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 BRITOMART.
 
 BY 
 
 B ritO m a rt. ^rs. Herbert Martin, 
 
 Author of 
 
 ^ jRnbBl " Bonjiie Lesley,'' " Common Clay^ 
 
 ^ ^ * «' ^ Man and a Brother,'' etc. 
 
 Faire Britomart, whose constant mind 
 
 Ne reckt of ladies love . . . 
 
 She forward went . ,• 
 
 With stedfast courage and stout hardiment. ^^ 
 
 Ne evil thing she feared, ne evil thing she ment. 
 
 In Three Volumes. 
 Vol. I. 
 
 London: 
 
 Richard Bentley & Son, 
 
 Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen. 
 
 1893. 
 
 (All rights reserved.)
 
 .fw 
 
 ^^:- 
 
 BRITOM ART. 
 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 '^ ^M SOMBRE looking room, the walls 
 
 ■^ well lined with grave-hued books, 
 
 a grey twilight stealing in, damp and 
 
 ^cheerless, nothing within to enliven 
 
 =:the aspect of the heavy, handsome, yet 
 
 J^'unhomelike interior of Mr. Trevenna's 
 
 .^,. 
 
 ■plibrary, but the red sparkle of a fire. 
 if 
 :rThe only occupant of the room, a pale, 
 
 Jjgrey, thin, elderly man, lying rather than 
 
 (sitting in a lounging chair, who, having 
 
 ceased reading from inability to see any 
 
 9 longer, was doing nothing now but staring 
 
 < gloomily enough on this same fire 
 
 d 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 The large old house was silent as a 
 tomb, the servants were out of hearing, 
 stillness brooded like a presence, the fall 
 of a cinder now and then sounded start- 
 llngly loud. The firelight faintly illu- 
 mined the stern yellow-white face of 
 Richard Trevenna, and lurked in the 
 iron-grey of his locks, thinning on the 
 bony temples, but pretty long and thick 
 below. The deeply sunken eyes were 
 those of a man weary of life, and one who 
 was more used to bitterness and hate, 
 than the kindly affections of humanity. 
 It was an intellectual face enough, but 
 dissatisfied, restless, and profoundly ill 
 at ease, physical suffering and decay 
 having been busy at the work of sharpen- 
 ing and lining the face, which an un- 
 satisfied, soul had begun. And now 
 whatever of good or evil, of disappoint- 
 ment, desire, failure, discontent had been, 
 everything, except the dreary pause of 
 stagnation when the end is near, was
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 over. Mr. Trevenna lived on, looking 
 for nothing, hoping for nothing, with few 
 motives in life, with even a want of 
 energy in despising. Life had been a 
 failure, it was nearly over, and nothing 
 more mattered much. Yet one or two 
 sensations survived, some pains still faintly 
 gnawed, something of evil and of good 
 still lingered in the weary world-worn 
 heart. Both the evil and the good had 
 often surprised the man himself; his own 
 life, his own character had always been 
 a struggle and a contradiction ; he only 
 knew that what he had meant had never 
 been accomplished, and what he had 
 accomplished had often done ill ; and 
 now it was a late hour even for regrets. 
 What did anything signify ? Was he 
 not a spark, to glow for an instant, then 
 extinguished for ever } But a spark's 
 brief moment may set up a conflagration. 
 Sometimes he writhed under the burdens 
 of his memory, and the impotent misery
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 of every outlook ; at others some better 
 longing, some nobler desire rose and 
 struggled for a last expression ere every- 
 thing was closed, and Richard Trevenna's 
 page of life was turned for ever. He 
 moved his long, thin body restlessly, and 
 uttered a sort of groan. He was waiting 
 in the shades already till the boat of 
 Charon touched his desolate shore. 
 
 A clangfine rinof at the front-door bell 
 echoed suddenly through the silent house, 
 and made him quiver with a nervous 
 start. He never had but three visitors, 
 his doctor, his lawyer, and his old college 
 friend Grey — it could be but one of these. 
 Probably Grey. Yes. The door opened 
 to admit the little, stooping, hesitating 
 figure of the one man on earth that he 
 might call his friend. The sight of the 
 
 Master of College was the only 
 
 vision of the long dull day that roused 
 any sense of satisfaction in Mr. Trevenna's 
 heart. They had always been as different
 
 BRITOMART. 5 
 
 as men can be ever since the old days, 
 thirty odd years ago when they were 
 chums at College, and when young Dick 
 Trevenna was a reckless, brilliant, hot- 
 tempered, thin-skinned, yet lovable scape- 
 grace, and his friend Edmund Grey the 
 quietest, shyest, steadiest young plodder, 
 with grand ideas and an enthusiasm which 
 made food for cynical laughter, but which 
 had outlived a thousand heart-beats of 
 the fierce, transient emotions of his friend. 
 Grey had not so much changed as fossilized. 
 Trevenna was utterly re-made from those 
 times of their youth. Yet the pure- 
 minded, gentle, ascetic, religious old 
 scholar, who still believed, still loved, 
 and still laboured on in a blind, persistent, 
 often blundering fashion, a thousand times 
 deceived yet still inclined to trust, could 
 never get out of the habit of friendship 
 for the man over whose life he had 
 mourned in his quiet way, ever since 
 the early parting of the ways when
 
 6 BRITOMART, 
 
 Trevenna's path went hopelessly awry. 
 Both were now old bachelors, apparently 
 on the same footing, into both lives the 
 influence of women had come and de- 
 parted, in one case only to spoil and 
 to sear, in the other to leave a faint 
 sad echo of what might have been a 
 lovely harmony. Once, and only once, 
 the shy maiden soul of Edmund Grey 
 had opened to passion. He never made 
 up his mind or had the courage to confess 
 it — it was always to be, and never was. 
 Some one stepped in with the confident 
 boldness of a different nature and picked 
 his rose ; no other ever seemed worth 
 plucking since that had faded away un- 
 touched by him ages ago. Since then he 
 had grown quietly old in his solitude, with 
 a lock and key on his silent heart ; but he 
 was still young in mind. He still believed 
 in good women, and liked to watch the 
 romances of other people from behind the 
 monastery grille of his own secluded life.
 
 BRITOMART, 
 
 A shy, Stammering, modest man, with 
 no power of expansion or expression, 
 doing kind things by stealth as if they 
 were sins ; awkward, plain, grey, yet with 
 a certain silent beauty in the serene 
 benediction of his gentle look. Few 
 people knew him, but not a few dearly 
 liked the courteous, considerate, reserved 
 old bachelor who hated to give pain, but 
 bore it himself with the calmest stoicism. 
 A scholar, a Christian, and a gentleman, 
 yet with a sort of sympathy for ignorance, 
 for doubt, and for sin, sprung from the 
 compassion of a gentle heart. He never 
 knew how to find fault, some people said 
 he was a great deal too lax to have such 
 a post as he held at the University, close 
 to which Mr. Trevenna's property was 
 situated, and where Mr. Grey had lived 
 for five-and-thirty years. 
 
 The little timid figure came sidling in, 
 and the old friends took hands ; both had 
 undemonstrative manners, and only just
 
 8 BRITOMART. 
 
 touched each other for a moment as coldly 
 if they were as mere acquaintances. 
 
 *' I can't get up," Mr. Trevenna said, in 
 a low-pitched, harsh voice — harsh, but not 
 loud. '' I am rather extra bad to-day, 
 with what Brett calls neuralgic pains. Sit 
 down, and stir that sleepy fire. It's an 
 accursed day." 
 
 '* No, no," Mr. Grey said deprecatingly, 
 as If even the weather needed a defender, 
 *' not so bad. Chilly — we expect chilly 
 weather in April, but with a feeling of 
 spring. You get cold from want of 
 exercise." He tried feebly to stir the 
 fire into a blaze ; but his hands were 
 awkward in wielding any weapon but a 
 pen, he nearly put out the flame instead 
 of enlivening it, and dropped the poker 
 with a clatter which made his friend start 
 and swear between his teeth. 
 
 It always hurt Mr. Grey to hear Tre- 
 venna swear, though he was used to it, 
 and he hurried into nervous apologies, as
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 trying to quiet things, he made more noise 
 than before. 
 
 '' Oh, damn it, Grey, leave the fire-irons 
 alone. Be content with having put out 
 my poor fire, and tortured my nerves. 
 Sit still, if you can, and don't attempt to 
 do anything with those useless hands of 
 yours. Let's hear if you have any news ; 
 yet, don't tell it me, on second thoughts, 
 for I am incapable of feeling any interest 
 in anybody but myself, and it's not worth 
 while pretending to do so. The only 
 possible thing that will do me any good 
 at this moment, is to growl about my own 
 sensations — yet that's stupid enough, and 
 the relief is transient." 
 
 "You are feeling bad.'^" the little man 
 asked, anxiously, clasping his hands, and 
 squeezing them between his knees, one of 
 his tricks of action. He peered, with his 
 soft, short-sighted eyes, into the worn, 
 haggard, yellow face of his friend. 
 
 " Bad ? Well, that's a mild word !
 
 lO BRITOMART. 
 
 Grey, I'm feeling all the pains of body 
 and all the weariness of spirit of which 
 this vile essence of ours is capable, I 
 believe. I suppose it's all right, I should 
 — for virtuous people would find some 
 virtuous reason for it, I've no doubt. 
 But I never asked to be born. I might 
 have been consulted." 
 
 "What does — what does Brett say?" 
 There was a sort of stammer in Mr. 
 Grey's speech, which was never fluent or 
 facile, and in emotion almost all power 
 of expression seemed to fail him. He 
 never could put into words the compas- 
 sionate tenderness of his soul. 
 
 " Brett .^ Oh, he talks cheerful lies, 
 after the manner of his kind, till I drive 
 him into a corner, when he admits, what 
 I know already, that few and evil are the 
 days that remain to me. I shouldn't mind 
 if every one of them didn't last a year, 
 and every night stretch into six. It's all 
 infinite tedium ; perhaps, when the pain
 
 BRITOMART. II 
 
 is sharpest, it is not the most difficult to 
 get on. Eh ! But this is delightful chat 
 to entertain a friend with ! Suppose we 
 talk politics, religion, or scandal. You 
 start a subject, old man, and I'll do my 
 best to chime in." 
 
 *' Is Geoffrey coming down ? I thought 
 you expected him ? " 
 
 The question brought a frown on the 
 already lowering forehead, and a sneer 
 on Mr. Trevenna's grim mouth. 
 
 '* Oh, Mr. Geoff finds metal more 
 attractive. He doesn't care to come 
 down here to be bored by an infernally sour 
 old uncle. He's philandering after the 
 daughter of that most abominable parvenu, 
 James Field, from what I hear — for, 
 though I'm laid on the shelf, I manage 
 to get information, you see — a pretty, 
 silly, frivolous, flirting thing. I'd rather 
 he married any one else, almost. I detest 
 that fellow Field.*' 
 
 " Do you know him ? "
 
 12 BRITOMART. 
 
 '' Yes ; at least I have known him, and 
 known things of him, quite enough to 
 loathe him, and that loud, vulgar, fool 
 of a wife of his. But I ought to expect 
 little better of Geoffrey ; he has done 
 nothing for years past but disappoint me." 
 After a pause he went on, with fierce 
 suddenness, jerking out his words as if 
 they were difficult to force from his lips. 
 *' I've been thinking over things — I've 
 plenty of time to think — I'm nearly 
 resolved to make an entire change in 
 the disposition of my property — I have 
 other reasons besides being disgusted with 
 Geoffrey." 
 
 Mr. Grey murmured some vague, in- 
 articulate reply, moving first one foot then 
 another, with aimless spasmodic motions. 
 All that was audible seemed to deprecate 
 the blame on Mr. Trevenna's nephew. 
 The other answered his spirit, rather 
 than his word. 
 
 "• Oh yes ; I dare say Geoffrey's no
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 worse, no more selfish, dissipated, heart- 
 less, or foolish than other young men. 
 They are bad, as a rule. I tell you 
 it isn't only that I'm displeased with 
 him. You remember that talk we had 
 a month ago, when I was taken worse, 
 and you thought I was dying ? " 
 
 Mr. Grey murmured a faint assent. 
 
 ** You spoke up strongly for once, old 
 man. Upon my life you surprised me ! 
 When a quiet, shy fellow, like you, fires 
 up and has his say, I suppose one is 
 naturally impressed. You know what 
 you told me you thought of the past — 
 what your idea was of the future ? " 
 
 ''Yes, I know; I — I think so still, 
 Trevenna." 
 
 " Of course you do. Quiet as you seem 
 you are as obstinate in your notions as a 
 mule. Well, I suppose you stirred up a 
 sort of half dormant feeling in me. Call 
 it a remorse if you will. As you put it — 
 — if there's anything in your ideas — there
 
 14 BRITOMART. 
 
 does seem a claim, a wrong. I put 
 inquiries on foot. Of course my lawyer 
 knows where they are, they are regularly 
 paid, and all that ; but personally I knew 
 very little. I did not care to inquire or to 
 hear. I have nearly made up my mind 
 to do what you are so keen on, Grey. But 
 it's late in the day. I don't think it will 
 do my soul — if I have a soul — or any one 
 else's much good. But perhaps it may be 
 right. One leaves that sort of question to 
 you experts. Just as I allow Brett to 
 talk learnedly about my inside, to diagnose 
 and to experimentalize in his own depart- 
 ment, so I consider j^^2^, old man, a scientist 
 in moral questions. If you are right or 
 wrong, at any rate you've been consistent, 
 and you've given your life to it. You 
 have no doubts on moral questions, you 
 hesitate an hour as to the choice of a hat, 
 and you grope about in difficult bits of 
 knowledge between this belief and that, 
 but you speak like an oracle where con-
 
 BRITOMART. 1 5 
 
 science is concerned, and are as confident 
 as if you had received an inspiration from 
 the supernatural. You say I've committed 
 this wrong, and I ought to do this thing 
 or be damned " 
 
 " No — no — no," murmured Mr. Grey, 
 with a wild movement of his hands of 
 entreaty. *' Not that — don't put it so ; 
 you hurt me, Trevenna." 
 
 *' I don't mean to," Trevenna said, with 
 a softening for the first time audible in 
 his harsh voice. *' I'm hardly fiend 
 enough, bad as I am, to hurt the only 
 living soul that cares whether mine is lost 
 or saved." 
 
 *' Trevenna, I need not be the only one; 
 you might yet have love and care about 
 you. It is for your own sake, as well as 
 for the right, I urge this step." 
 
 "That's bosh — humbug, my dear fellow !" 
 the other said, in his hardest tone of 
 cynical denial. *' I look for nothing of 
 the sort, for absolutely nothing ! Let's
 
 1 6 BRITOMART. 
 
 have no false gloss on the thing, no senti- 
 mentality. If I take the step you advise, 
 I take it because, in spite of all my hard- 
 ness of heart and badness of life, something, 
 I know not what, struggles within me, and 
 urges me to make some feeble effort 
 against wickedness, ' some power not my- 
 self that makes for righteousness ' which 
 / cannot formularize or define, but which 
 you choose to call God, the spirit within 
 that strives with one's familiar devil, for 
 what end I know not ; or else I do it 
 because you give me no peace, because 
 you are fool enough to go on caring what 
 I am, and what becomes of me — of the 
 spiritual me, that is to say, for the bodily 
 part of me is judged and condemned to 
 speedy dissolution with more or less pre- 
 liminary torture. So, to please you, or 
 because I have, perhaps, a lurking idea that 
 you may be right, and that something is of 
 more consequence than even dying, I enter- 
 tain this idea. Not in the least, my good
 
 BRITOMART. Ij 
 
 Edmund, to patch up my lost and rotten 
 life, or to try to get any satisfaction out of 
 it for myself. It may be a tardy act of 
 justice, it may be the girl's right — you say 
 so, and I give you the credit, as I remarked 
 before, of being a moral expert. But in 
 the mess I have made of everything, 
 whatever I do some one must suffer — in 
 this case Geoffrey will. Probably his 
 having vexed me lately makes me — it is 
 so difficult to disentangle one's motives — 
 more willing to do what will cause him 
 to suffer. This girl he fancies will have 
 money, that will pain him for the loss of 
 mine." 
 
 ''You think, then — you think Geoffrey 
 is in earnest about her ? From what I've 
 gathered this will not be his first — his first, 
 what shall I say ? " 
 
 " Affaire de coeur ? Not by any means. 
 The fellow's a lady-killer. No ; but I 
 fancy there's more in this. I set Hamley 
 on the alert to find out all he could. He 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 thinks he's caught — pah ! I hate the con- 
 nection ! Purse-proud, Intriguing, push- 
 ing mushrooms. I am certain the girl's a 
 made-up, ogling, flirting, silly fool. I wrote 
 when I was feeling particularly low and 
 bad — I don't mind telling you, Grey, that 
 at times I've been rather weak about the 
 lad, poor Harry's only boy — I wrote, rather 
 expansively for me, asking him to come 
 down and see me. I got a slap in the 
 face, the most indifferent scrawl in the 
 world, excusing himself because this fool 
 of a girl had a birthday party ! The fact 
 is, he thinks it is not worth the trouble to 
 toady me " — his voice was full of the 
 fiercest, concentrated bitterness — ''that I 
 have no one else to leave my money to, 
 so that he is free to please himself and 
 neglect the sour old uncle he does not care 
 a rap for, though he has got enough out 
 of him, God knows, so he does not bother 
 his head to palaver or pretend. You 
 can't buy affection or gratitude, I suppose.
 
 BRITOMART. 1 9 
 
 I've been lavish to him, paid his debts, 
 grudged him nothing. Now, I've never 
 done a thing for you, except plague and 
 make you miserable, and I believe you are 
 idiot enough to like me." He ended with 
 a short, crackling laugh, grimmer and 
 sadder than a sob. 
 
 ^'Why, you know I do, Dick," Mr. 
 Grey said, in his low, mild, sincere voice ; 
 " there's no doubt, I hope, on that point. 
 But I believe you wrong your nephew. 
 I believe Geoff cares for you ; and, 
 though I own his faults, he has a good 
 heart." 
 
 "■ Pshaw ! Praise from a man who can 
 go on caring for Richard Trevenna, is 
 worth nothing. Whom do you think 
 worthless, pray ? " 
 
 " Not Geoffrey, at any rate," Mr. Grey 
 persisted, with gentle obstinacy. " I be- 
 lieve the kindest judgments generally 
 turn out the truest. You like to decry 
 yourself; but my opinion of you is a
 
 20 BRITOMART. 
 
 more exact one, I believe, than your 
 own. You have always been your worst 
 enemy, Dick." 
 
 " Well, no enemy could have wrought 
 more havoc in my life, I grant you that. 
 Such havoc that there's no making the 
 smallest mend of it. But, as I said 
 before, for the reason I've stated, and 
 because you are the only friend I have 
 in heaven or on earth, I'll do what you 
 want." 
 
 "Dick— Dick, old friend—" Mr. Grey 
 was stammering hopelessly, grinding his 
 hands together in sore distress — '' don't 
 talk so — your only friend — in heaven 
 — my dear old fellow, you know better — 
 I know better — believe me, I know — I 
 know, I say ! There is a God — a Christ 
 — for you, for me — " 
 
 **Ah! Speak for yourself, old man. 
 It's too late to make a reformed character 
 of me. But if anything could ever per- 
 suade me to believe in anything better
 
 BRITOMART. 2 1 
 
 than this horrible chaos and black misery 
 of a world, reeling hopelessly from space 
 to annihilation, it would be that such as 
 you exist. Don't let's talk like this any 
 longer for a bit. I'm rather worn out 
 and exhausted. Here comes tea, the 
 old woman's comfort, to which I am 
 reduced. After a cup, and a drop of 
 cognac, I'll just discuss the next steps 
 with you. If this thing has to be, you'll 
 have to carry it through ; I've no energy 
 left, except when I'm in a rage, and I 
 dread everything. I leave it in your 
 hands, old man." 
 
 Mr. Grey gave a sort of gasp, expres- 
 sive of the terror which the prospect of 
 action gave his timid and, at times, 
 rather indolent spirit, yet he never dreamt, 
 terrible as the responsibility was, of 
 repudiating it. Stronger than fear, 
 stronger than indolence, stronger than his 
 desire for calm and peace, was the deep 
 conscientiousness, the fervent love of right
 
 2^ BRITOMART. 
 
 which dwelt in his inmost heart. He 
 had no doubts or dimness of vision 
 as to questions of right and wrong, 
 the expedient, the convenient, weighed 
 nothing. A certain course had always 
 seemed to him straight, his friend had 
 persistently taken another ; now, though 
 at the eleventh hour, his gentle, but 
 strenuous remonstrances, the entreaties of 
 his loving soul, seemed to have at last 
 produced some effect. He dreaded, un- 
 speakably dreaded, the mission laid upon 
 him ; but he accepted it. If he had not 
 had this moral heroism to give him 
 power, Edmund Grey would have been 
 nothing but a coward ; his frail little 
 blundering body quailed and shivered, 
 his stammering tongue refused to do his 
 bidding often, but his spirit had the only 
 sort of courage possible to such a nature, 
 and would face not only death, but the 
 worst terrors of life, rather than be false 
 to the inner voice, to which he had
 
 BRITOMART, 27, 
 
 listened so reverently and intently, that 
 it had learnt how to command so as to 
 ensure obedience. He could not talk, 
 however, even in his most exalted 
 moments ; now, he could only blink and 
 gasp and stutter in half- inaudible accents, 
 that he would do whatever he could. 
 Trevenna looked at him with a light, 
 half of ridicule, half of amusement, in his 
 sunken eyes, yet he was conscious all 
 the while of a warmth of love and 
 gratitude to which with all other men 
 he was absolutely a stranger. So love 
 is paid by love all the world over, except 
 in the hell that the demons of passion 
 make for themselves, in this unhappy 
 existence of ours.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 T IS always trite to talk of the con- 
 trasts of life ; but, whether it is so 
 or not, the glaring nature of some will 
 flaunt themselves before us, and force us 
 into cheap moralizing. The scene in which 
 Mr. Trevenna's nephew played his part on 
 that same evening which introduced the 
 uncle to you was of the nature of such 
 violent contrasts. On one side the sombre 
 dim room, which held only pain, regret, 
 and the dreary expectation of worse to 
 come, where the two elderly men talked 
 together in the twilight, and on the other 
 was Geoffrey Trevenna in a brilliantly, yet 
 softly lighted great London drawing-room,
 
 BRITOMART. 25 
 
 filled with the music of a swinging, plain- 
 tive waltz, mixed with the laughter and 
 gay voices of frivolous young people whose 
 trade is pleasure, and heavy with the 
 manifold perfumes of spring flowers and 
 manufactured essences. It was Viola Field's 
 birthday dance. Geoffrey was floating 
 down the room with this same Viola 
 in his arms, her light slender swaying 
 figure was close to him ; he heard the 
 quick beating of her heart ; he was whisper- 
 ing into her little rosy ear; her small 
 golden-brown curly-locked head, was droop- 
 ing close to his white shirt front. He 
 seemed to have a great deal to tell her in 
 whispers, though she answered little, yet 
 all amounted to the same foolish story that 
 has been told and retold for ages. They 
 were a goodly couple, he a handsome man 
 of eight and twenty, as dark as he had 
 a right to be from a Spanish mother, 
 Harry Trevenna's foreign wife, who had 
 never lived to see how like her her boy
 
 26 BRITOMART. 
 
 had grown, with a foreign grace and ease 
 of manner, an oHve complexion, and beau- 
 tiful dark eyes ; she the sort of girl people 
 cannot help calling " sweetly pretty," an 
 exquisitely made, fragile, delicately coloured 
 piece of porcelain, slight, yielding as a 
 flower, with a flowers easily destroyed 
 bloom, with golden-brown hair, and dark 
 blue eyes ; just the sort of hair and eyes 
 to complete the charm of the whole picture. 
 The smallest head set on the slenderest 
 throat, the slimmest waist, wrist, little white 
 fingers, she looked the darling of Fortune 
 and of Nature — born to be spoilt and petted 
 from her costly cradle upwards. She was, 
 of course, perfectly dressed ; except that 
 perhaps her tiny slight throat and arms 
 were too much bejewelled. Her parents 
 had not the finest taste in the world, and 
 loaded her with presents, and to-day was 
 her twenty-first birthday, so that numbers 
 of her ornaments were fresh from Bond 
 Street ; but her dress, or her ** frock," as
 
 BRITOMART. 2 J 
 
 she always called it, was lovely, shining 
 white silk, like lily leaves, almost bridal in 
 make and texture. Mr. and Mrs. Field, 
 in intervals of hospitality, had time to 
 watch and admire their only child ; they 
 never could get used to her delicate loveli- 
 ness, which was a freak of nature, and not 
 in the least what one would have expected 
 to spring from the parental fountain. Mrs. 
 Field was a very handsome woman, but 
 Viola was not and never would be like 
 her. The mother was full blown, exu- 
 berant, her charms ''vous sautent aux 
 yeux." Her white neck was as full as 
 the bust of Clytie, and made a beautiful 
 cushion for her diamond necklace. Her 
 high fixed colour needed no rouge, but her 
 piled up frizz of hair had been judiciously 
 brightened as middle age, which cannot 
 be driven off even by rich fashionable 
 ladies, tended to fade it. She was always 
 to be seen and heard as she dragged her 
 brocaded skirts about, with the diamonds
 
 28 BRITOMART. 
 
 flashing, as she talked and laughed and 
 fussed round her bier rooms. There were 
 people who admired Mrs. Field very much, 
 but they were not those who thought her 
 daughter perfection. Mr. James Field 
 was something " connected with shipping," 
 as people said vaguely. Mr. Trevenna, 
 and others who hated him, declared he 
 owned coffin ships, and had been lucky at 
 the expense of obscure, uncared for lives. 
 At any rate he was rich, which is generally 
 all that the world chooses to know, had a 
 fine big house, and entertained splendidly. 
 This covered his subtle vulgarity — which 
 did not consist in /^'lessness, — his disagree- 
 able expression and insolence to the 
 unlucky and importunate. Viola was his 
 only daughter, an heiress, a beauty. Some 
 said she might have married anybody, and 
 wondered that she was allowed to take up 
 with young Trevenna, a briefless barrister, 
 with a very small fortune of his own, and 
 nothing much to recommend him but taking
 
 BRITOMART. 29 
 
 manners, a handsome person, and some 
 expectations from an invalid uncle in 
 Oxfordshire. But Viola generally had her 
 own way — at least, so far in her short life, 
 when her wishes had seldom clashed with 
 her father's iron will, she had had it, and 
 he certainly doted on her. 
 
 He had just watched her skim past with 
 her partner, and a smile of satisfaction 
 at owning such a pretty thing was on his 
 full clean-shaven lips, when a rather loud, 
 rather angry bass voice behind him said, 
 with startling abruptness — 
 
 " Are those two engaged, Field, or is it 
 only flirting ? " 
 
 A large man, some forty years old, with 
 close-cropped red hair, and a not ugly, but 
 heavy and coarse face, was standing at his 
 elbow, and scowling with red eyebrows at 
 the young couple. 
 
 "Hullo, Lees! You startled me," Mr. 
 Field said, turning with a not altogether 
 easy laugh. *' Who's engaged ? Who's 
 flirting?"
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 '' Don't be a humbug, Field. You know 
 well enough I'm speaking about that little 
 girl of yours, and that puppy Trevenna. 
 I can't think how you allow it — she ought 
 to do better. What's Trevenna ? " 
 
 " My dear fellow, girls will dance, ay, 
 and flirt too, with a handsome young 
 man. There's nothing settled. But Tre- 
 venna's well thought of. He could get on 
 at the Bar if he chose. He goes every- 
 where, and he will have money." 
 
 '* Pshaw ! Wait till he's got it. The 
 old uncle isn't dead yet. Indeed, I believe 
 he isn't old. Don't let Viola throw her- 
 self away, that's all." And he turned on 
 his heel and went heavily on. 
 
 Mr. Field laughed to himself. '' Poor 
 Lees! He wants little Vi himself. If 
 she would have him, I shouldn't object. 
 Ten thousand a year, if he's a penny, and 
 a good-natured chap when he's pleased. 
 But red hair, a stout figure, and forty 
 years won't hold their own against such
 
 BRITOMART. 3 1 
 
 an outside as Master Trevenna can boast. 
 Poor old Lees ! He's certainly gone on 
 little Vi." 
 
 Another person was watching Geoffrey 
 Trevenna — a thin, grave, grey-headed 
 gentleman, of subdued and courteous 
 manner. This was Mr. Hamley, Richard 
 Trevenna's legal adviser as well as James 
 Field's ; a man born to be the locked 
 depositary of secrets, an unimpeachable 
 lawyer, a chilly but conscientious friend, 
 who pardoned most sins simply because 
 he expected nothing good of any one, who 
 had liked and disliked, but never either 
 hated or loved in all his calm, decorous 
 life. He had come to this dance, how- 
 ever, for a disinterested motive, and was 
 capable of kindness in his cool fashion. 
 He wanted to get a word later on with 
 Geoffrey Trevenna, whom he thought an 
 " agreeable sort of young fellow," and liked 
 — a little — It was out of his way to like 
 much.
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 Unconscious of lawyers, uncles, fathers, 
 or rivals, Geoffrey was making ardent 
 love to Viola. After a few turns, he bore 
 her off into one of the dark, secluded 
 nooks specially prepared for such couples, 
 and there the whole stream poured out. 
 
 ''You darling! How sweet you look! 
 You are prettier to-night than you ever 
 were — dearer. Don't let's go on like this 
 any longer. I'll have it out with your 
 father. You can tell them. You know, 
 and I know, that I'm over head and ears 
 in love with you, and you are a little bit 
 in love with me. Let us have it settled 
 once and for all, my little sweet. You'll 
 be my wife, won't you, darling pet .-^ " 
 
 Viola's brown head inclined to his 
 shoulder. He had his arm round her 
 slender, yielding, trembling figure. Her 
 soft, low, lisping, childish voice murmured 
 that he knew very well — too well — that 
 she did carpf^not a little — a great deal — 
 too much — she was silly
 
 BRITOMART, 33 
 
 '' Not silly ! The wisest, dearest darling 
 in the world ! It isn't silly to care for a 
 fellow who'd give his life for you. You 
 might do better, Vi, I dare say. I'm not 
 up to much " 
 
 *' That's nonsense." A flutter of a light 
 little hand just touched his lips to silence 
 him, not staying long enough to be kissed. 
 " You are a great deal cleverer than I 
 am. I'm nothing " 
 
 "Oh, nothing at all, only the prettiest 
 pet of a girl ; only an heiress ! Just see 
 what your governor has to say on that 
 point. He'll very likely want to kick me 
 off the premises." 
 
 '' Oh no, Geoffrey. He always lets me 
 have my own way " 
 
 ''And that's me? You darling!" A 
 long, fervent kiss was the only climax 
 possible. Geoffrey was quivering a little 
 with the ardent passion of his years and 
 temperament ; but he was surprised to 
 find how Viola trembled. Her whole 
 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 34 BRITOMART. 
 
 slight frame was shaken ; she panted a 
 little, and her heart beat audibly. She 
 was too highly strung, too sensitive, too 
 frail an exotic. He was almost afraid of 
 making love to her for the moment. He 
 relaxed the fervent clasp in which she 
 trembled. " My own sweet pet, I will be 
 so good to you, if only I may have you. 
 ril make you so happy for ever when you 
 are my very own! I'm afraid we shall 
 have to wait awhile ; I haven't money 
 enough to marry on. But some day I 
 shall have, and if only they let us be 
 engaged " 
 
 " Oh, they will let me do anything I 
 want ! They could never refuse me — on 
 my birthday, too ; such a happy, happy 
 birthday ! I felt it was going to be when 
 I woke." 
 
 " You ought to have been born under a 
 lucky star. You ought never to know 
 anything that is not smooth and sweet 
 and fair, my little darling."
 
 BRITOMART. 35 
 
 *' I couldn't bear to be unhappy," she 
 said softly, with her clinging hands on his. 
 " It always made me ill to cry. No one 
 ever let me. I am afraid Tvebeen dread- 
 fully spoilt." 
 
 " Then how have you managed to grow 
 up to be such a jewel ? I don't see 
 where the spoiling comes in. You are 
 the kindest, sweetest, tenderest little girl 
 in the world. What more could you 
 be?" 
 
 " But then I've never had any trouble 
 or temptation at all. I could not help 
 being kind, for every one has always been 
 kind to me." 
 
 ** And so they ought to be ; so they 
 shall be always. You shall never, never 
 have a cross word or look, if I can shield 
 you. I'll be your slave, your lover, your 
 worshipper always, for ever and ever." 
 
 " I don't want a slave, dear, I want 
 you to be my lover. I do love to be 
 loved."
 
 o 
 
 6 BRITOMART. 
 
 '' As if one could help it. You pretty, 
 pretty darling ! " 
 
 She paid him for his passionate praises 
 and caresses with soft little coaxinpf 
 touches, sweet little murmurs, a half- 
 yielding, a half-retreating which set his 
 blood on fire. When he came out again 
 into the world of the ball-room his dark 
 handsome face was burning, his eyes were 
 bright and moist, his heart was beating 
 fast. Even a casual observer might have 
 guessed what stirred him so, a cool, quiet 
 touch and polite well-modulated voice fell 
 on his heated rapture like a dash of cold 
 water. lie wheeled round almost fiercely 
 upon the disturber of his reverie, and 
 found that it was Mr. Hamley. The 
 flushed, dark, handsome face was nearly 
 insolent, if the lawyer had been thin- 
 skinned he would have kept the words 
 that had risen to his lips to himself, and 
 been too much offended with the arrogant 
 young fellow to have cared to say them
 
 BRITOMART, 37 
 
 for his benefit. But Mr. Hamley had 
 never been thin-skinned, and in his calm 
 middle age had sedulously cultivated a 
 philosophic composure not to be ruffled by 
 any outward circumstances, which did not 
 trouble the elaborate machinery of his ease. 
 
 *' You must pardon my detaining you 
 a moment, Mr. Trevenna," the level voice 
 said ; " I just wanted to take the oppor- 
 tunity for one word or two. I called 
 at your chambers but you were out, and 
 the clerk did not seem to know when to 
 expect you." 
 
 Geoffrey flushed a little, he tried not 
 to look embarrassed— his engagement of 
 the day had nothing at all to do with 
 either law or business, and he felt certain 
 that Mr. Hamley was perfectly aware of 
 the fact. He gave a little contemptuous 
 laugh. 
 
 ** I did not know you affected ball- 
 rooms, Mr. Hamley. I shouldn't have 
 thought it in your line."
 
 38 BRITOMART, 
 
 " They are not, decidedly not. I had 
 some business with Mr. Field, and he 
 was good enough to ask me to look in 
 to drink Miss Viola's health, and, as I 
 felt sure I should see you, I spared an 
 hour of my much occupied time." 
 
 " Really ! That was good of you. Have 
 you anything so important to say to me 
 then, that wouldn't wait another day ? " 
 
 " There are some things that wont 
 wait — a few," Mr. Hamley returned 
 dryly ; '' death is one of them. You know, 
 of course, that your uncle is in a very 
 precarious state .'^ " 
 
 '* I know he is in bad health," Geoffrey 
 said, rather startled. " Not that there 
 was anything very imminent. There 
 isn't, is there ? I ought to have been 
 told." 
 
 " And you have not been ? I thought 
 your uncle said he had written once or 
 twice, asking you to come down rather 
 urgently. I thought in one of those letters
 
 BRITOMART, 39 
 
 he said there would not long be a chance 
 of seeinor him ? " 
 
 Geoffrey fidgeted, confused, uncomfort- 
 able, inclined to put off any emotion but 
 that which intoxicated his senses. He 
 glanced about him hoping to see Viola, 
 to be distracted from the discomfort of 
 the lawyer's unrelenting matter-of-fact. 
 
 " Well I — I believe he said something 
 of that sort. I took it C2i7n grano ; my 
 uncle is naturally inclined to a gloomy 
 view of himself, and of — of everything 
 and everybody. I did not gather 
 that there was anything very bad the 
 matter." 
 
 '* No ? Well, I am afraid your uncle's 
 medical adviser and Mr. Grey also take 
 the same view of his state. I know 
 nothing more than what they have told 
 me. I thought from what I heard that 
 his health was in that state that no sudden 
 change would be surprising. And as I 
 knew you had not seen him since Christ-
 
 40 BRITOMART, 
 
 mas I fancied you were hardly perhaps 
 alive to the dangers of his position." 
 
 *' Not since Christmas ! I — certainly 
 I've been to Redwood since then." 
 
 ^'Have you? When?" Mr. Hamley 
 inquired, in a voice so dry as almost 
 to be unbearable. 
 
 Geoffrey vainly sought his memory for 
 the imaginary visit. Could it really be 
 four months since he had taken the 
 trouble to throw himself into a first-class 
 carriage for the two hours' journey ? 
 
 '' I thought it had been since then," 
 he muttered, adjusting the faded flower 
 in his coat. Viola gave it him fresh 
 and dewy, he wished flowers would last 
 a little longer, this limp wilted thing 
 somehow vexed his eyes. 
 
 '' No, I believe I am correct. The last 
 time I was down Mr. Trevenna was 
 speaking a little bitterly of what he called 
 your neglect. I won't say he did not use 
 some stronger word."
 
 BRITOMART. 4 1 
 
 " That I am sure he did," Geoffrey said, 
 half smIHng. '' My uncle's language can 
 be forcible." 
 
 " He has been good to you," the lawyer 
 returned calmly. 
 
 In another mood Geoffrey would have 
 taken this with careless good-humour, 
 just now it seemed to him disgusting 
 to be held from his newly gained delight, 
 to hear a grim, cold-natured piece of law 
 parchment like this find fault with him. 
 He felt like the wedding guest whom 
 the skinny hand of the ancient mariner 
 coerced. 
 
 " I am not ungrateful, sir," he retorted 
 angrily. " I don't exactly see how it 
 affects you ! " 
 
 " Not in the least, except in your 
 interests," the other returned, with cold 
 indifference. '' You will probably quarrel 
 with a reminder that Mr. Trevenna 
 might easily change the disposition of 
 his property. I'll not detain you with
 
 42 BRITOMART. 
 
 well meant, but evidently unwelcome 
 warnings or advice." 
 
 With a little stiff bow he was turning 
 on his heel, when Geoffrey, half startled, 
 put a detaining hand on his arm. 
 
 " One moment, Mr. Hamley ! I beg 
 pardon if I spoke rudely — my mind was 
 a little full of something different." 
 
 "So I perceived," Mr. Hamley said, 
 his thin lips lengthening for a moment 
 Into what was meant for a smile. *' It 
 is easy enough to see with what. You 
 know, of course, that one of the com- 
 plaints Mr. Trevenna makes of you has 
 to do with your intimacy here? He is 
 a man of strong prejudices ; he used to 
 know, and he very much dislikes, our 
 host." 
 
 " I've heard him say so. Of course 
 I don't want to conceal from you or from 
 him, when the time comes, that I consider 
 myself engaged to Miss Field. My uncle 
 could not dislike her if he knew her."
 
 BRITOMART, 43 
 
 '' H'm, Miss Viola Field is very 
 charming, I know, but I fear Mr. 
 Trevenna is hardly the man to change 
 any rooted opinion of his for such a 
 reason. Frankly, he is much displeased 
 with you at present, and I shall think 
 you unwise if you don't try and alter 
 his feelings." 
 
 '' I will go down and see him to-morrow 
 — no, as soon as I possibly can. I will 
 do my best. I have a real regard, what- 
 ever any one may think, for my uncle. 
 He has been generous, uncommonly 
 generous to me often, and lenient too. 
 But, after all, Mr. Hamley, I hardly 
 think he would disinherit me. I am his 
 only relation." 
 
 Mr. Hamley again uttered his peculiar 
 " hem." He might have been clearing 
 his throat, but the sound seemed to 
 signify a good deal. He looked fixedly 
 and oddly at Geoffrey. 
 
 '' Well, yes, perhaps — you may say so
 
 44 BRITOMART. 
 
 — at present — he has no near blood- 
 relations, no. But, if I were you, I would 
 not presume on that, Mr. Geoffrey, to 
 continue or widen the breach. Now, 
 don't let me keep you from your dance 
 — only think over the earHest day in 
 which you can pay a visit to your uncle 
 Richard/' 
 
 Geoffrey spared an uneasy moment 
 from his bliss to ponder the meaning 
 of those last words. There was more 
 behind, and something to make him 
 anxious, if a fellow could be anything but 
 happy who was fresh from the touch of 
 Violas soft endearing caress. It was 
 true that he had been so full of her, 
 and of the delights of his gilded youth, 
 when to want was to get, that he had 
 taken very little notice of one or two 
 bitterly sarcastic sentences in his uncles 
 always brief and coldly worded letters. 
 He had been neglectful and careless of 
 all those obligations, of every obligation
 
 BRITOMART, 45 
 
 except that of being happy, and pleasing 
 
 Viola. He must make it up with the 
 
 governor — he had been rather a fool ; 
 
 but, cold as he was, his uncle had an 
 
 affection for him, there was no one else 
 
 he cared for except old Grey, who was a 
 
 staunch friend of his, a good, unselfish, 
 
 disinterested fellow who would not want 
 
 a halfpenny of his lifelong friend's 
 
 money. He couldn't possibly go down to 
 
 Redwood to-morrow ; he must see Mr. 
 
 Field, and get all that over, must be 
 
 acknowledged as Viola s future husband ; 
 
 but next week he would certainly go 
 
 and tell his uncle of his engagement. 
 
 Well, considering his rooted aversion to 
 
 Viola's father, that might not prove to 
 
 be a pacifying statement ; but, if any one 
 
 saw her — the pretty, soft-voiced, winsome 
 
 little darling — it was impossible to resist 
 
 her ! The fiercest misogynist must make 
 
 an exception in favour of Vi ! His 
 
 thoughts thus returned to their former
 
 46 BRITOMART. 
 
 channel. Geoffrey went gaily to find 
 his partner, and to sip the material and 
 spiritual champagne of life. 
 
 " Well Vi, darling, have you enjoyed 
 your ball ? " her mother asked, between 
 her yawns, as, the last guests departed, 
 she prepared to trail heavily upstairs. 
 
 " Oh, awfully, mummy ! " the girl said, 
 in the slang of the day, for even Viola 
 could talk slang like the rest. '' I never did 
 more in my life." 
 
 *' You're not overtired .^ You look a 
 little worn out." 
 
 "• N — no — if only I can sleep." 
 
 ''You must sleep, ducky, or you'll be 
 ill. Here comes papa. Viola looks a 
 bit overdone, doesn't she, papa ? " 
 
 He took her chin on his finger and 
 inspected her. '' A bit — not much amiss. 
 It was a good ball. You danced a great 
 deal too often to please some folks, with 
 young Trevenna, Vi." 
 
 He watched with amusement the blood
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 rushing to the face he still held up for 
 inspection. He had always enjoyed 
 making his little girl blush. '' How 
 many times, missy, eh '^ " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know, papa. What does 
 it matter ? Yoit don't mind ? " 
 
 '' H'm ! I don't know that. There were 
 one or two who did, anyway, that are 
 worth more than to be sniffed at by a 
 fastidious little minx like you. Just 
 because Trevenna's a good-looking, fine- 
 spoken fellow, who can make a fool of a 
 eirl " 
 
 '' Let me go, papa/' Viola cried, half 
 Irritably, half plaintively, twisting herself 
 from his grasp. ''I'm tired; I want to 
 go to bed." 
 
 There was something pathetic in the 
 girl's voice at times — a ring, a minor note 
 which her mother never could hear un- 
 moved. Was it likely she should, when 
 she connected the tone with long nights 
 of watching, with heart-sickening fears and
 
 48 BRITOMART, 
 
 forebodings, the many times since baby- 
 hood that Viola had been ill ? It had 
 always been Mrs. Field's desire to keep 
 the rough winds from ruffling a hair of 
 the child's head. She was '' so delicate," 
 as she continued to say long after the 
 doctors had left off insisting on it, to the 
 irritation of her husband, who considered 
 enough had been spent over Vi's health to 
 start a hospital, and always strongly 
 declared that there was nothing at all 
 wrong with it, if her mother didn't fuss so 
 confoundedly. 
 
 " Let her go, papa," she cried too ; " she 
 is regularly done up. You can go on at 
 her about her partners, or anything else, 
 when she's rested. Call Firth, love, and 
 get into bed as quickly as ever you can." 
 
 Poor Firth looked far paler and more 
 tired than her young mistress ; but Viola, 
 though she had the dormant kindness of a 
 soft nature, was not brought up to see the 
 fatigue of a maid. It would have been a
 
 BRITOMART. 49 
 
 wild impossibility to have undressed her- 
 self after dancincr for four hours, or, indeed, 
 at any time. She was more helpless than 
 a baby born into the necessities of a 
 cottage, and serv^ants were paid to unlace, 
 untie, brush hair, and pull off dainty little 
 white slippers. There were unhappy girls 
 who had to dress their own hair, pack 
 their own boxes, and lay out their party 
 frocks and chiffons. Viola was sorry for 
 them, and thankful she was born into 
 another life. She felt altogether thankful, 
 and flutteringly happy, as she sank into 
 sleep, into which she fondly but vainly 
 hoped visions of a dark, ardent face, and 
 passionate deep eyes might come. As for 
 Firth she went grumbling to her three 
 hours' repose with a wish that Providence 
 had made her the fine lady she was sure 
 she should have acted to perfection. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 UMMY dear, I've something to 
 tell you." 
 
 Mrs. Field and Viola were dawdling in 
 the mother's cosy sitting-room, after a late 
 breakfast, the morning after the birthday 
 ball. According to the habit of girls who 
 have the most important announcement of 
 their young lives to make, Viola was 
 careful that not even the fond maternal 
 eyes should look into hers as she spoke, 
 swinging the ribbons of her pretty morn- 
 ing wTapper, with down-dropped head, 
 and aimless little white fingers. 
 
 " Eh, dear, have you ? " the mother 
 said, on the alert at once, and prepared
 
 BRITOMART. 5 1 
 
 for what was to follow ; " then there really 
 is something ? " 
 
 " Yes, mummy. And you know who 
 it is?" 
 
 " Well, I expect I do. I suppose it's 
 that Trevenna fellow." 
 
 I need hardly premise that Mrs. Field's 
 habit of mind and speech were not of the 
 Vere de Vere order. Viola, carefully 
 trained in a very different school, and used 
 to orthodox society, and a shibboleth of a 
 class above their own, was not unaware 
 that both father and mother were at times 
 common in talk, and always so in their 
 views of life ; but she had met with un- 
 bounded indulgence and kindness from 
 them, and shrank with a nervous dread 
 from even mental criticism. But now she 
 was in a state of tension and excitement 
 of mind, which made her irritably fastidious. 
 
 *' Mother ! " she cried sharply, '' don't 
 call him that. Of course it is Geoffrey 
 Trevenna — don't call him ' that fellow ! ' " 
 
 ilUi k/HWIT^ f\c
 
 52 BRITOMART, 
 
 "" I meant no harm, child," her mother 
 returned apologetically, for she hated to 
 vex this one cherished daughter of hers. 
 " I like him well enough ; he's very good- 
 looking and nice, I'm sure. Papa likes 
 him, too. Only, you know, ducky, we 
 can't but feel you might have looked a bit 
 higher." 
 
 ** Why higher ? His family's as old as 
 
 the hills, while ours " Viola shrugged 
 
 her shoulders expressively. '' I know his 
 uncle looks down on us. And he's so 
 popular he might marry anybody." 
 
 " No now, Vi dear, that's nonsense. 
 It's money, not family, people think of 
 nowadays. A young barrister, with just a 
 paltry two hundred or so of his own, can't 
 marry well ; and, family or no, your father's 
 only daughter isn't to be thought too little 
 of neither ! " 
 
 " I don't know what his income is — I 
 don't care — but even if you put it on that 
 horrid money question, he will be well off
 
 BRITOMART, 53 
 
 when his uncle dies — he's his heir, and 
 I've heard papa say old Mr. Trevenna has 
 a nice little estate." 
 
 " Yes," Mrs. Field drawled thought- 
 fully, " and it's a fact, I believe, that he 
 can't live long. Of course, if it wasn't 
 for that " 
 
 " If it wasn't, I should be engaged to 
 him all the same," Viola cried vehemently, 
 flushing a vivid pink as she did easily 
 when moved. '* I would never marry 
 any one else." 
 
 " Oh, come now, dearie, be reasonable. 
 You couldnt marry a poor man. You 
 think you could ; but you don't consider. 
 A girl brought up as you've been, with 
 nothing spared that money could buy, a 
 delicate little thing, too, that could no 
 more rough it than — than — " Mrs. Field 
 searched for a simile, and found one in 
 a cage of tropic birds which hung in the 
 window — " no more than those birds could 
 live out o' doors. I think I see you
 
 54 BRITOMART. 
 
 living in a bit of a place, with two 
 servants ! Romance is all very well, but 
 one falls back on comfort as one gets 
 older, and you could never bear poverty, 
 Vi, never." 
 
 " I shan't have to bear it," Viola re- 
 turned pettishly, her nerves were all on 
 edge, her mother had never seemed so 
 provoking. " Geoffrey won't be poor ! 
 And I am engaged to him, mother, 
 there's no use talking " 
 
 "Well, I suppose papa and I have 
 a word in it too ? " Mrs. Field said, a 
 little resentfully. '' Such parents as we've 
 been to you, Vi ! " 
 
 Viola's was one of those natures 
 easily frightened out of wrath, by even 
 a show of anger. She came on to the 
 sofa and nestled close to her mother's soft 
 cushiony form, with a slender arm round 
 the ample waist, which even the most 
 elaborate corset would not reduce to 
 slimness.
 
 BRITOMART. 55 
 
 " Don't be cross, mummy dear," she 
 coaxed, ''there's no question of my doing 
 anything you don't Hke. Geoffrey isn't 
 poor. You know what he is ; but you don't 
 know what he is to me. I'm dreadfully 
 in love with him. I should break my 
 heart if I couldn't have him. I suppose 
 you were in love once, mummy '^ " 
 
 A sudden sieh rose and fell within the 
 broad matronly bosom, which had not 
 always been only a white cushion to put 
 diamonds on. Ah, when she was young 
 and tender, when she was a light slip 
 of a girl running wild about the fields at 
 home, she, too, had had her fancies, her 
 palpitations of fear and joy, like Viola, 
 only she had been of tougher fibre 
 and harder training. She had not been 
 in love with James Field, though she 
 had made him a good wife, and a capital 
 head to his establishment. She had not 
 quite forgotten the time when she and 
 a curly haired lad of two and twenty had
 
 ^6 BRITOMART. 
 
 exchanged kisses and twopenny-half- 
 penny rings. Mr. Field's magnificent 
 diamonds and rubies adorned her plump 
 white hands now. 
 
 " But love isn't everything," she said 
 aloud, a little sadly, after the moment's 
 silence which she gave to a memory 
 roused by the girl's question ; '' take my 
 word for it, Vi." 
 
 " It's everything to me!' Viola returned, 
 in an undertone, which was little more 
 than a sigh. 
 
 Her mother touched the soft little baby 
 brown curls on her forehead with a fond 
 hand ; she might play the stern matron 
 if Viola were petulant, but she was like 
 wax under caressing touches, when the 
 girl coaxed and wheedled her with her 
 wistful sweet voice. 
 
 " We shall have to see what papa says. 
 I suppose Mr. Trevenna is coming to 
 speak to him ? " 
 
 " Yes, this evening. You must tell
 
 BRITOMART. 57 
 
 papa first, and get him to be nice. I 
 fmcst have my own way, mummy. I 
 always do, you know." 
 
 " You always do, indeed, I believe 
 you ! If ever there was a spoilt baby, 
 it's you." 
 
 " But I've always been good — its been 
 the very best thing for my bodily and 
 spiritual health. Don't you remember 
 old Dr. Sparkes telling you I couldn't 
 bear hardening and thwarting, like some 
 children '^ When you made me cry, I 
 was always ill, now wasn't I .^^ " 
 
 " When I made you cry ! Whenever 
 did I, pray, miss '^ I'm sure I learnt my 
 lesson well. It's the day of obedient 
 parents now." 
 
 " Well, on the whole, I will say that 
 you've been good and obedient; but I've 
 been just what I ought, too — the best of 
 girls — now haven't I ? Some mothers 
 have a dreadful time of it. You should 
 hear how Flossie and Carrie Lambert
 
 58 BRITOMART. 
 
 speak to their mother, and the life they 
 lead her. I never stand out against you 
 — I never will, unless you are nasty about 
 this." 
 
 " That's an easy sort of goodness, 
 when you're never vexed or contradicted ! " 
 
 " Oh, but I am, often ! Not by you — 
 at least, not if you can help it — but I often 
 give up what I want to do, because you 
 say I'm not strong enough for this or that, 
 when I should like to go. And papa is 
 disagreeable and cross enough sometimes, 
 w^hen things go wrong in the city, or his 
 dinner isn't to his taste." 
 
 " Ah, well, when all's said and done 
 you haven't much to complain of. Your 
 bed's pretty softly stuffed for you, Vi." 
 
 " Yes. But I'm like the princess in the 
 fairy-tale, I feel even the peas under my 
 feather beds. Either I was born so, or 
 I've been brought up to it ; but I really 
 can't bear things like some people, dear." 
 
 " And do you suppose you'll never
 
 BRITOMART. 59 
 
 have to ? However shall you get through 
 life without trouble, Vi ? " 
 
 ''At any rate, I'll wait till the trouble 
 comes. If I can't stand it, I can just lie 
 down and die, mummy ; it would be an 
 easy way out of it ! " 
 
 " Don't talk so ridiculously," her mother 
 cried, with irritation, though Viola spoke 
 lightly enough. 
 
 Into the sheltered luxury of the life 
 they led the ideas of such hideous spectres 
 as poverty, acute suffering, and death 
 might not enter. 
 
 She promised to ''talk to papa "before 
 dinner, and pave the way for Geoffrey's 
 interview. 
 
 Mr. Field came home in the best of 
 tempers, for occult reasons, his wife and 
 daughter supposed, connected with that 
 mysterious business life of which they 
 knew nothing, only seeing its fruition in 
 a plentiful crop of cheques. He declared 
 V'iola was made a fool of by a pair of
 
 6o BRITOMART. 
 
 handsome eyes and a lot of soft sawder ; 
 but since she'd set her heart on the fellow, 
 he supposed he must allow it to be an 
 engagement. He didn't mind keeping the 
 child at home, for of course it could not 
 end in a marriage till young Trevenna 
 came in for his uncle's property. It 
 wasn't the match he should have chosen ; 
 but girls would have their own way. 
 
 So he was not ungracious to Geoffrey, 
 though a little too inquisitorial and patron- 
 izing to suit a proud temper. Geoffrey 
 had to own that his profession brought 
 him in nothing when his chambers and 
 clerk were paid ; that he only had two 
 hundred a year absolutely of his own, and 
 his uncle allowed him the same. Of 
 course he knew he couldn't ask Viola to 
 marry him on that, but they might be 
 engaged ; he had expectations. 
 
 '' Ay. How much now has your 
 uncle?" 
 
 Geoffrey felt irritated, but was careful
 
 BRITOMART. 6 1 
 
 not to show it. Young men, even when 
 proud and hasty-tempered, are apt to be 
 wonderfully complaisant to the fathers of 
 their beloved. 
 
 " Between four and five thousand, I 
 believe." 
 
 '* And you are actually his heir '^ " 
 
 " He has, as far as I know, no other 
 relations. I have every reason to expect 
 that I am." 
 
 "And he can't live long. H'm, well, 
 I couldn't let my girl marry a man who 
 wouldn't settle five hundred pounds a 
 year on her. I would allow her the same 
 during my life. She will come in for a 
 good income when I die. I suppose I 
 must allow it to be considered an engage- 
 ment ; but frankly, Trevenna, I don't 
 think Vi is doing as well for herself as she 
 ought." 
 
 '' No, sir, I dare say you don't," 
 Geoffrey said, with studied self-command. 
 " I quite agree with you ; but she cares
 
 62 BRITOMART. 
 
 for me, you see — that goes for something 
 — and no man could be fonder of her 
 than I am." 
 
 ''Oh yes," Mr. Field returned, with 
 good-humoured cynicism. ''That's all 
 very nice ; but love don't pay a woman's 
 milliner's bills. Viola's been expensively 
 brought up, and she's not going to marry 
 to be less comfortable than she is, if I can 
 help it. But we'll let it be called an 
 engagement, since nothing else will satisfy 
 either of you. You can go and spoon her 
 now, if you like." 
 
 Geoffrey was glad to be dismissed on 
 any terms. The one thorn in the half- 
 blown rose of his love was the individu- 
 ality of Viola's father. Her mother, 
 pronounced as she was, and by no means 
 after his heart, was bearable. Her florid 
 good nature and unbounded affection for 
 Vi covered her sins of omission and 
 commission ; but Mr. Field was secretly 
 abhorrent to him. His impatient, fastidi-
 
 BRITOMART. 63 
 
 ous temper, all the inherited instincts and 
 habits of gentlehood, revolted against the 
 unblushing vulgarity of soul, the un- 
 deviating self-sufficiency of the purse- 
 proud, rampant Philistine, to whom Viola 
 had the misfortune to belong. But 
 the readiest way to put the vexation of 
 James Field's existence out of his mind 
 was to see Viola and to revel in her half- 
 coy, half-yielding sweetness, to triumph 
 in her charm, and to adore the exquisite 
 finish which her very frailty accentuated. 
 
 He had his brand-new, sparkling mar- 
 quise ring ready for her tiny third finger, 
 w^hich needed no ring to be lovely, with its 
 pink, almond-shaped little shell of a nail, as 
 delicately pretty as a flower-petal. Those 
 small, white, useless hands were one of 
 Viola's decided beauties. Geoffrey loved 
 to see them on his own broad palm, or 
 stroking the rough, dark sleeve of his 
 coat. 
 
 Like most men who have a good
 
 64 BRITOMART. 
 
 Opinion of themselves and a decided will, 
 his ideal of womanhood was small, refined, 
 caressing, flower-like. He did not want 
 a strong-minded, intellectual, universally 
 accomplished woman. 
 
 Viola was not stupid, but either in- 
 dolence of mind or physical inability made 
 her singularly ungifted in the ordinary 
 talents of womankind. She could neither 
 sing, play, nor paint, though she knew 
 how to dance perfectly, which perhaps 
 did as well. She had the merest smatter- 
 ing of knowledge on any subject ; never 
 opened a book of more lofty aim than a 
 society novel, and would have been sorely 
 puzzled to do anything more elaborate 
 with her needle than some little fashion- 
 able frippery which passed for fine work. 
 What did it matter ? They could always 
 pay servants to '' do things," and Viola 
 In herself, without one talent beyond 
 dancing and dressing to perfection, and 
 being able to hold her own in lively small
 
 BRITOMART. 65 
 
 talk, was just adorable. To have added 
 anything would be mere painting the 
 lily. At any rate she was not many un- 
 desirable things that some girls are. She 
 was a delicate coquette ; but there was no 
 brazen fastness, no abandon about her, 
 which men take advantage of for their 
 amusement, but — if they are refined in 
 mind — loathe in reality when the time for 
 choosing seriously comes. Viola neither 
 swore, smoked, nor romped, as many of 
 her compeers did. There was always a 
 subtle fragrance of innocence about her ; 
 she was never either unladylike or un- 
 womanly. Something vaguely pathetic 
 and wistfully appealing, though she had 
 never had a sorrow in her life greater 
 than the death of a pet dog, added 
 to the indefinable fascination which had 
 laid hold of Geofirey Trevenna's very 
 heart-strings. He could have refused her 
 nothing when her light, clinging hands 
 were on his shoulders, and her soft, wild- 
 voL. I. 5
 
 66 BRITOMART. 
 
 violet eyes looked into his with something 
 of sadness in them which facts had never 
 justified. The faces of perfectly happy 
 people have sometimes that indefinite 
 pathos which now and then means a fore- 
 boding, but more often is a mere cunning 
 trick of Mother Nature's fingers. On the 
 other hand, a homely, stolid countenance is 
 often the mask which hides a woeful heart. 
 
 After the usual trivialities of love- 
 making, which are so uninteresting to 
 everybody outside of them, had filled up 
 an hour or so of that first evening's per- 
 mitted bliss, Geoffrey told Viola inci- 
 dentally of Mr. Hamley's reproaches and 
 vague hints of more to follow, and de- 
 clared he must lose no time in running 
 down to Redwood to make his peace. 
 
 " Let me see, to-morrow's Saturday. 
 Perhaps I'd better spend Sunday with the 
 governor." 
 
 Viola s eyes were overshadowed as by a 
 tragedy.
 
 BRITOMART. 67 
 
 " Oh, dearest, not to-morrow — not Sun- 
 day. Go next week. To-morrow I've 
 set my heart on driving you with my new 
 ponies — papas birthday present; and on 
 Sunday we expect some people I should 
 like you to know — my great friend, Connie 
 Millington. You'll not go to-morrow, 
 Geoffrey ? What can one day matter .-^ " 
 
 " I expect old Hamley would say it did." 
 
 " But not really ; it could not make any 
 difference. We are only just engaged. It 
 would be too naughty of you to go away 
 directly. Say Monday will do, dearest." 
 
 Who could resist the appealing eyes, 
 the pouting baby mouth she made "^ Not 
 Geoffrey Trevenna, only twenty-eight 
 years old, madly in love, and just put in 
 possession of all this sweetness. Monday 
 would do, he decided, and he would try 
 the new ponies to-morrow instead of going 
 down to do his duty, dismally, in a melan- 
 choly, half-empty old house, full only of 
 suffering, dreariness, and discontent.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HE next day fickle April suddenly 
 leapt into sunshine, warmth, and 
 floweriness. The grim old giant London 
 smiled and looked positively beautiful in 
 the golden air, under a sky of almost 
 Italian blue. The trees in their first pale 
 green robes pretended to be young and 
 gay, and to have no prevision of blacks 
 or fogs to come ; the parks were gorgeous 
 with tulips and hyacinths ; the girls looked 
 like walking flowers. It was enough 
 pleasure to be young and alive, and when 
 in addition one is just in the first flush of 
 permitted love — well, Geoffrey was glad to
 
 BRITOMART. 69 
 
 forget that Redwood and duty still re- 
 mained in the immediate future. There 
 were two days of the garden of Eden first. 
 Viola had some shopping to do, she 
 announced, and Geoffrey must drive her 
 in the charming little pony-phseton which 
 her father had given her with a pair of 
 ravishing little grey beasts, with tails long 
 enough to gladden a woman's heart. She 
 came down, as he waited on the doorsteps 
 watching the turn-out, in a new elaboration 
 of the Court dressmaker who condescended 
 to take her orders, though she was not a 
 member of the aristocracy. The mas- 
 culine mind could only grasp that it was 
 a sort of cunning combination of the very 
 colours of spring — primrose and hyacinth 
 blue — and that she looked like an embodi- 
 ment of the April day in living lovely flesh 
 and blood. It might — probably would — 
 be cold again to-morrow, and then Viola 
 would cover herself with furs and velvet ; 
 but to-day was warm, was almost summery,
 
 yo BRITOMART, 
 
 and she could not but be in keeping with 
 it all. 
 
 " Aren't they beauties ? " she cried gaily, 
 descending the steps, with the big footman 
 gazing approvingly after her from above. 
 "It was a lovely present of the old dad's, 
 wasn't it .^ " 
 
 " Lovely. I was just thinking how the 
 whole thing matched — you and the ponies 
 and that new smart frock and hat. I feel 
 like a blot on this fairy-queen turn- 
 out." 
 
 "■ Nonsense. You look lovely too ; but 
 your buttonhole is not quite chic. Here's 
 another I've made for you. Put it in. 
 There, now you must drive. I like to be 
 lazy best ; and, though I can do it when 
 I choose, and they are charming little 
 fellows, I always do feel a wee bit nervous 
 when I have reins in my hands." 
 
 " Oh, I'll drive, if you wish, only you 
 would look prettier doing so. Are you 
 comfortable ? Are you quite sure you shall
 
 BRITOMART. J I 
 
 be warm enough ? That delicious costume 
 seems rather airy for April." 
 
 " You are as bad about coddling me as 
 mummy ! I am perfectly warm. I've 
 piles of things on." 
 
 *' Well, you always look, you know, as 
 if a breath would blow you away. You 
 are made to be coddled." 
 
 " Appearances are deceptive. It would 
 take a stiff breeze to do it." 
 
 '' And I always mean to stand between 
 you and a rough wind, little sweet. * My 
 plaidie to the angry airts,' etc." 
 
 " Well, it's not bad to have some one 
 between one and the wind, I own. Per- 
 haps being thin and looking delicate have 
 their advantages. What a perfectly 
 splendid day it is, and how utterly jolly it 
 is to be alive in it." 
 
 '* And to have some one driving you 
 who is head over ears in love ! " 
 
 ''Well, that, too, has its advantages. 
 One of them is that chocolate is an offering
 
 7^ BRITOMART. 
 
 appropriate to lovely beings. That is a 
 delightful chocolate shop there, Geoffrey, 
 and I am out of sweets." 
 
 ** You would like to stop for some 1 " 
 '' Please. That kind you gave me last." 
 The little pony-carriage was drawn up 
 at a fascinating French bon-bon shop, and 
 Geoffrey parted easily with half a sovereign. 
 Then there was the Park to cross, a dress- 
 maker's to call at, where he waited till he 
 was tolerably tired and the ponies fidgety; 
 then a stationer to interview about the 
 last thing in ornamental notepaper, some 
 gloves to purchase, and then Viola declared 
 she was tired of jumping in and out, and 
 would turn into the Park again for an un- 
 broken drive. 
 
 *'Oh, but I've forgotten mother's order 
 to leave at Fortnum and Mason's. I must 
 do that first. You can take it in and save 
 me, Geoffrey. I'll hold the ponies." 
 
 " I had better get some one ; they are 
 rather restless."
 
 BRITOMART. ^i^ 
 
 *' Oh no ; you won't be two seconds." 
 Accordingly Geoffrey entered the shop, 
 which was crowded, so that he had to 
 wait a minute to deHver Mrs. Field's 
 note. Directly he had done It, he was 
 aware of some sensation and scuffle by 
 the door, an exclamation of dismay, a 
 cry, "■ They've run away ! " a scutter of 
 hoofs. His heart stood still ; but he was 
 outside in an instant. The ponies, 
 fretted by flies, and tired of standing, 
 had begun to fidget and move impatiently; 
 and Viola, who could never overcome 
 timidity with horses, though she had 
 been used to them from her childhood, 
 had jerked the reins with too nervous 
 and uncertain a hand. The little things 
 reared and plunged off into the throng 
 of the street. A good many unavailing 
 attempts were made to stop and hold 
 them ; a dangerous accident seemed im- 
 minent, when it was averted, oddly 
 enough, by a woman — a girl — who made
 
 74 BRITOMART. 
 
 a bold dash forward, threw herself in 
 front of the ponies, seized their heads, 
 and held on with a grip of strange 
 intention and power, as if she meant, 
 whatever happened, to fling herself 
 between the other girl in the carriage, 
 who had fallen back as white as death, 
 loosing the reins, and what seemed her 
 probable destruction. 
 
 In a moment Geoffrey was there too, 
 and had taken hold of the quivering 
 ponies, with a quick ** Thank you," and 
 the briefest glance before he gave his 
 attention to Viola, who was on the point 
 of fainting. One glance gave him, how- 
 ever, a tolerably vivid picture of a tall, 
 strong-looking, young figure, lissom and 
 well knit, of a pair of large clear grey 
 eyes, a firm set mouth, and a long thick 
 twist of light brown hair, which had 
 been shaken out of its fastening, and 
 surprised him by its length. ** She looks 
 like Britomart," he thought, in that
 
 BRITOMART. 75 
 
 moment, recalling some picture he had 
 seen of the woman-knight. As soon 
 as she found herself no longer necessary, 
 the girl let the ponies' heads go, and 
 stepped back on to the pavement. In 
 another moment she seemed to have 
 disappeared. Ashamed of his unmeaning 
 scanty expression of gratitude, Geoffrey 
 turned from quieting the ponies and 
 consoling Viola to offer some rather 
 stronger one, and found that Britomart 
 was gone. 
 
 " A plucky girl, by Jove, sir," a by- 
 stander said. "If she hadn't been as 
 quick as lightning, and as brave as she 
 was quick, I'm afraid your young lady 
 would have had a nasty accident." 
 
 Geoffrey briefly assented. He was 
 somehow vexed to think that it was 
 a chance passer-by, and a girl, who had 
 risked her life for his Viola. It ought 
 to have been his opportunity ! But he 
 had not much time to waste on vexation
 
 76 BRITOMART. 
 
 or on any speculations about Viola's 
 preserver, he was much too full of Viola 
 herself, whose frail nerves were in a most 
 shattered condition, and who had only 
 just escaped fainting. He took her 
 into a chemist's shop, where salts, sal 
 volatile, petting, and a few hysterical 
 tears relieved her. A pale pink came 
 back into her white little face, she 
 declared, with a feeble attempt at a 
 laugh, that she was all right — no, she 
 would not go home in a cab, nor in any 
 way but with the ponies — little darlings ; 
 it was her fault, not theirs ! They only 
 started and swerved a little, and she 
 had foolishly jerked the reins, in a fright. 
 If Geoffrey drove she should be perfectly 
 comfortable ; she wanted only to get 
 home and have some tea. Geoffrey was 
 a little afraid of a relapse, but Viola's 
 perfect trust in him seemed to reassure 
 her, and she was soon looking and 
 talking almost like herself, only paler 
 than before the fright.
 
 BRITOMART, J J 
 
 " Who stopped them ? I couldn't see 
 anything but a whirl and throng- of 
 faces," she asked, as they drove along 
 at a very steady pace. 
 
 " It was a girl," Geoffrey answered 
 briefly. " I only just had a glimpse of 
 her, and before I could make out much, 
 she was gone." 
 
 '' Gone ! And no one even thanked her ! " 
 
 " Oh, I thanked her, in a vague, per- 
 functory sort of way. I was too full of 
 you, my sweet." 
 
 "It seems horribly ungrateful. How 
 could a Q-'irl be so strongf and brave ? 
 Was it a common girl ? " 
 
 " No, I think not. I tell you I hardly 
 took her in, only that she was very plainly 
 dressed but rather fine-looking, and like 
 Britomart." 
 
 "Who was Britomart?" Viola asked, 
 raising her delicate eyebrows in surprise. 
 " I never heard of her. What a queer 
 name."
 
 yS BRITOMART. 
 
 Geoffrey smiled, it was not new to 
 him to find that his pretty Viola was 
 profoundly ignorant of English literature, 
 and though she often looked like a living 
 poem, had small acquaintance with any 
 poetry but '' Hymns Ancient and Modern," 
 and a very little Tennyson. 
 
 " Britomart was a girl knight, and went 
 about the world fighting with evil creatures. 
 Have you ever heard of Edmund Spenser 
 and the ' Faerie Queene ' 1 " 
 
 " N— no — I don't think I have/' Viola 
 answered dubiously. '' I may have done 
 at those tiresome literature lessons at 
 school. It was an allegory, wasn't it ? 
 I detest allegories." 
 
 '' So do I — unmitigated by poetry — but 
 I choose to think of Una, Amoret, and 
 Britomart as real beings, not as abstract 
 virtues. Vou are an Amoret — such 
 creatures as men love, not these warrior 
 maidens." 
 
 " I think I've seen a statue, or a picture.
 
 BRITOMART. 79 
 
 or something of Una with a Hon, but of 
 course I never could read dull old poems. 
 Tm terribly ignorant, Geoff dear, I know 
 — the most frivolous, unintellectual of 
 girls!" 
 
 *' And the darlingest. Never mind 
 about the * Faerie Queene.' I suppose 
 honestly, lots of people who pretend to 
 being literary find it a bore. But I'm 
 sorry to have been ungrateful to this 
 Britomart. I couldn't help it, she dis- 
 appeared somehow. It was an odd thing, 
 with all those men about, that a woman, 
 and a young woman, should be the one 
 effective person to avert a catastrophe. 
 Oh, Vi, what it might have been ! " He 
 looked at her almost hungrily, with some- 
 thing of a vision of terror in his eyes. 
 
 It flashed across him what another 
 minute might have done, of how he might 
 have found her with the life crushed out 
 of her fragile little form, no tender 
 plaintive voice to answer him, no wistful
 
 8o BRITOMART, 
 
 blue eyes to dwell on his with conscious 
 answer to his passion. 
 
 She nestled close to him. " What is 
 the good of fancying things, Geoff? If 
 we begin going Into possibilities we shall 
 be always anxious and wretched. I am 
 not killed; I'm not hurt. You've got me, 
 I've got you ; and we are the happiest two 
 In London — say we are ! " 
 
 *' I'm only sure there Isn't a happier 
 man there. But one can't help imagining 
 sometimes " 
 
 *' Yes one can, if one tries ; I never do. 
 I am very matter-of-fact, and the present 
 does for me, since it Is always a delightful 
 present." 
 
 " Matter-of-fact ! You, with your face 
 and those sad eyes of yours, that always 
 seem to be looking for something sweeter 
 and rarer than life can bring." 
 
 " I can't help my face and my eyes. 
 I am afraid I am a fraud, and they are 
 impositions. I get the credit for being
 
 BRITOMART. 8 1 
 
 all sorts of things Yva not, because I look 
 delicate, and have rather heavy lids, and 
 large pupils to my eyes. I'm not poetical, 
 or sad, or yearning, or anything that's 
 interesting, I assure you. I'm quite 
 satisfied with myself and you, and life 
 altogether. I was born under a lucky 
 star. I've always had everything I want, 
 and I believe I always shall." 
 
 '' I hope you may," Geoffrey muttered. 
 He was a man of moods, easily swayed 
 to exaltation or depression, and now that 
 Viola had revived like her namesake, 
 when the sun shines after a shower, he 
 felt somehow vaguely depressed and fore- 
 boding, the interview at Redwood loomed 
 uninvitingly before him. Viola's words, 
 he knew not why, struck on him with 
 a sort of jar, a misgiving; he did not 
 quite know whether to believe her or 
 her face, with that mysterious hieroglyph 
 which Nature writes on some, the sign 
 manual of sorrows to come. 
 
 VOL. 1. 6
 
 82. BRITOMART, 
 
 His Spirits were not raised by finding 
 that Mr. Field and Mr. Lees had both 
 come home early to tea, as the latter had 
 brought some tickets for a much-talked- 
 of new operetta. 
 
 Mr. Lees, the red-headed, burly Dives, 
 who had carried on a deliberate blunt sort 
 of courtship to Viola by means of such 
 offerings, by rather too open staring, and 
 compliments which Geoffrey did not think 
 she disliked enough, was repugnant to the 
 fastidious young fellow, whom Mr. Lees 
 
 coarsely described as a " d d sight too 
 
 stuck up to suit my book ! " 
 
 Geoffrey could not understand how 
 Viola could tolerate his gross attentions, 
 and he was always irritated by the fact. 
 In truth Viola cared nothing at all for 
 Mr. Lees, who personally was unpleasant 
 to her ; but the spoilt darling, the princess 
 of a luxurious middle-class affluence, liked 
 compliments, flowers, French sweets and 
 trinkets, whatever their source, as a canary
 
 BRITOMART. '^'7) 
 
 bird likes his lump of sugar. It was too 
 bad that the evening- to which he had 
 looked forward as a delicious solitude-d- 
 deiLV, should be spent at a flaring, noisy 
 theatre, in company with Mr. and Mrs. 
 Field, and ''that brute Lees." But it 
 would be worse to go away and sulk by 
 himself, for he should be tortured by 
 fancying how '* that brute " would stare at 
 \^iola, and tell her point blank how pretty 
 she looked, and that she might not resent 
 it. So he had to make up his mind to the 
 inevitable, and accept his first renunciation, 
 since he had been Viola's acknowledged 
 lover. 
 
 Viola's mother soon discovered, in one 
 rapid maternal scrutiny, that she looked 
 pale, and the story of the fright and escape 
 was told rather reluctantly, since Viola 
 knew how her father would take it. It 
 was his way to be angry always when 
 either fate or some one's fault made any- 
 thing happen that he did not like, even
 
 84 BRITOMART. 
 
 when there was no one in particular to be 
 angry with. He began by swearing he 
 wished he hadn't been fool enough to 
 buy those confounded little beasts — they'd 
 better be shot at once ; then, as Viola 
 eagerly declared they were not in the least 
 to blame, he glowered on Geoffrey. 
 
 " You oughtn't to have left her like that, 
 Trevenna. Vi was always a fool with the 
 reins. It wasn't safe. I should have 
 thought you'd have had the sense to know 
 that." 
 
 *' I'm sorry I did," Geoffrey said politely, 
 but with displeasure beneath the outward 
 civility of manner. 
 
 Again Viola eagerly interposed. She 
 had wished it, she had said she would not 
 have any one to hold them. It was only 
 for a few seconds. 
 
 So this passed, though Geoffrey chafed 
 under the sensation that both Mr. Field 
 and his friend were offensive in their 
 manner to him. Indeed, James Field did
 
 BRITOMART. 85 
 
 not, at that moment, at all object to pro- 
 ducing this impression. His good humour 
 of last night was over, his friend Tom 
 Lees' reception of the news of Viola's 
 engagement had put him out. It had 
 been a very angry one. Lees had sworn 
 and blustered, had declared it was a d — d 
 shame that a nice girl was thrown away 
 like that ! He'd have married her himself, 
 and settled a thousand on her — it was 
 what he meant, and he'd have spoken 
 before, only he never supposed Field 
 would have been fool enough to allow his 
 only daughter, and a deuced pretty one 
 too, to be engaged to a penniless barrister! 
 These two men were what the world 
 calls friends, certainly intimates, privileged 
 to call each other fool or ass at pleasure. 
 James Field had a great respect for Tom 
 Lees' money and shrewd head for busi- 
 ness, and liked him for a boon companion 
 at the Derby or a club-dinner, and would 
 have been delighted to have owned him
 
 86 BRITOMART, 
 
 for a son-in-law, though there was not ten 
 years difference in their age, but he could 
 not thwart his girl, who always would have 
 her own way, and he feebly remonstrated 
 against the word *' penniless ; " it wasn't so 
 bad as that, and Trevenna was his uncle's 
 heir. 
 
 " Bah ! " retorted the angry Tom Lees, 
 '' compared to you and me, Field, the 
 fellow is penniless, and as for expectations," 
 — he blew them away with a snort of con- 
 tempt — '' see your money down, I say ; 
 don't wait for dead men's shoes. You've 
 made a mess of Viola's prospects, that's 
 the plain fact, and ought never to have 
 allowed it. Let's hope the thing won't 
 come off." 
 
 After this both Mr. Field's and Mr. 
 Lees' attitude towards Geoffrey may be 
 understood. Viola and her mother did 
 their best, as women do, by a great deal 
 of would-be easy, lively chatter, to cover 
 the uncomfortableness of the situation.
 
 BRITOMART. Sj 
 
 Mrs. Field was wont to tell her daughter, 
 confidentially, when ''papa was very cross," 
 and must be humoured, or there would 
 be a "bother." They had no illusions 
 about *'papa," though both were fond 
 of him. 
 
 " Who stopped the carriage ? We 
 haven't heard that," Mrs. Field said, press- 
 ing Viola to eat plenty of hot scone, to 
 revive her after her fright, something on 
 Mrs. Jennings' principle of " old Con- 
 stantia " being good for disappointed 
 affection. 
 
 " It was a girl, fancy that ! " Viola said. 
 
 "And what did you do for her? Of 
 course you gave her something ? " 
 
 Geoffrey laughed a little. " She wasn't 
 the sort of girl to give money to, Mrs. 
 Field. As far as I could tell she was a 
 lady, but I hardly saw her before she was 
 gone." 
 
 " Dear, how odd ! She must have been 
 a strong-minded sort of woman."
 
 88 BRITOMART. 
 
 " Strong armed, at any rate. She was 
 very prompt and brave." 
 
 ''Well, it makes me just shiver to think 
 of what might have happened. But all's 
 well that ends well ; she's safe and sound, 
 thank Heaven. We dine earlier than 
 usual for the play, Geoffrey. You'd 
 better be back here by seven, if you'll 
 come too. Will you ? " 
 
 " Why, of course, mummy ! " Viola 
 cried ; and, though Mr. Lees was not 
 cordial, he did not say that the box would 
 not hold the five of them. 
 
 So Geoffrey spent a rather unideal 
 evening in not the best of tempers, and 
 was only consoled by one moment's clasp 
 and kiss to reward him for the ordeal of 
 seeing Tom Lees stare at Viola, and to 
 try not to quarrel too openly with him for 
 doing so. Away from her he could be 
 philosophical, and recognize that he had 
 not the exclusive right of admiring her ; 
 but he had neither calmness of temper
 
 BRIIOMART. 89 
 
 nor habit of self-foro^etfulness to enable 
 him to stand even such rivalry as this 
 without irritation. Like Viola, he had 
 been so far a spoilt child, and had not 
 learnt to share his sweets with the world 
 in o^eneral.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 R. TREVENNA of Redwood had 
 been, though not materially worse, 
 suffering enough during those blissful first 
 days of Geoffrey's engagement, which 
 fleeted by for him while they lingered on 
 in leaden cruelty for his uncle, to be more 
 than usually irritated by the continued 
 neglect which galled his morbid, angry, 
 and unhappy heart. Each day that week 
 he had expected Geoffrey to come, if not, 
 at least to write ; but he heard nothine 
 of him. Only rumours reached him that 
 Geoffrey was perpetually at the Fields'. 
 
 ** He doesn't care a straw whether I am 
 in tortures, alive, or dead," he growled out
 
 BRITOMART. 9 1 
 
 to his friend Grey on the Sunday after- 
 noon, when he paid his usual melancholy 
 visit, *' except that dead he thinks I shall 
 be of more value to him than alive." 
 
 " N-n-no, d-don t say that," Mr. Grey 
 stammered, as usual incoherent but eager 
 in apology. " Geoffrey is n-not, n-not " 
 
 ** Not what ? Even you stutter over a 
 defence," his friend retorted, with a little 
 smile of contempt ; " and if you can't find 
 a good word for him, God forgive him, for 
 no man could." 
 
 *' Not heartless ; you know that, Tre- 
 venna." 
 
 *' I don't know it. If you mean by 
 heart what is really sentimental boy's fancy, 
 that the fool is always falling in love with 
 some pretty, empty-headed noodle, I dare 
 say he has heart enough ; but for the man 
 who reared him, spent and was spent on 
 him, cared for him, grudged him nothing, 
 he has none. If I suffered the tortures of 
 the damned — and God knows at times I
 
 92 BRITOMART. 
 
 can't imagine much worse — he would not 
 trouble so long as he can get his pleasure 
 out of his youth and my money." 
 
 ** You are hard on him." 
 
 " I am just. I know him. He is selfish, 
 self-indulgent, lazy. Well, he has deter- 
 mined me — you began the idea — his con- 
 duct has made me bound to carry the 
 project through." 
 
 '' Don't do from anger to Geoffrey what 
 you would not from abstract right and 
 justice." 
 
 At moments the moral force of character 
 which underlay the apparently plastic 
 gentleness of the shy, undecided little 
 man moved him to real dignity, which 
 was almost stern in its rectitude and 
 truth. These, what he called '* spasms 
 of firmness," in his usually yielding friend, 
 were never without effect on Richard 
 Trevenna. The men were oddly con- 
 trasted — the one who seemed all harsh, 
 cynical strength had a deeper current of
 
 BRITOMART. 93 
 
 weakness than the other with his mild, 
 almost tremulous indecisiveness of manner. 
 The reason was in the innermost source 
 of action. Love needs the truest strength, 
 and love had been turned to hate in the 
 depths of Trevenna's tossed and tortured 
 soul. 
 
 ** Don't inquire too far into motive, 
 Grey," he said, with an effort, after a 
 mirthless laugh ; " they are mixed enough 
 in an old sinner like me. Anyway, I have 
 made up my mind. I have given Hamley 
 instructions to write to — to Mrs. Hall, and 
 appoint a meeting. You will go with me 
 to town for the purpose. I must have 
 your help through with it, since you 
 instigated it. It is a hateful business, 
 part farce, part tragedy ; but I suppose it 
 must be gone through with while my 
 strength holds out. The whole of life 
 just now is a mere ghastly nuisance, but 
 good times and bad times and all times 
 pass over."
 
 94 BRITOMART. 
 
 " Don't let that miserable sentence be 
 your only consolation, Trevenna. You 
 will be doing right ; there will be a reward 
 and peace beyond these voices." 
 
 '' I know you think so. It's a vast 
 Perhaps. But I shall rest — I shall rest." 
 
 '* And you may find this a comfort, after 
 all. In the end. Do let me urge that 
 view of it once more, Dick." 
 
 " No, no ; I tell you no, as I told you 
 before. I'll have no strange woman about 
 me at the last, no one but my old friend, 
 my good old Edmund, to be priest, com- 
 forter, companion, what you will — only 
 the one person who cares and has always 
 cared for me. Let paid hirelings do the 
 rest of the disgusting business of stripping 
 off these old rags of mortality. The old 
 feeling, if it ever were anything real, 
 which I doubt, is dead and buried these 
 twenty years. I wouldn't even try and 
 raise its ghost, and I have no natural 
 affections, no yearning for domestic love
 
 BRITOMART. 95 
 
 and all the rest of the humbug. I will 
 just do the thing as a matter of formal 
 duty. I bring no sentiment to bear on it ; 
 don't suggest that idea any more to me, 
 Edmund. Neither you nor any other 
 creature can make anything out of this 
 remnant of life, which has been ugly and 
 miserable so long." 
 
 " And whatever you do, you'll not be 
 unjust to Geoffrey ? " 
 
 *' I won't leave him penniless," the other 
 returned grimly. " I promise no more. 
 To have to work and make his way would 
 be the best thine for him. Besides, unless 
 I'm much mistaken, James Field won't 
 bestow his precious daughter on any dis- 
 inherited man ; that would be a blessing 
 in disguise, as pious folks say, for Master 
 Geoff. No doubt he'll be cut up ; no 
 doubt he'll hate my memory. I can't 
 help that, but I'll benefit him against 
 his will." 
 
 The following day, with a post-card to
 
 96 BRITOMART. 
 
 prepare for his arrival, Geoffrey Trevenna 
 paid his long delayed visit to his uncle. 
 He had managed to make engagements 
 for the next day, which could not possibly 
 be broken, so that his ordeal was not 
 a long one, but he found it severe. 
 
 For months past, since his malady and 
 secret sufferings had increased, his uncle 
 had grown more severe, harsh, and un- 
 sympathetic, more inclined to sneer at 
 and criticise every word, to find fault 
 with every action. In former years, 
 though he had often fallen into disgrace, 
 and had been on uncomfortable terms 
 with him, there had been intervals of good 
 fellowship, when Mr. Trevenna had been 
 not only generous but almost genial, when 
 he had been amused and amusing, and in 
 such seasons, the young fellow had easily 
 forgotten and forgiven the disagreeable 
 moods, and been fond of the changeable, 
 cynical, yet not unkindly uncle, to whom 
 it came easy to give, and who was not
 
 BRITOMART. 97 
 
 a severe censor of morals. They had had 
 pleasant times together, the memory of 
 which was still green, but they were all 
 memories now. The bitter, hard, almost 
 cruel temper had become the habitual 
 aspect which Geoffrey met. Both men 
 had too much inward likeness to get on 
 well, at those times when friction and 
 vexing opposition came between them. 
 Both had the thin-skinned, proud temper 
 of the old Cornish Trevennas ; both had a 
 mixture of passion and critical fastidious- 
 ness, which made each apt to annoy and 
 alienate the other. Geoffrey had now all 
 the advantages of youth, warmth of blood, 
 kind-heartedness, and love of life, which 
 perhaps Richard had once known before 
 the crust of morbid hatred and disgust of 
 self, and of the world around, had grown 
 over his better nature. The very likeness, 
 with this contrast of conditions between 
 them, angered the elder man, and gave 
 an edge to his disapproval and resent- 
 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 98 BRITOMART. 
 
 ment. He received him with a mixture 
 of freezing civility, and bitter though 
 veiled displeasure, thanking him for at 
 last bestowing a few hours on a dull hole 
 like Redwood, and the old rat who snarled 
 within it. Geoffrey was too full of him- 
 self to take much trouble to bring his 
 uncle into a better humour. He supposed 
 it was illness that made him so ill- 
 tempered, and was sorry, in a light easy sort 
 of way, that he suffered ; but young men 
 of twenty-eight, with the warm blood of 
 health and happiness like sparkling wine 
 within them, don t deeply sympathize, as 
 a rule, with pain and decay. He meant 
 to show feeling, but he could not help 
 betraying that he was all the while ab- 
 sorbed in his own sensations. Living in 
 the high summer of his triumphant love, 
 how could he realize the winter of dis- 
 content which made the other's mental 
 atmosphere ? And while Richard Tre- 
 venna declared to himself, as well as to
 
 BRITOMART. 99 
 
 Others, that he wanted no pity, and believed 
 in no sympathy, he had In reaHty a nature 
 that craved solace of this kind, and that 
 had starved and grown sour from need 
 of It. What puzzles and complications 
 are within every one of us, unless, as In 
 Edmund Grey's case, self Is dropped as 
 a useless encumbrance impeding the 
 powers of the heart ! This simplifies a 
 disposition marvellously. Both the Tre- 
 vennas were by no means unselfish men, 
 and collisions were Inevitable. Geoffrey 
 postponed his piece of news which he 
 knew would not be a welcome one, till 
 close upon the time of leaving, when he 
 nonchalantly informed his uncle, in a casual 
 sort of way, that he was just engaged to 
 Miss Viola Field. 
 
 ** I know you don't care for her governor 
 — no more do I, to tell the truth ; but 
 you'd be certain to like Viola if you 
 knew her." 
 
 '' You think so ? Why ?" his uncle asked,
 
 lOO BRITOMART. 
 
 with chilling coldness, his deep-set, angry- 
 dark eyes emphasising his antagonism. 
 
 Geoffrey coloured, and fidgeted with the 
 ornaments on the mantelshelf, against 
 which he leant. He tried for an unsuc- 
 cessful little lauo^h. 
 
 *' Why ? Well, because she's charming, 
 of course." 
 
 " It is to be presumed you find her so, 
 or you would hardly have looked out for 
 a wife in a family like that. The most 
 disgusting type of purse-proud, insolent 
 bourgeois. People whose veins run money 
 — a man whose father was a low pawn- 
 broker and usurer ! " 
 
 " We needn't go back to a girl's grand- 
 father. Mr. Field isn't an ideal sort of 
 man, I allow. I don't even stand out that 
 he's a perfect gentleman ; but that makes 
 no difference to her." 
 
 ** Oh, doesn't it ? " with a single knocked 
 laugh, as grating as rusty iron. 
 
 '' No, I say it doesn't ! " Geoffrey
 
 BRITOMART, lOl 
 
 reiterated, with an attempt not to show 
 anger. '* Viola herself is a pearl, her 
 manners would suit the daughter of a 
 Duke, she is pretty, refined, more than 
 ordinarily so. I'm only speaking of 
 externals." 
 
 '' Oh, you imagine you have found a 
 pearl. Did any boy ever think he'd made 
 a blunder yet ? It is hardly to be supposed 
 that these supposititious charms, which I 
 have to take on trust, will reconcile me to 
 a match which links you with people I 
 despise and detest. I tell you I knew 
 James Field when he was young. I knew 
 his father — the man turned money-lender 
 and ruined a fellow I cared for. D'you 
 know how this same James Field has 
 made his money } " 
 
 " No ; I don't know, nor care," Geoffrey 
 returned sullenly. ** His money's nothing 
 to me. You don't suppose I want her for 
 that?" 
 
 "No. I grant you that much. I don't
 
 I02 BRITOMART. 
 
 think you're a knave, only a fool. If you 
 marry a girl out of that family you will be 
 a fool of the purest strain." 
 
 " Most people are, according to you, 
 Uncle Dick." 
 
 "Yes, they are; I've more and more 
 reason every day to think so. I don't 
 exclude myself I was a fool of fools to 
 expect anything of you but ingratitude 
 and idiotic selfishness. I can't go on 
 talking or listening to you — I'm not up to 
 it. Mind, I'm not going to die yet — don't 
 hope it — and mind this too, I can leave 
 my property as I choose, and I do 7iot 
 choose that it shall go to James Field's 
 son-in-law. Don't say I hold out any false 
 hopes to you ; I'm not merely raving, I 
 mean what I say. I absolutely and entirely 
 disapprove of your marrying this girl." 
 
 He was panting for breath, and the per- 
 spiration of pain was on his livid face. In 
 spite of strenuous efforts after cynical 
 indifference and absence of emotion, he
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 could not help the access of fits of violent 
 anger and agitation which shook the 
 shattered foundation of his frame like a 
 moral earthquake. 
 
 Geoffrey was thankful for an interruption. 
 He chose to attribute the violent threats 
 and show of anger to physical causes. 
 The poor old man was so weak that his 
 temper had become ungovernable ; it never 
 had been good, and he hated thwarting. 
 He probably didn't mean half what he 
 said. If he could be persuaded to see 
 Viola he would give in. In old days, a 
 pretty girl had sometimes produced an 
 effect upon his uncle, and brought out the 
 courteous, chivalrous manner which had 
 made him fascinating to women in his 
 youth, though neither courtesy nor chivalry 
 had ever gone deep, they were habits 
 formed from his bringing up, from the 
 traditions of the fine old family to which 
 he belonged and nothing more, for he had 
 never felt the real respect and reverence
 
 I04 BRITOMART. 
 
 for women which Mr. Grey had, but had 
 been too awkward to make as effective as 
 Trevenna's unreal show of them. It 
 wouldn't do to bother one's self about the 
 threat which probably meant nothing but 
 an expression of bodily discomfort. He 
 said good-bye to his uncle with an air 
 of good-humoured indifference which filled 
 the cup of Richard Trevenna's wrath. 
 He said nothing, not even to his one 
 only confidant, beyond the bare announce- 
 ment that Geoffrey had told him of his 
 engagement, but he made his preparations 
 deliberately for a journey, short enough, 
 and as easy as money can make a journey 
 now ; but still a formidable affair to an 
 invalid who had not left his house, except 
 for a short drive, for months, and involving 
 not only bodily fatigue and discomfort, 
 but a mental effort painful to an extra- 
 ordinary degree to a man at once sensitive 
 and scornful of sentiment, bitterly dissatis- 
 fied with every condition of life, and pro-
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 105 
 
 foundly hopeless in every outlook for the 
 future ; a man, too, to whom any inter- 
 course had grown difficult, and any which 
 involved an abandonment of reserve in 
 the smallest degree hateful. But a mixed 
 set of motives and feelings, good and bad, 
 urged him on, and he did not relent to his 
 own shrinking as from something loath- 
 some and intolerable.
 
 
 
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 CHAPTER VI, 
 
 1^^ BOUT twenty miles from London, 
 on the Surrey side, not far enough 
 from the great devourer to be free of a 
 certain suburban taint, though dull enough 
 for any remote district, there is a little 
 town, or large village, where the remains 
 of the past still linger in a church of some 
 antiquity though no special beauty, and a 
 few old-fashioned houses, but which the 
 jerry builder has invaded with stucco villas 
 and attempts at Queen Anne architecture. 
 The country round, though spoilt in some 
 places by brick-fields, and by a paper 
 factory which has ruined what was once a 
 pretty dell and stream, has its prettiness.*
 
 BRITOMART. IO7 
 
 There is a pleasant common, gorgeous in 
 autumn in purple and gold, where the 
 sunsets are beautiful ; and on the borders 
 of this common, outside the small, un- 
 interesting town are a few scattered houses 
 and cottages. In one of these three 
 women lived with whom our story has 
 to do. There was no quieter household 
 in Copsley — only a middle-aged, stout, 
 apathetic-looking mother with the remains 
 of beauty long dimmed and blurred by 
 that inexorable spoiler, Time, who is only 
 baffled by the highest and most exquisite 
 type of womanhood ; a daughter a year or 
 two over twenty, and an elderly, thin, 
 frosty-looking servant, who seemed to find 
 in perpetual work a panacea for the woes 
 of life. Scarcely a soul entered the doors. 
 Mrs. Hall seemed to have no friends. 
 The doctor, the vicar, the vicaress, and 
 one or two benevolent old ladies who 
 " didn't like not to be friendly with their 
 neighbours," were the only people who
 
 I08 BRITOMART. 
 
 had penetrated into the small low-ceiled 
 sitting-room where Mrs. Hall sat endlessly 
 knitting, where Penrose drew and worked. 
 It was nearly twenty years since these 
 three took up their abode at Heathside 
 Cottage. Penrose was then a tiny girl 
 with great, grave grey eyes and a thick 
 mane of golden-brown hair. Mrs. Hall 
 was young, handsome, and then com- 
 paratively slender, but not less quiet and 
 lymphatic — a shy, reserved, silent woman 
 who, as her neighbour, Miss Babb, declared, 
 was either too frightened or too stupid 
 to have a word to say for herself. Miss 
 Babb, brisk, alert, and deeply concerned 
 in parochial affairs, was at first pleased with 
 the idea of new neighbours, she had called 
 as soon as the cottage presented a settled 
 appearance. 
 
 Miss Babb was a spinster, at that time 
 over fifty, who had spent her half-century 
 in the small centre of the pettiest kind of 
 life that it is possible for a woman to move
 
 BRITOMART. 109 
 
 in. Her appetite for the concerns of her 
 neio^hbours, and for a collection of well- 
 authenticated facts regarding them, grew 
 with what it fed on. The tiny scandals 
 and racy secrets of a village life were her 
 books, her luxuries, her joys. She was 
 not utterly odious because her insatiable 
 curiosity was combined with a robust good 
 nature that defied the hatred her point- 
 blank, thick-skinned ^<3:?/^/^^r2V would other- 
 wise have provoked. She watched the 
 unloading of a few van-loads of quite 
 new, but unpretending, furniture — "■ from 
 Maple's, my dear " — at the cottage with 
 the deepest interest, counting the number 
 of bedsteads — only four, and a child's cot 
 — which showed that Mrs. Hall did not 
 expect visitors — noting the style of the 
 arm-chairs and one sofa, the peculiarities 
 of the kitchen utensils, and such-like 
 apparently unimportant details with keen, 
 unwinking alertness. 
 
 The week after, when the small house
 
 no BRITOMART. 
 
 seemed to have subsided into order, she 
 called. The tall, gaunt woman-servant, 
 sallow, black-eyed, apparently approaching 
 middle age, opened the door and con- 
 fronted Miss Babb with a look of severe 
 inquiry, which seemed to demand her 
 ticket of admission. No severe looks ever 
 penetrated Miss Babb's armour of self- 
 confidence. She was the sort of person 
 who needs to be knocked down by the 
 butt end of a remonstrance. 
 
 " Your mistress in ? " she inquired, 
 producing a card. '' I've called to see 
 her.^^ 
 
 " Yes, she's m," the woman answered, 
 with uncompromising rectitude ; '' but she 
 doesn't expect visitors." 
 
 "Oh!" Even while speaking Miss 
 Babb was advancing step by step, as a 
 soldier makes his way into a breach. 
 "Well, you'll please to tell her I'm here, 
 and give her my card." 
 
 The door which she had reached stood
 
 BRITOMART. m 
 
 Open, and Miss Babb now confronted a 
 hesitating and timid figure — that of the 
 new owner of the cottage, who had neither 
 the ready wit nor the nerve either to 
 welcome or repel the determined invader. 
 At the table, in a high chair, a large-eyed, 
 serious-looking child, in a white pinafore, 
 not far from the endearing baby stage — 
 Miss Babb was fond of children — sat 
 arranging some wooden animals in the 
 vague yet strenuous fashion of chubby 
 awkward little fingers. It was a hand- 
 some child on a large scale. 
 
 *'Your little boy, ma'am?" Miss Babb 
 said, diving at the small creature with an 
 intention of kissing it, which the child 
 frustrated by a quick turn of the head, 
 which made the brim of Miss Babb's 
 brown bonnet run into its eyes. It did 
 not cry, however, only rubbed them 
 hard. 
 
 " It's not a boy — it's a girl," faltered 
 the mother, shyly. She spoke in a low,
 
 112 BRITOMARl, 
 
 rather sweet-toned, but countrified voice. 
 '' She's called Penrose." 
 
 " Well, isn't that a boy's name ? She 
 don't look a bit like a girl, I declare. 
 Well, ma'am, I thought I'd call. I'm your 
 nearest neighbour, that's to say, except 
 the poor folks at the corner of the lane, so 
 I thought it but kind. I see you're settled 
 in all right, and I dare say you'll find 
 Copsley pleasant enough. On the whole 
 it's a cheerful, neighbourly place, though 
 we've all sorts. You can have as much 
 visiting as you've a mind for." 
 
 " Oh, I — I've no mind for visiting, 
 thank you," Mrs. Hall uttered, in tones of 
 alarm almost bordering on terror. " I 
 came here to be — to be quiet." 
 
 " Why .^ " doggedly inquired the un- 
 flinching Miss Babb. '' You aren't a new- 
 made widow. You don't wear weeds." 
 She glanced at the plain black dress and 
 the uncovered abundant locks. 
 
 '' N— no ; I— I don't."
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 Mrs. Hall apparently found nothing 
 more sensible to say than this. Yet, 
 Miss Babb reflected she surely ought to 
 be in weeds, for the child could not be 
 three. 
 
 '* Your husband died when the little one 
 was born ^ How old is she ? " 
 
 '* Two and a half." 
 
 " Where did you come from ? " 
 
 " From — from London." 
 
 Miss Babb persevered. She plied the 
 new-comer with cut and thrust questions. 
 She obtained vague, stupid, indefinite 
 replies. She courted the boyish little girl 
 with the large, clear, grey eyes and long up- 
 curled eyelashes, and partly reconciled the 
 latter to her presence, though Penrose still 
 refused the demanded kiss, even seeming 
 to prefer the hard brim of the bonnet. 
 She got no more satisfaction from Mrs. 
 Hall, and, leaving after half an hour, had 
 reduced that poor woman almost to im- 
 becility, and quite to tears. 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 114 BRITOMART. 
 
 She reported her interview to her great 
 ally, Mrs. Folliott, the vicar's wife, who 
 Avas new to Copsley herself, and zealous 
 to do the work of a new broom. Miss 
 Babb was evangelical in her views, and 
 differed essentially from Mrs. Folliott, 
 whose hobbies were Ritualistic services 
 and G.F.S. meetings, while the maiden 
 lady devoted herself to missionary boxes 
 and the manufacture of brown calico 
 pyjamas for the Africans ; but they forgot 
 their quarrels when neighbours had to be 
 discussed. Mrs. Folliott " thought it the 
 duty of the vicar's wife to be intimately 
 acquainted with the people in the parish." 
 Miss Babb "liked to be friendly with all 
 her neighbours." So on this unassailable 
 moral ground they met and discussed the 
 rest of their small world, over tea and hot 
 cakes at the Vicarage, or buttered toast at 
 Miss Babb's. 
 
 " Have you or the vicar called yet on 
 this lady at Heathside } " was Miss Babb's
 
 BRITOMART. II5 
 
 first question when she met the vicaress, 
 after the cottage was occupied that 
 Michaelmas twenty years ago. 
 
 '' No ; she hasn't been to church yet," 
 Mrs. Folhott answered, with some gravity 
 — she put on an ecclesiastical air when- 
 ever she spoke of church. " I waited for 
 the Sunday to see. Did she go anywhere 
 else ? " 
 
 The anywhere else was a sore point 
 to Mrs. Folliott. Copsley was a small 
 place, but it was, as she called it, '' a 
 hotbed of Dissent." There was a 
 Wesleyan chapel as well as a Baptist, 
 flaunting their red-brick ugliness at the 
 grey old church, and the aristocratic 
 vicarage over the way. The best trades- 
 men in the town went to chapel, com- 
 pelling Mrs. Folliott to send to London 
 for her grocery and ironmongery ; and the 
 church was never more than half filled. 
 The new surpliced choir, which made 
 naughty little corduroyed boys look like
 
 Il6 BRITOMART, 
 
 young seraphs In their white robes, seem- 
 ingly had no power of attraction to equal 
 the loud singing of familiar old hymns, in 
 which men, women, boys, and maidens 
 could all join, and Mr. Folliott's brief, 
 irreproachable sermonettes could not rival 
 Mr. Lloyd's discourses at the Baptist 
 chapel and Mr. Bates's at the Wesleyan. 
 
 "No," Miss Babb replied; "Mrs. Hall 
 did not stir out all day ; but the servant 
 went to the Methodist place. She's a 
 respectable-looking body. I wish I could 
 get such a one ; but as silent as her 
 mistress. My Sarah can't get a thing out 
 of her, but that they come from the south 
 of England somewhere, and that Mrs. 
 Hall lost her husband just after the child 
 was born. It's rather a nice child; not 
 shy, but quiet." 
 
 '' Well, I shall wait and see if she goes 
 to church. It doesn't seem as if this 
 Mrs. Hall would be a great acquisition, 
 anyhow."
 
 BRITOMART. 1 1 7 
 
 And so, indeed, it had proved. Mrs. 
 Hall was not a great acquisition. She 
 made no mark in Copsley society. Miss 
 Babb kept up a little casual acquaintance, 
 and was kind on occasions, in her fussy, 
 condescending way. No one had any- 
 thing to say against her ; but, on the other 
 hand, no one had much to urgey^r her, 
 except a few destitute, beggarly, or dis- 
 reputable folks, who did not count. She 
 never turned any one from the door with- 
 out a penny or a bit of food, was con- 
 stantly and egregiously imposed upon, and 
 had not anything hard to say of the laziest 
 and least respectable ; but even with the 
 poor she could not come out of her shell, 
 which some called reserve and others 
 stupidity. She was certainly not a bril- 
 liant woman ; all her movements were 
 slow, heavy, lagging ; her voice, as well 
 as her foot, faltered and halted. She 
 never had anything to say to any one. 
 She seemed to have no tastes, no strong
 
 Il8 BRITOMART. 
 
 opinions, no hatreds, no joys. She was 
 always apparently placid and contented ; 
 yet through the mist of her invincible 
 silence and reserve there was now and 
 then something- in her expression that told 
 of a struggle, of suffering long gone by. 
 She interested no one outside the cottao^e 
 walls, and gave nothing to talk about, 
 except that one reprehensible fact that she 
 did not go to church. Whether it was 
 active Dissent or apathy hardly appeared. 
 Jane, her servant, went regularly every 
 Sunday evening to the Wesleyan chapel, 
 and once or twice her mistress and the 
 little girl — who grew up to be a great 
 girl almost unnoticed — went with her, but 
 not regularly ; and when Mr. Bates, the 
 minister, called, Mrs. Hall was as chilly 
 and unresponsive to him as to the vicar. 
 She taught her child nothing of religion. 
 She grew up entirely free to believe or 
 not believe, except that Jane made her 
 say the Lord's Prayer and a simple peti-
 
 BRITOMART. II9 
 
 tion, such as children use, when she was 
 little, and gave her an old-fashioned child's 
 Bible, with frightful pictures in it, to read. 
 Penrose soon grew to think the pictures 
 hideous, and turned them over without 
 a glance ; but she loved to read the 
 printed pages as she read everything, all 
 the few story-books she possessed, and 
 the small shelf full of queer, old-fashioned 
 volumes, which it would have puzzled 
 any one who knew anything of literature 
 to find a reason for being collected by 
 a person of education. Mrs. Hall 
 seldom read. It was not her choice that 
 had brought together that small library, 
 which was a queerly assorted one enough. 
 There was an old cookery-book, in which 
 an illiterate hand had scrawled, " Eliz. 
 Ames, her book, 1830," ''Captain Cook's 
 Voyage Round the World," Bunyan's 
 "Pilgrim's Progress" and "Holy War," 
 " Dr. Watts's Hymns," " Robinson 
 Crusoe," some few volumes — some of
 
 120 BRITOMART. 
 
 them odd — evidently a lot from a second- 
 hand bookstall, chiefly of adventure and 
 discovery, a few modern mild story-books, 
 " The Wide, Wide World," '' The Lamp- 
 lighter/' '' Uncle Tom's Cabin," and so 
 on. In odd contrast to the rest, a prettily 
 bound Tennyson and another illustrated 
 gift-book or two were there also, which 
 had the name '' Mary " only written in 
 them in a neat Oxford hand, and a date 
 in the sixties. 
 
 Penrose had not much provision, it will 
 be seen, to satisfy her craving for books ; 
 but she knew all these nearly by heart, all 
 except the cookery-book, and a very un- 
 inviting volume of sermons. 
 
 When she was fifteen Mr. Folliott made 
 a solemn professional call on her mother 
 to ask if she were to be confirmed. Of 
 course she was properly baptized ? 
 
 " Oh yes," Mrs. Hall said, in her 
 nervous spasmodic way, feebly clasping 
 her plump hands together, and colouring
 
 BRITOMART. i 2 I 
 
 with the effort of speaking-, ''that was 
 done quite right ; I have the certificate." 
 
 " Then you will let her join my class, 
 and be instructed for confirmation, of 
 course," the vicar said blandly, but with 
 firmness. 
 
 Mrs. Hall trembled and faltered, '' Oh, 
 I don't know, I'm sure, Penrose is very 
 good. 1 don't know whether it is really 
 necessary. I don't mind much either 
 way — if she doesn't." 
 
 Mr. Folliott was shocked, yet baffled 
 by the very ineptitude of the mother. 
 To him it seemed terrible that she could 
 speak as if such a thing were of little 
 consequence either way, and refer it to 
 the girl herself. Penrose came to church 
 now pretty often in the evening, alone. 
 She had been very attentive and thought- 
 ful, but had somehow given the vicar the 
 impression of a looker-on, more than as 
 a young devotee. 
 
 "You'd better ask Pen herself," Mrs.
 
 122 BRITOMART. 
 
 Hall went on, rising, as if gladly to 
 escape any responsibility, or any further 
 questioning. '' I'll tell her to come." 
 
 " Is the woman wanting .^ " the vicar 
 asked himself, while he explained aloud 
 with some warmth his views of a mother's 
 duty in such a case, the wrong of neglect. 
 But he could get nothing decisive from 
 Mrs. Hall, she was not " brought up 
 Church " herself, she said, she hardly 
 knew what she was, she had not been 
 confirmed ; but, if Pen wished it — and Pen 
 seemed to like o^oinof to church — she 
 should not object. Pen thought a deal 
 about things, and wasn't like most girls 
 of fifteen. She insisted on slipping out 
 of the vicar's reach, and sending Penrose 
 to him. It was just the way she always 
 did. Penrose was the invariable receiver 
 of everything that came their way that 
 was difficult or disagreeable to manage, 
 the shield placed between her mother 
 and any perplexity, the referee in any
 
 BRITOMART. 1 23 
 
 dilemma. She had been thrust as a 
 child into this position, reversing all the 
 ordinary relations of mother and daughter. 
 The vicar tried talking to her when she 
 came as if she were any other village 
 maiden in her teens, in a high, con- 
 descending tone of spiritual supremacy, 
 as if she were immeasurably ignorant 
 and childish; yet, somehow, he was con- 
 scious of an odd difference in this grey- 
 eyed slip of a girl, who stood courageously, 
 but not boldly before him in her plain 
 short frock and holland apron, with a 
 great thick plait of light brown hair 
 hanging far below her waist like a ship's 
 cable. Penrose was not a beautiful girl, 
 but she was a striking one, and if not 
 regularly pretty, had certain pronounced 
 beauties. She promised to be tall, was 
 upright and strong, though thin ; she had 
 a very broad full forehead, not high, but 
 intellectually made ; large, clear candid 
 eyes, well opened, thickly fringed, meeting
 
 124 BRITOMART. 
 
 the gaze with a sincere truthfulness that 
 could not possibly hide any subterfuge or 
 deceit ; her well-shaped nose had delicate, 
 sensitive, proud nostrils ; her mouth was 
 not pretty, but it was full of character 
 and firmness, as was her square cleft chin. 
 Her complexion was of a clear, healthy 
 pale, sllghdy sunburnt, and not apt to 
 flush or change. She had a quantity of 
 hair, as I have said, springing strongly from 
 her forehead, with a largre wave in it ; It 
 grew more like a boy's than a girl's, and 
 there was something boyish altogether 
 in her face, bearing, and expression. She 
 had, it is true, never had a girl friend ; she 
 was not likely to have caught their ways, 
 even if it had been easy to her to assimilate, 
 which it most certainly was not. Mr.. 
 Folllott was a man much narrowed by 
 aristocratic and sacerdotal prejudices, and 
 with a large mixture of the autocrat 
 about him ; but he was neither a stupid 
 nor an unkindly one, and his rather hard
 
 BRITOMART. 1 25 
 
 ej^es insensibly softened as they met the 
 frank and simple truthfulness of the gaze 
 which had nothing to hide from him. 
 
 *' My dear," he said, in his hard, clear, 
 metallic voice, " I want you to come to my 
 class at the Vicarage, and be confirmed. 
 Your mother is — has no objection." 
 
 " Very well," Penrose said quietly, " I 
 shall not mind." 
 
 " Shall not mind ! That is a strano^e 
 way of speaking. You surely know what 
 confirmation mxeans ? " 
 
 '* I think I do a little. I suppose I 
 promise to be good and religious. I will 
 try my best ; but, please may I go to 
 chapel with mother if she wants me to ? 
 I must. If being confirmed in church 
 means that I am not — I cannot be. 
 Mother is used to a chapel — if she goes 
 anywhere — she likes it better than church ; 
 she says the people stare at her so she 
 crets confused." 
 
 The calm confidence of the child, which
 
 126 BRITOMART. 
 
 was not rude or arrogant, confounded the 
 lordly vicar. He waived the subject of 
 the chapel, and proceeded to question the 
 girl upon her faith. It was a self-taught 
 one. Nobody but Jane had told her 
 anything, and Jane was a Calvinist, whose 
 views Penrose had instantly rejected with 
 the positive directness of her nature. 
 Left to herself and to the Bible, she had 
 built up her own belief. The vicar thought 
 it wanting in many respects in exact ortho- 
 doxy, yet he could not find it in his heart 
 to confute the happy confidence in God, 
 in goodness, in the ideal life, in Christ, 
 which somehow had grown out of the 
 silent thoughts and the long solitary hours 
 face to face with Nature which had formed 
 this untutored girl. He could not help a 
 sort of odd respect and admiration for her, 
 and he left dogmatizing alone for the 
 moment. Penrose was confirmed with 
 the rest, in a simple white cotton frock and 
 cap, like the poorer village girls.
 
 BRITOMART, 1 27 
 
 Mr. Folliott had done what he could. 
 He had to submit to seeing Penrose only 
 occasionally at church, for, true to her 
 word, she now and then accompanied her 
 mother to the bare, barn-like edifice, with 
 round-headed windows, where good old 
 Mr. Bates, the unlearned but kindly 
 natured Wesleyan minister, held forth. 
 But Penrose meantime shot up into a 
 maiden good to look upon, and of whom 
 nobody, not even the most censorious and 
 crabbed of a small and narrow world, 
 could find anything worse to say than that 
 she had ''no manner," and was apt to be 
 brusque where truth and politeness clashed. 
 Yet, even where she had offended by this 
 over sincerity, she was so honestly desirous 
 to make friends, so ready to help, so con- 
 stant and so unsparing of herself that 
 resentment died, and she had no real 
 enemies in Copsley. 
 
 A quieter, duller, more uneventful life 
 could not be conceived. Penrose grew
 
 128 BRITOMART. 
 
 up to womanhood without having tasted 
 gaiety, excitement, flirtation. She dressed 
 and Hved as plainly as an anchorite ; 
 she had no intimates, no gossiping girl 
 confidantes to impart the more or less 
 innocent nonsense which is the staple 
 nourishment of most young minds. She 
 got hold of hardly any novels, only a few 
 old-fashioned ones of Miss Babb's, and 
 some standard works which Mrs. Folliott 
 recommended her. Her education was 
 desultory in the extreme, even scanty, yet 
 the soil was good, and the thinly scattered 
 seed brought forth more abundantly than 
 might have been expected. A mincing, 
 affected little daily governess, the daughter 
 of a farmer, who eked out her small re- 
 sources by a little cheap teaching, used to 
 come for a couple of hours in the morning 
 during the years between ten and sixteen 
 in Penrose's life. She imparted what 
 knowledge she possessed in a fashion to 
 make a high-school teacher shudder; so
 
 BRITOMART. 1 29 
 
 that Penrose learnt the dates of the kings 
 and queens of England by heart, with all 
 the worn-out old anecdotes and doubtful 
 facts as inculcated by Mrs. Markham. She 
 droned through ** Cornwall's Geography," 
 " Colenso's Arithmetic," and '' Mangnall's 
 Questions," learnt poetry from a book of 
 selections, French to a very moderate 
 extent, with a vile accent. Music was 
 abandoned in despair. Penrose loved to 
 listen, but her fingers had no flexibility ; 
 she had not an acute ear. Miss Finch 
 gave this up. For drawing, however, 
 the girl had a marked talent, and she 
 was here more fortunate in an instructor. 
 
 In the village lived an old artist, a 
 man who had never been successful, yet 
 who had something of a wayward genius 
 in him. He took a fancy to Penrose 
 Hall when she was a little wandering 
 maid, following her own sweet will in 
 rambling unprotected on common or in 
 copse, and who stood spellbound by the 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 I ^O BRITOMART. 
 
 hour to watch him. He was drawn 
 at last by her mute admiration and un- 
 exacting companionship to offer to teach 
 her how to paint. He provided her with 
 materials, and set her tasks which were 
 pastimes. She was perfectly happy with 
 a pencil or brush for long hours. They 
 were fast friends and comrades, though 
 but little talk passed between them. This 
 quiet-spoken, almost boorish elderly man, 
 and one or two of the poorer village folks, 
 were Penrose's only real friends outside 
 the walls of Heathside Cottage. At the 
 time of which I now speak she was in her 
 twenty-third year, and they had been at 
 Copsley nearly twenty years without 
 variation of its monotonous routine. 
 
 No girl had lived a quieter and more 
 secluded life. 
 
 Mrs. Hall seldom cared to go a mile 
 from home, and, with the exception of four 
 visits a year to London, whither Jane 
 accompanied her till Penrose grew old
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 enough to be her protector, she scarcely 
 ever made even a short journey. 
 
 These quarterly pilgrimages exercised 
 Miss Babb's mind, for she had always a 
 restless sense that there was " something 
 odd " about her quiet neighbour, and she 
 vainly tried to extract information about 
 herself from the reticent, silent, shy woman, 
 whose blank irresponsiveness often irritated 
 the small eager mind of the spinster lady. 
 It was to '* fetch her dividends," Mrs. Hall 
 replied to a point-blank question as to 
 these London errands, and no more could 
 be got at, not even where they were paid 
 nor the amount. But she never seemed 
 poor. They spent little at the cottage, 
 because no one cared to spend ; but Mrs. 
 Hall paid ready money for everything, 
 never grumbled at prices, and was ''foolishly 
 lavish," as Miss Babb considered, in charities 
 and subscriptions. Mystery or no mystery, 
 the widow was absolutely impenetrable as 
 to her past ; she seemed to have hardly
 
 13^ BRITOMART. 
 
 any opinions, and she had no fund of con- 
 versation at all. Copsley had grown used 
 to her not unhandsome, though time- 
 worn face, her heavy creeping movements, 
 low hesitating voice, and soft timid eyes. 
 No one disliked, but no one actively cared 
 for her outside the small circle of her 
 home, and she seemed to crave no affection, 
 no notice, and to be content with the 
 narrow range and dull tranquillity which 
 cramped her life within such meagre 
 limits. Even Miss Babb only occasionally 
 wondered what the early habits had been 
 which landed her in this seclusion.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ANE, I'm often frightened when 
 
 I think of Penrose." 
 
 These words broke a long silence, and 
 
 continued a disjointed, but not emotionless 
 
 talk which Mrs. Hall had been carrying on 
 
 in the neat kitchen of Heathside Cottage. 
 
 Quiet as she was Mrs. Hall never cared to 
 
 be left entirely alone ; to be without any 
 
 companion but her own slow-passing 
 
 thoughts seemed always to make her 
 
 nervous, and when her daughter was out 
 
 she generally took her knitting and sat 
 
 in the kitchen, or else helped Jane in her 
 
 work in a vague, indolent kind of way. 
 
 Jane was not a common-looking person, 
 
 she had a decided individuality.
 
 134 BRITOMART. 
 
 Thirty years ago, or even less, she must 
 have been a handsome woman in a rather 
 mascuHne way. Her hair, iron-grey now, 
 would have been beautiful when it was 
 black, she twisted it up into as hard and 
 small a knot as she could now ; but it was 
 still thick and crisp, and contrasted with 
 her very dark eyebrows and brown skin 
 which, though wrinkled, was wholesome, 
 clean and agreeable still to look at. Her 
 steady dark eyes could be fierce when 
 she frowned and pursed up her thin lips ; 
 but there were times when a kind, bene- 
 ficent gleam lightened them and they were 
 always honest and true. She was tall and 
 straight as a poplar, neat, quick, and 
 strong in all her movements — tender over 
 babies and animals. Her manner with 
 her mistress was one of perfect calm 
 equality, in fact rather authoritative than 
 otherwise, and Mrs. Hall never dreamt of 
 disputing her will. She could be passionate 
 and rude, but with one person she was at
 
 BRITOMART. 1 35 
 
 times yielding. This was Penrose, she 
 acknowledged a mistress in her only. Yet 
 Penrose was always gentle in her manner 
 to Jane. 
 
 The kitchen was cleaned up, shining 
 with scrubbing and polishing on this 
 Saturday afternoon, when Jane generally 
 finished her labours by rubbing the small 
 supply of silver, and all the shining brasses 
 and tins which the household boasted. 
 The fire burnt with a steady glow, pleasant 
 to every sense as the spring twilight crept 
 in. The wood of the table and dresser 
 was white as the freshly stoned hearth. 
 Mrs. Hall sat in an elbow-chair, rather 
 spasmodically rubbing a few teaspoons 
 with a leather, while Jane put her usual 
 vigour into the polishing of some candle- 
 sticks from the shelf. 
 
 " What d'ye mean ? " she asked, in her 
 trenchant abrupt tones. Nature had given 
 her a fine contralto voice, which might 
 have been a beautiful organ had not Jane
 
 136 BRITOMART. 
 
 always spoken abruptly, with a smack of 
 some rustic accent. '* Friofhtened when 
 you think of Penrose ? Why ? " 
 
 '' If ever she got to know things," 
 Mrs. Hall hesitated out in her faltering 
 way, " I think I couldn't bear it very 
 well." 
 
 *' There's no reason she ever should. 
 And if she did " 
 
 '' Oh, hush, Jane ! " 
 
 *' Well, if she did, you're her mother, 
 and she loves you. She ain't a girl to 
 turn on any one. You know that well 
 enough." 
 
 " I know ; but I couldn't bear she'd 
 have to, Jane. I wonder and wonder 
 however Pen comes to be what she is. 
 She's not a bit like me, not in one single 
 thing." 
 
 " No, only that she's got a soft heart 
 over children and beasts, and don't like 
 to see folks suffer." 
 
 " Only in that. She couldn't else be
 
 BRITOMART. 1 37 
 
 more different ; and she's not like — not at 
 all like her — her father." 
 
 - No." 
 
 A pause of silent rubbing, which Jane 
 broke. 
 
 ** You're right. She's not a mite like 
 you, not what you are nor what you was, 
 not a mite. But there's freaks of that 
 kind everywhere, folks come odd in 
 families just as carrots and parsnips do at 
 whiles. Why now, you were an odd one. 
 Who did you take after ? Not your 
 mother nor father, nor any of 'em. May- 
 be, Penrose is like one as is dead and gone, 
 or else the Lord made her fresh after 
 a pattern of his own." 
 
 '' She ought to have been a boy, I think 
 sometimes, so strong and fearless as she 
 is ; never would tell a lie, not to save 
 herself any pain, and would face anything, 
 now wouldn't she '^. " 
 
 Jane nodded. "Ay, that she would. 
 And you just as scared as you can be at
 
 138 BRITOMART, 
 
 every mortal thing, if a mouse squeaks, 
 or a dog jumps on you, or there's a 
 winding-sheet in the candle. No. I 
 never knew a more fearless creature than 
 she be, nor a more fearsome one 
 than you." 
 
 '' You remember her mastering that 
 drunken gipsy '^. " 
 
 Jane nodded again. 
 
 '' I always feel when she's by, as if I 
 couldn't be afraid. I sleep at night now, as 
 if there was a man in the place. It often 
 makes me wonder to see her. But all the 
 more it terrifies me when I get thinking 
 that some day she'll know it all, maybe, 
 and turn against me." The feeble voice 
 began to quiver, the full double chin 
 showed symptoms of a climbing sob. 
 
 " That's stuff," Jane said roughly, though 
 her eyes had their kinder look. " I say 
 she ain't one of that sort. Once care is 
 always care with her. She's not the girl 
 to turn against her mammy. And the
 
 BRITOMART. 1 39 
 
 Lord knows you've been a fond mother 
 to her." 
 
 *• Why, of course I've been ! What 
 else have I had but the child ? And the 
 dearest little thing as she was, with her 
 queer masterful ways, yet as loving with 
 them all. * You're tired, mothie,' she'd 
 say, when she was but a bit of a thing, so 
 high — ' you look tired — ^just lie down and 
 I'll cuddle you/ I used to think she 
 must be a changeling left by the angels, 
 she was so much better than I ever 
 thought she could be ! " 
 
 A few large, easy tears rolled down the 
 pale cheeks of the mother. Tears came 
 to her with as little trouble and pain, as 
 smiles do to some natures ; they hardly 
 reddened her eyelids, and she wiped them 
 away with simple unconsciousness. With 
 the two people who were her only inti- 
 mates in all the world, Mrs. Hall lost her 
 stolid, blank, undeviating reserve, and had 
 no shame at showing her emotions.
 
 I40 BRITOMART. 
 
 Jane, who was of sterner stuff, and had 
 only shed a few secret tears in all her life, 
 was a little impatient. 
 
 " What are you crying for ? " she asked, 
 setting down her bright candlestick with 
 emphasis. " You've got a comfortable 
 home as suits you, and the best of 
 daughters, healthy and happy — there's 
 nought to fret about." 
 
 '' No, only I wonder at times what I'd 
 do if she thought ill of me." 
 
 '' Don't, then. Don't be fancying things. 
 You have been talking this way since 
 you went to London. What was it 
 set you off? Anything as that lawyer 
 fellow said ? You've not been your own 
 self since, and you might as well tell 
 me the reason of it. You know when 
 you keep a thing to yourself it frets and 
 troubles you till you get it out, and it's 
 a good thing for you as you've got me 
 to tell it to." 
 
 ''He did upset me a bit, Jane ; but
 
 BRITOMART. I4I 
 
 I don't know exactly what he meant. 
 He's an odd, baffling way with him. You 
 know I see him alone most times, he 
 hardly ever asks for Pen, but this time he 
 did. He and I were alone at. first, and 
 after he'd paid me, he stared at me in that 
 secret sort of knowing way he has, and 
 said something. I was fluttered, and could 
 not rightly say what the words were, 
 something about changes that might 
 come, but not changes to hurt. Then he 
 asked to see Pen, and he eyed her all 
 over. She stood just as she does, so 
 upright, and not a bit scared, and looked 
 back at him. And he smiled, and said 
 she'd grown into a fine woman all at once, 
 and that he was sure she must be my right 
 hand — both my hands, he might have 
 said ; — that was all, there was nothing to 
 take hold of, but just that word 'change.' 
 Jane, the word itself frightens me ! I 
 shiver to think of any change." 
 
 " Why, there must be," Jane cried, "it's
 
 142 BRITOMART. 
 
 a world of change ! You can't reckon on 
 things going on like this humdrum, hum- 
 drum for ever ! You and me must get old 
 and die "—Mrs. Hall shuddered. '' Ay, I 
 know you dread it, poor soul ; but it must 
 be, soon or late. Then there's Penrose 
 growed, as he says, into a woman, and 
 a fine, fair, wholesome woman too, some 
 one might come to love her." 
 
 *' There's no one here," Mrs. Hall cried 
 eagerly, raising her white, clumsily shaped, 
 soft hands with a gesture as if she would 
 push away some unwelcome intruder. 
 " Pen doesn't think of such things, it 
 isn't her way." 
 
 '' Not her way ! Now don't be selfish — 
 she's a woman. Why shouldn't it come 
 her way to find out a woman's lot. She 
 can't always be looking after you, and 
 caring for you, as if you were the child 
 and she the mother. Don't you stand 
 in her light now, whatever happens." 
 
 "• Oh, but I hope nothing will happen ! "
 
 BRITOMART. 14^ 
 
 the mother cried, almost in a wail. '' It's 
 best to go on just as we do, and Pen's 
 happy enough, you know she is, Jane ! " 
 
 ''Happy enough! I'd like to know 
 what most girls 'ud think of that ejioughl' 
 Jane returned in an angry voice. '' What 
 suits you isn't going to suit her for ever. 
 You only want to be quiet and peaceful, 
 and for no one to stir up a thought about 
 what's past and gone ; but there's all her 
 future for Pen to think about, to be made 
 good or bad for her, and it ain't to be 
 expected as this sort of little half-asleep 
 living can do for any one like her for 
 ever and a day. Look what other girls 
 want, look what other girls have ! Why, 
 even here, in this little dull hole of a 
 place, look at the misses at the vicarage, 
 at the doctor's, at the big farmhouse over 
 yonder. Look at their smart clothes, 
 their junketings and picnics, their dancing 
 and playing of games, their young fellows, 
 and all the rest of it. And there's our
 
 144 BRITOMART. 
 
 Penrose, with her one common gown and 
 her best — no ribbons nor fal-lals, no one 
 saying nice things to her — though she'd 
 beat any of 'em in looks — no play or fun. 
 I tell you it didn't ought to be, and if 
 change to you meant a change for the 
 better for her, you'd be a bad mother to 
 oppose it." 
 
 *' I've never meant to be a bad mother, 
 God knows, Jane," the other faltered out. 
 More tears might have followed had not 
 the quick opening and shutting of the 
 front door sounded at the moment, and 
 Penrose's eager, firm step. 
 
 She threw open the kitchen door when 
 she found the parlour empty and dark. 
 Excitement flushed her cheek which only 
 grew rosy under strong feeling, and her 
 large clear eyes shone bright. It was, 
 however, a painful emotion, the lines of 
 her mouth and the contraction of her 
 forehead showed this. 
 
 '* Mother dear," she said, in a voice
 
 BRITOMART. 1 45 
 
 which she kept calm by a strong effort 
 of repression, usual to her when dealing 
 with her easily scared mother, " I want 
 to know if you'll let me bring Lucy 
 Evans in here for to-night, at any rate. 
 I found her under the hedge, ill — very 
 ill, I'm afraid. They'd turned her away 
 from her father's cottage. I don't know 
 who would take her in, and I can't let 
 her die out there." 
 
 " Lucy Evans ! The girl who — the girl 
 
 who '• a gathering remembrance of the 
 
 circumstances made Mrs. Hall suddenly 
 colour and tremble. 
 
 " The girl that was in service to Morton, 
 and went wrong," Jane put in uncom- 
 promisingly. 
 
 *' Yes," Penrose said quickly, as if the 
 words stung her. '' I know all about 
 that now ; Lucy told me. Her mistress 
 sent her away, and she's very ill, in dread- 
 ful pain, cold, starved, and miserable. She 
 was trying to get to the workhouse, but 
 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 146 BRITOMART. 
 
 it's terrible in there ; they are so hard 
 to the girls, and her own father and 
 mother are the hardest of all. Mother, 
 ril look after her, and nurse her, if you 
 won't mind. We can't leave her, and 
 go by on the other side." 
 
 ''Where is she?" said the faint, stam = 
 mering voice, out of the half darkness. 
 '' Not outside now ? " 
 
 " No, in the passage. I was only wait- 
 ing to take her upstairs. I may, mayn't 
 I .'^ I know I may," 
 
 *' Yes, dear, what you will ; only " 
 
 She broke off and touched Jane implor- 
 ingly. *'Jane, yotill see to her — not 
 Pen." 
 
 Jane said not a word ; she put down 
 what was in her hands, wiped them on 
 her apron, and went to the door. 
 
 '' I'll see the girl to bed, Penrose," she 
 said abruptly, as she reached it. '' Do 
 you just air some things, and then, when 
 she's all right, I'll go to Dr. Bentley's.
 
 BRITOMART, 1 47 
 
 'Tain't fit for you, at your age, to be doing 
 such jobs." 
 
 " That's nonsense, Jane," Penrose said 
 calmly, smiling as she spoke ; *' as if I 
 hadn't been used to all sorts of things 
 in the village ; as if I wasn't grown up ! 
 I can do anything Lucy wants." 
 
 "You'll not, then, I tell you," Jane 
 returned, with sudden severity ; *' your 
 mother don't wish you to. I'll see to 
 the wench myself. I'm not for turning 
 her adrift, or for being cruel ; but I've 
 little doubt she's none fit for you to be 
 with." 
 
 Penrose was reluctant to give way. 
 She trusted Jane's real goodness, but 
 feared its harshness of expression, and 
 her heart yearned over the desolate out- 
 cast she had brought home. But Jane 
 was inexorable. Penrose might only 
 help in bringing what was wanted in pre- 
 paring food, and waiting on her mother 
 in the absence of the one servant ; she
 
 148 BRITOMART. 
 
 must not come in to comfort the girl with 
 her ungrudging tenderness. And her 
 mother, too, kind as she always was to 
 the poor and ill, oddly enough seemed 
 also to hate her being with Lucy, and 
 kept her by her own side with feeble 
 insistence. She shrank from talking of 
 the suffering girl. Oh yes, anything 
 might be done for her while she was too 
 ill to be moved ! She did not grudge 
 anything ; but she would not see Doctor 
 Bentley — would hardly let Penrose tell 
 her what was the matter, nor how danger- 
 ous the girl's state was. Jane kept the 
 door shut on her, and her mother clung 
 to her presence. Penrose was not satisfied 
 to stand aloof; but, though strong, she 
 was not stubborn, and she yielded, not 
 because she understood, but because her 
 mother had set her heart on it. Only 
 she rejoiced to know, as the rain suddenly 
 came crashing on the roof, and pelting 
 like a mad thing against their windows,
 
 BRITOMART. 1 49 
 
 with a howling gusty wind in pursuit of 
 it, that the forlorn girl was safely housed, 
 and, whatever came to her now, at least 
 she had human care and help about her, 
 and was not left to bear the agony and 
 the desolation alone in the cruel and 
 bitter storm, that is no crueller than Fate 
 to such wrecks of humanity as the wicked- 
 ness of the world has created. Her mother 
 was odd about this, turning the subject 
 persistently from the girl upstairs — odd, 
 and even unusually nervous in manner. 
 But Penrose was accustomed to these 
 little eccentricities. Much as she shared 
 with her, dearly as she loved her, always 
 as they were together, she had found out 
 before she grew up that, simple, even 
 shallow as that mother seemed in some 
 ways, there were depths in her which she 
 had never penetrated, a silence which met 
 her blankly now and then like a dividing 
 wall she could not pass, a baffling though 
 soft resistance which she could no more
 
 1 50 BRITOMART. 
 
 overcome than a shot can penetrate a 
 feather-bed. But in spite of this passive 
 holding back, and Jane's more active 
 resolution that she should not be with 
 Lucy, Penrose could not be kept from 
 her share of ministering ; for the girl 
 grew rapidly worse — the cold and ex- 
 posure, the misery of mind and body 
 telling on an exhausted frame, brought 
 on acute inflammation of the lungs and 
 pleurisy, with no remnant of strength to 
 resist them. She cried out for the young 
 lady with half-delirious obstinacy, and 
 Jane had no heart to refuse. Penrose had 
 gone to bed, but was not asleep, in her 
 little room opening out of her mother's, 
 when Jane entered, tall, grey, and gaunt 
 in her night dishabilU. 
 
 '* Penrose," she said, in a subdued voice, 
 *' it's no use giving way to your mother's 
 wish about this ; you must come along and 
 see if you can quiet that poor dying wench. 
 She is a-dying ; I'm well enough used to
 
 BRITOMART, 151 
 
 sickness to see the look on her face there's 
 no mistaking, and she calls and calls for 
 you. I'm a Christian woman, and I can't 
 refuse her any comfort, if comfort it be. 
 She's dying — hurried into her grave by 
 bad, black-hearted folks ; and maybe the 
 Lord '11 reckon in what she's bearing now 
 against the day of judgment. Come along 
 to her. Your mother's asleep ; we needn't 
 worrit her, poor soul." 
 
 Penrose had leapt out of bed, and hurried 
 on her dressing-gown before the first words 
 were well out of Jane's lips. Her long 
 thick hair hung in one great cable down 
 her back, her firm young face was set 
 into an expression of pain sternly held 
 back from emotion. She looked like a 
 picture of some early martyr, or like the 
 angel with the sword, so blended in her 
 face was deep, strong, intense compassion 
 and self-control. In another minute she 
 was bending over Lucy, whose wild, burn- 
 ing eyes turned to hers with imploring
 
 152 BRITOMART. 
 
 anguish in their brown depths, and whose 
 fluttering, dry, hot hands caught hold ot 
 hers. Jane was right ; it was Death that 
 had sharpened the thin features of the once 
 pretty, careless face, and hollowed the 
 temples and eye-sockets with the touch 
 of his fingers. Her breath came short, 
 rattling, distressed, broken by a dry, weak 
 cough, which racked without relieving the 
 wasted, quivering body. 
 
 '' Oh, Miss Hall, you was always good 
 to me — you gave me flowers and apples 
 out of the garden when you and me was 
 little girls together ; you was sorry for me 
 out there in the rain, when father shut the 
 door on me. You'll be sorry for me now '^ 
 you'll try and help me, won't you ? though 
 I'm a bad girl — a bad girl, and you be 
 good. Miss Hall, you'll be kind to me ? 
 I'm so ill— I'm so ill ! You'll be a bit 
 sorry for me, won't you, though I'm bad ? " 
 
 Penrose stroked the rough hair, and 
 pressed the poor head to her breast. Her
 
 BRITOMART, 1 53 
 
 heart seemed breaking with pity ; she 
 wanted to be omnipotent for the moment, 
 to give Lucy help and solace. Her strong, 
 brave, tender soul was all one throb of 
 pity. But words are so weak, and as for 
 
 deeds Dear God, what can we do, 
 
 in the chains of our mortal limitations, 
 when Thine unhappy little ones call upon 
 us to help them ? 
 
 " Lucy, Lucy dear, I wish I could take 
 the suffering away ! I wish I could help 
 you through ! I'd bear it for you if I 
 could. Poor girl ! poor Lucy ! Is there 
 anything I can do ? " 
 
 ** Yes, yes, only hold me — hold me. 
 You're so kind ; you're so sorry for me. 
 Jane's been praying to God for me. 
 Jane's kind, too ; but I know she thinks 
 I'm lost, and haven't got a chance to be 
 forgiven. You pray, too, for you don't 
 think I'm as bad as she does ; and you 
 and me was little girls together." 
 
 Penrose held the poor head to her
 
 154 BRITOMART. 
 
 Strongly, yet softly, half sitting, half kneel- 
 ing, and murmured words of entreaty to 
 God for pity, mixed with the tenderest 
 broken assurances of her own love. 
 
 Jane stood silent and still, her strong 
 hard face scarcely relaxed ; yet in her 
 heart there was pity for the dying girl, 
 and deep, deep affection for the other. 
 She left all ministrations to her. She did 
 not try any longer to pray or to exhort. 
 It suddenly came upon her that this God 
 to whom Penrose's heart was crying was 
 not the God she had thought she knew, 
 not the stern Judge who hardly might 
 pardon sin, even when sin melted into a 
 very fountain of tears, but the Father 
 who had made such children possible, 
 who had inspired such a great heart as 
 this girl had, who would have given her 
 own strength and safety, her own freedom 
 from pain and woe gladly for the waif and 
 outcast from her own home who had fallen 
 broken-hearted at their threshold. It
 
 BRITOMART. 1 55 
 
 seemed as if some power not her own 
 had entered into Penrose and given her 
 a miraculous healing to the bruised 
 trembling spirit just lingering on the 
 solemn twilight verge. Lucy's cries ceased. 
 She lay still, exhausted, but with a sort 
 of peace upon her, infinitely mournful, yet 
 no longer terrible to look at. Her young, 
 drawn, altered face grew greyer, more and 
 more solemn, less and less like the girl 
 the village knew and scorned, lying quietly 
 on Penrose's warm and tender breast. 
 A few broken, whispering words came 
 sobbing out of her pale lips now and then. 
 " God bless you ! you've been so good. 
 I'm not frightened now. Don't you go 
 away and leave me. I'm sorry — sorry — 
 sorry." 
 
 At last Penrose's great eyes gathered 
 slow tears, which fell one by one on the 
 girl's rough light hair. The faint clinging 
 of the dying hands on hers would not 
 relax to let her wipe them off; but they
 
 156 BRITOMART. 
 
 were the very dew of mercy, and blessed 
 the living and the dying. 
 
 Jane held aloof, not in harshness, but 
 in a curious reverence, feeling that she 
 had no part here. Only at last she came 
 gently forward to lay back the lifeless 
 head and press a kind hand on the half 
 open eyelids. Then she kissed Penrose 
 suddenly ; she had not done so for many 
 a year. 
 
 '* The Lord bless and keep thee, dear," 
 she said. ** You've a merciful heart. 
 There's no fear that you'll judge them as 
 have sinned ; the Lord has put His love 
 into you." 
 
 Mrs. Hall woke next morning with a 
 start to find Jane standing by her with a 
 curious grave look, softer than its wont, 
 on her strongly cut features. 
 
 *' That poor thing's dead," she said ; 
 '' and I do believe the Lord has took her 
 to a better home than she's ever had a 
 chance of."
 
 BRITOMART. 1 57 
 
 *' Dead, Jane ; here, in this house ? 
 Oh, Jane ! " 
 
 "Well, we can't live outside of death 
 altogether," Jane returned almost sternly. 
 " It's well as she come here, anyway. It's 
 been made as easy to her as it could be, 
 thanks to that blessed girl of yours. 
 Neither you nor me have ever known all 
 there is in Penrose, I tell you. You 
 needn't ever be afeared of her being- hard. 
 Somehow or other she's got a heart of 
 gold, and you ought to thank the Lord 
 every day of your life that she's your own, 
 and loves you. I never knew what she 
 had about her till last night, though I 
 always loved her. I tell you Penrose is 
 one in a thousand, and the good Lord is 
 bound to reward her for her loving-kind- 
 ness to that poor sinful thing that's gone 
 out of life in a moment. I humoured 
 you to keep her away all I could ; but 
 I've a heart for others beside you, and 
 I couldn't refuse her when she cried
 
 1^8 BRITOMART, 
 
 and cried for her. I'm glad to my very 
 heart as I didn't. I tell you I shall 
 never forget this last night to my dying 
 day. It's made a difference to me that 
 I shan't get over. Now, don't you fret 
 or moan over what's happened, and what's 
 got to be done. The girl's dead, and 
 there's an end of it, and you must face it. 
 You shan't have more worry over it, you 
 may depend, than Penrose and me can 
 prevent. And you shan't see her, for I 
 know it makes you bad, poor soul, for you 
 never could abide the thought or sight of 
 death."
 
 "'"^ -W%;^i'~ '" r^~ 
 
 e'ulL' 
 
 
 ^^te 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 HE episode of Lucy Evans' death 
 passed away as even terrible 
 episodes pass, leaving no visible trace, yet 
 it was not without some effects. It 
 deepened Jane's feeling for Penrose, 
 which had always been strong though 
 silent. It gave Penrose new thoughts, 
 and an intense pity for suffering, a stronger 
 desire to help. It made the neighbours 
 wonder at, yet condescend to admire, the 
 kindness of the people at the Cottage. It 
 stirred a passing remorse and shame in 
 the coarse, cruel folks, who had been less 
 than kind to the outcast of their own kin. 
 But especially Penrose's mother pondered
 
 l6o BRITOMART. 
 
 and brooded over what she never spoke 
 of and tried to put away. She was a 
 woman of a curiously tenacious memory ; 
 she had had but few events and fewer 
 changes in her life. For twenty years 
 she had vegetated in one quiet spot, lead- 
 ing a harmless, apparently absolutely 
 peaceful existence, with nothing visibly to 
 disturb or unsettle her. All the more 
 vivid, therefore, remained the few strongly 
 marked memories of her youth. Not a 
 day passed but her mind slowly revolved 
 the visions which had never grown dim, 
 misty, or far away, though a long gulf of 
 years lay between them and the apathetic 
 calm of the present. Outwardly she droned 
 through the little affairs of an unbroken 
 routine, looked after her garden, dawdled 
 on the common, did a little languid work, 
 knitted or sewed, ate and slept soundly. 
 A "poor good creature," the neighbours 
 called her, " with nothing much in her and 
 heavy to get on with." But her inward
 
 BRITOMART, l6l 
 
 life went on side by side with this tranquil 
 monotony, with its secrets, its possessions, 
 its aches and inarticulate craving, and not 
 a soul knew one syllable of the sealed 
 volume, or at least but one, and she only 
 guessed, and often guessed wrong. The 
 awful solitudes of even bare, meagre souls 
 are always impressive. It is a frightening 
 thought to dwell on, that we all inhabit, 
 each absolutely alone, a desert island set 
 in the " unplumbed, salt, estranging sea." 
 
 The one disturbing, most disturbing, 
 thought that rose again and again in this 
 silence of her own heart whenever she 
 began to revolve her daily memories, w^as 
 that suggestive word '' change," which the 
 lawyer had thrown out in their last inter- 
 view. " Change " she dreaded, shrank 
 from it, yet she felt it in the air, she 
 looked out for it, trembling. What could 
 he have meant ? And what change could 
 there be that would not confound and 
 shake her into terror ? She did not often 
 
 VOL. I. II
 
 1 62 BRITOMART. 
 
 pray with any reality, though, out of habit, 
 3he repeated nightly a mechanical form. 
 The great event of her life had shaken to 
 pieces the old ignorant faith of her girl- 
 hood, and she had never had power 
 enough to put the broken bits coherently 
 together. But one prayer rose again and 
 again with an obstinate yet hopeless desire, 
 that nothing might disturb the life to 
 which her timid soul had grown used, that 
 she might not have to find out any new 
 way of existence, but be left in the half 
 peace which was her substitute for happi- 
 ness. She hated innovations, even of the 
 smallest kind. Any alteration in the 
 mode of living into which she had some- 
 how shaken, frightened and upset her. 
 
 Jane and Penrose — the only people who 
 had any real influence on her mind — were 
 careful to save and spare her, tacitly 
 agreed on a kind of indulgent petting 
 which ^either ever defined or sought any 
 reason for.
 
 BRITOMART. 1 63 
 
 *' Your mother likes this ; your mother 
 wants that." These phrases were enough 
 to make Penrose give up ungrudgingly, 
 even when her mother's wishes came in 
 the way, all the relaxations and pur- 
 suits which she mi^ht have found for 
 herself even in dull little Copsley, if it 
 had been possible to her to put her own 
 desires first. She had longings, like other 
 girls ; she wanted, as all ardent young 
 people must, to stretch her cramped wings 
 and take a flight into freedom. She felt, 
 though without openly complaining of 
 them, the hampering limits of her straitened 
 life. Her old artist friend urged her to 
 make a real pursuit of art. She had 
 enough in her, he said, if she gave her 
 time to it, to make something as satis- 
 factory of it in a small way as other 
 smaller painters. As it was she let every- 
 thing interfere, and could not get beyond 
 the amateurish. Penrose always shook 
 her head sadly enough, and answered
 
 164 BRITOMART, 
 
 briefly that nothing more was possible to 
 her. At every turn, when she tried to 
 move in any direction, those invisible 
 threads held her which her mother had 
 woven round her like the witch Maimuna. 
 If she strained, and tried to break them, 
 they would pull on that mother's heart 
 and hurt her. She must have what she 
 wanted, whatever Penrose went without. 
 So it was that Penrose had no girl friends. 
 She would have liked to know what 
 people of her own age thought and felt. 
 She had sometimes a wish to throw off the 
 gravity which had got to be a habit, and be 
 merry, to laugh at nothing, and " frivol " a 
 little with the rest. But " mother did not 
 like to have people in," and naturally no 
 one went out of their way to run after 
 Penrose, who had nothing to offer in 
 return. Mrs. Folliott had asked her to 
 working parties at the Vicarage, and was 
 condescendingly kind in her bland aris- 
 tocratic way when it struck her ; but the
 
 BRITOMART. 1 65 
 
 working parties were not lively. A dull 
 book was read aloud in a high monotone 
 by the vicar, who could not help intoning 
 even in private life, and the girls who were 
 intimate gossiped In whispers. Cella and 
 Grace Folliott, rather pretty, flirty, proud 
 girls, did not unbend to Penrose Hall, 
 who was dressed as plainly as a nun, had 
 no small-talk, and was not ''in society," 
 in short, at all, though no one ever 
 ventured to call her common — no one could 
 do that. One glance at her clear-cut 
 noble face was enough, and her sincere 
 rich contralto voice had a refinement in 
 every accent that the most casual hearer 
 could not miss. No, she was not vulgar, 
 only just not get-on-able-wlth ; not used 
 to the society shibboleth, the everyday 
 topics of ordinary young ladies. There 
 was nothing to go upon with her, and the 
 other girls were just civil, and no more. 
 The half-proud, half-pathetic look in her 
 clear grey eyes did not appeal to rather
 
 1 66 BRITOMART. 
 
 ordinary minds such as these were. So, 
 after a while, Penrose left off coming to 
 the working parties, partly because of the 
 feeling of loneliness she could not fight 
 off altogether, partly because her mother 
 passively opposed them, not openly giving 
 any objection, but hinting and hindering 
 in her vague hesitating way. 
 
 Now and then Penrose drank tea with 
 Miss Babb, and did little services for her. 
 The garrulous, active, managing old lady, 
 with all her faults of unbridled gossiping 
 and absolute density of the finer feelings, 
 was good-natured enough, and had a 
 neighbourly liking for the cottage people, 
 though she still maintained that there was 
 "something odd" about Mrs. Hall's 
 secretiveness. She took an interest in 
 most people, though not always a friendly 
 one ; and Penrose sometimes found it a 
 relief to sit an hour or two in the prim 
 old-fashioned little sitting-room, full of 
 the carefully preserved relics of a very
 
 BRITOMART, 167 
 
 unaesthetic youth — terribly painted hand- 
 screens, worsted-work stools, bead cushions, 
 and the like ; to chat or to read some 
 novel aloud, with a running comment from 
 Miss Babb, who liked the sound of her 
 own voice, and believed in her own critical 
 powers to an amusing extent. It was 
 provoking to the old lady that she never 
 could succeed in pumping her girl visitor ; 
 and, either because she had inherited 
 her mother's reserve, or because she 
 knew nothing, had no interesting bits of 
 information to give about that voiceless 
 past of her mothers which had always 
 puzzled and baffled Miss Babb's inquiring 
 mind. To be sure she had found out 
 that the quarterly visits to town were paid 
 to a solicitor called Hamley in Gray's Inn, 
 but that was not much to go upon. Pen- 
 rose believed he was her mother's trustee. 
 Beyond this Miss Babb could not get. 
 Penrose did not even know the amount of 
 her mother's income. Apparently they
 
 1 68 BRITOMART. 
 
 had not a relation in the world — at any 
 rate, Penrose knew of neither uncle, aunt, 
 nor cousin ; her mother's parents, she had 
 been told, were dead. Their name had 
 been Chegwidden ; her grandmother s 
 maiden name was in the old cookery 
 book, '' Elizabeth Ames." She believed 
 her grandfather had been a sea captain — 
 her mother often spoke of him with affec- 
 tion. Her mother she had not loved so 
 much ; she was a hard woman, she often 
 said. These few meagre facts were all 
 that Miss Babb had ever gleaned from 
 Penrose, and she could only supplement 
 them by her imagination. 
 
 '* Chegwidden ! That's a Cornish name, 
 I know ; and, to be sure, so, I suppose, 
 that odd name of yours is — Penrose ! I've 
 often wondered at it. Tre, Pol, and 
 Pen, they're all Cornish. D'ye know, 
 child, where your mother lived before she 
 was married ? " 
 
 ** No ; but I believe it was in the south 
 or west."
 
 BRITOMART, 169 
 
 ''Cornwall, no doubt. Well, that's 
 something to know. It's odd, isn't it, 
 that you've no relations ? " 
 
 " Very odd," said Penrose calmly ; and 
 somehow, as she looked straight at the old 
 lady with those honest eyes of hers that 
 had nothing to hide and no shame to con- 
 ceal, Miss Babb let her researches drop. 
 
 It happened, fortunately for Mrs. Hall, 
 as it turned out, that Penrose was spend- 
 ing the evening in this way with Miss 
 Babb when the postman called at Heath- 
 side Cottage and left a thick letter. It 
 was very seldom letters came, or anything 
 but a tradesman's circular, to the house, 
 and Mrs. Hall trembled all over as Jane 
 silently put it in her hand, and stood by, 
 as if waiting for news. 
 
 Mrs. Hall looked at it first vaguely, 
 then with a growing disturbance, shrinking 
 from opening it, as it was her habit to 
 shrink from any new thing that might 
 hide a terror.
 
 1 70 BRITOMART. 
 
 '' It's from Mr. Hamley, I believe," she 
 said faintly. 
 
 *' Open it and see," Jane returned, in her 
 strong voice, regardless of the tremor 
 that she was apt to scorn. *' Where's the 
 sense of staring at the outside like that ? 
 What can harm you in a letter from Mr. 
 Hamley ? " 
 
 '* I — I don't know; but I'm afraid, 
 Jane ! " 
 
 '' Pooh ! don't be so skeary, woman ! 
 Open it, or give it me." 
 
 Mrs. Hall slowly tore open the enve- 
 lope, as if she suspected it contained an 
 explosive, slowly read it, and uttered a 
 cry. There was an enclosure in a 
 cramped, curious hand. 
 
 " What is it } Can't you speak ? " Jane 
 asked, fiercely impatient. " What does 
 the man say .^ Who's the other from .^ " 
 
 "Read it. Oh dear, oh dear! I was 
 afraid there was some change coming — 
 something to upset me. Read it — can
 
 BRITOMART. 1 71 
 
 you ? — aloud. There's such a mist, I can't 
 be sure of what he does say ; and I am so 
 frightened. Read it, Jane." 
 
 " If I can," Jane said doubtfully ; " but 
 it's none so easy." 
 
 She spelled out slowly word by word, 
 while Mrs. Hall sat upright, white and 
 shaking, with the other letter clutched 
 tightly between her hands — 
 
 " Dear Madam, 
 
 " Mr. Trevenna has asked me to forward 
 enclosed. Therein you will see the proposition he 
 makes to you, which you will allow me, in your own 
 interests and in that of your daughter, to urge you to 
 accept without delay. If you do so^ I will take all 
 trouble of arrangement off your hands, and make 
 every preparation for your stay in town. I should 
 advise your coming thither early next week, and will, 
 if you permit, engage nice quiet rooms for you near 
 my chambers. Every detail shall be carefully studied 
 for your comfort, with a view to sparing you any 
 disagreeables. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 "Thomas Hamley." 
 
 ''Well, that's all French till we see 
 what the other one says," Jane said, when
 
 172 BRITOMART. 
 
 she had laboured through the short note 
 with some difficulty. *' He seems to write 
 very civil ; but I don t know what he 
 means. Don't be foolish, now ; open it 
 quick, and let us get this over as soon as 
 may be." 
 
 " I feel as if I couldn't, Jane." 
 
 " Shall I '^. Will you give it me, 
 Mary ? " The servant woman had seated 
 herself beside the other. She put her 
 large, brown, capable hand on her shoulder 
 with an air of protection ; her voice had 
 grown gentle. But the weak, trembling 
 fingers kept their grasp of this other 
 letter. A sort of shudder and sob ran 
 through her. 
 
 '' No ; I will in a minute, Jane. I 
 haven't had a letter from him for twenty 
 years ! 
 
 '' More shame to him," muttered the 
 other, in a harsh guttural voice. 
 
 '' I'm afraid what he may say. I 
 shouldn't have known the handwriting,
 
 BRITOMART. 173 
 
 Jane ; it's all altered. Mr. Hamley said 
 he'd been very ill." 
 
 " He's no young man. Don't work 
 yourself up over it, now ; it ain't worth 
 while your grieving. It's over, Mary, over 
 and dead like last year's leaves. Read 
 it ; maybe it's nought but a bit of law 
 business. There's no likelihood of more 
 than that betwixt you two." 
 
 Still shuddering a little, as if with cold, 
 Mrs. Hall opened the enclosure. She 
 did not this time give it to Jane to read, 
 her eyes slowly followed the crabbed 
 lines, written with fingers cramped with 
 pain ; and then she folded it up, and sat 
 without a word, as if she were turned to 
 stone by the terrifying surprise of what 
 she had slowly made out. 
 
 " Come, tell me what he says," Jane 
 cried, angry with the silence, shaking the 
 shoulder slightly, on which her hand rested. 
 
 ** Don't," the other moaned ; *' let me 
 think — let me be quiet."
 
 174 BRITOMART. 
 
 Another minute passed, and then she 
 began to falter out a word, suddenly 
 checked, as she started up ; then seized 
 her letters, and hurried to the door. 
 
 "Hush, hush! That's Pen at the 
 garden gate ; I can't see her ! Jane, I'm 
 going to bed. Tell her my — my head 
 aches ; she's not to come in to me. Get 
 her her supper, and, when she's busy, 
 come, and I'll tell you what it is ; but I 
 can't see Pen. Mind you don't let her in 
 my room." 
 
 She hastened stealthily upstairs, and 
 Jane, after her wont, w^ith an inward 
 protest, carried out her wishes.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HIS was the letter which Mrs. Hall 
 had read. It began abruptly — 
 
 " I have been for some time much occupied in 
 thought over the past, and our former relations to- 
 gether. I treated you badly, I spoilt your life, and 
 you have every reason to hate me. I am very ill now, 
 and not likely to last long, and I think I should be 
 glad to set things as far right as is possible after a 
 life of wrong. If you are willing, I will give you the 
 name and position of my wife. Hamley will arrange 
 all details with you. After my death you would have 
 my property, and the girl after you. I am aware it 
 is a very unsatisfactory atonement at the best ; but I 
 think you will gain more than you lose. You need 
 not write to me, I should prefer all communications 
 passing through Hamley ; if you agree, just notify the 
 same to him, and I will meet you in town the day you 
 fix. I will endeavour to spare you throughout as 
 much as I can. 
 
 "Yours, etc., 
 
 '* Richard Trevenna."
 
 176 BRITOMART. 
 
 While Penrose was at her simple 
 supper, with a book beside her, Jane stole 
 upstairs into the darkened room, where 
 Mrs. Hall lay, clutching the letter in 
 one hand, the other on her heart, which 
 beat audibly in heavy thuds under it, her 
 face was turned to the wall. The servant 
 — if she can be thus called — sat down on 
 the bed, and put her hand, with an anxious 
 solicitude that was as nearly tender as her 
 manner permitted, on the burning forehead. 
 
 '' I expect your head do ache truly 
 enough," she said. '* How it throbs ; and 
 your poor heart, too ! Come, Mary, take 
 courage ; tell me what there is in that 
 letter to make you in this twitter. But, 
 poor soul, you never had a mite of spirit ! 
 Now tell us — it'll ease you." 
 
 Mrs. Hall turned towards her, so that 
 her whispering voice should reach the 
 ear bent down to her. 
 
 '* Jane, I feel as if — I don't know how 
 I feel — stunned, dazed like. I'm not sure
 
 BRITOMART. 1 77 
 
 I'm awake ; it's knocked me over. He 
 
 wants — he asks — he says " Her voice 
 
 failed, and broke altogether. 
 
 ** There now, there ! " the other said, 
 as if she were soothing a child in a 
 nightmare. " Try and get quiet ; there 
 can't be nothing to scare you so. Why 
 should you trouble about what he's got 
 to say to you ? You're not a girl now ; 
 he can't get a hold of your life any more." 
 
 '* Jane, he says he'll marry me ! " The 
 words were jerked out with a kind of 
 spasm, and she caught hold of the firm 
 bony arm that was near her, and clung to 
 it as for support. 
 
 '• Marry you ! " Strong astonishment was 
 in the two words. '* And what for — now, 
 Mary ? It's years too late for the likes 
 of that ! " 
 
 " He's ill, not going to live long ; he 
 says it's to make amends." The words 
 were barely audible. 
 
 •' Make amends ! " Jane gave a short 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 178 BRITOMART. 
 
 laugh, harsh as a saw. ''Amends to a 
 woman for over twenty years' shame ! 
 That's a good notion." 
 
 '' Hush. He says he knows he spoilt 
 my life ; but, after all, I won't be sure of 
 that. I've not been so miserable. I think 
 I'd be no better off married, Jane. 
 I think I'll say things shall stay as they 
 are." The low, faltering words were 
 hesitated out as if she felt they had no 
 force, and knew what her listener would 
 say. 
 
 '' What does he want to do it for ? " 
 Jane asked sternly, with abrupt directness. 
 
 " He would leave me his property, and 
 Penrose after me — I'd take his name. 
 But we are very comfortable — we don't 
 want more money, do we .^ I'd better 
 not change." 
 
 '' Don't be a fool," the other returned 
 almost fiercely ; '* you've got to do it, 
 whether you like or no. It's late in the 
 day, God knows. There's no putting things 
 straight after what's come and gone ; but
 
 BRITOMART, 1 79 
 
 to die an honest woman, with a right to 
 your wedded name, and to leave the girl 
 well off — you've got to do it, Mary ! I've 
 stuck to you and fended you ; but I've 
 never called wrong right, or blame praise. 
 I never thought to live to see you in the 
 place you'd ought to have had then. I 
 say you shall marry him. Why, think 
 of this — if you think of nothing else — 
 suppose the man died without making 
 provision for you and her, where'd you 
 be then ? How'd you get on without a 
 home or a shilling ? If 'twas me I'd make 
 a living anywhere ; but you — you couldn't 
 do nothing now to earn a crust. I say 
 you must do this, and thank the Lord for 
 giving you the chance." 
 
 *' But, Jane," the frightened, quivering 
 voice wailed out, '' I can't bear to go 
 through with it — to see him again, after 
 twenty years, and meet him so — to stand 
 and be married — me with my grey hair — 
 me with my grown girl. Jane, I can't — 
 I can't have Pen know."
 
 l8o BRITOMART. 
 
 '' ' Can't/ ' can't/ always * can't ' this and 
 that !" the woman cried, starting Impatiently 
 away from the clutching hands, and almost 
 stamping as she spoke. " I'm sick of your 
 cowardly spirit ! Cant ! I say you can, 
 you shall, you must ! I've borne with you, 
 worked for you, given myself up to you — 
 if you let your faint-heartedness deny this 
 chance for bettering your life and Pen's, 
 I'll never help you no more — I'll wash my 
 hands of you. Pen must know every- 
 thing, I say — everything. Either you or 
 me shall tell her. You shan't deceive 
 that girl, that has no guile in her. I'll 
 hear no more of this fooling ! " 
 
 Mrs. Hall was crying, not bitterly — that 
 was not her way — not noisily, without sobs. 
 She could only murmur In reply, without 
 a touch of anger, that Jane was very hard. 
 
 '' Hard ! Ay, I never set up to be one 
 of the soft ones ; 'twas always you was 
 that, Mary Chegwidden, always the one 
 to coax and wheedle, while Jane got the
 
 BRITOMART. l8t 
 
 rough side, and gave back hard for hard. 
 But, all the same, I've cared for you and 
 your good, and I'm caring now. Think 
 of it, when you come to die and appear 
 before the Lord, when you meet the father 
 who thought the world of you, and was 
 mercifully taken before he knew your 
 shame — think of the difference it'll make 
 if you can stand up before him and say, ' I 
 died a wedded wife, father, with a right to 
 a name.' I'm an ignorant woman, maybe, 
 but I know what disgrace means, and I 
 felt like to die when I found out that 
 Mary Chegwidden had brought it on her 
 father's honest memory." 
 
 " Hush, hush, then — oh, hush ! I'll try 
 and bear it, if I must — if you'll not talk of 
 deserting me, Jane ! Only don't say that 
 I must let Pen know ! Why should she ? 
 Of course I cannot leave her here — of 
 course she must know what I go to London 
 for. She must hear that I'm married ; but 
 I can say that it was some one I knew
 
 1 8 2 BRITOMART. 
 
 long ago, before she was born ; she needn't 
 hear it is her father." 
 
 '' She must," Jane answered inflexibly. 
 *' If you won't tell her, I will. She must 
 know everything." 
 
 There was no more resistance, no reply 
 but the soft weeping. Mrs. Hall was too 
 much used to being ruled in great things 
 to fight with the iron will to which she had 
 been wont to yield all her life long. If 
 Jane said she must do anything she knew 
 it was inevitable, whatever of terror or pain 
 it might involve. At any rate she might 
 delay a little — the call for action was not 
 immediate ; at least she had some hours, 
 a night, part of a day — before she must 
 bring down the overwhelming, distracting 
 torrent on her poor weak head. Jane 
 grew gentle as the tears flowed, and no 
 more words came. She brought tea, and 
 made her drink it ; she soothed her with 
 little silent services, keeping Penrose, by 
 various devices, away from her mother.
 
 BRITOMART. 1 83 
 
 At last the room was quite dark and 
 silent, the other two in bed, and Mrs. 
 Hall found herself alone with her memories, 
 a crowdinof thronof that clamoured all 
 together for admission, picture after picture, 
 more or less distinct, of the long procession 
 of years since that early innocence of 
 childhood and first youth, which was sweet 
 and fragrant still to the woman of forty- 
 three. 
 
 First rose that vision out of the past, the 
 vision of the Cornish girl at home in the 
 little house by the unresting sea. How 
 fond she had been of every corner of the 
 fishing village ; how wild and gay her 
 childhood was, when she ran barefoot on 
 the crisp shining sand, or over the weed- 
 embroidered rocks, where the wet mussels 
 shone blue when the sunshine rested on 
 them, where the waves fretted themselves 
 for ever in creamy foam against the hard- 
 hearted cliffs, and the gulls screamed up 
 above in the grey of the sky ! She had
 
 184 BRITOMART, 
 
 been a happy child then, at home, though 
 ''mother" was difficult to get on with at 
 times, and apt to scold over wet clothes 
 and spoilt shoes. Though Jane had always 
 a will of her own, and was too old to be 
 a playfellow, there were plenty of other 
 girls and boys to race and shout with, to 
 help look for lobsters and crabs, and to 
 catch prawns in the pools. And when 
 Captain Chegwidden came home it was 
 a gala time. Molly had loved her hand- 
 some, good-natured sailor father with all 
 her heart ; he never gave her a rough 
 word, she was " his pretty maid," his 
 darling. He always stood between her and 
 a scolding. She went to school, and was 
 quick enough at her books. They were 
 well-to-do folks, in their way, while Captain 
 Chegwidden lived, and Molly did not 
 know what hardship or trouble meant till 
 she was fifteen years old, and her father 
 and the boat went down one dreary 
 October night. Then poverty knocked
 
 BRITOMART. 185 
 
 at the door. Jane went to service, and 
 Mary had to stay at home and help her 
 mother, to leave off both school and play, 
 to fetch and carry, sew and clean, while all 
 the while her pretty face grew prettier, and 
 no one cared except a sailor boy here and 
 there, who carried on a sort of rough 
 courtship which the girl shrank from, half 
 proudly and half shyly. She had been a 
 little too well educated for them, and was 
 not ready or bold enough with her tongue 
 for the kind of flirtations they liked ; and 
 her mother was strict, and kept frivolity 
 at arm's length. Mrs. Chegwidden was a 
 severe Methodist, and in her case, sorrow 
 had produced a stricter rigour and more 
 reserve of manner. She had never 
 been a genial woman, and naturally was 
 much less beloved than many a worse 
 one. This was a sombre bit of life, the 
 three years between fifteen and eighteen, 
 which ended all childish days and joys for 
 Mary Chegwidden, and brought none of
 
 1 86 BRITOMART. 
 
 the delights which succeed them in happier 
 girlhoods. 
 
 Then another picture rose before the 
 silence and darkness of the night, and 
 the unsleeping eyes of the mind saw the 
 first scene that heralded the crisis of her 
 fate. A young Oxford man came one 
 summer, five and twenty years ago, to 
 lodge at Mrs. Chegwidden's cottage. He 
 was a dark, handsome fellow, roving about 
 the world to please himself, and had taken 
 a whim in his head to revisit the country 
 from which his ancestors had sprung. 
 He was interested in antiquity, in old 
 tradition, in the ancient legends and 
 architecture of Cornwall. He was clever 
 and bright and full of life ; some one quite 
 different from anybody Molly Chegwidden 
 had ever known. He treated her with a 
 light, easy courtesy, which made her some- 
 how think of herself as she had never done 
 before, and discover that she had a strong 
 love of admiration, and a great desire to
 
 BRITOMART. 1 87 
 
 please — at any rate, to iplease a gentleman 
 who was so good-looking and so kind, 
 whose eyes told her, if his lips didn't, 
 that she was the prettiest girl he had 
 seen for a long while ; who was ridicu- 
 lously lavish and generous with money, 
 satisfying Mrs. Chegwidden's wildest 
 wishes in that respect ; who brought a 
 breeze of freshness in with him, who 
 had always something amusing or odd 
 to say, so that one felt really alive, not 
 as she often did, half so, with the best 
 of her mind asleep. 
 
 It was the brightest, sweetest, yet most 
 distracting month while he stayed, and 
 for the first time in her life the girl's 
 torpid heart awoke and thrilled into vivid 
 vitality. There never was anybody like 
 Mr. Trevenna; after knowing him there 
 was no looking at the sailors or the 
 traders of Trelewen. She was a soft- 
 spoken, soft-eyed, pretty young thing then 
 — the middle-aged woman remembered
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 Still how she had looked in a hat with 
 red ribbons in it, with her crisp dark hair 
 curling about her brown smiling face, and 
 how Mr. Trevenna had gazed at her, with 
 his bright observant eyes soft with a new 
 expression — she remembered even a little 
 whisper, '' Bravo, Molly, the hat and the 
 face together are quite too irresistible." 
 It was Sunday night, and the boys and 
 girls went on the headland together after 
 their wont on summer Sundays — every 
 Jill had her Jack except Mary Cheg- 
 widden, and she walked alone till Mr. 
 Trevenna overtook her, and persuaded 
 her to scramble down to the rocks to 
 watch the tide come in. Oh, happy day, 
 happy day that never came again, and 
 had no perfect fellow in all the years 
 that followed, or all that went before ! 
 
 There was no looking forwards or back- 
 wards, but a pause, a bliss, that weighed 
 and considered nothing, and seemed to 
 mean no more than just the short span
 
 BRITOMART. 1 89 
 
 of inconsequent delight. Mary had no 
 plans, no expectations, no fears, hardly 
 any hopes. She only knew that she was 
 eighteen years old, that she looked prettier 
 than she ever had done before, and that 
 the most perfect companion in the world 
 sat beside her, and made the time pass 
 like a sunbeam. To be sure, like all happy 
 hours, this had to be paid for. Directly 
 after, it seemed to her, came the miserable 
 day of parting, and the blankness of going 
 back to her work-a-day world again with 
 all the zest of living out of it, nothing but 
 sulkily done labour slurred through, 
 constant scolding, and a dreary sense that 
 there was nothing to be looked forward 
 to till next summer, when Mr. Trevenna 
 would come again. And that summer had 
 come, and Mr. Trevenna too ; a little less 
 delightful perhaps at first, rather more 
 guarded and distant, not so apt to meet 
 her wistful eyes, more careful to prevent 
 any suspicion of a flirtation. But Fate
 
 IQO BRITOMART. 
 
 had been too strong for him and her — they 
 hke to call it fate who stumble over their 
 path of life. Her mother had been suddenly- 
 taken ill, and, after only a day's suffering, 
 had died. 
 
 Mary Chegwidden was quite alone in 
 the world, for her only sister was out 
 of reach, having gone abroad with her 
 mistress. Alone, frightened, dependent, 
 clinging to him as if he were the only 
 friend left her, Richard Trevenna was 
 not too particular in the modes of his 
 consolation ; he had strong passions, and 
 took the usual cynical masculine view of 
 pretty, inferior, yielding girls. When 
 Mrs. Chegwidden was buried he paid all 
 her debts, left the cottage and furniture to 
 be sold, and took the daughter of the dead 
 woman away with him to see something 
 of a new, intoxicating world. Mary never, 
 then or now, was able to feel the righteous 
 wrath of a woman deceived and seduced. 
 Indignation and self-assertion were alike
 
 BRITOMART. 191 
 
 impossible to her plastic, timid, unimagi- 
 native soul. She simply gave way directly 
 to love and to him ; she hardly expected 
 him to marry her, though, as she was really 
 at heart a good girl and a modest one, 
 with absolutely nothing of the meretricious 
 in her simple nature, she was ashamed of 
 having done what her dead father and 
 mother would have thought a bitter 
 diso^race. 
 
 If either had been alive, she probably 
 would never have yielded ; but there was 
 no one to care, and be shamed, except 
 that elder sister, whom she had almost 
 forgotten. It did not seem to matter 
 much to any one, and she loved Mr. Tre- 
 venna in a humble, unexacting, adoring 
 fashion. He could not do anything wicked 
 in her eyes. She was just the woman 
 whose proper destiny had been to be a 
 quiet, comfortable, indolent matron, con- 
 tent with husband and children whatever 
 they might be, slipping gently through
 
 192 BRITOMART. 
 
 life without being of much importance 
 anywhere. She had never got her proper 
 footing since she missed this fate. It had 
 been very dehghtful at first ; they travelled 
 about for a year, and then settled down 
 in Paris for a time, just for a whim of 
 Trevenna's. Here Penrose was born ; 
 here change again — the thing of all 
 others she naturally feared — came upon 
 her, and here she ended the dream of an 
 impossible happiness. 
 
 No one but Richard Trevenna knew 
 what made it hateful to him to go on as 
 he had been doing. It had not taken 
 many months, it is true, to put an end to 
 his first raptures and his transitory passion 
 for Mary Chegwidden. There was not 
 enough in her to change passion into love. 
 He was kind to her, fond of her, con- 
 siderate about her long after he left off 
 beins: her lover at heart. But there was 
 an external influence beyond this altera- 
 tion in feeling which made him break with
 
 BRITOMART. 19; 
 
 the connection, something which not only 
 severed this, but also completely destroyed 
 the illusion and charm of existence, which 
 made him the pronounced cynic, misan- 
 thrope, and bitter man of the world which 
 he became from that time. He had never 
 been a man of high principle, or one who 
 followed high ideals ; but something malign 
 and cruel entered into his life then that 
 had never been there before. He had 
 wronged one woman, and another avenged 
 her. Who it was, what it was, Mary never 
 knew ; she only felt and suffered by the 
 results. She suffered, but not as acutely 
 as another kind of disposition would ; her 
 nature seemed too soft to be broken ; she 
 did not feel an overpowering surprise, or 
 an unendurable despair ; she had her 
 bonnie little girl, in whose companionship 
 there was no sting. She had grown 
 frightened and oppressed by Trevenna's 
 moods, his uncaressing coldness, his sar- 
 casms, his aloofness. She knew, without 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 BRITOMART. 
 
 bitterness towards him for the knowledge, 
 that she was not the woman to satisfy or 
 keep his heart ; it was a grief, but not a 
 cruel one, to come to an end of the brief 
 dream that this love might last. She still 
 cared for him, for though her feelings 
 were not intense, they were constant, but 
 his presence no longer gave her happi- 
 ness ; on the contrary, she was uneasy 
 and miserable with him under the per- 
 petual sense of inadequacy and dissatis- 
 faction. Her maternal instinct was the 
 strongest passion left in her ; the rest 
 seemed all exhausted or frightened away. 
 She acquiesced with floods of tears, but 
 without a word of remonstrance or blame 
 to his sudden decree of separation. He 
 was what the world calls generous in his 
 provision for her ; she should never know 
 the poverty again in which he found hen 
 He probably satisfied his conscience with 
 this at the time. He parted with her 
 easily enough. His child he had never
 
 BRITOMART. 1 95 
 
 much noticed; he did not care for children. 
 She was healthy and quiet, and her mother 
 doted on her, that was all he knew. 
 
 After this parting, when for a time 
 Mary Chegwidden, who had taken the 
 name of Mrs. Hall, was staying in London, 
 circumstances strangely threw her into 
 communication with her sister Jane. From 
 that time they had never been parted. 
 Jane was angry and grieved to find what 
 had happened, but not surprised. The 
 people at Trelewen had told her of Mary's 
 disappearance with '' the gentleman ; " the 
 rough Cornish woman had never hoped to 
 learn that her sister was *' an honest wife." 
 She felt the disgrace, and reproached 
 Mary at first with outspoken harshness ; 
 but there was no keeping up wrath with 
 a gentle fluid creature who had never 
 a word to answer it with, who only cried 
 and was silent. 
 
 Jane had no one else to love ; she liked 
 to command and arrange, she had a
 
 196 BRITOMART. 
 
 Strongly clannish feeling for her own. She 
 took up her abode with her sister when 
 she moved into the cottage at Copsley 
 which Mr. Hamley had to let, but as 
 her servant, she insisted on that, folks 
 should not talk if she could help it. Mary 
 must pass as a respectable w^idow lady 
 with a maid. She had rubbed off a good 
 deal of her rustic plainness, and had 
 always been better educated and more 
 refined than her elder sister, who had not 
 had her early chances, and was altogether 
 cast In a harder, rougher mould. In 
 private Jane might rule and scold when 
 she liked ; before people she was the 
 familiar old servant only. 
 
 This had been Mary Chegwidden's life. 
 It was not exactly a tragedy, though a 
 woman of Intense feeling might have made 
 one of it. It was, but for one great 
 event, a quiet monotony, and she had 
 grown accustomed to it, and, in her way, 
 happy. Yet there was one element of
 
 BRITOMART. 1 97 
 
 tragedy, one great terror that passed 
 beyond the borders of the commonplace. 
 This was the dread with which the mere 
 idea of Penrose knowing all her past had 
 inspired her. Penrose was her conscience, 
 her soul. Left to herself, she would have 
 calmly accepted her position, and been 
 little troubled by remorse or shame. Her 
 conscience had never been a restless or 
 uneasy one, but her instinctive under- 
 standing of Penrose's widely different 
 nature put a new aspect on everything, 
 and made her vaguely realize how her 
 daughter would have looked upon her 
 past. The strong, courageous, uncom- 
 promising spirit which had come like a 
 child of another world into her life, the 
 absolute truthfulness and purity of the 
 nature she could only understand by affec- 
 tion, was a new revelation. If Penrose 
 turned against her she should just lie 
 down and die. Yet Jane said Penrose 
 must know, that she must go through this
 
 198 BRITOMART. 
 
 double ordeal, must meet Richard Tre- 
 venna once more after all this waste of 
 years, must let Penrose into the secret 
 which she had hoped to carry away with 
 her into the silence of the grave. And 
 if Jane was inexorable, as she knew too 
 well she would be, there was no help for 
 it. She lay all night awake, staring blankly 
 out into the dark, keeping her vigil with 
 memory and fear, poor soul, till her ex- 
 hausted body could bear the watch no 
 longer, and sleep came — sleep like a 
 child's, undreaming and unbroken. 
 
 Jane came in to call her in the morning 
 as usual, but let her sleep on. 
 
 '' Poor girl ! " she said, forgetting that 
 the soft curly hair on the pillow was mixed 
 with grey, and with a sudden tenderness of 
 pity ; *' let her sleep her fill. It'll be none 
 so bright a waking, and Molly was never 
 the one to stand against trouble. But it's 
 for the best. It's got to be — and soon. 
 That man must have his answer to-day."
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 RS. HALL did not come downstairs 
 that morning, but Penrose was not 
 anxious. She had slept badly, Jane said, 
 with one of her headaches and a little 
 palpitation, and was taking what rest she 
 could. She pretty often stayed in bed in 
 the early part of the day. Her constitu- 
 tion was languid, and though her health 
 was not bad, her strength was never great, 
 and she easily sank into a kind of 
 lymphatic indolence. Penrose had enough 
 to do to keep her busy. It was raining, 
 and she could not go to sketch on the 
 common as she intended ; so, when her 
 household tasks were over, she set up the
 
 200 BRITOMART. 
 
 easel in the light, unfurnished little room 
 which she used for her own purposes. 
 But she had not begun to paint when Jane 
 came in rather slowly, with something in 
 her face that struck the girl with a kind 
 of vague fear, something grave, uncertain, 
 embarrassed. 
 
 " What is it, Jane ? " she asked her 
 quickly, letting her brush fall as she 
 turned to face her. '' Mother's not ill ?" 
 
 " No, she's not ill — only a bit disturbed 
 and unhappy. I've something to say to 
 you, Penrose, that your mother's fain to 
 leave to my telling. Tve tried my best 
 to persuade her to say it for herself; but 
 you know just how she is — so easily 
 frightened, and so chary to speak. Come, 
 sit by me here, and I'll try and tell you, as 
 well as I can, what you've got to know. 
 You'll not be hard on your mother. Pen, 
 whatever's been and over, will you 
 now ?" 
 
 The unusual pleading and indecision in
 
 BRITOMART. 20I 
 
 the voice that was apt to be so short and 
 abruptly resolute startled Penrose. She 
 fixed an intently earnest gaze on the dark 
 eyes that sank under hers as they had 
 never done before. 
 
 '' Why should I ? How could I be 
 hard on mother?" the clear voice said, 
 with a thrill in it. '' You know well 
 enough that I never could, Jane. She's 
 not afraid of that, surely, surely not ! " 
 
 ** She is afraid — mortal afraid, poor 
 soul ! But I tell her she needn't be. 
 You'll not turn against her whatever — I 
 know you'll not. But it's a difficult task 
 to begin — a sore thing to tell of a woman 
 to her own daughter. I'd fain have let it 
 alone, but since she will have it so, she 
 must. You know who your mother's 
 father was ? " . 
 
 " Yes. Captain Chegwidden." 
 
 *' Ay. Her name was — is — Mary 
 Chegwidden ; but what you don't know 
 is, that he was my father too."
 
 202 BRITOMART. 
 
 " Your father ! You are my mother's 
 sister ! " 
 
 " I am your mother's only sister. We 
 were born of the same father but of 
 another mother. I'm more than ten 
 )^ears older. We were both born to 
 Trelewen, and bred by the sea that 
 wrecked him and began our troubles. 
 I've passed as your servant ; but I'm 3^our 
 flesh and blood, and the Lord knows I've 
 loved you, and shall love you till I die. 
 You two are all the kin I have. But I'm 
 only telling you this to make you feel as 
 I've a right to speak of things that go 
 deep in both your lives ; so as you needn't 
 feel shamed by my knowing all I do, more 
 than you've known. The time's come 
 now when you can't go on any longer in 
 ignorance. It'll hurt you, child, and I 
 hate to hurt you ; but there's no other 
 way. You know nothing of your father 
 — not a word ; she's kept silence to you. 
 You think him dead."
 
 BRITOMART. 203 
 
 *' And he is not dead ? " 
 
 " No ; he's not dead. Your mother 
 has been called a widow — called Mrs. 
 Hall ; but she's neither one nor the other. 
 Your father's name is Trevenna, Richard 
 Trevenna, and he's alive this day." 
 
 " Trevenna ! Is that my name } " 
 
 Jane breathed hard. A curious look of 
 compunction and pity came over her stern 
 features. She paused a moment before 
 she said, in a suppressed and altered voice, 
 " No, my dear ; you've no right to his 
 name, no more than to any other. Your 
 mother was no wedded wife." 
 
 Penrose did not start nor cry. She was 
 white to the lips — a strange whiteness 
 which crept over the healthy brown of her 
 clear skin. She sat perfectly still, and 
 stared straight beyond all visible objects, 
 as if she saw a vision of pain. 
 
 ^' No wedded wife ! " She repeated the 
 words slowly to herself. "No wedded 
 wife ! Then what am I ? What do they
 
 204 BRITOMART, 
 
 call the children of women who are not 
 wedded wives ? " 
 
 Ah, they bear an ugly name ! Penrose 
 was a proud girl, and the thought ran like 
 a fire through her. She was content to be 
 obscure ; she would not mind if she had to 
 work for her living — no, not even in the 
 humblest fashion ; but she was not content 
 to be shamed ! She shivered, and a 
 crimson flush dyed all her face and neck. 
 For the moment it was of herself, not of 
 her mother, that she thought and suffered. 
 Her pride was outraged and stung into 
 what seemed to be almost rage. Jane's 
 next slow, difficultly uttered words roused 
 her into a change of feeling. 
 
 " It's dreadful to your mother for you to 
 know. Poor soul ! she loves you so dear. 
 She's afraid you'll turn against her, now 
 you know. But you'll not — you'll not ; I 
 know you'll not ! " 
 
 The rigid whiteness which had succeeded 
 the crimson in the young face, and made
 
 BRITOMART. 205 
 
 it almost terrible to see, passed like a 
 cloud. Penrose rose suddenly to her feet. 
 
 " Oh, poor mother ! Poor mother ! " 
 she said, in a stifled tone, broken with 
 an anguish of pity ; '' for her to be afraid 
 of vie f' She went towards the door 
 quickly, but Jane caught her arm. 
 
 •' Stay a moment — bless you for being 
 in haste to comfort her — but I've more to 
 tell. If something hadn't happened, you'd 
 never have known ; she'd never have let 
 you, for she had a terrible fear of it. I've 
 promised to tell you all about it, and you 
 must hear. This Mr. Trevenna, your 
 father, who ought to have been her hus- 
 band three and twenty years agone, he's a 
 rich man — what folks call a gentleman ; 
 and he's written to her after all this time. 
 He's willing now to give her his name. 
 When he dies, you and she will be rich 
 women. Ah, don't start away now as if 
 you didn't mean to hear ! I'm not saying 
 as you would care a bit for that — as if his
 
 2o6 BRITOMART. 
 
 money could pay for all that's past and 
 gone ; but the thing must be, and you will 
 help her go through with it. It's her right 
 — though I know it's late enough to talk 
 of rights, and nothing he can do can set 
 straight what was crooked to begin with. 
 It was this letter that came last night and 
 upset her so — the time had come when 
 she couldn't keep her secret from you any 
 longer. It's been like shedding the very 
 blood of her heart to let go of it. You'll 
 be good to your mother — you'll comfort 
 her. Say you will now, darling ! " She 
 caught hold of the girl, and kissed her 
 suddenly and fervently, putting into that 
 one kiss the silent love of many a year. 
 
 Penrose put her arms round the thin 
 shoulders, bent with willing toil, and laid 
 her cold face against the hard, lined cheek. 
 No one had caressed Jane Chegwidden 
 for the best part of a lifetime. There 
 was no need of words. A strong new 
 sense of kindred, of fellowship, stirred in
 
 BRITOMART. 20J 
 
 each heart — there was something of re- 
 semblance in the two, something of the 
 noble fortitude and faithful strength of an 
 ancient race. Each knew well how to 
 trust the other — to the death, if need be. 
 Jane's heart beat with a sorrowful joy. 
 She had been alone all her life, had spent 
 herself without hope of reward, and sud- 
 denly God had given her the sweet gift of 
 a new lov^e. It was born in a moment of 
 trouble, for she was moved with a pity 
 that was almost torture ; but she knew 
 that it would turn into a glad possession 
 to brighten the loneliness of the years to 
 come. 
 
 '* God bless thee, my dear ! " she said, 
 passing her -hard hand softly over the 
 thick hair. *' However it happens I don't 
 know ; but you're one of the chosen — good 
 right through to the heart of you. Your 
 mother needn't be afraid." 
 
 When Penrose opened the door and 
 came swiftly to her mother, Mrs. Hall
 
 2o8 BRITOMART, 
 
 started up in bed with a cry that was 
 almost a wail. It sounded like a cry for 
 pity. Whether that or not, it was silenced 
 on her girl's heart. Penrose clasped the 
 poor trembling woman closely, warmly, 
 passionately. 
 
 " Mothie, dear mothie ! " she whispered, 
 in her tenderest voice, using the old baby, 
 endearing name. *' I know — I know ! 
 You were never afraid that I should be 
 hard on you ! It's better I should know, 
 dear. You'll be glad there's nothing 
 between you and me, after a while. You've 
 always got me, mothie, whatever may 
 happen, and you mustn't doubt that I'll 
 stand by you. You'll never, never, never 
 doubt that ? " 
 
 Her words, and the knowledge that this 
 revelation — the one she had most dreaded 
 and shrank from — was over, and that her 
 daughter knew and yet did not turn away 
 from her, were like a cordial to the timid 
 heart. She revived in a moment. Some-
 
 BRITOMART. 209 
 
 thing in the very weakness and inadequacy 
 of her nature enabled her to be her calm, 
 everyday self again as soon as she had 
 cried away all her tears ; up and about 
 her little insignificant works before Pen- 
 rose had realized what had happened, and 
 had faced the new conditions of her life. 
 The strangely different, the infinitely 
 deeper and stronger nature, could not 
 adapt itself so easily to such a change 
 of thought. 
 
 Penrose needed all her courage to bear 
 the loss of so many ideals of her life. Her 
 father was not dead ; that imaginary father 
 whose picture she had made out of nothing, 
 about whom the very completeness of 
 silence and ignorance she had been in 
 had left more scope to imagination, had 
 never existed, had gone out of her life, 
 and instead, there was an idea that was 
 terrible and abhorrent to her. She had 
 no blame, no severity for her mother — it 
 was no novelty to have to make allowances, 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 2IO BRITOMART. 
 
 and to know how weak a thing it was she 
 was used to love and care for, but the 
 thought of this new father was hateful to 
 her. She would fain have thrust it from 
 her ; but it would come back. She could 
 not bear to think that all these years there 
 had been some one living who had spoilt 
 and defaced her mother's life, some one 
 who was nothing, yet everything to them. 
 And now he had come forward with this 
 strange idea of righting all the wrong that 
 never could be righted, and she could not 
 keep her mother out of his reach. They 
 must submit to his power, be beholden to 
 him for horrible benefactions — it might 
 even become a wrong to hate the very 
 thought of him. Penrose had the stern 
 vein in her which had descended from 
 some of those peasant ancestors, the same 
 that was in Jane Chegwidden, and abso- 
 lutely wanting in her own mother; she was 
 only never stern to any one she loved or 
 pitied. She hated cruelty, she abhorred
 
 BRITOMART. 211 
 
 the coarse, sensual, and malign vices, she 
 had the spirit in her of a young knight- 
 errant, the capacity for martyrdom. And 
 now she had to submit her proud, angry, 
 pure soul to the brand of disgrace. The 
 knowledge of her mother's past was to her 
 like some sin of her own doing — the shame 
 of that easy yielding, of the long acquies- 
 cence and contentment under the sense 
 of it, ached at her heart with an almost 
 unendurable pain. She bore it as the one 
 who had done the sin could never have 
 done. She felt it as her mother had not, 
 even when it was fresh ; it was a bitter 
 consciousness that stained every memory 
 that had been calm and dear. She had to 
 bear the loss, the sting, the pain, in perfect 
 silence ; no one should ever have to say 
 of her that she had felt so of her mother. 
 Perhaps Jane guessed at it a little in her 
 rough crude way, by that sort of instinct 
 which likeness of nature gives ; but nothing 
 of confidence passed between them after
 
 212 BRITOMART, 
 
 the first. She would not let Penrose treat 
 her In any way differently. She was deter- 
 mined to be the servant, not the kinswoman. 
 "No one shall have any call to talk about 
 a change," she said ; '* you shan't alter one 
 mite to me." No one saw anything strange, 
 therefore. The internal earthquake that 
 had shaken them all was unknown outside 
 the walls of the cottage. 
 
 Mrs. Hall wrote her letter to Mr. 
 Hamley, putting herself and all arrange- 
 ments for her future absolutely in his 
 hands. He was to take lodgings, to 
 tell her when to come to town, to make 
 everything as easy as was possible for her. 
 This was her way ; when there was any 
 one ready and willing to take respon- 
 sibility, to guide and to serve her, she 
 threw herself and her whole future im- 
 plicitly upon him. Since this thing had 
 to be, and she must face the ordeal, some 
 one must help her through, some one 
 must be the director of it ; she could bear
 
 BRITOMART. 213 
 
 anything with passive patience if she were 
 not expected to do more than bear. 
 Her greatest dread was meeting Richard 
 Trevenna face to face after all this quiet 
 stretch of years, during which she had had 
 the time not to forget, but to grow accus- 
 tomed to a brooding memory that was no 
 longer painful. Whenever she thought of 
 this she trembled with a nameless fear and 
 shrinking, yet the soft tenacity of her 
 feelings at times mingled strangely with 
 the terror a curious, faint longing for the 
 very thing she trembled at. The ashes 
 of the past were absolutely dead ; but there 
 was just this difference between the man 
 and the woman — in one case they were 
 cold as clay, in the other the ashes still 
 held the last lingering warmth of a fire 
 that time had slowly burnt away. 
 
 Trevenna had taken up this long for- 
 gotten tie simply because his conscience 
 had been stirred by friendship, by a half- 
 revived faith, by the approach of death, to
 
 214 BRITOMART. 
 
 a sense of a duty which his mind could 
 not reject. He had not the very smallest 
 remnant of sentiment remaining for the 
 past that was only a burden to him. He 
 prepared to go through with it with a stoical 
 coldness, and half-affected cynicism which 
 was easier to keep up than any other 
 attitude. It was perhaps an act of mere 
 insanity, he was giving way to his old 
 friend's quixotism and overstrained ideas 
 of right ; but, since he had given his word 
 to do it, he must go through with all the 
 inevitable disagreeables as grimly and 
 indifferently as his philosophy would allow. 
 There was one of those lulls in his disease 
 which often make a deceitful calm for a 
 time ; he was tolerably free for the moment 
 from physical pain, and able to take exer- 
 tions which would have usually prostrated 
 him. He took no one into his confidence 
 but Mr. Grey — no other soul besides knew 
 when he left home where he was going, 
 and no one imagined that he had any
 
 BRITOMART. 2 I S 
 
 particular object in the suddenly arranged 
 visit to London. He took rooms for him- 
 self and for Grey in a quiet hotel, his 
 manservant was left at Redwood ; and on 
 the very evening he reached town he had 
 arranged for a meeting with the woman 
 who was to be his wife at Mr. Hamley's 
 chambers. 
 
 It was the briefest, strangest, coldest 
 meeting between two who had not seen 
 each other for more than twenty years, 
 who had parted when they were in their 
 prime, the one a handsome man some- 
 thing over thirty, the other a mere girl 
 in the bloom and beauty of life ; now 
 he was a bent, sallow, grey-headed, hollow- 
 eyed invalid, who looked more like seventy 
 than fifty odd years ; she was a stout, 
 pale, hesitating, commonplace middle-aged 
 woman, with frightened furtive eyes and 
 hesitating voice. They touched each 
 others hands, and a few strange cold 
 words were interchanged. Each seemed
 
 2l6 BRITOMART. 
 
 to the Other a different creature from the 
 self of those old days. He told her his 
 intentions for the immediate and the later 
 future, she humbly and almost speechlessly 
 acquiesced. 
 
 *' I will execute a will as soon as the 
 affair is over," he said, in his harsh, weary 
 voice, ''leaving my property to you for 
 life — to your daughter afterwards. There 
 shall be a proper acknowledgment of our 
 relations to each other. You will not wish 
 to alter your home or way of life at present, 
 I imagine. When my death is expected, 
 it will be better for you to come to Red- 
 wood and to take your place at once there. 
 I will see that you are properly con- 
 sidered." 
 
 He stopped, and was silent, as if search- 
 ing for what more to say; she suddenly 
 raised her swollen lids, and gazed at him 
 with a curious wistfulness. Was this all, 
 after what was past and gone between 
 them.^ These frosty, business-like sen-
 
 BRITOMART. 217 
 
 tences, these stern unfriendly glances ? She 
 did not know what she expected, what she 
 wanted, only something lay cold at her 
 heart, and she blindly and vaguely groped 
 about for words to express the formless 
 desire for a gentler conclusion. 
 
 " You said you were ill," she faltered 
 out, in bald hesitating phrases, which she 
 felt incapable of bettering. '' Are you 
 sure I can't do anything for you ? I — we 
 — don't you want some one to look after 
 you, if — since you are not well ? " 
 
 '' Thank you," he said, with a cold 
 courtesy that froze the stumbling words ; 
 '' but I am well enough looked after. I 
 am not an agreeable invalid, and I should 
 be sorry to demand anything from you. 
 It could not be a happy situation for either 
 of us. I am willing to acknowledge that 
 I wronged you, and therefore I will do 
 what I can — though late. I will give you 
 my name, as I said. The position of my 
 widow will be better for you than that of
 
 2l8 BRITOMART, 
 
 my wife could be. No one need know 
 anything more than that we were separated 
 long ago. Mr. Hamley has settled every- 
 thing so as to avoid all unnecessary dis- 
 turbance or unpleasantness. I do not 
 think that we need say any more. I am 
 not a man of feeling; we shall find this 
 least disagreeable if we treat it as mere 
 business." 
 
 She could not answer him ; a dumb pain, 
 half fear of him, half the reviving remem- 
 brance of what had been once and never 
 could be any more, a foolish feminine ache 
 as she realized how utterly her day had 
 gone by — the little bright day that had 
 been overclouded so early, — all these shape- 
 less feelings stirred her slow heart, but 
 brought no words to the unready tongue. 
 Once she had clung to this cold, stern, grey 
 stranger, who was and was not the Richard 
 Trevenna of the old Trelewen days. Once 
 he had kissed her, had called her soft 
 foolish names — his bird, his pet, his pretty
 
 BRITOMART, 219 
 
 Molly ; now there was a great gulf fixed 
 between them, across which not one tender 
 message could ever pass. Long ago it 
 would have been a pride, a bliss to bear 
 his name ; then, when there was love be- 
 tween them, he denied her the bliss. Now, 
 when love was dead, and she dare not even 
 shed tears on its grave, he threw her the 
 gift that had lost all value. He had been 
 cruel in the past, when she forgave him 
 without a struggle ; now, when he meant to 
 right the old wrongs, she felt him cruelest 
 of all. He had better have left her in the 
 dull contented quiet of her later years ! 
 
 *' I think," he went on, in that cool 
 indifferent voice, hard as wrought iron, 
 ''if it suits you, it would be best for you 
 to leave Copsley. Things might leak out 
 there, you could travel, perhaps, a little, or 
 make a temporary home somewhere till 
 you have to consider how best to manage. 
 Wherever you are I shall always hear 
 through Hamley."
 
 220 BRITOMART, 
 
 " Yes. I shall leave Copsley," she said 
 wearily, looking on the ground. '' I 
 dare say it will be best." 
 
 '' I shall increase your income." 
 
 '' I don't want it. I have more than I 
 want now," she interposed, more quickly 
 than she had spoken before. " I never 
 spend all." 
 
 *' I had rather," he returned imperi- 
 ously. " You can put it by for — for your 
 daughter." 
 
 "■ For my daughter ! " The words 
 escaped almost involuntarily with the 
 first tone of reproach. The accent did 
 not escape him. 
 
 *' Well, for our daughter ; but, since I 
 don't know her, you must forgive my 
 feeling her to be yours only." 
 
 " Will you — will you see her ? " 
 
 ** No, no," he said quickly, with harsh 
 emphasis ; ** what use in that ? She would 
 only detest me — naturally. She knows, 
 of course ? "
 
 BRITOMART. 221 
 
 - Yes ; I— I had to tell her." 
 
 '• I will do what justice I can for her. 
 I will arrange, if you please, for her also 
 to take the name of Trevenna in future. 
 I need not detain you any longer now ; 
 you perfectly understand all our arrange- 
 ments ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Then we need not discuss it any 
 further. If anything strikes you, if you 
 desire any alteration made, any addition 
 to what I have stated, or if I have made 
 any part of what I have to ask you to go 
 through needlessly unpleasant, you will 
 let me know. I am anxious to save you 
 what I can." 
 
 " No ; there's nothing — nothing you 
 could do," she returned. In the same dull, 
 dragging voice, slowly rising to her feet 
 and preparing to go. She felt there was 
 nothing possible, since things were as they 
 were, since he was he ; there was no more 
 to be said, no more to be done. He was,
 
 22 2 BRITOMART, 
 
 perhaps, not to blame for this weight of 
 lead on her heart. Twenty years' alien- 
 ation ! And before that his love had 
 gone from her. She wondered how it 
 must feel to be a woman no longer young 
 and fair, who yet was beloved, who was 
 the wife of a man's heart. She stole one 
 furtive glance up at him ; he looked so 
 haggard, so old, weary, and world-worn, 
 she was almost as sorry for him as for 
 herself, and she blamed neither the one 
 nor the other. Dead, dead and cold, the 
 old love of their youth ; but still the soft- 
 hearted woman yearned with a pity for 
 it and for him that almost simulated the 
 dead love that could not return. She put 
 out her hesitating, tremulous hand. It had 
 just felt his when they met ; but now, when 
 he would have withdrawn his again after 
 the briefest touch possible, she let her 
 fingers fasten on his for a moment's 
 space. She had no weapon against his 
 invincible coldness, but if he had lost it
 
 BRITOMART. 223 
 
 for an instant, she could have fallen at 
 his feet and wept. 
 
 " Good-bye, Mary," he said, and even 
 the bare sound of her name, which she 
 used to think his voice made as sweet 
 as a caress, caused a thrill in her veins ; 
 she was grateful for even that coldly 
 spoken word. She only answered it by 
 one plaintive look, which might have been 
 pathetic if she had not been a stout, 
 heavy, middle-aged woman, in whom 
 sentiment seemed ludicrous, and they 
 parted without another word. The 
 ordeal was over ! She was relieved — as 
 glad as she could be of anything — but 
 the slow tears would keep rising as fast 
 as she wiped them off, as she drove back 
 alone to her lodgings ; and she could 
 have told no one — she hardly knew her- 
 self — what made them come. She only 
 knew she had missed something that life 
 once seemed to have promised her, that 
 she had nothing to hope for beyond the
 
 2 24 BRITOMART. 
 
 mere blankness of a peace that was half 
 insensibility. This was what she must 
 meet the future with ; the only actual 
 sweetness left besides was in the assur- 
 ance that Penrose would never leave off 
 loving her.
 
 _ ^^^ :^ 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 RS. FOLLIOTT was busy in a 
 most exemplary fashion one morn- 
 ing over yards of uninviting brown calico, 
 when Miss Babb burst in upon her in the 
 eager possession of a piece of news. 
 
 '' Good morning, Mrs. FoUIott ! Excuse 
 my being so early. I was out for my 
 constitutional, and thought I must first 
 look in to ask if you've heard that the 
 Halls are leaving Copsley all of a 
 sudden." 
 
 " My dear Miss Babb ! Leaving 
 Copsley ? Why, their term can't be up 
 till midsummer, and no one has heard a 
 word of it." 
 
 VOL. I. 15
 
 2 26 BRITOMART. 
 
 " No, that's the extraordinary part ; but 
 I always did say there was something odd 
 about Mrs. Hall. You'll bear me out 
 that I did. For all her demure, creep- 
 mouse ways, I'm convinced she's got 
 something in her past that no one has any 
 idea of. She went to London last week ; 
 they all three went, and only took a bag 
 or two, for I saw them go to the station, 
 and expected they'd be back before now. 
 Well, when I went past the cottage, who 
 should I meet coming out but Jane — lock- 
 ing the door after her, going to the village 
 for something. Of course I stopped her 
 to ask how her mistress and Penrose were, 
 and if they were back. No, she said ; nor 
 coming neither. They'd made up their 
 minds to go about a bit ; she's come to 
 see what luggage they wanted, and was 
 going to Beale's, the house-agent, about 
 leaving the cottage and furniture. She 
 was, as she always is, as silent and glum 
 as possible, not a thing to be got out of
 
 BRITOMART, 227 
 
 her. But I have a shrewd suspicion that 
 Mrs. Hall has got married again." 
 
 '' Married again ! What makes you think 
 that .'^ It isn't at all likely, at her age, and 
 not even well-preserved ; and there has 
 never been any one at the cottage." 
 
 " No ; but for all that — now just listen — 
 Jane had a paper and some letters in her 
 hand, and was going evidently to post 
 them. After she had gone on, I saw that 
 she had dropped one, so I picked it up to 
 pop in the box for her. Now, how do 
 you think it was directed ? The ' Mrs. 
 Hall, Heathside Cottage, Copsley,' was 
 crossed out — by Jane, I suppose — and 
 redirected to * Mrs. Trevenna, Bedford 
 Place, London.' How comes it that Mrs. 
 Hall's letter should be sent on to Mrs. 
 Trevenna, unless she is married again, or 
 she never was Mrs. Hall, but passed under 
 a wrong name ? Didn't I always say it 
 was mysterious her having no relations in 
 the world, and never any one to see her?"
 
 228 BRITOMART. 
 
 *' Trevenna ? Trevenna ? Now, how do 
 I know the name ? " mused Mrs. FolHott, 
 knitting her brow with an effort of memory, 
 and ignoring Miss Babb's conscious triumph 
 in her own sagacity. ** It seems familiar. 
 Oh, I remember now, there was a friend of 
 Mr. FolHott's of that name — Trevenna — 
 Trevenna — it was some one he knew, I am 
 sure, long ago, that I've heard him speak 
 of. Somebody in the Midlands, I believe, 
 or he met him at college. I must ask." 
 
 " But isn't it strange now ? What can 
 you make out of it ? " 
 
 '* It is odd. But I can hardly think 
 Mrs. Hall can have married again.*' 
 
 '* Well, if not, depend on it she never 
 was Mrs. Hall, and has taken another 
 name. Jane knows all about it, of that 
 I'm convinced. Jane has always seemed 
 deep in her confidence." 
 
 ''Well, at any rate, there's nothing 
 mysterious or underhand about Penrose. 
 She always has been particularly open
 
 BRITOMART. 229 
 
 and honest — as far as one can judge, 
 that is." 
 
 " Oh yes, there's nothing wrong about 
 her," Miss Babb agreed, with something 
 of kindhness mingHng with her inquisitive 
 eagerness. '' I Uke the girl ; she's been 
 very nice to me, and I've never seen any- 
 thing deceitful about her, I will say that. 
 But as to the mother " A compre- 
 hensive shake of the head conveyed more 
 than a host of words. 
 
 " Well, well, there may be some explana- 
 tion of it, if we only knew," Mrs. Folliott 
 said, rallying the orthodox expression of 
 benign indulgence, which she considered 
 became one "in her position." 
 
 "Ah, charity's all very well," Miss Babb 
 retorted nippingly, "but there's a point 
 where it becomes idiotic. I'm convinced, 
 explanation or no explanation, that there's 
 something very queer about the whole 
 business, and about Mrs. Hall, or what- 
 ever she calls herself. Who knows what
 
 230 BRITOMART. 
 
 sort of a character we've all been associating 
 with ? " 
 
 Mrs. Folliott had some sense of humour, 
 the expression of pious horror on the 
 elderly lady's hard-lined face forced a 
 smile to her lips. 
 
 ''Well, dear Miss Babb, no one can be 
 said to have associated very much with 
 Mrs. Hall, since she never would be on 
 easy terms with any one. You were the 
 most at the cottage, and no one can 
 suppose it's done you any harm ! " 
 
 '' I don't know that — one can't be too 
 particular. Whenever there's a mystery 
 one generally finds it to be a discredit- 
 able one, that's my experience, and a 
 mystery there certainly is about this woman. 
 What made her so shy and reserved, 
 I'd like to know, if it wasn't a conscious- 
 ness of being unfit for virtuous female 
 society .^ Well, I'm sorry for Penrose. 
 Of course it's possible I may even have 
 been deceived in her ; but I hardly think
 
 BRITOMART, 1\\ 
 
 it. No one could seem to be so open and 
 truthful, and be a hypocrite. No, I do 
 believe, whatever the mother may be, 
 Penrose is a good girl. You mark my 
 words, Mrs. Folliott, no one will see Mrs. 
 Hall's face in Copsley again. Jane's been 
 round paying all her bills — they didn't 
 amount to much, for she didn't run up 
 accounts, I'll say that for her." 
 
 '' Oh, and you may say more," Mrs. 
 Folliott interposed, still with her chari- 
 table expression on; *' while she lived here 
 — and she was quite a young woman when 
 she came, not more than five-and-twenty, 
 I suppose — there has been nothing in her 
 life to cause the very smallest scandal. 
 Nobody could have led a quieter or more 
 retired one." 
 
 " No, that's what I say was so mys- 
 terious and unnatural ; that is what makes 
 me sure there is a secret. And she never 
 wore widow's weeds, not even mourning. 
 I thought that odd at the time. Well, Til
 
 2 32 BRTTOMART. 
 
 wish you good morning. If I find out 
 anything more I'll let you know." 
 
 At luncheon Mrs. Folliott casually asked 
 her husband if he had not once known 
 some one called Trevenna. 
 
 *'Yes, to be sure, my dear. I was at 
 Christ Church with Dick Trevenna, if you 
 mean him — a wild, clever, queer sort of 
 young fellow. I lost sight of him after- 
 wards for several years, when I met him 
 in Oxford by chance. He was living 
 then at a place of his some miles out — I 
 forget the name of it — property he'd 
 inherited. He was a good deal altered, 
 old-looking, quite grey and worn, though 
 he was some years younger than I, and 
 I thought myself still in the prime of life 
 then — under forty. We did not get on 
 particularly well; he had a sarcastic, caustic 
 way with him, which was a new develop- 
 ment, and not a pleasant one." 
 
 " Was he a married man ? " 
 
 " I'm sure I don't know, my dear ; I
 
 BRTTOMART. 
 
 did not ask. As I say, he did not impress 
 me agreeably. I hadn't much talk with 
 him. What makes you ask about Tre- 
 venna now ? " 
 
 Mrs. Folliott discreetly forbore to enter 
 into any particulars ** before the girls," 
 about whom she had a theory of her own 
 not borne out by facts. She chose to 
 think them innocent young things, guarded 
 from all the darker facts of life, while in 
 reality the Miss Folliotts were specimens 
 of our nineteenth-century young ladies, 
 knowing most things, shocked at nothing, 
 and quite capable of holding their own 
 with anybody of either sex. Such harm- 
 less delusions are common with parents. 
 When she had her husband alone she 
 gave him Miss Babb's bit of gossip, with 
 her own comment that " it was certainly 
 very odd." 
 
 Mr. Folliott laughed with manly scepti- 
 cism. " Is that all that you and old Babb 
 have got to make a story out of } Probably
 
 234 BRITOMART. 
 
 there's nothinof in it at all. Mrs. Hall was 
 never in the habit of taking the town into 
 her confidence, and Jane is a very silent 
 woman, objecting to be drawn, x^nd as 
 for the name — there are more Trevennas 
 in the world than one." 
 
 ** Oh yes ; that's nothing. It was only 
 that I was sure I had some association 
 with the name. But, say what you like, 
 1 can't help keeping my own opinion that 
 Mrs. Hall, or whatever she is called, has 
 behaved in a very strange way." 
 
 Mrs. Folliott was a contradictory woman, 
 liking to hold her own. She had taken 
 the side of ''charity" with Miss Babb ; 
 now, when her husband seemed incredulous, 
 she was all for the idea of a mystery. 
 
 '' We shall never see Mi^s. Hall again 
 here, take my word for it," she said, 
 nodding her head ; *' and no one will miss 
 her." 
 
 ** Oh, I don't know that ; she was good 
 to some of the poor people, and her
 
 BRITOMART. 235 
 
 daiiofhter more so. Penrose behaved 
 wonderfully kindly to that poor thing that 
 died. She is rather a strong-willed young 
 woman, but I like Penrose." 
 
 ** Well, so do I, well enough. But 
 Penrose and her mother are two very 
 different people. I never saw mother and 
 daughter less alike." 
 
 *' Are you going to make a mystery out 
 of that, Charlotte ? " 
 
 '' It's all very well to laugh, Mr. Folliott, 
 but I am generally right in my sur- 
 mises." 
 
 '' Oh yes, women are always right. 
 Have your own way, my dear, cling 
 to your mystery, I've no objection at 
 all. Only there's one subscription less 
 on all my charities if Mrs. Hall does not 
 turn up again." 
 
 Mrs. Folliott was triumphantly con- 
 firmed in her opinion of her infallibility 
 when the spring and summer passed and 
 neither Mrs. Hall, Penrose, nor Jane
 
 t 
 
 236 BRITOMART. 
 
 reappeared In Copsley. The cottage was 
 let at midsummer, the furniture was sold, 
 and their place knew them no more. 
 Penrose's slender, tall, vigorous figure was 
 no longer seen walking swiftly over the 
 common or about the village. Her few 
 friends missed her. The old artist who 
 had given her lessons in painting, and 
 whose comrade she had been, in a frank, 
 cordial, almost boyish fashion, was the 
 one who most lamented the want of her 
 sympathetic companionship. He had been 
 fond of her, in his gruff, undemonstrative 
 way, since she was a little tomboy of a girl, 
 doing daring feats In climbing and leaping, 
 with a thick pigtail down her back, and 
 he felt the lonely autumn of his days more 
 cheerless and chill for the absence of the 
 girl who was so eager to learn and get on 
 in the study of landscape painting and 
 near knowledge of nature. He felt for- 
 gotten, too, and was Inclined to be more 
 cynical than before in his views of friend-
 
 I 
 
 BRITOMART. 237 
 
 ship and women, till he got a short, rather 
 sad, but cordial note of thanks and farewell. 
 She should not be living in Copsley again, 
 she said. They were travelling about a 
 little, and should most likely settle down 
 somewhere else, but she should never 
 forget those happy sketching days, the 
 pleasantest in all her life. She hoped he 
 would not forget his '' affectionate and 
 grateful pupil, Penrose." There was no 
 second name. She sent him with the 
 letter a new colour-box, but she gave him 
 no address, so that he could neither 
 acknowledge it nor thank her ; but he was 
 glad in his way to know that she was not 
 fickle and ungrateful, like the rest of her 
 sex. 
 
 The old women in the village, whom 
 Penrose had visited and enriched with her 
 little gifts and friendly cordiality, were 
 loud in their wails. *' Her was a nice 
 young lady, her was ; not like them gals 
 from the Vicarage as never have no time
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 to set down and chat, but jest pop in, give 
 un a track or a mite o' tea, and off again 
 with a ' Good mornin',' as if they was 
 queen. No, Miss Pen 'ud come and stop, 
 maybe half an hour, and listen so kind 
 to all one had to say, with summat nice 
 and cheering at the end, so hearty-like 
 and nateral. Her could ill be spared in a 
 place like this'n, where the ladies be so 
 high and stand-off ! " 
 
 These were the friends Penrose left 
 behind, these ; and all the wistful curs 
 whom nobody noticed, save to kick out 
 of the way, the forlorn cats who snatched 
 a precarious living with teeth and claws, 
 and who were too downhearted to keep 
 their fur smooth, the dirty children, who, 
 like the mongrels and despised pussies, 
 got more kicks than halfpence, these 
 missed her loudly or mutely. She had 
 been the friend and champion of the poor, 
 the weak, the ugly and unloved, the 
 black sheep of the community ; these
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 239 
 
 dreary lives were the drearier for the 
 absence of her kind clear glance and 
 her strong helpful hand. She made no 
 gap in the gay set or the '' society people ; " 
 she had never been of them.
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 
 EN ROSE, her mother, and Jane 
 Chegwidden drifted from London 
 in an aimless sort of way. Mrs. 
 Trevenna, as Jane perpetually called her, 
 to accustom her to the strange sound of 
 the name which at first made her tremble 
 and flush, had been slow to express any 
 decided wish as to her whereabouts, 
 except that of not returning ''home," as 
 she still called Copsley. She shrank from 
 inquiries, from starting there under a new 
 title which she could hardly yet bear 
 calmly. She thought at first she would 
 stay on in London, but very soon the 
 noise, the heartless bustle, the intense
 
 BRITOMART. 24 1 
 
 loneliness of the alien crowd became hate- 
 ful to the country-bred woman of narrow, 
 limited tastes and sympathies. Penrose 
 did not dislike town life, though she 
 was heavy-hearted at times ; something 
 of the fascination of its size, its fullness, 
 the new studies open to her of art and 
 of mankind, seized hold of her imagina- 
 tion. She liked to walk alone in the 
 crowds, and to look round at the infinite 
 variety which was spread everywhere in 
 a vast panorama before her thoughtful, 
 serious eyes. She was utterly unconscious 
 of any disagreeableness as of any wrong 
 in going about like this, she was absolutely 
 secure behind the shield of her valiant 
 maidenhood. It was not, as we know, 
 the innocence of ignorance ; there w^ere 
 sights and sounds which she understood 
 with shuddering keenness, but she had 
 no fear herself of insult or defilement. 
 She took her way alone, an unprotected 
 girl, not twenty-three, down the Strand 
 VOL. I. 16
 
 242 BRITOMART. 
 
 in the evening, and if any man looked 
 at her with evil eyes even these did not 
 read her wrong. She was young, there 
 was beauty of its own kind in her great 
 grey eyes, her clear skin, straight profile, 
 and abundant hair, as in her tall, well- 
 formed figure, erect in the unconscious 
 grace of health and strength, but it was 
 not the beauty which allures the street 
 lounger ; there was something of stern- 
 ness about her, she had no arts, no side 
 glances, no pretty girlish wiles. Once 
 she involuntarily laid her hand on a half- 
 drunken, hysterical girl, who was beginning 
 the shrieking, foul-mouthed invective, 
 which is the precursor of a street scene, 
 and looking full in the degraded, flushed 
 young face that had been pretty, just said 
 a word or two full of soothing compassion. 
 The girl's bloodshot, angry eyes fell upon 
 those large, kind, crystal-clear ones that 
 looked at her without loathing or hate, 
 and a sudden rush of softening tears came.
 
 BRITOMART. 243 
 
 They were half maudhn, no doubt, but 
 they sprang from some fount of sweetness 
 not yet quite dried up in the impure soul. 
 
 " You will go home quietly, won't you ? " 
 the voice said, the strong, low-toned, 
 compassionate voice. '' And if I can help 
 you in any way I shall be glad." 
 
 *' Bless you, miss," the girl said sobbing, 
 as Penrose drew her into a quiet entry. 
 "You can't do me no good; but I'll go 
 quietly because you've spoken kind to 
 me, and no one never does that now — 
 no one like you " 
 
 Virtue had gone out of the pure woman, 
 and the other went away with something 
 upon her that seemed for the moment 
 almost like cleansing. 
 
 But Penrose's London life, a curiously 
 lonely one, after all, only lasted a very 
 short time. Her mother was in a restless, 
 unrooted sort of state, reluctant to take 
 any determined step, yet unable to anchor 
 anywhere. She had stayed on all those
 
 244 BRITOMART. 
 
 years at Copsley for no particular reason, 
 except aversion to action, and might have 
 remained there in the same Hmpet-like 
 fashion if she had not been forced into 
 change. Now she sought about in a 
 vague, frightened fashion for some other 
 place of abode, and a sudden desire, as 
 strong as her nature was capable of enter- 
 taining, seized her to go to Cornwall, to 
 see the places and to breathe the air that 
 were once familiar to her. She would go 
 first to Trelewen, there was nobody there 
 likely to recognize her ; but, in case there 
 might by chance be such, she would only 
 visit it for one day and night, then they 
 would take lodcrino^s at St. Par's, the new 
 watering-place which had been made since 
 she knew it as a little fishincr village, 
 which she had visited once or twice with 
 her father. She had been so drooping, 
 dull, and phlegmatic lately, that Penrose 
 and Jane were glad to see any signs of 
 interest or rousing in her. There was
 
 BRITOMART. 245 
 
 little preparation to make and small pack- 
 ing. It was the end of April, a late Easter, 
 and the weather was beautiful ; the saddest 
 heart might pluck up hope and rejoice. 
 Mrs. Trevenna did seem to revive under 
 this new plan, which she was rather proud 
 of having originated. She took a feminine 
 pleasure in shopping before they left. She 
 had plenty of money to spend, and had 
 suddenly awaked to an idea that '' other 
 people " were better dressed than she and 
 Penrose were. 
 
 " It's a shame you should be so plain, 
 not to say shabby. Pen," she said, under 
 the influence of this new idea. '* You're 
 as nice looking as any of these dressed- 
 out girls. And I have hardly a decent 
 gown either. We 11 go to Regent Street, 
 and buy some clothes." 
 
 Penrose had not been in the way of 
 caring how she looked or what she wore, 
 and was singularly without vanity or self- 
 consciousness. It had never occurred to
 
 246 BRITOMART. 
 
 her to think if she had any good looks, 
 though she took, perhaps, a certain pride 
 in her long, thick, wavy brown hair ; but 
 she did not in the least know how rarely 
 fine this was. She saw every other girl 
 with apparent masses of hair — yellow, red, 
 or brown, and gave them all credit for 
 it, having no idea how much had come 
 from a shop, and had never grown on the 
 bedecked and beflowered heads. Still, 
 every woman likes to have new and pretty 
 things, and she was quite satisfied to give 
 up an afternoon to a discursive and pro- 
 longed shopping, which was a strange joy 
 to her mother, a pleasure she had not 
 tasted for years. She was delighted, when 
 the things were put on, with the vision of 
 herself in a soft, rich silk, with a handsome 
 mantle and bonnet, and Penrose in a pretty 
 fawn cloth, with a hat that really suited 
 her. It was only a regret that Penrose 
 liked such plainly cut, quiet dresses, and 
 would not bloom out in pinks, greens,
 
 BRITOMART. 247 
 
 or yellows, as her mother's taste sug- 
 orested. 
 
 *' You look like other girls now — like a 
 real lady should," the mother said ap- 
 provingly. 
 
 *' As if she hadn't always ! " Jane broke 
 in, with indignation, as she stood by, hold- 
 ing a cloak on her arm, and watching with 
 inward satisfaction. ** Let her be as plain 
 as you please, she was always a lady from 
 top to toe ; and like other girls she's not, 
 but a sight better." 
 
 The words struck Penrose rather pain- 
 fully. '' Like other girls ! " No, her heart 
 told her this she was not — could not be. 
 *' Other girls," in the sense in which her 
 mother spoke, had bright homes, parents 
 who were a pride to them, a name to bear 
 with careless, undoubting ease. Other 
 girls had a warm place kept for them, 
 were of much account, knew themselves 
 admired, caressed, had no undercurrent 
 of shame or bitterness, no inner sense of
 
 248 BRITOMART, 
 
 something for ever lost and missing in 
 their lives. She could never be as these 
 were. But she could — she would bear 
 the loss, the want, the regret with un- 
 daunted courage ; she could make life 
 better for a few, and worse for no one. 
 She could be satisfied with less than they, 
 with a heart for any fate. There was 
 nothing morbid about her, so she would 
 never know the very worst miseries of 
 mind. 
 
 **How different you are. Pen, from what I 
 was ! " her mother said, half complalningly, 
 as Penrose turned carelessly away from 
 the glass, and threw off her new hat with 
 small concern for it. ''It was a lot to 
 me to be nicely dressed, and to look 
 pretty ! " 
 
 Jane darted one swift, severe glance at 
 her, and pressed her long thin lips together 
 to keep in the words which rose in her 
 mind. She only said them to herself: 
 '' And a good thing too ; she'll not stumble
 
 BRITOMART. 249 
 
 as you did through weakness or a vain 
 mind, Mary Chegwidden." 
 
 j\Irs. Trevenna went straight from 
 London to Trelewen, her old home, which 
 she had not seen for nearly twenty-four 
 years. She and it were strangely altered 
 since those days of her first bloom, when 
 it was but a fishin2:-villaore, where a few 
 visitors in search of boating or the pic- 
 turesque straggled in summer-time. Now 
 it had grown a crop of new terraces, neat 
 stone houses with tiny gardens, growing 
 nasturtiums or mignonette in front, and 
 with its once silent stretch of sand gay 
 and noisy with children, fathers, mothers, 
 nurses, and loving couples. It was not 
 the Trelewen of her memory or fancy, any 
 more than she was pretty, rosy, smiling 
 Molly Chegwidden. Both were gone, and 
 she wandered, like a ghost, looking vainly 
 for her past. No one was left, or scarcely 
 any one she had known, and these would 
 not have recognized her in her heavy,
 
 250 BRITOMART, 
 
 Stout, pale middle age. She was glad to 
 go on, and had no wish to see her birth- 
 place any more. She grew more cheerful 
 at St. Par's, though still not the old self of 
 the quiet Copsley days. The one thing 
 she had come to dread, in the growing 
 indolence and apathy which had crept 
 upon her by degrees, had been change; 
 now change was forced upon her, change 
 on change. She trembled at the future, 
 and was confused and uneasy in the 
 present. She shrank from knowing people. 
 If they asked questions, how should she 
 answer them '^. She was too slow-witted 
 to parry them, Penrose too absolutely 
 truthful. Why, even her new name, the 
 name that ought to have been hers for all 
 these years, was difficult to pronounce, 
 and seemed not to belong to her. She 
 often felt as if nothing belonged to her of 
 rights, poor soul, except her only child, 
 who had been hers and hers alone since 
 first she felt the downy head upon her
 
 BRITOMART. 25 1 
 
 bosom. It was a strange thing that the 
 very deed which Richard Trevenna s tardy- 
 conscience had urged him to do as her 
 just claim, had given her no satisfaction — 
 had only aroused the shame in her which 
 had slept peacefully before. It was too 
 late, as he had said, for that old wrong to 
 be righted. 
 
 St. Par's had become of late years a 
 much-frequented watering-place, though 
 not a fashionable one in the ordinary use 
 of the word. The pure delicious air, the 
 glorious coast scenery, the firm reaches 
 of sand, the headlands, rocks, and nooks, 
 which made an endless variety of scene, 
 attracted people there, even at the cost 
 of a long tedious journey. The new grand 
 hotel opened its hospitable — and costly — 
 doors to the visitors, who did not mind 
 how much they spent. There were 
 lodging-houses of every sort and condition 
 to suit the humbler folks. 
 
 Mrs. Trevenna had taken some very
 
 252 BRITOMART, 
 
 modest rooms close to the harbour. She 
 was not poor ; she might, had she chosen, 
 have gone into handsome lodgings ; but 
 she had the tastes and instincts of one not 
 used to spending money, who rather pre- 
 ferred frugal ways. 
 
 Jane took her meals with them, though 
 at first she protested, and declared she 
 had rather share the landlady's kitchen. 
 Her sister was anxious to raise her by 
 degrees, without attracting notice, into the 
 position of her own companion ; and 
 Penrose hated, now that she knew the 
 relationship, to make any distinction 
 between her and them. There was 
 nothing vulgar, though homely, in Jane 
 Chegwidden, who had now taken her own 
 name again ; she had the innate, curious 
 refinement — at times proud and almost 
 stately — of the Cornish folk. She refused 
 to dress differently from her wont, though 
 the material of her plain dark gowns was 
 better, and still twisted up her fine grey
 
 BRITOMART, 
 
 hair, as if her object was to conceal how 
 thick it was. She looked like a quiet, 
 superior housekeeper of the old school, 
 and, before any stranger, kept up a dignified 
 air of respect towards Mrs. Trevenna and 
 Penrose which nothing would make her 
 alter. 
 
 Penrose lost her heart to the stern, 
 beautiful Cornish coast, which was a new 
 revelation of Nature to her, only used to 
 tamer scenery. The sea chafing the iron- 
 bound shores, and for ever breaking on 
 its weed-strewn rocks, in its glory of 
 sapphire and emerald ; the infinite variety 
 of colour and shape, the strange carving 
 of the age-long industry of the shifting 
 waters ; the gloom and mystery of the 
 shadowy caves, the gleams on the sun- 
 shiny distance — all these possessed her 
 deepest soul. She wandered alone with 
 her sketch-book and paint-box till she 
 found some place where she might try, 
 though in despair at her own futility, to
 
 2 54 BRITOMART, 
 
 catch some feeble shadow of the beauty 
 of this new world. She could never 
 succeed in the smallest degree to her own 
 satisfaction, yet she was happy and ab- 
 sorbed, unconscious of the loneliness which 
 was so great a contrast to the human life 
 on the sands all about her. 
 
 She was sitting sketching one morning, 
 rather uneasily perched on a corner of a 
 rocky ledge, and had only looked from 
 her painting to the sea and back again 
 in perfect unconsciousness of the world of 
 men and women, when she was absurdly 
 awaked. Some one slipped on the rocks 
 close by, fell against her, and threw her 
 sketch-book, brushes, and box violently 
 out of her hands at the same moment. 
 
 Penrose turned, bewildered, just in time 
 to save the destroyer of her peace from 
 a serious fall. She caught the slender 
 figure of a half-laughing, half-shrieking 
 girl, and lifted her bodily into safety. 
 
 *' Oh, thank you ! How strong you are !
 
 BRITOMART. 255 
 
 I am so very sorry I have disturbed you, 
 and made you let fall your things. Let 
 me try and get down and collect them 
 for you." 
 
 " Oh no, I can do that in a moment ! " 
 Penrose cried earnestly. '' You have hurt 
 yourself, I am afraid ; " for the girl was 
 panting, in a sobbing sort of way, and 
 there was blood on her delicate face. She 
 put up her hand to feel the place on her 
 forehead which had been scratched, and, 
 seeing blood on it, she turned white and 
 sick in a moment, so white and faint that, 
 if Penrose had not held her firmly, she 
 would have fallen. 
 
 '' It is not much," she said, eager to 
 console, pressing her handkerchief gently 
 to the cut, " only a scratch. Are you hurt 
 anywhere else ? In pain ? " 
 
 " No, no," the other said, rallying and 
 trying to laugh ; " nowhere except just a 
 bruise to my foot and ankle. But I am 
 stupid enough to get faint at the sight of
 
 256 BRITOMART, 
 
 blood." She had put her hand behind 
 her with a shudder. 
 
 '' Sit down here, on this ledge ; lean 
 back. There, now you are comfortable, 
 and I will get my sponge wet, and just 
 wipe the blood off your hand and forehead. 
 I have a bit of plaster in my pocket. Are 
 you better now ? " 
 
 ''Yes, thank you. You are very kind, 
 and I have bothered and interrupted you 
 awfully. I was sitting up above there, 
 watching you paint, when I moved, and 
 missed my footing somehow, and slipped. 
 Please to pick up your things, and go 
 on painting. I shall be perfectly right 
 now." 
 
 *' I will as soon as I have plastered up 
 your cut; it is really nothing — it has 
 stopped bleeding; but you look pale 
 still." 
 
 '' I soon lose all my colour — I am the 
 most idiotic person about such things. 
 I try to believe I can't help it, and my
 
 BRITOMART, 257 
 
 mater is always fussing about my health, 
 so you must imagine I am delicate, and 
 excuse me." 
 
 Penrose was looking earnestly at the 
 girl, whose pretty face seemed a little 
 familiar to her. She did look delicate ; 
 the soft flitting colour, the transparency of 
 skin which showed the blue veins so 
 clearly, the faint violet tint in the hollow 
 round the beautiful blue eyes, gave her an 
 appearance almost of fragility carried out 
 by her extreme slenderness. Her little 
 wrists, throat, and waist seemed hardly 
 strongly made enough for any useful pur- 
 pose. Penrose was not thick-set, though 
 there was plenty of strength in her elastic 
 well-knit frame, but she thought her 
 throat and waist must be double the size 
 of this fairy thing's. She was as frail and 
 lovely as the pink sea-shell on the sands, 
 as easily broken or injured. Her weak- 
 ness, as well as her beauty, appealed to 
 Penrose with a fascination that grew upon 
 
 VOL. I. 17
 
 58 BRTTOMART, 
 
 her. Everything was in harmony — the 
 sweet, light, half-pathetic, half-lively voice, 
 the wistful girlishness of her eyes, and the 
 delicate rosy-tipped, slender white hands, 
 from which Penrose had instantly wiped 
 the small crimson smear which disgusted 
 her. She could not help looking at this 
 lovely hand, which had a sparkling ring on 
 the taper third finger. What a contrast 
 it made to the brown, rather large, well- 
 formed, capable one which held it ! 
 Penrose laughed at the difference between 
 the two. 
 
 " Your hand makes mine look browner 
 and rougher than ever ! " she said, holding 
 one a moment beside the other. *' Doesn't 
 even sea air alter the colour a little 
 bit?" 
 
 ** I have not been here long enough to 
 get burnt. We only came yesterday. I 
 wasn't very well, and our doctor ordered 
 a mild, bracing sea air, so some one put 
 this place into mother's head. It was
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 259 
 
 a horribly tiring long journey. I was 
 worn out last night, but to-day is so fine, 
 I am really glad we came. I wandered 
 away from the others, my mother and 
 friends — and was fascinated by this corner, 
 and by your sketching. Please go on 
 with it. I feel so ashamed of interrupting 
 you — you won't mind my sitting here and 
 looking on ? " 
 
 '' Not at all," Penrose answered, collect- 
 ing her property, and removing what sand 
 she could from it. " But I cannot do 
 anything here worth looking at ; I have 
 never tried sea or rocks before, and I 
 find them dreadfully dil^cult, not to say 
 impossible.'* 
 
 " Oh, but I think it is quite lovely ! " 
 The soft caressing voice seemed almost 
 insincere to Penrose, though it was not so. 
 It was the girl's natural instinct and habit 
 to speak like this ; she probably said more 
 than she felt, because she was accustomed 
 to do so, but intended no untruth. For
 
 26o BRITOMART. 
 
 a moment this idea turned Penrose 
 against her ; the charm was too strong 
 to do so altogether, yet she rather curtly- 
 repudiated the flattery. 
 
 *' It is anything but lovely. My sea is 
 muddy, and my rocks look like — I don't 
 know what — lost luggage — dry bones — 
 anything but rocks decked out with living 
 things." 
 
 " It is wonderfully good to my un- 
 educated eyes, at any rate," the other 
 returned. " I am one of those stupid 
 people who can't do anything. I never 
 could. My governesses and masters all 
 gave me up as hopeless. I couldn't play 
 the piano, so I tried the guitar, the zither, 
 even the banjo, and did every bit as badly 
 at each ; I can't draw, or even do pretty 
 needlework. I am simply a dufler. Now 
 I am sure you are clever with your hands 
 as well as your head." 
 
 *' No,'' Penrose said abruptly, and 
 with decision. " I can draw, to a certain
 
 BRITOMART. 26 1 
 
 extent, and I can sew, certainly ; but I am 
 not clever in any way." 
 
 " Everything is comparative. I believe 
 I should find you so in comparison with 
 my own stupidity. Perhaps one thing is, 
 I've been spoilt by having things done 
 for me." 
 
 " That is very likely," Penrose remarked 
 absently ; she was frowning over the 
 difficulties of her work. 
 
 The girl behind her laughed a little — 
 it was the most musical rippling little 
 laugh ; but Penrose vaguely wondered 
 what amused her. There was a brief 
 silence, broken by the looker-on. 
 
 ** Have you been long here ? " 
 
 '* A week only." 
 
 " And do you stay long ? " 
 
 " I can't tell yet — probably not." 
 
 " Where are you ? Not at the hotel .^ " 
 
 " Oh no, at Bellevue Terrace — number 
 three " 
 
 "Those little houses close to the
 
 262 BRITOMART. 
 
 harbour ? I noticed them because the 
 postman said there was a Mrs. Trevenna 
 there." 
 
 '* Yes. It is my mother." 
 
 '' Not really ! How strange ! But I 
 suppose Trevenna must be a common 
 Cornish name } " 
 
 " It may be," Penrose returned, a little 
 abruptly ; '' but why is it strange ? " 
 
 The young lady gave a little nervous 
 laugh. If Penrose had been looking at 
 her instead of at her drawing, she would 
 have seen the loveliest rosy colour on her 
 face. 
 
 '* Well, I — I am very much interested 
 in the name. Have you, by chance, any 
 relation called Geoffrey Trevenna ? " 
 
 " We have no relations, as far as I 
 know." 
 
 '' Oh ! That is odd — it is altogether a 
 coincidence. My name, I suppose, will 
 be the same as yours, some day." 
 
 Penrose turned quickly, there was
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 surprise and confusion on her candid face. 
 " The same as mine ! You mean " 
 
 *' I mean that my fiancd is called 
 Geoffrey Trevenna. I dare say there is 
 no connection ; but it surprised me to hear 
 that it was your name — perhaps, because 
 I felt somehow as if we were friends, or 
 going to be friends — you were so kind to 
 me, you looked so kind when I bothered 
 you, and upset all your arrangements. 
 Forgive my saying that I took quite a 
 fancy to you. I hope we shall meet 
 again. I have to bathe, and none of my 
 people here do. I wonder whether you 
 will bathe with me ? " 
 
 She expected her graceful advances to 
 be instantly and warmly received ; she 
 was used to nothing but petting and 
 admiration, and a curious gravity and 
 hesitation plainly visible in the other girl 
 surprised and vexed her. 
 
 "■ I cannot promise," Penrose said, 
 hesitating and turning away. " My
 
 264 BRITOMART. 
 
 mother — I mean we may be going away 
 — we know no one." 
 
 *' Oh, if you don't wish it — of 
 course " 
 
 The tone was piqued, hurt even, and 
 Penrose was sorry, very sorry. She 
 would not have hurt the charming, frail- 
 looking creature for the world. She felt 
 a pang, which was almost as sharp as one 
 she endured as a child when she trod on 
 a little young bird. 
 
 " It isn't that I do not wish." She spoke 
 abruptly, the more so from the very effort 
 to explain, from the need of being truthful, 
 which was part of herself. "• I should 
 dearly like it ; but the real fact is — I can't 
 tell you why, but it is a fact — that we 
 don't go into society. I don't belong to 
 your world. I do assure you it is not 
 from rudeness or unfriendliness." 
 
 They were interrupted by a prim voice 
 below, the voice of a superior upper 
 servant, saying, '* If you please, Miss
 
 BRITOMART. 265 
 
 Field, your mother thinks you have sat 
 long enough now. The sun is in, and she 
 hopes you will put on this wrap." 
 
 ''What rubbish. Firth," Viola said 
 sharply, the sweetness of her voice 
 suddenly changing into that haughty 
 brevity which certain ladies adopt with 
 the maids who have ceased to bear 
 Christian names in their service. *' I am 
 not in the least cold — I hate to be 
 coddled. I shall come presently, before 
 lunch time." 
 
 Firth retired, and Penrose wondered 
 at a world where any one so soft could 
 find it possible to speak to another 
 woman with such scant courtesy. Truly 
 it was not her world ! 
 
 '* I wonder what you mean," Viola 
 went on, returning to her former sweet- 
 ness in a moment, '' as to being in society ? 
 If you mean of the upper ten, we are not ; 
 we are only middle-class. My fathers 
 name is Field. I am called Viola — a
 
 !66 BRITOMART. 
 
 ridiculously sentimental name, isn't it ? 
 My mater fancied it. What is yours ? " 
 
 ''Penrose." 
 
 " Penrose Trevenna ! How pretty and 
 uncommon ! I never heard of a woman 
 called Penrose — it is a surname, isn't 
 it?" 
 
 '' I don't know." 
 
 " Well, it sounds almost like a man's 
 name, yet not quite. It suits you. I 
 shan't forget it, nor you. Do you know, 
 you are as unlike other people as your 
 name is." 
 
 " Am I '> Why ? " Penrose asked 
 gravely. 
 
 *' I don't know, I can't explain. I am 
 not clever at putting things into words, 
 only I feel it somehow. When I saw you, 
 before I made that very unceremonious 
 introduction of myself bodily upon you, 
 I thought you looked as if you had been 
 part of a story. There was something 
 in your face different from most girls —
 
 BRITOMART. 267 
 
 from any girl I had ever met. If I had 
 been in trouble, I should have asked you 
 for help in a moment." 
 
 "Should you ? I am very glad." The 
 strong cordial voice was full of sincere 
 pleasure. Penrose smiled at the girl above 
 her. The frank sudden brightness that 
 came like sunshine over her face, made 
 it beautiful for the moment. " I am sure 
 I should be ready to help you ! " 
 
 '' Yet you won't even bathe with me ?" 
 Viola put on a mock pathetic voice. " You 
 absolutely refuse to be sociable ! " 
 
 " That is another thing. I know I could 
 not be." 
 
 '* You will let me come and watch you 
 another day, if I find you painting ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, if you care to do so ; but it 
 is dull work for you." 
 
 ** No, you are not dull. I assure you I 
 find it quite interesting. Let me see what 
 time it is. Goodness, one already ; and 
 there is poor mater frantically gesticu-
 
 BRITOMART. 
 
 lating. I must go up to lunch. Are you 
 coming too ? " 
 
 "Not just yet. We have dinner at 
 two." 
 
 " Are you a large party ? " 
 
 ** No ; only three." 
 
 *' Any sisters or brothers ? " 
 
 " No ; I have none." 
 
 *' Nor have I, so we can sympathize ; 
 though I can't say I ever lament the fact 
 very bitterly. Being an only child I get 
 all the spoiling, and I have heaps of girl 
 friends. On the whole they do as well, I 
 fancy, as sisters. Well, good-bye, Miss 
 Trevenna. I am not in danger of for- 
 getting your name. In spite of what you 
 say, I hope we shall meet again." 
 
 She went away with a smiling, gracious 
 little nod of half-condescending friend- 
 liness, and Penrose watched her with 
 interest, which was almost love. She was 
 a fascinating revelation — something new, 
 sweet, alluring. The spoilt darling of her
 
 BRITOMART. 269 
 
 parents, of fortune, of love. There was 
 no envy, not a trace, In the sense of deep 
 unHkeness between them, which forced 
 itself upon her. No ; envy was too small 
 and mean a thing for her generous heart 
 to harbour. She was glad to think that 
 some were born into the sunshine ; she 
 was used to the shade, it did not hurt her. 
 She little guessed what life had in store 
 for Viola Field, what there was to be 
 between them some day. Meanwhile, the 
 rapidly formed half-intimacy ended 
 abruptly for the time. When Penrose 
 told her mother, because she was in the 
 habit of being outspoken, of her talk on 
 the rocks, Mrs. Trevenna shrank with a 
 kind of peevish terror from the idea of any 
 further intercourse. 
 
 " Don't talk any more to her. Pen," she 
 said, almost angrily ; ** she knows a Tre- 
 venna. Who can tell that it is not a 
 relation. I know nothing of Mr. Tre- 
 venna's people. It is much more com-
 
 270 BRITOMART. 
 
 fortable not having to do with people 
 now." 
 
 So Penrose, to humour her mother — she 
 was too much in the habit of doing so to 
 hesitate on the score of any wishes of her 
 own — managed to go farther away for her 
 sketching, and beyond just a hurried nod 
 and smile, had no more intercourse with 
 Viola during the time they remained at 
 St. Par's. 
 
 Mrs. Trevenna wished to move again 
 before long, and they went elsewhere, in 
 an aimless kind of search for a resting- 
 place, which seemed never to present 
 itself quite as the mother hoped or vaguely 
 wanted it to be.
 
 . ^?aM L^-55^^^^^^ 
 
 .S^!^''ii««-'i^--S>.\ 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 I^'^IHE deceitful rally of health which had 
 begun about the time of Mr. 
 Trevenna's momentous visit to London 
 lasted during the summer and autumn of 
 the year. It was so marked even, that he 
 was actually induced to go abroad, and 
 persuaded his old friend Grey to accom- 
 pany him. It is true there were intervals 
 of pain and gloom, which made him in- 
 tolerable to himself, and difficult even to 
 so gentle a soul as Edmund Grey ; but, 
 when these were over, he seemed now 
 and then restored to something of the un- 
 certain brilliancy, which had made the
 
 272 BRITOMART. 
 
 moody, capricious, untrustworthy man at 
 times possessed of a fitful but definite 
 charm. 
 
 There was never any prediction to be 
 safely made, never any security about 
 him ; in opinions, feelings, actions, he 
 varied and shifted as a vane on a steeple 
 on a gusty day. At times he had strong 
 compunction for his own past ways, he 
 was sad, quiet, gently regretful, full of 
 noble sentiment, sincerely — for the moment 
 — on the side of the angels. At others a 
 blast of hatred, contempt, morose cynicism 
 came over him, and he had no beliefs, no 
 hopes, no affections. 
 
 Mr. Grey had a charitable, if ill-founded 
 theory, to bring to bear on these alter- 
 nations. When Dick was " himself," he 
 was sound at heart, there was real good- 
 ness in him ; when he was in his bad 
 mood he was ** not himself," that is to say, 
 his illness, the long wearing torment of 
 the last years of his life, had unhinged his
 
 BRITOMART. 273 
 
 mind, unsettled his brain, injured his heart. 
 He never could help loving and believing 
 in him ; he had an infinite, a most motherly 
 sort of patience for the man who had from 
 the first dazzled and enslaved his affections. 
 And this tenderness of his, whether well 
 or ill founded, was certainly calculated to 
 brinor out the better side of the contra- 
 dictory, perverse, yet weak nature of the 
 friend who knew, at the bottom of his 
 heart, how little he had deserved it. It 
 had prevailed at times over the worst 
 devils of his mind, and had exorcised them 
 for a while ; it had persuaded him into a 
 conviction that he had done wrong to 
 Mary Chegwidden, and, as we have seen, 
 led to that late repentance and its fruits. 
 Now and then it had " almost persuaded 
 him to be a Christian." At least he was 
 less of a heathen, less of a cynic with Grey 
 than with all the rest of the world. Un- 
 consciously to himself, he clung with 
 desperate tenacity to the seemingly weaker 
 
 VOL. I. 18
 
 2 74 BRITOMART. 
 
 and more yielding nature, which, for all 
 outward seeming, had a strength which 
 Richard Trevenna never reached. The 
 stern, rugged mask of the one concealed 
 the fatal weakness which had wrecked and 
 spoilt his own life certainly, and possibly 
 more than his own ; the hesitating mild- 
 ness which characterized the other ex- 
 ternally was also a mask, for beneath there 
 was the undeviating rectitude and principle 
 which might have steeled the timid, shy, 
 nervous nature into resolute endurance of 
 a fiery ordeal for truth's sake. 
 
 In November, as the grey days 
 shortened, and the sere leaves fell shiver- 
 ing from their stalks, Richard Trevenna s 
 brief spell of ease ended with the last 
 smile of the year. A chill, a something, 
 perhaps only the insidious progress of 
 his disease, prostrated him. It was the 
 beginning of the end. As he grew rapidly 
 weaker the pain which he had endured 
 for years lessened, however. He did not
 
 BRITOMART. 275 
 
 suffer much from anything but weariness 
 of body and soul, and the same subtle 
 change came in his every condition, the 
 precursor of the last change of all. He 
 was strangely quiet, and even gentle. His 
 man-servant was puzzled to account for 
 the absence of his usual sneers, growls, 
 and occasional passion of abuse ; he was 
 considerate and almost kind. The ser- 
 vants shook their heads over the singular 
 alteration, as an omen of the approaching 
 end. They did not love him, naturally, 
 but they had an easy place, high wages, 
 good living, and plenty of liberty. They 
 did not desire him to die. As for his one 
 friend, his faithful, constant companion, 
 this change affected him deeply, but with 
 a sad kind of rejoicing. Dick was '' him- 
 self" now, his better self. It was some- 
 thing, everything to have this softened 
 gleam to recall before the evening deepened 
 to night. 
 
 One afternoon he found Mr. Trevenna,
 
 276 BRITOMART. 
 
 as usual, stretched on his lounge-chair 
 beside the fire, with no other light than 
 what its red glow made, and the last 
 greenish light where the sunset had 
 been. A pale, wistful half-circle of moon 
 showed between the rifts of a purple grey 
 cloud. Only just a word of greeting 
 passed between them. They were too 
 much used to each other to be generally 
 talkative. Mr. Grey drew his usual chair 
 to the fire, and warmed first one hand, 
 then another with mechanical regularity. 
 Suddenly the harsh-toned voice, which 
 illness had slightly subdued, broke upon 
 the stillness of the room. 
 
 '* I believe my brain must be softening. 
 I can't otherwise account for the foolish- 
 ness I have been thinking over to-day. I 
 was reading King Lear this morning, and 
 it took hold of me rather, and afterwards 
 I kept dwelling on that wonderful Cordelia, 
 on the daughterhood that he thrust away 
 — and I felt, like, a fool, that it might be
 
 BRITOMART, 277 
 
 rather agreeable to have a daughter to be 
 with one at times.'* 
 
 "And you have a daughter. You re- 
 membered that, Dick '^. " Mr. Grey cried 
 eagerly, his whole thin, meagre body 
 twitchinof and workingf with his sudden 
 new idea. 
 
 " I did, perhaps ; but it's a weak, senti- 
 mental, idiotic thing to think of. What's 
 Hecuba to me, or I to Hecuba ? I 
 brought a child casually into this detest- 
 able world some twenty odd years ago, 
 for which she owes me a grudge, and 
 have done nothing absolutely from that 
 time to this to make the fact anything 
 but a curse to her. She has great 
 reason, hasn't she, to bless her father, 
 eh?" 
 
 "She is your child, for all that. Why 
 not — why not try and see if she — if they 
 can be any satisfaction to you ? Send for 
 them. You said you w-w-would." Mr. 
 Grey, as usual, began to stammer in his
 
 278 BRITOMART. 
 
 speech, as he always did when moved, 
 and to make strange contortions of his 
 spare frame and feeble limbs. Mr. Tre- 
 venna was too much used to his habits 
 now to be disturbed by them, though 
 small, fidgety eccentricities worried and 
 irritated him In everybody else. 
 
 " No, no, no, Edmund ; it cannot be. 
 My case is past that gentle optimism of 
 yours to treat. I am not fool enough to 
 buoy myself up with the false and ridiculous 
 hope that either of these two can ever 
 be anything to me but strangers, if not 
 enemies. If the girl knows all about the 
 past and loves her mother, it is very likely 
 she may be that also ; but I acquit poor 
 Mary, who never had any enmity, or a 
 drop of gall in her nature. Perhaps it 
 did not go deep enough. I said I would 
 send for her — and I suppose the girl must 
 come too — when I am actually dying ; 
 Brett and you must determine when. I 
 am only half dying now, and I cannot face
 
 BRITOMART. 279 
 
 the complications, the explanations, their 
 appearing would involve. I have grown 
 — I suspect I always was — a coward. I 
 do not care to tell Geoffrey yet that he 
 is supplanted." 
 
 Mr. Grey's feelings led him to writhe 
 and twist more painfully than ever, and 
 when he tried to speak it was a moment 
 or two before he was perfectly coherent. 
 
 '' It— it — it isn't r-right to G-G-Geoffrey, 
 Dick ; it isn't, indeed. He ought to know 
 — to be p-p-prepared." 
 
 " Oh, for God's sake, Edmund, leave the 
 thing alone ! " Trevenna cried with sudden 
 vehemence. " To please you, or for some 
 other equally cogent reason, I went in for 
 the right and wrong of the affair, and 
 satisfied your scruples or my own stupid 
 conscience ; let that suffice. Surely I am 
 martyrized enough already without letting 
 myself be riddled with the arrows of per- 
 petual annoyance. Geoffrey has chosen 
 to neglect me, to go against my wishes,
 
 2 8o BRITOMART. 
 
 to show himself ungrateful and selfish ; he 
 must put up with his disappointment. 
 He's got the girl and her money to con- 
 sole him. Let me be, if you have any pity 
 for me in you ! " 
 
 *' Dick ! As if — as if I had anything 
 else ! " The kind voice was broken as 
 with tears ; if the room had been light 
 perhaps his eyes might have been seen 
 to be full too. 
 
 He stretched out his hand, and laid it 
 hesitatingly on his friend's knee. '* I would 
 not make anything worse for you to bear, 
 God knows, old fellow ! " 
 
 '* Yes, yes, God knows, and I know, 
 that's enough." The angry voice sank 
 again into the dreary gentleness which had 
 before characterized it. " I know it's only 
 that there's something in you that forces 
 you to protest for the absolute right. But 
 you see, old man, that's not for me ; I 
 have been stumbling and hurting myself 
 all along in crooked ways, and I can't
 
 BRITOMART. 28 1 
 
 attain to doing absolutely good deeds, 
 only here and there I clutch at one that 
 seems to my purblind moral sense not en- 
 tirely evil. It is certain I have not made 
 a very satisfactory thing out of my life. 
 Mine never was a successful or flowery 
 sort of evil doing ; the thorns of the for- 
 bidden roses, the poison of the forbidden 
 fruits, always remained for my share. I 
 made an utter mess of everything. If 
 instead of patching up this belated marriage, 
 which is nothing but a name, I had been 
 fool enough to take Mary Chegwidden to 
 live in an orthodox fashion, I should no 
 doubt have sickened of it and of her ; but 
 I shouldn't have been as I am now, alone, 
 but for you, without any woman's comfort- 
 ing. The girl might have been a daughter 
 indeed. But it was fate. I never did 
 anything good, bad, or indifferent, that 
 ended satisfactorily. You know what was 
 the thing that turned everything to bitter 
 — don't you ? I never told you anything
 
 282 BRITOMART. 
 
 definite about Valerie Durocher — but you 
 guessed ? " 
 
 " I know she was a bad woman — false 
 to you, false to her husband." 
 
 ** Yes. I suppose she was. But I 
 never could judge her. I never could get 
 her into the right perspective for that. 
 She was the only woman I ever really 
 loved. She turned me against poor Molly. 
 I hoped to have married her after her 
 divorce ; but she had only been playing 
 with me. All the same I could have 
 forgiven that woman any crime. Molly's 
 fault was that she bored me ; she had no 
 crimes, I exhausted her so soon. She was 
 of the stuff to make an honest bourgeoise 
 wife of, and somehow got into the wrong 
 groove. I wish I had never seen her ; 
 but I've never done anything but wish in 
 vain all my life. Well, it can't last much 
 longer. At one time that thought made 
 me feel a sort of terror — it doesn't now. 
 If there's another life it can't be much
 
 BRITOMART. 283 
 
 worse than this one, and if not — there's 
 falhng to sleep and forgetting. I wonder 
 what sort of an affair Mrs. Trevenna and 
 her dauehter will make of their inheritance ! 
 Mind, she's not to be sent for till I'm m 
 extremist 
 
 The end of the spoilt, restless, unsatis- 
 factory life came a little before Christmas. 
 A sudden change took place, first with 
 convulsions, and then unconsciousness. 
 It was in this stage that Mr. Grey wrote 
 to Mrs. Trevenna under cover to the 
 lawyer, who was also summoned. He felt 
 it his duty also to write to Geoffrey ; but, 
 though he considered that he ought to 
 tell him of the changed condition of affairs 
 he would find on his arrival, he could not 
 in a letter. He deferred it till he was 
 actually there, then he would meet him at 
 the station and tell him. The letter, how- 
 ever, did not reach Geoffrey at once ; he 
 had gone on circuit to the north, and it 
 was redirected and sent from one place to
 
 284 BRITOMART. 
 
 another, so that when he arrived at Oxford 
 his uncle had been dead two days. This 
 information was the first Mr. Grey gave 
 him as he met him in his most halting and 
 confused fashion. 
 
 '' Dead ! " Geoffrey started back, and his 
 dark, handsome, nonchalant face paled and 
 showed real feeling. " And I wasn't there 
 — poor old man ! " 
 
 *' It was rather sudden — not — not painful 
 at last. Geoffrey, before we go there, I've 
 s-s-something to tell you that you must 
 know at once ; let us go into the waiting- 
 room for a minute — there's no one there." 
 
 Geoffrey followed him in surprise and 
 some alarm. He suddenly recalled Mr. 
 Hamley's ominous warnings at Viola's 
 birthday dance. Mr. Grey looked tragically 
 moved ; grief alone — though it must be 
 strong for the loss of the friend of the 
 greater part of his life — could hardly 
 account for his extreme agitation. 
 
 He drew a chair close up against the
 
 BRITOMART. 285 
 
 one Geoffrey took, in silence, in the dull, 
 half-lighted waiting-room, and said, almost 
 in his ear, in a confused, stumbling 
 whisper — 
 
 ''You — you will be s-s-surprised, 
 Geoffrey. It will be a sh-sh-shock and 
 dis-disappointment to you. I felt you 
 ought to have known of it before. You — 
 you — you are not the heir to your uncle's 
 property." The final words came out with 
 spasmodic haste. 
 
 " I am not ! Do you mean to say my 
 uncle has left it away from me '^ Was he 
 so angry as all that ? Well, he is dead. 
 He was kind to me — once. I will try not 
 to resent it. He had a right " 
 
 '* Stop. Hush, Geoffrey. Wait till you 
 understand. Whether his being vexed 
 with you or not had anything to do with 
 it I — I am not p-p-prepared to say. It is 
 not the main issue. There are others 
 — nearer to him — who have a closer 
 claim."
 
 86 BRITOMART. 
 
 '' Others ! What can you mean ? I 
 never heard of any one." 
 
 '' No. But it is true, for all that, that 
 they exist. Your uncle's wzye was with 
 him at the last." 
 
 " My tmcles wife ? " 
 
 ''Yes. He was married, though they 
 did not live together." 
 
 " And he kept that fact secret — from 
 me — for how long ? " 
 
 " Not for long. Geoffrey, I cannot 
 have you deceived. I trust to your 
 generosity, to your gentlemanly feelings 
 to keep others from knowing what I 
 tell you now. Your uncle only married 
 this — this poor lady last spring. He 
 felt, very late in the day, that he owed 
 it to her." 
 
 " But you spoke of more than one,** 
 Geoffrey said, quietly and coldly. He was 
 capable of much self-control, and the 
 habits of his class kept him from showing 
 either anger or disgust, but he was aware
 
 BRITOMART. 287 
 
 that the foundations of many an air-castle 
 were falling in ruin about him as his old 
 friend unwove the riddle of his uncle's 
 past. 
 
 ''Yes. I — I — in fact, there is a — a — a 
 daughter." 
 
 '' Then I am the richer by an aunt 
 and cousin ! It is certainly a surprise — 
 a very great, not exactly an agreeable, 
 surprise. I shall find this — this poor lady, 
 as you call her — and her daughter at 
 Redwood ? " 
 
 " Yes. You will, I know, make as 
 little disagreeableness as you can. Believe 
 me, Geoffrey," the little man went on, 
 forgetting to stammer in the earnestness 
 of his sympathy, '* I have had nothing to 
 do with keeping you in the dark. I urged 
 my poor friend to tell you. He shrank 
 from it. I — I loved him, Geoffrey, you 
 know that. We were friends, unbroken 
 friends for nearly forty years, yet I cannot 
 deny that he did wrong. He had a want
 
 288 BRITOMART. 
 
 of moral courage ; but his constant suffer- 
 ings — bodily and mental sufferings — must 
 be taken into account. No one but I 
 knew what those sufferings were. They 
 — they amounted to anguish. You can 
 forgive much to one who has had so much 
 to bear, Geoffrey, cannot you .^ " 
 
 *' I will try and remember the times 
 when he was good to me," Geoffrey said, 
 not untouched by the intensity of the 
 appeal in the sad voice that pleaded for 
 the man who was gone out of the pain of 
 life into the silence of non-existence, whom 
 neither hate nor gratitude now could 
 reach. 
 
 ''And the position of — of Mrs. Trevenna 
 is a peculiar, a painful one, you will re- 
 member that ? But I need not ask you ; 
 I am sure you will spare her as much as 
 you can." 
 
 ''It is not my way to be rough on 
 women, whatever they are. You will 
 forgive my feeling that Mrs. Trevenna
 
 BRITOMART. 289 
 
 cannot, from the nature of that posi- 
 tion you speak of, be a very estimable 
 person." 
 
 " She did wrong once," Mr. Grey 
 returned, with more force and decision 
 than Geoffrey had expected. " There are 
 not many of us who have not this to avow. 
 With that one exception I beHeve her to 
 be a good woman. She was much more 
 sinned against than sinning. Come, shall 
 we be going ? " 
 
 Geoffrey rose in silence. He did not 
 attempt any answer to the last statement. 
 Inwardly he felt cynically sceptical of 
 Mrs. Trevenna s worth. It was just like 
 good old Quixotic Grey to champion 
 her. What did he know of women } 
 Little enough of the best specimens, 
 absolutely nothing of the baser sort. At 
 any rate, whatever she was, adventuress 
 or not, virtuous or vile, the case was not 
 altered. He was ousted — he had been 
 shamefully deceived. He was too much 
 
 VOL. I. 19
 
 290 BRITOMART. 
 
 of a gentleman as well as man of the 
 world to make a scene, to pose as a victim ; 
 but his mind was naturally not disposed 
 to admit a favourable idea of the persons 
 who had deposed him. He must go through 
 with all the unpleasantness before him 
 with as much appearance of indifference 
 as ''good form" insisted upon. He was 
 not going to behave like a cad, however 
 ill he had been treated ; but as to taking 
 old Greys opinion on such a subject — 
 he mentally shrugged his shoulders, and 
 prepared, with outward good breeding and 
 inward disgust, to go through the trials 
 that awaited him. He dared not speculate 
 much on the future ; the present had to 
 be met, if not with patience, at least with 
 well-bred stoicism. He wasn't going to 
 show these women, this new-found wife 
 and daughter, that he cared, that they, 
 in their promotion, had to tread upon 
 his hopes. He wouldn't give them a 
 chance of triumphing over his disappoint-
 
 BRITOMART. 29 1 
 
 merit. He would at least overawe them 
 into respect. He did not mean to wear 
 his heart on his sleeve for such very 
 common daws to peck at. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 LONDON AND BECCLES. 6., C. 6^ Co.
 
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