LI E> R.AFLY OF THE U N IVLRS ITY Of ILLI NOI5 8a3 AJlll V.I ADA MOOEE'S STOKY. ADA MOORE'S STORY, A NOVEL. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : TINSLEY BEOTHERS, 18 CATHERINE STREET, STRAJJD. 1867. [TAc right of translation and reproduction is reserved.^ PRINTED BY J. E. TAYLOR AND CO., LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS. 8^^ v.i ADA MOOKE'S STOKY. CHAPTEE I. THE HOME OF MY CHILDHOOD. I WAS born in ISTorthumberlancI, that dear ^hospitable co.unty, which Madame de Stael N^has so grossly maligned in the latter part o S of her clief-d'' oeuvre ' Corinne.' But when did a French writer, or indeed any foreigner, understand or aj)preciate either England or the English ? rt While they persist in calling our Shake- - speare " the great Williams," and look upon ^the being elected "Lord Mayor" as the 6" VOL. I. B ADA MOORE 'S STORY. greatest dignity and as the highest honour to which even aristocracy can aspire ; while they aver that we breathe nothing but fog — that we never see the sun — that oiu* soil yields neither fruits to refresh, nor flowers to gladden us — and that we generally ter- minate our dark lives by suicide, who can look for justice to England from the pens of foreign writers ? Who can oppose Eeason to Passion, or refute Prejudice by Truth ? If it is thus in 1866, no wonder that half a century ago Madame de Stael drew so false a pictiu'e of our grand old Border Land. Could the brilliant author of ' Corinne ' ever have- visited a county so rich in noble ruins and historical remains, when she de- clared that there was not a monument of antiquity to be found far or near ? How came she to forget Warkworth — its Castle and its Hermitage ? The former mentioned by Shakespeare, whose Henry IV. THE HOME OF MY CHILDHOOD. 3 speaks of it as even in liis time " his ■worm-eaten Hold of Wark." Had she never heard of Dnnstanburgh, Bamborough, Morpeth, and many other noble ruins of grand picturesque beauty and great antiquity ? — all convicting Madame de Stael of ignorance or injustice ! To me the large featiu^es of hospitable Northumbria are like those of a plain but kindly face; and here and there the landscape dimples into beauty, like that plain kindly face when it smiles. I was born in a snug old red-tiled vicarage, whose front windows looked on the great German Ocean. There was no other habi- tation near, and of us at Moordell Yicarage it might have been remarked, as Dr. John- son said of the Duke of Northumberland while living at Alnwick Castle, that our next-door neighboiu- was the King of Den- mark. B 2 4 ADA MOORE's story. We were sheltered on one side by a plantation of dark Scotch firs, the foremost of which, bent and stript by the prevailing east winds, seemed to my fancy, when I was a child, to resemble ragged pilgrims bowing at the foot of the dear old church of Moor- dell, which stood on a hill close by. Again, as some of these tall dark pines stood on ground that sloped down to the sea, they seemed to me like black and plumed warriors of a giant race, who, descending the hill to encamp on the sands below, had suddenly been arrested and rooted to the spot by command of the Storm Fiend, or some other potent spiiit of the Border Land. To the north of our dear old parsonage come the sand-hills which border the coast at this part, and which are covered by a rank long grass, not unlike very fine rushes. Behind Moordell Yicarage rose and spread THE HOME OF MY CHILDHOOD. 5 vast tracts of purple moorland, rich in grouse and other game ; while dancing and sparkling, twisting and twining, laughing and babbling through our grounds, was the Coquet, — a beautiful river, full of clear shal- lows, rocky ledges, mimic waterfalls, and cool, dark, shady pools, overhung by trees, where, in sunny June, the sly trout loved to hide. Moordell was a very picturesque spot. I thought so when I had seen no other. I think so still, though now I have seen Mont Blanc at dawn and evening, and by moon- light ; beheld the sun rise from the top of the Eighi; gazed with awe at the solemn Salvator Eosa glories of the Tete IS'oire, after having explored all the beauties of Chamounix ; and though, from the windows of the room in which I am writing, I over- look a vast expanse of cobalt-coloui-ed sea, rising above dark groves of olive-trees ; and 6 ADA MOORE's story. though, as I gaze with raptm-e at the lovely scene, I descry the peaks of the Berceau Mountain, and a chain of rose-coloured rocks bordering the Bay. While to this enchanted spot Eomance lends its magic di-eams, and History its living, vivid interest. For lo ! on yonder promontory Bordighera gleams white in the sunshine, and Dr. Antonio, Lucy, Sir John, Speranza Battista, Miss Hutchins, and English John people the spot ; while at sunrise and at sunset Corsica, with its thrilling memories of the great Sesostris of all modern times — of him whose name is empire — tlu'ows itself so clearly across the azure main, that every fissure and ravine of its rocky mountains can be traced; and again at eventide, shrouded, misty, and in- distinct, looms in the distance, and aj)pears far, far away ! CHAPTER II. THE MOORES OF MOORDELL. Forming part of the Yic^rage of Moordell was one of the okl Peil Towers, which be- long to the early and warlike history of the Borders. This tower gave stability and in- terest to the quaint, picturesque vicarage. My father was the Yicar of Moordell. He was a cadet of the ancient and once valiant Border family, the head of which was called Moore of the Moors. Two generations of spendthrift absentees had brought down the prestige^ if not the pride, of the Moore family. ADA MOORE's STOHY. My grandfather had found it necessary to part with every acre of land not strictly entailed, and to let Moor House to a great London merchant, whose family now resided there, except during the shooting season. My grandmother at his death found her- self so much reduced that she had been obliged to take lodgings in Warkworth with her two sons. Until that time she had re- sided in an old, half-ruined mansion, five miles distant from Moor House. It was, or rather had been for many jcenturies, the Dower House of the widows of the Moore family. Surrounded by plantations of very tall and very dark fir-trees, and aj)proachable only by very bad, and in winter almost impracti- cable roads, it was a very weird, gloomy, and isolated spot. Of course it had the re- putation of being haunted. After my father's death the lawyers dis- THE MOORES OF MOORDELL. 9 covered, or pretended to discover, that the old Dower House, which had always been considered as inalienable from the Moore family, could be sold. It was accordingly sold — principally to pay their own long bill — and it was bought by a very wealthy " statesman" (as landed proprietors are called in ^sTorthumberland), Fenwick, of Fen wick Park. At this time the eldest son of the late Moore, of Moor House, had obtained through the interest of an old friend of his father's a cadetship in India. His only brother, my father, had competed for and obtained an open scholarship at Oriel College, Oxford. The small living of Moordell was to be his if, when he was in orders, it became vacant. If not, a fellowship would naturally follow his scholarship, and a college living be ulti- timately his. 10 ADA MOOEE's story. My uncle, now Moore of Moor House (although that house was let for a lease of years, and he was a cadet in the Indian army) was all calculation, pride, and ambition. My father was all intellect, love, and self-sacri- fice. My uncle, the day before he set sail for India, visited the home of his fathers. The family to whom it was let was not ex- pected till the middle of August ; it was then early in July. He went alone, although my father, whose loving heart had contrived to attach itself even to his cold, j^roud, am- bitious brother, had wished to accompany him. My father heard afterwards that his elder brother had stood long gazing with folded arms, pale cheeks, and flashing eyes at the portraits, in the picture gallery, of his war- like forefathers and stately foremothers, whence he had rej)aii*ed to Moordell church- yard, and frowningly glanced at the humble THE MOOEES OF MOORDELL. 11 headstone which recorded the bii'th and death of his father. His visit to that spot was a very brief one, and rapidly he strode thence to "Warkworth church. There lay, carved in marble and with his legs crossed, his ancestor, the Cru- sader, Sir Adam Maiu'e des Maures ; and by his side. Dame Margery his wyfe ; and three sonnes and five daughterres knelt round the couch on which their parents lay. My uncle's visit to this monument was a very long one. He afterwards told my father that he had knelt down by that marble grouj), and, kissing Sir Adam's sword, had sworn that he would never return to his native country until he could buy back every farm and forest and fishery — every rood of land by sea and moor — which his father and grandfather had sold, nor until he could afi'ord to live in the home of his fathers as his ancestors had done before him, and 12 ADA MOOEE's story. till lie could be Moore of the Moors, not only in name, but in reality. My grandmother did not live long in her small Warkwortli lodging; and yet my father worked hard at Oxford, where he had taken high honours, and had become a Fellow of his College, as " coach" or " crammer," in order to surround his mother with every comfort. But pride, family pride, ate like a canker into her heart's core. She might have lived on, and have been comparatively happy, in the gloomy, se- cluded, half-ruinous Dower House of the widows of the Moore family. She could breathe and enjoy the unwhole- some air that came in damp and deteriorated through the tangled evergreens and ivy that shrouded the windows. She could doze in the old high-backed hard chairs or sofas of the Dower House, by the huge cavernous grate, above which were THE MOOEES OF MOORDELL. 1 o scnljitnred in marble the arms of the Moores of the Moors. But in the snug, neat, sunny little sitting-room of her Warkworth lodg- ing, with the gay carpet and bright chintz, its small manteliDiece and small bran-new chimnej-glass in its bright little frame co- vered with yellow gauze, its Pembroke table and sideboard, both veneered and smell- ing of varnish, she could not breathe. She could take a sort of melancholy plea- sure in walking through the plantations of dark pines and over the purple moors that belonged to the old Dower House, but she could never bear to show herself, in her altered circumstances, in the one long street of Warkworth. And so she pined and died. About ^ ypi^i* after her death, and about five years after my uncle had set sail for India, the little living of Moordell became vacant, and my uncle, who had inherited the advowson, of course presented his brother. 14 CHAPTEE III. TWO THAT WERE ONE. I HAVE heard many of the okl, and indeed the middle-aged peoj)le of Moordell say that there never was a handsomer or finer, or a more loving conple than my father and mother, when first he brought her home as his bride, and installed her at Moordell Yicarage as its mistress. In confirmation of this assertion, I have not only my own recollection of those dear forms and faces, bathed in the sunset of memory, and seen through the softening TWO THAT WERE ONE. 15 mist of tears ; but I have before me, on my desk as I write, their miniatures, taken when they were first betrothed. They were painted by a young artist who has since become famous ; and although the costume of both seems quaint and old-fashioned, yet " a sweet young female face of seven- teen," with deep blue eyes full of intellect and love, the b]oom of Hebe, a beautiful mouth, and long golden hair in rich profu- sion, can never be out of fashion. Nor will the time ever come when a high, white, massive brow, dark eyes full of light, noble features, a clear pale complexion, and thick masses of raven hair, added to a tall form of perfect symmetry, will not be recognized as the best type of manly beauty. When I was a haj^py child at home, I thought nothing about the intense sym- pathy, the perfect union, the oneness that existed between my father and mother. 16 ADA MOORE's story. Now that I know liow rare a thing it is for hvo to he one, — wliat struggles for supre- macy, what infringements on each other's domain, destroy the peace of many homes, and how often an overbearing husband makes his wife a coward and a trickster, or a jealous, imperious wife converts her hus- band into a prevaricating poltroon, — I marvel at the recollection of the perfect equality, self-abnegation, and peace, that made our little vicarage the heau ideal of a home. Yes, I have learnt, in my experience of life, to wonder at and glory in the mutual reverence, tenderness, and trust of my dear parents for each other. '•' He was king of the household, and she was its queen." The first thought of my father was not what he should like, but what would j^lease my mother ; and with my mother, what would give most gratification to my father. 17 CHAPTER lY. THE TENANTS OF THE HALL. I HAYE said that the " Hall of my fathers " was let to a very wealthy Indian merchant, Mr. Hodgson. He used to come down on or about the twelfth of August with' a party of gentlemen to shoot grouse, and often Mrs. Hodgson and the young ladies accom- panied them. The Hodgsons thought a great deal of themselves, but they were not much noticed by the old Border families, who attached immense importance to birth and pedigree, VOL. I. c 18 ADA MOORE's story. and who preferred in their hearts a ruined Moore of Moordell to any nouveau richc and showy roturier, whose well-dressed wife and daughters, numerous servants, gay liveries, and fine new equij)ages, made the ladies of their own families, their rustic-looking servants, quiet liveries, and old-fashioned coaches or chariots, appear so obsolete and shabby. Mr. Hodgson was very hospitable. Mrs. Hodgson made many pomjDous, ludicrous efforts to patronize my mother. My father laughed in his own quiet way at the idea of a Mrs. Hodgson's patronizing the wife of a Moore of Moordell. I was very glad to be invited to the house, to see all the beautiful dresses and trinkets of the Misses Hodgson, and to be feasted with a variety of delicacies and dainties which I had never seen or even heard of before. THE TENANTS OF THE HALL. 19 There were no very remarkable people iu our neighbourhood. Parks, abbeys, priories, villas, and halls abounded; but they were not by any means so near to each other as in the midland and southern counties or in the south-east and west of England. The estates in the north were much more exten- sive and less cultivated. Their owners were called "statesmen." It was a coal county too, and that circum- stance, while adding much to the wealth and comfort of all classes, took a good deal from the beauty of the country and the neatness of the villages. The country seats were inhabited by some few of the nobility, and many of the old squirearchy. All were coal masters. In general they lacked something of the refine- ment of what they called ' the Sooth,' and they were more hospitable, and, I think, less artificial and unreal than those nearer the 20 ADA MOORE's story. great metropolis of the world. They were all singularly alike in their lives, views, manners, and conversation. Mr. Fenwick, of Fenwick Park (which was one of the finest estates in the county), was certainly an exception, but he was very seldom in the North, and, even when at Fenwick, mixed but very rarely with any of his neighbours. He was a man of cold, reserved manners, and of a stern, haughty expression of coun- tenance. It was said that his violence of temper, at times, amounted almost to in- sanity. He had educated a beautiful little girl whom he had met with in Italy, with the mistaken view of adapting her to be his wife. Her father was a Sicilian, and her mother an Englishwoman. He lodged in their house at Florence, and, as they were poor, and he was immensely rich (at least he THE TENANTS OF THE HALL. 21 seemed so to them), tliey tliought tlieir Lucia very fortunate in the prospect of being one day mistress of Fen wick Park, near Alnwick, and Fenwick House, Berkeley Square. Lucia was eleven years of age when she was placed at a first-rate boarding-school at Brighton, at Mr. Fenwick's expense. She was sixteen, and he was fifty-five, when they were married. She had always spent her holidays Avith him, a governess being provided to keep her to her studies. Even during the vacations, Fenwick of Fen- wick always presided at the lessons. He had taught her to obey him, and to fear him ; but he could not teach her to love him. The marriage was a very imhappy one. Mr, Fenwick gave up all manly pursuits, to devote himself entirely to the moral, in- tellectual, and physical training of his hap- less young wife. 22 ADA moore's story. She was in greater bondage than she had ever been when at school, and was much less happy, for there she had companions of her own age. Now this stern, middle-aged disciplinarian was her only associate ; for he shunned society, to devote his whole time to her. He was perfectly Spartan in his system. Yery early hours, cold bathing, and long walks before breakfast in all weathers and all seasons ; very plain food, — milk porridge, which she loathed, instead of tea or coffee, which he considered enervating; six hours daily of hard study by his side ; no fire in her room, and a very hard mattress to lie upon ; — these were his contrivances for strengthening the intellectual, moral, and physical system of his wife. They had one child, a son and heir, and Fenwick of Fenwick began, while this child was yet an infant, a system as severe as THE TENANTS OF THE HALL. 23 that wliicli he had adopted with Lucia in her childhood, and which had made him an object of terror to her ever after. Certainly a more miserable being than this yoimg wife did not exist. She had her sex's natural delight in dress and ornament ; he never allowed her to wear a trinket or jewel of any kind. She loved everything stylish and fashionable, and he loathed the fashion. When hoops and crinoline were universal, he compelled her to dispense with both. He made her wear her hair quite short, that no valuable time might be lost in dressing and adorning it. He gave her no money, and forbade her ever incurring a debt. He had her plain woollen dresses made after a fashion of his own. For summer wear they were of linen. He trained his child in the same way. One day, in a mistaken zeal for the infant's 24 ADA moore's story. benefit, he punished it so severely that it was seized with violent convulsions. What were the mother's feelings when the doctor, whom she sent for at once, shook his head and told her there was little hope of its recovery ! It was in town that this happened. The next day, the child having rallied, Mr. Fenwick went out on business, and did not came back till the evening. On his return, he sent, in vain, to command the presence of his wife and child. Vainly he rang the bell again and again, as if he would break the very wii'es. The servants, who di'eaded him, and who knew by his manner of ringing that he was in a violent passion, trembled and grew pale as they listened to his commands to desire Mrs. Fenwick to come to him dii'ectly, and to bring his boy with her. They dreaded some scene of violence for THE TENANTS OF THE HA[.L. 25 their kind and gentle mistress, and the beautifnl child, who was the pet of the household. Mrs. Fenwick was, however, nowhere to be found, and the old butler was obliged to summon courage to tell his master that his mistress had not been seen for many hours ; that she had gone out soon after he had left her, and had taken the child with her. No inquiries in the neighboiurhood elicited anything beyond the fact that Mrs. Fenwick and her little boy had been seen early in the day crossing the square. The wretched man, who, wrong-headed as he was, passionately loved his wife and child, and was very proud and very fond of his son (son and heii*), left nothing undone to discover their retreat. He did not dis- dain to enlist detectives, and to set them to work, but in vain. All they could learn was, that a lady and a child, answering to 26 ADA mooee's story. the description of Mrs. Fenwick and her little boy, had set sail from Liverpool for Sydney, in a crazy old tub of a ship, called the ' Ocean Queen.' The ' Ocean Queen,' a fortnight later, went to pieces in a storm, and all hands perished. Mr. Fenwick went into the deepest moiu-n- ing, and was seldom seen to smile. Smiling had never been his forte^ but now he was positively morose. He very seldom came to Fenwick Park now ; but when he did, it was always at night and unexpectedly. He was a tall, dark, massive-looking man, and about this time his sight became much affected. Ere long he was quite blind of one eye ; but this infirmity did not affect the outward appearance of his very large and very light blue eyes. I remember that he wore a green shade THE TENANTS OF THE HALL. 27 and used to roam gloomily about the woods, the moors, and the beach, with no guide but a favourite and very surly bulldog and a stick. Sometimes in my lonely childish rambles I met him, and I always thought there was something weird and mysterious about him. If I espied him in the distance, my heart beat wildly, and I fled like " the moon- eyed herald of dismay !" Then, too, the country people, very superstitious every- where, and particularly so on the Borders, told strange stories about Fenwick of Fen- wick and his ancestors. He was born, they said, on Good Friday, as his father was before him ; and these simple people believed that those born on Good Friday had powers peculiar to them- selves, — that they were gifted with second sight, held converse with the invisible world, and could detect a murderer among thousands. «' 28 ADA moore's story. It was whispered too, that he had had some hand in the disappearance of his wife and chikl ; but that report my father, who was in London, on business, at the time of their disappearance, and who had been sent for at once by Fenwick of Fenwick, knew to be false. My father well remembered his anguish when he discovered their flight, and that he had at once employed detectives to try to discover their retreat. Still, as I had been imbued by my old nurse Bessie with all the di-eadful stories current among those of her class about Fenwick of Fenwick, I never saw him without a shudder, and I always ran away if possible whenever I saw his huge form looming in the distance. If I came upon him suddenly in the forest or by the sea, my heart almost ceased to beat, the colour fled fi-om my face, and I hui-ried past him as swiftly as possible. THE TENANTS OF THE HALL. 29 Squire Fenwick had a sort of regard for my father. Occasionally, when at Fenwick, he would call and ask him to dinner. My mother and I were always overjoyed to see my dear father safe back again. My mother never told me she had any dread of Squire Fenwick, but I gathered it from her pallor, her restlessness, and her anxiety she could not conceal, as the hour at which he was expected home di-ew near. 30 CHAPTEH V. THE OLD FRENCH COUNT AND THE ITALIAN SIGNORE. There were two other near neighbours of ours, very interesting to me in themseh^es, but not men of fortune or estate like Squii'e Fenwick. One of these was a very old French Coimt, Monsieur Alceste de Mortemar. He had come over to oui- coast with his parents, the stately old Count and Countess de Mortemar, an old English nurse, a native of Warkworth, a snow-white tiny lap-dog of the Countess (a little toy poodle, one ball of THE COUNT AXD THE SIGXORE. 31 cm4s), and a beautiful little parroquet, wliicli, at the moment of their escai:)e from the old Castle de Mortemar, near St. Malo (in a fishing smack), had flown into the Countess's bosom, as if aware that he must escape with the noble fugitives or be left behind — perhaps to have his green and gold and scarlet neck wi'ung by the Sans- culottes, who had sworn to have the Count's head, and were ransacking the Castle just as its noble owners put to sea. Certainly Mignon^ one of whose dearest and favourite cJiefs-cV oeuvre was '' Vive leRoi^'' would have found no mercy at the blood-stained hands of the " bonnets rouges.^'' The Count and Countess de Mortemar and theii- son, then about thi-ee-and-twenty, had aU been high in favour with the ill- fated Louis XYI. and Marie Antoinette, his fair and most unfortunate Queen. Blanche, the tiny lap-dog of the Countess, 32 ADA mooee's story. and Mignon, the beautiful parroquet, were both presents of the Queen to her fayourite the Countess. It was entii-ely owing to the courage and devotion of old Shoozie Anderson, the Countess's English nurse, that the Count, her son, and herself escaped the guillotine. They reached Alnmouth in a fishing- smack, with whose owner Shoozie had made acquaintance at St. Malo, and by her advice they settled in her native village of Moor- dell. With the jewels and other valuables which the Count and Countess had con- trived to carry off with them, they had been enabled to purchase a quaint old house and garden in Moordell. There the old Count and Countess had lived till extreme old age, and there they had died. Blanche, the toy poodle, who had become a mother soon after her arrival at Moordell, had preceded her noble mistress to the THE COUNT AND THE SIGNOKE. 33 grave, but her posterity, snow-white, tiny, and curly as their foremother, were still the boast of Moorclell. Mignon, the clear little parroquet, with the longevity of his race, still survived, "lusty and lihe to live," as bright in plu- mage and with as clear and ringing a voice as when Marie Antoinette sent him on a certain IS'ew Year's day to her dear Coun- tess in a honhonniere. Still his refrain was as of yore, ^'■Vive le Roi,^'' and still he was the pride, the pet, and the solace of the only son of the old Count and Countess de Mortemar, who, all noble as he was by birth, had fi-om the fii'st turned his talents to account to assist his parents and to support himself. The Count Alceste de Mortemar had taught French and fencing for fifty years in the neighbourhood of Moordell. I had been his pupil in French from my VOL. I, D 34 ADA mooee's story. childhood, and was an especial favourite of the dear old man's. He was the heau ideal of a French noble- man of the old school. His accent was per- fect. His manners, albeit a little ceremo- nious, and his conversation very compli- mentary, were beyond expression graceful and winning. He had feelings of the most chivalrous devotion to the Bourbons. But, as ever, when for a time restored to power, they evinced no grateful recollection of the devo- tion and services of his family. He, after one visit to the Tuileries, returned to Moor- dell, preferring the cottage where he was respected to a land where he was forgotten and ignored. One other very interesting inhabitant of " our village " was much esteemed and noticed by my parents for my sake. This was an Italian refugee. THE COrXT AXD THE SIGXORE. 3-5 The Frencli Count had been the victim of the tyranny of the mob, that vengeful, blood-thirsty mob which had avenged in a few weeks the feudal oppression of ages. The Signer Bernardo di Castello was the victim of the tyranny of the King and the then existing government of Naples. He too maintained himself by giving lessons in his own sweet language. He was a Neapolitan, with large dark eyes, a yellow skin, and very marked features, and he easily instilled into my heart a passionate desire to see Italy trusted, free, and worthy of her grand descent from the old masters of the world. The French Count and the Italian Signore often met at our table, and were fast friends and good neighbours, though of course they never agreed on politics. Indeed, it Avas impossible they should do so, since liberalism was associated in the Count's mind with the d2 36 ADA mooee's story. Eeign of Terror, tlie red ruffianism of the first Frencli Eevolution, and the headless spectres of that good but weak monarch, the sixteenth Louis, and that statelj^, bloom- ing beauty, Marie Antoinette. On the other hand, liberalism, for the Signor Bernardo di Castello, meant freedom from the galling shame that all the true sons of Italy felt when, gazing on the fair face of their enchanting land, they remem- bered that her beauty was but that of a lovely slave asleep in her chains. It meant justice, freedom, honesty, equality, fraternity among the children of one mother ; and that mother not cold, scornful, haughty Austria — a step-dame at best, — but a true, loving mother — Italia Unita, the warm, the inspii*- ing, the devoted and beloved. Who could marvel that the enthusiastic old Boui'bonite and the imj)assioned disciple of Mazzini could never touch on politics THE COIT]ST^ AXD THE SIGXOEE. 37 without a conflict ? whicli terrified my geutle mother, but ouly amused my dear father, who knew that the flushed foces, flashing eyes, raised voices, and clenched fists of the French legitimatist and the Italian liberal did not prevent them being, in cooler mo- ments and on neutral ground, the best of friends. Indeed, on their fete-days, on all the great festivals of the Eoman Catholic church, and on New Year's day especially, they would embrace each other fervently, kiss each other on either cheek, and exchange small preseuts in token of eternal friendship. As for myself, I was warmly attached to both the Italian Signore and the French Count, and I grew up a political anomaly, for I had feelings of romantic devotion to the cause of legitimacy in France, and liber- alism in Italy. These feelings with regard to Italy were strengthened bj^ the perusal of Silvio Pellico 38 ADA moore's story. and many other works written in the same sublime spirit, which I had read in Italian with Signer Bernardo di Castello, and by that of ' Lorenzo Benoni ' and ' Dr. Antonio ' in English — works Ayliich contributed not a little towards the promotion of feelings of strong sympathy in all educated English minds for the glorious cause of Italian liberty and freedom. Perhaps it is only just to say that they indirectly assisted to engender and to ripen the unparalleled enthusiasm of the ovation which the whole British nation gave to the incarnation of Italian freedom in the pictu- resque shape of the patriot-soldier, Giuseppe Garibaldi. At the time of which I write I knew Italy only from the glowing descriptions of Bernardo di Castello and the word-painting of her poets, her novelists, and her historians. Even then I was an enthusiast in her cause. THE COUNT AND THE SIGXORE. 39 She was the idol of my fancy then ; now she is the beloved of my heart. But to my story. Back to the sandy shores of the bleak IN^orthumbria ! Back to the home of my childhood ! Barren and hard-featm-ed, compared to that bride of the sim, fragrant with the orange blossoms that seem to deck her for the altar, simny and soft Ansonia, — barren and bleak indeed art thon, ^orthnmbria ! save for thy purple moors and thy forests of dark pines ; bnt yet thou art bathed for me in the rich sunset of memory. And thou, Moordell, nestling in old Coquet Dale, brightened and freshened by the winding river that lends its name to that valley, art sj^anned to my mind's eye by that rainbow which is formed by memory's sunset shining on tears for departed dear ones, disaj)pointed hopes, and lost loves and joys ! 40 CHAPTEE YI. HAREY BLAKE. The Frencli Coiuit lived, as I have said, in an old house at Moordell. His i^arents had purchased both the quaint many-gabled tene- ment itself, and the garden in which it stood, Avith the proceeds of some of the plate and jewels which they had carried away with them from their old chateau in Brittany. This house had taken their fancy, because there was something about it rather superior to the buildings around it. In truth, al- though for more than two centuries it had HARRY BLAKE. 41 been let out as two abodes for pitmen and their families, at a more remote period it had been a Manor House. Owing to this, there were some remains of better days about it, — some fine old oak carving over the door- way, and in the largest room. This room, when the Count's father first took a fancy to the house, was divided in two by a wooden partition, which was covered, like the rest of the apartment, with a very cheap, common, and discoloiu-ed paper. The old Count caused the paper to be re- moved, and the partition to be taken down ; and then it appeared that the spacious but low-pitched room was panelled with black oak, and that beams of the same wood, also carved, supported the ceiling. The huge cavernous fire-place was also discovered to be surrounded by elaborate oak carving, wliich successive layers of coarse paint had almost concealed. 42 ADA moore's story. It was a " labour of love" with the old Count and his son, to restore all the ancient black oak carving ; and, by the help of per- severance and a polish of their own inven- tion, every leaf, fi-uit, flower, bird and nest in the really beautiful carving came out in high relief. The house contained this large ajDartment, and a kitchen on the ground- floor. There were two bed-rooms and a light closet over the sitting-room, and two smaller chambers over the kitchen. When the old Count piu-chased this quaint, antique Manor House, a poor woman named Betty Blake lived in one half of it. The tenants of the other half, a pitman and his iwo sons, had been recently killed by a ter- rible coal-mine accident. Betty Blake was a widow with one daugh- ter ; and as she was used to the place, and did not know where to go when the old Count purchased the old Manor House, she HAEEY BLAKE. 43 gladly accepted a proposal made to her by the old Count and Countess, the parents of my friend and master, to live rent-free with her daughter in the kitchen and the rooms above it, on condition that they should act as servants, cook, vs^ash, scrub, and wait on the French emigrant family. The English niu'se, who had so bravely and so cleverly contrived to effect their escape, had married, on her return to Moor- dell, a man to whom she had been engaged for twenty years. He was a baker at Aln- wick, and she of course took up her abode there. At the time of which I am now ^vriting, and when I was about ten years of age, Betty Blake was very old and very infirm. How well I remember the great delight if used to be to me, to go occasionally to the Count's, to spend an evening, and enjoy the excellent coffee which the dear old man 44 ADA ilOOEE's STORY. always made himself ! On a birtli-day or a fete this was a very great treat. On such occasions he was always in full dress. Mignon was on his shoulder crying "Yive le Eoi !" Several curly snow-white descendants of Blanche la Belle, washed for the occasion and with blue or cherry-coloured ribbons round their necks, slept on the rug or on the chairs and sofas, until he summoned them to dance and beg to amuse me. Of a very large light closet he had made a sort of oratory. There was a crucifix, a prie-Dicu^ a henitier, a rosary, and a missal ; and there the pious old Count performed his devotions morning and evening. That ora- tory had been his mother's. Old Betty's daughter who lived with her had never married, and was a strong, mus- cular, high-checkboned spinster, of forty. Betty had also a grandson, called Harry HARRY BLAKE. 45 Blake, a very interesting, intelligent boy of twelve, who had lived with his grand- mother from the age of two. It seemed that Betty Blake's youngest daughter, Effie, had married, and emigrated with her husband ; and as Harry was too delicate for a long sea-voyage, she had sent him home to her mother, to be taken care of. 46 CHAPTER YII. IklY FELLOW-STUDENT. Harry Blake was a great favourite, both with the old French Count and the Italian Signore. The former had known him from his infancy, when . he was the golden- headed cherub-pet of the whole household, and when the Count, who doted on pets of all kinds, used to take great delight in making him lisj) in French, and in telling him, with national energy and j)antomime, all those delightful French foiry-tales, which had been the joy of his own childhood. MY FELLOW-STUDENT. 47 It was a very great advantage to Harry- to be thus domesticated with one who, having great difficulty in expressing him- self in English, and, with national vanity, hating to do anything that he did not do in perfection, took great pains to teach him to speak French, with all his own purity and elegance of pronunciation and construction. Harry, beginning at that age when the ear and the tongue are so quick and teach- able, spoke not only like a little French child, but like a little French nobleman ; and it was curious, in a cottage on the Bor- ders, and clad like a little Northumbrian peasant, to hear Harry Blake speak French with the ease and elegance of the Count himself. Finding him so apt at learning languages, the Signore took Harry in hand, when he came to settle at Moordell ; and as every kind of study delighted the thoughtful, 48 ADA mooee's story. serious boy, lie soon became a good Italian scholar. But Frencli and Italian, elegant and de- lightful acquirements as they were, could not, as Betty Blake soon found out from my father, contribute towards the great object she had in view, namely, the getting young Harry to a grammar-school, thence as a scholar on the foundation to Oxford or Cambridge, and ultimatelj^ into the Chui'ch. Harry had been so delicate in his infancy, and so very difficult to rear, that old Betty had never attempted to put him to work in the fields, to keep bii'ds (as the coimtry people call the keeping birds off the corn), or, like most of the boys in those parts, to work in the coal-mines. The vicar of a village some ten miles dis- tant fi'om Moordell was the son of an old * friend of Betty's. He had been a book- MY FELLOW-STUDENT. 49 worm in his cliildliood, like Harry Blake. He had found friends to help him. He had been sent to coUeore, and ultimately had been presented to a small living ; and this was just the career that old Betty wanted for her grandson. When therefore my father offered to teach Harry Latin, Greek, and the mathematics at our vicarage every day for two hours, and also to let him share the lessons he was giv- ing me, Old Betty was very grateful and very much delighted ; and in her exhilaration she incautiously let out that there tuas good blood in Harry's veins, and that he was fit for nothing but to be that mixtui-e of the scholar and the gentleman, which she called a "minister." Dominie Sampson's mother had felt a similar ambition, and, by stinting herself, had carried her point. And thus it came to pass that, as chilcb-en, VOL. I. E 50 ADA MOORE 'S STORY. Harry Blake and I saw each, otlier eyery day, and were domesticated together for several hours. Harry, however, well trained by liis old grandmother, who had an almost feudal re- verence for what she called "the auld Bor- der bluid " and " the born gentry " of the land, never forgot himself so far as to call me by my Christian name, or to avail him- self of my childish advances towards the familiarity so natui'al between a boy and girl piu'suing their studies together. To Harry I was always "Miss Moore;" and though he was not a pugnacious boy, he once engaged in a battle with a young bully out of a coal-mine, a great deal older and bigger than himself, who ran against me in the village, when I had on a clean white frock, and left several black marks on the snowy muslin. Luckily, this boy, who was called "Brag- MY FELLOW-STITDENT. 51 giiig Ben," had not much spirit and had very little muscle. Harry soon compelled him to cry for quarter, and became a vil- lage hero in consequence. e2 62 CHAPTER YIII. MY HAPPY CHILDHOOD. I WAS very, very tappy at Moordell. The life I led tliere would seem, perhaps, very dull and monotonous to me now ; but then I had never lived in a town, I had never been accustomed to excitement, to the plea- sures of travelling, to fresh faces, to gay shops, to incident, adventure. I knew none of these. I lived in an atmosj)here of quiet love and pleasant duties. I was always oc- cupied. My mother, highly accomplished, taught me to di*aw, to dance, to sing, to MY HAPPY CHILDHOOD. 53 work. All solid studies I pursued with my father. The Count would perfect me in the French steps, which he had learnt in his boyhood, and displayed at juvenile Court- balls, figuring them in the same gilded salon as the hapless Dauphin and the Filia Dolo- rosa, the poor Duchess d'Angouleme. The Signore, who had his country's pas- sion and genius for music, made me sing duets with him, and accompanied me on the violoncello, of which noble instrument he was a master indeed. He taught me also to sketch from nature and to paint in oils. And thus, strange to say, I enjoyed, in that lonely and remote vicarage among the sand-hills and by the German Ocean, ad- vantages of education greater than those for which the Hodgsons paid three hundred per annum, while Miss Araminta Olivia, and Miss Ildefonsa Zenobia, and Miss Margaretta 54 ADA mooee's story. Ann Hodgson, were located at Hanton House, Hyde Park. I have said that tlie affection and the sym- pathy that united the hearts of my father and mother were of the strongest, the live- liest, and the most lasting nature. At nineteen she had left the gay, the fes- tive scenes, the London heau monde, where she was the reigning beauty, and, led by mighty love, the only love she had ever known, she had settled with my father in the most isolated and remote of Border vi- carages, and she had never once regretted the world she had left. She knew she was very beautiful, and she did not neglect her charms, nor degenerate into a dowdy. Like Clarissa Harlowe, she was always neatly elegant, or elegantly neat ; and, like that paragon of heroines, divine Clarissa, "her things always looked new." MY HAPPY CHILDHOOD. 55 Hydropathy and teetotalism were un- known at Moordell ; but my mother was so fond of bathing that my father constructed a bathing-machine for her use and mine, and a caroty pony, whom we called "Eufus," was trained to draw it into the sea for us. With regard to temperance, without having taken any vows, she practised that virtue ; and my father, who had the Borderer's love for his old port and his strong whisky- toddy, could seldom induce her to do more than (as he said) to " sweeten the cup.-' Happiness, peace, cleanliness, and tempe- rance tended then to preserve the rare beauty which had won my father's heart, and perhaps contributed much to keep up its devotion. She was Yexj animated, graceful, and witty too, was that dear mother. Not sati- rical — that word supposes something bitter — but with a quick sense of the ludicrous, a 50 ADA MOOEE's story. fund of genuine humour, and the power, had she chosen to exert it, of being a capi- tal mimic. She was deeply and unaffectedly religious. Order with her was an instinct, and indus- try a habit. She managed all money -mat- ters ; kept a day-book, and an account of every farthing received or expended ; and recorded every evening the events (they were such to us) of our happy, peaceful days du- ring my childhood. 57 CHAPTER IX. MY FIRST ILLTs^ESS. I REMEiiBER but oiie sacl break in this happy routine, and that was when I was taken dangeronsly ill. I had canght the scarlet fever. It was of the malignant kind. It was raging at Warkworth, Aln^dck, and Alnmonth. The parish doctor, a clever and experienced little man, with a bald head, bright black eyes, and top boots, had owned I was in danger. A great physician from Newcastle, and a greater still from Edinburgh, were summoned to a consulta- 58 ADA mooee's story. tion with our little parish doctor. My throat was what afflicted and tormented me the most. It was all but closed. I could swal- low nothing but liquids ; and the great dan- ger was that in a few hom^s I should not be able to take nourishment even in a liquid form. At this time I was about twelve years of age, and the weather was very warm; it was the beginning of September, and Sep- tember on the Borders is of the tem23erature of August in the south of England. The two grand doctors looked very grave and ominous while my father and mother were in the room ; but when they retired, and the thi'ee adjoiu'ned to a little morning room of my mother's, opening out of my bed-room, I was shocked to hear them talk lightly of the weather, and joke about poli- tics, and some story afloat about an Alnwick doctor, in the intervals of remarks about my MY FIRST ILLNESS. 59 ease, wliicli remarks startled me witli the ter- rible conviction that I must die. They had no idea that the thin wooden partition which divided the two rooms had several crevices, through which their words reached my ears. In spite of technical expressions, which, however, my knowledge of Latin enabled me to understand, I gathered that unless some very wonderful change took place in the night, owing to some powerful remedy they had prescribed, the next morning, our own medical man, who was a general prac- titioner, and therefore a surgeon, was to make an incision in the throat. How hard and cruel it seemed to me, shaking in my little bed as I did at the thought of all that awaited me, to hear them laughing and joking ! Dr. Tweedale, however, as he was called in the village, spoke in a loud voice, and did not join in theii* merriment. 60 ADA MOORE's story. They went downstairs to partake of some refreshment, and I, getting up in my little bed, looked through a crevice in the wooden partition, and saw Dr. Tweedale with his face buried in his red silk pocket-handker- chief, weeping. Poor kind old man ! He had brought me into the world. I had always been a great favourite of his. I called to him, and he heard my voice, stifled as it j)artly was. " Dr. Tweedale," I gasped out, " I have heard all !" As I spoke, I threw my arms round his neck as he bent over me, and pressing my hot cheek to his cold round good-humoured face, I found it was wet with tears. Mine were flowing fast. " Oh, Doctor," I said, gasping and speak- ing with great efi'ort, "must I die? Must I leave my parents, you, the old Count, the Signore, poor Bessie, Harry Blake, and be MY FIRST ILLNESS. 61 screwed down in a coffin like poor little Tommy Trotter was, and be put into the damp earth in Moordell churchyard, there to lie among the worms, and no one to go near me except on Sunday ? Oh, Doctor, save me ! save me ! do not let me die !" " While there's life there's hope, my child," said the Doctor. " I'll go and get you this medicine made up. Pray to God, Ada, darling, as I shall do, that it may be blessed to you." The old Count and the Signore, undis- mayed by the infectious nature of my terri- ble disease, came every hour to inquire after me. They could not rest. Poor Harry Blake was ill with grief. He sat under a cypress-tree that grew near my window, convulsed with emotion. The Hodgsons were at Moordell Hall, but Mrs. Hodgson's dread of the infection was so great, that she (though I believe she felt 62 ADA moore's story. for my parents, and was anxious abont me) would not let even an out-door servant from the Hall come to tlie Yicarage to in- quire how I was. Still, by the carrier, who passed the Hall gates twice a week, she sent very kind notes and presents of game, hot- house fruit, i^oultry, flowers, jelly, books to amuse me, and bottles of choice wine. She would not go to Moordell church, nor would she let any of her family or household a2:)pear there. She feared my father, in ofiiciating, might infect the con- gregation, herself, and the household espe- cially, with my malignant fever. . On the day of the consultation, and after it was known that the great Edinburgh and N"ewcastle physicians had all but given me over, there was real sorrow in almost every cottage in the village. The Count and the Signore sat or walked together, often weeping, and calling fre- MY FIEST ILLNESS. 63 quently to ask the tear-blistered Bessie what was the last bulletin. Bessie, in her passionate grief, sat huddled up in the corner of the old high-backed wooden settle so common in the Border kitchens, with her coarse apron thrown over her head. Harry Blake was too agitated to study by himself. My father, since my illness, had been unequal to the task of presiding over the studies of the poor boy; and warmly attached as Harry was to every member of our family, he knew not, as I afterwards heard, what to do with the long gloomy hours. When, on timidly inquiring of Dr. Tweedale, for whom he had been long watching, that the two great physi- cians had little or no hope, Harry, ashamed of the anguish and despair he felt, stood for a few moments after the doctor had left him, trying to stifle his sobs and force back his 64 ADA mooee's story. tears. Finding the effort vain, he started over the fence and dwarf wall that separated our garden from the sand-hills, and rnshing wildly on, on, on, he crossed the purple moors and plunged into the pine forest, there in their dark retreats to hide his grief from every eye. Nor did his distress appear to any one at Moordell to be exag- gerated or unaccountable. For many years, — namely, from the time when he was six years old until now that he was sixteen, — he had been in the habit of coming daily to the Yicarage for three hours. Those three hours we had always spent together, and, in spite of the dignified humility of his man- ners, his reverence and gratitude towards my dear learned father reflected on myself, the freemasomy of the Muses could not but establish a certain gentle rivalry and friendly emulation between a girl and a boy pur- suing the same studies, in the same room. MY riRST ILLNESS. 65 and under the same master, and with only three years difference in their ages. Then, besides the three daily houi's of study to- gether, some days of coui'se excepted, Harry, as the only return he could make for the benefit of my father's instruction, would work in my little garden ; would go on all errands for my father, my mother, and my- self; he would feed my pets, and bring me, no matter at what risk to himself — brave-hearted boy that he was — shells and seaweed from the most dangerous and re- mote parts of the coast ; ferns, fungi, and mosses for my collection; sea-birds' eggs, sought far and near ; everything that he thought could interest or delight me, and this of course brought him much into my company. He also, for he had very ready and very clean hands, constructed my aqua- rium and kept it filled with the strange beings that live in fresh-water. He built VOL. I. F 66 ADA moore's story. up an ayiary for all the birds lie had found for me. He studied botany and coneho- logy, to help me to class my plants and shells. Often, when we were at oiu* meals, my father, avIio did not think it would be right to ask Betty Blake's grandson to sit down with lis, and who yet ranked a lad who could construe Homer, quote Horace, chop logic, and caj) verses, speak French like the Count, and Italian like the Signore, far above Bessie and the kitchen, would send me with his luncheon, dinner, or tea into the little summer-house which he had helped to build ; and when seated at the rustic table in its centre, Harry, with a book open before him, would enjoy the dainties mj dear mother had sent him, and the glass of old jiort my father had j^oured out. On such occasions Harry would look and feel intensely happy. MY FIRST ILLNESS. 67 'No wonder, that wlien my illness put a stop at once to our mutual studies and to those pm'suits that we looked upon as re- creations, — to excursions in search of shells, sea-birds' eggs, seaweeds, water insects, ferns, mosses, wild flowers, and fungi, peb- bles and plants, — Harry felt his occupation gone, and gave himself up to despair. He had cultivated no intimacies with the uneducated boys around him. He could have had no fellowship with them. The French Count, the Italian Signore, and oui'selves, these were the only people he loved and cared for — saving always his old grandmother and her niece, for whom he had a sort of dutiful afi'ection, which, how- ever, did not make their rough manners, illiterate conversation, and Northumbrian accent at all agreeable to his ear, accus- tomed as it was to the language of our fa- mily, to the idiomatic and exquisite French f2 68 ADA mooee's story. of the old Count, and to the mellow, musical Italian of the Signore. I have heard since (for of coui'se at the time I knew nothing of it) that then young Harry in his anguish and his terror at the idea of my danger — my approaching death, in short — rushed from our garden, vaulted over the fence, dashed up the sand-hills, across the pui'ple moors, through the forest, and thence down a dark ravine on to the wild sea-shore, which was rosy in the slanting rays of the setting sun, and threw himself in an exhausted and dejected state on a little bed of sand hedged in by rocks. It was a curious freak of nature, so to scoop out a sort of little couch. In my early childhood, when I used to wander along the coast with my parents or Bessie, — Harry accompanying us to carry the basket in Tfliich my shells, my pebbles, and my sea- MY FIRST ILLNESS. 69 weed were depositedj — I had often rested at low water in this marine couch, to which my mother had given the name of '' Ada's Cot." 70 CHAPTER X. Ada's cot. Wearied and breathless with his long and agitated walk of at least two hoiu's, young Harry threw himself down on the soft sand that formed the cushion of " Ada's Cot" ; and the poor grateful youth wept quietly as he thought of all the happy hours he had spent in my comj)any, of all he owed to my dear father — for Harry was a very good scholar and a fair mathematician now ; and then he figured to himself the desolation that would darken our bright and aba's cot. 71 happy home ; and he rose and fell on hisi knees by the wide sea and with the setting snn shining on his tear-stained face, and he prayed. Comfort and hope seemed to come down into his breast, poor boy, as his prayers ascended to the throne of grace : they were winged by faith, and such prayers are strong. He lay down again when his prayer was finished ; and as for several nights he had not slept, the soft tranquillity of that remote and lonely spot, the half-mournful lullaby of the waves, and the gentle fanning of the sea-breeze, conspired to thi'ow him into a deej), deep sleep ! How long he had slept he did not know, but it must have been many hours. When, lo ! a hand was laid on his shoul- der, a voice sounded in his ear, and its words were, " "Wake, wake, and arise, Harry Blake ; the tide is coming in ; a few minutes more, and you are lost !" 72 ADA moore's story. Harry started up. The moon was flood- ing the ocean with silver. The dark trans- lucent azure of the sky was studded with golden stars. The rocks lay in deep shadow. The tide was rolling on, and was almost within reach of " Ada's Cot." A tall, pale woman in grey, with a hood drawn almost over her face, stood by Harry's side. " Follow me," she said, clasping his hand with one of icy coldness ; '' but for the Pro- vidence that sent me to rouse you, you must have been drowned in your sleep ?" " I thank you for the interest you have taken in my safety," said Harry ; " but if I could pass away without committing a crime that admits of no pardon, since it shuts out all repentance, I should be glad to die." " Why so, Harry Blake ?" asked the woman in grey. " What grief can a youth of your age have known, to make death seem desirable ?" Ada's cot. 73 ''The dark angel hovers over Moordell Vicarage," he said, biu-sting into tears. " The vicar, that kind, that learned, that noble- hearted man ! Dear, lovely, gentle Mrs. Moore ! Oh, they will die ! for they will never survive their only child." " Wliat ails their daughter ?" asked the woman in grey. " She is dying," he sobbed out, " of the scarlet fever. She had two new doctors to-day, and they have no hope. I have seen her every day for so many years. We have learnt our lessons and played together, for she has no pride. Oh that I could die to save her life !" By this time they had reached the skirts of the forest that slojoed down towards the sea. " Await me here," said the woman. " I have a remedy which never yet failed to cure the most malignant scarlet fever. If the doctors have given the poor child up, 74 ADA mooee's story. her parents will be willing to try it — as drowning men cling to a straw. Bnt no ; in- stead of awaiting me here, go on your way till you come to the large yew-tree at the entrance of the lane leading to the church- yard. I will join you there." There was something so ghost-like and mysterious about the tall thin form of the woman in grey. Her face was so pale, her eyes so large and hollow, her hands so thin and white, and her voice so hard and sepul- chral, that young Harry felt a tluill of awe as he watched her disaj)pear among the fir-trees. The moon was so bright, and all was so silvery-white outside, and so ebon- black within the forest, that the scene lent a sort of ghostly character to this strange ad- venture. Harry was brave, and, for a Border lad, was singularly free from superstition ; but even he felt his flesh creep at the thought of Ada's cot. 75 meeting this strange being at the entrance of the churchj'ard. Still, he said to himself, if she knows of anything that can save or ease the child of my benefactor, shall I let any coward fears of mine prevent theii- trying it ? That strange woman saved my life : but for her the tide must have swept me away in my sleep. She is, then, bent on doing good ; I will go at once to the trysting-tree. Harry was there for about two minutes, resolved, but his young heart beating high and quick, and his eyes turned away from the churchyard, with the very tall white headstones common in Northumberland, when suddenly he felt the cold light hand on his arm, though he had not heard any one approach. She gave him two phials, and said, " The contents of this one must be rubbed outside the throat ; this is to be taken inwardly ; 76 ADA moore's story. but the directions are written on the label of each phial. Lose no time, and spare no effort, no argument, no entreaty ; with God's blessing these remedies will save her." She turned and glided away. Harry made the best of his way back to the vicarage. 77 CHAPTEE XI. THE VISITATION OF THE SICK. My father and mother were with me when Harry arrived. They had been in my room for an hour or more. I was very much worse, and my poor father thought it his duty, as a Christian minister, to try to conquer the tempestuous grief of the father and the man, and to read to me the prayers for those for whom there is little hope of recovery. My mother had already tried to read a chapter from Job, and to pray ; but her 78 ADA moore's story. conviilsiYe grief quite overcame lier, and burying lier face on the pillow, close to the biu'ning cheek of her only child. I was much the calmest of the three. She held the Prayer-book to my fother without looking round, and said, " Eead the prayers for the sick, husband. Let us pray for our child, and with her. You are strong and brave ; I am bu.t a poor faithless coward after all." As my mother said these vv^ords, I pressed my hot lips to her brow, and said, "May God bless and comfort you, my own mamma I" My father began very bravely, and read through the solemn and beautiful service for " The Visitation of the Sick." (But then he was accustomed to this touching service.) All went on very well until he came to that beautiful prayer, at the sound of which so many hearts have melted into tears. I THE VISITATION OF THE SICK. 79 mean that prayer beginning " Hear us, al- mighty and most merciful God and Sa- viour ;" but when, after the implied j)ossibi- lity and hope of restoration to former health, he came to the heart-breaking alternative, " or else give her grace so to take thy visita- tion, that after this painful life ended, she may dwell with Thee in life everlasting," my poor father's voice was broken by sobs, and my mother, wildly tlu'owing up her arms with an exceeding bitter cry, fell for- ward on the bed quite senseless. I Of coiu'se my father could not continue to pray while she was in this state. He lifted her slight form in his strong arms ; he bore her to the half-open window, and Bessie un- did her dress, and resorted to all the usual methods to restore her to consciousness. It was some time before she succeeded. When at length my mother recovered from this death-like and protracted swoon, she 80 ADA MOOEE's story. hid her beautiful face on my father's arm and wept. Then I heard him say to her, " Ada ! come what will, you have your husband left. Beware, lest by rebellion to the will of the Father, you provoke him to take me too ; am I not more to you than many daughters ?" At this moment, Bessie, who had left the room, came in to say that Harry Blake was below, and begged hard to see "the master and the missus." " He has brought something to cure missie," said Bessie. "Poor boy!" said my father. "As if we could venture to give her some old wo- man's remedy prescribed by Bettie Blake !" I had been weej^ing quietly all this time. I sat up then and gasped out, " Papa ! Mam- ma ! let me take what Harry has brought. I think it will save me." THE VISITATION OF THE SICK. 81 ''Why not, husband ?" sobbed my mother. "Why not, indeed?" said my father; both meaning, though they could not bring themselves to utter the words, " The great doctors have given her over !" Poor Dr. Tweedale, who could not rest, came in just as Harry, pale as death and weeping bitterly, was imploring my parents on his knees to try the remedy sent with such confidence by the mysterious being who had saved him from drowning. She had wiitten on the phials the names and proportions of the drugs which formed the medicine. One remedy was to be taken inwardly ; the other was for outward application. My father handed the bottles to the doc- tor. He was far above all professional jealousies and meannesses. " May do good, and can do no harm," said the doctor. VOL. I. o 82 ADA jMooee's story. " God bless you ! Heaven bless yon, Dr. Tweedale!" cried yonng Harry, wild with excitement and joy. " sii* ! madam ! you will not hesitate ! you will not delay now !" The outward application and the inward remedy were both administered in the pre- sence of Dr. Tweedale. He remained with my poor father and mother all night. So did young Harry. The Count and the Signore called at mid- night to inquire after me, and at five in the morning they were again at our door. By that time a wonderful change for the better had taken place in my state. I had slept soundly. A violent persj)iration had succeeded to the consuming fire of that dreadful fever. The swelling of my throat had abated, so that I could swallow without much efi'ort. Dr. Tweedale j)i*onounced me in a fail' way to recover. I was able to take THE VISITATION OF THE SICK. 83 a little nourisliment, after which. I again fell asleep ; and my father, taking my trembling, em'aptiu-ed mother by the hand, led her away to our little breakfast-room. There, while the sunrise came in golden and red tlirough the clematis and monthly roses, all joined in the earnest thanksgiving which gushed warm and eloquent from his paternal heart. Tlie old Count was a very devout Eoman Catholic, of the old school. The Signore was also a Eomanist, but his creed was tinged with a more questioning liberalism. He was, as so many Italians of the present day are, a Protestant in all but the name, and in his worship of the Virgin and his prayers for the dead. But all, including young Harry and old Bessie, joined in that fervent thanksgiving • for the change abeady wrought, a-nd in ear- nest prayers for my entire recovery. g2 84 CHAPTEU XII. CONVALESCENCE. When the two great physicians came the next day, they did not seem as much pleased as they evidently were astonished. But even their amazement they instantly con- cealed under a cloak of professional impas- sibility, — attributed the great improvement, which they could not deny, to their own prescriptions, — wrote another, talked of the weather, the Ministry, and the politics of Eui'ope, — and took theii' leave, carrying away for the second time, a fee which crippled oui- little household for six months to come. CONVALESCENCE. 85 My convalescence was very gradual and protracted. It was late in the autumn when I was taken ill. It was early spring before Dr. Tweedale allowed me even to take a turn in the garden. On the Borders there is generally a fort- night of fine warm sunny weather in Fe- bniary. Long black frosts, biting north and east winds, and hea^y falls of snow, may, and very often do, follow this foretaste of spring; but, about the middle of the Fe- bruary succeeding my illness, we had the fortnight which Doctor Tweedale had looked forward to, and, with his consent, I was to spend an horn- (if equal to the exertion) in the garden I loved so well. As yet we had had no very cold weather ; and in our dear quaint old garden, sheltered by the sand-hills on one side, and by the pine forest on the other, the monthly roses still blossomed ; and in certain warm nooks, 86 ADA mooee's story, on wliicli the noonday sun shone, colonies of beautiful snowdrops had sprung up, and crocuses, golden, mauve, and white, reared their oval cujds and dark green spikes. I was much touched when I saw with what care Harry Blake had tended my own flower- garden, and in what blooming beauty and vigorous health were all the plants in my greenhouse. He had contrived an appara- tus for warming it ; so that it was, in fact, a small conservatory. He had taken such care of my aviary and my aquarium, that neither bird nor water-insect had died. I felt very thankful to the clever, grateful youth, but I had no opportunity of thank- ing him. He was now seventeen. There was an open scholarship to be con- tested for at Oriel College, Oxford. My father, who was an old friend of the Provost of Oriel, had long been expecting to hear that such was the case ; and during my CONVALESCENCE. 87 convalescence lie had been " coaching " or "cramming" young Hany as vigilantly and zealously as if he had been his own son. Harry, on his side, had studied as if his young life depended on his success. And though he had never seen the inside of a school, nor had any tutor in Latin, Greek, theology, and mathematics but my father, the old Eector of , a celebrated scholar, also of Oriel College, Oxford, to whom my father showed Harry's Latin verses and Greek prose, said that unless scholarship had grown out of his knowledge at Oxford, Harry Blake must be the successful can- didate. Old Betty, his grandmother, who was sus- pected of having a hoard in some old stock- ing or other, hidden in the antique Manor House behind a brick in the walls or under a board in the flooring, came forward with money to equip Harry, and furnish him 88 ADA mooee's stoey. witli fiincls for his journey. She added, in her broad Border dialect, " that if the laddie acqueeted himsel' brawly, and came off weel i' the contest, there was a bit siller ready for any mair expenses that might attend his being weel settled at college, sic as bukes and furniture, and a' kind o' belang- ings, sic as she weel knew her auld Joe, the present Vicar, had been sairly put to it to find the siller for." The day of my first walk in the garden after my illness, was the first day of Harry Blake's examination ; and as I looked around and beheld everywhere some new proof of the poor boy's grateful devotion to our family ; as I marked the evidences of his persevering, untiring labour, and thought of the fiery ordeal through which he was pass- ing at that moment, — while, unfriended and alone, "no help but in his genius and his God," he, in a few hours, was deciding his CONVALESCENCE. 89 fate for life, — I could not resist the impulse that led me to kneel down on the moss-grown step of a stone where now a sun-dial stood, but where once the image of St. John had stood ; and an earnest prayer for Harry's success rose from my very heart, while, my nerves weakened by recent illness, the tears fell like rain from my eyes. There is something inexpressibly touching to the feeling heart in any mutely eloquent proof of interest or care for us in some labour of love effected by the hands of ab- sent friends. "Wliat must it be — I thought to myself — if, instead of a short earthly joui'ney, those Avho have left behind tokens of devotion, their affection to us, were gone on that long dark voyage of which we know nothing but its dark and dreadful first station — the grave ! And if any doubt of our own requital of their affection crosses our minds, and flings the shadow over oui' hearts, with 90 ADA MOORE's story. wliat anguish of remorse, and what fever of vain longing, we ponder on their love and our ingratitude ! The dear old Count and the enthusiastic Signore, hearing I was downstairs and in the garden at last, soon found me there, and ere long my father and my mother came to us. I have, I know not why, a vivid recol- lection of that bright, sunny day. I sup- pose we all of us look back occasionally on hours and scenes of our childhood, that seem to us like rosy peaks or glittering islands out of the mists that envelop much that came before and much that followed. I can see, at this moment, the polite old French Count, bowing, hat in hand, before my dear mother. I can see her sweet face ; my father's noble form and dear smile ;. the Signore's black eyes, marked features, and impassioned gestures, all congratulating me and each other on my now confirmed re- CONVALESCENCE. 91 covery. And old Bessie ! — chancing to look round, I saw her standing at the washhouse door wiping her eyes with her blue checked apron, wee^Ding for joy, but retreating as soon as she was aware that I had seen her. 92 GHAPTEE XIII. WONDERFUL NEWS. I REMEMBER that Hij mother and I sat hand-in-hand in a little arhour on which the noonday snn shone golden and warm. A breeze, redolent of seaweed and exquisitely iresh and exhilarating, came from the dark blue sea, which we could behold not very far off; a spicy fragrance was distilled by the sun from the dark pine forest, and the , sweet sound of distant bells floated in the air. There had been a wedding at "Warkworth WONDERFUL NEWS. 93 that morning, and the sound so dear to the fu'st l^apoleon, the sound of distant bells, rejoiced our ears. My father had left his study, with the paper, which he had been reading when my mother went in to him and gently compelled him to come into the garden, in his hand. "What news from India, Arthur?" said my mother. My father had already tiUTied to that part of the paper where Indian news was to be found. " James is appointed military Governor of Bombay," said my father, his coloui' rising and his eyes flashing. " The Queen has made him a baronet for his great services during the late disturbances, and his gene- rous conduct to two Eajahs and a Begum. He is now Sir James Moore." "He must have made a very large for- 94 ADA mooee's story. tune," said the Count in French. "He is unmarried, and has no heir? " " Only our little girl here," said my father. ' ' My brother told me when we parted, and were hoth youths in years, ' Arthur, I shall never marry, but you will — all coamtry parsons do. Your child will probably be my heir. If you have only one, I hope it will be a boy ; but if not, a gii'l can marry and make her husband take the name of Moore of Moordell ; for I feel I cannot die till I have bought back every acre that belonged to the Moores, when Moore of Moordell was the great man of the Border. What a fine estate to come to your son, Arthur, or to a daughter on the conditions I have named ! But you'll most likely have a dozen bold Coquet Dale rangers : all poor parsons have large families.' " The Count and the Signore dined with us on that day, and di-ank my health as the heiress of Moordell Hall. WONDERFUL NEWS. 95 My mother shook her head, and said, "Don't believe in it, Ada. Your uncle is still in the prime of life — oul}^ two years older than your father." (My father's age, at the time being, was always for my mother the prime of life. Dear, modest wife that she was, she shifted the prime of life to suit his age. Had he lived to be ninety, ninety would have been the prime of life in her opinion.) " Well, Ada, in a few years he will retimi a rich nabob, yellow as his guineas perhaps. He will go to Cheltenham, and mothers and daughters will lay their snares. He will be caught, and will bring home a Lady Moore, to do the honours of Moordell." " I think not," said my father; " but it's just as well that Ada should not make too sure of being an heiress." " Oh, mamma !" I said, " I have no wish to be an heii-ess. Wealth could add nothing to my happiness." 96 ADA moore's story. "Except the power of doing good, my Ada," said my father. " I o^yn it wouki be a great joy to me to see James — Sir James, I beg his pardon — reinstated at Moordell Hall, living there as his ancestors did for so many centuries, all the adjoining coimtry belong- ing once more to the estate, — Moore of Moordell, as he vowed he would be if he lived to return, — and my little Ada here his heiress." " Oh ! when that time comes," said the Signore fervently, " you will do something, Ada carissima^ for my dear country, my beautiful Italy." " I hope," said my father, " if these hopes are realized, Ada, there will not be a want unrelieved in the whole range of Coquet Dale, and that you will carry out my poor pious grandmother's plan for a happy retreat for the widoAYS and orphans of our brave fishermen, and another for those of the not WONDERFUL NEWS. 97 less brave pitmen, who perish annually from fire-damp and other casualties coimected with their dark and perilous career !" As I listened to those suggestions, I thought it would be a fine thing — a noble thing to be an heiress ; and I began to accus- tom my mind to the grandeur and the wealth which it seemed likely I should one day possess. " I will buy poor Harry a beautiful pony," I thought. " I will build the Count the conservatory he is always longing for. I will do — what will I not do for beautiful Italy !" "What an interest I began to take in the thought of a refuge for the widows and orphans of pitmen and fishermen ! VOL. I. H 98 CHAPTER XIV. HARRY BLAKE'S TRIUMPH. A FEW days after that I have described, Harry Blake, in a very touching and gi*ateful letter to my father, announced that he had come off victor in the arduous competition for the open scholarship. Harry Blake was now a scholar of Oriel College, Oxford. He was to reside at once. Old Betty, to whom my father conveyed the good news, sent to the Vicarage in the evening, by her daughter, a sum which she begged he would send to Harry, for the HARRY BLAKE's TRIUMPH. * 99 necessary expenses of his installation at Ox- ford. My father, who loved Oxford with that tender and yet lively affection, and that deep reverence, which her best sons ever seem to feel for her thronghont their after life, and who was himself an Oriel man, re- solved to go thither himself to see and con- gratulate Harry, to introduce him to many of his own old friends now Dons there, and to counsel him as to the outlaying of his old grandmother's very liberal donation. I sent Harry a painting in oils, painted under the direction of the Signore, and framed by the Count. The subject was Moordell Yicarage. The Signore sent him a beautiful edition of Tasso ; and the Count, one of Eacine. My dear mother sent him a tea-set, with a small silver tea-pot and two silver tea- spoons. H 2 100 ADA MOORE's story. My father went away intending to stay two days, but it was more than a fortnight before we saw his dear face again. For- tunately a neighbouring clergyman was able and willing to take his duty, and had toldjnj" father so when he heard of his in- tended visit to that Alma Mater so dear to them both, for they had been at the Univer- sity together. "Wlio that has been educated at Oxford can wonder that my father, who had not been there for more than fifteen years, could scarcely tear himself away from those beau- tiful haunts, which Time, the great destroy- er, seems only to embellish, — the rich florid Gothic of those time-honoured colleges and halls, so rich in historical interest and classic memories, where the bright green of the beautiful trees contrasts with so exquisite a charm with the grey granite of each antique pile? HAREY BLAKE's TEIUMPH. 101 It was in the early spring when my father paid this visit to Oxford. Every season is beautiful there, but the spring is pre-emi- nently so. On account of that very contrast of the young bright verdure, in every lovely va- riety, with old time-worn grey of the build- ings, the colleges and halls have something monastic in their cool and shadowy gran- deur ; but the inhabitants are anything but monkish and ascetic in their habits. A cheerful piety, a gentle urbanity, the refine- ment that classical lore generally gives, the dignity tinged with affability which are en- gendered by the habit of command, a uni- versal and general appreciation of the good things of this world, — these are the attri- butes, in general, of the Dons of Oxford. Wliile with regard to the undergraduates, the flower of the youthful manliood of the loftier and wealthier classes fills the fine old 102 ADA MOOEE's STOEY. town with jo}^, and life, and beauty; all that is noblest in form, and handsomest in face, and brightest in intelligence, and fore- most in manly exercises, and gayest and most modish in dress, highest in hoj)e, most playful in art, kindest of heart, and mer- riest of mood, may be seen in the antique streets, the beautiful gardens, and the fair meadows, or on the clear Isis or the Cher- well. The Eev. Arthur Moore resolved, like Dr. Syntax, to drown his freshness in a pipe of port, and, at every turn, met some fami- liar face, some warm greeting, some old college chum, whom years had converted into a Don. He had been so pojoular at Oxford that none would hear of his going away till he had breakfasted, or dined, or wined, or boated, and talked over old times and hair-breadth escapes from the Proctors and their bulldogs. HARRY BLAKE's TRIUMPH. 103 The day was not long enough for the feasts it was destined to compass. And the Eev. Arthm- Moore, who fonnd a great plea- sure in introducing young Harry to all his old haunts and former friends, extended his stay to a fortnight. My mother, who had never been parted from my father for more than a day or two since theii* marriage, felt strange and lonely, but we filled up the time with the works necessary for the surprises we were prepar- ing for him. The old furniture was all to be covered anew with a bright pretty chintz : this was my mother's work and mine. The Signore undertook the cleaning of the pic- tures ; the Count, the gilding of the frames. We tui'ued his old silk di'essing-gown, and I dusted all his books and papers, taking care not to displace one ; liis study -windows were cleaned, the white curtains washed and 104 ADA MOORE's story. put up again, the carpet beaten. The garden was put in beautiful order by the grateful zeal of a village nurseryman, who had been a drunkard, but whom he had reformed by his preaching; and he had introduced several beautiful plants and flowering shrubs to siu'prise his reverence on his return. The lawn was fresh mown, the walks were newly gravelled, the vicarage and the garden were in exquisite order, and love and grati- tude had done all the wonders of which we were so proud. It was now the middle of May, and al- though, in a general way, the spring in Nor- thumberland is a fortnight or three weeks behind-hand when compared with that in the South of England, yet as we had had a very mild winter the spring was in its prime. The weather was beautiful and very mild, HAERY BLAKE 'S TRIUMPH. 105 and the garden was full of flowers and bright green foliage. My father was expected home to tea, — a substantial tea, for he was too economical to dine by the way. My mother and I were in a tumult of expectation. There is this advantage in a very quiet country life, that every little domestic incident becomes an important occurrence, as exciting and as de- lightful, nay, more so, than the most stir- ring events to the inhabitants of the great world. And thus the return of my dear father fi'om Oxford, after a fortnight's absence, made more stir and caused more emotion at Moor- dell Yicarage and throughout the hamlet than royal nuptials or a change of dynasty would have done elsewhere. How well I remember my dear mother on that white day in our calendar ! She was still a beautiful woman in the prime of life. 106 ADA MOORE's STOEY. She was dressed in white, and so was I. My father had a passion for white, and nothing became my mother so welL The Count and the Signore had been with us all the early part of the day, to help us to complete the ' sm-prises ;' but, with that tact which springs at once from the heart and the mind, they had resolved not to be with us when my father arrived, but to cbop in to see him later in the evening. And now they were gone, and everything was ready. Fido was washed and scented, and wore a new collar, which the Count had made for him, and to which I had fastened a white satin bow. Mignon, oiu' sj)lendid Angora cat, a descendant of one the old Countess had brought over with her, was also decorated for this great occasion. Bessie had on a clean white cap and a new dark blue cloth gown, the costume of the Borders. Her honest face shone with joy and yellow soap. HARRY BLAKE's TRIUMPH. 107 In oui' low but cheerful little dining-room the tea was set out. A beautiful bouquet of flowers had been sent by a Miss Foster, a bed-ridden old cripple devoted to my father, who read and prayed with her frequently. She had, as is so general on the Borders, a number of beautiful geraniums and other choice flowers in her window-sill. I am certain that to fui*nish the bouquet she sent us for my father's return, she must have made her niece, who lived with her, pluck off all the blossoms. It was a glorious bou- quet, and the gratitude and devotion that it represented added to the brilliancy and fra- grance of the flowers. One of my father's flock had sent a fine spring chicken ; another, some beautiful broccoli. Cream was supplied by a poor old dame who had a cow, and honeycomb by another who kept bees. At length my mother's ear caught the 108 ADA MOORE's story. sound of distant wheels, and I saw lier turn pale and red alternately. A minute later and Bessie came to the door and said, " Missus! Missus I Jock says lie hears the floi fra' the station weel enough. The masther '11 be here in twa minutes." Away ran my mother and I out at the garden gate and down the lane, and there ^as the fly coming leisurely along, and my father's head out at the window while he urged the man to make haste, and the driver replied, "Aweel, aweel, dinna fash yersel', your reverence, you're ganging fast enough." No sooner did my father see us than he opened the door of the fly, and, rushing to- wards us, received us in his arms. What a happy evening it was ! How delighted he seemed to be with all we had done to surprise him ! How glad he was to see the Count and the Signore ; and how he HAERY BLAKE's TRirMPH. 109 amused us all with his lively history of all his adventures ! How they enjoyed their whisky punch, of which my mother and I took a few frugal sips out of my father's glass. And how we all joined in chorus when he sang — for he had a beautiful tenor and a fine ear — " Home, sweet home ! there's no place like home ; be it ever so humble, there's no place like home ! " And when the Count and the Signore were gone, and we joined as usual in family prayer, how my father's voice trembled with the fervent gratitude of his heart for the mercy that had sent him safe back to his beloved home to find all well there ! I am sure there must have been tears in his eyes, for I heard them in his voice ; and I saw my mother bury her face in her handkerchief; and, indeed, my own eyes were moist. We were rather surprised not to see Harry Blake with my father ; but it appeared 110 ADA MOORE's story. that he was to reside at once, and oiir joy was so great and so complete in our re-union with that best of husbands and of fathers, that we felt as if we had never known how unutterably dear he was to us before that evening. ]11 CHAPTEU XV. TIIE QUIET FLIGHT OF TIME. During the next years of my life, nothing very remarkable occurred in our happy home. Of course I glided gradually fi-om the child into the woman. I became more pensive and less joyous. I took less delight in active exercise, and more in solitude, thought, and reading, par- ticularly poetry of the highest • di'der, and such fii'st-rate well-chosen novels and ro- mances as my wise and careful parents put into my hands. But all novels and most 112 ADA MOORE'S story. poems treat more or less, and in glo^^ing language, of that master-passion of young hearts — love ! I was now seventeen, and of coiu'se I began to identify myself with the heroines about whom I loved to read, — to picture to myself a being on whom to lavish the trea- sures of tenderness with which my heart o'erflowed, and to pine for a something be- yond the quiet joys of our " happy valley." Harry Blake had been home only twice since he had left Moordell, and then we were on a visit at the Hodgsons'. My mother and father did not seem to wish to encom'age any intimacy between Harry and me. I did not understand their reason then — of course I do now ! My father continued to correspond with Harry, and to take a lively interest in his progress ; but he never read Harry's letters aloud to me ; and once, when I proposed to THE QUIET FLIGHT OF TIME. 11 o send liim a purse I had knitted for him, he said, "Harry is a man now, Ada, and you are a young woman ; of course you will al- ways feel an interest in his welfare ; but there can be no intimacy, no intercourse now but of the most distant kind !" I felt that I blushed "jusqu'au blanc des yeux," as the French say ; and I grew sad, and shy, and nervous, but I never spoke to my father of Harry again. About this time, Mr. Fenwick of Fen- wick, who had been detained at Fenwick Park by a severe illness, was constantly in the habit of sending for my father. He was much disturbed in his mind, par- ticularly on religious matters. He had been for some years a great deal broken in the faith in which he had been brought up by pious and rather austere parents, and had imbibed, through an unfortunate intimacy with a fascinating free-thinker, and through VOL. I. I 114 ADA MOORE's story. the perusal of a number of brilliant and shallow works of ancient and modern deists, depressing doubts, which, on the bed of pain and possible death, became maddening terrors. My father was exactly the man such a hapless being required. He was more learned and better-read than the bril- liant writers who had shaken Mr. Fenwick's faith. He knew all they had wi'itten, and was able to refute all their sophisms. To Tom Paine he could oppose Pascal, and, as Mr. Fenwick was very fond of Voltaire, Jean Jacques Eousseau, and others of the same school, silence the glittering Voltaire by the grand voice of ISTewton, and all mi- nor doubters by the sublime Bossuet and our own divines. He led Fenwick of Fen- wick back through the mazes of doubt and the Slough of Despond to the Fountain of Truth and the foot of the Cross. Mr. Fenwick recovered from the illness THE QUIET FLIGHT OF TIME. 115 wliicli had endangered his life — a liver com- plaint, caused by anxiety of mind and morbid remorse. His eyesight was still very se- riously affected, and he lived in constant fear of total blindness. The comfort he derived from my father's presence was unspeakable. And my dear father, much as he loved his home and hated to be away from it, could not resist the earnest, almost passionate entreaties of this strange mysterious being, to stay with him sometimes two or three days at a time. I heard my father, who never spoke of such matters before me, say once to my mother, in ignorance that I was in the same room, " That poor Fenwick is haunted by the idea that his cruelty caused the death of his wife and child. In his late deliriums he fancied he saw her. "What an unfortu- nate being he is ! He loved her and his child to distraction, and yet ti'eated them I z 116 ADA MOORE's story. SO cruelly that tliey could not live with him. "I wish he would go back to town," said my mother; "he takes you away so much, Ai-thiu\" " Ada," said my father, "he is one of my flock. You know the good shepherd would give his life for the sheep. To you, as to my second self, I can reveal the secret." At these words I came out of the inner room. I felt I had no right to listen to a secret confided by my father to my mother. I said, " As you are going to tell Mamma a secret. Papa, I am in honour bound to come forth." My father kissed me tenderly, and said, " A greater wonder than that wonderful woman of Mrs. Centlivre's, who could keep a secret, is oui* little Ada, whose sense of honour forbids her to overhear one ! Gro, my child, and tell Bessie to get forward with the dinner, for I must go over to Fen wick Park this evening." 117 CHAPTEE XYI. FENWICK OF FEN^7CK. It was a few clays after the conversation I have recorded, that my father announced to my mother that he intended, if she had no objection, to invite Mr. Fenwick to spend a few days at our house. We had a spare room, and though both my mother and I felt a vague kind of mysterious dread of Fenwick of Fenwick, yet we were both glad to think that while he was domesticated mth us, we should be spared the intense anxiety which we always felt when my father was at Fen- wick Park. 118 ADA MOORE's STOEY. I never knew why my mother was always pale and nervous during my father's stay there. She had never given me any expla- nation on the subject ; and, all gentle as she was, there was a dignity and reserve about her which made it impossible for me to question her on any subject on which she chose to be silent : but of com-se the secret she made of the cause of her alarm added tenfold to the imitative terror I could not but feel. " I hope, my love," said my father, "that you and Adie w^ill do all you can — and we know that female art has often made a lucky hit — to cheer and comfort poor Fen- wick. He is a very unhappy man ; but he is wonderfully well read, and a perfect gentleman." ''Is he not almost blind?" said my mother. " He has a nervous affection of the eyes, FENWICK OF FENWICK. 119 which at times renders him very nearly blind. At times he sees pretty well." " Of course, Arthur, Adie and I will do our best to make any one you invite as com- fortable as possible." "He is very fond of music," said my father; "and I think if you and Adie play and sing- to him, you will soothe his perturbed spirit. At any rate, he cannot be here more than three or four days, for he is going to London on business at the end of the week. As you make no objection, my love, — and I thank you for your acquiescence, for I know Fenwick is no favourite of yours, — I shall walk over there to-day, for 1 have to see several cottages on his estate. FeuAvick's coachman will drive us back to dinner. Fenwick wants to have his carriage here while he is with us ; and as Bessie would be in despair if she had Fen- wick's groom quartered on her, and our 120 ADA MOOKe's STOET. stable and coacli-lioiise arc out of rej^air, tlie carriage-horses and groom will put up at the Black Do£-." My father took his leave, after affection- ately embracing us both ; and my mother and I set oiu'selves earnestly to Tvork to make those preparations which in so small a household naturally devolve on the ladies of the family. Bessie was not in a very good humour. She was always "put out" bv anv arrans-emcnt that interfered with the routine of our every-day life. She had the irascible Border temper, and a considerable amount of Border satire. She, too, availed herself of the pri^-ilege which old servants always seem to possess of finding fault with their masters and mis- tresses. " Aweel, aweel," she said ; " what a mon's the vicar ! As if it war na enou^'h that he y must terrify us poor woman-folk out o' our FEN WICK OF FEN WICK. 121 senses three or four times a week by ganging over to Fenwiek Park; but noo he must e'en bring that ill-fa'red uncanny Fenwiek o' Fenwiek to his ain ingle nook. It's na canny, and na gude will come of it. 'Na gude has ever come o' a Fenwiek o' Fenwiek sitting down wi' a Moore o' Moordell !" " Bessie," said my mother gently, but with the authority of a mistress, " how often must I forbid you to grumble at any- thing your master chooses to do ? Let me hear no more of these idle clavers, but go to the kitchen at once and begin to get the dinner ready." " I ken na, Ma'am, wha I'm to get ready." '' I will come do^Ti and give the necessary orders," said my mother. " Do you go and see That everything is fit for my inspection." Bessie said not a word, but went off very red and in a huff. She said nothing till she was, as she fancied, out of hearing, but then 122 ADA moore's story. the echoes of her grumblings reached us and made my mother smile; and presently we heard her, as was her custom on such occa- sions, venting her rage on Eob, the gardener and man of all work, whom she was rating for not having done sometliing she ought to have done herself ; and Eob, the ' odd man ' at the Yicarage, finding a boy who was em- ployed to weed and go on errands idling in the garden, quitted the irate Bessie to go and vent his rage on little Jack, who, being a lad of mettle, and finding himself roughly handled for nothing, took to his heels and did not reappear all day. The Count and the Signore called while my mother and I were putting up muslin ciu'tains and otherwise embellishing the room appropriated to Fenwick of Eenwick. The Count had all the notions relative to marriage of the country of his birth. He thought that every girl of seventeen was a FENWICK OF FENWICK. 123 person to be bestowed on some hon parti chosen for her by her parents. He looked upon matrimony as a transfer in which the bride elect was to have no voice ; in fact, a mariage de convenance was the only sort of marriage wliich he understood as proper or feasible among j)eople of birth and station. He therefore slyly congratulated my mo- ther and me upon the approaching visit of so rich and important a man. " "We shall see what we shall see," he said, smiling and bowing low as he kissed my mother's hand. " La petite will make a very fair and gracious chatelaine^ and I am glad my good fiiend the vicar is so ready to perform his paternal duties." " Oh, Count, indeed you mistake," said my mother. " Mr. Fenwick's visit has no reference whatever to Ada. Why, he is old enough to be her father.'' " So much the better !" said the Count. 124 ADA mooee's stoet. "So shall she look up to him, and love, honour, and ohey him !" " Never, Count !" said I pettishly, " I would rather die than marry such a man." " Marriage without love I" put in the Signore, "ah, there is the greatest of mo- dern abuses !" " But love will come," retorted the Count. " It is in the nature of any good and pure- hearted woman to attach herself to a man she sees every day and all day long, and of whose happiness she is the responsible trus- tee." " IN'o," said the Signore, " she may try to love, but love was never yet born of duty, and never will be !" "Count," said my mother, "in your country such a man as Fenwick of Fenwick might be selected by the parents of a girl of Ada's age, as a suitable husband for her, but in England never ; and here, in our uni- FEN WICK OF FEN WICK. 125 versal freedom, the woman herself has the right of election, and I think no English girl of seventeen would choose such a man as Fenwick of Fenwick." "Besides," said I, "you are very gene- rously disposing of what is not yours to give, Count. Fenwick of Fenwick is a very me- lancholy, morose, purblind widower, whom my father has invited here for change of air and scene. He is wedded to the memory of a wife who ran away from him, and, with their only child, both perished on their way to Sydney. You may be sure he has no wish to marry again." " We shall see — we shall see !" said the Count. "We shall never see Ada give her hand where she cannot give her heart," said the Signore. " I hope not," said my mother. I silently acquiesced in that hope. 126 CHAPTER XYII. A BEAW WOOEE. At six o'clock the beautiful phaeton of Fen- wick of Fenwick, with its noble high-step- ping glossy greys, driven by my father, — for Mr. Fenwick's sight was too weak for him to be able to drive, — stoj^ped at the Vicar- age gate. From behind the di'awing-room curtain I contemplated our guest, and shud- dered as I thought of the Count's pro- phecy. He was very tall — at least two inches taller than my father, who was remarkable for his A BRAW WOOER. 127 height even on the Borders, where great height and manly beauty are very common. The frame of Fenwick of Fenwick was pro- portioned to his height. He was not by any means fleshy, but he was large-boned and very muscular. There was stern beauty in his regular features. His hair, which was of a chinchilla colour and immensely thick, rose in spiral curls from his massive brow, and fell on his coat collar in thick curls. He had very large and very light eyes of a very light hazel, and, though his sight was impaired, they rolled and flashed be- neath his projecting black brows. His mouth was well-curved, and had a very decided, resolute expression, and the under lip was very full and very red. His chin was massive. I fancied that his eyes announced a ten- dency to insanity, and that his mouth and 128 ADA mooee's story. cliin indicated the cruelty wliicli was said to have driven away his wife. He spoke sternly and imperiously to the groom, and his voice had in it sounds which made me shudder. This strange and not very welcome visitor was received by my mother with the most amiable and cordial grace. As for myself, he had been an object of mysterious dread to me from my infancy, and when my father said, taking me by the hand, "Here is Ada, sole daughter of my house and heart," I blushed crimson, trem- bled, and cast down my eyes. I dared not raise them to meet those light orbs and that cruel smile. My mother, who was the per- fection of good breeding, and who had moved as a girl in the very first society, exerted herself, in order to please my father, to amuse Mr. Fenwick, and to put him at his ease. She succeeded admirably. There was a sunny warmth in her sweet face and beau- A BRAW WOOER. 129 tiful smile, which thawed the icy glance, the cold, reserved face, of Fenwick of Fenwick. My mother knew many people with whom he was acquainted, and before her marriage had visited at many country seats which were known to him. They had both travelled, too, in France, Italy, and Switzerland. He was a passionate admirer of the beau- ties of natui'e, and he had been in all the quarters of the globe, trying to escape from thought. I recollected, as he described some of his tours, a favouiite quotation of the Count's : — " Malade a la ville, malade a la campague ! II monte a cheval pour tromper ses enuemis ; Le chagrin monte sa croupe et voyage avec lui." In the evening, by my mother's invitation, the Count and the Signore came. The Count whispered in my ear many praises of Fenwick, whom he called un fort hel homme. VOL. I. K 130 ADA MOORE's story. Mr. Femvick spoke both French and Italian well ; and when asked if he sang, owned that he could sing second or take a part in a glee or a quartett. He had in truth a very fine ear and a magnificent voice — the voice of a Lablache. My mother and I, with the Count, who had a tenor, and Fenwick of Fenwick with his magnificent bass voice, sang several of the finest quartetts in modern operas. The Count annoyed me a great deal by glances which seemed to congratulate me, and which implied that every advantage Fenwick of Fenwick possessed was a sort of acquisition for which I was to be congra- tulated. The Signore looked at me rather sadly, as one might do at a voluntary martyr. But Mr. Fenwick exacted constant and undi- vided attention ; and if any of the company failed to pay it, or even attempted anything but listen to him, he grew red with rage and A BRAW WOOER. 131 impatience, and his purblind eyes flashed fire. He was rather pedantic, and wanted to constitute himself a universal preceptor and general censor. At times I thought him a very great bore. K 2 132 CHAPTER XYIII. THE UNIVERSAL PRECEPTOE. During our guest's stay we took long drives to see objects of interest in remote parts of the county, and I must say that his conver- sation was rich in anecdote, quotation, and poetry. He had something learned to say about everything. My dear mother, whose fine mind was so highly cultivated, and whose tastes were so intellectual and refined, found a good deal of interest and pleasure in the conversation of Fenwick of Fenwick. THE UNIVERSAL PEECEPTOR. 133 The Count and the Signore too were de- lighted with a man who spoke their own languages well, and knew the literature and the history of their countries, and who sym- pathized with theu' j)ast sufferings and their present resignation. I think Mr. Fenwick admired my mother beyond expression, and felt for her the sort of reverential affection and devotion which a knight of old experienced for his queen, or a devotee for some lovely saint. Of course, had she been single, he would have tlu'owu himself and his fortune at her feet. As it was, he saw in her at once the loveliest and most amiable of women, and the most devoted and virtuous of wives. Oiu" peaceful, happy, cheerful vicarage, and the pleasant useful life we led, made the thought of the loneliness and gloomy grandeur of Fenwick Park and Fenwick House in Berkeley Square, more than ever 134 ADA mooee's story. iutolerable to liim ; and tliis I think it was, that made him tui'n his thoughts towards me. I was veiy like my mother (not to compare to her, of conrse) ; at least, so all those who had seen her when she came to Moordell as a bride eighteen years before, assured me, I have remarked that this is the universal opinion expressed of all daughters by those "\\'ho have known their mothers in their 3'outh ; but I am quite certain that in this case it was just. At any rate, I was suffi- ciently like my mother to make me dear to those who loved her. I believe I had her voice, her manner (of course less self-possessed and finished), her golden hail*, and her complexion ; but I had my father's black eyes, eyebrows, and lashes ; and instead of the delicate oval of my mother's face, mine was round. IS^or were my features so small and chiselled as hers. THE UNIVERSAL PRECEPrOR. 135 I was rather taller, and less delicately moulded. My mother, though never laid up through illness, was always rather delicate and gene- rally very white. I was very strong and very healthy, and so blooming that my mother used to call me her Border rose. As Mr. Fenwick seemed to enjoy himself so much in our quiet little home, my father begged him to prolong his stay, which he agreed to almost joyfully, on condition that my father would postpone liis visit to town for a week, when he would accompany him and make him welcome at Fenwick House ; after which he stipulated that we should spend some time with him at Fenwick Park. In this invitation he kindly included the dear old Count and the Signore, who, the former with the vivacity of his nature, and the latter with the demonstrative warmth of 136 ADA moore's story. his, were in ecstasies at the prospect of this visit. * * * * About this time, my father received a letter from my uncle Sir James, announcing his approaching return. The Hodgsons' lease had nearly expired, and was not to be renewed. My uncle had already, he said, em- powered an agent at Morpeth, who had acted for him before and in whom he had great confidence, to buy back all the farms and lands that had formerly belonged to the Moores of Moordell. And he added, that lie had sent him the plans of certain addi- tions and alterations that he intended to have made at Moordell Hall and in the grounds. When first my dear father read his bro- ther's letter, he was overjoyed at the thought of his retiu-n after twenty years of THE rXIVERSAL PEECEPTOR. 137 expatriation. The family pride inherent in his nature made his cheek glow and his heart swell at the thought that his brother would restore, and even add to, the prestige and glory of his house ; that there would be once again a Moore of Moordell ; and that he would be, not a country Squire in very straitened circumstances, with a very long pedigree and a very short purse, ever and anon on the watch to sell this wood and that farm, to let this moor or that right of fishing, as his father, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers had been, but a Moore of Moordell richer than the richest of his ancestors had been, a baronet ever on the watch to buy back every rood of land and every tenement, however remote, which the necessities of his forefathers had com- pelled them to part with ! These were the fond emotions my father experienced on the perusal of my uncle's letter. 138 ADA moore's story. I remember, when it came, we were alone in the breakfast room, waiting for Mr. Fen- wick to join us in family prayer. I can read, as if it were but yesterday, my father's burst of joy, and how he caught my mother and me in his arms, and said, " Thank heaven, there will be a Moore of Moordell again ! Oh, wife ! oh, child ! re- joice with me ! Oh that my poor father and mother, Ada, had lived to see this day ! " He rested his noble head on my mother's breast, and tears gushed from his eyes ! At this moment, the very heavy foot of Fenwick of Fenwick caused the old stairs to creak and groan. He was coming down. My father tiu*ned to the open window and hastily wiped his eyes, and it was not till late in the day, indeed while dressing for dinner, that my mother told me that, the first proud and joyous excitement over, he had felt not a little wounded and disap- THE UNIVERSAL PRECEPTOE. 139 pointed to find that liis brother had not even asked his advice, opinion, or co-opera- tion, but had confided everything to Mr. Eobb, the agent at Morpeth, when it would have been so much more natural to have taken counsel with my father, who was on the spot, and who, as Sir James was evidently a confirmed bachelor, had a right to be con- sulted, since he was of course heir to the property. I know not why my father never alluded to himself as his brother's heir, but he very often alluded to me as ultimately to be Lady of Moordell, — in short, as heiress to this fine old family property. Tenwick of Tenwick, on one occasion, when he was joking me about my future grandeur, said, "Excuse me, Moore, but I think you are reckoning without your host. Sir James is not yet sixty, and I think it very likely he may fall a victim, as most 140 ADA MOORE's story. elderly nabobs do, to the beauty of some young husband-hunter, and the blandish- ments of her mamma. At any rate, it would be a pity were Miss Ada to make sure of a property wdiich she may never possess." "I quite agree with Mr. Fenwick," said mj mother. " I think it more than probable Sir James will some day introduce us to a Lady Moore." But my father did not, would not believe it. He said he knew his brother well. "He has no vanity," said my father; "and, he is not of a very loving nature. Now most of the old nabobs who fall into the snares, are caught either by the head or the heart. James, very cautious, penetrat- ing, sarcastic, and suspicious, will never believe that a beautiful young girl has fallen in love with him ; and if he could be made to believe it, I don't think it would affect him much." THE UNIVERSAL PRECEPTOR. I4l "Time will prove," said Mr. Fenwick, and the subject was dropped. However, the whole neighbourhood took my father's view of the matter. '' Sir James Moore," they said, " was coming home a confirmed old bachelor, and I was to be the heiress of the fine old estate of Moordell, and of all the wealth which, exaggerated to a fabulous amount, my uncle was said to have amassed in India. As this report was coeval with my coming out — that is, my completing my seventeenth year — the attentions and invitations I received far exceeded those generally bestowed on a debutante^ particularly when that debutante is the daughter of a country clergyman. 142 CHAPTEE XIX. SMITHKIN HODGSON. The HodgsonSj whose last autumn at Moor- dell was di-awing to a close, overwhelmed us with invitations and attentions. They had always been kind and neighbourly, but with a touch of condescension in their mamier, which, to a Moore of Moordell, was ludicrous as emanating from a Hodgson of St. Swi- thin's Lane. It had always been an object of hope and calculation with the Hodgsons, to become, in the end, purchasers of Moordell Hall. They SMITHKIN HODGSOX. 143 had rented it for twenty-one years. Several of their cliikben had been born there ; above all, Sniitlikin Hodgson, their eldest son and heir. Smithkin Hodgson was handsome and conceited, — in reality very shy, but hiding that uncomfortable feeling under a very off- hand and rather arrogant, insolent, sneering manner. He was his mother's idol, and was very extravagant, and what is commonly called "fost." These faults caused great quarrels with his father, who was a very careful man. Old Mr. Hodgson was very exact and very honest in his dealings, but rather stingy. He had a religious horror of debt, which he, like Cardinal Eichelieu, called " theft." To hide her son's extravagance and pre- vent his father from knowing what debts he incurred, poor Mrs; Hodgson stinted herself and her daughters, for whose di'ess and 144 ADA moore's story. pocket money, as well as for her o^^ti, Mr. Hodgson made her a tolerably liberal allow- ance. Mrs. Hodgson was fond of my gentle mother, whom she had knoTVTi now for so many years ; and she poinded into her sym- pathising ear, in my presence, all her terrors and her troubles. Even in her lamentations one could see an undercurrent of maternal pride in what she called the ton and fine taste of that spendthi'ift Smithkin, Of course, I never said a word, but I could not avoid hearing the poor mother's half-proud, half-terrified account of how Smithkin had urged — nay, commanded her to get hold of the letter-bag before it fell into his father's hands, in order to abstract any long, blueish, suspicious-looking letters with certain names of well-known jewellers, tailors, glovers, perfumers, etc. etc., on the adhcsiAXS. And how he had gone off shooting with a party of gay friends, leaving her, his poor mother. SMITHKIN HODGSON. 145 to the anxious and almost imj)ossible task of getting the bag before Mr. Hodgson (who was always on the look-out for it, being devoured with ennui everywhere but in St. Swithiu's Lane) should have got hold of it himself. '' Smithkin doesn't consider," said Mrs. Hodgson, who was not a lady by birth or education, " what a pucker he puts me in; I declare I feel like a thief! I've been obliged, on the sly, to get a second key made to the letter-bag, and if Hodgson were to find it out, wouldn't there be a shindy ! — a regular blow-up ! " "My dear Mrs. Hodgson," said my mo- ther, " I have kno"^^^l you long enough to be able to take the liberty of a fiiend, and to venture to speak openly, have I not ? " " Of course you have, my dear Mrs. Moore," said Mrs. Hodgson. " I'm a plain- spoken woman myself, open and above-board VOL. I. L 140 ADA MOOEE's story. as my dear father and motlicr ^vere before me ; but SmitUviu makes me as watchful as a detective and as sly as a fox. And then, as it's not in my natiu'e to slink about, and play at hide and seek, and fib, and prevari- cate, I'm certain I shall let the cat out of the bag some day, and then there'll be a pretty kettle of fish. I declare, yesterday Smitlikiu had come to my dressing-room at seven in the morning. I heard his stej), and stepped out of bed without waking Hodgson. Oh, I'm always on the watch — a regular sj)y, I am — the more's the shame ;" and the poor fond mother began to cry. ''Well, there was Smithkin, all ready to go out shooting, looking in his new shooting- suit fit to be put into the waxwork or the ' Modes de Paris,' with a colour like a rose. I was as white as a curd, and all of a shiver and a tremble lest Hodgson should wake and overhear us.> I'd nothing on but SMITHKIX HODGSOX. 147 my iiiglit-di'ess and wrap2:)er, — no stockings or shoes, — and such a cokl morning ! My feet were like ice. So says Smithkin, ' Mamma, I'm in a rcguhir fix. I must be off to Houghton to shoot, and I'm certain there'll be several " long blues," ' as the witty fellow calls them, ' in the letter-bag to-day, and maybe " greetings " from Vic- toria herself (writs he meant). If the governor opens the bag, there'll be no end of row. So you'd better dress yourself at once, and go to the little wood beyond the lodge, and hide up there till the post-man passes, then take the bag from him, open it and take out any letters directed to me ; and if there are any to the governor with Eoe- master and Eake, or Fleece and Flinch, or Hunter and Haveluck on the seal, bag them, there's a good mammy. If you don't, it's all u p with your poor Smithykinny boy ; and it must be either a case of pop ' — and he went l2 148 ADA moore's story. as if holding a pistol to his head, and made a sound like its going off with his tongue — ' or that,' and he shammed hanging him- self. ' Hallo ! there's my drag ! Good bye, mammy. You're a regular brick. Don't let the grass grow under your feet. I hear the relieving officer's harmonious snore. I'm off, — cm revoir.'' I could have cried, my dear Mrs, Moore, I could ; and yet, what could I do ? I was numbed with cold ; it had been raining all night, and there was an east wind blowing fit to tear the hair off' my head." "Poor Mrs, Hodgson!" said my mother, " Did you really go to the little wood, in such a morning ? Why, it's two miles from the Hall." ''I did, indeed, Mrs. Moore; and for fear Hodgson should get up-~ and see me from the bed-room windows, I had to go round by the back lane, almost knee-deep SMITHKIX HODGSON. 149 ill iiiiid, and across the moor, Avliere the wind suddenly made a grab at my hat, and tore that and — I don't mind you, my dear Mrs. Moore — my wig away. And there was I, with my head as baki as the back of your hand, chasing my hat and wig, both of which, as ill luck would have it, were car- ried, the one to the top of a fir-tree, — that Avas the wig, — the other to the middle of the Coquet, — that was my garden-hat, — where it went sailing down the stream, with the red ribbons blowing in the gale like the flag of a pleasure boat." "What a dreadful state to be in!" said my mother, suppressing her laughter ; I was convulsed with mine. " Ah ! so you may well say !" cried Mrs. Hodgson. "Well, I knew I couldn't climb a tree or ford a river ; so, thinking only of poor Smithkin's danger, I went on, and got to the little wood at last. I had tied my 150 ADA MOORE's 8T0RY. pocket-liandkcrcliief over m}^ head, and I dare say I looked very queer, for when I saw the postman at last, and scrambled through the hedge to intercept him, he first gave a great start, and then burst into a loud fit of laughter. I am siu-e he thought I was gone mad. — He knows me very well, and many a half-crown of mine has he had for giving me the letter-bag on the sly ; but this time he wasn't at all willins;, of coiu'se thiiilving me touched in the upper story. I was obliged to give him five shillings before I could get the bag ; but it was very lucky I did get it ; — there were several duns' letters, a County Coui't summons, and a writ. Wasn't it lucky I got hold of it ?" " I am not sure of that," said Mrs. Moore, " but what did you do about your hat and — wig ?" said my mother, with a little hesita- tion at pronouncing the word ' wig.' " Speak out, my dear, "said Mrs. Hodgson; SMITHKIN UODGSON. lol " dou't make two bites of a cherry. A wig's a wig ; but mine, as I looked up at it on my way home, looked for all the world like a rook's nest. Well, I found a boy — I sus- pect he was a poacher, — but, poacher or not, I was very glad to see him, — for one six- pence he ran up the tree like a squirrel and brought me my wig, and for another six- pence he forded the Coquet and found my hat stuck on an angle of rock. I had j ust put on my wig when who should I see coming towards me but Hodgson ! " ' Whatever brings you out in such a wind and at such an hour, Meriar ?' he said. " ' A headache,' I answered, hating my- self for the fib : but what could I do or say without letting the cat out of the bag ? ' I thought the morning air woidd do me good,' I added, ' but the wind carried away my hat.' (I never mention my wig to him. I suppose he knows it's a wig, but we never 152 ADA mooee's story. talk of it.) ' Oh, by the bye,' I said, ' I met the postman and took the letter-bag from him,' and I handed it to him from beneath my cloak. I had taken out Smithkin's letters and locked it again. " ' I came out to see what was keeping the postman,' he said. ' I expect important letters.' He opened the bag and took out several. '' My love,' he said, 'I'm in hopes Smitlikin has tiu-ned over a new leaf. He seems to have no duns' or la^Tors' letters such as he used to have. If I could feel certain that he had sovm his wild oats, I'd double his al- loAVance, and perhaps take him into partner- ship; but that would be ruin if he were likely to begin again and go on as he did last year.' " " Oh ! what did you say ? — what could you say?" cried my mother with tears in her eyes. SMITHKIN HODGSON. 153 '' I was too agitated to say anything," re- plied Mrs. Hodgson, " and I'm in a regular fix !— " I got home, leaving Hodgson to read his letters and papers in the Park ; and I was so worn out, chilled, and excited, that when I got into my own room I went off into a regular fit. I s'pose fine ladies and novel- writers would call it historical, but I call it having a regular good cry. Well, when I got a little eased, and had prayed on my bended knees to be forgiven all the fibs I'd told Hodgson, it came into my mind to slip out quietly and come and talk the matter over with you, Mrs. Moore. You are a wife and a mother, and I've always thought you not only a lady bred and born, but a good Clmstian, so I'm come to ask you what you would do in my place." " What I fear you will not have courage to do," said my mother. " I would not de- 154 ADA Moore's story. ceive a good Inisband for — " She paused. She was so kind aud gentle she did not like to say for a Lad son, so she added " for so ex- traA'agant a young man as Mr. Smithkin Hodgson. I would say to the young gentle- man that nothing should induce me to be a party to his guilt." " Oh, don't call it guilt, Mrs. Moore," said Mrs. Hodgson; "say his imprudence, his extrayaganco, his folly, if you will, but guilt is too harsh a word." " Not in my opinion," said my mother. " See what miser}- he causes you. Don't be angry when I say that his selfishness im- perils both your body and soul. Suppose it were not your own son's, but mine or any other friend's, and you heard that any other young man you like to name went out shoot- ing with gay friends and terrified his poor mother, by threats of suicide, into doing what you have done this morning. And then think SMITHKIN HODGSON. 155 of the false position in which it places you ! Do be advised in time, or you may be led on by degrees to steps that will end in Mr. Hodgson's taking Mr. Smithkin into partner- ship ; and a partner who has no principle (don't be angry. I speak plainly because you are in great peril), a partner without prin- ciple could ruin even so wealthy a man as Mr. Hodgson." " But how can I tell him? — how can I betray poor Smithkin, who has trusted me ?" "K^o, you camiot do that, of course," said my mother, " but you can tell your son that you will no longer connive at his de- ceiving his father. You can insist on his owning the state of his affairs. And Mr. Hodgson, however angry he may be, must enable him to settle them, and must allow him enough to live upon. Sooner or later the whole truth will come out, and Mr. Hodgson's confidence in you will be entirely 156 ADA mooee's story. destroyed. If lie discovers that you liave deceived him, particularly into a belief that his son was reformed and that he might safely take him into partnership), he would never love or trust you again. He would be justified in separating from you. " Oiu' children are very near and very dear to us," added my mother, but a good husband is nearer and dearer still. Yours, Mrs. Hodgson, is one of the best of hus- bands. Do you remember the words of the solemn promises and vows you made at the altar ?" " Oh !" said Mrs. Hodgson, much afflicted, " I know they were very solemn, but I can't call them to mind just now — it's so long ago." " Dear Mrs. Hodgson," said my mother, " from my heart I pity you, but I cannot, as I feared, do anything but lu'ge you to be firm with your son, and a true and loyal SMITHKIN HODGSOX. 157 wife to your husband. Any other policy is a crooked one, and must end in misery." " Oh dear ! oh dear ! " cried poor Mrs. Hodgson, wringing her hands, "how can I do it ? And if Smithkin should shoot or hang himself ! " " There is no fear of that," said my mother; "ho is of sound mind; and my firm belief is that no one of sound mind ever does or ever can commit suicide. Be- sides, if you will but look at things as they are, you will see that from the very fii-st the love of self has been your son's ruling passion. He would sacrifice father, mother, sisters, any one, but he will take care of himself. His troubles do not touch my heart much; but I could weej)," said my mother, " over his poor father's false hopes of his reform, and generous intentions in his favour. There is the affecting part of the drama ! Oh, Mrs. Hodgson, be advised ! ' 158 ADA mooee's stoey. Your son has youth, health, high spiiits, many friends, and no troubles but those he brings upon himself, — no love, no care but for himself. Your husband is growing old. After a life of industry and self-denial, he seeks his pleasure in his home. He has nothing but you. You are the trustee of his hajjpiness. Oh, never betray that trust !" Mrs. Hodgson was still wringing her hands and saying, "What shall I do? what shall I do?" when a carriage stopped at the gate, and visitors were announced. She instantly lowered her veil, and rising, begged to be allowed to go out at the glass-door into the garden, that had a gate that opened on the moor. " Poor Mrs. Hodgson ! " said my mother; " she has not moral courage to refuse what is, in fact, treachery to her husband, and co- operation in her son's ruin ; nay, perhaps, the ruin of the whole family." 159 CHAPTEE XX. THE DUKE AXD DUCHESS. The visitors who were slio^^n in on Mrs. Hodson's departure were the Duke and Duchess of Northland, the greatest of the great people of the place. They had always paid us every possible attention. Had we been the Moores of Moordell, living in our ancestral hall, and the important landowners our predecessors had been, the Duke and her most graceful and gracious Grace could not have been more kind and cordial. On this occasion she was accompanied by 160 ADA Moore's story. a very interesting, pretty person, four years older than myself, Lady Beatrice Eden. She was the Duchess's cousin. There was some- thing very delicate and almost ethereal in the appearance of Ladj^ Beatrice. Her Grace took an opportunity of telling my mother that there was great reason to fear she was consumptive, as her two eldest sisters, now no more, had been ; and that it was in con- templation, if possible, to send her to winter in the South, or at Madeira. Poor child ! her complexion reminded one of white porce- lain, and her cough was frequent. We were always remembered, and very liberallv too, in the venison and the shoot- ing season. My father and mother were always invited to all parties of importance given at the Castle. The Duke and Duchess were kind to all their neighbours, but espe- cially so to the clergy. The Duke, a very learned scientific man, had a great regard THE DUKE AND DUCHESS. 161 for my father. The Duchess, a beautiful, accomplished woman, liked and appreciated my gentle mother. They came now to con- gratulate us on the approaching return of my uncle. Sir James, — on his resumption of his own hall and estates, — on the res- toration, in fact, in the county of the old prestige of Moore of Moordell. While my mother conversed with the Duke and the Duchess, I was A^ery much engrossed by my interesting young visitor, Lady Beatrice. With the freemasonry of early youth, Ave had become suddenly in- timate. She went with me into the garden. She saw my aviary and my aquarium, my flowers, and my pets. She told me she was now that lonely thing, an only child. Mother- less too ! And then she said suddenly, " How I wish you were my sister ! I should be so happy with you ! " Bessie came out to tell us the Duke and VOL. I. M 1G2 ADA moore's story. Ducliess were going, and we hurried back. We found tliem however still seated, and informing my mother that they intended to give a ball on that day fortnight, and that they hoped the heiress of Moordell Hall would make her debut there. " You will have your formal invitations to-morrow, my dear Mrs. Moore," said the Duchess ; " but I want to hear you say you will come, as I feel a gi-eat interest in all dtliitantes at their first ball, and an especial one in your dear Ada's." My mother, of course, accepted the invi- tation with all due acknowledgments, and I, with many blushes, and anticipations that far outstripped any possible reality. I was in an inward tumult. My first ball ! And such a ball as a ball at the Castle was sure to be ! What should I wear ? How should my hair be di*essed ? How should I feel, en- tering a ball-room for the fii'st time ? How THE DUKE AND DUCHESS. 163 should I even have courage to dance, or to speak, or to do anything ? The Duchess had very graciously said to ni}^ mother, " If you have any friend not on my visiting list, whom, as it is Miss Moore's cUhutj you wish invited, let me have their names, and they shall have invitations. This is, you know, the first ball given at the Castle since our abode there. The late Duke and Duchess never gave balls — at least not after he became an invalid." My mother acknowledged the Duchess's kindness with thanks ; and knowing how ardently the Hodgsons desired to be ad- mitted to the Castle — an honour they had never enjoyed — she asked for invitations for them, for the Count, and the Signore. Very graciously the Duchess granted the request. She took down the names of the Hodgsons, and of Smithkin Hodgson, and as she did so said — M 2 164 ADA moore's story. "I don't know these people at all, Mrs. Moore ; but as you wish it, they shall have invitations. As for the dear old Count, I shall be rejoiced to see that fine old speci- men of a race now almost extinct — the French nobleman; and as the Duke and I sympatliize passionately with the true pa- triots of Italy, you may be sure the Signore will be welcome at the Castle." The Ducal party then took their leave ; and I began to talk with my dear mother of the subject uppermost in my mind — my first ball-dress ! How impossible it seems to me now to realize the intense anxiety and interest which I can yet remember to have felt in talking over the relative merits of gauze, crape, tulle, tarlatan, and net — all Avhite, of course ; and in passing in review all the white flowers which would best adorn my hair and my dress, from camellias, roses. THE DUKE AXD DUCHESS. 165 and garden lilies, down to jasmine and daisies ! The next day we were to go to a dinner- party at the Hodgsons', and as I knew that by that time they would have received their invitations, I looked forward with great pleasure to talking over balls and ball- dresses with the Misses Hodgson. I remember my dear father said, when I came down, ready to dej)art for the Hodgsons', in a white muslin dress trimmed with blue ribbons, and blue ribbons in my hair, — " If Ada looks as well at her fii-st ball as she does this evening, I shall be quite satisfied ; but, generally, the more anxious young ladies are about their appearance, and the more pains they take with their di-ess, the worse they look." " I don't think that will be the case with Ada !" said my mother. " She will wear 166 ADA mooee's stoet. nothing but white, which will be none the less becoming for being elegant and fresh, and made in the last new fashion." " I will tell you," said my father, smiling, " what, in my opinion, generally spoils the appearance of ladies when they are most eager to look their best : a hard corset is summoned to their aid, and as they tighten it with a heroism which, in a good cause, would entitle them to take rank as martjTS, they not only, in my opinion, destroy the beautiful form inherited from Eve herself, but they sacrifice the beauty of the ' human face divine' to a wasp-like waist, and the compression not only gives a distressed look to the countenance, but it sends the blood that should j)aint the cheeks to the nose ; and a plain gii-l, with a white nose and at ease in her corset and her mind, looks prettier than a beauty in tight stays and Avith a red nose !" THE DUKE AND DUCHESS. 167 As I listened to my father, I altered my mind about a new pair of very tight Paris-wove stays which the Alnwick dress-maker had almost persuaded me to order. " One other reason," added my father, "why women generally look their worst when they wish to look their best is, that on such important occasions as a first Draw- ing-room, a first ball, or a wedding-day, they submit their hair to the hands and taste of a man who knows, perhaps, what is fashionable, but has no sense of the picturesque or the becoming, — who strains it so tightly that his victims cannot turn their heads with ease — destroys its lustre with his washes, pomades, oils, and creams, and whose highest object is attained if he succeeds in making it look like a wig. I do hope that no hands but your mother's and your own will touch your golden tresses 1G8 ADA mooee's stoey. for the Castle ball, Ada ! If your hair looks as it does now, and your waist is no more compressed than it is in that blue sash, you will do very well, and I shall be proud of my little girl !" 169 CHAPTER XXI. LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. It was a large dinner-party at the Hoclgsons' — not that they were visited by the most ex- clusive of the " statesmen " of our aristocratic county, but the smaller gentry, the clergy, and the families of professional men living in Warkworth and Alnwick. The Yicar of Moordell and his wife and daughter, with their £300 per annum, were invited and welcomed by all the nobility and higher gentry, because they were of the old Border family of Moore of Moordell; 170 ADA MOORE's story. and the Hodgsons, with their £10,000 per annuTD, were exchided because they were South country j)^!'^®^^^, who had made their money by indigo. The Hodgsons gave very handsome din- ners, and their plate, glass, and china were literally superb. Everything in their esta- blishment was perhaps a little overdone and heavy. Wealth without taste was perceptible throughout. The girls wore rich silks, satins, and velvets, and were adorned with jewels, where muslins, ribbons, and flowers would have been more suitable and more becoming. The elegant diner a la Russe, so great an improvement on the heavy, hot, oppressive, and interminable banquets it has superseded, was not adopted at the Hodgsons'. They could not give ujd displaying their massive, richly embossed silver covers, side dishes, and other gorgeous articles of plate. Mrs. Hodgson always said, " Give me turtle soup LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. 171 in a silver tureen and silver sonp-plates with hot water ones beneath, and a haunch of venison in a lordly dish, and a fine biled turkey opposite in another. Let me see my table covered with silver ; I don't want no piles of artificial between me and my oppo- site neighbour, and little scraps of I don't know what handed round from a side table, and whisked away if I do but stop to drink a draught of ale. As I say to the girls, flowers are all very well for those who've no pearls, but they're poor trumpery things after all ; and if the value of any given thing is just as much as it will bring, why, flowers wouldn't be worth the trouble of carrying them !" The dinner party on the day in question was, as usual, large and rather heavy. The Hodgsons had some friends staying in the house. There were two vicars and their wives from adjoining parishes, and a soli- 172 ADA moore's story. citor and medical man, both from "Wark- worth and Alnwick; bnt the lion of the evening was Mr. Koscommon Lyall. Miss Margaretta Ann Hodgson told me he was a very great lion in the London world of fashion, — that he was a poet, a novelist, a painter, a musician, a keen sportsman, and, to wind up all, "very fast." I saw by the manner in which she spoke of him that she was more than half in love with him, and I was sorry, for her sake, when by Mrs. Hodg- son's command he took me in to dinner. He certainly was in appearance very in- teresting, elegant, and handsome. He had very dark eyes, very white teeth, a very pale complexion, wavy jet-black hair, and the most beautiful hand I had ever seen. I was . dazzled by his wit, instructed and excited by his eloquence, and captivated by the noble sentiments which seemed almost against his will to drop from his lips, as LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. 173 if to atone for some sparkling sarcasm or worldly epigram. Mr. Eoscommon Lyall spoke in a very low voice, and his very caustic, witty com- ments on some of the guests were uttered so as to reach no ear but mine. He thus, in a manner, took me into his confidence, and I felt flattered that he did so. He won my heart by the admiration he expressed of the beauty and elegance of my mother. He asked me who she was. It was no marvel to me that he did not know her, for he was a stranger at Moordell, and he was not in the drawing-room when we were announced. He also singled out my father as a noble- looking, intellectual man, who must be a somebody. These were the only persons at table at whom his wit did not aim a dia- mond shaft or two, and whom he did not suc- ceed in making very ridiculous in my eyes. Smithkin Hodgson he especially delighted to ridicule and quiz. 174 ADA moore's stoey. I ventured to say, •' I thought he was your great friend ?" " I might reply by begging you, as our kind hostess would express it, not to put such a label upon me," he retorted. "What have you seen in me, to make you think I can sympathize with vulgarity, purse-pride, vanity, and pretension?" "I have seen you," I said, "a guest at his father's house and table, and as I do not suppose you are here as Mr. Hodgson's friend, I presume you must be his son's." Much as I admired this London lion's person, manners, and wit, I was rather an- noyed at his ridiculing the people of whose hospitality he was availing himself, and I summoned courage to aim a slight reproof. He was silent for a moment, then looked earnestly at me, compelling me, by his fixed and almost reproachful gaze, to cast down my eyes. At length he said — LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. 175 "Don't judge of me by tlie tliouglitless things I have said to make you smile. I am not at all intimate with the Hodgsons, and I have only accejated Smithkin's ' soup- ticket,' as he called it, because I was told I should meet here a person I once saw for a moment in Alnwick, passing the windows of the coffee-room at the Swan, when I was breakfasting there, and to see whom I would have gone barefoot across Europe." '' And after all," I said, " that person is not here, and you have cast your pearls before swine, who, if they knew all, would turn again and rend you." " Who is satii'ical noAV ?" said Mr. Eos- common Lyall. "And how do you know that the person I alluded to is not here ?" " I cannot think that any of those you have so cleverly satirized, can have inspired in you by one glance so ardent a desire to for a meeting that you would perform such 176 ADA mooee's story. a pilgrimage as you allude to, in order to en- sure it." Mr. Eoscommon Lyall smiled. I felt a great wish to know wlio the person was in whom he felt so great an interest, but I was too shy to ask him, and the next topic started was the coming ball. Smithkin Hodgson was sitting opposite to me. He was very proud of his invitation to the Castle ball, and had no idea that we had had anything to do with the honoiu* conferred on him. He asked me across the table whether I was going to the Duchess's ball on the 15th. I said, ''Yes." At this moment some one required some of a dish before him, and he was obliged to help it. Mr. Eoscommon Lyall then said in a very low voice to me, " That question of Smithkin Hodgson's is preparatory to asking you to LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. 177 dance the first dance with him. Let me beg you to promise nie the first quadrille, waltz, polka, and mazurka ; for the others, I, who know all the best men, will bring you partners; but don't, pray don't dance with Smithkin. You have no idea how absurdly he canvasses for a ball ; I should be so grieved to see yon in any way mixed up with his vulgarity. Don't promise to dance with him ; I implore you, don't." I was amused at his earnestness, and flat- tered by it too. Presently Smithkin said, " Miss Moore, may I have the j)leasure of engaging you for the first dance at the Castle ball ?" Mr. Ef)scommon Lyall looked at me, as if his fate hung in my answer. "Thank you," I said, "but I am en- gaged." " The next, then ?'' said Smithkin. "I am engaged for that too !" VOL. I. N / 178 ADA moore's story. 'Tor any others?" asked Smithkin, turn- ing red and looking defiant. "Yes, for several. I don't think I have one dance at my disposal." He turned to a lady by him, and asked her ; and I heard him say, " There's as good fish in the sea as ever were caught." Eoscommon Lyall, in a very loud tone, said, "Thank you! You can never know how grateful I feel to you." The earnestness of his manner made me blush and tremble. Why should he care with whom I danced ? Who was the person he had seen in Alnwick, and so longed to see again? Vanity suggested that it might be myself, but the next moment I was ashamed of my own conceit. When the ladies left the dining-room for the drawing-room, the echoes of his loud,^ earnest voice haunted me, and so did the expression of his dark eyes. LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. 179 Margaretta Ann came and sat by me, in order to talk of Mr. Eoscommon LyalL From her I heard that there was some mys- tery about his bii'th, — that he was related to Mr. Fen wick of Fenwick, — she thought that gentleman was his uncle, and that he would be his heir ; but she fancied, from something Smithkin had said, that he had noble blood in his veins. "He talks of getting into Parliament," she added. " I am sure he would speak better than any of them," she said. I was young and romantic enough to like him all the better for the mystery she alluded to. I began to watch the door with interest and a flutter at my heart, and I had to seem absorbed by some engravings on the table before me, to hide the blushes that burned my cheeks at his approach. I had often heard of love at fii'st sight, and I now began to understand that there may be a N 2 180 ADA MOOEE's story. mystic sympatliy, a sudden interest, in the heart of a young girl for a person of whom she knows nothing, which, if the chances of life ultimately promote a union, will be re- membered as love at first sight. Mr. Eoscommon Jjjull sat down by me, and turning over the engravings, which were views in Italy and the South of France, he, who it seemed had been in all these lovely scenes, began to describe them to me in glowing language. I would have listened to him all night, but Mrs. Hodgson came to beg him to sing, and he complied at once ; no affectation, no delay, no pretended cold. His voice was exquisite in tone and highly cultivated. As Mrs. Hodgson was very fond of music, and never lost an opportunity of making me sing, she compelled me to stand near to the piano, and to join Mr. Eoscommon Lyall in some Italian duets. What expression LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. 181 he tlu'ew into the words of passionate love, of which I had never felt the true meaning before, and how my voice trembled and how my colour came and went when I had to call him ' mio hen^ and to sing ' famo.'' We were standing side by side. Miss Hodgson was accompanying us, when some one asked him to sing '■'■A te, caray His dark eyes, eloquent as his voice, made of that exquisite song a confession of pas- sionate love. Foolish, rash, and romantic child that I was — knowing nothing of this stranger, ig- norant of his principles, his antecedents, his character, his temper, I loved him already with that wild mystic emotional feeling which no one can feel twice ; and I, who had always laughed at the idea of love at first sight as a romantic delusion, found by my own experience that it was an enchanting reality. 182 ADA moore's story. After the music dancing was proposed. Mrs. Hodgson had a great delight in seeing young peoj)le hapjDy. Smithkin Hodgson, offended, did not ask me to dance. Eoscommon Lyall was my partner. We only danced one quadrille and a waltz, but he found an opportunity to beg me to introduce him to my parents. This I did, and my father, always courteous and hospitable, said he should be happy to see him at the Vicarage. The evening was over. He offered me his arm to see me to the carriage. The carriage ! — it was the shabby old Warkworth fly! For the first time in my life I felt a paltry shame, and blushed to think that he should hand me into that humble conveyance. I was silent as we drove home. I had so much to think of. Every word, look, tone. LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. 183 and sigli, and that almost imperceptible pressure of my baud when it had met his in the dance, — so light that, but for the impas- sioned gaze that accompanied it, it would have been only a doubt. "What makes you so silent, Ada?" said my father. '' Have you spent a dull even- ing ?" "Dull! Oh no, Papa, — a delightful evening." " Indeed !" said my mother. "Well, I did find it rather dull, but the Hodgsons' parties always are rather heavy ; and then I was so grieved to see poor old Mr. Hodgson so affectionate to his son, for from a few words that passed I discovered that Mrs. Hodgson has not followed my advice. I do believe her devotion to Smithkin is such, she will let his father take him into part- nership, believing him to be reformed ; and I much fear that, extravagant and un- 184 ADA mooee's stoey. principled as lie is, lie may ruin the good old man." My father was full of sympathy when he heard this, but I was so entirely under the influence of the most selfish and absorbing of passions that I only uttered a few com- monplaces of pity and concern, for at that moment the breaking of the old firm of Hodgson and Birne would scarcely have affected me, unless Eoscommon Lyall had been in some way or other connected with it. " By the bye, Ada," said my father, "who was that gentleman who jiaid you so much attention ? Mr. Eoscommon Lyall, did you say ? I never heard of him before. He is a very elegant, gentlemanly person. Who is he?" Glowing with pride at my father's praise of my idol, I said — "Margaretta Ann told me. Papa, that he is quite a lion in London society. He is a LOVE AT FITIST SIGHT. 185 poet, a novelist, a painter, a musician, an elegant who sets fashions, a sporting man — - in short, everything. She said he has a good fortune, she believes, and is of a very good family, but that there is some mystery about him. She thinks he will turn out to be a nobleman." "A mystery! I don't like mysteries," said my father. "In my experience, Ada, cloaks are more frequently used to conceal a rent than a star." " Oh, Papa ! I am certain Mr. Eoscommon Lyall has nothing disgraceful to conceal," I said very warmly. " He has the noblest sentiments." "Ah," said my father, laughing, "so had Joseph Surface." " He sings exquisitely," said my mother, "and he is certainly a very elegant, hand- some, accomplished person. Mrs. Hodgson told me she believes he is nephew and heir 186 ADA mooee's stoet. to Fenwick of Fenwick ; that is, in case liis tmcle never marries again. I think he is son of a half-sister of Mr. Fenwick' s who made a romantic run-away match with some one who may become a nobleman some day. I fancy Eoscommon Lyall is an assumed name." " I should prefer his being a mere gen- tleman, with no mystery or disguise about him," said my father; "but at any rate he is a very accomplished person, and a great acquisition to the Hodgsous' parties. How pale and tired Ada looks !" said my father, taking me in his arms, and kissing me ten- derly. " Go to bed at once, my child." He blessed me, and so did my dear, dear mother ; and I kissed them for the first time in my life with my lips only, not with my heart ! I was all anxiety to be alone — alone in my own little chamber, that, like a miser LOYE AT FIRST SIGHT. 187 opening his money chest to count over his hoard, I might ojDen my heart, and gloat over its treasures. What a purple light of love seemed to fill the little room, as I threw myself into an easy chair by my little bed, and thought over that enchanting evening, and, closing my own eyes, fancied I saw his gazing on me, with that intense half melan- choly interest, which had wakened all the slumbering passion of my heart ! After indulging for an hour at least in this reverie, I opened my window. It was a very calm night. The moon was shining brightly down on the garden, the dark forest on one side, the purple moors beyond, and the ivy-mantled tower of oiu' dear little old church. I could not see the great German Ocean from my mndow, but I could hear the soft sighing of the waves wooed by the night breeze, and the liquid splash of the ripple as it broke upon the beach. 188 ADA moore's stoey. As I gazed on tlio calm beauty of that sweet night in early autumn, and contrasted its exquisite stillness with the tumult in my own heart, I tried to catch, from the tran- quil and translucent azure of the sky, the dark stillness of the forests and the moors, and the spiritual light of the silver moon, something of the universal and heavenly repose and peace. By degrees the wild excitement and un- rest of my heart lapsed into a soft melan- choly, and then strange presentiments of coming sorrow and evil stole over my spirit. The wind rose a little, and waved the foliage of the dark yew and cypress trees that grew near my window, so that the dark branches seemed to me like the plumes of a hearse. An owl, who for more than a centiuy had tenanted the church tower, began to hoot, and, roused by the sound, our house-dog LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. 189 howled. My father had trained me up, all Borderer as I was, to despise superstition, but a rival master undid in an lioiu' the teach- ing of a life. First love is the very slave of forebodings, omens, and wild fancies of all kinds. I grew cold and white with fear of I knew not what, and hastily repairing to bed, where I lay long gazing through my tears at " the sun of the sleepless," my spirit at last floated over the crystal bridge into the land of dreams, and there I was kneeling in white robes veiled and crowned "with orange blossoms at the altar by Ros- common Lyall's side, when, lo ! the altar vanished ; a tomb replaced it ; my white lace veil changed into black crape, my white satin robes into a deep mourning garb. I was quite alone, and in the agony of my grief I wept, and waking, found my pillow wet with tears. Prayer came to my aid to calm my aching 190 ADA MOORE's story. heart and perturbed spirit ; and having prayed long and fervently, I sank into a sleep and di'eamless sleep, and did not wake till Bessie came to call me. 191 CHAPTEE XXII. love's young dream. "Oh, Miss Ada," cried Bessie, ''do be quick ! Master and Missus are taking a turn in the garden thegither, waitin' for ye, and here are you as sound as a' the sivin sleepers thegither ! See how the sun's shining, and hear the birdies singin', and a' to wak' ye up ! It's a sin and a shame to be in bed on sic a morn ! Xoav busk ye, like a bonnie lassie as ye are, for ye ken weel if onything can anger the master it's your bein' late, an' keepin' us a' waitin' for prayers !" 192 ADA mooee's story. I rose at once, and dressed rapidly. With the shades of night, all sadness, all fore- bodings of evil had departed. The sunshine was not brighter, nor the birds more glad, than my spirit. The mo- ment I waked I thought of him ! I felt like the possessor of a sweet and inex- haustible treasiu'e. I had come suddenly into a grand inheritance — one beside which Moordell Hall and its large estate seemed poor and pale — first and passionate love ! " I shall see him to-day !" I said to my- self. "I feel I shall!" I did not ask myself why at that thought my cheeks glowed and my heart throbbed even in the sohtude of my own chamber. I did not think how it would end— no thought of marriage or of any worldly ar- rangement crossed my mind. It was that absorbing, mystic, pure, and delicious feeling — a girl's first love ! love's young deeam. 193 " Well, Ada's slumbers have quite re- stored her bloom," said my father, as I poured out his coffee. " Our pale lily is becoming a red, red rose ! What say you, Mamma, to a drive to Alnwick to-day? You want, of course, to make some pur- chases for the ball ?" '' What say you, Ada ?" cried my mother. " You can drive me in the pony chaise ?" My heart sank within me. Go to Aln- wick — be away all day — when I felt certain he w^ould call ! Oh, I could not bear such a trial ! I said — " I would rather go to-morrow. Mamma. I have many things I want to do to-day." I felt ashamed of my own insincerity, and blushed deeply as I spoke. My kind mother took no notice of my confusion — perhaps she saw into my heart. She only said — "Very well. To-morrow, then ; that will do quite as well." VOL. I. 194 ADA moojre's story. Breakfast over, my father went out on parish business ; my mother took her needle- work, and settled calmly down in her favourite window-seat, inviting me to join her. The old gardener was mowing the lawn ; Bessie was busy with her cleanings and her scrubbings ; — everything went on as usual. There was change but in myself. But I ? Oh, the strange restlessness — the feverish watch — the nervous tumult — the bewildering hope — the baseless ecstasy ! The scene was as much changed for me as is a landscape when we look at it through crimson or orange-coloured glass after hav- ing beheld it through blue or green. I could do nothing — nothing but watch the road along which he would probably come from the Hall to the Yicarage. Long before it was at all likely that any visitor — a stranger particularly — would love's young DEEAir. 195 think of calling, I was on the watch. How anxious I felt about my appearance that day ! How often I arranged and disarranged my hair ! How capriciously I arrayed myself in all my best morning dresses by turns, and put on and tlirewofF white and coloured muslins, and blue, pink, mauve, and green ribbons, and could not be satisfied with my- self ! And when I heard the sound of wheels or of a horse's hoofs, how my heart beat — how my colour came and went — how the brush fell from my nerveless hand — and how, after j)ining for his arrival all day, I hoped that it might not be he ! I was not ready — not ready in mind or person, — all flutter, confusion, and hurry ! I know not how that day passed away, but it did pass, and I heard the church clock strike four. A few minutes after, the Hodgsons' car- riage di'ove up to the gate. 2 196 ADA moore's story. " He is come !" I said to myself, and sank into a chair, gi. jl='i^,5,iiili\7JL!iiiiaTl^^lfil?Llii'l\li>VUr^vy'iJV?j:iii/^>^"jfiJLl7ij