a certain good aunt, should find her present partner irresistibly charming, Captain Fullalove was of opinion that Miss Rebecca Endsleigh would have no reason to regret having brought her niece to the Plymouth Assembly Rooms. As Captain Fullalove, speak- ing in the lowest of confidential voices, said all this, and a good deal more, in Geoffrey Chal- loner's behalf to 3Iiss Rebecca Endsleigh, whilst ' The Lancers ' was being danced, it is not wonderful that the elderly lady scrutinized this young lieutenant with some curiosity when he had reappeared with Antoinette on his arm. Miss Rebecca Endsleigh was of opinion that Lieutenant Challoner was scarcely tall enough for Antoinette, and even looked * a mere shrimp of a man ' by the side of his tall and elegant captain. But it did not escape the observant lady that the lieutenant had a peculiarly pleas- ant voice and a pair of delightfully winning eyes. At the same time, the younger Miss Endsleigh's animated face aiforded her chaperon conclusive indications that she was favourably impressed by her new acquaintance. It told in Geofirey Challoner's favour, that, later in the THE T^YO SISTERS-IN-LA\Y. 21 ball, ^vlicii he was waltzing with Miss Antoinette Endsleigh, she discovered Avith simple dehght that Ids step was exactly her step ; and as their eyes met, when with characteristic frankness she told him what she thought of Ids step, it cannot be questioned that the sensitive and sympathetic girl found something to like in the two best features of the lieutenant's honest face. If Geoffrey was smitten at £rst sight, Miss Antoinette Endsleigh was not slow in respond- ing to his good opinion. To tell the truth, when she retired to rest after the eventful ball, and was awaiting the sleep that soon closed her eyelids, Antoinette mused wonderingly on words he had spoken, and on looks he had given her, and was all the happier for feeling that he liked her as much as a young man in his right mind €Ould like a girl on so brief an acquaintance. It was thus that Geoffrey and Antoinette made their first quick steps to the estate of life, that in their case proved no ' failure.' As Geoffrey, on all previous occasions of re- turning from sea, had come at the earliest opportunity straight to her house, Dorothy Challoner had reason to be astonished at the 22 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. letter, dated from Plymouth, in which ho an- nounced that he could not say exactly when he should appear in Queen's Square, as he had fallen in with certain very agreeable people, who were ' some of Captain Fulhilove's oldest fiiends.' Mrs. Challoner was of opinion that Geoffrey should have been more communicative about these very agreeable people. He might at least have mentioned their names. * I wonder whether they are all so old,' said Mrs. Challoner suspiciously, as she nodded her head in a way that caused her husband lively amusement. Ten days later, the lady's suspicion was quicl^ened almost to certainty by the letter, which informed her that Lieutenant Challoner was at Bath, where Captain FuUalove would stay for a few weeks, drinking the waters which had been recommended for his gout. The writer of the epistle was the more hopeful for the captain's case, as he would, whilst taking the waters, see more of the agreeable people mentioned in a previous letter, who had returned from Plymouth to their usual abode in a pic- turesque suburb of Somerset's fashionable city. THE TAVO SISTERS-IN-LAW. 23 As lie could not leave the invalid till the latter had taken the tiu'n to health, and was moreover well-pleased with his quarters at the York House Hotel, he should probably remain at Bath for three or four Aveeks. ' I told you that Geoffrey had fallen in love,' ejaculated Dorothy Challoner, when she had read the letter to her husband. ' You did,' replied the barrister, looking as he spoke from his breakfast-plate to the clock on the mantelpiece, ' but I fail to see the evidence.' 'Don't talk in that way about evidence, Lemuel; you are not in court. Considering all things, Geoffrey ought to be more communi- cative to us' ' He may have nothing to communicate. If there's any love-making, it's just as likely to be between Captaia Fullalove and one of his agreeable friends. Possibly the captain has gone to Bath to get married. If so, Geoffrey is right to be silent about his friend's business.' ' You doiit know that Captain Fullalove has a wife in London ? 'Tis years since he married Lady Diana Candlewick, daughter of the late and sister of the present Earl of Tarpauhn in 24 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. the peerage of Ireland. The earl's scat is Bogfenny Castle, co. Limerick. If you think I am wrong, look up Tarpaulin in the peerage.' For the present it was enough for Lemuel to look up the time. Glancing again at the clock, the busy man sprang to his feet and went off to chambers. Mrs. Challoner's hour of triumph over her husband came to Queen's Square together with the letter, which announced in Geoffrey's clear handwriting that he ' was engaged to Miss Antoinette Endsleigb, only surviving child of the late Lieutenant-colonel Peregrine Endsleigh of the 4th Lancers, — a gentlewoman whom the writer of course regarded as everything that was amiable and charming.' From the outset of their familiar intercourse, Dorothy and Antoinette were uncongenial sisters-in-law, — and none the less so for their several conscientious efforts to like one another. Though she was utterly incapable of intending to sow discord in the family circle which she was about to enter, Antoinette was so unfortun- ate as to conceive a slight distaste for Dorothy before setting eyes upon her. In his anxiety THE TWO SISTERS-IX-LAW. 25 that Antoinette should regard his brother and his brother's wife no less cordially than he regarded them, Geoffrey committed the mistake of over-praising them to his futm'e wife. In- forming her that Lemnel was one of the hand- somest men in London, and the most brilliant orator of the common-law bar, Geoffrey assured her that he was in every respect inferior to his marvellous brother ; and the young lieutenant of His Majesty's navy spoke no less hyperbolic- ally of Dorothy's moral graces. Patient of the praises he lavished on the magnificent Lemuel, Antoinette in her heart admired her lover's generous enthusiasm for his elder brother ; but when Geoffrey for the third time, during the same morning's ramble through the picturesque lanes of Charlcombe, declared his sister-in-law Hhe very best woman on the earth's surface,' the young lady, staying her steps and blushing as she rose in mutiny, remarked, 'Have you not a qnalifying clause to add to that statement ? You, sir, should not speak quite so highly of Mrs. Challoner to me.' Geoffrey laughed hghtly as he replied, with ^orae excitement, 26 CUTTING FOR TARTNERS. * To me, Netta, you of course are incompar- ably better than any other woman in the whole world ! That was understood.' 'Thank you, sir,' returned Miss Antoinette Endsleigh, as she gave her idolater a playful little courtesy before she made the next step onwards. But Geoffrey regretted the indiscre- tion which had provoked the piquant protest ; and he resolved to be more temperate in his talk about Dorothy's excellences. Though she had only done what was most agreeable to her own feelings, in teaching Geoffrey to regard her house as his home, Dorothy Challoner saw much to admire in her sisterly demeanour to the young sailor, and reflected with virtuous self-complacence on th6 debt of gratitude he owed her for treating him so hospitably — first, in Great James Street and then in Queen's Square, Bloomsbury. It is in the way of common-place people to think well of themselves for being amiably selfish. Having derived so much contentment from her ' good- ness' to Geoffrey, Mrs. Challoner was in the humour to be no less good to the young lady whom he was about to take out of Somerset for THE TWO SISTERS-IN-LAW. 21 better and for worse. In truth, Lemnel Chal- loner's no longer yonthful wife anticipated a renewal of former pleasure in patronizing the young lady from Somerset, — in taking her to the Goldsmiths' balls and to the receptions at the Mansion House, and introducing her to society and the sights of London. As motives of delicacy had caused Geoffrey to be silent about Antoinette's singular beauty, her sufficient fortune, and her patrician lineage in his letters to Queen's Square, Mrs. Challoner imagined that Miss Endsleigh was a young person of few charms, little money, and no particular family, who would be very grateful for being welcomed to one of the best houses in what was still the most fashionable square of Bloomsbury, and being taken for daily drives about town in the finest carriage of the Law Quarter. It had not occurred to Mrs. Challoner to look in the ' Peer- age and Baronetage ' for persons of the name of Endsleigh, — a name that struck the Queen's Square matron as rather plebeian and suggestive of * odds and ends.' * Yes,' assented the occasionally satirical Lemuel, in a tone that should have warned 28 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. Dorothy she was making a fool of herself, * 'tis a poor name in comparison to Fisher. I can't conceive that an Endsleigh ever rose to be Lord Mayor of London.' On coming to her presence, Dorothy saw at a glance and with secret mortification that ^liss Antoinette Endsleigh was no person to be petted by Mrs. Challoner of Queen's Square. Since she charmed Geoffrey by her piquant comeli- ness in her second conjugal year, Dorothy Challoner had broadened in her face, grown thicker in her short neck, and widened in her waist ; and in the process of general expansion she had lost much of the attractiveness that quickened a certain young barrister's pulses in the year of Sir Frederick Fisher's mayoralty. When she took her first view of Antoinette's elegant figure, graceful neck, and serenely noble face, Dorothy Challoner was pained to think how much she had changed for the worse in her appearance. Disappointed by Antoinette's unusual beauty, the elder Mrs. Challoner soon discovered other grounds for dissatisfaction with Geofifrey's bride, who, on coming to London, made a home for THE T^YO SISTERS-IN-LAW. 29' herself in a ready-furnished cottage on the Bayswater Eoad, directly opposite the trees of Kensington Gardens, instead of accepting her sister-in-law's invitation to stay in Queen's Square for the rest of the season. Instead of cariugto drive about town in Dorothy's grander carriage, iVntoinette was content with the fly and one sufficient horse, provided for her especial use by a Bayswater job-master. It pained Dorothy Challoner to discover that, instead of being a mere country cousin, new to London and its attractions, Antoinette had visited the town during three successive seasons. On learning from Geoffrey that Antoinette had been presented to Queen Charlotte in the first of those seasons, and ten days hence would be again presented to Her Majesty, the elder Mrs. Challoner had recourse to her newest edition of the * Peerage and Baronetage,' and learned more than even the reader knows of the anti- quity and grandeur of the two houses of Ends- leigh. The lady was not altogether pleased by her last gleanings from the book of social grandeur. They were perhaps the more dis- tasteful to the gleaner, because she remembered 30 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. how little interest Antoinette had displayed on hearing that her sister-in-law's father had held the high office of Lord Mayor of London. At the same time Dorothy Challoner had another ground of complaint against Geoffrey's wife, who only the other day had begged her sister- in-law, in the prettiest possible terms, to excuse her for not coming again to the Sunday suppers in Queen's Square. Of course, the suppers were attended by extremely clever people, whose con- versation was very entertaining ; but Antoinette hked a quiet Sunday, and liked to close it with- out quite so much gaiety. It is not w^onderful that the following words passed between Lemuel and Dorothy in a con- fidential hour: * I hope, Lemuel, that Antoinette won't give herself airs.' ' She is not likely to do so. At present she behaves very prettily.' ' We haven't summered and wintered her yet.' ' What has she said or done, Dolly, to make you speak in this way V 'It would be difficult to say. But 1 can't THE TWO SISTERS-IX-LAW. 31 help feeling what I feel. I can feel the pride in her nature without measuring her words, just as I can feel frost in the air without looking at a thermometer. Sooner or later, she'll prove mighty proud of her family. 1 see it in the set of her head and the shape of her neck.' ' You mayn't wnsh to hang her, because she has a graceful neck, and a pretty face. Has she said anything to offend you V ' When I told her that my father had been Lord Mayor, she only said " Yes?" — just in that way, ^vith an exasperating little note of inter- rogation, so as to imply " Well, what of it f I did not see all her meaning at the time, but I see it now. She doesn't think much of " mij family." ' ' Probabl}' not. Lord Mayors and city knights are not of much account to old county families. Doubtless, she has the views, and possibly the failings, of her class. In judging her, we must remember that she does come of rather grand people.' ' And she declines to come again on a Sunday evening.' 'I can't be angry with her for that. 'Twas 32 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. unfortunate that all the noisiest people came, and made more noise than usual, on those two evenings, and that Rawlins wanted to go to the card-room before the clock had struck twelve. I am sure she put the case to us very prettily. Don't you remember how she kissed both of us, and begged us to believe her to be very sensible of our kindness to her'«' ' She spoke prettily enough ; but all the same for that, Lemuel, she has drawn the line between our life and tluir life. And^ now that Mrs. Geoffrey Challoner is going to court, I should like to know when Mrs. Challoner is to be presented.' ' You shall be presented in good time. Wait till 1 am Attorney-General. In the meantime, be the good-tempered, generous Dorothy you have ever been. If Antoinette isn't exactly the right sister-in-law for us, you must make the best of her for dear Geoffrey's sake (to whom you have always been so good), and for my sake.' * I'll make the best of her. My fear is that, sooner or later, she won't make the best of me. I wish she wasn't so tall, and didn't look at one THE TWO SISTERS-IN-LAW. 35 SO steadily with those enormous grey eyes. It isn't right for a girl, who blushes so often, to be so cool and calm and self-possessed, even when she is blushing.' Something in these last words caused Lemuel to laugh heartily, before he remarked, ' That's only her way, Dorothy. People aren't all made alike.' 'Geoffrey,' returned DorothyChalloner/ ought to have been more communicative. If he had told us in his letters from Bath all about her height and her good looks, and her fortune and her exalted family, we should have known what to expect.' ' He might as well have written more freely,' said the barrister, taking up the packet of papers which he had brought from chambers, in order to read them before going to bed. ' But the dear boy held his pen on those matters, out of consideration for our feelings.' From its beginning, the intercourse of the sisters-in-law was attended with friction. Each was on guard against the other. Whilst Antoi- nette deemed « the best woman on the earth's surface ' a common-place and uninteresting VOL. I. D 34 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. person, Dorothy Challoiier suffered from an irritating sense of inferiority to her tall, ele- gant, well-descended sister-in-law. A line, which promised to broaden, had been drawn between their lives, though they maintained a decorous shoAv of sisterly sociability", — exchang- ing calls every week and dinners every fort- night, meeting by appointment at theatres and evening-parties, and admiring each other's clothes, after the wont of sisters-in-law, living in the same town on friendly terms. Dorothy oould not complain that her children were shghted by their aunt Geoffrey. Giving them presents upon presents all round, Antoinette tipped the boys munificently when they went off to school, and seized every opportunity for taking the little two-years-old Clemaine to her arms. ' I must say,' Dorothy remarked in confidence to her husband, *that Antoinette does behave very prettily to our girl. But then, what "woman could help doating on such a beauty? With all her good looks, Mrs. Geoffrey Challoner is not likely to have a lovelier child than Clemaine.' When the time approached for Lieutenant THE TWO SISTERS-IN-LAW. 35 Challoner's return to H.M.S. Atropos^ his young wife was preparing for her voyage to Malta, where she had determined to reside so long as Geoffrey's ship should be in the Mediterranean. It was the first of several voyages she made to remote naval stations, in order to be nearer and more accessible to her husband than she would be if she remained in England, whilst he was at sea. 'Write to me now and then, Dorothy,' said the younger sister-in-law, on the occasion of her farewell call in Queen s Square, ' for I shall thicik of you and long for news about you. I have come to like ycu very much. I shouldn't have come to like you so much as I do, if you had been all that Geoffrey used to declare you. Shortly before my marriage, he almost made me jealous by his extravagant praise of you.' Had she not been a common-place woman, Dorothy Challoner would have been agreeably tickled by the candour of this ndive confession. But the elder Mrs. Challoner had no sense of humour. ' It was only natural for Geofirey to think too well of me,' she remarked, with needless gravity, d2 36 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. * for he has a grateful heart, and I have been very good to him.' * To nie also you have been very good, Doro- thy, and I am not wholly incapable of gratitude,' rejoined Antoinette, as she regarded her sister- in-law with brimming eyes, and gave her the last of a long series of farewell kisses. Some few hours later, Dorothy Challoner remarked to her husband, ' Antoinette was quite cordial at the very last moment. Indeed, she seemed more than half- inclined to cry about it. But she needn't have chosen such a time for reminding me how im- mensely inferior I am to w^hat Geoffrey used to think me. She might just as well have been silent on that point.' 37 CHAPTER HI. WORDS OUT OF SEASON. Five years had passed since her departure from England for Malta, when Antoinette Challoner reappeared in London, and deemed herself for- tunate in jBnding her former nest in the Bays- water Road tenantless. Alas, for the poor lady, that she needed no larger home than the cottage of eight rooms ! Those years had been fruitful of change at No. 1], Queen's Square. Having continued to prosper in his profession, Lemuel Challoner had taken the coif, and was well to the fore in the Common Pleas. AVith his fine practice in Westminster Hall and his leading position on circuit, Mr. Serjeant Challoner was set on enter- ing parliament and winning his way to the bench by political service. The Serjeant's two 38 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. sons were still at school, the elder at Eton and the younger at Harrow ; but they were big boys, looking forward to frolicsome days at Oxford or Cambridge. Little Clemaine, with her roseate colour and golden hair, was nearing the close of her eighth year, and had found her first flatterer in a fashionable governess, who passed straight from a duchess's school-room to Mrs. Challoner's patronage. Sir Frederick Fisher had again figured as Lord Mayor, and, with a reputation for being very rich, was still atten- tive to business in Mark Lane, and immersed in Stock Exchange speculations, though he had entered his seventieth year. Dorothy Challoner had gone on growing in face, neck, waist, and self-complacence. It is not surprising that the comely matron had a good opinion of herself ; for she was prosperous, and one of those common-place Avomen who regard their pros- perity as evidence of their moral excellence. Fortune had been less benignant to the Geof- frey Challoners. The sailor was still only a lieutenant, and, now that European affairs were moving to peace that promised to endure, his look-out at the Admiralty had become less hope- WORDS OUT OF SEASON. 39 ful. Miss Rebecca Endsleigh of Bath had died during Antoinette's absence from England, and the latter was in no degree consoled for her bereavement by the acquisition of one-half of her aunt's six hundred a-year. The case was different with Antoinette's first cousin, Sir Peregrine Endsleigh, baronet, of Scoone's Court, Somerset, who twelve months later let Scoone's Court to a retired Anglo-Indian judge, and by means of Aunt Rebecca's seasonable legacy contrived to pass the remaining years of his inglorious existence on the Continent, with- out any w^orse discomfort than the disease of chronic discontent. During her sojourn in Malta, Antoinette endured sharper grief than the sorrow she felt for her aunt's death. The cup of bliss, for which she had uttered many an earnest prayer, fell to the ground even as she was on the point of raising it to her lips. The babe, that came to Mrs. Geoffrey Challoner's embrace at the close of her second conjugal year, died on the third day of its existence, and it had been re- placed by no other infant, when Antoinette re- entered the cottage in the Bayswater Road. 40 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. How many bitter tears fell from Antoinette's large grey eyes for this disappointment of her strong desire for offspring ! And she had the more reason to weep, because she knew that Geoffrey, with his almost feminine fondness for children, longed to be a father no less steadily than she longed to be a mother. The piece of fine muslin which she em- broidered for the christening robe of her first- born offspring was not made up for the babe, who breathed for so brief a span, before it was committed to its Maltese grave. In the first instance the pattern of the satin-stitch was simple enough ; but the muslin, which accom- panied Antoinette to several distant parts of the world, came in the course of years to be strangely overladen with embroidery. Going Avith its worker wherever she went, this piece of work was taken from Malta to London, from England to St. Louard's Island, from the West Indies to Canada. There is no need to give the perfect hst of all the places to which those yards of fine muslin were carried by Antoinette Challoner. AVhenever she became strongly hopeful of soon becoming a mother, Antoinette WORDS OUT OF SEASON. 41 fell to work on the muslin. No wonder she prized the pathetic memorial of so many births and deaths of tender hope. How many happy hours had she spent over the work! How often had she put it away with a sorrowful heart ! Antoinette Challoner was still in the closing stage of one of those visitations of successive elation, anxiety, and unutterable wretchedness, to which she was liable at irregular intervals, when she ordered her carriage, and bravely went forth to call at No. 11, Queen's Square, Bloomsbury, though she mistrusted her ability to maintain a proper show of cheerfulness ■during the long half-hour which she intended to pass in her sister-in-law's drawing-room and society. In truth, she was sick at heart, and quite unfit for the effort ; but, as Lemuel Chal- loner's wife had grown somewhat captious as well as more consequential, Antoinette was set on making this visit, for the sake of family peace. The poor gentlewoman had better have been a little less courageous, and have deferred the visit for another twenty-four hours. Not that Dorothy welcomed the visitor with less 42 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. than her usual cordiality. On the contrary, Mrs. Challoner of Queen's Square was more than sufSciently gracious to the sister-in-law, whom she had come to regard as ' rather a poor thing, after all,' for continuing to fret about that little baby in Malta. Kissing Antoinette heartily on each cheek, Dorothy said never a word about the length of the time {ten whole days) that had elapsed since Mrs. Geoffrey Challoner's last call. What with talk about the new opera, recent dances in the Law Quarter, the boys' last letters from school, Clemaine's marvellous cleverness, and a certain lovely amber-satin dress which the Serjeant had recently given Clemaine's fortunate mother, a short half-hour went off right pleasantly. Had i\.ntoinette taken her departure when Dorothy ceased to descant on the richness, delicacy, and cost per yard of the lovely amber-satin, there might have been no occasion for this book. Reverting from the excellences of the lovely dress to Clemaine's miraculous cleverness, Doro- thy invited Mrs. Geoffrey Challoner to accom- pany her to the middle window of the drawing- room, for the chance of getting a view of the WORDS OUT OF SEASON. 4^ ill comparable Clemaine, at that moment taking part of her daily exercise in the Square garden, under the surveillance ofMissFripp the governess. ' See, see,' cried the excited mother, when she and Antoinette had been at the window little more than two minutes, ' there she goes along " full tear," like a very angel. Was there ever such an angel in short petticoats V As the mother began this characteristic out- pouring of niMternal delight, the angel in short petticoats could be seen running at her fullest speed in a race against two small boys who ran well, and an awkward girl who Avas consider- ably older and taller than Clemaine. In the opening decades of the present century, it was usual for English girls of Clemaine's age to wear their hair in close crop. But Clemaine wore her golden hair in long uncurled tresses, floating over her shoulders ; and a very charming crea- ture she Avas, as she ran quickly over the grass, three good yards in front of her competitors in the race. The child's hat had fallen from her head, so that the spectators of her angelic running could see her finely-cut features and flowing locks to perfection. 44 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. * Isn't it a pretty sight?' ' She looks the very picture of health !' re- turned Antoinette, thinking to herself sadly and bitterly: * Why is it that this woman has so lovely a child, whilst 1 am childless?' ' She has been out almost her full hour,' cried the exultant Dorothy. * 1 will send for her, Antoinette, so that you may have a kiss from her lovely lips, before you go back to Bayswater.' ' No, no, Dorothy, you shan't do that. She looks so happy. Let her be out for her full hour.' ' Well, that's very good of you to say so. For I know, Antoinette, jow would like a kiss.' ' I prefer seeing her at play. She'll be back again in a minute.' ' Lor', my dear Antoinette,' ejaculated the common-place Avoman, doing a cruel thing with no unkindly purpose, 'how I do wish you had just such a darling !' Turning away in order that her rising tears should not be seen by her companion, Antoinette •Challoner went from the window and seated herself on a sofa. But the movement failed to achieve its purpose. Dorothy had discerned the rising tears, and the signijficant writhing of WORDS OUT OF SEASON. 45 Antoinette's lips, as the snfFerer was in the act of turning from the window, ' There, now,' thought Mrs. Geoffrey Chal- loner, 'she is off again, crying for that poor little baby of hers,-— dead by this time for four years, after living only three days. What a poor thing she is, after all ! I really must tell her that she ought to be braver, and to behave better.' ' There, there, my dear,' expostulated the elder sister-in-law, seating herself on the sofa by Antoinette's side, 'you shouldn't do that. Indeed you shouldn't, — it is not worthy of you, my dear. And really it is wrong of you to go so near to murmuring against the Almighty, as though He didn't know what is best for His creatures, and hadn't as much right to take away a blessing as to give it. And no amount of crying, Antoinette, will bring the little dear back again. Other women have lost children. Heaven only knows how I felt losing two sweet babes one after another, — but I made an effort, and cheered up, and so must you, — you really must, if you don't wish people to think you quite a poor thing.' 46 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. To Antoinette these Avorcis of admonition were the more distressing, because they were spoken in a voice something louder than Dorothy's ordinary tone. * Dorothy,' repHed Antoinette cahnly, doing her best to control her feeHngs, 'some weeks since 1 told you that references to my great trouble pained me acutely, and you promised never again to allude to it in my hearing. You made me that promise.' ' So I did,' returned Dorothy, taking the reproof in good part, ' and I ought to have kept my word. I won't break it again. But I do so want to see you happier. You must try to cheer up. Remember, my dear, if you have no children of your own, you have mine to love, — and you have my leave to love them as much as you like. Till you have children of your own, you should try to think of my children as your own. Lor', my dear Antoinette, just think how it will be all the better for them one day if Geoffrey and you have no child ! It ought to comfort you to think of that.' The elder Mrs. Challoner would have spoken more fully of this source of comfort for her WORDS OUT OF SEASON. 47 sister-iu-law, bad not Antoinette sprung to her feet and ejaculated in her agony, ' This is unendurable ! — it is cruelty ! — it is insult !' ' Don't go, — do sit down again V But the invalid did not, could not comply with the entreaty. Without speaking a word of farewell, Antoinette fled from the room, ran down the stairs, and escaped from the house of torture. The elder Mrs. Challoner was still at the height of her astonishment at her sister-in- law^s passionate words and sudden departure, when Lemuel Challoner came into the drawing- room from the adjoining chamber in which he had been writing letters throughout the long half-hour of Antoinette's unfortunate visit. The courts were not sitting that day, and Serjeant Challoner, after receiving half-a-dozen solicitors in the forenoon, bad returned early from chambers, in order to write half-a-dozen non-professional letters in a room furnished to pay the double debt of library and card-room, that, like his wife's chief chamber of audience, overlooked the green leaves and grass of the Square garden. When he found himself with 48 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. a few spare liours in the afternoon, the Ser- jeant was wont to spend them in dealing with arrears of private and non-legal correspondence, sitting behind an open door, so that he could overhear the talk of Mrs. Challoner's drawing- room, whilst he blotted sheets of letter-paper with a galloping quill. ' By Jove, Dolly, you've thrown the fat on the fire !' ejaculated Serjeant Challoner, as the sound of Antoinette's retreating wheels rose from the pavement below. ' Who would have thought of her exploding in that fashion, like a barrel of gunpowder, just because I touched her as lightly as a feather with a few words of counsel and encouragement?' ' 'Tis a pity you touched on that particular subject.' * 1 was wrong,' replied Dorothy Challoner contritely, ' I see how wrong I was. I ought to have kept ray promise never to allude to her baby, poor little thing ! 1 will write to her and beg her pardon this very moment. Don't be angry with me, Lemuel !' * As if I should be angry with you,' returned the always good-humored husband, raising his wife's WORDS OUT OF SEASON. 49 white but chumpy right-hand to his lips. ' You were imprudent, but you meant well.' * Indeed, indeed I did,' said Dorothy, showing a disposition to whimper. ' Don't cry. There's nothing to cry about, eveiA though she should make a storm of this little breeze to Geoffrey. It will all come right in a few days, if you keep quiet. Don't be in a huny to write to her. Perhaps there will be no need for the apology. Anyhow, don't put pen to paper till I tell you. 'Tis fortunate that I kept in the back-ground, and that you didn't let her know I was in the house. It would be a worse business, if she knew I overheard what passed between you.' Unfortunately, though she did not see him, Antoinette knew that her brother-in-law was writing letters in the library, whilst she was being ' lectured ' by his wife, and that he was an auditor of ' the lecture.' During every pause in the talk, and once or twice whilst her sister-in- law was expatiating on the virtues of the lovely amber dress, Antoinette's quick ears had caught the scratching and squeaking of the Serjeant's quill, as it galloped from left to right across the VOL. I. E 50 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. letter-paper. Had not the excitement of men- tal tortm-e overpowered Antoinette, she would have closed her call on Dorothy by popping into the card-room library, and saying merrily, ' How d'y'do, and good-bye, Lemuel. If you don't wish Dorothy's callers to know you are writing letters behind the open door, you should make less noise with your pen.' Before * the lecture ' began, Antoinette had determined on taking her leave thus brightly. Though she had no intention of ' making a storm out of the breeze to Geoffrey,^ the whole affair came to his knowledge from Antoinette's honest lips. As he returned from the Fighting Services in time to hand her from her carriage, and as he insisted on knowing the cause of the tell-tale redness of her eyelids, Mrs. Geoffrey could not keep the cause from him. Compelled to speak, she told the wdiole truth and nothing but the truth. ' 'Tis nothing of importance,' she began. ' I was not so w^ell as I imagined myself, when 1 started for Queen's Square ; where that dear, well-meaning, stupid Dorothy worried me. I was so foolish as to break down, and . . . There, WORDS OUT OF SEASON. 51 there, I have told you enough. Don't examine me. I am all well, now that I have cried off my annoyance.' But Geoffrey insisted on hearing the whole story, and, though he heard it to the last word without giving expression to wrath, Antoinette was secretly troubled by the hard look that came over his honest face during the last sentences of the recital. Next morning Lemuel Challoner received from Geoffrey a letter, which caused the addressee to observe, as he committed the epistle to his breast-pocket, instead of pitching it across the breakfast-table to his wife : ' There is no need for you to see that out- pouring of fraternal fervour. Galfridus ebul- liens ! the poor boy is ferocious ! I was afraid Antoinette would make mischief; and the sick woman has done her worst. It will all come right. But you must hold your pen to Mrs. Geoffrey till I give you leave to use it ; and you must keep out of her way till she has ceased to be dangerous.' Of the letter, which moved Serjeant Chal- loner to speak thus bitterly and authoritatively, E 2 52 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. it is enough to say that, after setting forth the particulars of Dorothy's offences, Geoffrey closed the epistle with these words : ' What I think of Mrs. Challoner's cruelty, I have made sufficiently clear. Make it no less clear to me what I ought to think of you, Antoinette did not see you, but she left Queen's Square under the impression that, whilst she and Mrs. Challoner were in the drawing-room, you were writing in the next room, and that, as the door between the two rooms was open, you heard all that your wife said. I am slow to beheve that you sat there, hearing the words of cruelty and insult, and forbearing to save poor Antoinette from the lash of Mrs. Challoner"s tongue. Was Antoinette's impression true or erroneous? I must beg you to answer this question by return of post. One word wi 1 suffice.' Lemuel's reply was more characteristic than concihatory : * Dear Geoff, * You are ofif your head, and we had better not meet till you have cooled down. WORDS OUT OF SEASON. 53 When you have come to your right mincl, I shall be happy to talk to you on a matter about which 1 must decline to write. I icas writing letters in the library, and I heard all the words that gave offence, and they have my approval, though I regret the turn taken by the conversa- tion. Your hard words have neither broken my bones, nor affected my regard for my only brother. If I don't see you in the course of ten days, I shall call early on the eleventh day (Sunday) and set this silly business right. ' L. C * Antoinette was not mistaken,' groaned Geoffrey Clialloner, when he perused the un- feeling note, 'and he was his wife's accomplice ! He sat behind the door, exulting in the pain inflicted by his cruel wife. To think of his having fallen so low ! Never brighter and keener in mind than now, he has sunk to her moral level !' The letters had put it beyond Lemuel's power to ' set the silly business right.' Greatly as they differed in person and mind, the brothers had some strong points of resemblance in temper 54 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. and disposition, though Geoffrey, with his flaw- less sincerity and absolute freedom from vanity, was greatly Lemuel's superior. They both had strong affections. Each resembled the other in having a temper, that came to him straight from the evil one, besides the more amiable disposition by which he was best known to his acquaintance. Even by the people who resented his caustic flippancy, and had suffered most acutely from his satire, it was admitted that Serjeant Challoner had a kind heart. In respect to those ' other tempers,' that came to them straight from the evil one, Lemuel was a less faulty man than his younger brother, by reason of his inferior ability to nurse resentment. Making enemies with a light heart, Lemuel forgave his enemies quickly; but Geofii'cy, while almost faultless in his better and habitual nature, Avas no less implacable in his few hatreds than stead}' in his many friendships. Moreover, both were idolatrous husbands. Whilst some families are poor, others are curi- ously rich, in the conjugal virtues. It ran in the Challoner blood to be good husbands. In all their branches the Challoners had from time WORDS OUT OF SEASON. 55 to time produced bad meD, but never (at least, in recent times) had they given the world a bad husband. Throughout our Georgian period their motto should have been ' For King and Wife.' Loyal to the crown, they were devoted to their wives. Whatever woman a Challoner married, he was sure to think her perfection. Impatient of dullness in everybody else, the brilliant Lemuel Challoner thought his wife's common-place stupidity entertaining, and even admirable. Under the world's observation, he treated her uniformly with tender deference. If he sometimes satirized her in their hours of privacy, he did so from no desire to give her pain, but simply because it amused him to see how insensible she was to his sarcasms. Had she ever winced under one of his humorous sallies, he would have desisted from one of his favourite games. AVhilst Antoinette was in Geoffrey's regard an angel from paradise, Lemuel had no doubt that his Dorothy was, what Geoffrey had once declared her to Miss Antoinette Endsleigh, ' the very best woman on the earth's surface.' When they had exchanged high words in 56 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. •writing, it was a poor chance that the storm would pass over quickly. Geoffrey having forborne to call on Lemuel within the ten days, Serjeant Challoner went forth on the eleventh day to call in the Bayswater Road, hoping to find his brother at home, whilst his sister-in-law would be at church. The serjeant would have had his walk from Bloomsbury in vain, had he not accidentally looked to the left as he was on the point of turning out of Kensington Gardens, and caught sight of Geoffrey, walking slowly in the direction of the Kensington Road. Though ho had no doubt that Geoffrey was sauntering in the Gardens, in order to avoid the early caller, Serjeant Challoner thought it best to follow his brother with quick steps and * have it out with him.' A few minutes later, the brothers stood face to face, with rustling green leaves overhead and no strangers near enough to catch their words. *Come, Geoff,' said the serjeant, in a con- ciliatory tone, but with insufficient tact, ' let us shake hands, and blow away this cloud with some honest laughter at our folly. It would be 'WORDS OUT OF SEASON. 57 too absurd for us to quarrel because our wives have bad a foolish tiff.' Forbearing to take Lemuel's proffered hand, Geoffrey answered : * I am not surprised to hear you speak con- temptuously of your own wife. You are at liberty to do so. But you had better be silent about Antoinette.' There is no need for a verbatim report of all that followed this opening of an interview which Geoffrey had tried to avoid. Whilst tlie younger brother was furious about the barbarous assault on Antoinette's feelings, the elder was indig- nant at the charge of cruelty preferred against ' the very best woman on the earth's surface.' To Geoffrey's disdainful reference to Lemuel's part in the barbarous assault, Serjeant Challoner replied by taunting the sailor with his meanness in accepting the words of a sick woman as con- clusive evidence against his own brother. The high words were very high, though the alterca- tion was not so noisy as to strike the ears of the loiterers in the broad walk. Those words of war were the last words that the brothers were permitted to exchange. Had 5S CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. tliey both lived for twenty, or even ten years, they would have been drawn together again by their strong mutual affection. But, alas ! Geof- frey sailed for the West Indies without seeing his brother again ; and, when the sailor re- appeared in England, the lawyer was dead. Nor was there postal intercourse between the brothers whilst Geofirey was on the North American and AVest Indian station. Had he learned from the newspapers how a gun acci- dent killed the elder of his two nephews, when the fine young fellow was still in his first year at Christ Church, Geoffrey would have written his brother a letter that would have put an end to their quarrel. But the news of Lemuel's death came to the sailor sooner than the news of the much earlier misadventure. Apart from the notice taken by the public journals of the Serjeant's doings in the law-courts, and of his unsuccessful contest for a seat in parliament, Geoffrey heard literally nothing of his brother's fortune in England, until he learned from the Times that Lemuel's bright career had closed all too soon. Extinguishing in an iustant the animosity he WORDS OUT OF SEASOX. 59' had nursed against Lemuel for more than five years, that doleful intelligence revived all Geoffrey's former admiration and tenderness for his brother, to whom he could never again- express either sentiment. Life would hence- forth have gone better with Geoffrey, could he have reflected w^ith an easy conscience on his part in the bitter quarrel, and could he, on ther death of his wrath against his beloved brother, have forgiven Dorothy Challoner for her share in the discord. But, unfortunately for his peace of mind, Geoffrey could not forget the bitter words he had spoken and written to the brother who was so devoted and beneficent to him in his boyhood, youth, and early manhood. To the last year of his life, there were moments when the generous seaman recalled with sharp remorse how he had rejected Lemuel's hand, and w^ell-intentioned, though ungraceful over- ture for reconcilement. Till the closing term of his existence, he softened in no degree to Dorothy Challoner, ' the woman who ' (to use one of his own expressions) ' had robbed him of his brother.' In truth, it seemed as though all the heat and rancour of his extinguished wrath ^0 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. against liis brother were transferred and super- added to the animosity with which he regarded the woman to whose mah'ce he attributed the supreme sorrow of his Hfe. Soon after her return from Quebec to Lon- don, when Lemuel Challoner had been several months in his grave, Antoinette bethought- her- self that she would do her best to bring about the reconcilement of Geoffrey and Dorothy. Having soon survived her resentment against her sister-in-law, Antoinette had for nearly five years been debating what steps she could take for the restoration of harmony in her husband's family, when death closed the discord of the bro- thers. And, for as long a time, the woman of fine sensibiHty had been growing more and more regretful for her share in the miserable dissen- sion. 8he could reflect with an easy conscience on having told Geoffrey of an affair which, during her last drive from Queen's Square to the Bayswater cottage, she had designed to withhold from his knowledge. Had he not returned home sooner than he had intended, and she had expected, he would have seen no signs of unusual distress in her face. But, when he WORDS OUT OF SEASON. 61 insisted on knowing the cause of her trouble^ the course she took was the only course open to her. She was also easy in her conscience respect- ing the way in which she complied with his request. In no particular had she overstated the case against Dorothy. In answering one of Geoffrey's most searching questions, she was careful to say that she had not seen Lemuel in the card-room. Her conscience assured her that she had not intentionally made mischief. But to the same sensitive conscience it was painfully clear that she was the chief cause of her husband's deplorable rupture with his elder brother. Had she only controlled her feehngs so as to leave Queen's Square without a scene, she would have returned to her home without the tell-tale redness in her eyes ; and had she, on alighting from her carriage in the Bays- water Road, met her husband with a serene and happy face, the lamentable quarrel would not have taken place. She should have been more patient under the provocation against which she had protested so passionately. There were times when Antoinette's acute contrition for her 62 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. disastrous impatience caused her to feel that, to cancel the consequences of her culpable vehe- mence, slie Avould gladly sacrifice everything that was precious to her, except her husband's love and happiness. ' I should like to call on poor Dorothy,' said Antoinette to Geoffrey, not long after their return to London from the other side of the Atlantic. ' With my approval V rejoined Geoffrey. * Of course. I could neither call on her, nor write to her, without your approval. Had I better write before calling?' * You are at liberty to do what you please ; but you will neither call nor write with my approval,' replied Geoffrey Challoner, rising from the breakfast-table to pace three times up and down the room, before he spoke another word. There was a terrible brightness in the hus- band's strong eyes, and a still more alarming hardness in his powerful though unsymmetrical face, when he desisted from ' pacing the deck,' and, looking steadily in Antoinette's face, spoke these words, in a low voice of unalterable resolution : WORDS OUT OF SEASON. 63 ' It is impossible for you to wish me to hold friendly intercom-se with ray worst enemy. You would not like me to be guilty of the falseness of feigning brotherly afiection for the woman who robbed me of my brother. I have not the power to make my heart love its enemies. I can no more govern the hate than the love of my nature. I am their servant. Mrs. Challoner and her children do not need my help. My brother, no doubt, made due provision for her and them ; and she is the daughter of a rich man, who is under an obligation to divide his wealth equally between her and her two brothers. She has, therefore, no need of my assistance, and she is never likely to need it. Should she, by strange mischance, come to need it, should she fall into distress and require my aid, I will aid her with a prompt and free hand, but unrelentingly. Of my own free will, I will never speak with her again in this life.' Antoinette Challoner was far too clever a woman, and had far too good reasons for rever- encing her husband, to imagine that her authority over him was limitless, because he always over-rated her merits, and seldom ex- ercised his marital power without showing, at 64 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. the same time, delicate consideration for her feeUngs. By the hght of his strangely powerful eyes she now saw one of the limits of her authority over Geoffrey; and, though she was sincerely desirous of returning to friendly relations with Lemuel Challoner's widow, she was happier, even at the very moment of the mortifying repulse, for seeing that she must yield to his will on a question that touched some of her deepest feelings, and for observing how far her idolatrous worshipper was from being her mere slave. So Antoinette Challoner neither called upon her sister-in-law, nor wrote to her ; and the two sets of Challoners remained apart, even as near kindred in this perplexing world so often re- main apart from one another, in obedience to overpowering resentments, that originated in idle words and apparently trivial dissonances of temper. 65 CHAPTER IV. GOSSIP CORNER. As she was designed on new lines to be the fastest warship of her size and guns in the British Navy, and was destined for service on the only station that just then offered sailors a prospect of distinguishing themselves in action, the Trouhridge had for many months been a thing of high interest to the naval members of the Fighting Services' Chih, Pall Mall, and an object of peculiar concern to officers who had been idling on half-pay longer than they liked. Of the thirty and more candidates for the command of the new ship, Captain Grievance, R.N., and Captain Crabtree, R.N., were not the least careful to conciliate the Lords Commis- sioners and the chief permanent officials of the department set in authority over the floating VOL. I. P 06 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. service. ShoAving themselves with somethiug more than sufficient frequency at levees, they found occasions, that would have been missed by ordinary men, for exchanging social amenities with the leaders and rulers of their profession. Given to exaggerate woman's influence over our naval affairs, they were at pains to in- gratiate themselves with influential woman- kind. Dancing from midnight to cockcrow at the Countess of Kidderminster's balls, they were no less energetic in the service of Mrs. Vivian y a short illness. My dear mother ! what a series of calamities was she called upon to endure within a few years ! She was still only fifty years of age when she had lost her husband and two sons, and fallen from afl[luence to poverty. Had I known how poor she was becoming at the time of poor Fred's death, I should not have pressed her to take me to France and Italy. But to 150 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. spare my feelings she bravely hid from me the full extent of her misfortunes ; and I imagined we were only comparatively poor, when we had become very poor. She was almost at the very end of her resources when she was taken from my arms and life's troubles. ' Let me now speak of my own troubles, — my present troul)les. After I put away mourning-dress for iny mother, I was married to Luther Donaldson, a young artist, some of whose water-colour sketches you may have seen. Born in the same month of the same year, we were young on our wedding-day —still only twenty-five years old. Yet our engagement was a long one. On our marriage we came to this house, sharing it with our friends the Ilarfords, who will soon leave England for Calcutta. Our life here was very happy — so vcrij happy — till it ended. Luther had not over-rated his ability to give me a tranquil home and all the pleasures for which I care greatly. We had not twenty pounds between us when we came to this dear place ; but as he was very industrious, giving lessons in girls' schools and teaching pupils who came to the studio for instruction, so as not to be wholly dependent on the sale of his Avorks, money never failed to come as fast as we needed it. Lodging something above our means, we dressed only up to our means, and fared below our means. Apart from the pleasures of art, he had not a single expensive taste ; and my tastes were his tastes. Even if children had come to us, we should not have repented our im- prudent marriage, as some of our friends called it. What with his sketches, which he sold to dealers for low prices, when he could not sell them to connoisseurs for rather better prices, and his pupils, who always PAST AND PRESENT. 151 paid their fees punctually, we were getting on so well that Luther felt he might insure his life, — could insure it, that is to say, without running any risk of finding himself by-and-by unable to make the yearly payments. Only three months and a few days have passed since he went into the city about the insurance. He was on his way to the insurance office, when he slipped on a piece of orange-peel and fell to the ground, as he was crossing the carriage-way at the foot of Holborn Hill. Before he could recover his feet, one of the powerful horses of a heavily-laden dray struck him, and then the wheels . . . you see how it was ! They carried him in a state of unconsci- ousness to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and there he died three days later, with his dear head resting on my arm, — died, dear aunt, without having recognized me since the accident. All this happened so recently, and yet I can write about it ! I have lost him, but I may yet have something of his life to love. In my forlorn condition, it may seem to some people strange that I can hope to be a mother in the course of a few months. Without a calling wherewith to support myself in the meantime, I hope to have another life dependent on me next February. Should I desire another event ? I must cherish the hope. If I lost the hope, I should die even yet of my grief for him. The dear child will be of his life. It must reseml^le him in some respects. It may, perhaps, have Jus eyes, — look at me with Ids eyes I ' But before its arrival I must have a plan for maintaining myself and the life that will be from his life. Were it not for the child, I should at once seek a situation as a governess. I have all the need- 152 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. fill accomplishments for a governess, thanks to my dciir mother ! I\Iy French is good French, written with some degree of critical discernment, and spoken with Parisian accent. On that point I do not flatter myself. I have some facility with Italian and some knowledge of German. My music is not of the highest merit ; but I know two eminent professors Avho would, I am sure, certify that I am a pianist of some ability. My voice is not strong, but it is musical, and has been well trained. My temper is not faultless, but it obeys me and is sympathetic ; and I enjoy the society of girls. Of course, I have many defects of character, but they would not prevent me from being a good governess. But as a resident governess I should be separated from my child ; and as a daily governess I should not earn enough money for my own wants and my child's wants. I could not endure to be separated from my child. Duties will devolve on me as a mother, and these duties T must discharge for myself. I want to be a school-mistress, — the mistress of a really good school for girls of gentle birth. But I have not the capital needful for the attainment of my ambition. Possibly fifteen hun- dred pounds would be sufficient, but a smaller sum would be insufficient for my purpose ; and unless you and my unele should think right to befriend me, at this crisis of my life, by lending me so large a sum of money, I fear I shall have to relinquish my scheme, for I know no one but you to whom I could with the faintest show of propriety make an appeal that even to my own judgment appears extravagant. 'Do not think me, dear aunt, so unreasonable as to imagine that you and my uncle may do me so great a PAST AND PRESENT. 15S service, whilst you know nothing of me. At present I only ask you to aiFord me an opportunity of making myself knowm to you, in order that you may judge whether I am worthy of the confidence I ask you to put in me. Whatever you may think of this letter, I beg you, dear Aunt Antoinette, to regard me as ' Your affectionate niece, Clemaine Donaldson.' During her several deliberate re-perusals of this pathetic letter, Antoinette Challoner ob- served that it was none too long for its com- prehensive story, that it displayed in several places the vriter's desire to defend people of whom she wrote from unjust censure, that it was agreeably free from the ordinary com- plaisances of solicitation, that it was animated by a spirit of courageous self-dependence, — that it was the letter of a sincere, conscientious, brave gentlewoman. Seating herself at the writing-table of her morning-room, to which chamber she had carried the letter for re-perusal, Antoinette Challoner wrote the following letter in a clear and flowing hand, without pause of pen from the first to the last line : ' The Laurels, Burnhani Regis, Berkshire. * Dear Child, * You have done well to write fully, and 154 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. your letter is none too long for its purpose ; but its length is a stinging rei)roach to nie. How Avrong I have been to let things drift on, till it was necessary for you in your great grief to write at such great length. ' Thougli you give nie no hint that it may be especially serviceable just now, I venture to ask your acceptance of the enclosed paper. It is sent for you to spend for immediate comfort, not to save for future welfare. Whatever else I may do or leave undone, you may be sure I shall not forget to send you another slip of the same kind before next February. Dismiss all anxieties about ways and means from your mind. About them you shall have no occasion to worry. I thank you, I thank God, that you have written to me. By doing so you have made me your debtor. Do be- lieve, dear child, that during the last twenty years or more, I have often thought tenderly of my little friend Clemaine, and that my heart has never been without a vacant chamber for her to occupy; and now, thank heaven ! you have come to it through your letter, and have taken possession of it. My dear Clemaine, 1 may not delay to assure you that your dear mother blamed herself too much, and spoke far too generously of me. I was more at fault than she. But enough of that wretched business for the present. ' Your plans for the future we will discuss by word of mouth. Thougli 1 admire and sympathize with your self-dependent spirit, I am not sure your scheme is the best that can be devised. Nothing can be settled till we have consulted with your uncle, who is cruising off the African coast. But, if you hold to your plan, yon shall have all that may be required for its execution. PAST AND PRESENT. 155 Your present duty is to be as hopeful and cheerful as possible, for the sake of the little one who will be here in February. • Before your letter came to my hands, I had arranged to run up to London on Wednesday for a week or ten days. Let me know if I may call on you at Raleigh Lodge at three o'clock in the afternoon of next Thursday. I am longing to see you. Dear child, I shall shed many more tears over your letter, and be all the better for shedding them. May heaven keep and bless you ! Make the same prayer, dear Clemaine, for •Your affectionate aunt, 'Antoinette.' Next day, on entering Mrs. Donaldson's par- lour to pay her an early visit, Emmeline Har- ford — a young woman with a piquant face that might with equal justice be called pretty and plain — found Clemaine in tears. ' Clemaine, my darling,' inquired the young woman of equivocal countenance, ' Avliat is the bad newsV I see — a disappointing letter from Aunt Antoinette ? I was afraid she would be selfish and insulting.' * No, no ; she is neither. The news is so much too, too good, that it has upset me.' ' If you are crying for joy, cry away, my friend. Tears of that sort will do you good. And Aunt lf)6 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. Antoinette is the kind aunt of tlie story-books, is she?' ' Don't laugh. Eniniehne ; there's notliing to laugh at.' * So it appears,' rephed Emmehne Harford, -with a renewal of kindly merriment at another flow of tears from Clemaine's eyes. ' Sit down there, and read that letter,' said Clemaine, holding out her aunt's letter towards the friend from whom she had no secrets. ' Sunshine from Berkshire !' remarked Emme- line, when she had read the letter and raised a pair of glistening brown, eyes from the exciting epistle. ' And very pleasant sunshine it is I' 'Now look at the enclosure, the paper to which she refers,' said Clemaine, displaying a crossed cheque for a hundred pounds. * It is a noble present,' Emmeline Harford re- marked, in a graver tone, ' a noble gift, — but I would rather have the letter without the gift, than the gift without the letter.' ''Tis better to have both, — it is too, too good of her!' ' No doubt ; but the letter is worth more than the cheque. The cheque came from a cheque- PAST AND PRESENT. 157 book, but the letter comes straight from a Av^omau's heart.' * They both come from a woman's heart to a woman's heart,' rejoined Clemaine warmly, as she recovered the precious documents and kissed each of them. Springing to her feet excitedly, Emmeline Harford ejaculated : * I must go and tell Fred, before he starts for the city. Of course, I may tell him ? No, I am too late, he is gone,' she added, as she caught the noise from the gate. ' What, more crying V Mistress Emmeline continued, 'Clemaine, you must not go on in that way. You may overdo it even with tears of joy.' Half-a-minute later, Emmeline's emotion over- bore her philosophy. ' As I am not Mrs. Challoner's niece, I have no light to cry over her letter. It w^ould,' said the humorous Emmeline, ' be sheer imperti-. nence for me to make a fuss about it. And yet, — and yet, Clemaine, 1 am more than half- inclined to go on the water with you.' The woman who is more than half-inclined to do anything, seldom goes her way without doing 158 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. it. So Emnieliue's arms came about Clemaine's neck, and for two or three miiintes the two friends were on the water together. ' And now, Mistress Clemaine,' remarked Em- mehne, when she and her friend had returned to dry hind, ' you must do your duty in that position of life . . . and take your breakfast.' ' Then don't run off witli the tea-pot.' ' You may eat that cold egg with your bread- and-butter, but you mayn't drink cold tea. 1 will be quick about it.' As she kept her last word, Emmeline Harford returned from the kitchen-fire in less than due course with a fresh brew of tea for her friend's refreshment, and, when Clemaine had breakfast- ed, she and her companion spent a couple of hours in the leafy garden, that sloped from the southward windows of their home down to the canal, whose barges were now and then visible as they moved noiselessly under the branches of the elms. 159 CHAPTER X. AUNT AND NIECE. Raleigh Lodge was rather a stately place for the common home of two sets of young people, whose combined incomes were less than six himdred a-year. On coming into the hands of Messrs. Mortlake and Pitcher of 34, Regent Street, Raleigh Lodge was declared in the advertisements of these well-known house- agents 'a detached family mansion, standing in its own grounds,' as though it were common for a mansion to stand in some other more or less remote premises. On alighting from her fly at the appointed 3 p.m., and entering the fore court of 12, North Bank Road, Aunt Antoinette Challoner Av^as agreeably impressed by the house that had been for three years the home of a young married couple, who lodged rather above their means : and the aunt was no less favour- inO CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. ably affected by the parlour, of which she was the sole occupant forsoiue three luinutes, before a young woman in mourning-dress entered the room, and, with a fciint indication of surprise, glanced shyly at her visitor. Something taller than middle height, shapely in figure, and of a pleasant countenance — that, without being altogether beautiful, was full of beauty — this gentlewoman was the more agree- able to look upon because, instead of wearing a cumbrous thing of crape with long 'weepers,' she wore on her brown hair a dainty cap of fine white tarlatan. The kind of cap, that has for many a day been the ordinary head-dress of a young widoAv, was unusual half-a-century since. 'You have come from my Aunt Antoinette?' said this young widow, looking shyly and in- quiringly at the caller, who had risen and advanced a step towards her. A smile rose to Antoinette Challoner's coun- tenance as she caught the significance of the timid look of interrogation, and answered it with, ' No, Clemaine, there is no mistake. 1 haven't come from her — I am Aunt Antoinette.' AUNT AND NIECE. 161 ' Of course ; now that I have caught your proj&le, I know it from memory and the silhouette. But you are so young !' 'I don't dye, nor wear false hair, nor use artificial colour, nor " make up " in any repre- hensible way,' said i\unt Challoner gaily. * I am just as I ought to be,' she added, with a girlish simplicity that was alike quaint and naive, as she kissed her niece lightly on her eyelids and lips. ' I know you are everything you ought to be/ returned Clemaine, wdth proper cordiality. ' But you are so young. I expected to find you with grey hair, and and you look no older than myself. You are so marvellously young.' ' You are a perfect flatterer, Clemaine, be- cause you clearly mean what you say. Yes, child, I " wear well," as the homely phrase goes. And I hope you'll find my heart no older than my looks,' said Aunt Challoner, holding out her arras with a slight gesture that was irresistibly inviting. Accepting the invitation, Clemaine leaped into the extended arms. At a later time of the long visit, Clemaine Donaldson introduced her aunt to Luther's VOL. I. M 162 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. studio, and then led her to the upper rooms, to show, with tender pride, to what a perfeot nest she had been taken in her honeymoon. Amongst the ornaments of the chief bed-room, Aunt Antoinette recognised a thing of art (?) that caused her to exclaim merrily : ' Oh, that absurd silhouette ! I remember standing for it so well.' After a brief pause, the original of the full-length portrait in black (touched with gold,) asked, in a peculiar tone of eager and jealous curiosity, 'And has it always been there? I mean, from your first coming to this house V ' Yes, surely, — in what better place could it have been put?' replied Clemaine Donaldson, with a show of perplexity at her aunt's question. Ten seconds later, divining why the question had been put, Clemaine added, ' I do not remember ever having had a bed-room without that sil- houette on one of the walls.' ' 1 am glad of that.' 'It is a small thiog, dear aunt, to be glad about.' ' The small thing shows that you never dis- liked me much.' AUNT AND NIECE. 163 ' Dearest aunt I' Clemaine exclaimed warmly, ' I never disliked you in the least. You may not imagine that I ever thought of you other- wise than affectionately. No one ever said an ill thing of you in my hearing. I never heard anyone speak of you with the exception of my father and mother, and two brothers ; and no one of them was likely to talk unkindly of you to me.' ' That's a comfort to me, and a punishment -also. Dear child, what a goose I must have been when I was a young woman ! What a goose to think your mother was my inferior!' ' 8he was not so good-looking as you, and probably you were much the cleverer.' ' 'Tis of more moment that she surpassed me in generosity.' * She was a good, very good mother. Aunt ■Challoner, and no woman, who is that, can be much less than a good woman. In her later years she was gentler and fairer to others, and more meek-spirited than 1 used to think her in my childhood. Perhaps her troubles sweetened her nature. It comforts me to think that her trials improved her, and that, instead of being M 2 164 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. real misfortunes, they were blessings in disguise/ Changing her tone as she essayed to lead the conversation from topics to which the silhouette had somehow given rise, Clemaine glanced at the half-length portrait over the mantel-piece — a crayon-sketch of a young man with a painter's brushes and pallet in his left hand. ' He was very handsome, Clemaine,' said Antoinette Challoner in reply to the glance, ' and must have been very good.' ' It's when 1 think of his goodness that I suffer most.' ' Of course, — for 'tis then you see most clearly how much you have lost. By-and-by, you'll think of his goodness for the pure happiness of thinking about it.' ' You have such a sweet way of putting the right thought in the fittest words! You are such a delicate comforter !' said the young widow, with the pleading look of a child asking for a caress. When they had descended the stairs, these two women went to the other side of the house, to pay a visit to Emmeline Haiford, who was just then giving her children their early supper of AUiNT AND NIECE. 165 bread and milk, with a slice of cake for a bomie bouche. ' I thought you would give me a look,' re- marked Emmeline, as she took Antoinette Chal- loner's hand, ' and I wanted to thank you for doing Clemaine so much good. Ten days since she was quite another creature, — just the very poorest of poor things.' ' And I owe you thanks,' returned Antoinette Challoner, with a delicate note of contrition in her cordial voice, ' for having been so good to my niece when I was away from her.' ' Pray, Mrs. Challoner, reserve your gratitude for those who are entitled to it. I haven't been the least bit good to Clemaine, and she has not been the least bit good to me. The tie between us is the bond of mutual convenience. We came together from motives of enlightened selfishness, and we are fairly good friends, be- cause each serves the other's purpose. Our concern for each other is limited by economical considerations.' ' Aunt Antoinette,' ejaculated Mistress Cle- maine Donaldson, with needless care to guard her aunt from misconception, ' we have been 166 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. fast friends ever since we used to play together in the Queen's Square garden. She was Eni- meliue Monckton in those days.' * Pretty friends ! sweet playmates !' protested Mrs. Harford. ' We used to quarrel desperately, and more than once fought one another Avith our fists ; and it was always Clemaine's fault that we fought so desperately.' * Fought so desperately !' cried Clemaine, with a degree of animation quite unbecoming the wearer of a widow's cap. ' Now she'll be tell- ing you, Aunt Antoinette, of what she calls our grand battle-royal.' ' Of course I shall. 'Twas when I struck out and gave her a black eye. What a business it was I Next day — I shall never forget it — I was taken in chains round the square to Mrs. Chal- loner's drawing-room to receive judgment.' ' Chains of roses V suggested Antoinette, who evidently thought Mrs. Harford an amusing young woman. 'Chains of circumstance,' replied Emmeline the outrageous. ' " Chains " is only a figure of speech for being led round the square by one's governess. Miss Clipstone had me in charge, AUNT AND NIECE. 167 and held my wrist the whole way. It was enough to frighten the juvenile delinquent, who had been told that it rested with Mrs. Challoner to say Avhether she should be whipped on return- ing from court to prison. When I came before the court — that's another figure of speech — the court took me on her lap, and kissed me, and, after telling me I shouldn't play riotously, sent me off Avith the sweetest little currant-bun con- cei viable, and a note for my mother, saying that I was forgiven.' 'All this about an eye that was scarcely reddened by the blow!' cried Clemaine Donaldson. * So it all ended happily,' continued Emme- line Harford. * 1 was punished with a currant- bun instead of a whipping. I was humihated, and Clemaine recovered from her black eye ; and our mothers were as good friends as ever, — which isn't usual with gentlewomen whose daughters have had a stand-up fight in a public square/ ' How old were you when this happened V inquired Antoinette Challoner, with lively interest. 168 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. * I was nine and Clemaine was eight, but she was a full inch the taller and much the stronger/ *And you can make this confession in the hearing of your own children V asked Antoinette Challoner, as the children roared with delight at the familiar story. * You naughty mamma, to fight Clemaine out o' doors,' cried the senior infant — a laughing girl, cetat. five. * And Clemaine's mamma gave my mamma a currant-bun !' roared the younger infant, Tommy, cetat. four, who was of opinion that the interest of the exciting story culminated in the substi- tution of a ' goodie ' for a chastisement. Having brought themselves into prominence by these judicious comments on their mamma's narrative, Emmeline Harford's children received kisses from Antoinette Challoner, who was still caressing the chubby infants, when the one female servant of the ' mansion standing in its own grounds ' entered the room and spoke words to Mrs. Donaldson. * It's Dr. Cartwright,' said the last-named lady. * Come and see our dear doctor. Aunt Antoinette. You'll be sure to hke him.' AUNT AND NIECE. 169 *It\s Dr. Cartwriglit ! I'll go and see the dear doctor,' cried each of the infants. 'Indeed, my dear young people,' Emmeline Harford remarked quickly, and in a tone of high maternal authority, ' you'll do no sucli thing. You run oftener than you ought into Clemaine's parlour when she is alone. If the doctor wishes to see you, he'll send for you.' Returning with Clemaine to her parlour, Antoinette made the acquaintance of Arthur Cartwright, M.D., of Welbeck Street, Cavendish Square ; a tall and comely gentleman, who wore the signs of middle age in his fine profile, and in the thickly-haired brows of his penetrating, but singularly agreeable eyes. A person of a cheery countenance and almost stately presence, he afforded, in his bearing and address, a good example of the manner that distinguishes the elite of the medical profession from the leaders of the other liberal professions. Not that he belonged to ' the elite of the faculty ' in the narrowest sense of the term. Neither a mem- ber of the London College of Physicians, though he was an Edinburgh doctor of medicine, nor a *pure surgeon,' though he was a member of the 170 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. college of Lincoln's Inn FieldR, Dr. Cartwright was a * family doctor,' wlio made in general practice a greater income than most fairly successful physicians of the higher grade of the faculty. On coming into the room, where he was waiting for her niece, Antoinette Challoner saw, almost at a glance, that this * general practitioner' was a man of the world and of society. By the subtle freemasonry of their order gentle people are quick to recognize per- sons of their own social kind. Antoinette's instinct did not betray her on the present occa- sion. For, though he was only their * family doctor,' Arthur Cartwright, of Welbeck Street, enjoyed the friendly regard of some of the brightest and most fastidious ' queens of society.' ' Pardon me,' said Dr. Cartwright, addressing both ladies as they approached him, * if 1 have called at the wrong moment.' Bowing slightly to Antoinette Challoner, the doctor added, in an explanatory tone : ' Mrs. Donaldson is good enough to let me run in upon her whenever I pass the corner of North Bank Road.' ' Observe, Aunt Challoner,' remarked Cle- maine, ' that Dr. Cartwright calls on me onli; AUNT AND NIECE. 171 when he happens to be passing. When I was so ill that he paid a second visit day after day, he always happened to be passing. 'Tis his pretty way of pretending that I give him no trouble.' 'Clemaine has told me how kind you have been to her. Had I been a man I would have been a doctor I' said Antoinette Challoner, who resembled a large proportion of her sex in taking a romantic view of medicine and its folloAvers. ' No other profession affords so many oppor- tunities for being unobtrusively benevolent.' ' No profession, Mrs. Challoner,' returned Dr. Cartwright, ' is more apt to make a naturally vain man unendurably conceited. Because she allows me the pleasure of taking a sort of paternal interest in her health, your niece thinks of me, and sometimes even speaks to me, as though I were a prodigy of beneficence.' It was not till she heard them talking to- gether, as though they Avere old acquaintances, that Clemaine silently charged herself with having forgotten to introduce the doctor to her aunt. ' Don't you think the change of a trip to Berk- 172 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS shire would be good for my nieee V inquired Mrs. Geoffrey Challouer, at a later point of her first interview with Dr. Cartwright. ' She doesn't need any change of air,' Dr. Cartwright answered, glancing as he spoke at Clemaine, to learn from her face how she re- garded her aunt's suggestion ; ' but change of scene might be beneficial to her, if she could take it quietly.* ' We should be very quiet. I have a large garden in which she could pass the time by her- self, and I should take her for dail}^ drives in the lanes about Burnham Regis. Of course I should invite no one to the house, and she need not be troubled with introductions to my callers.' ' Such a visit would be good for her ; but . . .' ' Oh, of course,' Antoinette Challoner put in quickly, 'it would be only for a short time, as the Harfords are so soon going to Calcutta.' ' You are a good thought-reader, Mrs. Chal- loner,' remarked Dr. Cartwright, with a smile. * How did you discover all the force of my " but " so quickly?' ' It was so natural a thought for me to have. Your " but " did not put it in my mind.' AUNT AND NIECE. 173 ' A very natural thoiight for one who is in the habit of thinking for others,' said the doctor, observing how little was enough to make a blush flit across Mrs. Challoncr's face. ' The atmosphere of this house is bad for me,' Antoinette Challoner remarked gaily ; * it is sm'charged with Hattery. Clemaine began by complimenting me on the youthfulness of my appearance, and now you are teaching me to think myself a very amiable woman.' ' And isn't she wonderfully young-looking for her years?' Clemaine Donaldson inquired, with much animation. ' It is impossible for me to say,' answered the medical authority, ' as I don't know Mrs. Chal- loner's age. It will be time enough for me to ask Mrs. Challoner to tell me her age when she has made me her medical adviser: and even then I should not venture to put so dehcate a question, without due consideration of the need for putting it.' ' How old do you think her V ' Well, if 1 may construe Mrs. Challoner's silence as consent to your inquiry, I should say — yes, I should say that you and your aunt are 174 CUTTING FOR PARTxXKRS. about the same age. She may, perhaps, he something older; for I know a few huhes who look no older than you, though they are over forty. I am just now attending a lady who is forty-eight, and yet might be mistaken even in such a light as this for no more than thirty. Cases of singular youthfulness of appearance are less remarkable to doctors than to other people.' ' I like to be told I look young,' said Antoi- nette Challoner, with naive simplicity, ' for my husband's sake. I don't care how old I look to other people.' * What is your exact age, aunt V ' Forty-eight. I was forty-eight only a few weeks since. I did not keep my last birthday, because Geoffrey was at sea.' ' Now, Dr. Cart Wright,' urged Clemaine Don- aldson, 'isn't it a wonderful case ?' * It is certainly an unusual case,' assented the doctor, scrutinizing the gentle face of the sub- ject under examination. ' You will pardon me, Mrs. Challoner, for examining you so closely ?' * Pray, scrutinize me,' returned Antoinette Challoner, with an air of placid amusement. ' If AUXT AND NIECE. 175 I were a horse, I should ask whether you would like to look at my teeth.' 'I have examined them already,' said the medical expert, ' and, besides being beautifully white, they are remarkably short and regular for a person of your age. I am venturing to examine your eyebrows. Of course, you now and then use tweezers to them V ' Bless me ! no,' ejaculated Antoinette Chal- loner. ' Why should I ? The hair on them is none too thick.' ' Then, do excuse me,' said Dr. Cartwright, taking from one of his waistcoat-pockets a small magnifying-glass. * You see you lead me on from one hberty to another. May I use this glass? This is unusual,' remarked the doctor, with a note of enthusiasm in his voice, when he had used the glass for half-a-minute. ' Your eyebrows have not one of the tell-tale hairs.' ' I knew it was an extraordinary case !' Mrs. Donaldson put in triumphantly. 'And you don't seem to have a grey hair on. your head.' * Though I never use tweezers. And now is the examination over?' * Accept my apologies, Mrs. Challoner, for — ' 17(5 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. '■ For doing what Clemaine asked aud I allowed you to do.' Five minutes later, when Dr. Cartwright had taken his departure, Antoinette Challoner re- marked to her niece, ' I like your doctor, Clemaine. If 1 am ever ill when I am in London, I shall send for him.' 177 CHAPTER XL FEELING AND CONDUCT. Dr. Cartwright having decided that a trip to Berkshire would be beneficial to his patient, the young widow journeyed from London to Burnham Regis by one of the several stage-coaches that passed daily through that long and tortuous village to the music of a guard's horn. Alighting from her coach on the first day of October, she was her aunt's guest for an entire fortnight, spending the days chiefly in the open air. It was a pleasant fort- night for both women, whose mutual regard changed in so short a time from sympathetic congeniality to strong aff'ection. But earthly happiness is usually touched with sadness. There were moments when Clemaine charged herself with heartlessness in finding life so VOL. I. N 1 78 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. enjoyable, when her husband had been so few- months in the grave. And the more she de- lighted in her niece, the more often was Antoinette Challoner troubled by compunction for having done her kinswoman a grievous wrong. In her contrition for having caused dissension in her husband's family, the woman of a warm heart and tender conscience resolved to do her utmost to restore Clemaine to her proper place in her uncle's affection. Together with the desire, there gi-ew in Antoinette Challoner's breast a distrust of her ability to render Clemaine Donaldson this im- portant service, — the service demanded of her by justice, — the service that would only undo a part of the mischief that had resulted from the outbreak of passionate feeling, of which she was guilty so many years since in Queen's Square. She had no fear that Geoffrey Challoner would disapprove her action in assuring Clemaine that she should have from her uncle all needful aid for the accomplishment of her design ; for she remembered how he had declared that, should Dorothy Challoner or her children over apply to him for material aid, he would help them with a FEELING AND CONDUCT. 179 liberal hand. And he was no man to forget the purpose, so deliberately expressed, or to withdraw from it. Antoinette Challoner also remembered the stern voice and hard words with which he at the same time declared that his munificence to Lemuel Challoner's widow and children would be attended with no mitiga- tion of resentment against the woman who had robbed him of his only brother. Antoinette Challoner desu-ed that her husband should do more for his niece than help her with money. Her strong desire and far from strong hope were that he should take Clemaine to his heart, — should on his return from sea take her and her child to live with him under his own roof, or at least near his own walls and under his immediate personal protection. Now that Dorothy Challoner was dead, would the man, who felt so deeply and steadily, be capable of loving Clemaine as he would have loved her, had she not been personally associated with the incidents that had resulted in the supreme son'ow of his existence? That he would be just and munificent with his purse to the near kinswoman, who in her tender childhood had of n2 180 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. course been wholly guiltless in respect to her mother's offence, Antoinette Challoner was con- fident. But Antoinette's heart misgave her when she asked herself, whether the man, so steady in his few enmities and many friend- ships, — the man, whose affections (as he had so impressively told her) were not under his con- trol, but, on the contrary, dominated his will, — would be able to regard Dorothy Challoner's daughter with love, in no degree troubled or discoloured by his deep dislike of her mother, — the mother who was no more. A fooHsh woman, or merely common-place woman, would have imagined herself competent to settle this difKcult question by an overbearing expression of her own wish and resolve, — by ordering her husband to love his niece heartily, because he oiiglit to love her. Antoinette Challoner was far too clever and sympathetic a woman to be capable of such a mistake. Aware that in every righteous way her husband would act in accordance with any strong expression she might make of her desire, she was no less aware that she could not change his feelings by a command, however FEELING AND CONDUCT. 181 cleverly it might be draped and tricked with terms of persuasion and phrases of entreaty. The sympathetic woman, whose conduct was so often determined by feelings too powerful for her self-control, and whose feelings had always received the largest measure of consideration, needed no monitor to inform her that her hus- band's deepest feelings were entitled to similar respect. The question, which just now occa- sioned her so much uneasiness, related to feeling rather than conduct, — to certain fine sensibilities and subtle forces of her husband's nature, that were wholly outside the domain of her wifely authority, and barely within the field of her womanly influence. Unless Geoffrey Challoner could care for his niece so as to be capable of enjoying her society, Antoinette's judgment assured her it would be better that she should forego her strong desire, and that Clemaine, pursuing a self-dependent course, should make a home and career for herself at a distance from her uncle. Could he thus care for Dorothy Challouer's daughter ? It was for him, and no one else, to answer the question. His wife could only influence him in the matter by writ- 182 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. ing to him of Clemaiue Donaldson, so as to offer her in tlie most favourable light to his compas- sion and judgment. Clemaine was still enjoying the quietude of the Laurels, and her daily drives in the leafy lanes of Berkshire, when Antoinette Challoner wrote to her husband a comprehensive narrative of her recent intercourse with his brother's daughter and only surviving child. Comprising exact copies of the letter in which Clemaine had applied to them for help, and of the answer made to the pathetic solicitation, the narrative displayed with equal skill and kindliness all the many particulars which the writer had learned respecting Dorothy Challoner's closing years, and her daughter's career from the hour of her father's death. Speaking of Clemaine with affec- tionate admiration, and showing the grounds for her high opinion of the young widow, the writer of the narrative dealt witli Dorothy Challoner's story in a way that was most likely to soften Geoffrey to the memory of his sister- in-law. Captain Challoner's reply to this lengthy epistle did not come to Antoinette's hands till the middle of January, when circumstances had FEELING AND CONDUCT. 183 greatly changed Mrs. Challoner's view of her near future. Clemaine Donaldson had scarcely returned to North Bank Road, the braver in heart and the richer in womanly fortitude for her brief so- journ at Burnham Regis, Avhen Antoinette Challoner passed suddenly from the spiritual elation that had possessed her for several months, to a condition of anxious incertitude that seemed likely to close in yet another visit- ation of despondency. In her anxiety she hastened to London and consulted Dr. Cart- wright, whom she enjoined to keep her arrival at a Jermyn Street lodging-house from the knowledge of their friends at Raleigh Lodge. Living in seclusion, Mrs. Challoner remained in Jermyn Street for an entire week, during which time she was visited daily by the Welbeck Street doctor, to whom she felt she could safely confide all the particulars of her equally delicate and pitiful case. A safer confidant and more judicious adviser Antoinette could not have found in the medical profession ; and, though his clear and unhesitating verdict on the main questions of her case extinguished for ever her 184 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. long-cherished hope of eventually becoming a mother, the patient retm*ned to Berkshire with a sentiment of gratitude for the physician's candour. 'Would that I had consulted so wise and honest a physician as you at the outset of my long trouble,' the poor lady remarked with thankfulness to the honest physician, that was touched with asperity towards an earlier adviser. ' Had Dr. Goodeve spoken to me as you have spoken, I should have fought my grief and con- quered it, and should have escaped all the misery — the untold and unutterable misery — that has come to me from the delusive hope with which he inspired me. I wonder if poor Mary Tudor was trifled with and cruelly misled by some Dr. Goodeve of the sixteenth century?' ' You may not be too severe on Dr. Goodeve, my dear Mrs. Challoner,' replied ' the dear doctor ' of Raleigh Lodge, ' you should be just to him, though he is no longer in this world to suffer from your bad opinion of him. Though he was a fine physician, he may have been mistaken about your rather obscure case. And, if he misled you wilfully, he may have done so from a good motive.' FEELING AND CONDUCT. 185 ' How could he liavo had a good motive for deceiving me, it" he misled me wilfully?' ' He may,' Dr. Cartwright answered, with im- pressive seriousness, ''have thought it better for your mental health that you should be buoyed up by a delusive hope, than be altogether hope- less. You see, you are a highly nervous and sensitive woman. Your way of blushing some- times for just nothing at all, and the peculiarity of your pulse, show how highly strung and dangerously fine your nerves are. Twenty years since Dr. Goodeve may well have ques- tioned whether you could endure utter hopeless- ness, and have shrunk from the responsibility of telling you a truth that might wreck your reason. It was neither easy nor pleasant for me to be cruel onl}^ to be kind.' * You were not at all cruel, and you were very kind/ Antoinette Challoner ejaculated, with vehement tenderness, ' oh ! so very kind I Why is the tongue so weak to declare the heart's gratitude V ' The tongue mny be weak, but manner and conduct are strong. You must show your gratitude to me, my dear Mrs. Challoner, by 186 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. bearing your fate bravely, so that I may have no reason to regret what you are pleased to call my honesty.' ' Don't fear for me, dear doctor. My heart Avill not break, nor my brain run riot, because I know my fate. There is comfort in knowing the worst. I shall cry it all out over the red and yellow leaves in Berkshire. It will go sadly with me for a few weeks ; but, when the latest leaves have fallen, I shall come up to town with a smihng face, and shall hope to see you often at Raleigh Lodge.' ' Yes, you may not go there with a sad face. For your niece's sake — for the sake of her hope — you must bo brave, and extort contentment from your hard lot.' * How fortunate for me,' remarked Antoinette, ' that I resisted my disposition to tell Clemaine that we were both animated by the same hope. I was so very near making the vain confession to her when she was in Berkshire.' Knowing how keenly desirous he was of off- spring, and how he was nursing in his breast the delusive hope that had perished for ever from her own heart, and bow acutely he would FEELTNG AND CONDUCT. 187 suffer from the disappointment of an expecta- tion which she had fostered, it is not wonder- ful that Antoinette was reluctant to inflict on her husband such anguish as had come to her, and that she determined to leave him for a while in the enjoyment of the fond imagination, till she should have received his answer to her letter about Clemaine, and should see her path more clearly by the light of w^hat would happen in Februaiy at Raleigh Lodge. Should he be capable of loving Clemaine as daughter rather than niece, he might rejoice at what would happen there some three months hence, — might rejoice at an event that would be an imperfect,. but considerable, compensation for the disap- pointment of a nearer and dearer hope. Some three months hence ! AVho of us knows ^vhat will happen three months hence V Geoffrey Challoner's reply to Antoinette's lengthy narrative was what she feared it would be. Speaking compassionately of his niece's misfortunes, and admiringly of the spirit of her letter, the captain of H.M.S. Trouhridge declared his cordial approval of all that Antoinette had done for the consolation and encouragement of the young w^idow. 188 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. ' Years since I told you that neither Dorothy Challoner nor her children/ ho -wrote to his wife, * should ever apply to nie for help, and find me indisposed to assist them. In bidding Mrs. Donaldson dismiss all anxiety about pecuniary ways and means, and promising her the money needful for her enterprise, you liave done no more than I should have done, had her letter been addressed to and opened by me. You are right in thinking that her purpose will require a much larger sum than she imagines. She will need at least three thousand pounds, and pro- bably more : for she should be the mistress of a really good school. She should lay her plans deliberately, and avoid precipitancy in their execution. She should, I think, defer action till a year shall have passed after the birth of her child; and of course we must provide liberally for her comfort, till she is in a position to provide for herself. Perhaps Bath would be the best place for her establishment. It is a great city for girls' schools ; and, as I was her friend for many years before I acted as her executor, I know precisely the degree in which Admiral Pierson's widow prospered as a Bath FEELING AND CONDUCT. 189 schoolmistress. After educating her several children and estabHshing them honourably in life, Mrs. Pierson left them something more than thirty thousand pounds at her death. With our help Mrs. Donaldson might be no less pros- perous in the same city. Some of your old Somerset friends might bo moved to send her pupils, whose birth and quality would at once make her school fashionable. Anyhow, at Bath she would have the largest measure of advan- tage, from your sanction and my approval of her enterprise. ' Of course, dearest Netta,' the writer con- tinued, ' 1 at once saw the force of your sugges- tion that I might think right to ofler Mrs. Donaldson "another way of taking life," It was like you, my dear wife, ever considerate for the feelings of others and at all times so deli- cately thoughtful for my sensibilities, to say no more in recommendation of the " other way of taking life." There was no need for you to say even so little, in order to show me that you would like the young widow and her child to be members of our household. For imj sake, my darhng, you must relinquish your generous 190 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. project. My knowledge of my oavh defects for- bids me to assent to your desire. It will be better for her, far better for me^ that Mrs. Don- aldson should live in independence of us, and at some distance from us. Were she to live with us, or under our immediate personal protection, I should always think of her as Dorothy Fisher s daughter rather than as my dear brother's daughter, and should even think of her child as Dorothy Fisher's descendant rather than dear Lemuel's grandchild. Keep us apart, spare me the disquiet that would result from personal association, and I shall think of her as my brother's daughter rather than her mother's daughter. Compassionate me for being so illogically implacable. I do not try to justify my feeling towards the innocent offspring of the woman who did me grievous wrong. I am not master of my feelings, but it lies within my power to act with justice and humanity to my brother's child. I will aid her, correspond with her, sometimes visit her, and from time to time receive her as my guest. More you will not re- quire. I enclose a few words for her.' The few words ran thus : FEELING AND CONDUCT. 191 ' H.M.S. Tronhrichje : off Sierra Leone. ' My Dear Niece, ' I have been deeply moved by all that your aunt has written to me about your troubles. It is in her nature to think too highly of those whom she likes ; but the spirit and tone of your womanly letter to her satisfy me that she is justified in regard- ing you with affectionate admiration. 1 join with her in thanking you for applying to us for the assistance to which you are entitled, and concur heartily in everything she has said for your encouragement. Your scheme for establishing yourself in life has my unqualified approval, and be assured that everything we can do for its success shall be done cordially and thoroughly by your father's brother. Be of good cheer, and may heaven protect you. ' Your affectionate uncle. ' Geoffrey Challoner.' * You may not think him cold and hard,' pleaded Antoinette Challoner, when Clemaine raised a pair of brimming eyes from this brief note. ' Cold ? hard ? Dear aunt,' ejaculated the niece, 'I am moved to my heart's deepest depths by his kindness. It is sucli a relief to me that my scheme has his approval — his un- qualified approval. I had a fear, and so much reason for fearing, that he would not like my 192 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. plan, — would think it too openly self-dependent. What a dear, good uncle he is !' And, in her delight at ' the unqualified approval,' Clemaine raised the note to her lips, and kissed the dear, good uncle's signature. As she regarded thus thankfully the few words written to her by the uncle who would care for her but could not love her, it may be imagined that Clemaine Donaldson's brimming eyes over- flowed with tears of gratitude at the carefully selected passages, which Antoinette Challoner read to her from the lengthy epistle that had been the envelope of the brief note from Sierra Leone. By this time, six weeks had elapsed since Mrs. Challoner kept her promise to Dr. Cart- wright by coming to town with a happy face, and again settled herself in the Jermyn Street lodging-house which for seven years had been the usual resting-place of Geoffrey and Antoin- ette Challoner, when they visited London. An establishment of superfine gentihty, whose street-door was opened by a superannuated butler, this lodging-house belonged to the severely respectable Mrs. Pottenger, widow of FEELING AND CONDUCT. 193 Samuel Pottenger, Esq., whilom of the Stock Exchange, London, whose operations in divers of the more delicate and perilous securities had brought him to financial distress, and even tar- nished his professional honour, before he closed an equalty enterprising and ingenious career with a brandy-bottle. A smile never failed to brighten Mrs. Pottenger's mournful visage, when the superannuated butler handed her a letter from Burnham Regis ; for of all the other ladies who from time to time slept on her superlative feather-beds, and rested by day on her chintz- covered sofas, no one was so acceptable to the lodging-house keeper as Mrs. Challoner ; no one wrote letters so expressive (as Mrs. Pottenger often remarked to her next-door neighbour and professional confidante, Mrs. Clipstone,) of 'the respect due to a gentlewoman in adversit}'.' Whilst the other ladies wrote their desires and requests in the third person, ' ever yours sin- cerely, Antoinette Challoner,' always opened her notes with, ' Dear Mrs. Pottenger.' Whilst the gentlewomen, who desired and requested in the third person, were exacting on points touching the size and furniture of their rooms, Mrs. VOL. I. 194 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. Challoner only asked for quarters of any kind in the house where she could ' imagine herself at home/ After her first sojourn at 42, Jermyn Street, Mrs. Challoner never came to it straight from Berkshire without a present of fruit or flowers for the widow of Samuel Pottenger, Esq. ' These are a sample of my Berkshire roses,' Antoinette remarked on one occasion to her professional entertainer, 'and you will allow they are beauties, though your gardener at Clapham may have produced better,' — an allu- sion to the garden of Mrs. Pottenger's better days, that was peculiarly gratifying to 'the gentlewoman in adversity.' The roses were still things of beauty, when Mrs. Pottenger remarked to her congenial next- door-neighbour, ' Mrs. Challoner of Burnham Regis never for- gets that a gentlewoman remains a gentle- woman, though necessity compels her to let furnished apartments. Of all the ladies to whom I have mentioned the style in which I used to live before the late Mr. P.'s reverses, Mrs. Chal- loner is the only one who seems to remember FEELING AND CONDUCT. 195 what I was. And she is so perfectly the lad}^, when one seeks to ascertain her wishes about dinner, and so forth ! It's impossible to do less than one's best for a client, who leaves every- thing to one's own discretion.' Perhaps Antoinette Challoner's civiHties would have been less gratifying to Mrs. Pottenger, had the latter known how Mrs. Challoner sympa- thized with all persons, whatever their for- tunes and misfortunes, who came under her observation. o2 196 CHAPTER XII. WORK THE COMFORTER. The process of ' crying it all out over the red and yellow leaves in Berkshire ' would have been more fruitful of tears, and in other ways more afflicting to the mourner, had she not found employment for her mind and body in preparing for her withdrawal from Burnham Regis. With the assistance of her willing- maids, Antoinette Challoner packed the books and papers of her husband's library and her own morning-room into the series of boxes which Jack Bailing, the carpenter and cheer- master of Burnham Regis, constructed in obedi- ence to her directions, — a spell of work that caused Mr. Balling to remark in the bosom of his family, ' Trust Madam Challoner to give everything WORK THE COMFORTER. 197 she can to Burnham Regis work-people ! She is not the sort of madam to send work and money out of the parish, when there are people in the parish competent to do the work and earn the money.' After putting away the books and papers, Antoinette Challoner threw herself into the cleanlier labour of putting her stores of raiment and household linen into another series of weather-proof cases. Moreover, whilst Hebecca the crusty, and Polly the round-eyed, and Fanny the audacious, did the rougher part of this homely labour, their mistress fell to work on making two inventories of her household effects, — inventory A. of such articles of furniture as should be moved to the suitable house for which she would soon be looking in suitable neighbourhoods ; and inventory B. of such sticks and stuff as should be sold by auction, if Mr. Anderson should decline to take them at a valuation. There Avas a,lso much hard labour in shifting furniture from room to room, so as to prevent confusion of the two sets of inventoried goods and chattels, — labour of which Mrs. Challoner persisted in taking a full share, not- 198 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. withstanding tlie audaciouR Fanny's protest against so strange an abuse of her mistress's strength and energy. 'Indeed, m'm, you just shouldn't tire your- self in that way,' urged Fanny the audaciouSy in the absence of Rebecca and Polly. ' Such work isn't fit for you, m'm; and why should you do it, when your own three maids (to say nothing of the men from the garden) could do all the lifting and pulling about, if you'd only sit still and give your orders ? You'll be making yourself ill, m'm, if you go on as you are doing.' '1 work, child,' Antoinette Challoner replied, with equal fervour and sadness, ' because I want the comfort of work. I am ill — ill at heart. How should 1 be happy, with my husband so far away ? And work is a sweet comforter to a sorrowful woman. What a merciful God to punish us with no heavier punishment than such a blessing as the need to v/ork hard. Think of that, Fanny, if you are ever inclined to murmur at having to toil for your living, and earn it with the sweat of your brow.' ' I shouldn't care, m'm, how hard I worked, if WORK THE COMFORTER. 199 the work would make me only a quarter as good as you are,' responded Fanny, with emotion, that was qualified with alarm at her mistress's sorrowful earnestness. ' So you think me a good woman,' rejoined Antoinette Challoner, with a smile mitigating the melancholy of her gentle countenance * Well, you may think so, if you like ; for it won't do you harm to think me better than I am. But you mayn't say so again.' In the evening, when her admiration of her mistress's wonderful goodness had been suc- ceeded by a boastful desire to stagger her fellow-servants with another demonstration of her intimacy with ' the missis,' Fanny remarked to Rebecca and Polly, as they sat together at supper, * Ah, me ! the poor dear missis is beginning to fret for the master. I know'd how it would be. I know'd that cheerfulness of hers was nothing more than make-believe, and that sooner or later she'd be breaking down. And now the poor dear is breaking down as I know'd she would, and is fretting her dear heart into fiddlestrings. Yes, Rebecca, you may take my 200 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. word for it that, after all, missises and servants are made of the same flesh and blood, and feel much the same, though missises that are ladies born, like my missis, have too much pride to let theirselves fall into the 'sterics.' *'Spose you want me and Polly to believe that the missis has been telling you she's a- fretting?' answered the crusty and short-spoken Rebecca. ' If you don't care to hear what missis said to me this very afternoon, as we two sat to- gether and talked confidential, I can hold my tongue.' ' You'd better hold it hard and tight, if you want to be gossiping about the missis. I'm in no humour for any of your impidence to-night. I had rather hear Polly speak a word.' 'I don't see that Fanny has any cause to boast of having worrited the missis a'most to tears, which I heard her doing with my own ears,' said the round-eyed Polly, with pugnacious severity, ' ay, with my own ears, as the door of the morning-room was wide open, and I was sorting linen at the table in the passage, when she fancied I was downstairs. Yes, cook, I WORK THE COMFORTER. 201 heard Fanny go at the missis, a'most to the point of scolding her, for working too hard with us servants, — just as if it wasn't for the missis to know what is best for her, and to work as much and as httle as she pleases. And so she went on at missis, till in order to make her hold her peace, the missis said she wasn't happy, and had took to working in order to get away from her misery. And that's the long and the short of what passed 'twixt missis and Fanny, as they "two sat together and talked confidential." If I had worrited the missis in that fashion, and squeezed (so to speak) the very heart out of her, I should at least have had the decency to keep quiet about the matter, instead of talking of what had passed when I and missis " sat to- gether and talked confidential." But then I €an't imagine myself a-worriting my missis in such an impideut and barbarous manner ; for, though I was born and bred to servitude, I come of honest parents (thank the Lord !) who paid the extra tuppence for me when I was young, and trained me to order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters, in accordance with the words of the sacred catechism, amen.' 202 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. "^ There, you've said enough,' remarked the sliort-spoken Rebecca. ' You are only wasting breath in trying to teach manners to Fanny. You'd better be putting away the plates, Polly, while I make things straight for the night.' ' And I'll go off to mij missis,' remarked Fanny, as she retired with exasperating serenity from her uncongenial fellow-servants. * Good- night, Rebecca,' said the audacious parlour-maid, making a low courtesy at the kitchen-door, ' and wishing that you may get up to-moiTow morning in a better temper. As for you, Polly,' added the self-complacent young woman, after vindicating her manners with an even more profound gesture of reverence to the house- maid, ' don't trouble yourself with thinking that I shall tell my missis how you played the eaves- dropper on our confidential talk. But, indeed, mj' dear, you should cure yourself of that bad habit of prying and hstening at doors ajar, which is wholly unbecoming a young woman on whose manners so much care and money were spent by her affectionate parents.' Had she not discerned in Polly's bright eyes and flushing face a disposition to use the supper- WORK THE COMFORTER. 203 plates as instruments of war, Fanny avouIcI have continued to indulge her satiric genius. Taking a more prudent course, the sarcastic parlour- maid went off to her mistress without provoking the offspring of honest parents to commit a breach of the peace. 'Well,' ejaculated Polly, when her enemy had gone out of view and earshot, ' I do pity the poor young man who has promised to take that sauce-box for better and worse at the turn of the year.' ' She'll honour him with a vengeance,' re- marked Rebecca, with the bitterness of a woman who had made several unsuccessful attempts to establish herself in matrimony. ' Yes, she'll honour him sweetly, — first with her tongue, and then Avith her fingers ! For she can be that violent, when her hair has been combed the wrong way. And he, too, the smartest and risingest young tradesman in the whole street ! I can't help a-pitying him.' ' 'Twill serve him right, for being caught by fine airs and a pretty face.' After perfecting her domestic an'angements for withdrawing from the Laurels, Antoinette 204 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. Challoner, Avhose spirits rose under the salutary influeuce of the work into which she had thrown herself so vehemently, made farewell calls on her Berkshire friends, — leaving P.P.C. cards on those whom she failed to find at home, and ex- plaining to the others that she should pass a few months in London before settling down in some neighbourhood within an easy drive from the great town. She was still making these vale- dictory visits when Mr. Anderson appeared at the Laurels, in consequence of a note he had received from the tenant of his Berkshire house. As ^Irs. Challoner wished to leave Burnham Regis something sooner than the expiration of Captain Chall oner's lease, the rich Australian would be only too happy to take the estate off her hands. Li other particulars, the landlord was ready to act in accordance with Mrs. Chal- loner's wishes. Agreeing to buy whatever furniture she had determined to offer him at a valuer's appraisement, he took into his service the whole of his out-going tenant's staff of ser- vants, with the exception of the parlour-maid, whose pretty face and stylish airs had enthralled the smartest young tradesman of the parish. WORK THE COMFORTER. 205 Moreover, whilst consenting to do everything that she could reasonably require of him, Mr. Anderson, in his delight at getting immediate possession of the Laurels, and in his chivalric disposition to please so pleasing a gentlewoman, promised to take good care of Mrs. Challoner's pony, toy-dogs, cats, caged birds, choice poultry and other pets, until it should be convenient to her to remove them from Burnham Regis. Had Geoffrey Challoner been in England, it is con- ceivable that his wife's withdrawal from Berk- shire would have been attended with a larger measure of personal inconvenience to herself. In the execution of affairs of business, capable and charming women are sometimes more liindered than helped by the presence and co- operation of their husbands. 206 (CHAPTER XIII. HOPE AND FEAR. Quit of all responsibility for the Laurels when she shpped quietly away from Burnhani Regis, Antoinette Challoner had rested for no long penod in her familiar quarters under Mrs. Pottenger's roof, when she made herself an- swerable for the rent, rates, and taxes of Raleigh Lodge, North Bank Road, Regent's Park. When the Harfords and Donaldsons agreed to share the same villa, Raleigh Lodge was hired of its owner by Frederick Harford, soon after he encountered the financial reverses that made him ^lad to occupy a subordinate position in the house of Boldero and Clarkson, King's Street, Cheapside, for the sake of a salary that was little more than adequate to his manner of living in the north-western suburb. A typical HOPE AND FEAR. 207 gentleman (emphatically 'a gentleman') with something to do in the city, Emmeline Harford's husband had been cheered during his period of adversity by a conviction that his rich uncle, Peter Boldero of London and Calcutta, would in due course and at his own time offer more lucrative employment to a nephew, whose com- mercial misfortunes had in no way tarnished his honour or affected the stainless reputation of the Bolderos. And Frederick Harford^s confi- dence in his uncle's beneficence was justified by the event. After testing his young kins- man's capacity and rectitude, Peter Boldero determined to establish him in Calcutta, as the representative and junior partner of the great firm of Boldero and Clarkson. Before Clemaine's prospect was brightened by her aunt's sympathy and assistance, the Harfords had resolved that on their departure from England they would give the young widow their share of the furniture of Raleigh Villa, and ofier to leave their children under her custody on terms that would afford her the means of subsistence. But Antoinette Chal- loner's action had so far changed their friend's 208 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. position, that they liesitated from motives of delicacy to make either the gift or the proposal. Before the close of December, when it had been finally settled at King's Street, Cheapside, that they should sail from the Thames for Calcutta in the course of next March, Frederick and Emmeline Harford decided to confide their infants to a near relation at Hampstead, and to be silent about their project for endowing Cle- maine with their household goods and chattels. At the same time, the Harfords dismissed the design of pre-paying the rent for the remainder of their tenure of the villa. As Mrs. Challoner wished to take Ealeigh Lodge off their hands, for her own and her niece's home from March till Michaelmas, Mr. Harford could only consent to the lady's desire. Passing her nights in Jermyn Street, Antoin- ette Challoner spent the greater part of her days, between the middle of December and the last week of February, at the villa in the vicinity of the Regent's Park. Regarding the Harfords with a friendhness that, under favourable con- ditions, would have deepened to affectionate attachment, the sympathetic woman daily be- HOPE AND FEAR. 209 came more and more sensible of her niece's generous endowments, and at the same time more strongly fascinated by her voice and address. Understanding one another from the first horn- of their reunion, the aunt and niece were singularly congenial in taste, temper, and intellectual disposition. Delighting thus vividly in the woman whom she charged herself with having grievously injured, Antoinette Chal- loner was acutely troubled by her husband's unrelenting attitude to the niece, who was so deserving of his afiection. But, after her one impulsive entreaty that Clemaine would not ' think him hard and cold,' the loyal wife gave no expression to her regret for his want of w^armth towards Dorothy Ghalloner's child. On the contrary, accommodating herself to the humour of the young woman, who was so pathetically grateful for her uncle's cold bene- ficence and bare justice, Antoinette Challoner, alike in the presence and absence of the Har- fords, spoke with apparent satisfaction of her husband's unqualified approval of Clemaine Donaldson's scheme for a career of self-sustain- ing industry. It was impossible for the sympa- VOL. I. P 210 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. thetic and considerate aunt to hint her secret distaste for the project, which was so agree- able to Clemaine that her face brightened with gratification whenever it was alhided to in her hearing. The first weeks of February had come and gone, when Clemaine, falling suddenly from her usual state of serene hopefulness to a melancholy inood, remarked to Antoinette, ' But all these pleasant plans for my future contentment may end in nothing. Heaven only knows what may happen in a few days.' * Whatever may happen, we shall be in God's hands,' rejoined Antoinette, touched by the tender sadness of her companion's voice and countenance. ' To feel that, to know it — is so comforting. Last night, dear aunt Antoinette, when I roused myself from a painful dream, and felt the tears on my cheeks, and was shaking with terror, it did so comfort me to say those ver^- words : " Whatever may happen, I shall be in God's hands." As I slipped back again to sleep, I was so comforted by feeling God's arm all about me. It matters little whether we live in this or HOPE AND FEAR. 211 another world. It soothed me, oh ! it soothed me so tenderly last night, to think how happy I should be in either case — with Luther in heaven, or with ray child on earth. Between two such hopes there ought to be no room for despon- dency. And yet, and yet — I was so weak and feeble a thing last night, that for a brief while I lost view of the two hopes, and trembled through my whole body, and shivered with panic' 'And you will be trembling and shivering again,' said Antoinette Challoner, coming to the sofa on which Clemaine was sitting, ' if you don't lay up your feet and put your head on this pillow which I am smoothing for you.' 'Thank you, dear, thanks!' said Clemaine, falling back upon the pillow. ' Dear aunt, you have such tender ways ; you could handle a butterfly without taking any of the bloom from its wings.' ' I should not hurt such a substantial butterfly as you. Now, I'll put the candles out, and we'll sit by the firelight. I'll do the talking, you the listening ; or, if you talk, it must be in whispers/ After darkening the room and seating herself p 2 212 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. Oil a low cliair by the invalid's side, Antoinette Challoncr continued : ' You mayn't give way to the nervous fancies that will be troubling you during the next few days. Cherish both thoughts, but think less of Luther in heaven than of the child who will soon be with you in this world. Look forward to the time when you'll be the mistress of a grand school at Bath, with the girls honouring you and clinging to you. Be set on remaining in this world, and doing good in it throughout many years, before you go aw^ay to the better life.' * I won't give way more than I can help. But, though I know God's arm is about me, 1 know also that 1 am entering the path of peril,' Clemaine answered, in a low voice. * Yes, some peril — but not much — no more peril than one encounters in a thunderstorm.' ' Possibly, no more danger than that : but still one in a few thousands or so is struck by the lightning, and that amount of danger is teri-ifying to a weak and nervous wanderer.' ' Yes, yes. But you must be brave and calm and thankful — yes, very thankful. How often, Clemaine, have I prayed heaven to be as you HOPE AND FEAR. 213 are now, and, oh ! how thankful should I have been had God granted me my desire ! 1 have never confessed so much to any other woman. But in talking to you, dear one, I am only talk- ing to myself; for you are part of myself,' — words that caused Clemaine to raise one of Antoinette's hands to her lips, and kiss it repeatedly. ' You ma}Ti't excite yourself, dear heart I' said Antoinette, who would have withdrawn her hand, had Clemaine held it less firmly. ' I am not exciting myself,' said Clemaine, quietly, ' for I am only loving you, and to love you is so calming and strengthening. Let me have your hand ; it is so soft and tender and soothing — so like your voice and your whole self.' ' But I must leave you now, to make a call on a friend before returning to dinner at Jermyn Street. I have a character for punctuality to maintain with dear old Mrs. Pottenger. You must let me go now.' Rising as she spoke the last words, Antoinette added, as she moved towards the door, ' Shall I ask Erameline to sit with jonT 211 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. * No ; she'll come when she has put her children to bed. She must not bo taken from her children now, for she insists on taking them to-morrow to Hampstead and leaving them there, — so that the house may be quieter, when I am ill. So let her be. Moreover, I would be left alone for a while, so that I may think about you. I sha'n't give way to nervous fancies. But you must come to me early to-moiTow — as early as you can, I mean, without putting your- self too much out of the way.' * 1 shall be here early, — be sure of that.' * What a trouble I am to you !' * Yes, a great trouble,' Antoinette Challoner replied banteiingly, ' and, of course, I would rather pass the hours in my lonely lodging than in your company. Now, be a good child till to-morrow morning.' Better than her word, Antoinette Challoner returned to Raleigh Lodge soon after the usual hour for closing the house for the night. Hence it came to pass that she was at Clemaine's side when the latter was visited by another bad dream somewhere about two a.m. The first cry had scarcely escaped the dreamer's lips HOPE AND FEAR. 215 when Antoinette was standing over her and ehpping an arm under her neck, whilst she at the same time put a cool, soft hand on the patient's forehead. ' Oh, — oh !' ejaculated Clemaine, as she passed from broken sleep to perfect consciousness, ' I thought it was God's arm, and it was your arm.' ' It was God's arm also,' Antoinette Challoner returned, ' for human love is part of His love, and the comfort and strength that come to us from human love are His gifts.' 'But, dear Aunt Antoinette, how did you manage to get into this room in the middle of the night V ' By returning to the house when you had been two hours in bed. Emmeline was expect- ing me, and let me in. I did not enter like a thief by night, but like an honest woman, with my sleeping-gown in a little hand-bag. I was sitting in the easy-chair, with a novel, when your cry brought me to your side.' ' But why all this V * On leaving you yesterday, I went to the dear doctor, and had a talk with him ; and he 210 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. agreed with me in thinking that, if the dream came again, it would be well for some one to put a quick end to it, and save you from an- other trembling fit. So I returned to sit up with you, and prevent the dream from worrying you.' ' It's very good of you, but indeed you need not have put yourself so much out of the usual Avay. You know, Emmeliue put a bell up the other day, so that 1 could ring for her. Indeed, you have thought too much for me and too little for yourself. Emmeline promised to come at the first tinkle of the bell.' * Which would not have been rung, till the dream had worried you into tears. Moreover, my pet,' Antoinette added apologetically, ' this busy-body of an aunt would have been too miserable in Jermyn Street. She wanted so much to be near you. I have saved you from the worst of the dream.' ' But not from the tears,' returned Clemaine, with naive playfulness and the pleasant sadness of a thankful heart, * not from the tears. I sha'n't fret, as I did last night. But I must enjoy a few tears, for you and Emmeline are both so good to me. What a sly, secretive HOPE AND FEAR. 2 1 7 little puss she was, — to put me to bed so demurely, without giving- me a hint that you were coming back. You two are so good to me ! — and, as you say, human love is a part of God's love ! Don't say anything till I have done crying. It will be only for a minute.' *Well, you may cry for a minute-and-half, but not a second longer. See,' added Antoi- nette Challoner, taking her watch from the toilet- table, and retiring to the easy-chair and the shaded lamp by which she had been reading her novel, ' I'll time you by the second-hand of my watch. Make the most of your ninety seconds ; a great deal of crying can be done in ninety seconds.' ' And what did the doctor say V inquired -Clemaine, with commendable composure, when the ninety seconds had been fully ticked out. * Everything that was cheering, and nothing that was reverse. Nervous fears and painful dreams are mere matters of course to patients in your state. He had already ordered your nurse to come here by mid-day to-morrow, that is, by the noon of to-day. He is confident that every- thing will go well.' 218 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. 'Of course,' Raid Clemaine, with humorous hghtuess, * he'll come here on his way home from a patient in this neighbourhood, — possibly from the patient who lives within a hundred yards of Raleigh Lodge.' ' No doubt ; and now, you saucy puss, you must close your eyes and go to sleep, as soon as I have put some coal on the fire. There, the fire will do for the rest of the night. Now go to sleep, and leave me to the enjoyment of my novel.' ' I'll go to sleep — 1 am turning sleepy again.' But, though she closed her eyes, Clemaine remained awake for some time longer, now thinking of her Luther in heaven, and now of the child who would soon be in this world, thinking of both tranquilly and hopefully, while the reader on the other side of the room turned over the leaves of her interesting novel. ' Aunt,' she said, when she had been silent for half-an-hour, ' [ am still awake, but 1 am quite happy — so very happy.' ' That's well, my pet ; but it would be better for you to be asleep.' ' The sleep will come soon, for my mind is- peaceful.' HOPE AND FEAR. 219 * What have you been thinking about V 'A few minutes since I was thinking how fortunate it has been for me that 1 Avrote to yon. I feel a better woman for having Hved to knoAV and love you.' * It was fortunate for both of us.' ' Then I fell a-thinking of my two hopes, and I am resting so tranquilly on both of them. Either way I shall be happy.' ' Yes, yes ; but do try to sleep. 1 want rest, but may not take any, while you are thus wakeful.' Taking the entreaty and the reproof as any manageable child would have taken them from an indulgent and weary mother, Clemaine again closed her eyes, and, after closing them, lay silent for so long a time, that the novel reader imagined her charge must have fallen into slumber. But tbougli slumber was nearer, and drowsiness weighed more heavily on her eye- lids, Clemaine was still wakeful enough to think and speak. ' Dear one,' she prayed faintly, ' let me see you once more, and have another kiss before I drop a-sleep.' 220 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. ' Well, one more kiss, just one,' responded the sympathetic nurse, speaking us though Clemaine were a cliild wlio almost needed punishment, ' and then if you don't go to sleep I shall be compelled to give you the anodyne draught that I brought with me from Welbeck Street.' ' Tliat would be a terrible punishment,' said Clemaine, falling in with the humour of her nurse's words. Having taken the kiss thankfully, Clemaine remarked, ' Instead of being so happy, how wretched 1 should be at this moment, with Emmeline on the point of st^irting for India, if you hadn't come to me. But now I have nothing to worry about.' ' Nothing, indeed, nothing to fret about.' ' What a comfort it is to know that, if I go away, my child will be your child.' * Yes, your child will be my child.' 'If it is aboyf ' He will be my son.' 'And if it is a girl?' ' 8he shall be my daughter.' ' Though I am sleepy, I shall remember those HOPE AND FEAR. 221 SAVcet words — sweet as music and not to be for- gotten. Girl or boy, it shall be your child. Oh,. the comfort of it — the comfort !' Like a sick child hugging its favourite toy, the sick woman played with her consolatory thought for another minute, and fell asleep with a smile on her slightly parted hps. ' That is something to be thankful for !' Antoinette Challoner whispered to herself, when she had stood full five minutes watching her unconscious patient. ' It is sound, deep, natural slumber. How glad I am that 1 held out against her restlessness, and resisted the strong inclina- tion to give her the sleeping-draught !' Five hours later, when he paid her an early visit before his usual hour for breakfast. Dr. Cartwright found Clemaine tranquil in mind, and saw nothing in her condition to justify serious apprehension. To Antoinette and Emme- hne, however, he made no secret of his sHght dissatisfaction with the restlessness which their patient had undergone on two successive nights, and with her nervous intimations of a feeling that her approaching trouble might have a fatal issue. 222 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. * If she were an ordinary woman, I should think nothing of her apprehensiveness. But she dififers from ordinary women in being no less brave than emotional. It is not uncommon for patients in her condition to suffer from alarming presentiments and even from panic. But we may be sure that, witli her courage and habitual self-control, our patient is more disposed to hide than reveal the mournful anticipations that are assailing her. Her manifest presentiment that things will go ill wdth her is doubtless stronger than her words, if she were of a weaker nature, would indicate. Under certain possible though unusual contingencies, her very coiu-age may operate against our washes. Should an^^thing untoward occur to reduce her to extreme and perilous weakness, her fearlessness of death may result in a positive indisposition to live ; and in that case she would lose the most power- ful of what I may call her recuperative energies. Her way of talking about going to her husband may, indeed does, signify that she has no strong desire to live. The less she thinks of poor Luther just now, the better for her, — or, rather let me say, the better for us who wish to keep HOPE AND FEAR. ^23 her in this world. In talking with her, say everything that may confirm her failing desire for length of days, and avoid every topic that may bring her husband to her mind. Gossip with her on cheerful matters, and more par- ticularly about Bath and the grand school she will have there. — And for your comfort, my dear ladies, let me assure you that her nervous fancies won't affect the course of her illness, unless something unusual should occur.' In accordance with the doctor's counsel, Mrs. Ohalloner and Mrs. Harford were at much pains to lure the invalid from depressing thoughts, and during the next three days displayed no little ingenuity in making their talk turn upon the scheme of beneficent industry that had Uncle Geoffrey's ' unqualified approval.' Re- calling the days when they were school-girls, the two conspirators entertained Clemaine with pleasant recollections of the seminaries in which they suffered under ' bad marks,' and endeavour- ed to carry off prizes for scholarship or good conduct. Emmeline knew more of school-life from personal experience and from the school- girl's point of view than either of her com- 224 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. panions, and some of her kindly anecdotes of governesses and professors, classes and class- mates, were so droll and piquant, that the hearers of her confessions more than once or twice fell into hearty laughter. Antoinette Challoner's reminiscences of the superfine Bath boarding- school, to whose classes she gained admittance by special grace in the character of an irregu- larly attached * externe,' were tame and colour- less in comparison with Emmeline Harford's recollections of academic troubles and triumphs at No. 42, Osnaburgh Square, London-super- mare. But the senior raconteur had much to tell of school-girls and their manners in foreign lands. Moreover, to raise Clemaine's spirits, Geoffrey Challoner's wife produced a list of those members of her old connection in Wilts, Somerset, and Devon, whom she designed to draw into a social league, for placing her niece in the first rank of living schoolmistresses. Partly because she was of a lighter tempera- ment, and partly because she was less sensitive and sympathetic, EmmeHne was more satisfied than Antoinette Challoner with the apparent effect of their measures for cheering their HOPE AND FEAR. 225 patient. In her coufidence that things were going well with Clemaine, and that she would survive her coming peril in the usual way of young mothers, Emmeline gave a cheery answer to Dr. Cartwright's inquiry, ' And how have we been going on since 1 was here in the morning f * Excellently well,' said Emmeline. ' From the moment of your departure in the morning even until now (9.30 p.m.) our darling has been in good spirits, talking more of Bath and her future life there, than of aught else. Once in the forenoon, and twice since our mid-day dinner she reverted of her own accord to the favourite topic, when I and Mrs. Challoner had agreed we would be silent about it for awhile. I have neither seen tears in her eyes, nor heard a sigh come from her lips during the whole day. Everything we do for her pleases her. In short, she has been too good — monotonously good. I should have more pleasure in waiting upon her, if she would be just a Httle fractious and querulous.' Emmeline having given her report. Dr. Cart- wright turned towards Antoinette Challoner VOL. I. Q 226 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. with a significant glance, that said as plainly as the tongue could have said it, * And now for the other side of the picture— another view of the «ame subject.' * I wish I could agree altogether with Mrs. Harford,' said Antoinette Challoner, in answer to the physician's unspoken inquiry, * and I should agree with her, if it were in my nature to accept appearances unsuspiciously. But I am far from certain that Clemaine is as tranquil and hopeful and set on living as she affects to be. I can't help feeling that she is hiding her thoughts from us, and is only humouring us when she speaks and acts so precisely as we wish her. I am afraid she is cleverer than both of her managing friends, and quite as good an actress as either of them. To spare their feel- ings, she is playing with them. Seeing how set we are on guarding her from despondency, she affects to be cheerful ; and she is silent about her liusband and talkative about Bath and her future career out of deference to our wishes and from tenderness for our sensibilities. That is my view of her good behaviour.' * Which report do you prefer, doctor ; the HOPE AND FEAR. 227 report of the confiding friend, or the report of the suspicious aunt?' inquired Emmeline, in whose parlour the conference took place. * Your view of the case is the more agreeable, but ' 'i5?^^?' interposed Emmeline, with the air of a victim of injustice. ' You need say no more. You think me the less discerning, and therefore the inferior nurse. Be generous in this hour of your triumph, Mrs. Challoner.' ' No one can be a better nurse than you, Mrs. Harford,' returned the physician ; ' you are a tender and devoted nurse (I have reason to acknowledge it), and always cheerful, as nurses ought to be. As a nurse, you are not Mrs. Challoner's inferior; but I rather think she would make the better physician.' ' This is unendurable. Dr. Cartwright !' ejacu- lated Emmeline, with a show of keener resent- ment. ' You first soothe me with a compliment, and then in my hearing and presence put my rival over my head, and rate her as a physician. But I will be superior to jealousy, and generous to my rival. Mrs. Challoner is the cheerfuUest nurse imaginable.' q2 228 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. < With two such nurses by her side, my patient must do well,' said the doctor stoutly, as he rose from his seat in Emmeline Harford's parlour. ' You have no misgiving, doctor?' Mis. Chal- loner inquired quickly, and with impressive earnestness. * Why should 1 be less hopeful now than T was the other day, when I assured you that all would go well, provided nothing unusual should occur. There has been no recurrence of the convulsive tremor and shivering-fit, she has had throe tranquil days. I see no reason for apprehension.' ' But you are less than altogether hopeful,' urged Antoinette. ' I am confident that all will go well,' the doctor answered steadily, * unless some one of the possible but unusual contingencies, to which I referred the other day, should change and darken the prospect.' ' Won't you look at her before you goV said Geoffrey Challoner's wife. * I had better not disturb her,' was the answer. * ^ly appearance might alarm her. Don't let HOPE AND FEAR. 229 her kuow that 1 dropped ia thus late to in- quire how the day had gone with her. Till she needs me urgently, your one aim must be to keep her tranquil and hopeful ; and to do that, my dear madam, you must be tranquil and hopeful yourself.' * I should be both, if it were not for " the possible but unusual contingencies." Would to heaven those contingencies were impossible.' 'Ah, my dear madam,' returned the doctor, holding out his small white hand for the fare- well shake, ' it would be a happier world for lis doctors if there were no such contingencies.' With these words Dr. Cartwright took leave of Clemaine's friends, and withdrew for a few hours from the house, to which he returned at early dawn in obedience to an urgent summons. 230 CHAPTER XIV. WHY IS IT { Sometimes, though seldom, the approach of a cahimity is heralded by those invisible and voiceless harbingers of doom, who inform the mind and stir the heart by organs more impres- sive than speech, acting upon nerves more sensitive and finely apprehensive than the nerves of hearing. On their delivery, these warnings from fate become those veritable presentiments that differ from the delusive previsions of fancy in being invariably followed by fulfilment. For several days Antoinette Challoner and Dr. Cartwright had been troubled by growing apprehension for Clemaine's safet}- in her ap- proaching illness ; and through sympathy each of them had discovered the unrest and mournful WHY IS IT? 231 foreboding of the other's breast. The hour was now at hand that would cause them to attribute their dismal prognostications to inscrutable and unrelenting destiny, or justify them in dismiss- ing the vain fears, as the mere offspring of affectionate solicitude and disordered imagina- tion. On entering the room that had been the young widow's bridal-chamber. Dr. Cartwright was confronted by one of those untoward but most unusual contingencies, which were in his mind when he declared that in their absence Clemaine would have a fair and fortun- ate passage to maternal felicity. It was a con- tingency, which made it certain that the invalid would endure far more than an average measure of the bodily torture that comes to womankind from the primeval curse, — *I will greatly multi- ply thy sorrow and thy conception ; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children.' Worse still; the contingency, which subjected the sufferer to rack of muscle and torture of nerve, — anguish that knew neither remedy nor palliative before the recent anesthetic discovenes, — resulted in another and even more alarming contingency, 232 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. tliat ill a few minutes reduced Clemaine to extreme and perilous prostration. p]ven so, the course of Clemainc's tribulation was longer, and for awhile promised to be less deplorable in result than Dr. Cartwright feared it would prove, whilst he fought skilfully and despairingly with death over his patient's prostrate form. Clemaine's babe was born alive, and she survived the birth of the fair and shapely female infant. But, even as the child raised its first thin, sharp cry in this sad world, the mother became imconscious. The next hours were passed by Clemaine Donaldson in a series of swoons, divided by intervals of con- sciousness, during which she recognized the watchers about her bed, and even addressed them in faint and broken words of endearment and gratitude. During two of these intervals, the babe was brought to Clemaine at her request, in order that she might gaze on the being that had proceeded from her and the husband to whom she felt herself to be jom-ney- iug ; but though she regarded the infant with searching, sad, tender, tearless eyes, she gave no intimation of a wish that this life from her life WHY IS IT? 233 should be placed between her arms and upou her breast. It favoured the failing hopes, to which Antoi- nette Challoner and Emmeline Harford clung despairingly even to the last, that the swoons became more brief, and each interval of consci- ousness longer than the previous interval, and that Clemaine took readily, and even with relish, the nutriment and wine that were offered to her after each fainting fit. To what straws does despair chng I By what trifles can dying hopes be resuscitated ! It was thus that Cle- maine's life, hanging on a single fine thread, oscillated for some sixty hours between ex- tinction and revival, now quickening the hope and now deepening the despair that reigned alternately in the breasts of her fond attendants. At length, a startling change came over the patient's countenance, — a change showing that some influence was accelerating the heart's action, and that the natural stimulant of strong emotion was raising the energies of an enfeebled body and fading mind. The change was a process strangely beautiful to its beholders and strangely beautify iug to the object of their 234 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. solicitude, — a process that, lasting for several minutes, added momentarily to the tender love- liness of the young mother's face, till it became in serenity and radiance even as the face of an angel. ' Aunt,' Clemaine Donaldson said softly, after resting in tranquil consciousness for several min- utes, ' raise me with your dear arm, and put me on my pillows, so that I may sit a little up, and look round at my pretty room, with its pleasant fire, and bright candles, and dear pictures. Oh, this is comfortable ! — you have placed me so nicely I — Let me see baby again.' The babe having been brought to her bed- side, Clemaine regarded it tenderly, as it lay in the arms of its nurse — a young woman with a handsome face, whom Dr. Cartwright had brought to Raleigh Lodge, to foster the infant whose mother was powerless to cherish her off- spring on her own bosom. ' It is a lovely child, very lovely ! But I see nothing of Luther in it, and very little of my- self. Yet she must be like some one.' ' I think she will be like your father,' said Antoinette Challoner. WHY IS IT? 235 ' I am glad you think so,' Clemaine remarked, with satisfaction in her voice and in the smile of her brightening countenance, ' for if so she will grow to be lovely. He was very handsome. Beauty is to be desired for her ; and it wall be easier for uncle to love her if she should resemble his brother. — Nurse, 1 see you will be kind to my httle one, for you have the look of a good woman. That will do, nurse ; you can take baby away now. It makes me happy and thankful to see it in such tender hands.' Not a little to the nurse's perplexity, Clemaine added, ' Yes, go now, nurse, for I have much to do in a short time ; baby's mother will soon be with you, for I shan't detain her long.' The nurse having retired from the room, Clemaine, re- garding her aunt with pathetically beseeching eyes, remarked, ' A few nights since, when we could not know whether my babe would be a boy or a girl, you said " If it is a boy ^' ' ' It shall be my son,' said Antoinette Challoner,. seeing that Clemaine wished her to complete the afiectionate assurance. * Yes, yes, you said so ; thank you for saying the words again, for I Avished to hear them once 236 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. more. You felt what I wished. But,' Clemaine Donaldson continued, again playing fondly with the music of the remembered words, even as a child will play with the words of a favourite story, 'my child is a girl; and you said, dear aunt, " If it is a girl " Say the words again, dear; do say them, for they are so sweet.' Dropping to her knees as she obeyed the entreaty, and then, looking tenderly upwards into Clemaine's glowing eyes, as she repeated the promise with strong but well-controlled emotion, Antoinette Challoner spoke these words slowly and with a sweet solemnity : ' I said, dearest, " If it is a girl, she shall be my daughter ;" and, dear Clemaine, I will be to her a tender, loving, devoted mother, feeling and doing all and everything in the way of maternal attachment and service that it is pos- sible for a woman to feel and do for a child not actually born of her own body and her own pain ; and I will do my very utmost to render your child as dear to your uncle even as a child coming to him from my own sufferings could be. She shall be my daughter, and my daughter ehall be to him as his own daughter.' WHY IS IT? 237 Rising from her knees when she had spoken the words of this solemn promise — words none the less charged with the passion and earnestness of intense feeling, for being uttered slowly and in a low tone — Antoinette Challoner extended her arms over Clemaine and kissed her on the lips. As she raised her face slowly from her niece's lips, x-Vntoinette saw in the pillowed face an accession of ineffable loveliness that caused her to tremble and start slightly, and also to whiten with sudden apprehension. 'Aunt,' Clemaine asked composedly, 'is there anything amiss in me that you start and turn pale ?' 'Nothing amiss,' was the frank answer, ' nothing amiss. It was only your lovely colour and joyful look that surprised me.' ' Strange that they should surprise you, as it was you who made me so happy. How could I be otherwise than joyful after your words and kiss ? Keep near me, darhng, but say nothing more of my lovely colour. You mayn't flatter a dying woman, because the angels are bright- ening her face for heaven. I want to say something about baby's name. Do not name- her after me.' 238 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. ' Not after you ? Surely she sliould ])car lier another's name.' * Of course she should ; and, as she will be your child and you will be her mother, she should be christened Antoinette — a name almost sacred to every feeling heart, and very dear to all who care for you.' * She shall bear my name if you wish it, darling ; but she may bear your name also.' * Better not,' Clemaine returned pleadingly. * Let her be named Antoinette Sophy. It will be easier for uncle to love her as a daughter, if ehe bears no name that would remind him of old troubles.' It was the second time during the course of her 'last words,' that Clemaine surprised An- toinette by showing her fine feeling and clear perception that Geoffrey Chall oner's disposition to befriend his unfortunate niece was in no degree consequent on affection for her, but was rather a purpose entertained from motives of justice, honour, and humanity, in spite of a certain distaste for her as the child of a woman whom he held accountable for his severance from his only brother ; and to Antoinette Chal- WHY IS IT? 239 loner the two successive revelations of the fine and accnrate perception were the more astonish- ing and impressive, because she had been studiously reticent to Clemaine respecting the coldness of her uncle's regard for her, and Clemaine had, on no previous occasion, shown herself sensible of the coldness. ' Sophy was my grandmother Challoner's christian name, and the name will associate the little child at his feet with his tender thought for the mother, who passed away from him when he was still a child. I think uncle would rather have a Sophy than a Clemaine for his niece and adopted child. — But,' added Clemaine Donaldson, with a naive deference that at so solemn a moment was no less droll than pathetic, * I have no right to dictate what your child is to be called.' * She shall be christened Sophy Antoinette,' said Geoffrey Challoner's wife ; * but 1 shall always think of her as Clemaine.' Dismissing this important matter with an ex- pression of gratitude for her aunt's consent, Clemaine, seeing Emmeline at the foot of the bed, beckoned her to come nearer. 240 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. ' You'll not forget mc, old playmate,' said Cletiiaine, raising both her arms to Emmeline ; ' no, you won't forget me ; but you must not remember me sadly. Such a jolly friendship as ours has been may not be fruitful of tears and regrets merely because I am in heaven. Old playmate, one last kiss.' Putting a light and caressing hand on Cle- maine's face, and doing her brave best to re- frain from sobbing out-right, the warm-hearted Emmeline kissed her friend repeatedly. *What good friends we have been to each other, my bonny, from earliest childhood until now I' Clemaine said cheerily, when Emmeline had ceased kissing her. ' Ah, me ! the laughter and the fun we have had together I Were it a sin for young girls and young women to be men-y together, I should be less happy and in a worse case than I imagine myself. Thank God for keeping us good friends to the last.' * Yes,' said Emmeline, utterly deserted by the jovial temper and bhthe spirits that had been so serviceable in sustaining Clemaine in the darkest season of her affliction, ' good friends to the last, — good friends, — always good friends !' WHY IS IT? 241 'Even when we had our grand stand-up fight in Queen's Square?' inquired Clemaine, with a last flash of the old merriment that had so agreeably seasoned the long intercourse of the whilom playmates. Seeing from the convulsive movement of Emmeline's lips that her feelings were over- powering her, Clemaine desisted from the light strain, which only troubled the heart it was meant to soothe and cheer. ' Be brave, my darling,' Clemaine entreated softly, *be brave for your old friend's sake.* After a brief pause she inquired : ' Is Fred here T The question having been answered by a nod, — only by a vigorous nod, because Emme- line could not trust her writhing lips even for the utterances of a single syllable, — Clemaine begged that she might see him. * Go to Fred, darling, and send him to me,' she said. ' Fred has been so very good to me. I want to thank him, and wish him " Good-bye." But come to me again, Emmeline, when I have spoken to him, for I shall soon want you at my side.' It had not been Clemaine's wont to think or VOL. I. R 242 CUTTING FOR TARTXERS. speak of her friend's husband as Fred. AHke to Luther Donaldson's wife and to Luther Donaldson's widow, the young merchant, a rather staid and formal gentleman, had ever been 'Mr. Harford,' — and on the tongue, at least, nothing nearer or dearer than ' Mr. Har- ford.' Half-a-century since young gentlewomen were less quick than young gentlewomen of the present day to play with the most famihar designations of their male acquaintances. In- deed, they were forbidden by conventional civility to address by their christian names any men, who were neither their servants nor their nearest relatives. But the great republican, Death, smiles at etiquette, and has a gentle way of replacing its usages with easier and more affectionate modes of intercourse. Seizing the opportunity for leaving the room and recovering her self-control, Emmeline Har- ford went from Clemaine's bed-side quickly as a bird escaping from confinement, and noiselessly as sunhght passing from a lawn. * Fred,' said Clemaine, as soon as Emmeline's husband came to her presence, ' it is like you to come so quickly for a few weak words of fare- ^YHY IS IT? 243 well and a few idle thanks. — You've been very kind and good to me in several things, but above all in allowing me so much of your wife's affection. In that respect you have been very- generous to both of us.' ' My dear,' replied the staid and ever formal gentleman, with less than his usual formality, *she loved me none the less for loving you.' ' That is true ; but you would have been jealous of me, had you not been more than ordinaiily generous. You were very good to let us remain closer than sisters, notwithstand- ing your title to all her affection. You must pardon me for worrying her just now almost to tears. I was a blunderer in thinking to cheer her with words too light for the hour. Go to her now, Fred ; but send her to me again for a few minutes, as soon as she has recovered from my blundering. Yes, send her to me again,' Clemaine continued, as she put her right hand in Frederick Harford's grasp, ' for I wish her to be near me at the last, holding my left hand as tenderly as you are now holding my right. And now, Fred, kiss my hand before you let it go.' As the staid and habitually formal gentleman R 2 244 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. lowered his head in order to give the kiss, two large hot tears fell from his eyes to her hand, which he was raising towards his descending lips. A smile of gentle drollery played over the inefiiible gladness of Clemaine's glowing face, as slie stayed the descending lips by saying, quaintly, * You must kiss me all the same ; but don't disturb the tears.' When the kisses had been given in accordance with the direction, she added, ' Thanks, Fred, for both — the tears and the kisses. Now, go to Emmeline, for I may need her any moment.' For three or four minutes after Fred Harford's withdrawal, whilst Antoinette Challoner was her only companion, Clemaine prattled with alternate pleasantry and pathos of the delight of dying, — remarking how strange it was that she, like most other people, had anticipated with terror a process so fruitful of enjoyment. * If the dear doctor,' she remarked, ' would only drop in on his way home from one of his just-in-this-immediate-neighbourhood patients, my cup of happiness would brim over. — Why — WHY IS IT? 245 aunt,' she added, in separate ejaculations, as her quickened senses made her aware of the physi- cian's presence, — ' it must be ! — yes, it is ! — oh, dear, dear doctor, how long have you been hereT * I dropped in,' the doctor answered drily, * on my way home from patients in this imme- diate neighbourhood, and just in time to over- hear your wish to see me. — So they have raised you in your bed, and propped you with pillows in that fashion, without having my per- mission to do so.' ' It is a good attitude for the purpose, isn't it V inquired Clemaine, laying a significant stress on the ' purpose.' 'Let me raise this pillow just a little. And now for the pulse,' said the doctor, touching the patient's left wrist, whilst he regarded her tenderly. 'Well? is it a good pulse?' Clemaine asked, when the doctor withdrew his fingers from the wrist, and returned his watch to its pocket. * Good enough for the purpose,' replied the doctor, smiling sadly as he used her expression. ' It is a weak little pulse, — but regular. It is tranquil.' 2i6 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. * Like the heart it comes from, — the tranquil, happy heart.' ' That's well, darling !' * Dear doctor, ' said Clemaine faintly, when she had been silent for half-a-minute, * drop in now and then on Aunt Antoinette, when I've gone away. Drop in upon her whenever you are passing near. She'll be lonely and low sometimes, when the Harfords have started for Calcutta, and she has no household friend but her little daughter. You won't forget?' * I won't forget.' * And, dear doctor, lean over me and kiss me on the forehead. Luther will like to see your kiss on my forehead when he receives me at the gate, for he loved you even as I do, and he knows how good you have been to me since he went away.' When the kiss had been put upon her brow, Clemaine said softly, 'And now I will close my eyes and speak in prayer to Our Father in Heaven !' Closing her eyes as she spoke, Clemaine raised her hands to her breast and placed the palms of her hands the one against the other WHY IS IT? 247 in prayerful wise ; and during the next five minutes her watchers saw from the movements of her silent lips that she was meekly address- ing the Creator of all human kind. Her lips were still moving thus dutifully, and her eyelids were still guarding her mind against the in- trusion of earthly cares and interests, when Emmehne Harford, Frederick Harford, Nurse Charlesworth, the other and younger nurse whose charge was sleeping tranquilly in its cradle, and the young woman who had been Emmeline's and Clemaine's only and faithful servant for four years, came about the silent bed with noiseless steps. Hence it came to pass that, on ceasing to pray, and letting her hands fall upon her breast, and raising the blue-veined hds of her large and lustrous eyes, Clemaine found herself under the regard of several observers. Yet another glow of gladness came to the exceeding beauty of her face, as she saw and recognized each person of the assembly. * How sweet and good of you — all, all my dear ones,' she murmured faintly, as her gaze travelled slowly round the bed, ' all here — old playmate — EmmeHne's husband — good Sarah, 248 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. always so good — my nurse — baby's nurse — dear doctor — dear, dear aunt.' Extending her right arm slowly, she said softly : * Dear aunt, take my hand and lead me.' In like manner oifering her left hand to Emmeline, she said, in even a lower tone : ' Emmeline, old playmate, lead me, for my sight is going,' and as she thus spoke beseechingly to the two women, who were of all human kind dearest to her heart, she sank backward upon her yielding pillows. She had not yet spoken her last words. Twice she was heard to murmur, * Human love is God's love.' Something later a hght cry of joyful greeting escaped her lips, followed by the words, * Luther — dear Luther — lovely in the valley — no, not dark in the valley — no shadow —all light.' In fancy — at least, in fancy — she had been led through the valley of the shadow of death by Antoinette and Emmeline, had found the dread valley shadowless and unutterably beauti- ful, and had been met by Luther at the entrance to paradise. She imagined herself — at least, she imagined herself — to be answering a question put to her by her husband, when she whispered WHY IS IT? 249 -svith her last breath, ' Yes, dear Luther,' the last words that trembled from her Hps to the bearing of the watchers about her bed. When loving hands had clothed her in the garments of the grave, and composed her limbs with reverential care for their last resting- place, nothing remained on earth of Clemaine's lissom figure and graceful shape and animating resence, but the still form that lay in a straight line on what had been her bridal bed, and the gentle face — so small and fair, so tranquil and oh, so strangely childish in its delicate linea- ments — that, retaining all the sacred loveliness which came to it in the closing hours of her existence, had gained another and holier charm from the beautifying touch of death. One short week later, when the childish face and unmoving form had been committed to the tomb, and the few mourners for her death had turned away from the cold and cruel grave, feeling that life must ever be other than it had been to them through her influence, nothing remained of Clemaine on earth, but the subdu- ing recollections of her noble endowments and 250 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. gracious ways and untimely fate — memories making for the goodness of those who had tended her in her latest hours. Who of us has escaped the sorrow of mourning for such an one as Clemaine, — young and win- ning, brave and tender of heart, energetic, yet quite unselfish, generous in her impulses, con- scientious in her designs, faultless in every detail of her conduct, and wholly unaware of her exceptional goodness ? The grey-headed reader, who has not lamented the premature departure of several such women, is in one respect less unfortunate than the writer of this inefiectual page. Why is it that women so young and fair, so hopeful and courageous, so strong in faith and sweetly beneficent, are taken thus early from the homes they hallow, and from a world that darkens when they die ? Is it that these bright and spotless spirits are even more needful for happiness in heaven, than ser- viceable for righteousness on earth ? 251 CHAPTER XV. TOUCHING A CERTIFICATE. That Clemaine Donaldson was visited by no clergyman after her accouchement is sufficient- ly accounted for by what has been told of her condition from the hour of her child's birth. It is needful to speak more fully of the privacy with which her child was baptized, and of the circumstances that withheld the private rite from the cognizance of the registrar of baptisms. Built for the accommodation of a few hundred worshippers, at a time when the most provident inhabitants of the quarter were far from imagin- ing how rapidly the population of the rural suburb would multiply, St. Jude's, Regent's Park — the church at which Emmeline and Cle- maine were regular attendants and communi- cants for nearly four years — had become in- ^52 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. adequate to the spiritual requirements of its picturesque vicinity, wlien it "was closed to worshippers at the opening of February, 1836, and placed in the hands of an architect for eulargementand reconstruction. Builders having taken possession of the sacred edifice, the vicar started with his diocesan's approval on a trip to Rome and Palestine, leaving the Reverend William Haydon, M.A., curate in charge of what may be described as a churchless congregation. That Mr. Haydon had the vicar's authority to act as his deputy was notified to people of the district by a black board on the door of the vestry-clerk's office, inscribed with these words: ' During the alterations and re-coostruction of St. Judy's, Regent's Park, all communications touching baptisms, churchings, funerals, and other clerical business of the church are to be addressed to the Reverend William Haydon, M.A., Curate-in-Charge, at No. 4, Wilford Terrace.' On withdrawing for several months from his cure, the Reverend Charles Brookfield, M.A., the vicar of St. Jude's, Regent's Park, had enjoined Mr. Haydon to be attentive in calling TOUCHING A CERTIFICATE. 253 on the members of the congregatiou, aud espe- cially observant of his duties touching baptisms. As it stood in a corner of the church, which would not be disturbed by the builders, the curate was told to encourage the matrons of the district to bring their newly-born children to the St. Jude's font for baptism, at hours when the masons and other artificers would not be at their noisy work. At the same time, in con- sideration of the disorder of the church, he was instructed to perform the rite privately in every case, where the parents or other guardians of a newly-born infant should prefer the private func- tion. He had also been enjoined by the vicar to see that the private baptisms were entered in the register with due exactness. A careful and conscientious young man, Mr. Haydon was at great pains to carry out the instructions he had received from the absent vicar. Consequently, had Emmeline Harford or Antoinette Challoner requested the curate-in-charge to baptize Cle- maine Donaldson's child at Raleigh Lodge, the baptism would have been promptly recorded in the St. Jude's baptismal register. But considerations determined the ladies of '254: CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. Raleigh Lodge to ask another clergy mau to perform the private rite, by which Clemaine's baby was admitted to the church iiiilitaut. Whilst she regarded the vicar of St. Jiide's, Regent's Park, with tlie enthusiasm that so often qualifies a gentlewoman's diposition to- wards her favourite clergyman, Emmeline Har- ford had conceived a strong distaste for the ^ncar s curate-in-charge, who had come to the •congregation so recently as New Year's day, and had been so unfortunate as to offend the lady by a trivial brusquerie during the first week of his connection with the church. Having earned Mrs. Harford's disfavour by a mere fault of manner, the curate-in-charge became greatly distasteful to Mr. Frederick Harford, and in some degree unacceptable to Mrs. Donaldson, ever slow to deem her old playmate mistaken in anything. On hearing his wife's case against tlie curate, Mr. Harford had remarked warmly, ' Were it not for my respect for his cloth, I should give the gentleman a lesson in civility.' It was enough for Clemaine to say in her gentle way, * We will not be too severe on him for being less courteous than the vicar.' Under TOUCHING A CERTIFICATE. 255 these circumstances, it is not surprising that Mr. and Mrs. Harford agreed with Mrs. Challoner, when she suggested that they should ask Mr. Patrick Mansfield to baptize Clemaine's child. The Reverend Patrick Mansfield, M.A., was still staying with his brother-in-law, Dr. Cart- wright of Welbeck Street, when Antoinette Challoner made this suggestion. The result was that on the day before he took ship at the AVest India Dock for his return- voyage to Barbadoes, where he was rector of St. John's parish, and just three days before the Harfords sailed for Calcutta in the other Indies, the Reverend Mr. Mansfield came with his brother-in-law to Raleigh Lodge, and brought httle Sophia Antoinette Donaldson within the lines of the Church of England, — the ceremony being performed in the presence of Antoinette Challoner, the two Harfords, Dr. Cartwright, and Rose Drakeford, the comely and well- favoured young woman, who had cherished the little Sophy on her breast almost from the first hour of the child's existence. Of the picturesque group that surrounded Clemaine's infant during the performance of the 25r) CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. sacred ceremony, Rose Drakeford was far from beiug the least striking and pictm-esque person- age. Considerably taller than Emmeline Har- ford, and almost equal to Antoinette Challoner in stature, Rose Drakeford had the air of a gentlewoman, though she was only the wife of a clever marquetry-worker, and wore a dress appropriate to a person of her humble condition. Comely in her countenance, by reason of her aquiline profile, good mouth, dark eyes, and the delicate purity of an olive complexion that glowed on either cheek with roseate brightness, Rose was the more pleasing to her new acquaint- ances at Raleigh Lodge, and to the doctor who had introduced her to them, because her noble face was pervaded by the air of recent and subduing sorrow. Enough for the present of the handsome young woman, who was less moved by the ofi'er of liberal wages than by a desire to oblige Dr. Cartwright, when she con- sented at his urgent request to foster a stranger's child. Little Sophia Antoinette having been made a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, with due TOUCHING A CERTIFICATE. 257 regard for scriptural and canonical requirements, and Rose Drakeford having retired with her charge from the parlour (so recently * Clemaine's parlour') in- which the baptismal rite had been performed, the rector of St John's parish, in the island of Barbadoes, asked for writing materials in order that he might make a certificate of the ceremony, for the information of the curate in charge of St. Jude's church. ' As you don't need my help in that matter, I'll be off" to my patients,' said Dr. Cartwright, as he hastened from the room, setting an example that was quickly followed by the Harfords. 'If you do not require our presence any longer, Mr. Mansfield,' Frederick Harford observ- ed, with a gesture of courtesy, as the Barbadian rector was taking his first dip of ink at the writing-desk to which Mrs. Challoner had led him, ' Mrs. Harford and I will wish you good- bye, and a happy voyage to Barbadoes, as we shall barely have time to keep our appointment at Hampstead.' Having no further need of their presence, Mr. Mansfield allowed Frederick and Emmeline to VOL. I. S 258 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. go their way to Hampstead, where they were engaged to sta}^ for a couple of nights, at the house of the relative who had already taken charge of their children. 'Now for the certificate,' observed the clergy- man, resuming his seat and re-dipping his pen, when, tln-ough the withdrawal of the other witnesses of the baptism, Antoinette Challoner had become his only companion in the parlour. On its completion the certificate ran to this effect: * 22nd March, 1836. 'I, Patrick Mansfield, M.A.. Oxon, clerk in holy orders, and rector of St. John's parish, in the Island of Barbadoes, in the West Indies, do hereby certify that I did, on this 22nd day of March, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-six, baptize according to the rites of the United Church of England and Ireland, the daughter of the late Luther Donaldson, landscape-painter, and Clemaine his wife, by the name of Sophia Antoinette, at Raleigh Lodge, No. 12, North Bank Road, Regent's Park, late the abode of the said Luther and Clemaine. ' Patrick Mansfield, M.A., etc. *To the Reverend William Haydon, M.A., Curate in charge of St. Jude's Church, Regent's Park.' • ' Give this certificate,' said the Barbadian rector, as he handed the paper to Mrs. Challoner,- TOUCHING A CERTIFICATE. 259 after reading it aloud and rather pompously, ' to the Reverend Mr. Haydon, in order that he may make record of the baptism in the proper register of his church.' * That should be done at once V enquired Antoinette Challoner, fishing for further infor- mation about the paper of testimony. ' Within twenty-four hours/ replied Mr. Mansfield, with increasing pomposity, and in a tone of authoritativeness that would have been excessive had Antoinette Challoner been a Sunday-school mistress, and he been the Arch- bishop of Canterbury. ' Observe, — the statute of 52 George the Third, chapter 146, by which the registration of baptisms is now wisely and sufficiently governed, requires that every oflSci- ating minister as soon as possible after the solemnization of every baptism, whether public or private, shall record the same baptism in the proper register, and shall also with his own hand sign the same record; and this he must do within the seven days next following the cere- mony, unless he shall ^be prevented by sickness or unavoidable impediment. Do I make myself plain to you V s2 2 GO CUTTING FOll PARTNERS. * I think 80,' replied Antoinette Challoner, with the uir of an intelligent pupil, grateful for crumbs of valuable iufonnation. * AVhat you have said refers to an officiating minister, acting within the limits of his own parish or special district?' * Precisely, my dear madam, to an officiating minister acting within the limits of his own parish or special district,' answered the Barba- dian rector, in the condescending style of a professor benignly recognizing a favourite pupil's latest display of intelligence. *And now," continued the benign professor, seizing an opportunity for showing his singular sagacity in reading a pupil's secret thoughts, ' you are about to say, "But you, my dear sir, have not been in this affair an officiating clergyman act- ing within the limits of your own special parish or district r" Antoinette Challoner's nod of assent showing how precisely her mental position and secret thought had been apprehended by her instructor, the rector of St. John's parish in the island of Barbadoes continued : * Exactly. I saw what you were thinking. TOUCHING A CERTIFICATE. 261 and I will make the matter clear by repeating a few of the ipsissima verba of the statute, as well as I can remember them. "If," says the same aforementioned statute, " the ceremony of baptism and burial is performed elsewhere than in the parish church or chapel having its own register, and by a person who is not the officiating minister of the parish, then the minister performing the ceremony must on the same or next day transmit to the minister of the parish a certificate in a prescribed form, and the minister of the parish is thereupon to enter such baptism in the register according to the certifi- cate, adding the words ' according to the certifi- cate of the Reverend A. B., transmitted to me on the day of ' " and so forth. Conse- quently, you see, it is necessary that my certificate should be in Mr. Haydon's hand to-morrow, in order that he may on its authority and by its information make a sufficient record of the baptism.' ' Till he has seen and acted upon it, there can be no legal evidence of my little one's baptism?' said Antoinette Challoner, still fishing for information with another fly. 262 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. ' No, not so/ responded the teacher, smiHng triumpliantly, as he gorged both fly and hook. * No ! Written by me in the performance of my duty to the State, and in comphance with an injunction by the State, that certificate is good and sufficient documentary evidence of a sacred fact, that would of course be no less a fact, and a sacred fact, should all human evidence of so interesting an event be wholly destroyed. For example, let us suppose that, through some strange and most improbable misadventure, the certificate should never come to the cognizance of the Keverend Mr. Haydon or any other clergyman. Let us suppose,' the Barbadian rector continued in a lighter and less pompous manner, that would not have misbeseemed a secular orator, addressing a numerous audience on a trivial and rather amusing subject, 'for illustration's sake, let us suppose that, instead of giving the certificate to Mr. Haydon, you should through sheer forgetfulness or some freak of feminine perversity preserve it under lock and key in this desk for the next twenty or thirty years. In that case no record of Sophia Antoinette's baptism and parentage TOUCHING A CERTIFICATE. 2C^'^ would appear in the St. Jude's register, and any person searching the register some twenty or thirty years hence for evidence of the parentage and baptism of the same Sophia Antoinette would get nothing but disappoint- ment for his pains. Well, what of that V ' The consequences might be serious f * The consequences might be very serious. But, my dear madam, it is far more probable that the defect of the register would have no serious consequences nor any consequences whatever. The number of baptismal registra- tions that come to be needed for purposes of evidence, are comparatively few, very few, — perhaps not more than one in ten thousand ; and of the comparatively few registrations, that in the course of time become practically service- able for evidential ends, only a small proportion afford evidence that could not be procured from another source or other sources of informa- tion. Still once in a Icng while, once in a blue moon, it does happen that by force of a baptismal registration property does pass to an individual, who in his inability to produce any other suf- ficient proof of his parentage or a link in his 2G4 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. lineage would miss the estate, were it not for the entry in the register. Let us imagine a case in regard to your charming little ward, Sophia Antoinette. Imagine that thirty years hence it should be needful for her to prove herself the daughter of Luther and Clemaine Donaldson, and that in her inability to prove the fact in an easier or indeed in anj- other way, she should seek the requisite evidence in the St. Jude's register — and should search the register in vain.' ' In that case,' interposed Antoinette Chal- loner, still fishing for information, ' she would necessarily miss the estate or other advantage to which she could not prove herself entitled.' ' Not necessarily,' rejoined Mr. Mansfield, with a triumphant smile, 'not necessarily, my dear Mrs. Challoner. The issue of the affair might be as disastrous as you imagine. But let us imagine that at the eleventh hour of the search this certificate should come to light in the secret drawer of this writing-desk, and come to Sophia Antoinette's possession. In that case she would derive from the certificate all the advantage that would have come to her from a registration TOUCHING A CERTIFICATE. 265 made in accordance with the certificate. The irregularity and defect of the register, and the delay of the transmission of the certificate would not lessen the evidential value of the document. That is the whole truth of the affair. I need say no more.' * You have said more than enough to show there should be no needless delay in transmitting this precious paper to the custodian of the St. Jude's registers. To-night,' added Antoinette Challoner, as she opened the larger compartment of lier writing-desk and put the certificate in a hidden drawer of the same compartment, ' the paper shall rest there. And now, Mr. Mansfield, let lis talk about the West Indies.' Whereupon, ceasing to speak by turns like a popular lecturer addressing a numerous audience and a professor giving instruction to an intellec- tual inferior, the Barbadian rector resumed his usual and proper role of a well-mannered clergy- man, and spent half-an-hour alike to his own and Mrs. Challoner's satisfaction, gossiping with her about the islands she had visited, and the people whose acquaintance she had made during her sojourn in the West Indies. 'iQG CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. The clergyman having taken his departure, An- toinette Challoner hastened to the room that had ah'cady come to be known in Raleigh Lodge as ' the nursery/ in order to take another view of the minute and newly-constituted Christian, before that young person should be divested of a christening-robe, whose elaborate and profuse embroidery had elicited no little praise from the participators in the baptismal ceremony. Lying on the middle of the great bed on which her mother had so recently yielded her last breath, Sophy — with her small head resting on a small down pillow covered with thin silk of the lightest blue, and with her profusely embroidered robe so laid out as to display its elaborate ornamentation — was a choice example of infantine beauty in the earliest stage of development; and as she regarded the little creature's blue -veined forehead and eyehds, pink cheeks, and tiny, curling, pouting hps, Antoin- ette Challoner's nervous lineaments were pathe- tically eloquent of womanly tenderness and of maternal felicity. * Asleep, Rose V Antoinette Challoner inquired, in a whisper, as she entered the room on tiptoe, TOUCHING A CERTIFICATE. 2C7 and stole noiselessly from the door to the bed. Rose Drakeford's answer in the affirmative was made by a single nod, unaccompanied by word or whisper that might break the baby's slumber ; and as the two women stood side by side at the foot of the big bed, now studying Sophy's wee countenance and now exchanging glances of approval and admiration, it would have been manifest to any observer of the scene that the mistress and the servant, the gentlewoman and the artisan's wife, were in unison. The touch of nature that made them kin came from their common love of the unconscious nursling, whose existence soothed Hose Drakeford's sorrow for her recent bereavement, and was scarcely less delightful to Antoinette Challoner than the realization of her long cherished and often dis- appointed hope would have been. ' See ! she's awake !' observed Antoinette Challoner, in the lowest tone above a whisper, when the baby raised her eyelids and then moved her small lips, as though she were half- inclined to utter a protest against the conditions of human existence. ' Yes, awake,' replied Rose Drakcford, who 2(38 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. proceeded to make with her mouth an inde- ecribable sound, combining the properties of the weakest possible hum and the faintest possible whistle, that lulling the baby out of the momen- tary fretfulness determined her to take life tranquilly and observe it uncomplainingly. ' What a beauty she is, as she lies there I' remarked Antoinette audibly, when it was clear that baby had dismissed her half-entertained purpose of making an outcry with her lilliputian lungs and ridiculous little throat. ' And what a robe it is ! Mrs. Harford says she never saw a more delicate and beautiful piece of work !' And you agree with her V ' I never saw a richer piece of embroidery, but I am inchned to think it overdone with ornament.' ' You are right, Rose ; it is overdone with the needle. The original design was all plain here and all plain there ; and all those little rose- buds, with a sprig of leaf to each of them, were put in long after I had obscured the beauty of the original design with disfiguring embellish- ments. 1 should not have tried to improve it. TOUCHIXG A CERTIFICATE. 26^ But there were times when I could not keep my fingers off it. Ah, me ! how many stitches that robe has cost me, — and how many tears ' You worked upon it in the first instance, madam, for a child of your own V 'Yes, for my child, my only child — that was born and buried years ago at Malta.' * I knew you had a child and lost it.' ' Yes i How so ?— -Of course. Dr. Cartwright told you r * No, madam, — the doctor didn't tell me.' * How came you to know it?' ' 1 read it in your eyes, 1 felt it in your voice, the first evening of being here, when you received me so kindly and put me at my ease. I knew you must have sufiered like me,' an- swered Rose, with a sad and tranquil earnest- ness that brought a blush of sympathetic emotion to Antoinette's face. * Of course, I should have thought of that. — Yes, Rose,' Geofii-ey Challoner's wife added tenderly, as she laid her right hand lightly on the young woman's shoulder, ' we are sisters by affliction, — my past sorrow, your present grief. When 1 heard how short a time your 270 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. child liad lived, I remembered how my child also had lived for ouly three days. Last night, Rose, when I said my prayers, I begged our dear Father of His mercy to comfort you with another child. It seemed good to Him to with- hold that consolation from me. I never had another child, though the dear Lord knows how strongly I used to implore Him to give mc one. Again and again I imagined He assented to my entreaties, and when the hope of soon becoming a mother took possession of me I used in my gladness to fall to work on that over-embroider- ed muslin, and when the hope went from me and left me in darkness and desolation, it was then I used to water the roses with bitter tears. Ah, me ! how often the hope came and went ! But, thank God! all that trouble is over now. May your trouble end as completely and much sooner !' ' As it was of God's will, madam, that Mrs. Donaldson has died, so it is of His mercy that her baby has come to such tender hands as yours,' said Rose Drakeford, with emotion that caused her dark eyes to brim with tears, and impelled her to grasp Antoinette Challoner's TOUCHING A CERTIFICATE. 271 right hand and kiss it repeatedly. ' Oh, madam,' the young woman added beseechingly, on the subsidence of her excitement, as she let go her mistress's hand Avith a look of alarm, 'do not be angry with me for taking such a liberty.' * Have 1 not said, Rose, that sorrow has made us sisters 1 I should be a strange woman to resent your kindness as a liberty,' replied Antoinette Challoner, putting a kiss on Rose Drakeford's face, as she passed from the nursery. The next day Antoinette Challoner omitted to deliver the certificate to the curate-in-charge, and in this respect the day following Sophy Donaldson's admission to the church militant here on earth resembled every succeeding day. The certificate remained for many a day and many a year in Antoinette Challoner's posses- sion, and many a year passed before it occurred to anyone to ask how it had come to pass that the St. Jude's register comprised no record of the baptism and parentage of Sophia Antoi- nette, daughter of Luther Donaldson and his wife Clemaine. AVhilst the Harfords were staying at Hamp- stead, it made for Antpipette Challoner's peace 272 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. of inind, and her ability to write a long and momentons letter to her liusband, that slie was troubled by no inconvenient inquiries respecting the document, which she had determined to withhold from the clergyman, for whose in- formation it had been written. Incurious about the details of ecclesiastical regulations, and re- garding the theological doctrines of baptismal regeneration with secular levity and scientific insolence, Dr. Cartwright did not trouble him- self about little Sophy's enrollment in the gTeat Christian army, w^hen the ceremony had been duly performed by his Barbadian brother-in-law. It was enough for him to know that one of the youngest and most tender of his patients was secure of all the spiritual advantage that could ensue from a rite, which could not do the infant any physical harm. Antoinette Challoner had no apprehension of annoyance, from the phy- sician's never impertinent inquisitiveness ; and the event accorded with her sense of security. Thinking it at least possible that the Harfords might be less incurious than their dear doctor, the provident Mrs. Challoner settled in her own mind how she should reply to their questions, so TOUCHING A CERTIFICATE. 273 as to satisfy their curiosity without revealing the purpose of her own breast. But on their return from Hampstead, to spend their last night in England at the villa, that had been their home for nearly four years, Emmeline and Frederick gave her no occasion for using any- one of the several more or less disingenuous forms of speech, by which she designed to baffle their inquisitiveness, without having recourse to positive untruth. On their re-appearance at Kaleigh Lodge, the young merchant and his wife were Avithin twenty-four hours of the time when they had to go on board ship ; and, though their heavy trunks had already been sent to the East India dock, it still remained for them to pack their cabin-baggage. Intent on the mani- fold petty affairs that are wont to occupy the minds of voyagers on the eve of a long journey, the Harfords spoke never a word about the dis- tasteful curate-in-charge, and much to her relief omitted to ask Antoinette Challoner a single question about the certificate, that was lying in one of the secret drawers of her writing-desk. VOL. 1. 274 CHAPTER XVI. THE PLAN OF IMPOSTURE. The Harfords having departed for Calcutta, Antoinette Challoner was the sole tenant of Raleigh Lodge, and the sole guardian of the infant whom she had adopted and designed to rear as her own daughter. Circumstances had placed her in loco imrentis to her niece's only offspring, whom she designed to impose, for an indefinite period, on her husband as his and her own issue. Under every conceivable combination of cir- cumstances, the woman, who imposes a child falsely on her husband as their progeny, is guilty of a heinous offence. Reprehensible for several grave reasons, the fraud is singularly odious for involving steady persistence in un- truth towards the man, who has a stronger title THE PLAN OF IMPOSTURE. 275 than any other human being to the impostor's candour and confidence. It is also an especially execrable offence, because it makes directly for that * confusion of progeny,' which moved Dr. Johnson to declare the gravest kind of conjugal infidelity more abominable in a woman than in a man. This imposture Antoinette Challoner determined to commit, and throughout a long series of years did actually perpetrate, to her husband's perfect delusion. Yet I do not hesi- tate to speak of the woman, guilty of so enor- mous an offence against her loyal and devoted husband, as a good w^oman. That the fraud, so daringly conceived and so steadily maintained, was compatible with this estimate of Mrs. Chal- loner's character, appears from the considera- tions which determined her to practise in so reprehensible a w^ay on her husband's confidence in her veracity. Of these considerations some related to the dead, while others related to the living. In order that we may judge Antoinette Challoner fairly, in respect to the long course of imposture on which she is now entering, let us examine the two sets of considerations, which palliate T 2 27(> CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. the enormity of an offence tliat admits of no justification. Conceiving herself to have been chiefly ac- countable for her husband's quarrel with his brother, and being acutely remorseful for her part in the family dissension, which had resulted in grievous injury to her sister-in-law, the con- scientious Antoinette Challoner deemed herself to be under a strong moral obligation to render the only atonement in her power to the shade of Dorothy Challoner. Whether the living woman took a reasonable view of her relation to the dead woman is a question that can in no degree affect our view of the moral value and beauty of her desire to make reparation to her sister-in-law's spirit, for the injury she conceived herself to have done her. It is enough for readers of this story to know that Antoinette Challoner imagined herself imder a solemn obHgation to make atonement to her dead sister-in-law, and that she was strongly desirous to discharge the sacred obligation. From th(^ day of her re-union with Clemaine to the time of Clemaine's fatal illness, Mrs. Geoffrey Chal- loner was hopeful of eventually compassing her THE PLAN OF IMPOSTURE. 277 liusband's perfect reconciliation with his niece, and was firmly resolved on doing her utmost to make the young widow a prime object of her uncle's affection. Now that Clemaine had gone to the unseen world, the only atonement Antoi- nette Challoner could make to the spirit of her injured sister-in-law was to plant Olemaine's child securely in Geoffrey Challoner's generous breast. Thus instigated by sentiments of remorse and justice to make atonement to her dead sister-in- law, Antoinette Challoner was impelled by the same sentiments of remorse and justice, and also by impulses of aflection, to render the same atonement to Clemaine, who had suffered no less largely and cruelly than her mother from the family dissension. Thinking she owed Cle- maine's ghost the same atonement, Antoinette Challoner also owed her niece's gentle spirit the services of personal affection and cordial attach- ment. Moreover, on taking the unconscious infant into her custody, Antoinette Challoner had promised the dying mother to deal with the €hild in every respect as her own offspring, and to do her utmost to make her husband feel as 278 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. fondly for the child as it was iu his nature to feel for an infant born tt) him by his own wife. Having made this solemn promise to the dying Clemaine, Antoinette Challoner was not the woman to be careless for its fulfillment. The letter and the spirit of the promise were power- fully operative on Antoinette Challoner's quick brain and fervid heart and fearless spirit, when she decided to offer little Sophy to her husband's love as her and his offspring. Let us now glance at the considerations that related to living persons, — to Avit, Sophy An- toinette, Geoffrey Challoner, and Antoinette herself. Impelled to do her utmost for the little Sophy's welfare, by regard for her imaginary obligation to render atonement to Dorothy Challoner's spirit, by conscientious concern for her imagin- ary duty to make reparation to Clemaine's shade, by emotions of affectionate devotion to the niece who had Hved to become her friend, and by scrupulous care for her solemn promise to that dear friend, Antoinette Challoner was even more powerfully moved to scheme and labour for the advantage of Clemaine's child by her THE PLAN OF IMPOSTURE. 279 own vehement love of the parentless babe. Having welcomed little Sophy to the chamber of her heart that might never be occupied by a child of her own self, Geoffrey Challoner's wife rejoiced in the infant with the passionate tender- ness and extravagant delight of a woman, who, after spending long years in the unrest and anguish of unsatisfied yearnings for offspring, attains her heart's desire at the eleventh hour. The element of mental unsoundness (always distinct from insanity) that had so often troubled Antoinette Challoner on the weakest side of her nature, was recognized by Dr. Cart- wright in the tender excesses and almost fan- tastic exuberance of her fondness for the infant, that had come so tragically into her possession. Indeed, there were times when the endearments which she lavished on the idolized baby, were equally pathetic and amusing to the observant doctor. To plant this precious darling in her hus- band's heart, and to make him a cordial partici- pator in her idolatry of the incomparable infant, Antoinette Challoner was prepared to go great lengths: and, after deliberating on what he had 280 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. "written to her of his repugnance to the notion of living in close and daily intimacy with Dorothy Challoner's daughter, Mrs. Clialloner came to the reasonable conclusion that her 1 us- band would regard Dorothy Challoner's grand- daughter with similar aversion, unless he were lured into loving Sophy before he should learn tlie relation in w^hich he really stood to the un- offending child. Even more than by her solicitude for the in- fant's welfare, Antoinette Challoner was impelled to make her great essay in imposture by concern for her husband's happiness. No less cognizant of the foibles and perversities than of the noble qualities of his essentially generous nature, no less famihar with the stubbornness of his ' other ' and unusual temper than with the virtues and graces of his habitual disposition, Antoinette Challoner kneio he would never delight in Cle- maine's offspring, if the little one were introduced to him as the grandchild of the woman to whose maUce and duplicity he attributed his lament- able severance from his only brother. On the contrary, on returning from sea three or four years hence, the simple and sweet-natiired THE PLAN OF DIPOSTURE. 281 sailor, who ever delighted in children and had suffered almost as acutely as his wife from hav- ing no children of his own, would not fail to take the little Sophy to his heart, if he were not pre- judiced against her, before he set eyes on her, by the knowledge of her lineal descent from his maleficent sister-in-law. But under what name and character should Sophy Donaldson be introduced to Geoffrey Challoner, in order that he should delight in the child whom it was necessary for his happiness that he should love passionately ? As she an- swered this question to herself, Antoinette Chal- loner's heart leaped in her breast with wild pulsations, her face flushed crimson, her large grey eyes glowed with excitement, and her brain was dizzied by successive waves of violent emotion. ' Yes,' she thought, as the design for the im- posture took sudden possession of her intellect, imagination, and affections, 'I told Clemaine that her daughter should be my daughter, and that I would do my utmost to render the child as dear to my husband as any child of my own could be, and I will be true to my word. Geo- 282 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. ffrey will delight in the child, and she will fasci- nate his taste and control his affections, if she is offered to him as the child for whom he has been longing for years — as the fulfillment of the hope with which he left me last summer. There will be no need to persist in the impostm-e for any- very long period after his return to England. When he shall have learned to delight in my darling, and she shall have bound his heart with indestructible ties, I shall tell him that, instead of being my offspring, she is the issue of his brother^s daughter. Having regard to the pur- pose and fruit of the imposture, he will pardon my deceit, will not resent it, but will be grateful to me for it.' To the wife — who, in her reluctance to give him pain, had now for several months forborne to infonii her husband of the utter extinction of her hope of eventually becoming a mother — this plan for an extraordinary imposture was the more congenial, because it would exempt him, for an indefinite period, from the distress of knowing that he would go cliildless to the grave, and, for the same indefinite period, would afford him the delight of imagining himself a father. THE PLAN OF IMPOSTURE. 283 Whilst she was chiefly impelled to enter on the course of imposture by the motives already indicated — by desire to render ample atonement to Dorothy Challoncr and Clemaine Donaldson ; by regard for her solemn promise to the dying Clemaine ; by solicitude for the little Sophy's welfare, and by concern for her husband's happi- ness — Antoinette Challoner was also actuated, albeit far less strongly, by self-reflecting con- siderations. Wishing to knit Clemaine's child to her own soul by ties stronger than the thread of affinity^ the aunt-by-marriage wished to keep Clemaine's offspring in ignorance of her real parentage, in order that she might regard her adoptive parents as her father and mother in the largest, strictest, most sacred sense of the tender titles. Hungry for the greatest possible measure of the child's reverential attachment, the woman, to whom an unrelenting fate had denied the maternal privi- leges, wished for her own sake to be regarded with fihal fondness and enthusiasm by Sophy Donaldson. To w4n this love from the child who was not her veritable issue, Antoinette Challoner saw that, even from the dawn of her 284 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. mental life, Sophy must be trained to mistake her great-aiiiit fur her mother. Wishing for her own sake to bo regarded as Sophy's veritable mother-in-blood by the child herself, Antoinette Challoner also wished for her own sake to be mistaken for Sophy's mother by the world, in order that she should escape the social discredit of childlessness. After what has been said of the distress that came to her from the disappointment of her vehement yearnings for maternal felicity, readers will not be sur- prised to learn that, notwithstanding her intel- lectual vigour and acuteness, the nervous and sensitive Mrs. Challoner could reflect on her mere misfortune with feelings of shame, that were none the less vexatious to her self-respect, and irritating to her spirit, because she knew the shame was unreasonable. Upon the whole, we suffer less from the com- punctions of conscience than from the poisonous stings of self-regarding vanity. In a slight degree Geoffrey Challoner's wife was moved to play the impostor by reflecting that, if the world were induced to imagine her the mother of her adopted child, she would cease to be compas- THE PLAN OF DIPOSTURE. 285 sionately disesteemed as a woman who had shown herself insufficient for the first and fore- most of ' the causes for which matrimony was ordained ' and ' instituted of God in the time of man's innocency.' Of course, in taking so mor- bid a view of her own purely physical disability, the too sensitive Antoinette Challoner was guilty of weakness, that contrasts notably with the general strength of her character. It does not follow that the exceptional weakness is incom- patible with the general strength. Human nature, be it observed, delights in those con- trarieties of temper and disposition, and conse- quent action, which youthful censors of romantic literature are sometimes too quick to denounce as ' unnatural inconsistencies.' Whilst most of the considerations, which determined Antoinette Challoner to perpetrate so nefarious an imposture, were distinctly evi- dential of her goodness, the others were at least consistent with all that has been said of the general rectitude of her conduct and the sweet- ness of her disposition. The desire to render atonement to Dorothy Challoner's shade was the desire of a conscientious woman. The wish 286 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. to render atonement for the injury she imagined herself to have done to Clemaine Donaldson was also the wish of a conscientious woman. The determination to befriend Clemaine's child to the utmost, in accordance with the solemn promise made to the dying mother, was the determination of a loyal and virtuous mind. The concern for Sophy's welfare was a pious and humane concern. In shrinking from the course of action, that would occasion her hus- band immediate and extreme distress, Antoi- nette Challoner was nothing worse than a tenderly sympathetic wife. Her wish to pro- cure for him the largest possible measure of felicity accorded with her conjugal duty. Her hunger for the largest attainable measure of Sophy's affection was the innocent yearning of a womanly heart. In desiring to be mistaken by the world for the veritable mother of her adopted child, in order that she might escape an imaginary disesteem, Antoinette was guilty of pathetic weakness that was pure of malice. Moreover, in fairness to this good woman who did an evi\ thing, let it be observed that at the time of determining to do what was wrong THE PLAX OF IMPOSTURE. 287 and wicked, she was far from imagining that the impostm-e, which promised to be so greatly beneficial to her husband and her adopted child, and so advantageous and pleasant to herself, could be fruitful of injury to any person. AVhat- ever property her husband might bequeath to Sophy, under the impression that she was his daughter, would only be the same property which, with his view of the moral obligations and claims of consanguinity, he would bequeath to her as sole surviving representative of his own father. It could not be more than the same property that, in case he died without a will after surviving his wife, would in the course of nature and by force of human law devolve on Sophy as his nearest of kin. A few days before Sophy's private baptism, Antoinette Challoner received from her husband a letter that strengthened her disposition to carry out the scheme of imposture, on which she had meditated almost from the hour of Clemaine's death. From this epistle Mrs. Challoner learned (not for the first time) that at least two and perhaps three of the letters which she had despatched to her husband had through some 288 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. delay or more serious misadventure of successive mails failed to reach their destination in due course. ' Since your letter of the date 29th November ult., in which you made no mention of your health beyond saying that you were " fairly well," ' wrote Geoffrey Challoner in the later part ot the lengthy epistle dated off Sierra Leone, ' I have received no line from your pen. My anxiety for you, my darling, would be even keener and more torturing than it is, had the mails come to us with no letter from you. What disasters, what ghastly terrors should I be imagining, if the two missing mails and the fourteen days overdue mail had arrived without letters from you. No, it is not so bad as that. But it tries me sadly to be so long without hearing from you. Heaven grant that the mails may have survived the rough weather, and soon may bring me budgets of cheery gossip from the best and brightest letter-writer in the whole universe, — budgets saying more about your health than " I go on fairly well.'* Ah, me ! my dearest, to think of all that may have happened since I had those meagre words, THE PLAN OF IMPOSTURE. 289 " I go on fairly well." Poor fellow that I am ! — so far away from you, and knowing nothing of what ill or good fortune has befallen you since the 29th of November.' Later still, in the same long letter, Geoffrey Challoner wrote : * May all have gone well with you ! That is the prayer I make to heaven, as I close my eyes to sleep and as I awake. It rises from my lips to heaven, whenever I turn away from work and think of you. And may all have gone well with my luckless niece. Though I cannot think of her as you woidd hke me to think of her, I can from my heart wish her good for- tune, — ay, and a bright life for the little one, who, if all goes well, will be lying on her breast while you are reading these lines. Yes, I can wish so much for the little one, whom it will never be in my power to look at with delight. If I were a philosopher I should be able to school myself into thinking more tenderly of them, — should find it easy to dis-associate them from the woman who robbed me of my brother. But I am nothing more than a simple sailor, who ever was, and ever must remain, the slave VOL. I. U 290 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. of his affections. No, I shall never delight either in my niece or in her child, whether it be girl or boy. But they shall never hear an un- kind word from my lips, nor shall they have reason to complain of my action towards them. Countenance, counsel, money 1 will give them freely ; but my love they may not ask for.' It was thus that Geoffrey Challoner wrote of his brother's daughter and her still unborn child in the letter, that did not come to Antoi- nette Challoner's hands till the child was fourteen days old, and the mother was sleeping the sleep that knows no waking. Till she perused this letter, Antoinette Chal- loner had not definitely resolved to carry out the plan of imposture. But the epistle, which made her feel more strongly how needful the deception was for her husband's happiness and her ward's welfare, put an end to iiTcsolution. AVhilst the Harfords were absent from Raleigh Lodge, staying with their friends and taking- leave of their children at Hampstead, Antoinette Challoner wrote the letter, which in the course of a few weeks gave her husband to understand that his niece was resting in the grave of St. THE PLAN OF IMPOSTURE. 291 Jude's cemetery with her still-boru infant by her side, and that his convalescent wife was rejoicing in the possession of a daughter, who promised to develop into a lovely Avoman. 'Dearest,' the impostor Avrote to a husband incapable of suspecting her of even the shghtest deviation from truth, ' do not think me incon- stant in affection, because I am too agreeably agitated by my own happiness to be capable of mourning deeply for the niece who was so un- speakably dear to me. I will write you a longer letter by the next mail, but for the present 1 have written as much as my weakness will let me. Be assured, my dear husband, that in every particular of my bodily health we have reason to be thankful ; but of course I am no stronger than women in my ineffably blissful estate are wont to be. See, . Geoffrey, this thornless rose-bud with a sprig of leaf rising from its stalk, which I have sketched into this last corner of my last sheet of paper. The rose-bud has been put gently against the lips of our own w^ee-wee darling ; and our tiny little daughter's hands — oh, dearest husband ! they are such lovely little hands ! — have been gently u2 292 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. drawn over the lines of the concluding page of my too long budget. Be patient, dearest hus- band, and as soon as she shall be able to use a pen, our darling shall write to you with her own tender little hand. — Your ever loving Wife.' The vessel that conveyed the Harfords to Calcutta had barely passed out of the mouth of the Thames, when this momentous letter was committed to the mail, that carried it to the African station. The letter having gone from her hands, Antoinette Challoner had entered on the plan of imposture, from which she imagined she could retreat easily, when the deception should have achieved its principal purpose. 293 CHAPTER XVII. A CONGENITAL PECULIARITY. Becoming the sole teDant of Raleigh Lodge in the middle of March, 1836, Antoinette Challoner dwelt in the villa, lying in a neighbourhood of villas, till the following Michaelmas; during which time she made several changes in the furniture and internal arrangements of the house. Most of the furniture and other inanimate goods and chattels, which she left behind her at Burnham Regis, having been brought to Lon- don and deposited in the warehouses of Messrs. Duncombe and Babb, a firm of upholsterers who had in the way of their trade served three gen- erations of her husband's family, Mrs. Challoner towards the close of March caused some of those possessions — to wit, her piano and harp, her 294 CUTTIXG FOR PARTNERS. favourite sofa, a selection of works from her library, and the writing-table at which she had in the course of years written so many letters to her numerous correspondents — to be taken from the aforesaid warehouses to her temporary home near Regent's Park. Retaining, in the capacity of house and parlour-maid, the young woman who had for nearly four years been the villa's general and only servant, Geoffrey Challoner's wife engaged the services of a competent female cook. For her own personal attendant she had Rose Drakeford, who was delighted to serve so gracious a mistress as ' lady's-maid,' whilst con- tinuing to act as little Sophy's foster-nurse. The garden and grounds of Raleigh Lodge having been placed under the care of a nursery- man, Mrs. Challoner, in the middle of April, 1836, commissioned the keeper of an adjacent livery-stables to journey to Burnham Regis, and taking possession of her white pony, pony- can-iage, big black-and-tan colley, dainty Italian greyhound, Persian cats and kittens, black Spanish poultry, caged birds, and all things appertaining to them, to bring them to London. This commission having been executed, with A CONGENITAL PECULIARITY. 295 due observance of courtesy to the gentleman who had preserved the pets for her since her withdrawal from Berkshire, Mrs. Challoner felt herself wholly quit of Burnham Regis and of every material tie to the place. The pony and carriage were committed to the care of the livery-stable keeper, who undertook to provide a young man fit and competent either to drive the mettlesome animal, or to sit behind Mrs. Challoner when she preferred to be her own * whip.' The pony having been thus provided for, the other pets were received at Raleigh Lodge, alike to the satisfaction of their owner and the diversion of her modest staff of domestic servants. Though she harboured no unkind thought of her late employers, Mrs. Challoner's house-and-parlour maid was more than consoled for the disappearance of Mr. and Mrs. Harford by the arrival of the live stock from Berkshire, and found the sentiment of all her fellow-ser- vants to be with her, when she declared that the ' dogs and singing-birds and cats and kittens and poultry and suchlike made the place sound and look home-like.' Had no one needed him in his professional 296 CUTTING FOR TARTNERS. capacity at No. 12, North Bank Road, Regent's Park, Dr. Cartwright would have been a fre- quent caller at Raleigh Lodge, out of regard to Clemaine's prayer that, after her death he would continue to drop in at the villa to cheer her dear aunt. But the doctor's visits at the Lodge between the middle of March and the end of the following September would have been much less numerous and regular, had not Clemaine's infant required a large amount of his nicest attention. Not that Sophy failed to falfil her early promise of good health. Super- ior to the infirmities of sickly babes, she escaped the violent maladies that sometimes assail vigorous infants. It has been already remarked that she was lovely in her countenance and shapely in her limbs. But, notwithstanding the general beauty and symmetry of her person, she was in one minute particular deficient in shape- liness. Whilst her left ear was small, delicately- fashioned, and of faultless complexion, the external surfaces of Sophy's right ear were im- perfectly developed and defective in their con- tours. One shrinks from describing an ear, that bore some resemblance to an opening flower, by A CONGENITAL PECULIARITY. 297 Ro harsh a word as * malformation.' The honest though far from stern historian is, however, compelled to record that the ear was not formed as it ought to have been. This being so, it was fortunate for little Sophy that she was * brought into the world ' by Dr. Cartwright of Welbeck Street, who had for years made a special study of the congenital deformities of the human ear. The doctor's eminence in this special depart- ment of surgery dated from his successful treatment of the auricular malformation of Charles Dormer, Marquis of Crop worthy, infant son and heir-apparent of x^ustin Dormer, sixth Duke of Shirrescourt. For generations the ShiiTCscourt Dormers had been remarkable amongst the nobility of Great Britain for their pointed ears ; and at the time of the sixth duke's marriage with Lady Vanilla Cataract, the beautiful daughter of the Earl and Countess of Bellhanger, it was well-known in the best- informed circles that, had it not been for Lord Bell hanger's financial necessities and his count- ess's overbearing will. Lady Vanilla would have declined the greatest * catch' of the season, from her fear of becoming the mother of yet 298 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. another brood of Dormers with pointed ears. The young duchess's apprehension was justified by the event ; each of* her numerous oflfspring being endowed by nature 'svith one faultless ear and one pointed ear — the boys being thus out of form in the right ear, while the girls suffered from the same peculiarity of the left ear. For- tunately for the sensibilities of the loveliest duchess of her generation, Her Grace of Shirres- court had for her apothecary a young man who, within three days of the Marquis of Crop worthy's birth, had the courage to approach the Court physicians, then in attendance on the duchess, with certain ingenious proposals for dealing with the deformity of the noble infant's right ear. Receiving Dr. Cartwright's novel and curious suggestions with an air of supercilious amuse- ment, appropriate to their high position in ' the faculty,' the Court physicians gave the duchess to understand that the treatment suggested by her young and distinctly intelligent apothecary could not be hurtful to the constitution of the Duke of Shirrescourt's heir-apparent. Whether the treatment would be beneficial to the ear was a purely surgical question, on which the A CONGENITAL PECULIARITY. 299 courtly physicians, with a proper regard for pro- fessional etiquette, dechned to give an opinion. Sir Felix Hounslow, baronet, having certified, with the show of supercilious amusement be- fitting the President of the Royal College of Surgeons, that the treatment could not hurt the ear, young Dr. Cartwright was authorized by Her Grace the Duchess of Shirrescourt to do his best to amend her poor boy's unfortunate ear. AVhere- upon the young doctor did his best with such happy results, that the Marquis of Cropworthy escaped the peculiarity of Shirrescourt Dormers* and the ingenious general practitioner received from the Duke of Shirrescourt a complimentary fee of a hundred guineas, over and above his charges for services rendered to the minute marquis. As he was no less fortunate in his treatment of the other items of her grace's pro- geny, and was paid no less liberally for services rendered to each item's deformity, and as the Duchess of Shirrescourt, in her gratitude to her ' family doctor,' spoke strongly to ' society ' of his wonderful cleverness, Dr. Cartwright had reason to be thankful for the naturally pointed ears of the Shirrescourt Dormers. 300 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. But for the doctor's skill, Clemaine Donald- son's offspring would have grown to womanhood with a Dormer ear on the right side of her lovely countenance. Thanks to his skill, her right ear became a match to the small and daintily-fash- ioned ear on the other side of her head. Not merely for the sake of the doctor's repu- tation is it needful for the historian to describe the appearance of Sophy's right ear before it was subjected to surgical treatment. Protruding from the head, instead of lying lightly against it, the ear was misshapen in that the edge of its superior part and the edge of its posterior part were inclined towards one another, so that the feature in some degree resembled an imper- fectly-opened blossom of the arrow-leafed arum — the resemblance being the more striking because the ear rose to a point from the place where the superior and posterior parts were in juxtaposition. The angular projection, which is the most striking and grotesque peculiarity of the pointed human ear, is regarded by physi- ologists as the survival of an extinct auricular formation. Speaking of the projecting points observable in the several examples of the pointed A CONGENITAL PECULIARITY. 301 human ear, that were submitted to his considera- tion by the sculptor and poet, Thomas Woolner, R.A., Charles Darwin observes, in the 'Descent of Man ' : * These points not only project inwards, but often a little outwards, so that they are visible when the head is viewed from directly in front or behind. They are variable in size and some- what in position, standing either a little higher or lower ; and they sometimes occur on one ear and not on the other.' After comparing the pro- jecting angles that are occasionally observable in the helix of the human ear, with similar pro- jections of tissue observable in the ears of monkeys, the physiologist concludes that the projections are ' a vestige of formerly pointed ears, which occasionally reappears in man.' Little Sophy's right ear was one of the unusual human ears that exhibit, at the margin, a vestige of the distinguishing external characteristics of the whilom pointed ears of human-kind. Besides being pointed at the top, and remark- able for the inclination of the superior part and the posterior part of its cartilage towards each other, the infant's ear was defective in the 302 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. superior parts of its outer margin, on either side of the angular projection that rose upwards from the superior edge of the feature. Instead of turning inwards and downwards Avith a deli- cate curve, the hehxwas at these spaces straight and graceless. In treating this ear, therefore, Dr. Cartwright aimed at correcting three several defects, — 1, the excessive prominence of the visible part of the ear ; 2, the folding towards one another of the superior and posterior portions of the auri- cular cartilage ; and 3, the disfiguring erectness aud straightness of the superior part of the helix (including the angular projection of tissue), Avliich did not fold downwards in the manner of a faultless margin. To effect his purpose, the surgeon applied gentle pressure to the plastic tissue of the offending parts. Remarking to the three women (Mrs. Challouer, Mrs. Harford, and Rose Drakeford), wdio watched the initial (operations, that gentle pressure would be suffi- cient to induce Nature to correct completely the faults, which she would correct in some degree Avithout surgical encouragement, Ur. Cartwright applied the sufficient pressure by A CONGENITAL PECULIARITY. 303 means of an apparatus, that to unscientific observers would appear inadequate to the purpose. After measuring the anterior surface of the ear with great nicety, he made a base of opera- tions by cutting out a piece of firm card-board, that was somewhat smaller than this surface. This card-board he fitted with five ligatures of woven silk cord, each of which passed through a minute hole in the board, one end of each cord being attached by a knot to the card- board, whilst the other end was armed with a small silver hook. In the next place the operator padded one side and all the edge of the card- board with soft wadding, so that the tender muscular tissue and delicate cartilage, to which the apparatus would soon be applied, should not be chafed or unduly irritated by the board. In like manner the small, blunt, thick little hooks were guarded with down-wadding. The daintily-fashioned instrument was then put upon the ear, when a slight amount of manual force had caused a partial unfolding of superior and posterior spaces of cartilage. One of the smooth and padded hooks — the little * grappling-silvers,' 304 CUTTING FOR PARTN^ERS. as the doctor called them — was then put under the lobe of Sophy's ear, so as to act as a stay for keeping the apparatus in position, when the grappliug-silvers should be hooked on to that part of the helix which they were designed to lure into folding outwards, downwards, and towards the middle of the ear. Lastly, the apparatus was secured with strips of fine linen, that after being drawn firmly over the head were fastened with needle and thread, so that no knots or rumples of the bandages should cause the patient avoidable discomfort. In these days, when babies do not wear caps, such an apjDaratus would show ill on an infant's head ; but the caps worn by Sophia Antoinette almost concealed the mechanical devices for improving the shape of her ear. The treatment was not earned out easily. Although Rose Drakeford was careful to handle her minute charge in ways least likely to result in a disarrangement of the surgical contrivance, a day seldom passed without an incident, that imposed on Sophy's nurse and adoptive mother the trouble of replacing the compress and liga- ments. Thrice a week Dr. Cartwright showed A CONGENITAL PECULIARITY. 305 his manual cleverness in re-ordering the appli- ance. A troublesome business, the treatment was also a slow business. After three weeks of unremitted care and obedience to the doctor's instructions, Antoinette Challoner and Nurse Drakeford could not see the improvement that was apparent to his nicer vision; but three weeks later they were rewarded for their assiduity by seeing the folded cartilage ex- hibit a distinct disposition to expand, and also by discerning a tendency in the faulty part of the helix to come forwards, as though it were inclined to fold outwards and down- wards. This tendency towards improvement having become manifest, the treatment be- came daily more visibly effectual. At the end of her third month, Sophy's right ear had expanded so as to have wholly lost its re- semblance to an unfolding arum-blossom, and, instead of protruding forwards, had almost receded to its proper position. Better still, the superior part of the margin had descended and folded outwards and downwards, though the helix was still far from being satisfactory. The treatment having proceeded thus far, VOL. I. X 306 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. and Sophy'8 faulty ear having become inured to surgical usage, Dr. Cartwright threw aside the silken cords and tiny ' grappling-silvers,' as things no longer sufficient for the occasion, and brought forth a small case, full of minute india- rubber instruments, differing from one another in size and material thickness, but all of them being of the same fashion. Each instrument had the appearance of a small curved tube, and resembled in form the superior curve of the helix of a shapely human ear. On examining one of these instruments at the doctor's invita- tion, Antoinette Challoner saw that, instead of being a perfect tube, it was divided and open along the whole of its concave line, and was an open canula, — the long opening being so narrow as to be scarcely perceptible. ' It is a case of india-rubber — an india-rubber frame — which you will put over the defective part of the baby's ear V said Mrs. Challoner, with an air of lively interest. * Exactly so, just as a gardener puts a young- cucumber into a straight or a curved frame,' returned the doctor, 'so that it may grow straight or acquire a graceful curve. I am the A CONGENITAL PECULIARITY. 307 gardener, the helix of baby's ear is the cucum- ber, and this india-rubber canula is the frame that will regulate its growth. But let me see whether there is a better frame for the purpose.' Examining several of the instruments which he compared one by one with the superior curve of the ear under treatment, Dr. Cartwright exercised nice discrimination in choosing the particular instrument for immediate use. Having made the selection, the doctor opened the elastic canula mth his two thumbs and forefingers, and, in spite of the young person's noisy protest against the liberty, adjusted the elastic 'trap' to the highest part of Sophy's ear. ' There, nurse,' said the doctor, addressing Rose Drakeford, as soon as she had succeeded in soothing Sophy's indignation, ' you may keep that neat little contrivance on baby's ear night -and day for an entire week, should it not seem to wony her. Should she, however, be more than usually fractious, and give you cause to attribute her discontent to the nipping of the india-rubber, you may remove the instrument, but, in that case, you must let me know at once, x2 308 CUTTING FOR PARTXERS. SO that I may put a less powerful instrument on the ear.' ' Why didn't you use one of those india-rubber frames sooner V inquired Antoinette Challoner. * You could have folded the top of the ear down, and put the folded part into one of those cases, three months since V 'Had I done so. Mrs. Challoner,' was the answer, * I should have caused your Httle darling a great deal of pain, should certainly have done her no good, and should probably have done her much harm. Until we had wheedled and co&setted it by a gentler though more troublesome process into something like the proper shape — until its tissues had been trained by surgical treatment to acquiesce in hard usage — the ear would not have endured the grip of an india-rubber clasp. It would have rebelled against such harsh treatment. Our tender little patient would have fretted and wailed incessantly, and the ear would have suffered from inflammation.' Applied at the close of her third month, the india-rubber occasioned Sophy no serious pain, and so little discomfiture that Nurse Drakeford A CONGENITAL PECULIARITY. 309 was not tempted to remove it, and Dr. Cart- wright at the end of the week had no hesitation in using a stronger instrument; and each succeed- ing week T\'itnessed the ear's further progress to perfection, till the doctor, shortly before Michael- mas, declared the cure accomplished, although it might be well for the treatment to be con- tinued till the end of the year. The majority of tender-hearted women have an aptitude for nm-sing and a taste for doctor- ing. Taking an interest in surgery even when its methods are painful, women of this admirable kind often find positive delight in watching sur- gical processes that are comparatively painless. Till she went off to India, Emmeline Harford showed the liveliest curiosity in the state of Sophy's faulty ear, and in the gentle measures that were being taken for its cure. 'Making a sketch of baby's ear?' inquired the doctor, when he came upon Emmeline as she was in the act of making a feeble sketch of the faulty feature, on the day before it was put under treatment. ' Yes,' replied Emmeline, turning from Rose Drakeford, who was holding baby and dis- 310 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. playing the ear for the furtherance of the insufficient Hmner's purpose, ' but I have not enough command of the pencil to do justice to 80 interesting a peculiarity/ ' It is well enough/ returned the doctor, after glancing at the lady's work, ' but, if you will allow me, I will make a sketch that will be a better memorial of the case for you, when you are in India. No, I won't take your pencil ; I will use my etching-pen.' Seating himself by Emmeline Harford's side^ and taking the pen from its case, even while he spoke, the doctor made a characteristic portrait of the baby's ear with a quickness and skill that occasioned no sm-prise to the lady, who was familiar with her friend's artistic address. ' Capital,' said Emmeline, after surveying the sketch made thus rapidly and effectively. ' Now,' she added, * give me, by the side of the ear as it is, the ear as it will be after treatment.' Comphang with the request, Arthur Cart- wright produced no less happy a portrait of the ear in the near future. ' I see,' said Emmeline, when she had scruti- nized the two drawings closely, and compared A CONGENITAL PECULIARITY. 311 them carefully, 'the pointed projection will remain. You won't be able to get rid of it V ' It will remain, but not as a grotesque dis- figurement. It will descend with the adjacent hehx and fold downwards thus. Instead of being a disagreeable irregularity, it will be nothing more than a curious, and really rather pleasing divergence from the ordinary type of feature.' *Now for date and signature, please. You must complete the record,' remarked Emmeline, smiling cheeringl}^, though she had so lately put on black for her old playmate. Whereupon the clever draughtsman signed and dated the paper, after writing under No. 1 drawing ' Sophy's ear as it is,' and tinder No. 2 drawing ' Sophy's ear as it will be.' Clemaine's child had not been christened when the doctor penned these descriptive words, but she was already called Sophy as well as ' Baby ' by the few people who were interested in her existence. This sketch of Sophy's faulty ear was neither the first nor the last portrait made by the doctor of the misshapen feature. On two previous days he had portrayed the ear on a leaf of a 312 CUTTINO FOR PARTNERS. professional note-book with his facile etching- pen — making the two several sketches under the observation of Antoinette Challoner and Emme- line Harford. in making her feeble pencil- drawing, Emmeline only followed the example net her by the physician — followed it, indeed, with a secret hope that, on seeing the insuf- ficiency of her drawing, he would give her a sketch by his own hand to carry away with her to Calcutta. And when the Harfords had loft England, the physician made several other sketches of the ear. Giving Mrs. Challoner one of his sketches of the ear in its original state, he gave his 2'^'^otSfjee^ Rose Drakeford, a similar drawing, and also a sketch of the perfect ear, made at the conclusion of its successful treatment. 313 CHAPTER XVIII. ON GUARD. From March till the close of the follovviug Sep- tember, Mrs. Challoner lived near Regent's Park in strict seclusion, and growing jealousy of in- trusion. Having a secret to guard, she became vigilant for its preservation, and apprehensive that it would be discovered by strangers, who were not at all likely to detect what was hidden in her own breast. Wishing to avoid the curi- osity and even the mere notice of her neigh- bours, so as to pass from their memory when she should withdraw from their quarter, she had recourse to devices for self-concealment that were discordant with her natural candour, and at variance with the openness of her ways in every previous stage of her career. Choosing her tradesmen without holding interviews with 314 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. them, she avoided their shops and communicated with them through her servants. On emerging from her nan'ow garden to take walking exer- cise in Regent's Park or in the picturesque burial ground of St. Jude's Church, she was careful to keep her veil down over her face. In the same way she hid her features when she drove through the north-western suburb in her pony-carriage. In the earlier weeks of his attendance upon her, the young man with the slight form and light weight from the livery-stables was hopeful that, when the fashionable people came to town from the country, Mrs. Challoner would cease to take her drives in the rural districts to the north of London, and would show her handsome white pony and stylish carriage in ' the ladies' mile,' where they were qualified to figure creditably. But the hope was disappointed. On turning out of North Bank Road at the heels of her mettlesome pony, the lady invariably put the animal's head northward and made for the lanes and green fields. The young man pined for Hyde Park and learned to abhor the leafy by- ways and charming scenery of Willesden and Neasden, Kingsbury and Cricklewood, Hendon ON GUARD. 315 aud Finchley, Hampstead and High gate. But what could he do ? It was for liim to sit in silence when the lady was ' her own whip,' and to obey orders when he was permitted to handle the reins. Fortunately for her reputation, lie accounted for his mistress's unsocial humour and morbid preference of rural airings, by assuming that she had suffered inordinately from the recent death at Raleigh Lodge, and that her heart was as sorrowful as her mourning was deep. Besides the postmen of North Bank Road and the ten or twelye tradesmen of the St. Jude's vicinity, who served Mrs. Challoner in their respective ways of business without knowing her by sight, few persons came to Raleigh Lodge during her brief tenure of the villa. Dr. Cart- wright made many calls at the house, but he was only one caller. Every now and then a strange gentleman rang at the gate-bell in the hope of finding Mr. or Mrs. Harford at home, and went his way on being informed by the house-and-parlour-maid that Mr. and Mrs. Har- ford had gone to India. It being still the fashion in the more rural suburbs of London for old 316 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. residents to call on new-comers to the district, a larger number of persons would no doubt have rung the visitors' bell at the lodge-gate, had not regard for the recent death at the house, and for the deep mourning worn by its new mistress, determined the leaders of local society to post- pone their overtures for neighbourly intercourse with Mrs. Challoner, till she should rehnquish licr black crape, and the St. Jude's congregation should have reassembled at their proper church. One of the few persons to call at the villa in ignorance of the Harfords' departure was the curate-in-charge, who was moved partly by courteous disposition and partly by official curiosity to ring the visitors' bell, when some- thing more than two months had passed since Clemaine Donaldson's interment. * Dear me I Gone to India? You surprise me,' remarked the Rev. William Haydon, M.A., who, without being unaware that for some trivial reason he had been coldly regarded by Emmeline and Frederick Harford, was un- appiised how cordial was their distaste for him. ' Mr. and Mrs. Harford went to India weeks ON GUARD. 317 siuce/ returned Emma Tripgrove (called * Sarah' whilst she was Emmeliue's servant), who had shared in her late employers' dislike of Mr. Haydou, though she was not precisely informed of their reasons for disliking him. * Have the children accompanied them V in- quired the young clergyman, moved to ask questions by a sense of clerical duty and also, it must be admitted, by the human curiosity that sometimes animates persons who are not women. ' The children are with friends at Hampstead.' ' Very nice arrangement. The friends at Hampstead, I suppose, are relations, eh?' 'Yes, sir, some of Mr. Harford's family.' ' And their name V ' It was not my business to inquire, sir,' replied Emma Tripgrove, Avith much severity and just a little impudence. * Quite right to mind yom* business and not be inquisitive. And how about baby ? Poor Mrs. Donaldson's baby still here, eh V ' Yes, sir, still here.' ' And gTowing a fine child V 'A lovely child, sir, — strong and lovely.' 318 CUTTING FOIl PARTNERS. * That's rigbt. Let's see. It's a boy, eh?' * No, sii*, a girl.' ' And Mrs. . . . your present mistress, I mean —Mrs. . . . eh?' But Emma Tripgrove held her own, aud from uo higher motive than the pertness, not uncom- mon in young women of her position, forbore for a moment to give the name for which her clerical inquisitor was fishing. ' ^Irs. ... I forget the name of your mistress.' * Mrs. Challoner, sir.' *To be sure, Mrs. Challoner, of course,' ejaculated Mr. Haydon, who, by the way, now learned the name for the first time. ' Is Mrs. Challoner at home?' ' No, sir, my mistress is gone for a drive in the country V * She has a beautiful day for her drive. Gone out in the pony-phaeton ?' ' Yes, sir, in the pony-chaise.' ' With nurse and baby ?' * Yes, sir, with nurse and baby.' * By-the-by, do you know when baby is to be christened.' ' I haven't asked, sir. Shall I tell my mistress you called to inquire V ON GUARD. 319 ' No need to do that. Moreover, I haveu't called for that purpose. I only asked casually, just for the sake of information.' ' Yes, sir.' * I can ask her about that when 1 have the pleasure of finding her at home. There, give your mistress that card with my compliments, and say that I shall venture to call again in a short time.' * Yes, sir. And I am to say nothing about baby's christening V ' No need to say anything about that. Good afternoon I' The Rev. Wilham Haydon, M.A., having taken his departure, Emma Tripgrove on her way back from the garden-gate to the principal entrance of Mrs. Challoner's house, remarked to herself, * Well, I never ! Leastways, I am not a bit surprised at what 1 heard Mrs. Harford say to Mr. Harford about your way of asking questions. You do ask a many too many questions. You ain't the original Paul Pry, because 1 saw him last Boxing Day, and he isn't a clergyman, and cames a big cotton umberella, and wears white unmentionables that are a sight too big for him. 320 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. No, you aiii*t the original Mr. Pry, but you must be one of his family, — say, a first cousin, who hopes to come in for the family living.' After re-entering the house and closing the hall-door, Emma Tripgrove told another little piece of her mind to herself in this wise, before she went to the kitchen for a gossip with the cook: ' Yes, sir, you have given me a good many questions. If your questions had only been sixpences I should be richer than 1 am, and shouldn't debate any longer about buying that fashionable pair of boots, which I am more than half-set un buying at the new shop in Lisson Grove.' More than one blush flitted over Antoinette Challoner's nervous face, when on her return from her drive she received Emma Tripgrove's full and precisely accurate account of what had passed between herself and the curat e-in-charge. 'Then, you did not tell Mr. Haydon that Sophy had been baptized and named V remarked Mrs. Challoner composedly. 'I said never a word more, m'm, of the christening than what I have told you, m'm.' ox GUARD. 321 ' Why didn't you tell him baby had been christened V ' As it was a private christening,' replied Emma Tripgrove, with fine simphcity and mani- fest veracity, ' I thought, m'm, as how tliat may be it oughter to be kep private.' 'Avery good reason, Emma,' rejoined Mrs. Challoner approvingly, 'for not being more communicative. Things that are done with privacy are usually intended to be kept private. I am not sorry that I was out when Mr. Haydon was so good as to call. Mrs. Harford thought he asked too many questions, and I don't like being questioned by comparative strangers.' ' He'll be calling again, m'm, in a short time.' ' And when he calls, Emma, whether I am at liome or away from home, tell Mr. Haydon that I don't receive visitors at present. Say nothing more or less than " My mistress, sir, doesn't re- ceive visitors at present "; and be careful to say it in your politest and most civil manner, — for I should not like him to think me insensible to his kindness in calling.' ' Yes, m'm, I'll mind and be quite respectful.' 'It would be wrong of you,' rejoined Antoi- VOL. I. Y 322 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. nette Challoner gravely, * to be disrespectful to anyone, and especially wrong to be wanting in respect to a clergyman. — And now, child, as Mrs. Drakef'ord is busy, be kind enough to un- button my boots for me.' Emma Tripgrove having complied with this request, Antoinette Challoner thanked the young woman for the small personal service. * Thanks, Emma. You are a handy young woman, and fit for a better place than you have here, and I will do my best to get a better place for you.' ' You are very kind to say so, m'm, but 1 don't want a better place than I have here, or a kinder mistress,' replied Emma, who, having been engaged for no more than six months, was greatly desirous of an engagement for a longer term. 'I should hke to be your servant . for good.' ' I shall be going into the country, Emma, at Michaelmas — and the country is dull to young women who have lived in London.' ' I know what service in the comitry is like, m'm ; and as for dull, this hasn't been such a very lively place. Yet I have been happy in it. ON GUARD. 323 I am ready to go anywhere for kindness, for I have been so long used to kindness as to be wholly unable to do Avithout it. You see, in'm, Mrs. Harford and dear Mrs. Donaldson treated me more like a friend than like a servant. I have had more than one kiss from the very lips of both of them.' 'I don't see my way to taking you into the country. I sha'n't want you there as a housemaid, and you are not quite good enough cook for me.' " You might make me baby^s nurse,' urged Emma, gathering courage to lay her whole scheme before the lady, who was every bit as sweet-tempered and gracious in her ways as Mrs. Harford and Mrs. Donaldson, though so much statelier than either of them. ' You see, m'm,' pleaded Emma, colouring brightly and growing almost attractive in her plain face, as she pressed the points which she deemed most favourable to her ambition, ' you see, m'm, I like children, and, though it's I who say it, I am clever in managing 'em, as you may know from the way Mrs. Harford's children cared for me. And you must have another nurse for ^liss Y 2 324 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. Sophy, when Mrs. Drakef'ord gocR home to her husband. And I've been thinking, ni'm, that I should make all the tenderer nurse to the dar- ling for having loved and honoured her dear mother in heaven.' * It can't be, Emma ; for reasons I cannot tell you,' Antoinette Challoner answered, with min- gled firmness and sadness. *I haven't made too bold, m'm, I do trust? No, I see you are not offended with me,' ' Offended with you ? No, child — don't fancy any such tiling. I like you all the better for offering to be my little darling's nurse — and for making the offer with so much good feeling. But my arrangements won't admit of your plan.' Wondering what the arrangements could be, p]mma Tripgrove was as far from imagining them as Mrs. Challoner was far from revealing the plan of imposture, Avhich forbade her to take into the country any young woman Avho was cognizant of Sophy's parentage. Three days later the blood leaped to Antoi- nette Challoner's nervous and handsome face when she glanced at a printed bill which had l)een left in an envelope at her door. Dated ox GUARD. 325 from 'The Vestry Clerk's Office, St. Jnde's, Regent's Park,' the bill bore these words in large type : ' During the alterations and re-construc- tion of St. Jude's, Regent's Park, all communi- cations touching baptisms, churchings, funerals, and other clerical business of the church, are to be addressed to the Reverend William Haydon, M.A., Curate-in-charge, at No. 14, Wilford Terrace.' It was on the tenth day after the delivery of this official announcement that Emma Tripgrove was again brought to the gate of Raleigh Lodge by a ring at the visitors' bell. On opening the gate, the house-and-parlour-maid once more found herself face to face with the curate-in- charge, who inquired whether Mrs. Challoner was at home. *My mistress, sir,' replied Emma Tripgrove, with a more than usually low courtesy, made in conscientious obedience to the mistress's order, that her demeanour to the clergyman should be very respectful, ' doesn't receive visitors at present.' ' I asked if Mrs. Challoner was at home,' re- turned Mr. Haydon slowly and stiffly. 326 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. ' Yes, sir, that is my mistress's name,' Emma replied, with another gesture of reverence, and a faultless pronunciation of the word — which she was apt, in careless moments, to render ' missis.' * Perhaps, if you take in my card to Mrs. Challoner, she will consent to receive the offi- ciating clergyman of her parish,' said the curate, in a civil, though slightly masterful voice, as he offered the house-and-parlour-maid one of his calling-cards. 'My mistress, sir, doesn't receive visitors at present,' Emm.-j Tripgrove repeated, Avhilst hesi- tating to take the proffered card. After review-" ing the position, which shghtly embarrassed her, the young woman took the card, and added, with yet another courtesy : ' And, sir, my mis- tress told me pertickler that, if your reverence called again, I should say most exact, " Mistress doesn't receive visitors at present." ' Not a little to her gratification, Emma Trip- grove saw Mr. Haydon's face redden as he said : ' Oh, then, of course 1 should be sorry to in- trude on Mrs. Challoner. But you may as well give her my card together with my compliments.' ox GUARD. 327 'Certainly, your reverence,' said Emma, with yet a fourth gesture of obeisance. For a moment, as she watched the young- clergyman's retreating figure, Emma congratu- hited herself on having performed her part in the interview faultlessly. But, on her way back from the garden-gate to the front door, it oc- curred to the young woman that she had shght- ly exceeded the directions of her mistress, who certainly Iiad not enjoined her to inform Mr. Haydon that the general order for all callers had been made with especial reference to his par- ticular case. Consequently Mrs. Challoner was not informed of the excess of duty of which her house-and-pai-lour-maid had been guilty. For, though she was an intelligent, and in some respects exemplary person, Emma Tripgrove suffered, like most young women of her class, from deficiency of candour. The report given to Mrs. Challoner by her house -an d-parlour-maid of what she had said to Mr. Haydon, and of what Mr. Haydon had said to her, was more satisfactory to the tenant ia possession of Raleigh Lodge than it would have been, had Enmia Tripgrove told the whole truth. 328 CUTTING FOR PARTNERS. ' The curate-iu-charge,' Geoffrey Challoiier's wife thought to her.self, with a seuse of reHef, ^ is not Hkely to call on me again ; and before the vicar's retm-n 1 shall have gone into the country.' END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. lom>on: trintbd by dunoak maooonald, blknhrim hodse. 3 0112 084215067 '3* ' fV