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 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
 
 LI E> R.ARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVLR5ITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS 
 
 823
 
 THE FATAL THREE 
 
 % Hobtl 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 LADY AUDLEYS SECRET," "VIXEN,' 
 "ISHMAEL," "MOHAWKS," 
 
 ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON 
 SIMPKIN, MAESHALL, AND CO. 
 
 STATIONERS' HALL COURT 
 
 iAll rigMs reserved]
 
 LONDOX : 
 P.OBSON' AND SOXS LIMITED, I'RIXTKRS PAXCHAS ROAD N.W.
 
 4«9 
 
 91Z 
 
 y^y^A, 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. T. 
 
 CLOTHO; OR SPINNING THE THUEAI). 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. " We have been so Happy" 
 
 II. Fay 
 
 in. A Superior Person 
 
 IV. All She could Eemember . 
 
 V. Without the Wolf 
 
 VI, "Ah! Pity! the Lily is Withered 
 
 VII. Drifting Apart . 
 
 VIII. " Such Things were " . 
 
 IX. The Pace in the Church . 
 
 X. There is always the Skeleton 
 
 x[. The Beginning of Doubt 
 
 XII. " She cannot be Unworthy " 
 
 xiii. Shall She be less than Another? 
 
 XIV. Lifting the Curtain . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 3 
 13 
 
 27 
 
 41 
 79 
 
 I 12 
 
 129 
 146 
 
 360 
 
 210 
 231 
 
 244 
 274
 
 BOOK THE FIRST. 
 
 CLOTHO; OR SPINNING THE THREAD, 
 
 VOL. r.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " WE HAVE BEEN SO HAPPY." 
 
 "I'm afraid she will be a terrible bore," said the 
 lady, with a slight pettishness in the tone of a voice 
 that was naturally sweet. 
 
 " How can she bore us, love ? She is only a 
 child, and you can do what you like with her," said 
 the gentleman. 
 
 " My dear John, you have just admitted that she 
 is between thirteen and fourteen — a great deal more 
 than a child — a great overgrown girl, who will want 
 to be taken about in the carriage, and to come down 
 to the drawing-room, and who will be always in the 
 way. Had she been a child of Mildred's age, and a 
 playfellow for Mildred, I should not have objected 
 half so much." 
 
 " I'm very sorry you object ; but I have no doubt 
 she will be a playfellow for Mildred all the same.
 
 4 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 and that she will not mind spending a good deal of 
 her life in the schoolroom." 
 
 *' Evidently, John, you don't know what girls of 
 fourteen are. I do." 
 
 " Naturally, Maud, since it is not so many years 
 since you yourself were that age." 
 
 The lady smiled, touched ever so slightly by 
 the suggestion of youth, which was gratifying to the 
 mother of a seven-year-old daughter. 
 
 The scene was a large old-fashioned drawing- 
 room, in an old-fashioned street in the very best 
 quarter of the town, bounded on the west by Park 
 Lane and on the east by Grosvenor Square. The 
 lady was sitting at her own particular table, in her 
 favourite window, in the summer gloaming ; the 
 gentleman was standing with his back to the velvet- 
 draped mantelpiece. The room was full of flowers 
 and prettinesses of every kind, and ojBfered unmis- 
 takable evidence of artistic taste and large means in 
 its possessors. 
 
 The lady was young and fair, a tall slip of a 
 woman, who afforded a Court milliner the very best 
 possible scaffolding for expensive gowns. The gen-
 
 " WE HAVE BEEN SO HAPPY. 6 
 
 tleman was middle-aged and stout, with strongly- 
 marked features and a resolute, straightforward 
 expression. The lady was the daughter of an Irish 
 peer ; the gentleman was a commoner, whose fortune 
 had been made in a great wholesale firm, which 
 had still its mammoth warehouses near St. Paul's 
 Churchyard, and its manufactory at Lyons, but with 
 which John Fausset had no longer any connection. 
 He had taken his capital out of the business, and 
 had cleansed himself from the stain of commercial 
 dealings before he married the Honourable Maud 
 Donfrey, third daughter of Lord Castle-Connell. 
 
 Miss Donfrey had given herself very willingly to 
 the commoner, albeit he was her senior by more than 
 twenty years, and, in her own deprecating description 
 of him, was quite out of her set. She liked him not 
 a little for his own sake, and for the power his strong 
 will exercised over her own weaker nature ; but she 
 liked him still better for the sake of wealth which 
 seemed unlimited. 
 
 She was nineteen at the time of her marriage, 
 and she had been married nine years. Those years 
 had brought the Honourable Mrs. Fausset only one
 
 6 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 child, the seven-year-old daughter playing about the 
 room in the twilight ; and maternity had offered very 
 little hindrance to the lady's ^pleasures as a woman 
 of fashion. She had been indulged to the uttermost 
 by a fond and admiring husband ; and now for the 
 first time in his life John Fausset had occasion to ask 
 his wife a favour, which was not granted too readily. 
 It must be owned that the favour was not a small 
 one, involving nothing less than the adoption of an 
 orphan girl in whose fate Mr. Fausset was interested. 
 
 " It is very dreadful," sighed Mrs. Fausset, as if 
 she were speaking of an earthquake. *'We have 
 been so happy alone together — you and I and 
 Mildred." 
 
 *' Yes, dearest, when we have been alone, which, 
 you will admit, has not been very often." 
 
 *' 0, but visitors do not count. They come and 
 go. They don't belong to us. This dreadful girl 
 will be one of us ; or she will expect to be. I feel 
 as if the golden circle of home-life were going to be 
 broken." 
 
 " Not broken, Maud, only expanded." 
 
 " 0, but you can't expand it by letting in a
 
 • • WE HAVE BEEN SO HAPPY . 7 
 
 stranger. Had the mother no people of her own ; no 
 surroundings whatever ; nobody but you who could 
 be appealed to for this wretched girl ?" inquired 
 Mrs. Fausset, fanning herself wearily, as she lolled 
 back in her low chair. 
 
 She wore a loose cream-coloured gown, of softest 
 silk and Indian embroidery, and there were diamond 
 stars trembling amongst her feathery golden hair. 
 The flowing garment in which she had dined alone 
 with her husband was to be changed presently for 
 white satin and old Mechlin lace, in which she was 
 to appear at three evening parties ; but in the mean- 
 time, having for once in a way dined at home, she 
 considered her mode of life intensely domestic. 
 
 The seven-year-old daughter was roaming about 
 with her doll, sometimes in one drawing-room, some- 
 times in another. There were three, opening into 
 each other, the innermost room half conservatory, 
 shadowy with palms and tropical ferns. Mildred 
 was enjoying herself in the quiet way of children 
 accustomed to play alone, looking at the pretty things 
 upon the various tables, peering in at the old china 
 figures in the cabinets — the ridiculous Chelsea
 
 8 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 shepherd and shepherdess ; the Chelsea lady in hawk- 
 ing costume, with a falcon upon her wrist ; the 
 absurb lambs, and more absurd foliage; and the 
 Bow and Battersea ladies and gentlemen, with their 
 blunt features and coarse complexions. Mildred was 
 quite happy, prowling about and looking at things 
 in silent wonder ; turning over the leaves of illus- 
 trated books, and lifting the lids of gold and enamelled 
 boxes ; trying to find out the uses and meanings of 
 things. Sometimes she came back to the front 
 drawing-room, and seated herself on a stool at her 
 mother's feet, solemnly listening to the conversation, 
 following it much more earnestly, and comprehending 
 it much better, than either her father or mother 
 would have supposed possible. 
 
 To stop up after nine o'clock was an unwonted 
 joy for Mildred, who went to bed ordinarily at seven. 
 The privilege had been granted in honour of the 
 rare occasion — a tete-a-tete dinner in the height of 
 the London season. 
 
 " Is there no one else who could take her ?" 
 repeated Mrs. Fausset impatiently, finding her hus- 
 band slow to answer.
 
 '' WE HAVE BEEN SO HAPPY." 9 
 
 " There is really no one else upon whom the 
 poor child has any claim." 
 
 " Cannot she remain at school ? You could pay 
 for her schooling, of course. I should not mind 
 that." 
 
 This was generous in a lady who had brought 
 her husband a nominal five thousand pounds, and 
 who spent his money as freely as if it had been 
 water. 
 
 '' She cannot remain at school. She is a kind 
 of girl who cannot get on at school. She needs 
 home influences." 
 
 " You mean that she is a horrid rebellious girl 
 who has been expelled from a school, and whom I 
 am to take because nobody else will have her." 
 
 *' You are unjust and ungenerous, Maud. The 
 girl has not been expelled. She is a girl of peculiar 
 temper, and very strong feelings, and she is un- 
 happy amidst the icy formalties of an unexception- 
 able school. Perhaps had she been sent to some 
 struggling schoolmistress in a small way of business 
 she might have been happier. At any rate, she is 
 not happy, and as her people were friends of mine in
 
 10 THE FATii THREE. 
 
 the past I should like to make her girlhood happy, 
 and to see her well married, if I can." 
 
 " But are there not plenty of other people in the 
 world who would do all you want if you paid them. 
 I'm sure I should not grudge the money." 
 
 *' It is not a question of money. The girl has 
 money of her own. She is an heiress." 
 
 " Then she is a ward in Chancery, I suppose ?" 
 
 " No, she is my ward. I am her sole trustee." 
 
 " And you really want to have her here in our 
 own house, and at The Hook, too, I suppose. Al- 
 ways with us wherever we go." 
 
 " That is what I want — until she marries. She 
 will be twenty in five years, and in all probability 
 she will marry before she is twenty. It is not 
 a life-long sacrifice that I am asking from you, 
 Maud ; and, remember, it is the first favour I have 
 ever asked you." 
 
 **Let the little girl come, mother," pleaded 
 Mildred, clambering on to her mother's knee. 
 
 She had been sitting with her head bent over 
 her doll, and her hair falling forward over her face 
 like golden rain, for the last ten minutes. Mrs.
 
 *'WE HAVE BEEN SO HAPPY." 11 
 
 Fausset had no suspicion that the child had been 
 listening, and this sudden appeal was startling to 
 the last degree. • 
 
 " Wisdom has spoken from my darling's rosy 
 lips," said Fausset, coming over to the window and 
 stooping to kiss his child. 
 
 '* My dear John, you must know that your wish 
 is a law to me," replied his wife, submitting all at 
 once to the inevitable. *' If you are really bent 
 upon having your ward here she must come." 
 
 "I am really bent upon it." 
 
 " Then let her come as soon as you like." 
 
 " I will bring her to-morrow." 
 
 " And I shall have some one to play with," said 
 Mildred, in her baby voice ; "I shall give her my 
 second best doll." 
 
 *' Not your best, Mildred ?" asked the father, 
 smiling at her. 
 
 Mildred reflected for a few moments. 
 
 ''I'll wait and see what she is like," she said, 
 '' and if she is very nice I will give her quite my 
 best doll. The one you brought me from Paris, 
 father. The one that walks and talk?."
 
 12 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 Maud Fausset sighed, and looked at the little 
 watch dangling on her chatelaine. 
 
 " A quarter to ten ! How awfully late for Mil- 
 dred to be up ! And it is time I dressed. I hope 
 you are coming with me, John. King the bell, 
 please. Come, Mildred." 
 
 The child kissed her father with a hearty, cling- 
 ing kiss which meant a world of love, and then she 
 picked up her doll — not the walking-talking machine 
 from Paris, but a friendly, old-fashioned wax and 
 bran personage — and trotted out of the room, hang- 
 ing on to her mother's gown. 
 
 '* How sweet she is !" muttered the father, look- 
 ing after her fondly; '^ and what a happy home it 
 has been ! I hope the coming of that other one 
 won't make any difference."
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 FAY. 
 
 Mrs. Fausset's three parties, the last of which was 
 a very smart ball, kept her away from home until 
 the summer sun was rising above Grosvenor Square, 
 and the cocks were crowing in the mews behind 
 Upper Parchment Street. Having been so late in 
 the morning, Mrs. Fausset ignored breakfast, and 
 only made her appearance in time for lunch, when 
 her husband came in from his ride. He had escorted 
 her to the first of her parties, and had left her on 
 the way to the second, to go and finish his evening 
 in the House, which he found much more interest- 
 ing than society. 
 
 They met at luncheon, and talked of their pre- 
 vious night's experiences, and of indifierent matters. 
 Not a word about the expected presence which was 
 so soon to disturb their domestic calm. Mr. Fausset 
 affected cheerfulness, yet was evidently out of spirits.
 
 14 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 He looked round the picturesque old oak dining- 
 room wistfully; he strolled into the inner room, 
 with its dwarf bookcases, pictures, and bronzes, its 
 cosy corner behind a sixfold Indian screen, a cen- 
 tury-old screen, bought at Christie's out of a famous 
 collection. He surveyed this temple of domestic 
 peace, and wondered within himself whether it 
 would be quite as peaceful when a new presence was 
 among them. 
 
 ^' Surely a girl of fourteen can make no differ- 
 ence," he argued, "even if she has a peculiar temper. 
 If she is inclined to be troublesome, she shall be 
 made to keep herself to herself. Maud shall not be 
 rendered unhappy by her." 
 
 He went out soon after lunch, and came home 
 again at afternoon tea-time in a hansom, with a girl in 
 a black frock. A four-wheeler followed, with a large 
 trunk and two smaller boxes. The splendid creatures 
 in knee-breeches and powder who opened the door 
 had been ordered to deny their mistress to every- 
 body, so Mrs. Fausset was taking tea alone in her 
 morning-room. 
 
 The morning-room occupied the whole front of
 
 FAY. 15 
 
 the second floor, a beautiful room witli three win- 
 dows, the centre a large bow jutting out over empty 
 space. This bow-window had been added when Mr. 
 Fausset married, on a suggestion from his fiancee. 
 It spoiled the external appearance of the house, but 
 it made the room delightful. For furniture and 
 decoration there was everything pretty, novel, eccen- 
 tric, and expensive that Maud Fausset had ever been 
 able to think of. She had only stopped her caprices 
 and her purchases when the room would not hold 
 another thing of beauty. There was a confusion of 
 form and colour, but the general effect was charm- 
 ing ; and Mrs. Fausset, in a loose white muslin 
 gown, suited the room, just as the room suited Mrs. 
 Fausset. 
 
 She was sitting in the bow-window, in a semi- 
 circle of flowers and amidst the noises of the West 
 End world, waiting for her husband and the new- 
 comer, nervous and apprehensive. The scarlet 
 Japanese tea-table stood untouched, the water bub- 
 bling in the quaint little bronze tea-kettle, swinging 
 between a pair of rampant dragons. 
 
 She started as the door opened, but kept her
 
 16 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 seat. She did not want to spoil the new-comer by 
 an undue appearance of interest. 
 
 John Fausset came into the room, leading a pale 
 girl dressed in black. She was tall for her age, and 
 very thin, and her small face had a pinched look, 
 which made the great black eyes look larger. She 
 was a peculiar-looking girl, with an olive tint in her 
 complexion which hinted at a lineage not altogether 
 English. She was badly dressed in the best mate- 
 rials, and had a look of never having been much 
 cared for since she was born. 
 
 " This is Fay," said Mr. Fausset, trying to be 
 cheerful. 
 
 His wife held out her hand, which the girl took 
 coldly, but not shyly. She had an air of being per- 
 fectly self-possessed. 
 
 • [*' Her name is Fay, is it ? What a pretty name ! 
 By the bye, you did not tell me her surname." 
 
 " Did I not ? Her^name is Fausset. She is a 
 distant relation of my family." 
 
 "I did not understand that last night," said 
 Mrs. Fausset, with a'puzzled air. ** You only talked 
 of a friend."
 
 PAY. 17 
 
 " Was that so ? I should have said a family 
 connection. Yes, Fay and I are namesakes, and 
 kindred." 
 
 He patted the girl's shoulder caressingly, and 
 made her sit down by the little red table in front of 
 the tea-cups, and cakes, and buns. The buns re- 
 minded him of his daughter. 
 
 *'Where is Mildred?" 
 
 " She is at her music-lesson ; but she will be 
 here in a minute or two, no doubt," answered his 
 wife. 
 
 " Poor little mite, to have to begin lessons so 
 soon; the chubby little fingers stuck down upon the 
 cold hard keys. The piano is so uninviting at seven 
 years old ; such a world of labour for such a small 
 effect. If she could turn a barrel-organ, with a 
 monkey on the top, I'm sure she would like music 
 ever so much better; and after a year or two of 
 grinding it would dawn upon her that there was 
 something wanting in that kind of music, and then 
 she would attack the piano of her own accord, and 
 its difficulties would not seem so hopelessly uninter- 
 esting. Are you fond of lessons, Fay ?" 
 

 
 18 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 "I hate them," answered the girl, with vindictive 
 emphasis. 
 
 "And I suppose you hate books too ?" said Mrs. 
 Fausset, rather scornfully. 
 
 " No, I love books." 
 
 She looked about the spacious room, curiously, 
 with admiring eyes. People who came from very 
 pretty rooms of their own were lost in admiration 
 at Mrs. Fausset's morning-room, with its hetero- 
 geneous styles of art — here Louis Seize, there 
 Japanese ; Italian on one side, Indian on the other. 
 What a dazzling effect, then, it must needs have 
 upon this girl, who had spent the last five years of 
 her life amidst the barren surroundings of a sub- 
 urban school ! 
 
 ** What a pretty room ! " she exclaimed at last. 
 
 " Don't you think my wife was made to live in 
 pretty rooms?" asked Fausset, touching Maud's 
 delicate hand as it moved among the tea-things. 
 
 " She is very pretty herself," said Fay, bluntly. 
 
 "Yes, and all things about her should be pretty. 
 This thing, for instance," as Mildred came bounding 
 into the room, and clambered on her father's knee.
 
 FAY. 19 
 
 " This is my daughter, Fay, and your playfellow, if 
 you know how to play." 
 
 " I'm afraid I don't, for they always snuhbed us 
 for anything like play," answered the stranger, "but 
 Mildred shall teach me, if she will." 
 
 She had learnt the child's name from Mr. Fausset 
 during the drive from Streatham Common to Upper 
 Parchment Street. 
 
 Mildred stretched out her little hand to the girl 
 in black with somewhat of a patronising air. She 
 had lived all her little life among bright colours 
 and beautiful objects, in a kind of butterfly world ; 
 and she concluded that this pale girl in sombre 
 raiment must needs be poor and unhappy. She 
 looked her prettiest, smiling down at the stranger 
 from her father's shoulder, where she hung fondly. 
 She looked like a cherub in a picture by Kubens, 
 red-lipped, with eyes of azure, and flaxen hair just 
 touched with gold, and a complexion of dazzling lily 
 and carnation-colour suffused with light. 
 
 "I mean to give you my very best doll," she 
 said. 
 
 " You darling, how I shall adore you !" cried the
 
 20 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 strange girl impulsively, rising from her seat at the 
 tea-table, and clasping Mildred in her arms. 
 
 " That is as it should be," said Fausset, patting 
 Fay's shoulder affectionately. *' Let there be a bond 
 of love between you two." 
 
 "And will you play with me, and learn your 
 lessons with me, and sleep in my room ?" asked 
 Mildred coaxingly. 
 
 " No, darliug. Fay will have a room of her own," 
 said Mrs. Fausset, replying to the last inquiry. 
 "It is much nicer for girls to have rooms to them- 
 selves." 
 
 **No, it isn't," answered Mildred, with a touch 
 of petulance that was pretty in so lovely a child. " I 
 want Fay to sleep with me. I want her to tell me 
 stories every night." 
 
 " You have mother to tell you stories, Mil- 
 dred," said Mrs. Fausset, already inclined to be 
 jealous. 
 
 " Not very often. Mother goes to parties almost 
 every night." 
 
 **Not at The Hook, love." 
 
 *■ 0, but at The Hook there's always com-
 
 FAY. 21 
 
 pany. Why can't I have Fay to tell me stories 
 every night ?" urged the child persistently. 
 
 " I don't see why they should not be together, 
 Maud," said Mr. Fausset, always prone to indulge 
 Mildred's lightest whim. 
 
 " It is better that Fay should have a room of her 
 own, for a great many reasons," replied his wife, 
 with a look of displeasure. 
 
 " Very well, Maud,'S0 be it," he answered, evi- 
 dently desiring to conciliate her. "And which 
 room is Fay to have ?" 
 
 " I have given her Bell's room." 
 
 Mr. Fausset's countenance fell. 
 
 "Bell's room — a servant's room !" — he repeated 
 blankly. 
 
 "It is very inconvenient for Bell, of course," 
 said Mrs. Fausset. " She will have to put up 
 with an extra bed in the housemaid's room ; and 
 as she has always been used to a room of her 
 own, she made herself rather disagreeable about 
 the change." 
 
 Mr. Fausset was silent, and seemed thoughtful. 
 Mildred had pulled Fay away from the table and led
 
 22 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 her to a distant window, where a pair of Virginian 
 love-birds were twittering in their gilded cage, half 
 hidden amidst the bank of feathery white spirea and 
 yellow marguerites which filled the recess. 
 
 ** I should like to see the room," said Fausset 
 presently, when his wife had put down her teacup. 
 
 " My dear John, why should you trouble yourself 
 about such a detail ?" 
 
 " I want to do my duty to the girl — if I can." 
 
 " I think you might trust such a small matter to 
 me, or even to my housekeeper," Maud Fausset 
 answered with an ofi'ended air. " However, you are 
 quite at liberty to make a personal inspection. Bell 
 is very particular, and any room she occupied is sure 
 to be nice. But you can judge for yourself. The 
 room is on the same floor as Mildred's." 
 
 This last remark implied that to occupy any 
 apartment on that floor must be a privilege. 
 
 " But not with the same aspect." 
 
 " Isn't it ? No, I suppose not. The windows 
 look the other way," said Mrs. Fausset innocently. 
 
 She was not an over -educated person. She 
 adored Keats, Shelley, and Browning, and talked
 
 FAY. 23 
 
 about them learnedly in a way ; but she hardly 
 knew the points of the compass. 
 
 She sauntered out of the room, a picture of 
 languid elegance in her flowing muslin gown. 
 There were flowers on the landing, and a scarlet 
 Japanese screen to fence ofi' the stairs that went 
 downward, and a blue-and-gold Algerian curtain to 
 hide the upward flight. This second floor was Mrs. 
 Fausset's particular domain. Her bedroom and 
 bathroom and dressing-room were all on this floor. 
 Mr. Fausset lived there also, but seemed to be there 
 on sufferance. 
 
 She pulled aside the Algerian curtain, and they 
 went up to the third story. The two front rooms 
 were Mildred's bedroom and schoolroom. The 
 bedroom-door was open, revealing an airy room with 
 two windows brightened by outside flower-boxes, 
 full of gaudy red geraniums and snow-white mar- 
 guerites, a gay-looking room, with a pale blue 
 paper and a blue-and-cream-colour carpet. A little 
 brass bed, with lace curtains, for Mildred — an iron 
 bed, without curtains, for Mildred's maid. 
 
 The house was like many old London houses,
 
 24 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 more spacious than it looked outside. There were 
 four or five small rooms at the back occupied by 
 servants, and it was one of those rooms — a very small 
 room looking into a mews — which Mr. Fausset went 
 to inspect. 
 
 It was not a delightful room. There was an 
 outside wall at right-angles with the one window 
 which shut ofi" the glory of the westering sun. 
 There was a forest of chimney-pots by way of pros- 
 pect. There was not even a flower-box to redeem 
 the dinginess of the outlook. The furniture was 
 neat, and the room was spotlessly clean; but as 
 much might be said of a cell in Portland Prison. 
 A narrow iron bedstead, a couple of cane chairs, a 
 common mahogany chest of drawers in the window, 
 and on the chest of drawers a white toilet-cover and 
 a small mahogany looking-glass ; a deal washstand 
 and a zinc bath. These are not luxurious surround- 
 ings ; and Mr. Fausset's countenance did not express 
 approval. 
 
 *'I'm sure it is quite as nice a room as she 
 would have at any boarding-school," said his wife^ 
 answering that disapproving look.
 
 FAT. 25* 
 
 " Perhaps ; but I want her to feel as if she were 
 not at school, but at home." 
 
 " She can have a prettier room at The Hook, I 
 daresay, though we are short of bedrooms even there 
 — if she is to go to The Hook with us." 
 
 " Why, of course she is to go with us. She is 
 to live with us till she marries." 
 
 Mrs. Fausset sighed, and looked profoundly 
 melancholy. 
 
 " I don't think we shall get her married very 
 easily," she said. 
 
 " Why not?" asked her husband quickly, looking 
 at her anxiously as he spoke. 
 
 *' She is so remarkably plain." 
 
 ** Did she strike you so ? I think her rather 
 pretty, or at least interesting. She has magnificent 
 eyes." 
 
 " So has an owl in an ivy-bush," exclaimed 
 Mrs. Fausset petulantly. " Those great black eyes 
 in that small pale face are positively repulsive. 
 However, I don't want to depreciate her. She is 
 of your kith and kin, and you are interested in her ;
 
 26 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 SO we must do the best we can. I only hope Mildred 
 will get on with her.'* 
 
 This conversation took place upon the stairs. 
 Mr. Fausset was at the morning-room door by this 
 time. He opened it, and saw his daughter in the 
 sunlit window among the flowers, with her arm 
 round Fay's neck. 
 
 " They have begun very well," he said. 
 
 " Children are so capricious," answered his wife.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A SUPERIOR PERSON. 
 
 Mildred and her father's ward got on remarkably 
 well — perhaps a little too well to please Mrs. 
 Fausset, who had been jealous of the new-comer, 
 and resentful of her intrusion from the outset. 
 Mildred did not show herself capricious in her 
 treatment of her playfellow. The child had never 
 had a young companion before, and to her the 
 advent of Fay meant the beginning of a brighter 
 life. Until Fay came there had been no one but 
 mother ; and mother spent the greater part of her 
 life in visiting and receiving visits. Only the briefest 
 intervals between a ceaseless round of gaieties could 
 be afforded to Mildred. Her mother doated on her, 
 or thought she did ; but she had allowed herself to 
 be caught in the cogs of the great society wheel, 
 and she was obliged to go round with the wheel. 
 So far as brightly-furnished rooms and an expensive
 
 28 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 morning governess, ever so mucli too clever for the 
 pupil's requirements, and costly toys and pretty 
 frocks and carriage-drives, could go, Mildred was a 
 child in an earthly paradise ; but there are some 
 children who yearn for something more than luxu- 
 rious surroundings and fine clothes, and Mildred 
 Fausset was one of those. She wanted a great 
 deal of love — she wanted love always ; not in brief 
 snatches, as her mother gave it — hurried caresses 
 given in the midst of dressing for a ball, hasty 
 kisses before stepping into her carriage to be whisked 
 off to a garden-party, or in all the pomp and splen- 
 dour of ostrich feathers, diamonds, and court-train 
 before the solemn function of a Drawing-room. Such 
 passing glimpses of love were not enough for Mil- 
 dred. She wanted warm affections interwoven with 
 the fabric of her life ; she wanted loving companion- 
 ship from morning till night; and this she had 
 from Fay. From the first moment of their clasping 
 hands the two girls had loved each other. Each 
 sorely in need of love, they had come together 
 naturally, and with all the force of free undisciplined 
 nature, meeting and mingling like two rivers.
 
 A SUPERIOR PERSON. 251 
 
 John Fausset saw their affection, and was de- 
 lighted. That loving union between the girl and 
 the child seemed to solve all difficulties. Fay was 
 no longer a stranger. She was a part of the family, 
 merged in the golden circle of domestic love. Mrs. 
 Fausset looked on with jaundiced eye. 
 
 "If one could only believe it were genuine !" she 
 sighed. 
 
 " Genuine ! which of them do you suppose is 
 pretending ? Not Mildred, surely ?" 
 
 '* Mildred ! No, indeed. She is truth itself." 
 
 " Why do you suspect Fay of falsehood ?" 
 
 " My dear John, I fear — I only say I fear — that 
 your protegee is sly. She has a quiet self-contained 
 air that I don't like in one so young." 
 
 " I don't wonder she is self-contained. You do 
 so little to draw her out." 
 
 *' Her attachment to Mildred has an exaggerated 
 air — as if she wanted to curry favour with us by 
 pretending to be fond of our child," said Mrs. 
 Fausset, ignoring her husband's remark. 
 
 ''Why should she curry favour? She is not 
 here as a dependent — though she is made to wear
 
 30 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 the look of one sometimes more than I like. I have 
 told you that her future is provided for ; and as for 
 pretending to be fond of Mildred, she is the last girl 
 to pretend affection. She would have been better 
 liked at school if she had been capable of pretending. 
 There is a wild, undisciplined nature under that self- 
 contained air you talk about." 
 
 " There is a very bad temper, if that is what you 
 mean. Bell has complained to me more than once 
 on that subject." 
 
 " I hope you have not set Bell in authority over 
 her," exclaimed Mr. Fausset hastily. 
 
 ** There must be some one to maintain order 
 when Miss Colville is away." 
 
 " That some one should be you or I, not Bell." 
 
 **Bell is a conscientious person, and she would 
 make no improper use of authority." 
 
 " She is a very disagreeable person. That is all 
 I know about her," retorted Mr. Fausset, as he left 
 the room. 
 
 He was dissatisfied with Fay's position in the 
 house, yet hardly knew how to complain or what 
 alteration to suggest. There were no positive wrongs
 
 A SUPERIOR PERSON. 31 
 
 to resent. Fay shared Mildred's studies and amuse- 
 ments; they had their meals together, and took 
 their airings together. 
 
 When Mildred went down to the morning-room 
 or the drawing-room Fay generally went with her — 
 generally, not always. There were times when Bell 
 looked in at the schoolroom-door and beckoned 
 Mildred. " Mamma wants you alone," she would 
 whisper on the threshold ; and Mildred ran off to be 
 petted and paraded before some privileged visitor. 
 
 There were differences which Fay felt keenly, 
 and inwardly resented. She was allowed to sit aloof 
 when the drawing-room was full of fine ladies, upon 
 Mrs. Fausset's afternoon ; while Mildred was brought 
 into notice and talked about, her little graces exhi- 
 bited and expatiated upon, or her childish tastes 
 conciliated. Fay would sit looking at one of the art- 
 books piled upon a side-table, or turning over photo- 
 graphs and prints in a portfolio. She never talked 
 unless spoken to, or did anything to put herself for- 
 ward. 
 
 Sometimes an officious visitor would notice her. 
 
 " What a clever-looking girl ! Who is she ?**
 
 82 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 asked a prosperous dowager, whose own daughters 
 were all planted out in life, happy wives and mothers, 
 and who could afford to interest herself in stray 
 members of the human race. 
 
 " She is a ward of my husband's. Miss Fausset." 
 
 *' Indeed ! A cousin, I suppose ?" 
 
 " Hardly so near as that. A distant connec- 
 tion." 
 
 Mrs. Fausset's tone expressed a wish not to be 
 bored by praise of the clever-looking girl. People 
 soon perceived that Miss Fausset was to be taken 
 no more notice of than a piece of furniture. She 
 was there for some reason known to Mr. and Mrs. 
 Fausset, but she was not there because she was 
 wanted— except by Mildred. Everybody could see 
 that Mildred wanted her. Mildred would run to her 
 as she sat apart, and clamber on her knee, and hang 
 upon her, and whisper and giggle with her, and 
 warm the statue into life. Mildred would carry her 
 tea and cakes, and make a loving fuss about her in 
 spite of all the world. 
 
 Bell was a power in the house in Upper Parch-
 
 A SUPERIOR PERSON. 83 
 
 ment Street. She was that kind of old servant who 
 is as bad as a mother-in-law, or even worse ; for 
 your mother-in-law is a lady by breeding and educa- 
 tion, and is in somewise governed by reason, while 
 your trustworthy old servant is apt to be a creature 
 of impulse, influenced only by feeling. Bell was a 
 woman of strong feelings, devotedly attached to Mrs. 
 Fausset. 
 
 Twenty-seven years ago, when Maud Donfrey 
 was an infant, Martha Bell was the young wife of the 
 head-gardener at Castle-Connell. The gardener and 
 his wife lived at one of the lodges near the bank of 
 the Shannon, and were altogether superior people 
 for their class. Martha had been a lace-maker at 
 Limerick, and was fairly educated. Patrick Bell 
 was less refined, and had no ideas beyond his garden ; 
 but he was honest, sober, and thoroughly respectable. 
 He seldom read the newspapers, and had never heard 
 of Home Rule or the three F.s. 
 
 Their first child died within three weeks of its 
 birth, and a wet-nurse being wanted at the great 
 house for Lady Castle-Connell's seventh baby, Mrs. 
 Bell was chosen as altogether the best person for 
 
 TOL. I. D
 
 34 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 that confidential office. She went to live at the great 
 white house in the beautiful gardens near the river. 
 It was only a temporary separation, she told Patrick; 
 and Patrick took courage at the thought that his wife 
 would return to him as soon as Lady Castle-Connell's 
 daughter was weaned, while in the meantime he was 
 to enjoy the privilege of seeing her every Sunday 
 afternoon ; but somehow it happened that Martha 
 Bell never went back to the commonly-furnished 
 little rooms in the lodge, or to the coarse-handed 
 husband. 
 
 Martha Bell was a woman of strong feelings. 
 She grieved passionately for her dead baby, and she 
 took the stranger's child reluctantly to her aching 
 breast. But babies have a way of getting them- 
 selves loved, and one baby will creep into the place 
 of another unawares. Before Mrs. Bell had been at 
 the great house three months she idolised her nurs- 
 ling. By the time she had been there a year she 
 felt that life would be unbearable without her foster- 
 child. Fortunately for her, she seemed as necessary 
 to the child as the child was to her. Maud was 
 delicate, fragile, lovely, and evanescent of aspect.
 
 A SUPERIOR PERSON. 85 
 
 Lady Castle-Connell had lost two out of her brood, 
 partly, she feared, from carelessness in the nursery. 
 Bell was devoted to her charge, and Bell was en- 
 treated to remain for a year or two at least. 
 
 Bell consented to remain for a year ; she became 
 accustomed to the comforts and refinements of a 
 nobleman's house; she hated the lodge, and she 
 cared very little for her husband. It was a relief to 
 her when Patrick Bell sickened of his desolate home, 
 and took it into his head to emigrate to Canada, 
 where he had brothers and sisters settled already. 
 He and his wife parted in the friendliest spirit, with 
 some ideas of reunion years hence, when the Honour- 
 able Maud should have outgrown the need of a 
 nurse ; but the husband died in Canada before the 
 wife had made up her mind to join him there. 
 Mrs. Bell lived at the great white house until Maud 
 Donfrey left Castle-Connell as the bride of John 
 Fausset. She went before her mistress to the house 
 in Upper Parchment Street, and was there when 
 the husband and wife arrived after their Continental 
 honeymoon. From that hour she remained in pos- 
 session at The Hook, Surrey, or at Upper Parchment
 
 36 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 Street, or at any temporary abode by sea or lake. 
 Bell was always a power in Mrs. Fausset's life, ruling 
 over the other servants, dictating and fault-finding 
 in a quiet, respectful way, discovering the weak side 
 of everybody's character, and getting to the bottom 
 of everybody's history. The servants hated her, and 
 bowed down before her. Mrs. Fausset was fond of 
 her as a part of her own childhood, remembering 
 that great love which had watched through all her 
 infantine illnesses and delighted in all her childish 
 joys. Yet, even despite these fond associations, 
 there were times when Maud Fausset thought that 
 it would be a good thing if dear old Bell would 
 accept a liberal pension and go and live in some 
 rose and honeysuckle cottage among the summery 
 meadows by the Thames. Mrs. Fausset had only 
 seen that riverside region in summer, and she had 
 hardly realised the stern fact of winter in that 
 district. She never thought of rheumatism in 
 connection with one of those low white -walled cot- 
 tages, half - hidden under overhanging thatched 
 gables, and curtained with woodbine and passion- 
 flower, rose and myrtle. Dear old Bell was forty-
 
 A SUPERIOR PERSON. 37 
 
 eight, straight as a ramrod, very thin, with sharp 
 features, and eager gray eyes under bushy iron-gray 
 brows. She had thick iron-gray hair, and she never 
 wore a cap ; that was one of her privileges, and a 
 mark of demarcation between her and the other ser- 
 vants — that and her afternoon gown of black silk or 
 satin. 
 
 She had no specific duties in the house, but had 
 something to say about everything. Mrs. Fausset's 
 French maid and Mildred's German maid were at 
 one in their detestation of Bell ; but both were emi- 
 nently civil to that authority. 
 
 From the hour of Fay's advent in Upper Parch- 
 ment Street, Bell had set her face against her. In 
 the first place, she had not been taken into Mr. and 
 Mrs. Fausset's confidence about the girl. She had 
 not been consulted or appealed to in any way ; and, 
 in the second place, she had been told that her bed- 
 room would be wanted for the new-comer, and that 
 she must henceforward share a room with one of the 
 housemaids, an indignity which this superior person 
 keenly felt. 
 
 Nor did Fay do anything to conciliate this domestic
 
 38 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 power. Fay disliked Bell as heartily as Bell disliked 
 Fay. She refused all offers of service from the con- 
 fidential servant at the outset, and when Bell wanted 
 to help in unpacking her boxes — perhaps with some 
 idea of peering into those details of a girl's posses- 
 sions which in themselves constitute a history — 
 Fay declined her help curtly, and shut the door in 
 her face. 
 
 Bell had sounded her mistress, but had obtained 
 the scantiest information from that source. A distant 
 connection of Mr. Fausset's — his ward, an heiress. 
 Not one detail beyond this could Bell extract from 
 her mistress, who had never kept a secret from her. 
 Evidently Mrs. Fausset knew no more. 
 
 "I must say, ma'am, that for an heiress the 
 child has been sadly neglected," said Bell. "Her 
 under-linen was all at sixes and sevens till I took it 
 in hand ; and she came to this house with her left 
 boot worn down at heel. Her drawers are stuffed 
 with clothes, but many of them are out of repair ; 
 and she is such a wilful young lady that she will 
 hardly let me touch her things."
 
 A SUPERIOR PERSON. 39 
 
 Bell had a habit of emphasising personal pro- 
 nouns that referred to herself. 
 
 " You must do whatever you think proper about 
 her clothes, whether she likes it or not," answered 
 Mrs. Fausset, standing before her glass, and giving 
 final touches to the feathery golden hair which her 
 maid had arranged a few minutes before. ** If she 
 wants new things, you can buy them for her from 
 any of my tradespeople. Mr. Fausset says she is 
 to be looked after in every way. You had better 
 not go to Bond Street for her under-linen. Oxford 
 Street will do ; and you need not go to Stephanie for 
 her hats. She is such a very plain girl that it 
 would be absurd — cruel even — to dress her like 
 Mildred." 
 
 "Yes, indeed, it would, ma'am," assented Bell; 
 and then she pursued musingly : " If it was a good 
 school she was at, all I can say is that the wardrobe- 
 woman was a very queer person to send any pupil 
 away with her linen in such a neglected state. And 
 as for her education. Miss Colville says she is 
 shockingly backward. Miss Mildred knows more
 
 40 THE FATAL THREF. 
 
 geography and more grammar than that great over- 
 grown girl of fourteen." 
 
 Mrs. Fausset sighed. 
 
 " Yes, Bell, she has evidently heen neglected ; 
 but her education matters very little. It is her dis- 
 position I am anxious about." 
 
 " Ah, ma'am, and so am 7," sighed Bell. 
 
 When Bell had withdrawn, Maud Fausset sat in 
 front of her dressing-table in a reverie. She forgot 
 to put on her bonnet or to ring for her maid, 
 though she had been told the carriage was waiting, 
 and although she was due at a musical recital in 
 ten minutes. She sat there lost in thought, while 
 the horses jingled their bits impatiently in the street 
 below. 
 
 "Yes, there is a mystery," she said to herself; 
 ** everybody sees it, even Bell."
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 
 ALL SHE COULD REMEMBER. 
 
 The London season was waning, and fewer carriages 
 rolled westward to the Park gates in the low sun- 
 light of late afternoon, and fewer riders trotted 
 eastward towards Grosvenor Square in the brighter 
 sunshine before luncheon. Town was gay still; 
 but the flood-tide of pleasure was over. The river of 
 London life was on the ebb, and people were begin- 
 ning to talk about grouse-moors in Scotland and 
 sulphur-springs in Germany. 
 
 Fay had lived in Upper Parchment Street nearly 
 two months. It seemed to her impatient spirit as if 
 she had lived there half a lifetime. The life would 
 have been hateful to her without Mildred's love. 
 That made amends for a good deal, but it could not 
 make amends for everything ; not for Bell's quiet 
 insolence, for instance. 
 
 Bell had replenished the alien's wardrobe.
 
 42 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 Everything she had bought was of excellent quality, 
 and expensive after its kind ; but had a prize been 
 offered for bad taste, Bell would have taken it by 
 her selections of raiment on this occasion. Not 
 once did she allow Fay to have a voice in the 
 matter. 
 
 *' Mrs. Fausset deputed me to choose the things, 
 miss," she said, *' and I hope I know my duty." 
 
 " I suppose I am very ugly," said Fay resign- 
 edly, as she contemplated her small features in the 
 glass, overshadowed by a mushroom hat of coarse 
 brown straw, with a big brown bow, " but in this 
 hat I look positively hideous." 
 
 The hat was an excellent hat : that good coarse 
 Dunstable, which costs money and wears for ever, 
 the ribbon of the best quality ; but Hebe herself 
 would have looked plain under a hat shaped like a 
 bell-glass. 
 
 Fay's remark was recorded to Mrs. Fausset as 
 the indication of a discontented spirit. 
 
 Not being able to learn anything about Fay's 
 history from her mistress, Bell had tried to obtain a 
 little light from the girl herself, but without avail.
 
 ALL SHE COULD KEMEMBER. 43 
 
 Questioned about her school, Fay had replied that 
 she hated her school, and didn't want to talk of it. 
 Questioned about her mother, she answered that her 
 mother's name was too sacred to be spoken about to 
 a stranger ; and on a subtle attempt to obtain infor- 
 mation about her father, the girl flushed crimson, 
 started up angrily from her chair, and told the 
 highly respectable Bell that she was not in the habit 
 of chattering to servants, or being questioned by 
 them. 
 
 After this it was war to the knife on Martha 
 Bell's part. 
 
 Miss Colville, the expensive morning governess, 
 was in somewise above prejudice, and was a person 
 of liberal mind, allowing for the fact that she had 
 lived all her life in other people's houses, looking on 
 at lives of fashionable frivolity in which she had no 
 share, and had been obliged to study Debrett's 
 annual volume as if it were her Bible, lest she 
 should commit herself in every other speech, so 
 intricate are the ramifications and intermarriages of 
 the Upper Ten Thousand. Miss Colville was not 
 unkind to Fay Fausset, and was conscientious in
 
 44 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 her instructions ; but even she resented the mystery 
 of the girl's existence, and felt that her presence 
 blemished the respectability of the household. By 
 and by, when she should be seeking new employ- 
 ment, and should have occasion to refer to Mrs. 
 Fausset, and to talk of her pupils in Upper Parch- 
 ment Street, there would be a difficulty in accounting 
 for Fay. A ward of Mr. Fausset's, a distant con- 
 nection : the whole thing sounded improbable. An 
 heiress who had come to the house with torn 
 embroidery upon her under-linen. A mystery — yes, 
 no doubt a mystery. And in Miss Colville's ultra- 
 particular phase of life no manner of mystery was 
 considered respectable ; except always those open 
 secrets in the very highest circles which society 
 agrees to ignore. 
 
 In spite of these drawbacks. Miss Colville was 
 fairly kind to her new charge. Fay was backward 
 in grammar and geography ; she was a dullard about 
 science; but she could chatter French, she knew a 
 little Italian, and in music she was highly gifted. 
 In this she resembled Mildred, who adored music, 
 and had taken her first lessons on the piano as a
 
 ALL SHE COULD REMEMBER. 45 
 
 water-fowl takes to a pond, joyously, as to her native 
 element. Fay was not advanced* in the technique of 
 the art, but she played and sang charmingly, for the 
 most part by ear ; and she used to play and sing to 
 Mildred in the summer twilight, till Bell came like 
 a prison-warder and insisted upon Mildred's going 
 to bed. 
 
 " I nursed your mamma, miss," she would say, 
 *' and /never allowed her to spoil her complexion 
 with late hours as Miss Fay is leading you on 
 to do." 
 
 At seven Mildred cared neither for health nor 
 complexion in the abstract, arid she loved Fay's 
 music and Fay's stories. Fay would tell her a fairy 
 tale, with musical accompaniments, improvised to 
 suit the story. This was Beauty's father groping 
 through the dark wood. Then came the swaying of 
 branches, the rustling of summer leaves, the long, 
 long sigh of the night wind, the hoot of the owl, 
 and the roll of distant thunder. Here came Fatima's 
 brothers to the rescue, with a triumphant march, 
 and the trampling of fiery steeds, careering up and 
 down the piano in presto arpeggios, bursting open
 
 46 THE FATAL THEEB. 
 
 the gates of Bluebeard's Castle with a fortissimo 
 volley of chords. * 
 
 "J never heard any one make such a noise on a 
 piano," said Bell, bristling with indignation. 
 
 At eight o'clock Fay's day and evening were 
 done. Mildred vanished like the setting of the sun. 
 She would like to have had Fay to sit beside her bed 
 and tell her stories, and talk to her, till she dropped 
 to sleep ; but this happiness was sternly interdicted 
 by Bell. 
 
 ** She would keep you awake half the night, Miss 
 Mildred, over - exciting you with her stories; and 
 what would your pa and the doctors say to 7ne V 
 exclaimed Bell. 
 
 The door of the bright, pretty bedchamber closed 
 npon Mildred, and Fay went back to the schoolroom 
 heavy of heart, to enjoy the privilege of sitting up 
 by herself till half-past nine, a privilege conceded to 
 superior years. In that dismal hour and a half the 
 girl had leisure to contemplate the solitude of her 
 friendless life. Take Mildred from her, and she 
 had no one — nothing. Mr. Fausset had meant to 
 be kind to her, perhaps. He had talked very kindly
 
 ALL SHE COULD KEMEMBER. 47 
 
 to her in the long drive from Streatham. He had 
 promised her a home and the love of kindred ; 
 but evil influences had come in his way, and he had 
 given her — Bell. Perhaps she was of a jealous, 
 exacting disposition ; for, fondly as she loved Mil- 
 dred, she could not help comparing Mildred's lot 
 with her own : Mildred's bright, airy room and 
 flower-decked windows, looking over the tree-tops 
 in the Park, with her dingy cell opening upon a 
 forest of chimneys, and tainted with odours of stables 
 and kitchen ; Mildred's butterfly frocks of lace and 
 muslin, with the substantial ugliness of her own 
 attire; Mildred's manifold possessions — trinkets, 
 toys, books, games, pictures, and flowers — with her 
 empty dressing-table and unadorned walls. 
 
 " At your age white frocks would be ridiculous," 
 said Bell ; yet Fay saw other girls of her age flaunt- 
 ing in white muslin all that summer through. 
 
 Sometimes the footman forgot to bring her lamp, 
 and she would sit in the schoolroom window, looking 
 down into the street, and watching the carriages 
 roll by in endless procession, with their lamps 
 flaming in the pale gray night, carrying their freight
 
 48 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 to balls and parties, hurrying from pleasure to plea- 
 sure on swift-revolving wheels. A melancholy hour 
 this for the longing heart of youth, even when the 
 schoolgirl's future participation in all these pleasures 
 is a certainty, or contingent only upon life ; but what 
 was it for this girl, who had all girlhood's yearnings 
 for pleasure and excitement, and who knew not if 
 that sparkling draught would ever touch her lips, 
 who felt herself an alien in this fine house, a stranger 
 at this fashionable end of the town ? It was no new 
 thing for her to sit alone in the twilight, a prey to 
 melancholy thoughts. Ever since she could remem- 
 ber, her life had been solitary and loveless. The 
 home ties and tender associations which sweeten 
 other lives were unknown to her. She had never 
 known what love meant till she felt Mildred's warm 
 arms clinging round her neck, and Mildred's soft 
 cheek pressed against hers. Her life had been a 
 shifting scene peopled with strangers. Dim and 
 misty memories of childhood's earliest dawn con- 
 jured up a cottage-garden on a windy hill; the sea 
 stretching far away in the distance, bright and blue, 
 but unattainable ; a patch of grass on one side, a
 
 ALL SHE COULD REMEMBER. 49 
 
 patch of potatoes on the other ; a hed of wallflowers 
 and stocks and yellow marigolds in front of the 
 parlour window ; a family of hens and an arrogant 
 cock strutting in the foreground ; and, standing out 
 sharply against the sky and the sea, a tall column 
 surmounted by a statue. 
 
 How she had longed to get nearer that vast 
 expanse of water, to find out what the sea was like ! 
 From some points in the view it seemed so near, 
 almost as if she could touch it with her outstretched 
 hands; from other points it looked so far away. 
 She used to stand on a bank behind the cottage and 
 watch the white-sailed boats going out to sea, and 
 the steamers with their trailing smoke melting and 
 vanishing on the horizon. 
 
 "Where do they go?" she asked in her baby 
 French. " Where do they go ?" 
 
 Those were the first words she remembered 
 speaking, and nobody seemed ever to have answered 
 that eager question. 
 
 No one had cared for her in those days. She 
 was very sure of that, looking back upon that mo- 
 notonous childhood : a long series of empty hours in 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 60 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 a cottage garden, and with no companions except 
 the fowls, and no voice except that of the cow in the 
 meadow hard by : a cow which sent forth meaningless 
 bellows occasionally, and which she feared as if it 
 had been a lion. 
 
 There was a woman in a white cap whom she 
 called Nounou, and who seemed too busy to care 
 about anybody ; a woman who did all the housework, 
 and dug the potato-garden, and looked after the 
 fowls, and milked the cow and made butter, and rode 
 to market on a donkey once or twice a week : a woman 
 who was always in a hurry. There was a man who 
 came home from work at sundown, and there were 
 two boys in blouses and sabots, the youngest of 
 whom was too old to play with the nurse-child. 
 Long summer days in the chalky garden, long hours 
 of listless monotony in front of the wide bright sea, 
 had left a sense of oppression upon Fay's mind. 
 She did not know even the name of the town she 
 had seen far below the long ridge of chalky hill — a 
 town of tall white houses and domes and spires, 
 which had seemed a vast metropolis to the eyes of 
 infancy. She had but to shut her eyes in her evening
 
 ALL SHE COULD REMEMBER. 51 
 
 solitude, and she could conjure up the picture of 
 roofs and spires, and hill and sea, and the tall 
 column in its railed enclosure ; yet she knew no more 
 of town or hill than that they were on the other 
 side of the Channel. 
 
 She remembered lying in a narrow little bed, that 
 rocked desperately on a windy day, and looking out 
 at the white sea-foam dashing against a curious oval 
 window, like a giant's eye ; and then she remembered 
 her first wondering experience of railway travelling ; 
 a train flashing past green fields and hop-gardens 
 and houses ; and then darkness and the jolting of a 
 cab ; and after that being carried half-asleep into a 
 strange house, and waking to find herself in a strange 
 room, all very clean and neat, with a white-curtained 
 bed and white muslin window-curtains, and on look- 
 ing out of the window, behold, there was a patch of 
 common all abloom with yellow gorse. 
 
 She remembered dimly that she had travelled in 
 the charge of a little gray-haired man, w^ho dis- 
 appeared after the journey. She found herself 
 now in the care cf an elderly lady, very prim and 
 strict, but not absolutely unkind ; who wore a silk 
 
 LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY Of \um
 
 62 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 gown, and a gold watch at her waistband, and who 
 talked in an unknown tongue. Everything here 
 was prettier than in Nounou's house, and there was 
 a better garden, a garden where there were more 
 flowers and no potatoes and there was the common 
 in the front of the garden, all hillocks and hollows, 
 where she was allowed to amuse herself in charge 
 of a ruddy-faced girl in a lavender cotton frock. 
 
 The old lady taught her the unknown tongue, 
 which she discovered in time to be English, and a 
 good deal besides — reading and writing, for instance, 
 and the rudiments of music, a little arithmetic, 
 grammar, and geography. She took kindly to music 
 and reading, and she liked to dabble with ink ; but 
 the other lessons were abhorrent, and she gave the 
 orderly old lady a good deal of trouble. There 
 was no love between them, only endurance on 
 either side ; and the long days on the common were 
 almost as desolate as the days on the chalky hill 
 above the sea. 
 
 At last there came a change. The dressmaker 
 sent home three new frocks, all uncompromisingly 
 ugly; the little old gray-haired man reappeared.
 
 ALL SHE COULD REMEMBER. 53 
 
 looking exactly as he had looked on board the steamer, 
 and a fly carried Fay and this guardian to the railway- 
 station on the common, and thence the train took 
 them to a great dark city, which the man told Fay 
 was London ; and then they went in a cab through 
 streets that seemed endless, till at last the streets 
 melted into a wide high-road, with trees on either 
 side, and the cab drove into a garden of shining 
 laurels and rhododendrons, and pulled up before a 
 classic portico. Fay had no memory of any house 
 so grand as this, although it was only the conven- 
 tional suburban villa of sixty or seventy years ago. 
 
 Just at first the change seemed delightful That 
 circular carriage-sweep, those shining rhododendrons 
 with great rose-coloured trusses of bloom, the droop- 
 ing gold of the laburnums, and the masses of per- 
 fumed lilac, were beautiful in her eyes. Not so 
 beautiful the long, bare schoolroom and the willow- 
 pattern cups and saucers. Not so beautiful that 
 all-pervading atmosphere of restraint which made 
 school odious to Fay from the outset. 
 
 She stayed there for years — an eternity it seemed 
 to her, looking back upon its hopeless monotony.
 
 54 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 Pleasure, Tariety, excitement, she had none. Life 
 was an everlasting treadmill — up and down, down 
 and up, over and over again. The same dull 
 round of lessons ; a dismal uniformity of food ; 
 Sunday penance in the shape of two long services 
 in a badly ventilated church, and one long catechism 
 in a dreary schoolroom. No gaol can be much duller 
 than a well-regulated middle-class girls' school. Fay 
 could complain of no ill-treatment. She was well 
 fed, comfortably housed, warmly clad; but her life 
 was a burden to her. 
 
 She had a bad temper ; was irritable, impatient, 
 quick to take offence, and prone to fits of sullenness. 
 This was the opinion of the authorities; and her 
 faults increased as she grew older. She was not 
 absolutely rebellious towards the governesses ; but 
 there was always something amiss. She was idle 
 and listless at her studies, took no interest in any- 
 thing but her music-lessons, and was altogether an 
 unsatisfactory pupil. She had no lasting friendships 
 among her schoolfellows. She was capricious in her 
 likings, and was prone to fancy herself slighted or 
 ill-treated on the smallest provocation. The general
 
 ALL SHE COULD REMEMBER. 65 
 
 verdict condemned her as the most disagreeable girl 
 in the school. With the meaner souls among her 
 schoolfellows it was considered an affront that she 
 should have no antecedents worth talking about, 
 no relatives, no home, and no hampers or presents. 
 Even the servants neglected her as a young person 
 without surroundings, upon whom kindness would be 
 thrown away. The wardrobe-w^oman left her clothes 
 unmended, feeling that it mattered very little in what 
 order they were kept, since the girl never went home 
 for the holidays, and there was no mother or aunt to 
 investigate her trunks. She was condemned on 
 every hand as a discreditable mystery; and w4ien, 
 one unlucky afternoon, a sultry afternoon at the 
 beginning of a hot summer, she lost her temper in 
 the middle of a class-lesson, burst into a torrent of 
 angry speech, half defiance, half reproach, bounced 
 up from her seat, and rushed out of the schoolroom, 
 there were few to pity, and none to sympathise. 
 
 The proprietress of the school was elderly and 
 lymphatic. Miss Fausset had been stigmatised as 
 a troublesome pupil for a long time. There were 
 continual complaints about Miss Fausset's conduct,
 
 56 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 worrying complaints, which spoilt Miss Constable's 
 dinner and interfered with her digestion. Really, 
 the only course open to that prosperous, over-fed 
 personage was to get rid of Miss Fausset. There 
 was an amiable family of three sisters — highly 
 connected young persons, whose father was in the 
 wine trade — waiting for vacancies in that old-estab- 
 lished seminary. 
 
 *' We will make a tabula rasa of a troublesome 
 past," said Miss Constable, who loved fine words. 
 " Miss Fausset must go." 
 
 Thus it was that John Fausset had been sud- 
 denly called upon to find a new home for his ward ; 
 and thus it was that Fay had been brought to Upper 
 Parchment Street. 
 
 No doubt Upper Parchment Street was better 
 than school ; but if it had not been for Mildred the 
 atmosphere on the edge of Hyde Park would have 
 been no more congenial than the atmosphere at 
 Streatham. Fay felt herself an intruder in that 
 splendid house, where, amidst that multitude of 
 pretty things, she could not put her finger upon one 
 gracious object that belonged to her — nothing that
 
 ALL SHE COULD REMEMBER. 57 
 
 was her " very own," as Mildred called it ; for she 
 had refused Mildred's doll and all other proffered 
 gifts, too proud to profit by a child's lavish gene- 
 rosity. Mrs. Fausset made her no gifts, never talked 
 to her, rarely looked at her. 
 
 Fay knew that Mrs. Fausset disliked her. She 
 had divined as much from the first, and she knew 
 only too well that dislike had grown with experience. 
 She was allowed to go down to afternoon tea with 
 Mildred ; but had she been deaf and dumb her society 
 could not have been less cultivated by the mistress 
 of the house. Mrs. Fausset's feelings were patent to 
 the whole household, and were common talk in the 
 servants' hall. " No wonder," said the women ; the 
 men said "What a shame!" but footmen and house- 
 maids were at one in their treatment of Fay, which 
 was neglectful, and occasionally insolent. It would 
 hardly have been possible for them to behave well to 
 the intruder and keep in favour with Bell, who was 
 absolute — a superior power to butler or housekeeper, 
 a person with no stated office, and the supreme right 
 to interfere with everybody. 
 
 Bell sighed and shook her head whenever Miss
 
 58 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 Fay was mentioned. She bridled with pent-up 
 indignation, as if the giri's existence were an injury 
 to her, Martha Bell. ''If I hadn't nursed Mrs. 
 Fausset when she was the loveliest infant that ever 
 drew breath, I shouldn't feel it so much," said Bell; 
 and then tears would spring to her eyes and chokings 
 would convulse her throat, and the housekeeper would 
 shake her head and sympathise mysteriously. 
 
 At the end of July the establishment migrated 
 from Parchment Street to The Hook, Mr. Fausset's 
 riverside villa between Chertsey and Windsor. The 
 Hook was an expanse of meadow-land bordered with 
 willows, round which the river made a loop ; and on 
 this enchanted bit of ground — a spot loved by the 
 river-god — Mr. Fausset had built for himself the 
 most delightful embodiment of that much-abused 
 word villa ; a long, low, white house, with spacious 
 rooms, broad corridors, a double flight of marble 
 stairs, meeting on a landing lit by an Italian cupola 
 — a villa surrounded with a classic colonnade, and 
 looking out upon peerless gardens sloping to the 
 willow-shadowed stream. 
 
 To Fay The Hook seemed like a vision of Para-
 
 ALL SHE COULD REMEMBER. 69 
 
 dise. It was almost happiness even to her impa- 
 tient spirit to sit in a corner of those lovely grounds, 
 screened from the outer world by a dense wall of 
 Portugal laurels and arbutus, with the blue water 
 and the low, flat meadows of the further shore for 
 her only prospect. 
 
 Miss Colville was left behind in London. For 
 Fay and Mildred life was a perpetual holiday. Mrs. 
 Fausset was almost as much in society at The Hook 
 as she had been in London. Visitors came and 
 visitors went. She was never alone. There were 
 parties at Henley and Marlow, and Wargrave and 
 Goring. Two pairs of horses were kept hard at 
 work carrying Mr. and Mrs. Fausset about that 
 lovely riverside landscape to garden-parties and 
 dinners, picnics and regattas. John Fausset went 
 because his wife liked him to go, and because he 
 liked to see her happy and admired. The two girls 
 were left, for the most part, to their own devices, 
 under the supervision of Bell. They lived in the 
 gardens, with an occasional excursion into the un- 
 known world along the river. There was a trust- 
 worthy under-gardener, who was a good oarsman.
 
 60 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 and in his charge Mildred was allowed to go on the 
 water in a big wherry, which looked substantial 
 enough to have carried a select boarding-school. 
 
 This life by the Thames was the nearest ap- 
 proach to absolute happiness which Fay had ever 
 known ; but for her there was to be no such thing 
 as unbroken bliss. In the midst of the sultry 
 August weather Mildred fell ill — a mild attack of 
 scarlet fever, which sounded less alarming to Mrs. 
 Fausset's ear, because the doctor spoke of it as scar- 
 latina. It was a very mild case, the local prac- 
 titioner told Mrs. Fausset; there was no occasion 
 to send for a London physician ; there was no occa- 
 sion for alarm. Mildred must keep her bed for a 
 fortnight, and must be isolated from the rest of the 
 house. Her own maid might nurse her if she had 
 had the complaint. 
 
 "How could she have caught the fever?" Mrs. 
 Fausset asked, with an injured air ; and there was a 
 grand investigation, but no scarlet fever to be heard 
 of nearer than Maidenhead. 
 
 " People are so artful in hiding these things," 
 said Mrs. Fausset ; and ten minutes afterwards she
 
 ALL SHE COULD REMEMBER. 61 
 
 begged the doctor not to mention Mildred's malady 
 to any of her neighbours. 
 
 " We have such a host of engagements, and 
 crowds of visitors coming from London," she said. 
 " People are so ridiculously nervous. Of course I 
 shall be extremely careful." 
 
 The doctor gave elaborate instructions about 
 isolation. Such measures being taken, Mrs. Fausset 
 might receive all fashionable London with safety. 
 
 *' And it is really such a mild case that you need 
 not put yourself about in any way," concluded the 
 doctor. 
 
 "Dear, sweet pet, we must do all we can to 
 amuse her," sighed the fond mother. 
 
 Mild as the case might be, the patient had to 
 suffer thirst and headache, a dry and swollen throat, 
 and restless nights. Her most eager desire was for 
 Fay's company, and as it was ascertained that Fay 
 had suffered from scarlet fever some years before in 
 a somewhat severe form, it was considered she 
 might safely assist in the sick-room. 
 
 She was there almost all day, and very often in 
 the night. She read to Mildred, and sang to her,
 
 62 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 and played with her, and indulged every changing 
 fancy and caprice of sickness. Her love was inex- 
 haustible, indefatigable, for ever on the watch. If 
 Mildred woke from a feverish dream in the deep of 
 night, with a little agitated sob or cry, she found a 
 figure in a white dressing-gown bending over her, 
 and loving arms encircling her before she had time 
 to feel frightened. Fay slept in a little dressing- 
 room opening out of Mildred's large, airy bedroom, 
 so as to be near her darling. It was a mere closet, 
 with a truckle-bed brought down from the servants' 
 attic ; but it was good enough for Fay, whose only 
 thought was of the child who loved her as none 
 other had ever loved within her memory. 
 
 Mrs. Fausset was prettily anxious about her 
 child. She would come to Mildred's room in her 
 dressing-gown before her leisurely morning toilet, to 
 hear the last report. She would sit by the bed for 
 five minutes showering kisses on the pale cheeks, 
 and then she would go away to her long summer- 
 day of frivolous pleasures and society talk. Kipples 
 of laughter and snatches of speech came floating in 
 at the open windows ; and at Mildred's behest Fay
 
 ALL SHE COULD REMEMBER. 63 
 
 would stand at a window and report the proceedings 
 of that happy world outside. 
 
 " They are going out in the boat. They are 
 going to have tea on the lawn. Your mamma is 
 walking up and down with Sir Horace Clavering. 
 Miss Granville and her sister are playing croquet;" 
 and so on, and so on, all day. 
 
 Mildred tossed about on her pretty white bed 
 impatiently. 
 
 "It is very horrid being shut up here on these 
 fine days," she said ; " or it would be horrid without 
 you, Fay. Mamma does not come to see me much." 
 
 Mamma came three or four times a day ; but her 
 visits were of the briefest. She would come into 
 the room beaming with smiles, looking like living 
 sunlight in her exquisite white gown, with its deli- 
 cate ribbons and cloudy lace — a fleecy white cloud 
 just touched with rose-colour, as if she were an 
 embodiment of the summer dawn. Sometimes she 
 brought Mildred a peach, or a bunch of hothouse 
 grapes, or an orchid, or a new picture-book ; but 
 beautiful as these offerings were, the child did not 
 always value them. She would push the plate of
 
 64 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 grapes or the peach aside impatiently when her 
 mother was gone, or she would entreat Fay to eat 
 the dainty. 
 
 " Mamma thinks I am greedy," she said ; " but 
 I ain't, ami, Fay?" 
 
 Those three weeks in the sick-room, those wake- 
 ful nights and long, slow summer days, strengthened 
 the bond of love between the two girls. By the time 
 Mildred was convalescent they seemed to have loved 
 each other for years. Mildred could hardly remem- 
 ber what her life was like before she had Fay for a 
 companion. Mrs. Fausset saw this growing affec- 
 tion not without jealousy; but it was very convenient 
 that there should be some one in the house whose 
 companionship kept Mildred happy, and she even 
 went so far as to admit that Fay was ** useful." 
 
 " I cannot be with the dear child half so much as 
 I should like to be," she said ; " visitors are so 
 exacting." 
 
 Fay had slept very little during Mildred's illness, 
 and now that the child was nearly well the elder girl 
 began to flag somewhat, and was tired early in the 
 evening, and glad to go to bed at the same hour as
 
 ALL SHE COULD REMEMBER. 65 
 
 the patient, who, under Bell's supervision, was made 
 to retire before eight. She was now well enough to 
 sit up all day, and to drive out in a pony-carriage in 
 the sunny hours after early dinner. Fay went with 
 her, of course. Pony and landscape would have been 
 wanting in charm without Fay's company. Both 
 girls had gone to bed one sultry evening in the faint 
 gray twilight. Fay was sleeping profoundly ; but 
 Mildred, after dozing a little, was lying half-awake, 
 with closed eyelids, in the flower-scented room. 
 The day had been exceptionally warm. The win- 
 dows were all open, and a door between Mildred's 
 bedroom and sitting-room had been left ajar. 
 
 Bell was in the sitting-room at her favourite task 
 of clearing up the scattered toys and books, and re- 
 ducing all things to mathematical precision. Meta, 
 Mildred's German maid, was sitting at needlework 
 near the window by the light of a shaded lamp. 
 The light shone in the twilight through the partly- 
 open door, and gave Mildred a sense of company. 
 They began to talk presently, and Mildred listened, 
 idly at first, and soothed by the sound of their 
 voices, but afterwards with keen curiosity. 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 66 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 " I know I sliouldn't like to be treated so," said 
 Meta. 
 
 ** I don't see that she lias anything to complain 
 of," answered Bell. " She has a good home, and 
 everything provided for her. What more can she 
 want?" 
 
 *' I should want a good deal more if I was a 
 heiress." 
 
 " An heiress," corrected Bell, who prided herself 
 on having cultivated her mind, and was somewhat 
 pedantic of speech. *' That's all nonsense, Meta. 
 She's no more an heiress than I am. Mr. Fausset 
 told my poor young mistress that just to throw dust 
 in her eyes. Heiress, indeed ! An heiress without 
 a relative in the world that she can speak of — an 
 heiress that has dropped from the moon. Don't 
 tell me:' 
 
 Nobody was telling Mrs. Bell anything ; but she 
 had a resentful air, as if combating the arguments 
 of an invisible adversary. 
 
 There was a silence during which Mildred nearly 
 fell asleep ; and then the voices began again.
 
 ALL SHE COULD REMEMBER. 67 
 
 " It's impossible for sisters to be fonder of each 
 other than those two are," said Meta. 
 
 *' There's nothing strange in that, considering 
 they are sisters," answered Bell angrily. 
 
 " 0, but you've no right to say that, Mrs. Bell ; 
 it's going too far." 
 
 " Haven't I a right to use my eyes and ears ? 
 Can't I see the family look in those two faces, 
 though Miss Mildred is pretty and Miss Fay is 
 plain ? Can't I hear the same tones in the two 
 voices, and haven't I seen his way of bringing that 
 girl into the house, and his guilty look before my 
 poor injured mistress ? Of course they're sisters. 
 Who could ever doubt it ? She doesn't, I know, 
 poor dear." 
 
 She, in this connection, meant Mrs. Fausset. 
 
 There was only one point in this speech which 
 the innocent child seized upon. She and Fay were 
 said to be sisters. 0, how she had longed for a 
 sister in the last year or so of her life, since she had 
 found out the meaning of solitude among fairest 
 surroundings ! How all the brightest things she 
 possessed had palled upon her for want of sisterly
 
 68 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 companionship I How she had longed for a baby-sister 
 even, and had envied the children in households 
 where a new baby was an annual institution ! She 
 had wondered w^hy her mother did not treat herself 
 to a new^ baby occasionally, as so many of her 
 mother's friends did. And now Fay had been given 
 to her, ever so much better than a baby, which 
 would have taken such a long time to grow up. 
 Mildred had never calculated how long, but she con- 
 cluded that it would be some months before the most 
 forward baby would be of a companionable age. Fay 
 had been given to her — a ready-made companion, 
 versed iu fairy tales, able to conjure up an enchanted 
 world out of the schoolroom piano, skilful with pencil 
 and colour-box, able to draw the faces and figures 
 and palaces and w^oodlands of that fairy world, able 
 to amuse and entertain her in a hundred ways. And 
 Fay was her sister after all. She dropped asleep in 
 a flutter of pleasurable excitement. She would ask 
 her mother all about it to-morrow; and in the 
 meantime she would say nothing to Fay. It was 
 fun to have a secret from Fay. 
 
 A batch of visitors left next day after lunch.
 
 ALL SHE COULD REMEMBER. 69 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Fausset were to be alone for to.ty- 
 eigbt hours, a rare oasis of domesticity in the society 
 desert. Mildred had been promised that the first 
 day there was no company she was to have tea with 
 mamma in the tent on the lawn. She claimed the 
 fulfilment of that promise to-day. 
 
 It was a lovely day after the sultry, thundery 
 night. Mrs. Fausset reclined in her basket-chair in 
 the shelter of the tent. Fay and Mildred sat side 
 by side on a low bamboo bench on the grass : the 
 little girl, fairy-like, in her white muslin and flowing 
 flaxen hair, the big girl in olive- coloured alpaca, 
 with dark hair clustering in short curls about the 
 small intelligent head. There could hardly have 
 been a stronger contrast than that between the two 
 girls ; and yet Bell was right. There was a family 
 look, an undefinable resemblance of contour and 
 expression which would have struck a very attentive 
 observer — something in the line of the delicate eye- 
 brow, something in the angle of the forehead. 
 
 ''Mamma," said Mildred suddenly, clambering 
 into her mother's lap, *' why mayn't I call Fay 
 sister?"
 
 70 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 jlrs. Fausset started, and flushed crimson. 
 
 ** What nonsense, child ! Why, because it would 
 be most ridiculous." 
 
 ''But she is my sister," urged Mildred, looking 
 full into her mother's eyes, with tremendous resolu- 
 tion in her own. *' I love her like a sister, and she 
 is my sister. Bell says so." 
 
 "Bell is an impertinent person," cried Mrs. 
 Fausset angrily. '' When did she say so ?" 
 
 *' Last night, when she thought I was asleep. 
 Mayn't I call Fay sister ?" persisted Mildred coax- 
 ingly. 
 
 ''On no account. I never heard anything so 
 shameful. To think that Bell should gossip ! An 
 old servant like Bell — my own old nurse. It is too 
 cruel!" cried Mrs. Fausset, forgetting herself in her 
 anger. 
 
 Fay stood tall and straight in the sunshine out- 
 side the tent, wondering at the storm. She had an 
 instinctive apprehension that Mrs. Fausset's anger 
 was humiliating to her. She knew not why, but she 
 felt a sense of despair darker than any other evil
 
 ALL SHE COULD REMEMBER. 71 
 
 moment in her life ; and yet her evil moments had 
 been many. 
 
 " You need not be afraid that I shall ask Mildred 
 to call me sister," she said. *'I love her dearly, 
 but I hate everybody else in this house." 
 
 *' You are a wicked, ungrateful girl," exclaimed 
 Mrs. Fausset, **and I am very sorry I ever saw your 
 face." 
 
 Fay drew herself up, looked at the speaker indig- 
 nantly for a moment or so, and then walked quietly 
 away towards the house. 
 
 She passed the footman with the tea-tray as she 
 crossed the lawn, and a little further on she passed 
 John Fausset, who looked at her wonderingly. 
 
 Mildred burst out crying. 
 
 **How unkind you are, mamma!" she sobbed. 
 **If I mayn't call her my sister I shall always love 
 her like a sister — always, always, always," 
 
 "What is the matter with my Mildred?" asked 
 Mr. Fausset, arriving at this moment. 
 
 '' Nothing. She has only been silly," his wife 
 answered pettishly. 
 
 ''And Fay — has she been silly, too?"
 
 72 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 "Fay, jour protegee, has been most impertinent 
 to me. But I suppose that does not count." 
 
 *' It does count, for a good deal, if she has been 
 intentionally impertinent," answered Fausset gravely. 
 
 He looked back after Fay's vanishing figure with 
 a troubled expression. He had so sighed for peace. 
 He had hoped that the motherless girl might be 
 taken into his home and cared for and made happy, 
 without evil feeling upon any one's part ; and now 
 he could see by his wife's countenance that the hope 
 of union and peace was at an end. 
 
 "I don't know what you mean about intention," 
 said his wife ; " I only know that the girl you are so 
 fond of has just said she hates everybody in this 
 house except Mildred. That sound rather like iuten- 
 tional impertinence, I think." 
 
 " Go and play, darling," said Fausset to his child ; 
 " or run after Fay, and bring her back to tea." 
 
 "You show a vast amount of consideration for 
 your wife," said Mrs. Fausset. 
 
 "My dear Maud, I want you to show a little 
 more consideration for that girl, who has been so 
 devoted to Mildred all through her illness, and who
 
 ALL SHE COULD REMEMBER. 73 
 
 has one very strong claim upon a mother's heart — 
 she is motherless." 
 
 "I should think more of that claim, perhaps, if 
 I knew who her mother was, and what she was to 
 you," said Maud Fausset. 
 
 " She was once near and dear to me. That is 
 all I can tell you, Maud; and it ought to be 
 enough." 
 
 ''It is more than enough," his wife answered, 
 trembling from head to foot, as she rose from her 
 low chair, and walked away from the tent. 
 
 John Fausset looked after her irresolutely, went a 
 few steps as if he meant to follow her, and then 
 turned back to the tent, just as Mildred reappeared 
 with Fay from another direction. 
 
 " We three will have tea together," he exclaimed, 
 with demonstrative cheerfulness. ^' Mamma is not 
 very well, Mildred ; she has gone back to the house. 
 You shall pour out my tea." 
 
 He seated himself in his wife's chair, and Mildred 
 sat on his knee, and put her arms round his neck, 
 and adored him with all her power of adoration. 
 Her household divinity had ever been the father.
 
 74 THE FATx\.L THREE. 
 
 Perhaps her baby mind had found out the weakness 
 of one parent and the strength of the other. 
 
 ''Fay shall pour out the tea," she said, with a 
 sense of self-sacrifice. " It will be a treat for Fay." 
 
 So Fay poured out the tea, and they all three sat 
 in the tent, and were happy and merry — or seem- 
 ingly so, perhaps, as concerned John Fausset — for 
 one whole sunshiny hour, and for the first time Fay 
 felt that she was not an outsider. Yet there lurked 
 in her mind the memory of Mrs. Fausset's anger, 
 and that memory was bitter. 
 
 " What am I, that almost everybody should be 
 rude to me ?" she asked herself, as she sat alone 
 that night after Mildred had gone to bed. 
 
 From the open windows below came the languid 
 sweetness of a nocturne by Chopin. Mrs. Fausset 
 was playing her husband to sleep after dinner. Sure 
 token of reconciliation between husband and wife. 
 
 The doctor came next morning. He appeared 
 upon alternate days now, and looked at Mildred in a 
 casual manner, after exhausting the local gossip 
 with Mrs. Fausset. This morning he and Mrs.
 
 ALL SHE COULD REMEMBER. 75 
 
 Fausset wera particularly confidential before the 
 patient was sent for. 
 
 " Admirable !" be exclaimed, when be bad looked 
 at her tongue and felt ber pulse ; "we are as nearly 
 well as we can be. All we want now is a little sea- 
 air to set us up for tbe winter. The great point, 
 my dear madam " — to Mrs. Fausset — " is to avoid 
 all risk of sequelce, A fortnight at Brighton or East- 
 bourne will restore our little friend to perfect 
 health." 
 
 There were no difficulties in the way of such 
 people as the Faussets, no question of ways and 
 means. Bell was sent for, and despatched to East- 
 bourne by an afternoon train. She was to take 
 lodgings in a perfect position, and of impeccable 
 repute as to sanitation. Mildred was to follow next 
 day, under convoy of Meta and the under-butler, a 
 responsible person of thirty-five. 
 
 *' Fay must go, too," exclaimed Mildred ; where- 
 upon followed a tragic scene. 
 
 Fay was not to go to Eastbourne. No reasons 
 were assigned for the decision. Mildred was to ride 
 a donkey ; she was to have a pony-carriage at her
 
 76 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 disposition ; but she was to be without Fay for a 
 whole fortnight. In a fortnight she would be able 
 to come home again. 
 
 *'How many days are there in a fortnight ?" she 
 asked piteously. 
 
 *' Fourteen." 
 
 " Fay, fourteen days away from you !" she 
 exclaimed, clinging with fond arms round Fay's 
 neck, and pulling down the dark head on a level 
 with her own bright hair. 
 
 Fay was pale, but tearless, and said not a word. 
 She let Mildred kiss her, and kissed back again, but 
 in a dead silence. She went into the hall with the 
 child, and to the carriage-door, and they kissed each 
 other on the doorstep, and they kissed at the car- 
 riage-window ; and then the horses trotted away 
 along the gravel drive, and Fay had a last glimpse 
 of the fair head thrust out of the window, and the 
 lilies and roses of a child's face framed in pale gold 
 hair. 
 
 It was a little more than a fortnight before Bell 
 and her charge went back to The Hook. Mildred 
 had sorely missed her playfellow, but had consoled
 
 ALL SHE COULD REMEMBER. 77 
 
 herself with a spade and pail on the beach, and a 
 donkey of venerable aspect, whose chief distinction 
 was his white linen panoply, on the long dusty 
 roads. 
 
 Mrs. Fausset was not at home to receive her 
 daughter. She had a superior duty at Chertsey, 
 where people of some social importance were giving 
 a lawn-party. The house seemed empty and silent, 
 and all its brightness and graceful furniture, and 
 flowers in the hall and on the staircase, could not 
 atone for that want of human life. 
 
 ** Where is Fay ?" cried Mildred, taking alarm. 
 
 Nobody answered a question which was addressed 
 to everybody. 
 
 " Fay, Fay, where are you ?" cried the child, 
 and then rushed up- stairs to the schoolroom, light 
 as a lapwing, distracted with that sudden fear. 
 "Fay, Fay!" The treble cry rang through the 
 house. 
 
 No one in the schoolroom, nor in Mildred's bed- 
 room, nor in the little room where Fay had slept, 
 nor in the drawing-rooms, whither Mildred came 
 running, after that futile quest up-stairs.
 
 78 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 Bell met her in tlie ball, with a letter in her 
 hand. 
 
 "Your mamma wished to break it to you her- 
 self, miss," said Bell. ''Miss Fay has gone." 
 
 ''Gone, where?" 
 
 " To Brussels." 
 
 " Where is Brussels ?" 
 
 " I believe, miss, that it is the capital of Bel- 
 gium." 
 
 Mildred tore open the letter, which Bell read 
 aloud over the child's shoulder. 
 
 "I hope you won't be grieved at losing your 
 playfellow, my dearest pet. Fay is dreadfully back- 
 ward in her education, and has no manners. She 
 has gone to a finishing-school at Brussels, and you 
 may not see her again for some years." 
 
 And so the years go by, and this story passes on 
 to a time when the child Mildred is a child no more, 
 but the happy mother of a fair young daughter, and 
 the wife of an idolised husband.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WITHOUT THE WOLF. 
 
 "Father," said Lola, "there are ever so many 
 people in the village ill with fever. Isn't it sad ?" 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Greswold, of Enderby Manor, had 
 been submitting to a fortnight's dissipation in Lon- 
 don, and this was their first Sunday at home after 
 that interval. They had returned late on the pre- 
 vious night, and house and gardens had all the 
 sweetness and freshness of a scene to which one is 
 restored after absence. They had spent the summer 
 morning in the little village church with their 
 daughter ; and now they were enjoying the leisure 
 interval between church and luncheon. 
 
 George Greswold sat in a lounging-chair under a 
 cedar within twenty yards of the dining-room win- 
 dows, and Lola was hanging about him as he read 
 the Athencsum, caressing him with little touches of 
 light hands upon his hair or his coat-collar, adoring 
 him with all her might after the agony of severance.
 
 80 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 She was his only child, and the love between 
 them was passing the love of the father and daughter 
 of every-day life. It was an almost romantic attach- 
 ment. 
 
 Like most only daughters, Lola was precocious, 
 far in advance of her years in thoughtfulness and 
 emotion, though perhaps a little behind the average 
 girl of twelve in the severities of feminine education. 
 She had been her mother's chief companion ever 
 since she could speak, the confidante of all that 
 mother's thoughts and fancies, which were as inno- 
 cent as those of childhood itself. She had read 
 much more than most girls of her age, and had 
 been made familiar with poets whose names are only 
 known to the schoolgirl in a history of literature. 
 She knew a good deal about the best books in Euro- 
 pean literature ; but, most of all, she knew the hearts 
 and minds of her father and mother, their loves and 
 likings, their joys and sorrows. She had never been 
 shut out from their confidence ; she had never been 
 told to go and play when they wanted to talk to 
 each other. She had sat with them, and walked 
 and ridden and driven with them ever since she was
 
 ^VITHOUT TEE WOLF. 81 
 
 old enough to dispense with her nurse's arms. She 
 had lived her young life with them, and had been a 
 part of their lives. 
 
 George Greswold looked up from his Athenceum 
 in quick alarm. 
 
 "Fever!" he exclaimed, *' fever at Enderby !" 
 
 " Strange, isn't it, father? Everybody is won- 
 dering about it. Enderby has always been such a 
 healthy village, and you have taken such pains to 
 make it so." 
 
 "Yes, love, I have done my best. I am a land- 
 lord for pleasure, and not for gain, as you and mother 
 know." 
 
 "And what seems strangest and worst of all," 
 continued Lola, " is that this dreadful fever has 
 broken out among the people you and mother and I 
 are fondest of — our old friends and pensioners — 
 and the children we know most about. It seems 
 so hard that those you and mother have helped the 
 most should be the first to be ill." 
 
 "Yes, love, that must seem very hard to my 
 tender-hearted darling." 
 
 Her father looked up at her fondly as she stood 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 behind Lis chair, her white arm leaning upon his 
 shoulder. The summer was in its zenith. It was 
 strawberry- time, rose -time, haymaking-time — the 
 season of nightingales and meadow-sweet and tall 
 Mary lilies, and all those lovely things that cluster 
 in the core of summer's great warm heart. Lola 
 was all in white — a loose muslin frock, straight from 
 shoulder to instep. Her thick gold hair fell straight 
 as her frock below her ungirdled waist, and, in her 
 white and gold, she had the look of an angel in an 
 early Italian picture. Her eyes w^ere as blue as that 
 cloudless sky of midsummer which took a deeper 
 azure behind the black-green branches of the cedar. 
 
 "My pet, I take it this fever is some slight 
 summer malady. Cottagers are such ravens. They 
 always make the worst of an illness." 
 
 ''0, but they really have been very bad. Mary 
 Martin has had the fever, but she is getting better. 
 And there's Johnny Giles ; you know what a strong 
 boy he is. He's very bad, poor little chap — so 
 delirious ; and I do feel so sorry for his poor 
 mother. And young Mrs. Peter has it, and two of 
 her children."
 
 WITHOUT THE WOLF. 
 
 83 
 
 " It must be contagious," cried Greswold, seizing 
 his daughter's round white arm with an agitated 
 movement. *' You have not been to see any of them, 
 have you, Lola?" he asked, looking at her with 
 unspeakable anxiety. 
 
 " No ; Bell wouldn't let me go to see any of 
 them ; but of course I have taken them things every 
 day — wine and beef-tea and jelly, and everything 
 we could think of; and they have had as much milk 
 as they liked." 
 
 "You should not have gone yourself with the 
 things, darling. You should have sent them." 
 
 " That would seem so unkind, as if one hardly 
 cared; and Puck with nothing to do all the time 
 but to drag me about. It was no trouble to go 
 myself. I did not even go inside the cottages. Bell 
 said I mustn't." 
 
 " Bell was right. Well, I suppose there is no 
 harm done if you didn't go into any of the cot- 
 tages ; and it was very sweet of you to take the 
 things yourself; like Red Riding Hood, only without 
 the wolf. There goes the gong. I hope you are 
 hungry."
 
 84 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 " Not very. The weather is too v^arm for eating 
 anything hut strawherries." 
 
 He looked at her anxiously again, ready to take 
 alarm at a word. 
 
 " Yes, it is too warm in this south-western 
 country," he said nervously. '' We'll go to Scot- 
 land next week." 
 
 " So soon ?" 
 
 *' Why not a little sooner than usual, for once in 
 a way ?" 
 
 " I shall be sorry to go away while the people 
 are ill," she said gravely. 
 
 George Greswold forgot that the gong had 
 sounded. He sat, leaning forward, in a despondent 
 attitude. The very mention of sickness in the land 
 had unhinged him. This child was so dear to him, 
 his only one. He had done all that forethought, 
 sense, and science could do to make the village 
 which lay at his doors the perfection of health and 
 purity. Famous sanitarians had been entertained 
 at the Manor, and had held counsel with Mr. 
 Greswold upon the progress of sanitation, and its 
 latest developments. They had wondered with him
 
 WITHOUT THE WOLF. 85 
 
 over the blind ignorance of our forefathers. They 
 had instructed him how to drain his house, and how 
 to ventilate and purify his cottages. They had 
 assured him that, so far as lay within the limits of 
 human intelligence, perfection had been achieved in 
 Enderby village and Enderby Manor House. 
 
 And now his idolised daughter hung over his 
 chair and told him that there was fever raging in 
 the land, his land ; the land which he loved as if 
 it were a living thing, and on which he had lavished 
 care and money ever since he had owned it. Other 
 men might consider their ancestral estates as some- 
 thing to be lived upon ; George Greswold thought of 
 his forefathers' house and lands as something to be 
 lived for. His cottages were model cottages, and 
 he was known far and wide as a model landlord. 
 
 " George, are you quite forgetting luncheon ?" 
 asked a voice from one of the open windows, and he 
 looked up to see a beautiful face looking out at him, 
 framed in hair of Lola's colour. 
 
 ** My dear Mildred, come here for a moment ?" 
 he said, and his wife went to him, smiling still, but 
 with a shade of uneasiness in her face.
 
 86 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 ''Go iu, pet. We'll follow you directly," lie 
 said to his daughter ; and then he rose slowly, with 
 an air of being almost broken down by a great 
 trouble, and put his hand through his wife's arm, 
 and led her along the velvet turf beyond the cedar. 
 
 " Mildred, have you heard of this fever ?" 
 
 " Yes ; Louisa told me this morning when she 
 was doing my hair. It seems to be rather bad ; 
 but there cannot be any danger, surely, after all 
 you have done to make the cottages perfect in every 
 way ?" 
 
 " One cannot tell. There may be a germ of evil 
 brought from somewhere else. I am sorry Lola has 
 been among the people." 
 
 " 0, but she has not been inside any of the 
 cottages. Bell took care to prevent that." 
 
 " Bell was wise, but she might have done better 
 still. She should have telegraphed to us. Lola 
 must not go about any more. You will see to that, 
 won't you, dearest ? Before the end of the week I 
 will take you both to Scotland." 
 
 "Do you really suppose there can be danger?" 
 she asked, growing very pale.
 
 WITHOUT THE WOLF. 87 
 
 *' No, no, I don't apprehend danger. Only it 
 is better to be over-cautioua than over-bold. We 
 cannot be too careful of our treasure." 
 
 "No, no, indeed," answered the mother, with a 
 piteous look. 
 
 "Mother," called Lola from the window, "are 
 you ever coming? Pomfret will be late for church." 
 
 Pomfret was the butler, whose convenience had 
 to be studied upon Sundays. The servants dined 
 while the family were at luncheon, and almost all 
 the establishment went to afternoon service, leaving 
 a footman and an under-housemaid in sole possession 
 of the grave old manor-house, where the silence had 
 a solemnity as in some monastic chapel. Lola was 
 anxious that luncheon should begin, and Pomfret be 
 dismissed to eat his dinner. 
 
 This child of twelve had more than a woman's 
 forethought. She spent her life in thinking about 
 other people; but of all those whom she loved, and 
 for whom she cared, her father was first and chief. 
 For him her love was akin to worship. 
 
 She watched his face anxiously now, as she took 
 her seat at his right hand, and was silent until
 
 88 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 Pomfret had served the soup and retired, leaving all 
 the rest of the luncheon on the table, and the wine 
 on a dumb-waiter by his master's side. 
 
 There was always a cold lunch on Sundays, and 
 the evening meal was also cold, a compromise 
 between dinner and supper, served at nine o'clock, 
 by which time the servants had gratified their 
 various tastes for church or chapel, and had enjoyed 
 an evening walk. There was no parsonage in 
 England w^here the day of rest was held in more 
 reverence than it was at Enderby Manor. 
 
 Mr. Greswold was no bigot, his religion in no 
 wise savoured of the over-good school; but he was a 
 man of deep religious convictions ; and he had been 
 brought up to honour Sunday as a day set apart. 
 
 The Sunday parties and Sunday amusements of 
 fashionable London were an abomination to him, 
 though he was far too liberal-minded to wish to 
 shut museums and picture-galleries against the 
 people. 
 
 *' Father," said Lola, when they were alone, 
 *' I'm afraid you had your bad dream last night." 
 
 Greswold looked at her curiously.
 
 WITHOUT THE WOLF. 89 
 
 *' No, love, my dreams were colourless, and have 
 left not even a remembrance." 
 
 "And yet you look sorrowful, just as you always 
 look after your bad dream." 
 
 " Your father is anxious about the cottagers 
 who are ill, dearest," said Mrs. Greswold. " That 
 is all." 
 
 *' But you must not be unhappy about them, 
 father dear. You don't think that any of them will 
 die, do you ?" asked Lola, drawing very near him, 
 and looking up at him with awe-stricken eyes. 
 
 " Indeed, my love, I hope not. They shall not 
 die, if care can save them. I will walk round the 
 village with Porter this afternoon, and find out all 
 about the trouble. If there is anything that he 
 cannot understand, we'll have Dr. Hutchinson over 
 from Southampton, or a physician from London if 
 necessary. My people shall not be neglected." 
 
 " May I go with you this afternoon, father ?" 
 
 " No, dearest, neither you nor mother must 
 leave the grounds till we go away. I will have 
 no needless risks run by my dear ones." 
 
 Neither mother nor daughter disputed his will
 
 90 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 upon this point. He was the sole arbiter of their 
 lives. It seemed almost as if they lived only to 
 please him. Both would have liked to go with him; 
 both thought him over-cautious ; yet neither at- 
 tempted to argue the point. Happy household in 
 which there are no arguments upon domestic 
 trifles, no bickerings about the infinitesimals of 
 life ! 
 
 Enderby Manor was one of those ideal homes 
 which adorn the face of England and sustain its 
 reputation as the native soil of domestic virtues, 
 the country in which good wives and good mothers 
 are indigenous. 
 
 There are many such ideal homes in the land as 
 to outward aspect, seen from the high-road, across 
 park or pasture, shrubbery or flower-garden ; but 
 only a few of these sustain the idea upon intimate 
 knowledge of the interior. 
 
 Here, within as well as without, the atmosphere 
 was peace. Those velvet lawns and brilliant flower- 
 beds were not more perfect than the love between 
 husband and wife, child and parents. No cloud had 
 ever shadowed that serene heaven of domestic peace.
 
 WITHOUT THE WOLF. 01 
 
 George Greswold had married at thirty a girl of 
 eighteen who adored him ; and those two had lived 
 for each other and for their only child ever since. 
 All outside the narrow circle of family love counted 
 only as the margin or the framework of life. All 
 the deepest and sweetest elements of life were within 
 the veil. Mildred Greswold could not conceive a 
 fashionahle woman's existence — a life given up to 
 frivolous occupations and futile excitements — a life 
 of empty pleasure faintly flavoured with art, litera- 
 ture, science, philanthropy, and politics, and fancy- 
 ing itself eminently useful and eminently progressive. 
 She had seen such an existence in her childhood, 
 and had wondered that any reasoning creature could 
 so live. She had turned her hack upon the modish 
 world when she married George Greswold, and had 
 surrendered most of the delights of society to lead 
 quiet days in her husband's ancestral home, loving 
 that old house for his sake, as he loved it for the 
 sake of the dead. 
 
 They were not in outer darkness, however, as to 
 the movement of the world. They spent a fortnight 
 at Limmers occasionally, when the fancy moved
 
 92 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 them. They saw all the pictures worth seeing, 
 heard a good deal of the best music, mixed just 
 enough in society to distinguish gold from tinsel, 
 and to make a happy choice of friends. 
 
 They occasionally treated themselves to a week 
 in Paris, and their autumn holidays were mostly 
 spent in a shooting-box twenty miles beyond Inver- 
 ness. They came back to the Manor in time for 
 the pheasant-shooting, and the New Year generally 
 began with a house-party which lasted with varia- 
 tions until the hunting was all over, and the young 
 leaves were green in the neighbouring forest. No 
 lives could have been happier, or fuller of interest ; 
 but the interest all centred in home. Farmers and 
 cottagers on the estate were cared for as a part of 
 home ; and the estate itself was loved almost as 
 a living thing by husband and wife, and the fair 
 child who had been born to them in the old-fashioned 
 house. 
 
 The grave red-brick manor-house had been built 
 when William III. was King ; and there were some 
 Dutch innovations in the Old English architecture, 
 notably a turret or pavilion at the end of each wing,
 
 WITHOUT THE WOLF. 93 
 
 and a long bowling-green on the western side of the 
 garden. The walls had that deep glowing red 
 which is only seen in old brickwork, and the black 
 glazed tiles upon the hopper roof glittered in the 
 sunlight with the prismatic hues of antique Ehodian 
 glass. The chief characteristic of the interior was 
 the oak-panelling, which clothed the rooms and 
 corridors as in a garment of sober brown, and would 
 have been suggestive of gloom but for the pictures 
 and porcelain which brightened every wall, and the 
 rich colouring of brocaded curtains and tapestry 
 portieres. The chief charm of the house was the 
 aspect of home life, the books and musical instru- 
 ments, the art treasures, and flowers, and domestic 
 trifles to be seen everywhere ; the air which every 
 room and every nook and corner had of being lived 
 in by home-loving and home-keeping people. 
 
 The pavilion at the end of the south-west wing 
 was Lola's special domain, that and the room com- 
 municating with it. That pretty sitting-room, with 
 dwarf book - shelves, water - colour pictures, and 
 Wedgwood china, was never called a schoolroom. 
 It was Lola's study.
 
 94 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 " There shall be no suggestion of school in our 
 home," said George Greswold. 
 
 It was he who chose his daughter's masters, 
 and it was often he who attended during the lesson, 
 listening intently to the progress of the work, and 
 as keenly interested in the pupil's progress as the 
 pupil herself. Latin he himself taught her, and 
 she already knew by heart those noblest of Horace's 
 odes which are fittest for young lips. Their philo- 
 sophy saddened her a little. 
 
 " Is life always changing ?" she asked her father; 
 <* must one never venture to be quite happy ?" 
 
 The Latin poet's pervading idea of mutability, 
 inevitable death, and inevitable change impressed 
 her with a flavour of sadness, child as she was. 
 
 " My dearest, had Horace been a Christian, as 
 you are, and had he lived for others, as you do, he 
 would not have been afraid to call himself happy," 
 answered George Greswold. "He was a Pagan, 
 and he put on the armour of philosophy for want of 
 the armour of faith." 
 
 These lessons in the classics, taking a dead 
 language not as a dry study of grammar and die-
 
 WITHOUT THE WOLF. 95 
 
 tionarj, but as the gate to new worlds of poetry 
 and philosophy, had been Lola's delight. She was 
 in no wise unpleasantly precocious ; but she was far 
 in advance of the conventional schoolroom child, 
 trained into characterless uniformity by a superior 
 governess. Lola had never been under governess 
 rule. Her life at the Manor had been as free as 
 that of the butterflies. There was only Bell to 
 lecture her — white-haired Mrs. Bell, thin and spare, 
 straight as an arrow, at seventy-four years of age, 
 the embodiment of servants'-hall gentility, in her 
 black silk afternoon gown and neat cambric cap — 
 Bell, who looked after Lola's health, and Lola's 
 rooms, and was for ever tidying the drawers and 
 tables, and lecturing upon the degeneracy of girl- 
 hood. It was her boast to have nursed Lola's 
 grandmother, as well as Lola's mother, which 
 seemed going back to the remoteness of the dark 
 ages. 
 
 Enderby Manor was three miles from Romsey, 
 and within riding or driving distance of the New 
 Forest and of Salisbury Cathedral. It lay in the 
 heart of a pastoral district watered by the Test, and
 
 96 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 was altogether one of the most enjoyable estates in 
 that part of the country. 
 
 Before luncheon was finished a messenger was on 
 his way to the village to summon Mr. Porter, more 
 commonly Dr. Porter, the parish and everybody's 
 doctor, an elderly man of burly figure, close-cropped 
 gray hair, and yeoman-like bearing — a man born on 
 the soil, whose father and grandfather and great- 
 grandfather had cured or killed the inhabitants of 
 Enderby parish from time immemorial. Judging 
 from the tombstones in the pretty old churchyard, 
 they must have cured more than they killed ; for 
 those crumbling moss-grown stones bore the record 
 of patriarchal lives, and the union near Enderby was 
 a museum of incipient centenarians. 
 
 Mr. Porter came into the grave old library at the 
 Manor looking more serious than his wont, perhaps 
 in sympathy with George Greswold's anxious face, 
 turned towards the door as the footman opened it. 
 
 " Well, Porter, what does it all mean, this 
 fever ?" asked Greswold abruptly. 
 
 Mr. Porter had a manner of discussing a case 
 which was all his own. He always appealed to his
 
 WITHOUT THE WOLF. 97 
 
 patient with a professional air, as if consulting an- 
 other medical authority, and a higher one than 
 himself. It was flattering, perhaps, but not always 
 satisfactory. 
 
 " Well, you see, there's the high temperature 
 — 104 in some cases — and there's the inflamed 
 throat, and there's headache. What do 2/ozt say ? " 
 ** Don't talk nonsense. Porter ; you must know 
 whether it is an infectious fever or not. If you 
 don't know, we'll send to Southampton for Hutch- 
 inson." 
 
 " Of course, you can have him if you like. I 
 judge more by temperature than anything — the 
 thermometer is a safer guide than the pulse, as you 
 know. I took their temperatures this morning 
 before I went to church : only one case in which 
 there was improvement — all the others decidedly 
 worse ; very strongly developed cases of malignant 
 fever — typhus or typhoid — which, as you know, 
 by Jenner's differentiation of the two forms — " 
 
 *' For God's sake, man, don't talk to me as if 
 I were a doctor, and had your ghoulish relish of 
 VOL. I. n
 
 98 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 disease ! If you have the slightest doubt as to 
 treatment, send for Hutchinson." 
 
 He took a sheaf of telegraph-forms from the 
 stand in front of him, and began to write his mes- 
 sage while he was talking. He had made up his 
 mind that Dr. Hutchinson must come to see these 
 humble sufferers, and to investigate the cause of 
 evil. He had taken such pains to create a healthy 
 settlement, had spared no expense; and for fifteen 
 years, from the hour of his succession until now, all 
 had gone well with him. And now there was fever 
 in the land, fever in the air breathed by those two 
 beloved ones, daughter and wife. 
 
 "I have been so happy; my life has been cloud- 
 less, save for one dark memory," he said to himself, 
 covering his face with his hands as he leaned with 
 his elbows on the table, while Mr. Porter expatiated 
 upon the cases in the village, and on fever in general. 
 " I have tested the water in all the wells — per- 
 fectly pure. There can be nothing amiss with the 
 milk, for all my patients are on Mrs. Greswold's 
 list, and are getting their milk from your own 
 dairy. The drainage is perfection — yet here we
 
 WITHOUT THE WOLF. 99 
 
 liave an outbreak of fever, which looks remarkably 
 like typhoid ?" 
 
 " Why not say at once that it is typhoid ?" 
 
 '' The symptoms all point that way." 
 
 " You say there can be nothing amiss with the 
 milk. You have not analysed it, I suppose ?" 
 
 " Why should I ? Out of your own dairy, where 
 everything is managed in the very best way — the 
 perfection of cleanliness in every detail." 
 
 "You ought to have analysed the milk, all the 
 same," said Greswold thoughtfully. *' The strength 
 of a chain is its weakest link. There may be some 
 weak link here, though we cannot put our fingers 
 upon it — yet. Are there many cases ?" 
 
 "Let me see. There's Johnny Giles, and Mrs. 
 Peter and her children, and Janet Dawson, and 
 there's Andrew Kogers, and there's Mary Eainbow," 
 began Mr. Porter, counting on his fingers as he 
 went on, until the list of sulierers came to eleven. 
 "Mostly youngsters," he said in conclusion. 
 
 " They ought to have been isolated," said Gres- 
 wold. " I will get out plans for an infirmary to- 
 morrow. There is the willow-field, on the other
 
 100 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 side of the Tillage, a ridge of high ground sloping 
 down towards the parish drain, with a southern 
 exposure, a capital site for a hospital. It is dread- 
 ful to think of fever-poison spreading from half-a- 
 dozen different cottages. Which was the first case ?'* 
 
 " Little Rainhow." 
 
 '^ That fair-haired child whom I used to see 
 from my dressing-room window every morning as 
 she went away from the dairy, tottering under a 
 pitcher of milk ? Poor little Polly ! She was a 
 favourite with us all. Is she very ill ?" 
 
 " Yes, I think hers is about the best case," 
 answered the doctor unctuously; ^'the others are a 
 little vague ; but there's no doubt about her, all the 
 symptoms strongly marked — a very clear case." 
 
 " Is tbere ai;y danger of a fatal termination ?" 
 
 *' I'm afraid there is." 
 
 "Poor little Polly — poor pretty little girl! I 
 used to know it was seven o'clock when I saw that 
 bright little flaxen head flit by the yew hedge yon- 
 der. Polly was as good a timekeeper as any clock 
 in the village. And you think she may die ? You 
 have not told Lola, I hope ?"
 
 WITHOUT THE WOLF. 101 
 
 '' No, I have not let out anything about danger. 
 Lola is only too anxious already." 
 
 **I will put the infirmary in hand to-morrow; 
 and I will take my wife and daughter to Scotland on 
 Tuesday." 
 
 *' Upon my word, it will be a very good thing to 
 get them away. These fever cases are so mysteri- 
 ous. There's no knowing what shape infection may 
 take. I have the strongest belief in your system of 
 drainage — " 
 
 "Nothing is perfect," said Greswold impatiently. 
 " The science of sanitation is still in its infancy. I 
 sometimes think we have not advanced very far from 
 the knowledge of our ancestors, whose homes were 
 desolated by the Black Death. However, don't let 
 us talk, Porter. Let us act, if we can. Come and 
 look at the dairy." 
 
 " You don't apprehend evil there ?" 
 
 " There are three sources of typhoid poison — 
 drainage, water, milk. You say the drains and the 
 water are good, and that the milk comes from my 
 own dairy. If you are right as to the first and
 
 102 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 second, the third must be wrong, no matter whose 
 dairy it may come from." 
 
 He took up his hat, and went out of the house 
 with the doctor. Gardens and shrubberies stretched 
 before them in all their luxuriance of summer ver- 
 dure, gardens and shrubberies which had been the 
 ■delight and pride of many generations of Greswolds, 
 but loved more dearly by none than by George 
 Greswold and his wife. In Mildred's mind the old 
 family house was a part of her husband's individu- 
 iilit}^ an attribute rather than a mere possession. 
 Every tree and every shrub was sacred. These, his 
 mother's own hands had cropped and tended ; those, 
 grandfathers and great-grandfathers and arricre 
 great-grandfathers had planted in epochs that dis- 
 tance has made romantic. 
 
 On the right of the hall-door a broad gravel path 
 led in a serpentine sweep towards the stables, a 
 long, low building spread over a considerable area, 
 and hidden by shrubberies. The dairy was a little 
 further off, approached by a winding walk through 
 thickets of laurel and arbutus. It had been origin- 
 ally a barn, and was used as a receptacle for all
 
 WITHOUT THE WOLF. 103 
 
 manner of out-of-door lumber when Mildred came to 
 the Manor. She had converted the old stone build- 
 ing into a model dairy, with outside gallery and 
 staircase of solid woodwork, and with a Swiss roof. 
 Other buildings had been added. There were low 
 cowhouses, and tall pigeon-houses, and a pictur- 
 esque variety of gables and elevations which was 
 delightful to the eye, seen on a summer afternoon 
 such as this June Sunday, amidst the perfume of 
 clove carnations and old English roses, and the 
 cooing of doves. 
 
 Mrs. Gres wold's Channel Island cows were her 
 delight — creatures with cream-coloured coats, black 
 noses, and wistful brown eyes. Scarcely a day 
 passed on which she did not waste an hour or so in 
 the cowhouses or in the meadows caressing these 
 favourites. Each cow had her name painted in 
 blue and white above her stall, and the chief, or 
 duchess of the herd, was very severe in the main- 
 tenance of cowhouse precedence, and knew how 
 to resent the insolence of a new-comer who should 
 presume to cross the threshold in advance of her. 
 
 The dairy itself had a solemn and shadowy air,
 
 104 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 like a shriue, and was as pretty as the dairy at Frog- 
 more. The walls were lined with Minton tiles, the 
 shallow milk-pans were of Doulton pottery, and 
 quaintly-shaped pitchers of bright colours were 
 ranged on china brackets along the walls. The 
 windows were latticed, and a pane of ruby, rose, or 
 amethyst appeared here and there among the old 
 bottle-green glass, and cast a patch of coloured light 
 upon the cool marble slab below. 
 
 The chief dairy-woman lived at an old-fashioned 
 cottage on the premises, with her husband, the cow- 
 keeper ; and their garden, which lay at the back of 
 the cowhouses and dairy, was the ideal old English 
 garden, in which flowers and fruit strive for the 
 mastery. In a corner of this garden, close to the 
 outer ofiices of the cottage, among rows of peas, and 
 summer cabbages, and great overgrown lavender- 
 bushes and moss-roses, stood the old well, with its 
 crumbling brick border and ancient spindle, a well 
 that had been dug when the old manor-house was 
 new. 
 
 There were other water arrangements for Mrs. 
 Greswold's dairv, a new artesian well, on a hill a
 
 WITHOUT THE WOLF. 105 
 
 quarter of a mile from the kitchen-garden, a well 
 that went deep down into the chalk, and was famous 
 for the purity of its water. All the drinking-water 
 of the house was supplied from this well, and the 
 water was laid on in iron pipes to dairy and cow- 
 houses. All the vessels used for milk or cream 
 were washed in this water ; at least, such were Mr. 
 Greswold's strict orders — orders supposed to be car- 
 ried out under the supervision of his bailiff and 
 housekeeper. 
 
 Mr. Porter looked at a reeking heap of stable 
 manure that sprawled within twenty feet of the old 
 well with suspicion in his eye, and from the manure- 
 heap he looked at the back premises of the old cob- 
 walled cottage. 
 
 " I'm afraid there may have been soakage from 
 that manure-heap into the well," he said ; " and if 
 your dairy vessels are washed in that water — " 
 
 "But they never are," interrupted Mr. Gres- 
 wold; '' that water is used only for the garden — eh, 
 Mrs. Wadman ?" 
 
 The dairy-woman was standing on the threshold 
 of her neat little kitchen, curtseying to her master.
 
 106 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 resplendent in her Sunday gown of bright blue 
 merino, and her Sunday brooch, containing her 
 husband's photograph, coloured out of knowledge. 
 
 '* No, of course not, sir ; leastways, never except 
 when there was something wrong with the pipes 
 from the artesian." 
 
 " Something wrong ; when was that ? I never 
 heard of anything wrong." 
 
 ''Well, sir, my husband didn't want to be 
 troublesome, and Mr. Thomas he gave the order for 
 the men from Komsey, that was on the Saturday 
 after working-hours, and they was to come as it 
 might be on the Monday morning, and they never 
 come near; and Mr. Thomas he wrote and wrote, 
 and my husband he says it ain't no use writing, and 
 he takes the pony and rides over to Romsey in his 
 overtime, and he complains about the men not 
 coming, and they tells him there's a big job on 
 at Broadlands and not a plumber to be had for 
 love or money ; but the pipes is all right noiVj 
 sir." 
 
 '' Now ? Since when have they been in working 
 order ?"
 
 WITHOUT THE WOLF. 107 
 
 '' Since yesterday, sir. Mr. Thomas was deter- 
 mined he'd have everything right before you came 
 back." 
 
 ** And how long have you been using that water," 
 pointing to the well, with its moss-grown brickwork 
 and flaunting margin of yellow stonecrop, " for dairy 
 purposes ?" 
 
 **Well, you see, sir, we was obliged to use water 
 of some kind ; and there ain't purer or better water 
 than that for twenty mile round. I always use it 
 for my kettle every time I make tea for mo or my 
 master, and never found no harm from it in the last 
 fifteen years," 
 
 "How long have you used it for the dairy?" 
 repeated George Greswold angrily ; " can't you give 
 a straight answer, woman ?" 
 
 Mrs, Wadman could not : had never achieved a 
 direct reply to a plain question within the memory 
 of man. 
 
 " The men was to have come on the Monday 
 morning, first thing," she said, "and they didn't 
 come till the Tuesday week after that, and then they 
 was that slow — "
 
 108 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 George Greswold walked up and down the garden 
 path, raging. 
 
 " She won't answer !" he cried. *' Was it a week 
 — a fortnight — three weeks ago that you began to 
 use that water for your dairy?" he asked sternly; 
 and gradually he and the doctor induced her to 
 acknowledge that the garden well had been in use 
 for the dairy nearly three weeks before yester- 
 day. 
 
 " Then that is enough to account for everything," 
 said Dr. Porter. "First there is filtration of man- 
 ure through a gravelly soil — inevitable — and next 
 there is something worse. She had her sister here 
 from Salisbury — six weeks ago — down with typhoid 
 fever three days after she came — brought it from 
 Salisbury." 
 
 *'Yes, yes — I remember. You told me there 
 was no danger of infection." 
 
 " There need have been none. I made her use 
 all precautions possible in an old-fashioned cottage ; 
 but however careful she might be, there would be 
 always the risk of a well — close at hand like that 
 one — getting tainted. I asked her if she ever used
 
 WITHOUT THE WOLF. 109 
 
 that water for anything but the garden, and she 
 said no, the artesian well supplied every want. And 
 now she talks about her kettle, and tells us coolly 
 that she has been using that polluted water for the 
 last three weeks — and poisoning a whole village." 
 
 " Me poisoning the village ! Dr. Porter, how 
 can you say such a cruel thing? Me, that wouldn't 
 hurt a fly if I knew it !" 
 
 " Perhaps not, Mrs. Wadman ; but I'm afraid 
 you've hurt a good many of your neighbours without 
 knowing it." 
 
 George Greswold stood in the pathway silent and 
 deadly pale. He had been so happy for the last 
 thirteen years — a sky without a cloud — and now in a 
 moment the clouds were closing round him, and 
 again all might be darkness, as it had been once 
 before in his life. Calamity for which he felt him- 
 self unaccountable had come upon him before — 
 swift as an arrow from the bow — and now again he 
 stood helpless, smitten by the hand of Fate. 
 
 He thought of the little village child, with her 
 guileless face, looking up at his window as she 
 tripped by with her pitcher. His dole of milk had
 
 110 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 been fatal to tlie simple souls who bad looked up to 
 bim as a Providence. He bad taken sucb pains tbat 
 all sbould be sweet and wholesome in bis people's 
 cottages ; he bad spent money like water, and bad 
 lectured them and taught them ; and lo ! from his 
 own luxurious home the evil had gone forth. Care- 
 less servants, hushing up a difficulty, loth to ap- 
 proach him with plain facts lest they should be 
 considered troublesome, had wrought this evil, had 
 spread disease and death in the land. 
 
 And bis own and only child, the delight of his 
 life, the apple of bis eye — that tainted milk bad 
 been served at her table ! Amidst all that grace 
 of porcelain and flowers the poison bad lurked, as 
 at the cottagers' board. What if she, too, should 
 suffer ? 
 
 He meant to take her away in* a day or two — 
 now — now when the cause of evil was at work no 
 longer. The thought that it might be too late, that 
 the germ of poison might lurk in the heart of tbat 
 fair flower, filled bim with despair. 
 
 Mrs. Wadman had run into her cottage, shedding 
 indignant tears at Dr. Porter's cruelty. She came
 
 WITHOUT THE WOLF. Ill 
 
 out again, with a triumphant air, carrying a tumbler 
 of water. 
 
 "Just look at it, sir," she said; "look how 
 bright and clear it is. There never was better 
 water." 
 
 "]\Jy good woman, in this case brightness and 
 clearness mean corruption," said the doctor. " If 
 you'll give me a pint of that water in a bottle I'll 
 take it home with me, and test it before I sleep to- 
 night."
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 *' AH ! PITY ! THE LILY IS WITHERED." 
 
 George Greswold left the dairy-garden like a man 
 stricken to death. He felt as if the hand of Fate 
 were on him. It was not his fault that this evil had 
 come upon him, that these poor people whom he had 
 tried to help suffered hy his bounty, and were per- 
 haps to die for it. He had done all that human 
 foresight could do ; but the blind folly of his ser- 
 vants had stultified his efforts. Nothing in a London 
 slum could have been worse than this evil which had 
 come about in a gentleman's ornamental dairy, upon 
 premises where money had been lavished to secure 
 the perfection of scientific sanitation. 
 
 Mr. Porter murmured some hopeful remark as 
 they went back to the house. 
 
 *' Don't talk about it, Porter," Greswold an- 
 swered impatiently ; '' nothing could be worse — 
 nothiug. Do all you can for these poor people —
 
 "ah ! pity! the lilt is withered." 113 
 
 your uttermost, mind, your uttermost. Spare neither 
 time nor money. Save them, if you can." 
 
 '' You may be assured I shall do my best. 
 There are only three or four very bad cases." 
 
 " Three or four ! My God, how horrible ! Three 
 or four people murdered by the idiocy of my ser- 
 vants." 
 
 "Joe Stanning — not much chance for him, I'm 
 afraid — and Polly Rainbow." 
 
 " Polly — poor pretty little Polly ! Porter, you 
 must save her ! You must perform a miracle, man. 
 That is what genius means in a doctor. The man 
 of genius does something that all other doctors have 
 pronounced impossible. You will have Hutchinson 
 over to-morrow. He may be able to help you." 
 
 "If she live till to-morrow. I'm afraid it's a 
 question of a few hours." 
 
 George Greswold groaned aloud. 
 
 " And my daughter has been drinking the same 
 tainted milk. "Will she be stricken, do you think?" 
 he asked, with an awful calmness. 
 
 *' God forbid ! Lola has such a fine constitution 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 iind the antecedent circumstances are different. I'll 
 go and have a look at my patients, and come back 
 to you late in the evening with the last news." 
 
 They parted by a little gate at the corner of a 
 thick yew hedge, which admitted Mr. Greswold into 
 his wife's flower-garden : a very old garden, which had 
 been the care and delight of many generations; a 
 large square garden, with broad flower-beds on each 
 side, a stone sundial in the centre of a grass-plot, 
 and a buttressed wall at the end, a massive old wall 
 of vermilion brickwork, honeycombed by the decay 
 of centuries, against which a double rank of holly- 
 hocks made a particoloured screen, while flaunting 
 dragon's-mouth and yellow stonecrop made a flame 
 of colour on the top. 
 
 There was an old stone summer-house in each 
 angle of that end wall, temples open to the sun and 
 air, and raised upon three marble steps, stained 
 with moss and lichen. 
 
 Charming as these antique retreats were to muse 
 or read in, Mildred Greswold preferred taking tea on 
 the lawn, in the shadow of the two old cedars. She 
 was sitting in a low garden-chair, with a Japanese
 
 115 
 
 tea-table at her side, and a volume of Robertson's 
 sermons on her lap. 
 
 It was a rule of life at Enderby Manor that only 
 books of pious tendency should be read on Sundays. 
 The Sunday library was varied and well chosen. 
 Nobody ever found the books dull or the day too 
 long. The dedication of that one day in seven to 
 godliness and good works had never been an oppres- 
 sion to Mildred Greswold. 
 
 She remembered her mother's Sundays — days of 
 hasty church, and slow elaborate dressing for after- 
 noon or evening gaieties ; days of church parade and 
 much praise of other people's gowns and deprecia- 
 tion of other people's conduct ; days of gadding about 
 and running from place to place; Sunday luncheons, 
 Sunday musical parties, Sunday expeditions up the 
 river, Sunday in the studios, Sunday at Richmond 
 or Greenwich. Mrs. Greswold remembered the fussy 
 emptiness of that fashionable Sunday, and pre- 
 ferred sermons and tranquil solitude in the manor 
 gardens. 
 
 Solitude meant a trinity of domestic love. Hus- 
 band, wife, and daughter spent their Sundays
 
 116 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 together. Those were blessed days for the wife and 
 daughter, since there were no business engagements, 
 no quarter- sessions, or interviews with the bailiff, or 
 letter-writing, to rob them of the society they both 
 loved best in the world. George Greswold devoted 
 his Sundays entirely to his Creator and his home. 
 
 *' Where is Lola ?" he asked, surprised to find 
 his wife alone at this hour. 
 
 " She has a slight headache, and I persuaded her 
 to lie down for an hour or so." 
 
 The father's face blanched. A word was enough 
 in his overwrought condition. 
 
 "Porter must see her," he said; ''and I have 
 just let him leave me. I'll send some one after 
 him." 
 
 "My dear George, it is nothing ; only one of her 
 usual headaches." 
 
 " You are sure she was not feverish ?" 
 
 " I think not. It never occurred to me. She 
 has often complained of headache since she began 
 to grow so fast." 
 
 " Yes, she has shot up like a tall white lily — 
 my lily !" murmured the father tenderly.
 
 *' AH ! PITY ! THE LILY IS WITHERED." 117 
 
 He sank into a chair, feeling helpless, hopeless 
 almost, under that overpowering sense of fatality — 
 of undeserved evil. 
 
 '* Dear George, you look so ill this afternoon," 
 said his wife, with tender anxiety, laying her hand 
 on his shoulder, and looking earnestly at him, as he 
 sat there in a downcast attitude, his arms hanging 
 loosely, his eyes bent upon the ground. " I'm afraid 
 the heat has overcome you." 
 
 **Yes, it has been very hot. Do me a favour, 
 Mildred. Go into the house, and send somebody 
 to find Porter. He was going the round of the 
 cottages where there are sick people. He can easily 
 be found. I want him to see Lola, at once." 
 
 " I'll send after him, George ; but, indeed, I 
 don't see any need for a doctor. Lola is so strong ; 
 her headaches pass like summer clouds. George, 
 you don't think that she is going to have fever, like 
 the cottagers !" cried Mildred, full of a sudden 
 terror. 
 
 " No, no ; of course not. Why should she have 
 the fever ? But Porter might as well see her at 
 once — at once. I hate delay in such cases."
 
 118 THE FATAL THEEE. 
 
 His wife hurried away without a word. He had 
 imbued her with all his own fears. 
 
 He sat in the garden, just as she had left him, 
 motionless, benumbed with sorrow. There might, 
 indeed, be no ground for this chilling fear ; others 
 might die, and his beloved might still go unscathed. 
 But she had been subjected to the same poison, and 
 at any moment the same symptoms might show 
 themselves. For the next week or ten days he must 
 be haunted by a hideous spectre. He would make 
 haste to get his dearest one away to the strong 
 fresh mountain air, to the salt breath of the German 
 Ocean ; but if the poison had already tainted that 
 young life, mountain and sea could not save her 
 from the fever. She must pass through the furnace, 
 as those others were passing. 
 
 " Poor little Polly Eainbow ! The only child of a 
 widow ; the only one ; like mine," he said to himself. 
 
 He sat in the garden till dusk, brooding, praying 
 dumbly, unutterably sad. The image of the widow 
 of Nain was in his mind while he sat there. The 
 humble funeral train, the mourning mother, and 
 that divine face shining out of the little group of
 
 " AH ! PITY ! THE LILT IS WITHERED." 119 
 
 peasant faces, radiant with intellect and faith — 
 among them, but not of them — and the uplifted 
 hand beckoning the dead man from the bier. 
 
 "The age of miracles is past," he thought: 
 "there is no Saviour in the land to help me ! In 
 my day of darkness Heaven made no sign. I was 
 left to suffer as the worms suffer under the plough- 
 share, and to wriggle back to life as best I could, 
 like them." 
 
 It was growing towards the summer darkness 
 when he rose and went into the house, where he 
 questioned the butler, whom he met in the hall. 
 Mr. Porter had been brought back, and had seen 
 Miss Greswold. He had found her slightly feverish, 
 and had ordered her to go to bed. Mrs. Greswold was 
 sitting with her. Did Dr. Porter seem anxious ? 
 No, not at all anxious ; but he was going to send 
 Miss Laura some medicine before bedtime. 
 
 It was after nine now, but Greswold could not 
 stay in the house. He wanted to know how it fared 
 with his sick tenantry — most of all with the little 
 flaxen-haired girl he had so often noticed of late.
 
 120 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 He went out into the road that led to the village, 
 a scattered colony, a cottage here and there, or a 
 cluster of cottages and gardens on a bit of rising 
 ground above the road. There was a common a 
 little way from the Manor, a picturesque, irregular 
 expanse of hollows and hillocks, skirted by a few 
 cottages, and with a fir plantation shielding it from 
 the north. Mrs. Kainbow's cottage stood between 
 the common and the fir-wood, an old half-timbered 
 cottage, very low, with a bedroom in the roof, and 
 a curious dormer-window, with a thatched arch pro- 
 jecting above the lattice, like an overhanging eye- 
 brow. The little garden was aflame with scarlet 
 bean-blossom, roses, and geraniums, and the per- 
 fume of sweet-peas filled the air. 
 
 Greswold heard the doctor talking in the upper 
 chamber as he stood by the gate. The deep, grave 
 tones were audible in the evening stillness, and 
 there was another sound that chilled the Squire's 
 heart : the sound of a woman's suppressed weeping. 
 
 He waited at the gate. He had not the nerve to 
 go into the cottage and face that sorrowing widow. 
 It seemed to him as if the child's peril were his
 
 "ah ! PITY ! THE LILY IS WITHERED." 121 
 
 ault. It was not enough that he had taken all 
 reasonable precautions. He ought to have foreseen 
 the idiocy of his servants. He ought to have been 
 more on the alert to prevent evil. 
 
 The great round moon came slowly up out of a 
 cluster of Scotch firs. How black the branches 
 looked against that red light ! Slo-wly, slowly gliding 
 upward in a slanting line, the moon stole at the 
 back of those black branches, and climbed into the 
 open sky. 
 
 How often Lola had watched such a moonrise at 
 his side, and with what keen eyes she had noted the 
 beauty of the spectacle ! It was not that he had 
 trained her to observe and to feel the loveliness of 
 nature. With her that feeling had been an instinct, 
 born with her, going before the wisdom of maturity, 
 the cultivated taste of travelled experience. 
 
 To-night she was lying in her darkened room, 
 the poor head heavy and painful on the pillow. She 
 would not see the moon rising slowly yonder in 
 that cloudless sky. 
 
 '* No matter ; she will see it to-morrow, I hope," 
 he said to himself, trying to be cheerful. "I am a
 
 122 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 morbid fool to torment myself; she has been subject 
 to headaches of late. Mildred is right." 
 
 And then he remembered that death and sorrow 
 were near — close to him as he stood there watching 
 the moon. He remembered poor little Polly Rain- 
 bow, and desponded again. 
 
 A woman's agonised cry broke the soft summer 
 stillness, and pierced George Greswold's heart. 
 
 " The child is dead !" he thought. 
 
 Yes, poor little Polly was gone. The widow 
 came out to the gate presently, sobbing piteously, 
 and clasped Mr. Greswold's hand and cried over it, 
 broken down by her despair, leaning against the 
 gate-post, as if her limbs had lost the power to bear 
 her up. 
 
 " 0, sir, she was my all !" she sobbed ; " she 
 was my all !" 
 
 She could say no more than this, but kept re- 
 peating it again and again. *' She was all I had in 
 the world ; the only thing I cared for." 
 
 George Greswold touched her shoulder with pro- 
 tecting gentleness. There was not a peasant in the 
 village for whom he had not infinite tenderness —
 
 " AH ! PITY ! THE LILY IS WITHERED." 123 
 
 pitying their infirmities, forgiving their errors, inex- 
 haustible in benevolence towards them all. He had 
 set himself to make his dependents happy as the 
 first duty of his position. And yet he had done 
 them evil unwittingly. He had cost this poor 
 widow her dearest treasure — her one ewe lamb. 
 
 *' Bear up, if you can, my good soul," he said ; 
 ** I know that it is hard." 
 
 *' Ah, sir, you'd know it better if it was your 
 young lady that was stricken down !" exclaimed the 
 widow bitterly ; and the Squire walked away from the 
 cottage-gate without another word. 
 
 Yes, he would know it better then. His heart 
 was heavy enough now. What would it be like if 
 she were smitten ? 
 
 She was much the same next day : languid, with 
 an aching head and some fever. She was not very 
 feverish. On the whole, the doctor was hopeful, or 
 he pretended to be so. He could give no positive 
 opinion yet, nor could Dr. Hutchinson. They were 
 both agreed upon that point ; and they were agreed 
 that the polluted water in the garden v\^ell had been
 
 124 TEE FATAL THREE. 
 
 the cause of the village epidemic. Analysis had 
 shown that it was charged with poisonous gas. 
 
 Mr. Greswold hastened his preparations for the 
 journey to Scotland with a feverish eagerness. He 
 wrote to engage a sleeping-carriage on the Great 
 Northern. They were to travel on Thursday, 
 leaving home before noon, dining in town, and 
 starting for the North in the evening. If Lola's 
 illness were indeed the slight indisposition which 
 everybody hoped it was, she might be quite able to 
 travel on Thursday, and the change of air and the 
 movement would do her good. 
 
 " She is always so well in Scotland," said her 
 father. 
 
 No, there did not seem much amiss with her. 
 She was very sweet, and even cheerful, when her 
 father went into her room to sit beside her bed for 
 a quarter of an hour or so. The doctors had ordered 
 that she should be kept very quiet, and a hospital 
 nurse had been fetched from Salisbury to sit up at 
 night with her. There was no necessity for such 
 care, but it was well to do even a little too much 
 where so cherished a life was at stake. People had
 
 "ah! fity! the lily is withered." 125 
 
 but to look at the father's face to know how precious 
 that frail existence was to him. Nor was it less 
 dear to the mother ; but she seemed less apprehen- 
 sive, less bowed down by gloomy forebodings. 
 
 Yes, Lola was quite cheerful for those few 
 minutes in which her father sat by her side. The 
 strength of her love overcame her weakness. She 
 forgot the pain in her head, the weariness of her 
 limbs, while he was there. She questioned him 
 about the villagers. 
 
 '' How is little Polly going on ?" she asked. 
 
 He dared not tell the truth. It would have 
 hurt him too much to speak to her of death. 
 
 "She is going on very well; all is well, love," 
 he said, deceiving her for the first time in his 
 life. 
 
 This was on Tuesday, and the preparations for 
 Scotland w^ere still in progress. Mr. Greswold's 
 talk with his daughter was all of their romantic 
 Highland home, of the picnics and rambles, the 
 fishing excursions and sketching parties they would 
 have there. The nurse sat in a corner and listened 
 to them with a grave countenance, and would not
 
 12G THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 allow Mr. Greswold more than ten minutes with his 
 daughter. 
 
 He counted the hours till they should be on the 
 road for the North. There would be the rest of 
 Tuesday and all Wednesday. She would be up and 
 dressed on Wednesday, no doubt ; and on Thursday 
 morning the good old gray carriage-horses would 
 take them all off to Komsey Station — such a pretty 
 drive on a summer morning, by fields and copses, 
 with changeful glimpses of the silvery Test. 
 
 Dr. Hutchinson came on Tuesday evening, and 
 found his patient not quite so well. There was a 
 long conference between the two doctors, and then 
 the nurse was called in to receive her instructions ; 
 and then Mr. Greswold was told that the journey to 
 Scotland musi be put off for a fortnight at the very 
 least. 
 
 He received the sentence as if it had been his 
 death-warrant. He asked no questions. He dared 
 not, A second nurse was to be sent over from 
 Southampton next morning. The two doctors had 
 the cool, determined air of men who are preparing 
 for a battle.
 
 *' AH ! PITY ! THE LILY IS WITHERED." 127 
 
 Lola, was liglit-lieaded next morning ; but with 
 intervals of calmness and consciousness. She 
 heard the church bell tolling, and asked what it 
 meant. 
 
 "It's for Polly Kainbow's funeral," answered the 
 maid who was tidying the room. 
 
 " 0, no," cried Lola, " that can't be ! Father 
 said she was better." 
 
 And then her mind began to wander, and she 
 talked of Polly Rainbow as if the child had been in 
 the room : talked of the little girl's lessons at the 
 parish school, and of a prize that she was to get. 
 
 After that all was darkness, all was despair — a 
 seemingly inevitable progress from bad to worse- 
 Science, care, love, prayers — all were futile ; and the 
 bell that had tolled for the widow's only child tolled 
 ten days afterwards for Lola. 
 
 It seemed to George Greswold as those slow 
 strokes beat upon his brain, heavily, heavily, like 
 minute guns, that all the hopes and cares and joys 
 and expectations life had held for him were over. 
 His wife was on her knees in the darkened house 
 from which the funeral train was slowly moving,
 
 128 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 and he had loved her passionately ; and yet it 
 seemed to him as if the open car yonder, with its 
 coffin hidden under snow-white blossoms, was carry- 
 ing away all that had ever been precious to him 
 upon this earth. 
 
 " She was the morning, with its promise of 
 day," he said to himself. " She was the spring- 
 time, with its promise of summer. While I had 
 her I lived in the future ; henceforward I can only 
 live in the present. I dare not look back upon 
 the past !"
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 DRIFTING APART. 
 
 George Greswold and his wife spent tlie rest of 
 that fatal year in a villa on the Lake of Thun, an 
 Italian villa, with a campanello tower, and a long 
 white colonnade, and stone balconies overhanging 
 lawn and gardens, where the flowers grew in a 
 riotous profusion. The villa was midway between 
 two of the boat-stations, and there was no other 
 house near, and this loneliness was its chief charm 
 for those two heart-broken mourners. They yearned 
 for no sympathy, they cared for no companionship — 
 hardly even for that of each other, close as the bond 
 of love had been till now. Each seemed to desire 
 above all things to be alone with that great grief — 
 to hug that dear, sad memory in silence and soli- 
 tude. Only to see them from a distance, from the 
 boat yonder, as it glided swiftly past that flowery 
 lawn, an observer would have guessed at sorrow 
 VOIi. I . K
 
 180 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 and bereavement from the mere attitude of either 
 mourner — the man sitting with his head bent 
 forward, brooding on the ground, the unread news- 
 paper lying across his knee ; the woman on the 
 other side of the lawn, beyond speaking distance, 
 half reclining in a low basket-chair, with her hands 
 clasped above her head, gazing at the distant line of 
 snow mountains in listless vacancy. The huge tan- 
 coloured St. Bernard, snapping with his great 
 cavern-like jaws at infinitesimal flies, was the only 
 object that gave life to the picture. 
 
 The boats went by in sunshine and cloud, the 
 boats went by under torrential rain, which seemed to 
 fuse lake and mountains, villas and gardens, into 
 one watery chaos ; the boats went by, and the days 
 passed like the boats, and made no difference in the 
 lives of those two mourners. Nothing could ever 
 make any difference to either of them for evermore, 
 it seemed to Mildred. It was as if some spring had 
 broken in the machinery of life. Even love seemed 
 dead. 
 
 " And yet he was once so fond of me, and I 
 of him," thought the wife, watching her husband's
 
 DRIFTING APART. 13 1 
 
 face, with its curious look of absence — the look of a 
 window with the blind down. 
 
 There were times when tliat look of utter ab- 
 straction almost frightened Mildred Greswold. It 
 was an expression she had seen occasionally during 
 her daughter's lifetime, and which had always made 
 her anxious. It was the look about which Lola 
 used to say when they all met at the breakfast- 
 table, 
 
 *' Papa has had his bad dream again." 
 
 That bad dream was no invention of Lola's, but 
 a stern reality in George Greswold's life. He would 
 start up from his pillow in an agony, muttering- 
 broken sentences in that voice of the sleeper which 
 seems always different from his natural voice — as if 
 he belonged to another world. Cold beads of sweat 
 would start out upon his forehead, and the wife 
 would put her arms round him and soothe him as a 
 mother soothes her frightened child, until the mut- 
 tering ceased and he sank upon his pillow exhausted, 
 to lapse into quiet sleep, or else awoke and recovered 
 calmness in awakening. 
 
 The dream — whatever it was — always left its
 
 332 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 mark upon him next day. It was a kind of night- 
 mare, he told his wife, when she gently questioned 
 him, not urging her questions lest there should be 
 pain in the mere recollection of that horrid vision. 
 He could give no graphic description of that dream. 
 It was all confusion — a blurred and troubled pic- 
 ture ; but that confusion was in itself agony. 
 
 Rarely were his mutterings intelligible; rarely 
 did his wife catch half-a-dozen consecutive words 
 from those broken sentences ; but once she heard 
 him say, 
 
 " The cage — the cage again — iron bars — like a 
 wild beast !" 
 
 And now that absent and cloudy look which she 
 had seen in her husband's face after the bad dream 
 was there often. She spoke to him sometimes, and 
 lie did not hear. She repeated the same question 
 iwice or thrice, in her soft low voice, standing close 
 beside him, and he did not answer. There were 
 times when it was difficult to arouse him from that 
 deep abstraction ; and at such times the utter blank- 
 ness and solitude of her own life weighed upon her 
 like a dead weight, an almost unbearable burden.
 
 DEIFTING APART. 138 
 
 " What is to become of us both in all the long 
 yearrf i cfore us ?" she thought despairingly. " Are 
 we to be always far apart — living in the same 
 house, spending all our days together, and yet 
 divided ?" 
 
 She had married before she was eighteen, and at 
 one-and-thirty was still in the bloom of womanhood, 
 younger than most women of that age ; for her life 
 bad been subject to none of those vicissitudes and 
 fevers which age women of the world. She had 
 never kept a secret from her husband, never trem- 
 bled at opening a milliner's account, or blushed at 
 the delivery of a surreptitious letter. The struggles 
 for preeminence, the social race in which some 
 women waste their energies and strain their nerves, 
 were unknown to her. She had lived at Enderby 
 Manor as the flowers lived, rejoicing in the air and 
 the sunshine, drinking out of a cup of life in which 
 there mingled no drop of poison. Thus it was that 
 not one Hue upon the transparent skin marked the 
 passage of a decade. The violet eyes had the limpid 
 purity, and the emotional lips had the tender carna- 
 tion, of girlhood. Mildred Greswold was as beauti-
 
 134 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 ful at thirty-one as Mildred Fausset had been at 
 seventeen. And yet it seemed to her that life was 
 over, and that her husband had ceased to care for 
 her. 
 
 Many and many an hour in that lovely solitude 
 beside the lake she sat with hands loosely clasped 
 in her lap or above her head, with her books lying 
 forgotten at her feet — all the newest books that 
 librarians could send to tempt the jaded appetite of 
 the reader — and her eyes gazing vacantly over the 
 blue of the lake or towards the snow-peaks on the 
 horizon. Often in these silent musings she recalled 
 the past, and looked at the days that were gone as 
 at a picture. 
 
 She remembered just such an autumn as this, 
 a peerless autumn spent with her father at The Hook 
 — spent for the most part on the river and in the 
 garden, the sunny days and moonlit nights being 
 far too lovely for any one to waste indoors. Her 
 seventeenth birthday was not long past. It was 
 just ten years since she had come home to that 
 house to find Fay had vanished from it, and to shed 
 bitter tears for the loss of ber com^^anion. Never
 
 DRIFTING APART. 135 
 
 since that time had she seen Fay's face. Her 
 questions had been met coldly or angrily by her 
 mother ; and even her father had answered her 
 with unsatisfactory brevity. 
 
 All she could learn was that Fay had been sent 
 to complete her education at a finishing-school at 
 Brussels. 
 
 " At school ! 0, poor Fay ! I hope she is 
 happy." 
 
 '* She ought to be," Mrs. Fausset answered 
 peevishly. " The school is horridly expensive. I 
 saw one of the bills the other day. Simply enormous. 
 The girls are taken to the opera, and have all sorts 
 of absurd indulgences." 
 
 " Still, it is only school, mother, not home," 
 said Mildred compassionately. 
 
 This was two years after Fay had vanished. No 
 letter had ever come from her to Mildred, though 
 Mildred was able to write now, in her own sprawl- 
 ing childish fashion, and would have been delighted 
 to answer any such letter. She had herself indited 
 various epistles to her friend, but had not succeeded 
 in getting them posted. They had drifted to the
 
 136 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 wests-paper basket, mute evidences of wasted affec- 
 tion. 
 
 As each holiday time came round the child 
 asked if Fay were coming home, always to receive 
 the same saddening negative. 
 
 One day, when she had been more urgent than 
 usual, Mrs. Fausset lost temper and answered 
 sharply, 
 
 " No, she is not coming. She is never coming, 
 I don't like her, and I don't intend ever to have her 
 in any house of mine, so you may as well leave off 
 plaguing me about her." 
 
 " But, mother, why don't you like her ?" 
 
 *' Never mind why. I don't like her. That is 
 enough for you to know." 
 
 " But, mother, if she is father's daughter and my 
 sister, you ought to like her," pleaded Mildred, very 
 much in earnest. 
 
 "How dare you say that ! You must never say 
 it again — you are a naughty, cruel child to say such 
 things!" exclaimed Mrs. Fausset, beginning to cry, 
 
 " Why naughty ? why cruel ? 0, mother !" and 
 Mildred cried too.
 
 DRIFTING APART. 137 
 
 She clasped her arms round her mother's neck 
 and sobbed aloud. 
 
 " Dear mother, indeed I'm not naughty," she 
 protested, " but Bell said Fay was papa's daughter. 
 ' Of course she's his daughter,' Bell said ; and if 
 she's father's daughter, she's my sister, and it's 
 wicked not to love one's sister. The psalm I was 
 learning yesterday says so, mother. ' Behold how 
 good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell to- 
 gether in unity !" And it means sisters just the 
 same. Miss Colville said, when I asked her; and I 
 do love Fay. I can't help loving her." 
 
 " You must never speak her name again to me,'' 
 said Mrs. Fausset resolutely. " I shall leave off 
 loving you if you pester me about that odious 
 girl!" 
 
 " Then wasn't it true what Bell said ?" 
 
 " Of course not." 
 
 " Mother, would it be wrong for papa to have a 
 daughter?" asked Mildred, perplexed by this mysteri- 
 ous resentment for which she could understand no 
 cause, 
 
 ''Wrong ! It would be infamous.'^
 
 138 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 "Would God be angry?" asked the cliild, with 
 an awe-stricken look. " Would it be wicked ?" 
 
 "It would be the worst possible insult to me'' 
 said Lord Castle-Connell's daughter, ignoring the 
 minor question. 
 
 After this Mildred refrained from all further 
 speech about the absent girl to her mother ; but 
 as the years went by she questioned her father 
 from time to time as to Fay's whereabouts. 
 
 " She is very well off, my dear. You need not 
 make yourself unhappy about her. She is with a 
 very nice family, and has pleasant surroundings." 
 
 " Shall I never see her again, father ?" 
 
 " Never's a long day, Mildred. I'll take you to 
 see her by and by when there is an opportunity. 
 You see, it happens unfortunately that your mother 
 does not like her, so it is better she should not 
 come here. It would not be pleasant for her — or 
 for me." 
 
 He said this gravely, with a somewhat dejected 
 look, and Mildred felt somehow that even to him it 
 would be better to talk no more of her lost com- 
 panion.
 
 DRIFTING APART. 139 
 
 As the years went by Mrs. Fausset changed from 
 a woman of fashion to a nervous valetudinarian. It 
 was not that she loved pleasure less, but her beauty 
 and her health had both begun to dwindle and fade 
 at an age when other women are in their prime. 
 She fretted at the loss of her beauty — watched every 
 wrinkle, counted every gray hair, lamented over 
 every change in the delicate colouring which had 
 been her chief charm. 
 
 " How pretty you are growing, Mildred !" she ex- 
 claimed once, with a discontented air, when Mildred 
 was a tall slip of fourteen. " You are just what I 
 was at your age. And you will grow prettier every 
 day until you are thirty, and then I daresay you will 
 begin to fade as I have done, and feel an old woman 
 as I do." 
 
 It seemed to her that her own charms dwindled 
 as her daughter grew. As the bud unfolded, the 
 flower faded. She felt almost as if Mildred had 
 robbed her of her beauty. She would not give up 
 the pleasures and excitement of society. She con- 
 sulted half-a-dozen fashionable physicians, and would 
 not obey one of them. They all prescribed the same
 
 140 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 repulsive treatment — rest, early hours, country air, 
 with gentle exercise ; no parties, no excitement, no 
 strong tea. 
 
 Mrs. Fausset disoheyed them all, and from only 
 fancying herself ill grew to he really ill ; and from 
 chronic lassitude developed organic disease of the 
 heart. 
 
 She lingered nearly two years, a confirmed in- 
 valid, sufi*ering a good deal, and giving other people 
 a great deal of trouble. She died soon after Mildred's 
 sixteenth birthday, and on her death-bed she confided 
 freely in her daughter, who had attended upon her 
 devotedly all through her illness, neglecting every- 
 thing else in the world for her mother's sake. 
 
 " You are old enough to understand things that 
 must once have seemed very mysterious to you, 
 Mildred," said Mrs. Fausset, lying half-hidden in 
 the shadow of guipure bed-curtains, with her daugh- 
 ter's hand clasped in hers, perhaps forgetting how 
 young that daughter was in her own yearning for 
 sympathy. " You couldn't make out why I disliked 
 that horrid girl so much, could you ?" 
 
 "No, indeed, mother."
 
 DRIFTING APART. 141 
 
 " I hated her because she was your father's 
 daughter, Mildred — his natural daughter ; the child 
 of some woman who was not his wife. You are old 
 enough now to know what that means. You were 
 reading The Heart of Midlothian to me last week. 
 You know, Mildred ?" 
 
 Yes, Mildred knew. She hung her head at 
 the memory of that sad story, and at the thought 
 that her father might have sinned like George 
 Staunton. 
 
 " Yes, Mildred, she was the child of some woman 
 he loved before he married me. He must have been 
 desperately in love with the woman, or he would 
 never have brought her daughter into my house. 
 It was the greatest insult he could offer to me." 
 
 '' Was it, mother ?" 
 
 " Was it ? Why, of course it was. How stupid 
 you are, child !" exclaimed the invalid peevishly, and 
 the feverish hand grew hotter as she talked. 
 
 Mildred blushed crimson at the thought of this 
 story of shame. Poor Fay ! poor, unhappy Fay ! 
 And yet her strong common sense told her that there 
 were two sides to the question.
 
 142 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 "It was not Fay's fault, mother," she said 
 gently. " No one could blame Fay, or be angry 
 ■with her. And if the — wicked woman was dead, 
 and father had repented, and was sorry, was it 
 very wrong for him to bring my sister home to us ?" 
 
 " Don't call her your sister !" exclaimed Mrs. 
 Fausset, with a feeble scream of angry alarm ; " she 
 is not your sister — she is no relation — she is nothing 
 to you. It was an insult to bring her across my 
 threshold. You must be very stupid, or you must 
 care very little for me, if you can't understand that. 
 His conduct proved that he had cared for that low, 
 common woman — Fay's mother — more than ever he 
 cared for me ; perhaps he thought her prettier than 
 me," said the invalid in hysterical parenthesis, "and 
 I have never known a happy hour since." 
 
 " 0, mamma dear, not in all the years when 
 you used to wear such lovely gowns, and go to so 
 many parties ?" protested the voice of common sense. 
 
 " I only craved for excitement because I was 
 miserable at heart. I don't think you can half un- 
 derstand a wife's feelings, Mildred, or you wouldn't 
 say such foolish things, I wanted you to know this
 
 DRIFTING APART. 143 
 
 before my death. I want you to remember it always, 
 and if you meet that odious girl avoid her as you 
 would a pestilence. If your father should attempt 
 to bring her here, or to Parchment Street, after I am 
 gone — " 
 
 "He will not, mother. He will respect your 
 wishes too much — he will be too sorry," exclaimed 
 Mildred, bending down to kiss the hot, dry hand, 
 and moistening it with her tears. 
 
 The year of mourning that began soon after this 
 conversation was a very quiet interval for father and 
 daughter. They travelled a little, spent six months 
 in Leipsic, where Mildred studied the piano under 
 the most approved masters, a couple of months in 
 Paris, where her father showed her all the lions in 
 a tranquil, leisurely way that was very pleasant; 
 and then they went down to The Hook, and lived 
 there in happy idleness on the river and in the 
 gardens all through a long and lovely summer. 
 
 Both were saddened at the sight of an empty 
 chair — one sacred corner in all the prettiest rooms 
 — where Maud Fausset had been wont to sit, a
 
 144 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 graceful languid figure, robed in white, or some pale 
 delicate hue even more beautiful than white in con- 
 trast with the background of palms and flowers, 
 Japanese screen or Indian curtain. How pretty she 
 had looked sitting there, with books and scent- 
 bottles, and dainty satin-lined basket full of some 
 light frivolous work, which progressed by stages of 
 half-a-dozen stitches a day ! Her fans, her Tenny- 
 son, her palms, and perfumes — all had savoured of 
 her own fragile bright-coloured loveliness. She was 
 gone ; and father and daughter were alone together 
 — deeply attached to each other, yet with a secret 
 between them, a secret which made a darkening 
 shadow across the lives of both. 
 
 Whenever John Fausset wore a look of troubled 
 thought Mildred fancied he was brooding upon the 
 past, thinking of that erring w^oman who had borne 
 him a child, the child he had tried to fuse into his 
 own family, and to whom her own childish heart had 
 yearned as to a sister. 
 
 '* It must have been instinct that made me love 
 her," she said to herself; and then she would wonder 
 idly what the fair sinner who had been Fay's mother
 
 DRIFTINa APART. 145 
 
 was like, and whether her father had really cared 
 more for that frail woman than for his lawful wife. 
 
 " Poor pretty mamma ! he seemed to doat upon 
 her," thought Mildred. "I cannot imagine his 
 ever having loved any one so well. I cannot imagine 
 his ever having cared for any other woman in this 
 world." 
 
 The formless image of that unknown woman 
 haunted the girl's imagination. She appeared some- 
 times with one aspect, sometimes another — darkly 
 beautiful, of Oriental type, like Scott's Rebecca, or 
 fair and lowly-born like Efiie Deans — poor fragile 
 Effie, fated to fall at the first temptation. Poetry 
 and fiction were full of suggestions about that 
 unknown influence in her father's life; but every 
 thought of the past ended in a sigh of pity for that 
 fair wife whose domestic happiness had been clouded 
 over by that half-discovered mystery. 
 
 Never a word did she breathe to her father upon 
 this forbidden subject ; never a word to Bell, who 
 was still at the head of afi'airs in both Mr. Fausset's 
 houses, and who looked like a grim and stony repo- 
 sitory of family secrets. 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Mildred had been motherless for a year when that 
 new love began to grow which was to be stronger and 
 closer than the love of mother or father, and which 
 was to take possession of her life hereafter and trans- 
 plant her to a new soil. 
 
 How well she remembered that summer after- 
 noon on which she and George Greswold met for 
 the first time ! — she a girl of seventeen, fresh, simple- 
 minded, untainted by that life of fashion and frivolity 
 which she had seen only from the outside, looking 
 on as a child at the follies of men and women — he 
 her senior by thirteen years, and serious beyond his 
 age. Her father and his father had been companions 
 at the University, as undergraduates, with full purses 
 and a mutual delight in fox-hunting and tandem- 
 driving ; and it was this old Oxford friendship which 
 was the cause of George Greswold's appearance at
 
 ''such things were." 147 
 
 The Hook on that particular summer afternoon. Mr. 
 Fausset had met him on a house-boat at Henley 
 Eegatta, had been moved by the memory of the past 
 on discovering that Greswold was the son of George 
 Kansome of Magdalen, and had brought his friend's 
 son home to introduce to his daughter. It was not 
 altogether without ulterior thought, perhaps, that he 
 introduced George Greswold into his home. He 
 had a theory that the young men of this latter day 
 were for the most part a weak-kneed and degenerate 
 race ; and it had seemed to him that this tall, 
 broad-shouldered young man with the marked fea- 
 tures, dark eyes, and powerful brow was of a stronger 
 type than the average bachelor. 
 
 "A pity that he is rather too old for Mildred," 
 he said to himself, supposing that his daughter 
 would hardly feel interested in a man who was more 
 than five-and-twenty. 
 
 Mildred could recall his face as she saw it for 
 the first time, to-day in her desolation, sitting idly 
 beside the lake, while the rhythmical beat of the 
 paddle-wheels died away in the distance. That 
 grave dark face impressed her at once with a sense
 
 148 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 of power. She did not think the stranger hand- 
 come, or fascinating, or aristocratic, or elegant ; but 
 she thought of him a great deal, and she was silent 
 and shy in his presence, let him come as often as he 
 might. 
 
 He was in mourning for his mother, to whom he 
 had been deeply attached, and who had died within 
 the last three months, leaving him Enderby Manor 
 and a large fortune. His home life had not been 
 happy. There had been an antagonism between him 
 and his father from his boyhood upwards, and he 
 had shaken the dust of the paternal house off his 
 feet, and had left England to wander aimlessly, 
 living on a small income allowed him by his mother, 
 and making a little money by literature. He was a 
 second son, a person of no importance, except to 
 the mother, who doted upon him. 
 
 Happily for this younger son his mother was a 
 woman of fortune, and on her death George Ran- 
 some inherited Enderby Manor, the old house in 
 which generations of Greswolds had come and gone 
 since Dutch William was King of England. There 
 had been a much older house pulled down to make
 
 " SUCH THINGS WERE." 149 
 
 room for that red brick mansion, and the Greswolds 
 had been lords of the soil since the Wars of the 
 Roses — red-rose to the heart's core, and loyal to an 
 unfortunate king, whether Plantagenet, Tudor, or 
 Stuart. 
 
 By the conditions of his mother's will, George 
 Eansome assumed her family name and arms, and 
 became George Ransome Greswold in all legal 
 documents henceforward; but he signed himself 
 George Greswold, and was known to his friends by 
 that name. He had not loved his father nor his 
 father's race. 
 
 He came to The Hook often in that glorious 
 summer weather. At the first he was grave and 
 silent, and seemed oppressed by sad memories ; but 
 this seemed natural in one who had so lately lost 
 a beloved parent. Gradually the ice melted, and his 
 manner brightened. He came without being bidden. 
 He contrived to make himself, as it were, a member 
 of the family, whose appearance surprised nobody. 
 He bought a steam-launch, which was always at Mr. 
 Fausset's disposal, and Miss Fausset went every- 
 where with her father. She recalled those sunlit
 
 160 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 days now, "with every impression of the moment ; 
 the ever-growing sense of happiness ; the silent 
 delight in knowing herself beloved; the deepening 
 reverence for the man who loved her ; the limitless 
 faith in his power of heart and brain ; the confiding 
 love which felt a protection in the very sound of his 
 voice. Yes, those had been happy days — the rosy 
 dawning of a great joy that was to last until the 
 grave, Mildred Fausset had thought ; and now, after 
 thirteen years of wedded love, they had drifted apart. 
 Sorrow, which should have drawn them nearer toge- 
 ther, had served only to divide them. 
 
 " 0, my lamb, if you could know in your hea- 
 venly home how much your loss has cost us !" 
 thought the mother, with the image of that beloved 
 child before her eyes. 
 
 There had been a gloomy reserve in George 
 Greswold's grief which had held his wife at a dis- 
 tance, and had wounded her sorrowful heart. He 
 was selfish in his sorrow, forgetting that her loss 
 was as great as his. He had bowed his head before 
 inexorable Fate, had sat down in dust and ashes, and 
 brooded over his bereavement, solitary, despairing.
 
 " SUCH THINGS WERE." 151 
 
 If he did not curse God in his anguish, it was 
 because early teaching still prevailed, and the habits 
 of thought he had learned in childhood were not 
 lightly to be flung off. Upon one side of his 
 character he was a Pagan, seeing in this affliction 
 the hand of Nemesis, the blind Avenger. 
 
 They left Switzerland in the late autumn, and 
 wintered in Vienna, where Mr. Greswold gave him- 
 self up to study, and where neither he nor his wife 
 took any part in the gaieties of the capital. Here 
 they lived until the spring, and then, even in the 
 depths of his gloom, a yearning came upon George 
 Greswold to see the home of his race, the manor 
 which he had loved as if it were a living thing. 
 
 " Mildred, do you think you could bear to be in 
 the old home again ?" he asked his wife suddenly, 
 one morning at breakfast. 
 
 " I could bear anything better than the life we 
 lead here," she answered, her eyes filling with tears. 
 
 " We will go back, then — yes, even if it is only 
 to look upon our daughter's grave." 
 
 They went back to England and to Enderby 
 Manor within a week after that conversation. They
 
 152 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 arrived at Romsey Station one bright May afternoon, 
 and found the gray horses waiting to carry them to 
 the old house. How sad and strange it seemed to 
 be coming home without Lola ! She had always 
 been their companion in such journeys, and her 
 eager face and glad young voice, on the alert to 
 recognise the first familiar points of the landscape, 
 hill-top, or tree, or cottage that indicated home, 
 had given an air of gaiety to every-day life. 
 
 The old horses took them back to the Manor, 
 but not the old coachman. A great change in the 
 household had come about after Lola's funeral. 
 George Greswold had been merciless to those ser- 
 vants whose carelessness had brought about that 
 great calamity, which made seven new graves in the 
 churchyard before all was done. He dismissed his 
 bailiff, Mrs. Wadman and her husband, an under- 
 dairymaid and a cowman, and his housekeeper, all 
 of whom he considered accountable for the use of 
 that foul water from the old well — accountable, inas- 
 much as they had given him no notice of the evil, 
 and had exercised no care or common sense in their 
 management of the dairy. These he dismissed
 
 ** SUCH THINGS WERE." 153 
 
 sternly, and that party feeling which rules among 
 servants took this severity amiss, and several other 
 members of the household gave warning. 
 
 "Let it be a clean sweep, then," said Mr. Gres- 
 wold to Bell, who announced the falling-away of his 
 old servants. " Let there be none of the old faces 
 here when we come back next year — except yours. 
 There will be plenty of time for you to get new 
 people." 
 
 " A clean sweep " suited Bell's temper admira- 
 bly. To engage new servants who should owe their 
 places to her, and bow themselves down before her, 
 was a delight to the old Irishwoman. 
 
 Thus it was that all things had a strange aspect 
 when Mildred Greswold reentered her old home. 
 Even the rooms had a different air. The new 
 servants had arranged the furniture upon new lines, 
 not knowing that old order which had been a part 
 of daily life. 
 
 Let us go and look at her rooms first," said 
 Mildred softly ; and husband and wife went silently 
 to the rooms in the south wing — the octagon-room 
 with its dwarf bookcases and bright bindings, its
 
 154 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 proof-engravings after Landseer — pictures chosen 
 by Lola herself. Here nothing was changed. 
 Bell's own hands had kept all things in order. 
 No unfamiliar touch had disturbed the relics of 
 the dead. 
 
 Mrs. Greswold stayed in that once happy scene 
 for nearly an hour. It was hard to realise that she 
 and her daughter were never to be together again, 
 they who had been almost inseparable — who had 
 sat side by side by yonder window or yonder hearth 
 in all the changes of the seasons. There was the 
 piano at which they had played and sung together. 
 The music-stand still contained the prettily-bound 
 volumes — sonatinas by Hummel and Clementi — 
 easy duets by Mozart, national melodies, Volks- 
 Lieder. In music the child had been in advance of 
 her years. With the mother music was a passion, 
 and she had imbued her daughter with her own 
 tastes in all things. The child's nature had been 
 a carrying on and completing of the mother's 
 character, a development of all the mother's gifts. 
 
 She was gone, and the mother's life seemed 
 desolate and empty — the future a blank. Never in
 
 " SUCH THINGS WERE." 155 
 
 lier life had she so much needed her husband's love 
 — active, considerate, sympathetic — and yet never 
 had he seemed so far apart from her. It was not 
 that he was unkind or neglectful, it was only that 
 his heart made no movement towards hers ; he 
 was not in sympathy with her. He had wrapped 
 himself in his grief as in a mantle ; he stood aloof 
 from her, and seemed never to have understood that 
 her sorrow was as great as his own. 
 
 He left her on the threshold of Lola's room. It 
 might he that he could not endure the sight of 
 those things which she had looked at weeping, in an 
 ecstasy of grief. To her that agony of touch and 
 memory, the aspect of things that belonged to the 
 past, seemed to bring her lost child nearer to her — 
 it was as if she stretched her hands across the gulf 
 and touched those vanished hands. 
 
 " Poor piano !" she sighed ; " poor piano, that 
 she loved." 
 
 She touched the keys softly, playing the open- 
 ing bars of La ci darem la mano. It was the first 
 melody they had played together, mother and child 
 — arranged easily as a duet. Later they had sung
 
 156 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 it together, the girl's voice clear as a bird's, and 
 seeming to need training no more than a bird's 
 voice. These things had been, and were all 
 over. 
 
 " What shall I do with my life ?" cried the 
 mother despairingly ; " what shall I do with all the 
 days to come — now she is gone ?" 
 
 She left those rooms at last, locking the doors 
 behind her, and went out into the garden. The 
 grand old cedars cast their broad shadows on the 
 lawn. The rustic chairs and tables were there, as 
 in the days gone by, when that velvet turf under 
 the cedars had been Mrs. Greswold's summer 
 parlour. Would she sit there ever again ? she 
 wondered : could she endure to sit there without 
 Lola? 
 
 There was a private way from the Manor gardens 
 into the churchyard, a short cut to church by which 
 mother and daughter had gone twice on every 
 Sunday ever since Lola was old enough to know 
 what Sunday meant. She went by this path in the 
 evening stillness to visit Lola's grave. 
 
 She gathered a few rosebuds as she went.
 
 " SUCH THINGS WERE." 157 
 
 "Flowers for my blighted flower," she murmured 
 softly. 
 
 All was still and solemn in the old churchyard 
 shadowed by sombre yews — a churchyard of irregular 
 levels and moss-grown monuments enclosed by rusty 
 iron railings, and humbler headstones of crumbling 
 stone covered over with an orange-coloured lichen 
 which was like vegetable rust. 
 
 The names on these were for the most part 
 illegible, the lettering of a fashion that has passed 
 away ; but here and there a brand-new stone perked 
 itself up among these old memorials with an asser- 
 tive statement about the dead. 
 
 Lola's grave was marked by a large white marble 
 cross, carved in alto relievo on the level slab. The 
 inscription was of the simplest : 
 
 "Laura, the only child of George and Mildred 
 Greswold, aged twelve." 
 
 There were no words of promise or of consolation 
 upon the stone. 
 
 On one side of the grave there was a large 
 mountain-ash, whose white blossoms and delicate 
 leaves made a kind of temple above the marble
 
 158 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 slab ; on the other, an ancient yew cast its denser 
 shade. Mildred knelt down in the shadow, and let 
 her head droop over the cold stone. There was a 
 skylark singing in the blue vault high above the 
 old Norman tower — a carol of joy and glad young 
 life, as it seemed to Mildred, sitting in the dust. 
 What a mockery that joyousness of spring-time and 
 Nature seemed ! 
 
 She knew not how long she had knelt there in 
 silent grief when the branches rustled suddenly, as 
 if a strong arm had parted them, and a man flung 
 himself down heavily upon a turf-covered mound — 
 a neglected, nameless grave — beside Lola's monu- 
 ment. She did not stir from her kneeling attitude, 
 or lift her head to look at the new-comer, knowing 
 that the mourner was her husband. She had heard 
 his footsteps approaching, heavy and slow in the 
 stillness of the place. 
 
 The trunk of the tree hid her from that other 
 mourner as she knelt there. He thought himself 
 alone; and, in the abandonment of that fancied 
 solitude, he groaned aloud, as Job may have groaned, 
 sitting among ashes.
 
 ** SUCH THINGS WERE." 159 
 
 "Judgment !" he cried, *^ judgment !" and then, 
 after an interval of silence, he cried again, "judg- 
 ment!" 
 
 That one word, so repeated, seemed to freeze all 
 the blood in her veins. What did it mean, that 
 exceeding bitter cry, 
 
 *' Judgment !"
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE FACE IN THE CHURCH. 
 
 Two montlis had gone since that first visit to Lola's 
 grave, when the husband and wife had knelt so near 
 each other, and yet so far apart in the infinite 
 mystery of human consciousness ; he with his secret 
 thoughts and secret woes, which she had never 
 fathomed. He, unaware of her neighbourhood ; 
 she, chilled by a vague suspicion and sense of 
 estrangement which had been growing upon her 
 ever since her daughter's death. 
 
 It was summer again, the ripe full-blown summer 
 of mid-July. The awful anniversary of their be- 
 reavement had passed in silence and prayer. All 
 things at Enderby looked as they had looked in the 
 years that were gone, except the faces of the servants, 
 which were for the most part strange. That change 
 of the household made a great change in life to 
 people so conservative as George Greswold and his
 
 THE FACE IN THE CHURCH. 161 
 
 wife ; and the old home seemed so much the less 
 like home because of that change. The Squire of 
 Enderby felt that his popularity was lessened in the 
 village for which he had done so much. His severe 
 dealing with the offenders had pleased nobody, not 
 even the sufferers from the epidemic, whose losses 
 he had avenged. He had shown himself implacable ; 
 and there were many who said he had been unjust. 
 
 " It was hard upon Wadman and his wife to be 
 turned off after twenty j^ears' faithful service," said 
 one of the villagers. " The Squire may go a long 
 way before he'll get as good a bailiff as Thomas," 
 said another. 
 
 For the first time since he had inherited the 
 estate George Greswold felt himself surrounded by 
 an atmosphere of discontent, and even dislike. His 
 tenants seemed afraid of him, and were reticent and 
 moody when he talked to them, which he did much 
 seldomer than of old, making a great effort in order 
 to appear interested in their affairs. 
 
 Mildred's life during those summer weeks, while 
 the roses were opening and all the flowers succeeding 
 each other in a procession of loveliness, had drifted 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 along like a slow dull stream that crawls through a 
 desolate swamp. There was neither beauty nor 
 colour in her existence ; there was a sense of vacuity, 
 an aching void. Nothing to hope for, nothing to 
 look back upon. 
 
 She did not abandon herself slavishly to her 
 sorrow. She tried to resume the life of duty which 
 had once been so full of sweetness, so rich in its 
 rewards for every service. She went about among 
 the cottagers as of old ; she visited the shabby gen- 
 tilities on the fringe of the market town, the 
 annuitants and struggling families, the poor widows 
 and elderly spinsters, who had quite as much need 
 of help as the cottagers, and whom it had always 
 been her delight to encourage and sustain with 
 friendliness and sympathy, as well as with delicate 
 benefactions, gifts that never humiliated the recipient. 
 She took up the thread of her work in the parish 
 schools ; she resumed her old interest in the church 
 services and decorations, in the inevitable charity 
 bazaar or organ-fund concert. She played her part 
 in the parish so well that people began to say, 
 
 " Mrs. Greswold is getting over her loss."
 
 THE FACE IN THE CHURCH. 163 
 
 In him the shock had left a deeper mark. His 
 whole aspect was changed. He looked ten years 
 older than before the coming of sorrow; and 
 though people loved her better, they pitied him 
 more. 
 
 " She has more occupations and pursuits to in- 
 terest her," said Mr. Rollinson, the curate. " She 
 is devoted to music, and that employs her mind." 
 
 Yes, music was her passion ; but in these days 
 of mourning even music was allied to pain. Every 
 melody she played, every song she sang, recalled the 
 child whose appreciation of that divine art had been 
 far beyond her years. They had sung and played 
 together. Often singing alone in the summer dusk, 
 in that corner of the long drawing-room, where 
 Lola's babyish chair still stood, she had started, 
 fancying she heard that other voice mingling with 
 her own — the sweet clear tones which had sounded 
 seraphic even upon earth. 
 
 0, was she with the angels now ; or was it all a 
 fable, that fond vision of a fairer world and an 
 angelic choir, singing before the great white throne ? 
 To have lost such a child was almost to believe in
 
 164: THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 the world of seraphim and cherubim, of angels and 
 purified spirits. Where else could she be ? 
 
 Husband and wife lived together, side by side, in 
 a sad communion that seemed to lack the spirit of 
 unity. The outward semblance of confiding afi'ection 
 was there, but there was something wanting. He 
 was very good to her — as kind, as attentive, and con- 
 siderate as in their first year of marriage ; and yet 
 there was something wanting. 
 
 She remembered what he had been when he 
 came as a stranger to The Hook"; and it seemed to 
 her as if the glass of Time had been turned back- 
 wards for fourteen years, and that he was again just 
 as he had been in those early days, when she had 
 watched him, curiously interested in his character as 
 in a mystery. He was too grave for a man of his 
 years — and with a shade of gloom upon him that 
 hinted at a more than common grief. He had been 
 subject to lapses of abstraction, as if his mind had 
 slipped back to some unhappy past. It was only 
 when he had fallen in love and was wholly devoted 
 to her that the shadow passed away, and he began 
 to feel the joyousness of life and the fervour of
 
 THE FACE IN THE CHURCH. 165 
 
 ardent hopes. Then the old character dropped off 
 him like the serpent's slough, and he became as 
 young as the youngest — boyish even in his frank 
 felicity. 
 
 This memory of her first impressions about him 
 was so strong with her that she could not help 
 speaking of it one evening after dinner when she 
 had been playing one of Beethoven's grandest 
 adagios to him, and they were sitting in silence, 
 she by the piano, he far away by an open window on 
 a level with the shadowy lawn, where the great cedars 
 rose black against the pale gray sky. 
 
 " George, do you remember my playing that 
 adagio to you for the first time ?" 
 
 **I remember you better than Beethoven. I 
 could scarcely think of the music in those days 
 for thinking so much of you." 
 
 ** Ah, but the first time you heard me play that 
 adagio was before you had begun to care for me — 
 before you had cast your slough." 
 
 " What do you mean ?" 
 
 " Before you had come out of your cloud of sad 
 memories. When first you came to us you lived
 
 166 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 only in the past. I doubt if you were more than 
 half-conscious of our existence." 
 
 She could only distinguish his profile faintly de- 
 fined against the evening gray as he sat beside the 
 window. Had she seen the expression of his face, 
 its look of infinite pain, she would hardly have pur- 
 sued the subject. 
 
 "I had but lately lost my mother," he said 
 gravely. 
 
 "Ah, but that was a grief which you did not 
 hide from us. You did not shrink from our sym- 
 pathy there. There was some other trouble, some- 
 thing that belonged to a remoter past, over which 
 you brooded in secret. Yes, George, I know you 
 had some secrets then — that divided us — and — 
 and — " falteringly, with tears in her voice — '*I 
 think those old secrets are keeping us asunder now, 
 when our grief should draw us nearer together." 
 
 She had left her place by the piano, and had 
 gone to him as she spoke, and now she was on her 
 knees beside him, clinging to him tearfully. 
 
 " George, trust me, love me," she pleaded. 
 
 *' My beloved, do I net love you ?" he protested
 
 THE FACE IN THE CHURCH. 167 
 
 passionately, clasping her in his arms, kissing away 
 her tears, soothing her as if she had been a child. 
 "My dearest and best, from the first hour I 
 awakened to a new life in yonr love my truth has 
 never wavered, my heart has never known change." 
 
 " And yet you are changed — since our darling 
 went — terribly changed." 
 
 ** Do you wonder that I grieve for her ?" 
 
 " No, but you grieve apart — you hold yourself 
 aloof from me." 
 
 " If I do it is because I do not want you to share 
 my burden, Mildred. Your sorrow may be cured, 
 perhaps — mine never can be. Time may be merci- 
 ful to you — for me time can do nothing." 
 
 "Dearest, what hope can there be for me that 
 you do not share ? — the Christian's hope of meeting 
 our loved one hereafter. I have no other hope." 
 
 " I hardly know if I have that hope," he an- 
 swered slowly, with deepest despondency. 
 
 " And yet you are a Christian." 
 
 " If to endeavour to follow Christ, the Teacher 
 and Friend of humanity, is to be a Christian — yes." 
 
 "And you believe in the world to come ?"
 
 168 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 " I try SO to believe, Mildred. I try. Faith in 
 the Kingdom of Heaven does not come easily to a 
 man whose life has been ruled by the inexorable 
 Fates. Not a word, darling; let us not talk of 
 these things. "We know no more than Socrates 
 knew in his dungeon ; no more than Koger Bacon 
 knew in his old age — unheard, buried, forgotten. 
 Never doubt my love, dearest. That is changeless. 
 You and Lola were the sunshine of my life. You 
 shall be my sunshine henceforward. I have been 
 selfish in brooding over my sorrow ; but it is the 
 habit of my mind to grieve in silence. Forgive me, 
 dear wife ; forgive me." 
 
 He clasped her in his arms, and again she felt 
 assured of her husband's afi'ection ; but she knew all 
 the same that there was some sorrow in his past 
 life which he had kept hidden from her, which he 
 meant her never to know. 
 
 Many a time in their happy married life she had 
 tried to lead him to talk of his boyhood and youth. 
 About his days at Eton and Oxford he was frank 
 enough, but he was curiously reticent about his 
 home life and about those years which he had spent
 
 THE FACE IN THE CHURCH. 169 
 
 travelling over the Continent after he had left his 
 father's house for good. 
 
 " I was not happy at home, Mildred," he told 
 her one day. " My father and I did not get on 
 together, as the phrase goes. He was very fond of 
 my elder brother. They had the same way of think- 
 ing about most things. Randolph's marriage pleased 
 my father, and he looked to Randolph to strengthen 
 the position of our family, which had been consider- 
 ably reduced by his own extravagance. He would 
 have liked my mother's estate to have gone to the 
 elder son ; but she had full disposing power, and 
 she made me her heir. This set my father against 
 me, and there came a time when, dearly as I loved 
 my mother, I found that I could no longer live at 
 home. I went out into the world, a lonely man ; 
 and I only came back to the old home after my 
 father's death." 
 
 This was the fullest account of his family history 
 that George Greswold had given his wife. From 
 his reserve in speaking of his father she divined that 
 the balance of wrong had been upon the side of the 
 parent rather than of the son. Had a man of her
 
 170 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 husband's temper been the sinner he would have 
 frankly confessed his errors. Of his mother he 
 spoke with undeviating love ; and he seemed to 
 have been on friendly terms with his brother. 
 
 On the morning after that tearful talk in the 
 twilight Mr. Greswold startled his wife from a pen- 
 sive reverie as they sat at breakfast in the garden. 
 They always breakfasted out of doors on fine summer 
 mornings. They had made no change in old cus- 
 toms since their return, as some mourners might 
 have done, hoping to blunt the keen edge of memory 
 by an alteration in the details of life. Both knew 
 too well how futile any such alteration of their sur- 
 roundings would be. They remembered Lola no 
 more vividly at Enderby than they had remembered 
 her in Switzerland. 
 
 ''My dearest, I have been thinking of you in- 
 cessantly since last night, and of the loneliness of 
 your life," George Greswold began seriously, as he 
 sat in a low basket-chair, sipping his coffee, with his 
 favourite setter Kassandra at his feet ; an Irish dog 
 that had been famous for feather in days gone by, 
 but who had insinuated herself into the family affec-
 
 THE FACE IN THE CHURCH. 171 
 
 tions, and had got herself accepted as a household 
 companion to the ruin of her sporting qualities. 
 Kassandra went no more with the guns. Her place 
 was the drawing-room or the lawn. 
 
 " I can never he lonely, George, while I have 
 you. There is no other company I can ever care 
 about henceforward." 
 
 "Let me always be the first, dear; but you 
 should have female companionship of some kind. 
 Our house is empty and voiceless. There should 
 be some young voice — some young footstep — " 
 
 " Do you mean that I ought to hire a girl to run 
 up and down stairs, and laugh in the corridors, as 
 Lola used ? 0, George, how can you !" exclaimed 
 Mildred, beginning to cry. 
 
 " No, no, dear. I had no such thought in my 
 mind. I was thinking of Kandolph's daughter. 
 You seemed to like her when she and her sister 
 were here two years ago." 
 
 " Yes, she was a nice, bright girl then, and my 
 darling was pleased with her. How merry they 
 were together, playing battledore and shuttlecock 
 over there by the yew hedge ! Don't ask me ever
 
 172 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 to see that girl again, George. It would make my 
 heart ache." 
 
 *' I am sorry to hear you say that, Mildred. I 
 was going to ask you to have her here on a good long 
 visit. Now that Kosalind is married, Pamela has 
 no home of her own. Rosalind and her husband 
 like having her occasionally — for a month or six 
 weeks at a time ; but Sir Henry Mountford's house 
 is not Pamela's home. She would soon begin to 
 feel herself an incubus. The Mountfords are very 
 fond of society, and just a little worldly. They 
 would soon be tired of a girl whose presence was no 
 direct advantage. I have been thinking that with 
 us Pamela would never be in the way. You need 
 not see too much of her in this big house. There 
 would be plenty of room for her to carry on her own 
 pursuits and amusements without boring you ; and 
 when you wanted her she would be at hand, a bright 
 companionable girl, who would grow fonder of you 
 every day." 
 
 "I could not endure her fondness. I could not 
 endure any girl's companionship. Her presence 
 would only remind me of my loss."
 
 THE FACE IN THE CHURCH. 173 
 
 "Dearest, I thought we were both agreed that, 
 as nothing can make us forget our darling, it can- 
 not matter to us how often we are reminded of 
 her." 
 
 " Yes, by silent, unreasoning things like Kassan- 
 dra," touching the dog's tawny head with a caressing 
 hand ; "or the garden — the trees and flowers she 
 loved — her books — her piano. Those things may 
 remind us of our darling without hurting us. But 
 to hear a girl's voice calling me — as she used to call 
 me from the garden on summer mornings— to hear 
 a girl's laughter — " 
 
 " Yes, it would be painful, love, at first. I can 
 understand that, Mildred. But if you can benefit 
 an orphan girl by having her here, I know your kind 
 heart will not refuse. Let her come for a few 
 weeks, and if her presence pains you she shall stay 
 no longer. She shall not be invited again. I would 
 not ask you to receive a stranger, but my brother's 
 daughter is near me in blood." 
 
 " Let her come, George," said Mildred impul- 
 sively ; "I am very selfish — thinking only of my 
 own feelings. Let her come. How strangely this
 
 174 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 talk of ours reminds me of something that happened 
 when I was a child !" 
 
 " What was that, Mildred ?" 
 
 "You have heard me speak of Fay, my play- 
 fellow ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " I remember the evening my father asked 
 mamma to let her come to us. It seemed just now 
 as if you were using his very words ; and yet all 
 things were different." 
 
 Mildred had told him very little about that child- 
 ish sorrow of hers. She had shrunk from any 
 allusion to the girl whose existence bore witness 
 against her father. She, too, fond and frank as she 
 was, had kept her own counsel, had borne the 
 burden of a secret. 
 
 " Yes, I have heard you speak of the girl you 
 called Fay, and of whom you must have been very 
 fond, for the tears came into your eyes when you 
 mentioned her. Did she live with you long ?" 
 
 " 0, no, a very short time ! She was sent to 
 school — to a finishing-school at Brussels." 
 
 "Brussels !" he repeated, with a look of surprise.
 
 THE FACE IN THE CHURCH. 17^ 
 
 " Yes. Do you know anything about Brussels 
 schools ?" 
 
 "Nothing personally. I have heard of girls 
 educated there. And what became of your play- 
 fellow after the Brussels school ?" 
 
 ** I never heard." 
 
 " And you never tried to find out ?" 
 
 " Yes, I asked my mother ; but there was a pre- 
 judice in her mind against poor Fay. I would 
 rather not talk about her, George." 
 
 Her vivid blush, her evident confusion, perplexed 
 her husband. There was some kind of mystery, it 
 seemed — some family trouble in the background, or 
 Mildred, who was all candour, would have spoken 
 more freely. 
 
 " Then may I really invite Pamela ?" he asked, 
 after a brief silence, during which he had responded 
 to the endearments of Kassandra, too well fed to 
 have any design upon the dainties on the breakfast- 
 table, and only asking to be loved. 
 
 *'I will write to her myself, George. Where is 
 she r 
 
 ** Not very far ofi". She is at Cowes with the
 
 176 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 Mountfords, on board Sir Henry's yacht the Gadfly. 
 You had better send your letter to the post-office, 
 marked Gadfly." 
 
 The invitation was despatched by the first post ; 
 Miss Greswold was asked to come to the Manor as 
 soon as she liked, and to stay till the autumn. 
 
 The next day was Sunday, and Mr. and Mrs. 
 Greswold went to church together by the path that 
 led them within a few paces of Lola's grave. 
 
 For the first time since her daughter's death 
 Mildred had put on a light gown. Till to-day she 
 had worn only black. This morning she came into 
 the vivid sunlight in a pale gray gown of soft lustre- 
 less silk, and a neat little gray straw bonnet, which 
 set ofi" the fairness of her skin and the sheen of her 
 golden hair. The simple fashion of her gown be- 
 came her tall, slim figure, which had lost none of 
 the grace of girlhood. She was the prettiest and 
 most distinguished -looking woman in Enderby 
 Church, although there were more county families 
 represented there upon that particular Sunday than 
 are often to be seen in a village church. 
 
 The Manor House pew was on one side of the
 
 THE FACE IN THE CHURCH. 177 
 
 chancel, and commanded a full view of the nave. 
 The first lesson was long, and while it was being 
 read Mildred's eyes wandered idly along the faces in 
 the nave, recognising countenances that had been 
 familiar to her ever since her marriage, until that 
 wandering gaze stopped suddenly, arrested by a face 
 that was strange. 
 
 She saw this strange face between other faces — 
 as it were in a cleft in the block of people. She 
 saw it at the end of a vista, with the sunlight from 
 the chancel window full upon it — a face that im- 
 pressed her as no face of a stranger had ever done 
 before. 
 
 It looked like the face of Judas, she thought ; 
 and then in the next moment was ashamed of her 
 fancy. 
 
 *'It is only the colouring, and the effect of the 
 light upon it," she told herself. "I am not so 
 weak as to cherish the vulgar prejudice against that 
 coloured hair." 
 
 " That coloured hair " was of the colour which a 
 man's enemies call red and his friends auburn or 
 chestnut. It was of that ruddy brown which Titian 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 THE FATAL TIIP.EE. 
 
 has immortalised in more than one Venus, and 
 ■without which Potiphar's wife would be a nonen- 
 tity. 
 
 The stranger wore a small pointed beard of this 
 famous colouring. His eyes were of a reddish 
 brown, large, and luminous, his eyebrows strongly 
 arched ; his nose was a small aquiline ; his brow 
 was wide and lofty, slightly bald in front. His 
 mouth was the only obviously objectionable feature. 
 The lips were finely moulded, from a Greek sculp- 
 tor's standpoint, and would have done for a Greek 
 Bacchus, but the expression was at once crafty and 
 sensual. The auburn moustache served to accentu- 
 ate rather than to conceal that repellant expression. 
 Mildred looked at him presently as he stood up for 
 the Te Deum, 
 
 He was tall, for she saw his head well above in- 
 tervening heads. He looked about five-and-thirty. 
 He had the air of being a gentleman. 
 
 '* Whoever he is, I hope I shall never see him 
 again," thought Mildred.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 
 
 When Mr. and Mrs. Greswold left the church, the 
 stranger was taking his place in the Hillersdon 
 wagonette, a capacious vehicle, drawn by a pair of 
 upstanding black-brown horses, set off by servants 
 in smart liveries of dark brown and gold. 
 
 Mildred gave a sigh of relief. If the stranger 
 was a visitor at Riverdale it was not likely that he 
 would stay long in the neighbourhood, or be seen 
 again for years to come. The guests at Riverdale 
 were generally birds of passage; and the same 
 faces seldom appeared there twice. Mr. and Mrs. 
 Hillersdon of Riverdale were famous for their 
 extensive circle, and famous for bringing new people 
 into the county. Some of their neighbours said it 
 was Mr. Hillersdon who brought the people there, 
 and that Mrs. Hillersdon had nothing to do with 
 the visiting list ; others declared that husband and 
 wife were equally fickle and equally frivolous.
 
 180 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 Eiverdale was one of the finest houses within ten 
 miles of Komsey, and it was variously described by 
 the local gentry. It was called a delightful house, 
 or it was called a curious house, according to the 
 temper of the speaker. Its worst enemy could not 
 deny that it was a splendid house — spacious, 
 architectural, luxurious, with all the appendages of 
 wealth and dignity — nor could its worst enemy 
 deny its merit as one of the most hospitable houses 
 in the county. 
 
 Notwithstanding this splendour and lavish hos- 
 pitality, the local magnates did not go to Eiver- 
 dale, and the Hillersdons were not received in some 
 of the best houses. Tom Hillersdon was a large 
 landowner, a millionaire, and a man of good family ; 
 but Tom Hillersdon was considered to have stranded 
 himself in middle life by a marriage which in the 
 outer world was spoken of vaguely as " unfortunate," 
 but which the straitlaced among his neighbours 
 considered fatal. No man who had so married 
 could hold up his head among his friends any more ; 
 no man who had so married could hope to have his 
 wife received in decent people's houses. In spite of
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 181 
 
 which opinion prevailing among Tom Hillersdon's 
 oldest friends Mrs. Hillersdon contrived to gather a 
 good many people round her, and some of them 
 the most distinguished in the land. She had 
 Cabinet Ministers, men of letters, and famous 
 painters among her guests. She had plenty of 
 women friends — of a sort : attractive women, in- 
 tellectual and enlightened women ; sober matrons, 
 bread-and-butter girls ; women who doated on Mrs. 
 Hillersdon, and, strange to say, had never heard her 
 history. 
 
 And yet Hillersdon's wife had a history scarcely 
 less famous than that of Cleopatra or Nell Gwynne. 
 Louise Hillersdon was once Louise Lorraine, the 
 young adventuress whose Irish gray eyes had set 
 all London talking when the Great Exhibition of 
 '62 was still a monstrous iron skeleton, and when 
 South Kensington was in its infancy. Louise 
 Lorraine's extravagance, and Louise Lorraine's 
 devotees, from German princes and English 
 dukes downwards, had been town-talk. Her box 
 at the opera had been the cynosure of every 
 eye ; and Paris ran mad when she drove in
 
 182 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 the Bois, or exhibited her diamonds in the Rue 
 Lepelletier; or supped in the small hours at the 
 Cafe de Paris, with the topmost strawberries in the 
 basket. Numerous and conflicting were the versions 
 of her early history — the more sensational chronicles 
 describing her as the Aphrodite of the gutter. 
 Some people declared that she could neither read 
 nor write, and could not stir without her amanuensis 
 at her elbow ; others affirmed that she spoke four 
 languages, and read a Greek play or a chapter of 
 Thucidydes every night, with her feet on the 
 fender, while her maid brushed her hair. The 
 sober truth lay midway between these extremes. 
 She was the daughter of a doctor in a line regiment ; 
 she was eminently beautiful, very ignorant, and very 
 clever. She wrote an uneducated hand, never read 
 anything better than a sentimental novel, sang 
 prettily, and could accompany her songs on the 
 guitar with a good deal of dash and fire. To this 
 may be added that she was an adept in the art of 
 dress, had as much tact and finesse as a leader of 
 the old French noblesse, and more audacity than a 
 Parisian cocotte in the golden age of Cocotterie.
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 183 
 
 Such she was when Tom Hillersdon, Wiltshire 
 squire, and millionaire, swooped like an eagle upon 
 this fair dove, and bore her off to his eerie. There 
 was howling and gnashing of teeth among those 
 many admirers who were all thinking seriously 
 about making the lovely Louise a bond fide offer; 
 and it was felt in a certain set that Tom Hillers- 
 don had done a valiant and victorious deed ; but 
 his country friends were of one accord in the 
 idea that Hillersdon had wrecked himself for ever. 
 
 The Squire's wife came to Riverdale, and es- 
 tablished herself there with as easy an air as if 
 she had been a duchess. She gave herself no 
 trouble about the county families. London was 
 near enough for the fair Louise, and she filled her 
 house — or Tom Hillersdon filled it — with relays of 
 visitors from the great city. Scarcely had she been 
 settled there a week when the local gentry were 
 startled at seeing her sail into church with one of 
 the most famous English statesmen in her train. 
 Upon the Sunday after she was attended by a great 
 painter and a well-known savant ; and besides these 
 she had a pew full of smaller fry — a lady novelist, a
 
 184 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 fashionable actor, a celebrated Queen's Counsel, and 
 a county member. 
 
 ''Where does she get those men?" asked Lady 
 Marjorie Danefeld, the Conservative member's wife ; 
 *' surely they can't all be — reminiscences." 
 
 It had been supposed while the newly-wedded 
 couple were on their honeymoon that the lady's 
 arrival at Kiverdale would inaugurate a reign of 
 profanity — that Sunday would be given over to 
 Bohemian society, cafe-chantant songs, champagne, 
 and cigarette-smoking. Great was the surprise of 
 the locality, therefore, when Mrs. Hillersdon ap- 
 peared in the Stjuire's pew on Sunday morning, 
 neatly dressed, demure, nay, with an aspect of more 
 than usual sanctity ; greater still the astonishment 
 when she reappeared in the afternoon, and listened 
 meekly to the catechising of the school-children and 
 to the baptism of a refractory baby ; greater even 
 yet when it was found that these pious practices 
 were continued, that she never missed a Saint's-Day 
 service, that she had morning prayers for family and 
 household, and that she held meetings of an evan- 
 gelical character in her drawing-room — meetings at
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 185 
 
 which curates from outlying parishes gathered like a 
 flock of crows, and at which the excellence of the 
 tea and coffee, pound-cake and muffins, speedily 
 became known to the outside world. 
 
 Happily for Tom Hillersdon these pious tenden- 
 cies did not interfere with his amusements or the 
 pleasantness of his domestic life. Biverdale was 
 enlivened by a perennial supply of lively or interest- 
 ing people. Notoriety of some kind was a passport 
 to the Hillersdons' favour. It was an indication 
 that a man was beginning to make his mark when he 
 was asked to Eiverdale. When he had made his 
 mark he might think twice about going. Riverdale 
 was the paradise of budding celebrities. 
 
 So to-day, seeing the stranger get into the Hil- 
 lersdon wagonette, Mrs. Greswold opined that he 
 was a man who had made some kind of reputation. 
 He could not be an actor with that beard. He was 
 a painter, perhaps. She thought he looked like a 
 painter. 
 
 The wagonette was full of well-dressed women 
 and well-bred men, all with an essentially metro- 
 politan — or cosmopolitan — air. The eighteen-carat
 
 186 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 stamp of " county " was obviously deficient. Mrs. 
 Hillersdon had her own carriage — a barouche — 
 which she shared with an elderly lady, who looked 
 as correct as if she had been a bishop's wife. She 
 was on bowing terms with Mrs. Greswold. They 
 had met at hunt-balls and charity bazaars, and at 
 various other functions from which the wife of a 
 local landowner can hardly be excluded — even when 
 she has a history. 
 
 Mildred thought no more of the auburn-haired 
 stranger after the wagonette had disappeared in a 
 cloud of summer-dust. She strolled slowly home 
 with her husband by a walk which they had been in 
 the habit of taking on fine Sundays after morning 
 service, but which they had never trodden together 
 since Lola's death. It was a round which skirted 
 the common, and took them past a good many of 
 the cottages, and their tenants had been wont to 
 loiter at their gates on fine Sundays, in the hope of 
 getting a passing word with the Squire and his wife. 
 There had been something patriarchal, or clannish, 
 in the feeling between landlord and tenant, labourer 
 and master, which can only prevail in a parish where
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 187 
 
 the chief landowner spends the greater part of his 
 life at home. 
 
 To-day every one was just as respectful as of old ; 
 curtsies were as low and tones as reverential ; but 
 George Greswold and his wife felt there was a differ- 
 ence, all the same. A gulf had been cleft between 
 them and their people by last summer's calamity. 
 It was not the kindred of the dead in whom this 
 coolness was distinguishable. The bereaved seemed 
 drawn nearer to their Squire by an affliction which 
 had touched him too. But in Enderby parish there 
 was a bond of kindred which seemed to interlink the 
 whole population. There were not above three 
 family names in the village, and everybody was 
 everybody else's cousin, w^hen not a nearer relative. 
 Thus, in dismissing his bailiff and dairy people, Mr. 
 Greswold had given umbrage to almost all his cot- 
 tagers. He was no longer regarded as a kind 
 master. A man who could dismiss a servant after 
 twenty years' faithful service was, in the estimation 
 of Enderby parish, a ruthless tyrant — a master whose 
 yoke galled every shoulder. 
 
 " Him seemed to be so fond of we all," said
 
 188 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 Luke Thomas, the village wheelwright, brother of 
 that John Thomas who had been Mr. Greswold's 
 bailiff, and who was now dreeing his weird in 
 Canada ; " and yet offend he, and him can turn and 
 sack yer as if yer was a thief — sweep yer off his 
 premises like a handful o' rubbish. Faithful service 
 don't count with he." 
 
 George Greswold felt the change from friendly 
 gladness to cold civility. He could see the altered 
 expression in all those familiar faces. The only 
 sign of affection was from Mrs. Kainbow, standing at 
 her cottage gate in decent black, with sunken cheeks 
 worn pale by many tears. She burst out crying at 
 sight of Mildred Greswold, and clasped her hand in 
 a fervour of sympathy. 
 
 "0, to think of your sweet young lady, ma'am ! 
 that you should lose her, as I lost my Polly !" she 
 sobbed ; and the two women wept together — sisters 
 in affliction. 
 
 " You don't think we are to blame, do you, Mrs. 
 Eainbow ?" Mildred said gently. 
 
 *' No, no, indeed, ma'am. We all know it was 
 God's will. We must kiss the rod."
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 189 
 
 *' What fatalists these people are !" said Gres- 
 wold, as he and his wife walked homeward by the 
 sweet-smelling common, where the heather showed 
 purple here and there, and where the harebells were 
 beginning to dance upon the wind. " Yes, it is 
 God's will ; but the name of that God is Nemesis." 
 
 Husband and wife were almost silent during 
 luncheon. Both were depressed by that want of 
 friendliness in those who had been to them as fami- 
 liar friends. To have forfeited confidence and affec- 
 tion was hard when they had done so much to merit 
 both. Mildred could but remember how she and 
 her golden-haired daughter had gone about amongst 
 those people, caring for all their needs, spiritual and 
 temporal, never approaching them from the stand- 
 point of superiority, but treating them verily as 
 friends. She recalled long autumn afternoons in the 
 village reading-room, when she and Lola had pre- 
 sided over a bevy of matrons and elderly spinsters, 
 she reading aloud to them while they worked, Lola 
 threading needles to save elderly eyes, sewing on 
 buttons, indefatigable in giving help of all kinds to 
 those village sempstresses. She had fancied that
 
 190 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 those mothers' meetings, the story-books, and the 
 talk had brought them all into a bond of affectionate 
 sympathy ; and yet one act of stern justice seemed 
 to have cancelled all obligations. 
 
 Mr. Greswold lighted a cigar after lunch, and 
 went for a ramble in those extensive copses which 
 were one of the charms of Enderby Manor, miles 
 and miles of woodland walks, dark and cool in the 
 hottest day of summer — lonely footpaths where the 
 master of Enderby could think his own thoughts 
 without risk of coming face to face with any one in 
 that leafy solitude. The Enderby copses were 
 cherished rather for pleasure than for profit, and 
 were allowed to grow a good deal higher and a good 
 deal wilder and thicker than the young wood upon 
 neighbouring estates. 
 
 Mildred went to the drawing-room and to her 
 piano, after her husband her chief companion and 
 confidante now that Lola was gone. Music was her 
 passion — the only art that moved her deeply, and to 
 sit alone wandering from number to number of 
 Beethoven and Mozart, Bach or Mendelssohn, was 
 the very luxury of loneliness.
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 191 
 
 Adhering in all things to the rule that Sunday- 
 was not as other days, she had her library of sacred 
 music apart from other volumes, and it was sacred 
 music only which she played on Sundays. Her 
 repertoire was large, and she roamed at will among 
 the classic masters of the last two hundred years, 
 hut for sacred music Bach and Mozart were her 
 favourites. 
 
 She was playing a Gloria by the latter composer 
 when she heard a carriage drive past the windows, 
 and looked up just in time to catch a glimpse of a 
 profile that startled her with a sudden sense of 
 strangeness and familiarity. The carriage was a 
 light T-cart, driven by a groom in the Hillersdon 
 livery. 
 
 A visitor from Riverdale was a novelty, for, 
 although George Greswold and Tom Hillersdon were 
 friendly in the hunting-field, Riverdale and the 
 Manor were not on visiting terms. The visit was 
 for her husband, Mildred concluded, and she went 
 on playing. 
 
 The door was opened by the new footman, who 
 announced " Mr. Castellani."
 
 192 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 Mrs. Greswold rose from the piano to find 
 herself face to face with the man whose countenance, 
 seen in the distance, in the light of the east window, 
 had reminded her of Judas. Seen as she saw him 
 now, in the softer light of the afternoon, standing 
 before her with a deprecating air in her own 
 drawing-room, the stranger looked altogether 
 different, and she thought he had a pleasing ex- 
 pression. 
 
 He was tall and slim, well dressed in a sub- 
 dued metropolitan style ; and he had an air of 
 distinction and elegance which would have marked 
 him anywhere as a creature apart from the com- 
 mon herd. It was not an English manner. There 
 was a supple grace in his movements which sug- 
 gested a Southern origin. There was a pleading 
 look in the full brown eyes which suggested an 
 emotional temperament. 
 
 *' An Italian, no doubt," thought Mildred, taking 
 this Southern gracefulness in conjunction with the 
 Southern name. 
 
 She wondered on what pretence this stranger 
 had called, and what could be his motive for coming.
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 193 
 
 " Mrs. Greswold, I have to apologise humbly for 
 presenting myself without having first sent you my 
 credentials and waited for your permission to call,'* 
 he said, in very perfect English, with only the slight- 
 est Milanese accent ; and then he handed Mrs. Gres- 
 wold an unsealed letter, which he had taken from 
 his breast-pocket. 
 
 She glanced at it hastily, not a little embarrassed 
 by the situation. The letter was from an intimate 
 friend, an amateur litterateur, who wrote graceful 
 sonnets and gave pleasant parties : 
 
 " I need not excuse myself, my dear friend, for 
 making Mr. Castellani known to you in the flesh, as 
 I have no doubt he is already familiar to you in the 
 spirit. He is the anonymous author of Nepenthe, the 
 book that almost every one has been reading and 
 quite every one has been talking about this season. 
 Only the few can understand it ; but you are of 
 those few, and I feel assured your decpe^^t feelings 
 have been stirred by that most exceptional work. 
 How delicious it must be with you among grocn. 
 
 VOL. I. O
 
 194 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 lanes and English meadows ! We are just rushing off 
 to a land of extinct volcanoes for my poor husband's 
 annual cure. A cons de coeur, Diana Tomkison." 
 
 " Pray sit down," said Mildred, as she finished 
 Iier gushing friend's note ; " my husband will be in 
 presently — I hope in time to see you." 
 
 " Pardon me if, in all humility, I say it is you I 
 was especially anxious to see, to know, if it were 
 possible — delightful as it will be also to know Mr. 
 Greswold. It is with your name that my past 
 associations are interwoven." 
 
 'indeed ! How is that?" 
 
 '^ It is a long story, Mrs. Greswold, To explain 
 the association I must refer to the remote past. My 
 grandfather was in the silk trade, like your grand- 
 father." 
 
 Mildred blushed ; the assertion came upon her 
 like an unpleasant surprise. It was a shock. That 
 great house of silk merchants from which her father's 
 wealth had been derived had hardly ever been men- 
 tioned in her presence. Lord Castle-Connell's 
 daughter had never grown out of the idea that all
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 195 
 
 trade is odious, and her daughter had ahuost for- 
 gotten that her father had ever been in trade. 
 
 " Yes, when the house of Fausset was in its 
 infancy the house of Felix & Sons, silk manufac- 
 turers and silk merchants, was one of the largest on 
 the hillside of old Lyons. My great-grandfather 
 was one of the richest men in Lyons, and he was 
 able to help the clever young Englishman, your 
 grandfather, who came into his house as correspond- 
 ing clerk, to perfect himself in the French language, 
 and to find out what the silk trade was like. He 
 had a small capital, and when he had learnt some- 
 thing about the trade, he established himself near 
 St. Paul's Churchyard as a wholesale trader in a 
 very small way. He had no looms of his own in 
 those days ; and it was the great house of Felix, 
 and the credit given him by that house, which 
 enabled him to hold his own, and to make a fortune. 
 When your father began life the house of Felix was 
 on the wane. Your grandfather had established a 
 manufactory of his own at Lyons. Felix & Sons 
 had grown old-fashioned. They had forgotten to 
 march with the times. They had allowed them-
 
 196 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 selves to go to sleep ; and they were on the verge of 
 bankruptcy when your father came to their rescue 
 with a loan which enabled them to tide over their 
 difficulties. They had had a lesson, and they 
 profited by it. The house of Felix recovered its 
 ascendency, and the loan was repaid before your 
 father retired from business." 
 
 "I am not surprised to hear that my father was 
 generous. I should have been slow to believe that 
 he could have been ungrateful," said Mildred softly. 
 
 " Your name is among my earliest recollections," 
 pursued Castellani. ** My mother was educated at 
 a convent at Roehampton, and she was very fond of 
 England and English people. The first journey I 
 can distinctly remember was a journey to London, 
 which occurred when I was ten years old. I re- 
 member my father and mother talking about Mr. 
 Fausset. She had known him when she was a little 
 girl. He used to stay in her father's house when 
 he came to Lyons on business. She would like to 
 have seen him and his wife and daughter, for old 
 times' sake ; but she had been told that his wife was 
 a lady of rank, and that he had broken off all asso-
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 197 
 
 ciations with big trading career. She was too 
 diffident to intrude herself upon her father's old 
 ally. One day our carriage passed yours in the 
 Park. Yes, I saw you, a golden-haired child — yes, 
 madam, saw you with these eyes — and the vision has 
 stayed with me, a sunny remembrance of my own 
 childhood. I can see that fair child's face in this 
 room to-day." 
 
 "You should have seen my daughter," faltered 
 Mildred sadly. 
 
 " You have a daughter ?" said the stranger 
 eagerly. 
 
 " I had a daughter. She is gone. I only put 
 off my black gown yesterday ; but my heart and 
 mind will wear mourning for her till I go to my 
 grave." 
 
 " Ah, madam, how deeply I sympathise with such 
 a grief !" murmured Castellani. 
 
 He had a voice of peculiar depth and beauty — 
 one of those rare voices whose every tone is music. 
 The pathos and compassion in those few common- 
 place words moved Mildred to sudden tears. She 
 commanded herself with an effort.
 
 198 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 "I am much interested in your reminiscences," 
 she said, after a brief pause. "My father was very 
 dear to me. My mother came of an old Irish 
 family, and the Irish, as you know, are apt to be 
 over-proud of high birth. I had never heard my 
 father's commercial life spoken about until to-day. 
 I only knew him as an idle man, without business 
 cares of any kind, able to take life pleasantly. He 
 used to spend two or three months of every year 
 under this roof. It was a terrible blow to me when 
 we lost him six years ago, and I think my husband 
 mourned him almost as deeply as I did. But tell 
 me about your book. Are you really the author of 
 Nepenthe, that nameless author who has been so 
 much discussed?" 
 
 "And who has been identified with so many 
 distinguished people — Mr. Gladstone — Cardinal 
 Newman." 
 
 " Mr. Swinburne — Mr. Browning. I have heard 
 all kinds of speculations. And is it really you ?" 
 
 " Yes, it is I. To you I may plead guilty, since, 
 unfortunately, the authorship of Nepenthe is now le 
 secret de Polichinelle. "
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 199 
 
 "It is a — strange book," said Mildred. '* My 
 husband and I were both interested in it, and 
 impressed by it. But your book saddened us both. 
 You seem to believe in nothing." 
 
 "'Seems,' madam! nay, I know not 'seems;' 
 but perhaps I am not so bad as you think me. I 
 am of Hamlet's temper — inquiring rather than dis- 
 believing. To live is to doubt. And I own that I 
 have seen enough of this life to discover that the 
 richest gift Fate can give to man is the gift of 
 forgetfulness." 
 
 " I cannot think that. I would not forget, even 
 if I could. It would be treason to forget the beloved 
 ones we have lost." 
 
 "Ah, Mrs. Greswold, most men have worse me- 
 mories than the memory of the dead. The wounds 
 we want healed are deeper than those made by 
 Death ; his scars we can afford to look upon. There 
 are wounds that have gone deeper, and that leave an 
 uglier mark." 
 
 There was a pause. Mr. Castellani made na 
 sign of departure. He evidently intended to wait 
 for the Squire's return. Through the open windows
 
 200 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 of a second drawing-room, divided from the first by 
 an archway, they could see the servants setting out 
 the tea-table on the lawn. A Turkey carpet was 
 spread under the cedar, and there were basket- 
 chairs of various shapes, cushioned, luxurious, and 
 two or three small wicker-tables of different colours, 
 and a milking- stool or two, and all the indications of 
 outdoor life. The one thing missing was that aerial 
 figure, robed in white, which had been wont to flit 
 about among the dancing shadows of branch and 
 blossom — a creature as evanescent as they, it seemed 
 to that mourning mother who remembered her to- 
 <iay. 
 
 " Are you staying long at Eiverdale ?" asked Mil- 
 /ired presently, by way of conversation. 
 
 '' If Mrs. Hillersdon would be good enough to 
 have me, I would stay another fortnight. The place 
 is perfect, the surrounding scenery has your true 
 English charm, and my hostess is simply delight- 
 ful." 
 
 ''You like her?" asked Mildred, interested. 
 
 No woman can help being curious about a woman 
 ^vith such a history as Mrs. Hillersdon's. All the
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 201 
 
 elements of romance and mystery seem, from the 
 feminine standpoint, to concentre in such a career. 
 How many hearts has such a woman broken ; how 
 many lives has she ruined ; how often has she been 
 on the brink of madness or suicide ? — she, the placid 
 matron, with her fat carriage-horses, and powdered 
 footmen, and big prayer-book, and demure behaviour, 
 and altogether bourgeois surroundings. 
 
 " Like her ? Yes ; she is such a clever woman." 
 
 " Indeed !" 
 
 " Yes, she is a marvel — the cleverest woman I 
 know." 
 
 He laid a stress on the superlative. His praise 
 might mean anything — might be a hidden sneer. 
 He might praise as the devil prays — backwards. 
 Mildred had an uncomfortable feeling that he was 
 not in earnest. 
 
 " Have you known her long ?" she asked. 
 
 " Not very long ; only this season. I am told 
 that she is fickle, or that other people are fickle, and 
 that she seldom knows any one more than a season. 
 But I do not mean to be fickle ; I mean to be a 
 house-friend at Riverdale all my life if she will let
 
 202 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 me. She is a very clever woman, and thoroughly 
 artistic." 
 
 Mildred had not quite grasped the modern signi- 
 ficance of this last word. 
 
 " Does Mrs. Hillersdon paint ?" she asked. 
 
 "No, she does not paint." 
 
 '' She plays — or sings, I suppose ?" 
 
 "No. I am told she once sang Spanish hallads 
 with a guitar accompaniment ; hut the people who 
 remember her singing tell me that her arms were 
 the chief feature in the performance. Her arms are 
 lovely to this day. No; she neither paints, nor 
 plays, nor sings ; but she is supremely artistic. She 
 dresses as few women of five-and-forty know how to 
 dress — dresses so as to make one think five-and- 
 forty the most perfect age for a woman ; and she 
 has a marvellous appreciation of art, of painting, of 
 poetry, of acting, of music. She is almost the only 
 woman to whom I have ever played Beethoven who 
 has seemed to me thoroughly simpatica,'' 
 
 " Ah !" exclaimed Mildred, surprised, "you your- 
 self play, then ?" 
 
 "It is hardly a merit in me," answered Castel-
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 203 
 
 lani modestly; ''my father was one of the finest 
 musicians of his time in Italy." 
 
 "Indeed!" 
 
 "You are naturally surprised. His genius was 
 poorly appreciated. His name was hardly known 
 out of Milan and Brussels. Strange to say, those 
 stolid Flemings appreciated him. His work was 
 over the heads of the vulgar public. He saw such 
 men as Yerdi and Gounod triumphant, while he 
 remained obscure." 
 
 " But surely you admire Yerdi and Gounod ?" 
 
 " In their places, yes ; both are admirable ; but 
 my father's place should have been in a higher rank 
 of composers. But let me not plague you about 
 him. He is dead, and forgotten. He died crown- 
 less. I heard you playing Mozart's * Gloria ' as 
 I came in. You like Mozart ?" 
 
 " I adore him." 
 
 "Yes, I know there are still people who like his 
 music. Chopin did ; asked for it on his death-bed," 
 said Castellani, with a wry face, as if he were talk- 
 ing of a vulgar propensity for sauerkraut or a morbid 
 hankering for asafcetida.
 
 204 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 " How I wish you would play something while 
 we are waiting for my husband !" said Mildred, see- 
 ing her visitor's gaze wandering to the open piano. 
 
 *' If you will go into the garden and take your 
 tea, I will play with delight while you take it. I 
 doubt if I could play to you in cold blood. I know 
 you are critical." 
 
 "And you think I am not simpatica,'' retorted 
 Mildred, laughing at him. She was quite at her 
 ease with him already, all thought of that Judas face 
 in the church being forgotten. His half-deferential, 
 half-caressing manner ; his easy confidences about 
 himself and his own tastes, had made her more 
 familiar with his individuality in the space of an 
 hour than she would have been with the average 
 Englishman in a month. She did not know whether 
 she liked or disliked him ; but he amused her, and 
 it was a new sensation for her to feel amused. 
 
 She sauntered softly out to the lawn, and he 
 began to play. 
 
 Heavens, what a touch ! Was it really her piano 
 which answered with tones so exquisite — which gave 
 forth such thrilling melody ? He played an impro-
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 205 
 
 vised arrangement of Schubert's ^' Ave Maria," and 
 she stood entranced till the last dying arpeggio 
 melted into silence. No one could doubt that he 
 came of a race gifted in music. 
 
 " Pray don't leave the piano," she said softly, 
 from her place by the open window. 
 
 *' I will play till you call me away," he answered, 
 as he began Chopin's Etude in C sharp minor. 
 
 That weird and impassioned composition reached 
 its close just as George Greswold approached from 
 a little gate on the other side of the lawn. Mildred 
 went to meet him, and Castellani left the piano 
 and came out of the window to be presented to his 
 host. 
 
 Nothing could be more strongly marked than the 
 contrast between the two men, as they stood facing 
 each other in the golden light of afternoon. Gres- 
 wold, tall, broad-shouldered, rugged-looking, in his 
 rough brown heather suit and deerstalker cap, 
 carrying a thick stick, with an iron fork at the end 
 of it, for the annihilation of chance weeds in his 
 peregrinations. His fine and massive features had 
 a worn look, his cheeks were hollow, his dark hair
 
 206 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 and beard were grizzled here and there, his dark 
 complexion had lost the hue of 3'outh. He looked 
 ten years older than his actual age. 
 
 Before him stood the Italian, graceful, gracious 
 in every line and every movement ; his features 
 delicately chiselled, his eyes dark, full, and bright ; 
 his complexion of that milky pallor which is so often 
 seen with hair tending towards red ; his brown 
 beard of silkiest texture ; his hands delicately mo- 
 delled and of ivory whiteness ; his dress imbued 
 with all the grace which a fashionable tailor can 
 give to the clothes of a man who cultivates the 
 beautiful, even in the barren field of nineteenth 
 century costume. It was impossible that so marked 
 a contrast could escape Mildred's observation alto- 
 gether ; yet she perceived it dimly. The picture 
 came back to her memory afterwards in more vivid 
 colours. 
 
 She made the necessary introduction, and then 
 proceeded to pour out the tea, leaving the two men 
 to talk to each other. 
 
 "Your name has an Italian sound," Greswold 
 said presently.
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 207 
 
 " It is a Milanese name. My father was a native 
 of Milan ; my mother was French, but she was 
 educated in England, and all her proclivities were 
 English. It w^as at her desire my father sent me to 
 Rugby, and afterwards to Cambridge. Her fatal 
 illness called me back to Italy immediately after I 
 had got my degree, and it was some years before 
 I again visited England." 
 
 "\Yere you in Italy all that time ?" asked Gres- 
 wold, looking down absently, and with an unwonted 
 trouble in his face. 
 
 Mildred sat at the tea-table, the visitor waiting 
 upon her, insisting upon charging himself with her 
 husband's cup as well as his own ; an attention and 
 reversal of etiquette of w^hich Mr. Greswold seemed 
 unconscious. Kassandra had returned with her 
 master from a long walk, and was lying at his feet 
 in elderly exhaustion. She saluted the stranger 
 with a suppressed growl when he approached with 
 the teacups. Kassandra adored her own people, but 
 was not remarkable for civility to strangers. 
 
 " Yes ; I wasted four or five years in the South 
 — in Florence, in Venice, or along the Riviera, wan-
 
 208 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 dering about like Satan, not having made up my 
 mind what to do in the world." 
 
 Greswold was silent, bending down to play with 
 Kassandra, who wagged her tail with a gentle largo 
 movement, in grateful contentment. 
 
 *' You must have heard my father's name when 
 you were at Milan," said Castellani. " His music 
 was fashionable there.'' 
 
 Mildred looked up with a surprised expression. 
 She had never heard her husband talk of Milan, and 
 yet this stranger mentioned his residence there as if 
 it were an established fact. 
 
 " How did you know I was ever at Milan ?" 
 asked Greswold, looking up sharply. 
 
 " For the simplest of reasons. I had the honour 
 of meeting you on more than one occasion at large 
 assemblies, where my insignificant personality would 
 hardly impress itself upon your memory. And I 
 met you a year later at Lady Lochinvar's palace at 
 Nice, soon after your first marriage." 
 
 Mildred looked up at her husband. He was pale 
 as ashes, his lips whitening as she gazed at him. 
 She felt her own cheeks paling ; felt a sudden coldness
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 209 
 
 creeping over her, as if she were going to faint. 
 She watched her husband dumbly, expecting him to 
 tell this man that he was mistaken, that he was 
 confounding him, George Greswold, with some one 
 else; but Greswold sat silent, and presently, as if 
 to hide his confusion, bent again over the dog, who 
 got up suddenly and licked his face in a gush of 
 aflfection — as if she knew — as if she knew. 
 
 He had been married before, and he had told 
 his wife not one word of that first marriage. There 
 had been no hint of the fact that he was a widower 
 when he asked John Fausset for his daughter's 
 hand. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF DOUBT. 
 
 Endeeby ChurcLi clock struck six. They heard 
 every chime, slow and clear in the summer stillness, 
 as they sat in the broad shadow of the cedar, silent 
 all three. 
 
 It seemed as if the striking of the clock were the 
 breaking of a spell. 
 
 " So late ?" exclaimed Castellani, in a cheery 
 voice ; " and I promised Mrs. Hillersdon to be back 
 in time to drive to Romsey for the evening service. 
 The old Abbey Church of Romsey, she tells me, is 
 a thing to dream about. There is no eight-o'clock 
 dinner at Riverdale on Sundays. Every one goes to 
 church somewhere, and we sup at half-past nine, and 
 after supper there is sometimes extempore prayer — 
 and sometimes there are charades or dumb crambo. 
 Cest selon. When the Prince was there they had 
 dumb crambo. Good-bye. I am almost ashamed
 
 THE BEGINNING OF DOUBT. 211 
 
 to ask if I may ever come again, after having bored 
 you for such an unconscionable time." 
 
 He had the easiest air possible, and seemed 
 totally unconscious of any embarrassment caused by 
 his allusions to the past ; and yet in both faces, as 
 he looked from one to the other, he must have seen 
 the strongest indications of trouble. 
 
 Mrs. Greswold murmured something to the effect 
 that she would be glad to see him at any time, a 
 speech obviously conventional and unmeaning. Mr. 
 Greswold rose hastily and accompanied him to the 
 hall-door, where the cart still waited for him, the 
 groom fixed as a statue of despondency. 
 
 Mr. Castellani was inclined to be loquacious to 
 the last. Greswold was brief almost to incivility. 
 He stood watching the light cart roll away, and then 
 went slowly back to the garden and to his seat under 
 the cedar. 
 
 He seated himself without a word, looking earn- 
 estly at his wife, whose drooping head and fixed 
 attitude told of deepest thought. So they sat for 
 some minutes in dead silence, Kassandra licking her
 
 -212 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 master's pendant hand, as he leaned forward with 
 his elbow on his knee, infinitely sorry for him. 
 
 Mildred was the first to break that silence. 
 
 " George, why did you not tell me," she began in 
 a lov/ faltering voice, " that I was not your first 
 wife ? What reason could there be for concealment 
 between you and me ? I so trusted you ; I so loved 
 you. Nothing you could have told would have 
 •changed me." 
 
 " Dearest, there was one reason, and a powerful 
 one," answered George Greswold firmly, meeting 
 the appealing look of her eyes with a clear and 
 steady gaze. *' My first marriage is a sad remem- 
 brance for me — full of trouble. I did not care to tell 
 you that miserable story, to call a dreaded ghost out 
 of the grave of the past. My first marriage was the 
 one great sorrow of my life, but it was only an 
 episode in my life. It left me as lonely as it 
 found me. There are very few who know any- 
 thing about it. I am sorry that young man should 
 have come here to trouble us with his uninvited 
 reminiscences. For my own part, I cannot remember 
 having ever seen his face before."
 
 THE BEGINNING OF DOUBT. 21S 
 
 **I am sorry you should have kept such a secret 
 from me," said Mildred. "It would have been so 
 much wiser to have been candid. Do you think I 
 should not have respected your sad memories ? Yoii 
 had only to say to me ' Such things were ; but let us 
 not talk of them.' It would have been more manly ;- 
 it would have been kinder to me." 
 
 " Say that I was a coward, if you like ; that 1 
 am still a coward, where those memories are con- 
 cerned," said Greswold. 
 
 The look of agony in his face melted her in a 
 moment. She threw herself on her knees beside 
 his chair, she and the dog fawning upon him to- 
 gether. 
 
 " Forgive me, forgive me, dearest," she pleaded^ 
 " I will never speak to you of this again. Women 
 are so jealous — of the past most of all." 
 
 '' Is that all?" he said : " God knows you have^ 
 little need. Let us say no more, Mildred. The 
 past is past: neither you nor I can alter it. Memory 
 is inexorable. God Himself cannot change it." 
 
 " I will contrive that Mr. Castellani shall not 
 come here again, George, if you object to see hin."
 
 214 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 '' Pray don't trouble yourself. I would not have 
 such a worm suppose that he could be obnoxious 
 to me." 
 
 " Tell me what you think of him," she asked, in 
 a lighter tone, anxious to bring back the easy mood 
 of every-day life. " He seems very clever, and he is 
 rather handsome." 
 
 "What do I think of the trumpet-ash on the 
 verandah yonder ? A beautiful parasite, which will 
 hold on anywhere in the sunshine. Mr. Castellani 
 is of the same family, I take it — studies his own 
 interests first, and chooses his friends afterwards. 
 He wdll do admirably for Riverdale." 
 
 '^ He plays divinely. His touch transformed my 
 piano." 
 
 " He looks the kind of man who would play the 
 piano," said Greswold, with ineffable contempt, look- 
 ing down at his own sunburnt hands, hardened by 
 exposure to all weathers, broadened by handling gun 
 and punt-pole, and by half-a-dozen other forms of 
 out-door exercise. " However, I have no objection 
 to him, if he serve to amuse you and Pamela." 
 
 He spoke with a kind of weary indifference, as of
 
 THE BEGINNING OF DOUBT. 215 
 
 a man who cared for very little in life ; and then he 
 rose slowly, took up his stick, and strolled off to the 
 shrubbery. 
 
 Pamela appeared on the following afternoon with 
 boxes, bags, music-books, raquets, and parasols, in a 
 proportion which gave promise of a long visit. She 
 had asked as a tremendous favour to be allowed to 
 bring Box — otherwise Fitz-Box — her fox-terrier, son 
 of Sir Henry Mountford's Box, great-grandson of 
 Brockenhurst Joe, through that distinguished ani- 
 mal's daughter Lyndhurst Jessie, and on the pater- 
 nal side a lineal descendant of Mr. Murchison's 
 Cracknel. 
 
 " I hope you won't mind very much," she wrote; 
 " but it would be death to him if I were to leave 
 him behind. To begin with, his brother Fitz-Cox, 
 who has a villanous temper, would inevitably kill 
 him ; and besides that, he would pine to death at not 
 sleeping in my room at night, which he has done 
 ever since he was a puppy. If you will let me bring 
 him, I will answer for his gocd manners, and that 
 he shall not be a trouble to any one."
 
 216 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 The descendant of Brockenhurst Joe rushed out 
 into the garden, and made a lightning circuit of lawn 
 and shrubberies, while his young mistress was kiss- 
 ing her Aunt Mildred, as she called her uncle's wife 
 in the fulness of her affection. 
 
 ''It is so very good of you to have me, and I am 
 so delighted to come !" she said. 
 
 Mildred would have much preferred that she were 
 anywhere else, yet could not help feeling kindly 
 to her. She was a frank, bright-looking girl, with 
 brown eyes, and almost flaxen hair ; a piquant con- 
 trast, for the hair was genuine, and carried out in 
 the eyebrows, which were only just a shade darker. 
 Her complexion was fair to transparency, and she 
 had just enough soft rosy bloom to light up the 
 delicate skin. Her nose was slightly retrousse, her 
 mouth was a little wider than she herself approved, 
 and her teeth were perfection. She had a charming 
 figure of the plump order, but its plumpness was a 
 distress to her. 
 
 " Don't you think I get horribly stout ?" she 
 asked Mildred, when she was sitting at tea in the 
 garden presently.
 
 THE BEGINNING OF DOUBT. 217 
 
 " You may be a little stouter than you were at 
 sixteen, perhaps, but not at all too stout." 
 
 " 0, but I am ! I know it, I feel it. Don't 
 endeavour to spare my feelings, aunt. It is useless. 
 I know I am fat. Kosalind says I ought to marry ; 
 but I tell her it's absurd. How can anybody ever 
 care for me now I am fat ? They would only want 
 my money if they asked me to marry them," con- 
 cluded Pamela, clinging to the plural. 
 
 ''My dear Pamela, do you wish me to tell you 
 that you are charming, and all that you ought to 
 be?" asked Mildred, laughing. 
 
 " 0, no, no ! I don't want you to spare my 
 feelings. Everybody spares one's feelings. One 
 grows up in ignorance of the horrors in one's appear- 
 ance, because people will spare one's feelings. And 
 then one sees oneself in a strange glass ; or a boy in 
 the street says something, and one knows the worst. 
 I think I know the worst about myself. That is 
 one comfort. How lovely it is here !" said Pamela, 
 with a sudden change of mood, glancing at Mildred 
 with a little pathetic look as she remembered the
 
 218 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 childish figure that must be for ever missing from 
 that home picture. 
 
 *'I am so glad to be with you," she murmured 
 softly, nestling up to Mildred's side, as they sat 
 together on a rustic bench; ''let me be useful to 
 you, let me be a companion to you, if you can." 
 
 "You shall be both, dear." 
 
 " How good to say that ! And you won't mind 
 Box ?" 
 
 "Not the least. If he will be amiable to Kas- 
 sandra." 
 
 ''He will. He has been brought up among 
 other dogs. We are a very doggy family at the Hall. 
 Would you think he was worth a hundred and fifty 
 guineas ?" asked Pamela with ill-concealed pride, as 
 the scion of illustrious progenitors came up and put 
 his long lean head in her hand, and conversed with 
 her in a series of expressive snorts, as it were a 
 conversational code. 
 
 "I hardly know what constitutes perfection in a 
 fox-terrier." 
 
 " No more do I; but I know he is perfect. He 
 is said to be the image of Cracknel, only better. I
 
 THE BEGINNING OF DOUBT. 219 
 
 tremble wheu I think that my possession of him 
 hangs by a thread. He might be stolen at any 
 moment." 
 
 "You must be careful." 
 
 ** Yes, I cannot be too careful. Here comes 
 Uncle George," said Pamela, rising and running to 
 meet Mr. Greswold. " 0, Uncle George, liow 
 altered you are !" 
 
 She was always saying the wrong thing, after 
 the manner of impulsive girls ; and she was quick- 
 witted enough to discover her mistake the instant 
 after. 
 
 Happily the dogs furnished a ready diversion. 
 She introduced Box, and expatiated upon his grand 
 qualities. She admired and made friends with Kas- 
 sandra, and then settled down almost as lightly as a 
 butterfly, in spite of her plumpness, on a Japanese 
 stool, to take her teacup from Mildred's hands. 
 
 She was perfectly at her ease by this time, and 
 told her uncle and aunt all about her sister Rosa- 
 lind, and Rosalind's husband, Sir Henry Mountford, 
 whom she summed up lightly as a nice old thing, 
 and no end of fun. It was easy to divine from her
 
 220 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 discourse that Eainham Hall was not an especially 
 intellectual atmosphere, not a school of advanced 
 thought, or of any other kind of thought. Pamela's 
 talk was of tennis, yachting, fishing, and shooting, 
 and of the people who shared in those sports. She 
 seemed to belong to a world in which nobody ever 
 sat down except to eat, or stayed indoors except 
 under stress of weather. 
 
 " I hear you have all manner of clever people in 
 your neighbourhood," she said by and by, having 
 told all she had to tell about Kainham. 
 
 " Have we ?" asked Greswold, smiling at her 
 intensity. 
 
 " Yes, at Riverdale. They do say the author of 
 Nepenthe is staying there, and that he is not a 
 Roman Cardinal or an English statesman, but 
 almost a young man — an Italian by birth — and very 
 handsome. I would give worlds to see him." 
 
 "It is not unlikely you may be gratified without 
 giving anything," answered her uncle. "Mr. Cas- 
 tellani was here yesterday afternoon, and threatened 
 to repeat his visit." 
 
 *' Castellani ! Yes, that is the name I heard.
 
 THE BEGINNING OF DOUBT. 221 
 
 What a pretty name ! And what is he like ? Do 
 tell me all about him, Aunt Mildred." 
 
 She turned to the woman as the more likely to 
 give her a graphic description. The average man 
 is an undescribing animal. 
 
 Mildred made an effort at self-command before 
 she spoke. Castellani counted for but little in her 
 recent trouble. His revelation had been an acci- 
 dent, and its effect entirely dissociated from him. 
 Yet the very thought of the man troubled her, and 
 the dread of seeing him again was like a physical 
 pain. 
 
 " I do not know what to say about his appear- 
 ance," she answered presently, slowly fanning her- 
 self with a great scarlet Japanese fan, pale and cool 
 looking in her plain white gown with its black 
 ribbons. The very picture of domestic peace, one 
 would suppose, judging by externals only. " I 
 suppose there are people who would think him 
 handsome." 
 
 ** Don't you, aunt?" 
 
 " No. I don't like the colour of his eyes or of 
 his hair. They are of that reddish-brown which the
 
 222 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 Venetian painters are so fond of, but which always 
 gives me an idea of falsehood and treachery. Mr. 
 Castellani is a very clever man, but he is not a man 
 whom I could ever trust." 
 
 " How nice !" cried Pamela, her face radiant 
 with enthusiasm ; "a creature with red-brown hair, 
 and eyes with a depth of falsehood in them. That 
 is just the kind of man who might be the author of 
 Nepenthe, If you had told me he was stout and 
 rosy-cheeked, with pepper-and-salt whiskers and a 
 fine, benevolent head, I would never have opened 
 his book again." 
 
 " You seem to admire this Nepenthe prodigi- 
 ously," said her uncle, looking at her with a calmly 
 critical air. " Is it because the book is the fashion, 
 or from your own unassisted appreciation of it ? 
 I did not think you were a bookish person." 
 
 " I'm not," cried Pamela. ** I am a mass of 
 ignorance. I don't know anything about science. 
 I don't know the name of a single butterfly. I don't 
 know one toadstool from another. But when I love 
 a book it is a passion with me. My Keats has 
 tumbled to pieces; my Shelley is disgracefully
 
 THE BEGINNING OF DOUBT. 223 
 
 dirty. I have read Nepenthe six times, and I am 
 waiting for the cheap edition, to keep it under my 
 pillow. It has made me an Agnostic." 
 
 " Do you know the dictionary meaning of that 
 word r 
 
 " I don't think I do ; hut I know I am an 
 Agnostic. Nepenthe has unsettled all my old beliefs. 
 If I had read it four years ago I should have refused 
 to be confirmed. I am dying to know the author." 
 
 " You like unbelievers, then ?" said Mr. Greswold. 
 
 " I adore men who dare to doubt, who are not 
 afraid to stand apart from their fellow-men." 
 
 ** On a bad eminence ?" 
 
 ** Yes, on a bad eminence. What a sweet ex- 
 pression ! I can never understand Goethe's Gretchen." 
 
 " Y\^hy not ?" 
 
 ** How could she have cared for Faust, when she 
 had the privilege of knowing Mephistopheles ?^'' 
 
 Pamela Kansome had established herself in her 
 pretty bedroom and dressing-room, and had super- 
 vised her maid while she unpacked and arranged all 
 her belongings, before dinner-time. She came down
 
 224 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 to the drawing-room, at a quarter to eight, as tho- 
 roughly at her ease as if she had lived half her life 
 at Enderby Manor. She was a kind of visitor who 
 gives no trouble, and who drops into the right place 
 instinctively. Mildred Greswold felt cheered by her 
 presence, in spite of that ever-recurrent pang of 
 memory which associated all young bright things 
 with the sweet girl-child who should have grown to 
 womanhood under that roof, and who was lying a 
 little way off, under the ripening berries of the 
 mountain-ash, and in the deep shadow of a century- 
 old yew. 
 
 They were very quiet in the drawing-room after 
 dinner ; Greswold reading in a nook apart, by the 
 light of his own particular lamp ; his wife bending 
 over an embroidery-frame in her cornernear the piano, 
 where she had her own special dwarf bookcase and 
 her work-basket, and the bonheur clu jour at which 
 she sometimes wrote letters, her own little table 
 scattered with old family miniatures by Angelica 
 Kaufmann, Cosway, and Eoss, and antique watches 
 in enamelled cases, and boxes of porcelain and gold 
 and silver, every one of which had its history.
 
 THE BEGINNING OF DOUBT. 225 
 
 Eyery woman who lives mucli at home has some 
 such corner, where the very atmosphere is full of 
 home thoughts. She asked her niece to play, and 
 to go on playing as long as she liked ; and Pamela, 
 pleased with the touch of the Broadwood grand, 
 rang the changes upon Chopin, Schumann, Kaff, and 
 Brahm, choosing those compositions which least 
 jarred upon the atmosphere of studious repose. 
 
 Mildred's needle moved slowly, as she sat in her 
 low chair, with her hands in the lamp-light and her 
 face in shadow, moved very slowly, and then stopped 
 altogether, and the white hands lay idle in her lap, 
 and the embroidery-frame, with its half-finished 
 group of azaleas, slid from her knee to the ground. 
 She was thinking — thinking of that one subject 
 which had possessed her thoughts since yesterday 
 afternoon ; which had kept her awake through the 
 brief darkness of the summer night and in the slow 
 hours betwixt dawn and seven o'clock, when the 
 entrance of the maid with the early cup of tea marked 
 the beginning of the daily routine. In all those 
 hours her thoughts had revolved round that one 
 theme with an intolerable recurrence. 
 
 YOL. I. o
 
 226 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 It was of her husband's first marriage she 
 thought, and of his motive for silence about that 
 marriage : that he who, in the whole course of their 
 wedded lives, had been the very spirit of single- 
 minded candour, should yet have suppressed this 
 all-important event in his past history, was a fact 
 in itself so startling and mysterious that it might 
 well be the focus of a wife's troubled thoughts. He 
 could not so have acted without some all-sufficient 
 reason ; and what manner of reason could that have 
 been which had influenced him to conduct so en- 
 tirely at variance with his own character ? 
 
 What was there in the history of that marriage 
 which had sealed his lips, which made it horrible to 
 him to speak about it, even when fair dealing with 
 the girl who was to be his wife should have con- 
 strained frankness ? 
 
 Had he been cursed with a wicked wife ; some 
 beautiful creature, who had caught his heart in her 
 toils, as a cat catches a bird, and had won him only 
 to betray and to dishonour him ? Had she blighted 
 his life, branded him with the shame of a forsaken 
 husband ?
 
 THE BEGINNING OF DOUBT. 227 
 
 And then a hideous dread floated across her mind. 
 What if that first wife were still living — divorced 
 from him ? Had she, Mildred Fausset, severely trained 
 in the strictest principles of the Anglican Church — 
 taught her creed by an ascetic who deemed divorce 
 unchristian and an abomination, and who had always 
 refused to marry those who had been divorced — had 
 she, in whose life and mind religion and duty were 
 as one feeling and one principle — had she been 
 trapped into a union with a man whose wife yet 
 lived, and in the sight of God was yet one with him 
 — a wife who might crawl penitent to his feet some 
 day, and claim him as her own again by the right of 
 tears and prayers and a soul cleansed from sin ? 
 Such a sinner must have some hold, some claim even 
 to the last, upon the man who once was her husband-, 
 who once swore to cherish her and cleave to her, of 
 whom it had once been said, " And they two shall 
 be one flesh." 
 
 No ; again and again, no. She could not believe 
 George Greswold capable of such deep dishonour as 
 to have concealed the existence of a divorced wife.
 
 228 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 No ; the reason for that mysterious silence must be 
 another reason than this. 
 
 She had sinned against him, it might be, and 
 had died in her sin, under circumstances too sad to 
 be told without infinite pain; and he, who had 
 never in her experience shown himself wanting in 
 moral courage, had in this one crisis of his life acted 
 as the coward acts. He had kept silence where 
 conscience should have constrained him to speak. 
 
 And then the wife's vivid fancy conjured up the 
 image of that other wife. Her jealous fears depicted 
 that wife of past years as a being to be loved and 
 remembered until death — beautiful, fascinating, 
 gifted with all the qualities that charm mankind. 
 ** He can never care for me as he once cared for 
 her," Mildred told herself. *' She was his first 
 love." 
 
 His first — the first revelation of what love means 
 to the passionate heart of youth. What a world 
 there is in that ! Mildred remembered how a new 
 life began for her with the awakening of her love for 
 George Greswold. What a strange sweet enchant- 
 ment, what an intoxicating gladness which glorified
 
 THE BEGINNING OF DOUBT. 229 
 
 tlie whole face of nature ! The river, and the reedy 
 islets, and the pollard willows, and the autumn sun- 
 sets — things so simple and familiar — had all taken 
 new colours in that magical dawn of her first love. 
 
 She — that unknown woman — had heen George 
 Greswold's first love. Mildred envied her that brief 
 life, whose sole distinction was to have been loved 
 by him. 
 
 "Why do I imagine a mystery about her?" she 
 argued, after long brooding. " The only secret was 
 that he loved her as he could never love me, and he 
 feared to tell me as much lest I should refuse the 
 remnant of a heart. It was out of kindness to me 
 that he kept silence. It would have pained me too 
 much to know how she had been loved." 
 
 She knew that her husband was a man of exceed- 
 ing sensitiveness; she knew him capable of almost 
 woman-like delicacy. Was it altogether unnatural 
 that such a man should have held back the history 
 of his first marriage — with its passionate love, its 
 heartbroken ending — from the enthusiastic girl who 
 had given him all her heart, and to whom he could 
 give so little in return ?
 
 230 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 **He may have seen how I loved him, and may- 
 have married me half out of pity," she said to her- 
 self finally, with unspeakable bitterness. 
 
 Yet if this were so, could they have been so happy 
 together, so completely united — save in that one 
 secret of the past, that one dark regret which had 
 revealed itself from time to time in an agonising 
 dream ? He had walked that dark labyrinth of sleep 
 alone with his sorrow : there she could not follow 
 him. 
 
 She remembered the awful sound of those broken 
 sentences — spoken to shadows in a land of shadow. 
 She remembered how acutely she had felt his re- 
 moteness as he sat up in bed, pale as death, his 
 eyes open and fixed, his lips muttering. He and 
 the dead were face to face in the halls of the past. 
 She had no part iu his life, or in his memory.
 
 CHAPTER XII, 
 
 SHE CANNOT BE UNWORTHY. 
 
 Mr. Castellani did not wait long before he availed 
 himself of Mrs. Greswold's permission to repeat liis 
 visit. He appeared on Friday afternoon, at the 
 orthodox hour of half-past three, when Mildred and 
 her niece were sitting in the drawing-room, exhausted 
 by a long morning at Salisbury, where they had 
 explored the cathedral, and lunched in the Close 
 with a clever friend of George Greswold's, who had 
 made his mark on modern literature. 
 
 " I adore Salisbury Close," said Pamela, as she 
 looked through the old-fashioned window to the old- 
 fashioned garden ; "it reminds me of Honoria." 
 
 She did not deem it necessary to explain what 
 Honoria she meant, presuming a universal acquaint- 
 ance with Coventry Patmore's gentle heroine. 
 
 The morning had been sultry, the homeward 
 drive long, and both ladies were resting in comfort-
 
 232 
 
 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 able silence, each with a book, when Castellani was 
 announced. 
 
 Mildred received him rather coldly, trying her 
 uttermost to seem thoroughly at ease. She intro- 
 duced him to her niece, Miss Eansome. 
 
 " The daughter of the late Mr. Randolph Ransom e 
 and the sister of Lady Mountford ?" Castellani in- 
 quired presently, when Pamela had run out on the 
 lawn to speak to Box. 
 
 " Yes. You seem to know everybody's belong- 
 ings." 
 
 *' Why not ? It is the duty of every man of the 
 world, more especially of a foreigner. I know Mr. 
 Ransome's place in the Sussex Weald — a very fine 
 property — and I know that the two ladies are co- 
 heiresses, but that the Sussex estate is to descend to 
 the eldest son of the elder daughter, or failing male 
 issue there, to the son of the younger. Lady Mount- 
 ford has a baby-son, I believe. 
 
 "Your information is altogether correct." 
 
 " Why should it be otherwise ? Mr. Hillersdon 
 and his wife discussed the family history to-day at 
 luncheon, apropos to Miss Ransome's appearance in
 
 " SHE CANNOT BE UNWORTHY." 233 
 
 Eomsey Church at the Saint's Day service yester- 
 day." 
 
 His frankness apologised for his impertinence, 
 and he was a foreigner, which seems always to 
 excuse a great deal. 
 
 Pamela came back again, after rescuing Box from 
 a rough-and-tumble game with Kassandra. She 
 looked rosy and breathless, and very pretty, in her 
 pale-blue gown and girlish sash flying in the wind, 
 and flaxen hair flufi'ed into a feathery pile on the top 
 of her head, and honest brown eyes. She resumed 
 her seat in the deep old window behind the end of 
 the piano, and made believe to go on with some 
 work, which she took in a tangled heap from a very 
 untidy basket. Already Pamela had set the sign of 
 her presence upon the drawing-rooms at Enderby, a 
 trail of heterogeneous litter which was a part of her 
 individuality. Screened by the piano, she was able 
 to observe Castellani, as he stood leaning over the 
 large central ottoman, with his knee on the cushioned 
 seat, talking to Mrs. Greswold. 
 
 He was the author of Nepenthe. It was in that 
 character he interested her. She looked at him with
 
 284 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 the thought of his book full in her mind. It was 
 one of those half-mad, wholly artificial compositions 
 which delight girls and young men, and which are 
 just clever enough, and have just enough originality 
 to get talked about and written about by the cul- 
 tured few. It was a love-story, ending tragically; 
 a story of ruined lives and broken hearts, told in the 
 autobiographical form, with a studied avoidance of 
 all conventional ornament, which gave an air of 
 reality where all was inherently false. Pamela 
 thought it must be Castellani's own story. She 
 fancied she could see the traces of those heart- 
 breaking experiences, those crushing disappoint- 
 ments in his countenance, in his bearing even, and 
 in the tones of his voice, which gave an impression 
 of mental fatigue, as of a man worn out by a fatal 
 passion. 
 
 The story of Nepenthe was as old as the hills — 
 or at least as old as the Boulevard des Capucines 
 and the Palais Koyal. It was the story of a vir- 
 tuous young man's love for an unvirtuous woman — 
 the story of Demetrius and Lamia — the story of a 
 man's demoralisation under the influence of incar-
 
 *' SHE CANNOT BE UNWORTHY." 235 
 
 nate falsehood, of the gradual lapse from good to 
 evil, the gradual extinction of every belief and every 
 scruple, the iBnal destruction of a soul. 
 
 The wicked siren was taken, her victim was 
 left; but left to expiate that miserable infatuation 
 by an after-life of misery ; left without a joy in the 
 present or a hope in the future. 
 
 " He looks like it," thought Pamela, remember- 
 ing that final chapter. 
 
 Mrs. Greswold was putting a few slow stitches 
 into the azalea-leaves on her embroidery-frame, and 
 listening to Mr. Castellani with an air of polite in- 
 difference. 
 
 " Do you know that Kiverdale is quita the most 
 delightful house I have ever stayed in ?" he said ; 
 " and I have stayed in a great many. And do you 
 know that Mrs. Hillersdon is heart-broken at your 
 never having called upon her ?" 
 
 *'I am sorry so small a matter should touch 
 Mrs. Hillersdon's heart." 
 
 " She feels it intensely. She told me so yester- 
 day. Perfect candour is one of the charms of her 
 character. She is as emotional and as trans-
 
 236 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 parent as a child. Why have you not called on 
 her?" 
 
 "You forget that Riverdale is seven miles from 
 this house." 
 
 "Does not your charity extend so far? Are 
 people who live seven miles off beyond the pale ? I 
 think you must visit a little further afield than seven 
 miles. There must be some other reason." 
 
 "There is another reason, which I had rather 
 not talk about." 
 
 "I understand. You consider Mrs. Hillersdon 
 a person not to be visited. Long ago, when you 
 were a child in the nursery, Mrs. Hillersdon was 
 an undisciplined, inexperienced girl, and the world 
 used her hardly. Is that old history never to be 
 forgotten ? Men, who know it all, have agreed to 
 forget it : why should women, who only know a 
 fragment, so obstinately remember ?" 
 
 " I know nothing, and remember nothing, about 
 Mrs. Hillersdon. My friends are, for the most part, 
 those of my husband's choice, and I pay no visits 
 without his approval. He does not wish me to visit
 
 *' SHE CANNOT BE UNWORTHY." 237 
 
 at lliverdale. You have forced me to give you a 
 plain answer, Mr. Castellani." 
 
 " Why not ? Plain truth is always best. I am 
 sorry Mr. Greswold has interdicted my charming 
 friend. You can have no idea how excellent a 
 woman she is, or how admirable a wife. Tom 
 Hillersdon might have searched the county from 
 border to border and not have found as good a 
 woman — looked at as the woman best calculated to 
 make him happy. And what delightful people she 
 has brought about him ! One of the most interest- 
 ing men I ever met arrived yesterday, and is to 
 preach the hospital sermon at Komsey next Sunday. 
 He is an old friend of yours." 
 
 " A clergyman, and an old friend of mine, at 
 Eiverdale !" 
 
 " A man of ascetic life and exceptional culture. 
 I never heard any man talk of Dante better than he 
 talked to me last night in a moonlight stroll on the 
 terrace, while the other men were in the smoking- 
 room." 
 
 " Surely you do not mean Mr. Cancellor, the 
 Yicar of St. Elizabeth's, Parchment Street ?"
 
 238 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 " That is the man — Clement Cancellor, Vicar of 
 St. Elizabeth's. He looks like a mediaeval monk 
 just stepped out of one of Bellini's altar-pieces." 
 
 " He is the noblest, most unselfish of men," 
 said Mildred warmly ; "he has given his life to 
 doing good among rich and poor. It is so long since 
 I have seen him. We have asked him to Enderby 
 very often, but he has always been too busy to come. 
 And to think that he should be in this neighbour- 
 hood and I know nothing about it ; and to think that 
 he should go to Riverdale rather than come here !" 
 
 **He had hardly any option. It was Mrs. 
 Hillersdon who asked him to preach on Hospital 
 Sunday. She extorted a promise from him three 
 months ago in London. The Vicar of Romsey was 
 enchanted. * You are the cleverest woman I know,' 
 he said. * No one else could have got me such a 
 great gun.' " 
 
 "A great gun — Mr. Cancellor a great gun ! I 
 can only think of him as I knew him when I was 
 twelve years old : a tall, thin young man, in a very 
 shabby coat — he was curate at St. Elizabeth's then 
 — very gaunt and hollow-cheeked, but with such a
 
 " SHE CANNOT BE UNWORTHY." 239 
 
 sweet smile. He used to come twice a week to teach 
 me the history of the Bible and the Church. He 
 made me love both." 
 
 "He is gaunt and hollow-cheeked still, tall and 
 bony and sallow, and he still wears a shabby coat. 
 You will not find much difi'erence in him, I fancy — 
 only so many more years of hard work and self- 
 sacrifice, ascetic living and nightly study. A man 
 to know Dante as he does must have given years of 
 his life to that one poet — and I am told that in 
 literature Canceller is an all-round man. His mono- 
 graph on Pascal is said to be the best of a brilliant 
 series of such studies." 
 
 " I hope he will come to see his old pupil before 
 he leaves the neighbourhood." 
 
 "He means to do so. He was talking of it 
 yesterday evening — asking Mrs. Hillersdon if she 
 was intimate with you — so awkward for poor Mrs. 
 Hillersdon." 
 
 " I shall be very glad to see him again." 
 
 " May I drive him over to tea to-morrow after- 
 noon ?" 
 
 "He will be welcome here at any time."
 
 240 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 " Or with any one ? If Mrs. Hillersdon were to 
 bring him, would you still refuse to receive her?" 
 
 *' I have never refused to receive her. We have 
 met and talked to each other on public occasions. 
 If Mr. Canceller likes her she cannot be unworthy." 
 
 " May she come with him to-morrow ?" persisted 
 Castellani. 
 
 " If she likes," faltered Mildred, wondering that 
 any woman could so force an entrance to another 
 woman's house. 
 
 She did not know that it was by such forced 
 entrances Mrs. Hillersdon had made her way in 
 society until some of the best houses in London had 
 been opened to her. 
 
 " If you are not in a hurry to leave us, I know 
 my niece would much like to hear you play," she 
 said, feeling that the talk about Eiverdale had been 
 dull work for Pamela. 
 
 Miss Eansome murmured assent. 
 
 " If you will play something of Beethoven's," she 
 entreated. 
 
 *'Do you object to Mozart?" he asked, forget- 
 ting his depreciation of the valet-musician's son a
 
 " SHE CANNOT BE UNWORTHY." 241 
 
 few days before. " I feel more in the humour for 
 that prince of dramatists. I will give you the sup- 
 per in Don Giovanni. You shall see Leporello 
 trembling. You shall hear the tramp of ghostly 
 feet." 
 
 And then, improvising upon a familiar theme, he 
 gave his own version of that wonderful scene, and 
 that music so played conjured up a picture as vivid 
 as ever opera-house furnished to an enthralled 
 audience. 
 
 Pamela listened in silent rapture. What a God- 
 gifted creature this was, who had so deeply moved 
 her by his pen, who moved her even more intensely 
 by that magical touch upon the piano ! 
 
 When he had played those last crashing chords 
 which consigned the profligate to his doom, he 
 waited for a minute or so, and then, softly, as if 
 almost unawares, in mere absent-minded idleness, 
 his hands wandered into the staccato accompaniment 
 of the serenade, and, with the finest tenor Mildred 
 had heard since she heard Sim Reeves, he sang 
 those delicate and dainty phrases with which the 
 seducer woos his last divinity. 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 242 THE FATAL THEEE. 
 
 He rose from the piano at the close of that lovely 
 air, smiling at his hearers. 
 
 ** I had no idea that you were a singer as well as 
 a pianist," said Mildred. 
 
 "You forget that music is my native tongue. 
 My father taught me to play before he taught me to 
 read, and I knew harmony before I knew my alpha- 
 bet. I was brought up in the house of a man who 
 lived only for music — to whom all stringed instru- 
 ments were as his mother tongue. It was by a 
 caprice that he made me play the piano — which he 
 rarely touched himself." 
 
 "He must have been a great genius," said 
 Pamela, with girlish fervour. 
 
 "Alas! no, he just missed greatness, and he 
 /ust missed genius. He was a highly-gifted man — 
 various — capricious — volatile — and he married a 
 woman with just enough money to ruin him. Had 
 he been obliged to earn his bread, he might have 
 been great. Who can say ? Hunger is the slave- 
 driver, with his whip of steel, who peoples the Val- 
 halla of nations. If Homer had not been a beggar 
 — as well as blind — we might have had no story
 
 *' SHE CANNOT BE UNWORTHY." 243 
 
 of Troy. Good-bye, Mrs. Greswold. Good-bye," 
 shaking hands with Pamela. "I may bring my 
 hostess to-morrow ?" 
 
 ''I — I — suppose so," Mildred answered feebly, 
 wondering what her husband would think of such 
 an invasion. 
 
 Yet, if Clement Cancellor, who to Mildred's mind 
 had always seemed the ideal Christian priest, if he 
 could tolerate and consort with her, could she, Mil- 
 dred Greswold, persist in the Pharisee's part, and 
 hold herself aloof from this neighbour, to whose 
 good works and kindly disposition many voices had 
 testified in her hearing?
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 SHALL SHE BE LESS THAN ANOTHER ? 
 
 It was in all good faith that Clement Cancellor had 
 gone to Eiverdale. He had not gone there for the 
 fleshpots of Egypt. He was a man of severely 
 ascetic habits, who ate and drank as temperately as 
 a disciple of that old faith of the East which is gain- 
 ing a curious influence upon our new life of the 
 "West. For him the gratification of the senses, soft 
 raiment, artistic furniture, thoroughbred horses and 
 luxurious carriages, palm-houses and orchid-houses, 
 ofi'ered no temptation. He stayed in Mrs. Hillers- 
 don's house because he was her friend, her friend 
 upon the broadest and soundest basis on which 
 friendship could be built. He knew all that was to 
 be known about her. He knew her frailties of the 
 past, her virtues in the present, her exalted hope in 
 the future. From her own lips he had heard the 
 story of Louise Lorraine's life. She had extenuated
 
 SHALL SHE BE LESS THAN ANOTHER ? 245 
 
 nothing. She had not withheld from him either 
 the foulness of her sins or their number — nay, it 
 may be that she had in somewise exaggerated the 
 blackness of those devils whom he, Clement Cancel- 
 lor, had cast out from her, enhancing by just so 
 much the magnitude of the miracle he had wrought. 
 She had held back nothing ; but over every revela- 
 tion she had contrived to spread that gloss which a 
 clever woman knows how to give to the tale of her 
 own wrong-doing. In every incident of that evil 
 career she had contrived to show herself more sinned 
 against than sinning ; the fragile victim of over- 
 mastering wickedness in others; the martyr of 
 man's treachery and man's passion ; the sport of 
 fate and circumstance. Had Mr. Cancellor known 
 the world he lived in half as well as he knew the 
 world beyond he would hardly have believed so 
 readily in the lady who had been Louise Lorraine : 
 but he was too single-minded to doubt a repentant 
 sinner whose conversion from the ways of evil had 
 been made manifest by so many good works, and 
 such unflagging zeal in the exercises of the Anglican 
 Church.
 
 246 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 Parchment Street, Grosvenor Square, is one of 
 the fashionable streets of London, and St. Eliza- 
 beth's, Parchment Street, had gradually developed, 
 in Clement Canceller's incumbency, into one of the 
 most popular tabernacles at the West End. He 
 whose life-desire had been to carry the lamp of the 
 faith into dark places, to be the friend and teacher of 
 the friendless and the untaught, found himself almost 
 in spite of himself a fashionable preacher, and the 
 delight of the cultured, the wealthy, and the aristo- 
 cratic. In his parish of St. Elizabeth's there was 
 plenty of work for him to do — plenty of that work 
 which he had chosen as the mission that had been 
 given to him to fulfil. Behind those patrician streets 
 where only the best-appointed carriages drew up, 
 where only the best-dressed footmen ever pulled the 
 bells or rattled long peals on high-art knockers, 
 there were some of the worst slums in London, and 
 it was in those slums that half Mr. Canceller's life 
 was spent. In narrow alleys between Oxford and 
 Wigmore Streets, and in the intricate purlieus of 
 Marylebone Lane, the Anglican priest had ample 
 scope for his labour, a vineyard waiting for the hus-
 
 SHALL SHE BE LESS THAN ANOTHER ? 247 
 
 bandman. And in the labyrinth hidden in the 
 heart of West End London Mr. Canceller's chief 
 coadjutor for the last twenty years had been Louise 
 Hillersdon. Thoroughness was the supreme quality 
 of Mrs. Hillersdon's mind. Nothing stopped her. 
 It was this temper which had given her distinction 
 in the days when princes were her cupbearers and 
 diamonds her daily tribute. There had been other 
 women as beautiful, other women as fascinating; 
 but there was not one who with beauty and fascina- 
 tion combined the audacity and resolution of Louise 
 Lorraine. When Louise Lorraine took possession 
 of a man's wits and a man's fortune that man was 
 doomed. He was as completely gone as the lemon 
 in the iron squeezer. A twist of the machine, and 
 there is nothing left but broken rind and crushed 
 pulp. A season of infatuation, and there was 
 nothing left of Mrs. Lorraine's admirer but shattered 
 health and an overdrawn banking account. Estates, 
 houses, friends, position, good name, all dropped 
 away from the man whom Louise Lorraine brayed 
 in her mortar. She spoke of him next season with 
 half contemptuous pity. " Did I know Sir Theodore
 
 248 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 Barrymore ? Yes ; he used to come to my parties 
 sometimes. A nice fellow enough, hut such a ter- 
 rible fool." 
 
 When Louise Lorraine married Tom Hillersdon, 
 and took it into her head to break away altogether 
 from her past career, and to pose before the world 
 as a beautiful Magdalen, she was clever enough to 
 know that, to achieve any place in society, she must 
 have a very powerful influence to help her. She 
 was clever enough to discover that the one influence 
 which a woman in her position could count upon was 
 the influence of the Church. She was beautiful 
 enough and refined enough to win friends among 
 the clergy by the charm of her personality. She 
 was rich enough to secure such friends, and bind 
 them to herself by the splendour of her gifts, by her 
 substantial aid in those good works which are to the 
 priest as the very breath of his life. One man she 
 could win by an organ ; another lived only to com- 
 plete a steeple ; the third had been yearning for a 
 decade for that golden hour when the cracked tin- 
 tinabulation which now summoned his flock should 
 be exchanged for a fine peal of bells. Such men as
 
 SHALL SHE BE LESS THAN ANOTHER ? 249 
 
 these were only too easily won, and the drawing- 
 rooms of Mr. Hillersdon's house in Park Lane were 
 rarely without the grace of some clerical figure in 
 long frock-coat and Koman collar. 
 
 Clement Canceller was of a sterner stuff, and 
 not to be bought by bell or reredos, rood-screen or 
 pulpit. Him Louise Hillersdon won by larger mea- 
 sures : to him she offered all that was spiritual in 
 her nature : and this woman of strange memories 
 was not without spiritual aspirations and real 
 striving after godliness. Clement Canceller was no 
 pious simpleton, to be won by sentimental cant and 
 crocodile tears. He knew truth from falsehood, had 
 never in his life been duped by the jingle of false 
 coin. He knew that Mrs. Hillersdon's repentance 
 had the true ring, albeit she was in some things still 
 of the earth earthy. She had worked for him and 
 with him in that wilderness of London as not one 
 other woman in his congregation had ever worked. 
 To the lost of her own sex she had been as a redeem- 
 ing angel. Wretched women had blessed her with 
 their expiring breath, had died full of hopes that 
 might never have been awakened had not Louise
 
 250 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 Lorraine sat beside their beds. Few other women 
 had ever so influenced the erring of her sex. She 
 who had waded deep in the slough of sin knew how 
 to talk to sinners. 
 
 Mr. Canceller never forgot her as he had seen 
 her by the bed of death and in the haunts of iniquity. 
 She could never be to him as the herd of women. 
 To the mind of the preacher she had a higher value 
 than one in twenty of those women of his flock whose 
 unstained lives had never needed the cleansing of 
 self-sacrifice and difficult works. 
 
 Thus it was that the Vicar of St. Elizabeth's 
 had never shrunk from acknowledging Mrs. Hillers- 
 don as his personal friend, had never feared to sit 
 at her board, or to be seen with her in public ; and 
 in the work of Louise Lorraine's rehabilitation 
 Clement Cancellor had been a tower of strength. 
 And now this latest mark of friendship, this visit to 
 her country home, and this appearance in the noble 
 old Abbey Church at her solicitation, filled her cup 
 of pride. These starched county people who had 
 shunned her hospitalities were to see that one 
 of the most distinguished preachers in the High
 
 SHALL SHE BE LESS THAN ANOTHER ? 251 
 
 Church party had given her his friendship and his 
 esteem. 
 
 It had been something for her to have the Prince 
 at Eiverdale : it was still more to her to have Clement 
 Canceller. 
 
 Pamela was in a flutter of excitement all Satur- 
 day morning, in the expectation of Castellani's reap- 
 pearance in the afternoon. She had heard Mr. 
 Canceller preach, and was delighted at the idea of 
 seeing him in the pleasant intimacy of afternoon 
 tea. Had there been no such person as Castellani, 
 her spirits would have been on tip-toe at the idea 
 of conversing with the fashionable preacher — of 
 telling him in a reverent under-tone of all those 
 deep emotions his eloquence had inspired in her. 
 But the author of Nepenthe possessed just that 
 combination of qualities which commands the admir- 
 ation of such a girl as Pamela. That exquisite 
 touch on the piano, that perfect tenor voice, that 
 exotic elegance of dress and figure, all had made 
 their mark upon the sensitive plate of a girl's ardent 
 fancy. " If I had pictured to myself the man who
 
 252 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 wrote Nepenthe, I should have imagined just such 
 a face, just such a style,*' thought Pamela, quite 
 forgetting that when first she had read the hook 
 she had made a very vivid picture of the author 
 altogether the opposite of Cesar Castellani — a dark 
 man, lean as a whipping-post, grave as philosophy 
 itself, with somhre hlack eyes, and ehon hair, and 
 a complexion of antique marble. And now she was 
 ready to accept the Italian, sleek, supple, essentially 
 modern in every grace and attribute, in place of that 
 sage of antique mould. 
 
 She went dancing about with the dogs all the 
 morning, inciting the grave Kassandra to unwonted 
 exertions, running in and out of the drawing-room, 
 making an atmosphere of gaiety in the grave old 
 house. Mildred's heart ached as she watched that 
 flying figure in the white gown, youth, health, joy- 
 ousness, personified. 
 
 " 0, if my darling were but here, life might be 
 full of happiness again," she thought. " I should 
 cease to weary myself with wondering about that 
 hidden past." 
 
 Do what she would her thoughts still dwelt upon
 
 SHALL SHE BE LESS THAN ANOTHER ? 253 
 
 the image of that wife who had possessed George 
 Greswold's heart before her. She knew that he must 
 have loved that other woman whom he had sworn 
 before God's altar to cherish. He was not the kind 
 of man to marry for any motive but a disinterested 
 love. That he had loved passionately, and that he 
 had been wronged deeply, was Mildred's reading of 
 the mystery. There had been a look of agony in 
 his countenance when he spoke of the past that told 
 of a sorrow too deep for words. 
 
 ** He has never loved me as he once loved her," 
 thought Mildred, who out of the wealth of her own 
 love had developed the capacity for that self-torture 
 called jealousy. 
 
 It seemed to her that her husband had taken 
 pains to avoid the old opportunities of confidential 
 talk since that revelation of last Sunday. He had 
 been more than usually engaged by the business 
 details of his estate ; and she fancied that he made 
 the most of all those duties which he used once to per- 
 form with the utmost despatch, grudging every hour 
 that was spent away from the home circle. He now
 
 254 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 complained of the new steward's ignorance, which 
 threw so much extra work upon himself. 
 
 " After jogging on for years in the same groove 
 with a man who knew every rood of my land, and 
 the idiosyncrasies of every tenant, I find it hard work 
 teaching a new man/' he told his wife. 
 
 This sounded reasonable enough, yet she could 
 hut think that since Sunday he had studiously 
 avoided being alone with her. If he asked her to 
 drive or walk with him, he secured Pamela's com- 
 pany before the excursion was planned. 
 
 *' We must show you the country," he said to 
 his niece. 
 
 Mildred told him of the threatened incursion from 
 Riverdale as they sat at luncheon with Pamela. 
 
 **I hope you don't mind my receiving Mrs. 
 Hillersdon," she said. 
 
 " No, my dear Mildred, I think it would take a 
 much worse woman than Mrs. Hillersdon to do you 
 any harm, or Pamela either. Whatever her early 
 history may have been, she has made Tom Hillersdon 
 an excellent wife, and she has been a very good friend 
 to the poor. I should not have cared for you to cul-
 
 SHALL SHE BE LESS THAN ANOTHER ? 255 
 
 tivate Mrs. Hillersdon, or the society she brings 
 round her, at Eiverdale — " 
 
 " Sir Henry says they have people from the music- 
 halls," interjected Pamela, in an awe-stricken voice. 
 
 ''But if Mrs. Hillersdon likes to come here with 
 her clerical star — " 
 
 " Don't call him a star, George. He is highly 
 gifted, and people have chosen to make him the 
 fashion, but he is the most single-hearted and simple- 
 minded man I ever met. No popularity could spoil 
 him. I feel that if he holds out the hand of friend- 
 ship to Mrs. Hillersdon, she must be a good woman." 
 
 " Let her come, Mildred, only don't let her com- 
 ing open the door to intimacy. I would not have 
 my wife the friend of any woman with a history." 
 
 ^' And yet there are histories in most lives, George, 
 and there is sometimes a mystery." 
 
 She could not refrain from this little touch of 
 bitterness, yet she was sorry the instant she had 
 spoken, deeply penitent, when she saw the look of 
 pain in the thoughtful face opposite her. Why 
 should she wilfully wound him, purposely, needless- 
 ly, she who so fondly loved him, whose keenest pain
 
 256 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 was to think that he had loved any woman upon earth 
 
 before he loved her ? 
 
 " Will you be at home to help me to receive my 
 
 old friend, George ?" she said, as they rose from the 
 
 table. 
 
 "Yes, I will be at home to welcome Canceller, 
 
 and to protect you from his protegee's influence, if 
 
 I can." 
 
 They were all three in the drawing-room when 
 the Kiverdale party arrived. Mildred and Mrs. 
 Hillersdon met in somewise as old acquaintances, 
 having been thrown together on numerous occasions, 
 at hunt balls, charity bazaars, and other public 
 assemblies. Pamela was the only stranger. 
 
 Although the scandalous romance of Louise Lor- 
 raine's career was called ancient history, she was 
 still a beautiful woman. The delicate features, the 
 pure tones of the alabaster skin, and the large Irish 
 gray eyes, had been kindly dealt with by time. On 
 the verge of fifty, Mrs. Hillersdon might have owned 
 only to forty, had she cared so far to palter with 
 truth. Her charm was, however, now more in a 
 fascinating personality than in the remains of a
 
 SHALL SHE BE LESS THAN ANOTHER ? 257 
 
 once dazzling loveliness. There was mind in the 
 keen, bright face, with its sharply-cut lines, and 
 those traces of intellectual wear which give a new 
 grace, instead of the old one of youthful softness and 
 faultless colouring. The bloom was gone from the 
 peach, the brilliancy of youth had faded from those 
 speaking eyes, but there was all the old sweetness 
 of expression which had made Louise Lorraine's 
 smile irresistible as the song of the lurlei in the days 
 that were gone. Her dress was perfect, as it had 
 always been from the day when she threw away her 
 last cotton stocking, darned by her own fair hands, 
 and took to dressing like a leader of the great world, 
 and with perhaps even less concern for cost. She 
 dressed in perfect harmony with her age and position. 
 Her gown was of softest black silk, draped with 
 some semi-diaphanous fabric and clouded with Chan- 
 tilly lace. Her bonnet was of the same lace and 
 gauze, and her tapering hand and slender wrist were 
 fitted to perfection in a long black glove which met 
 a cloud of lace just below the elbow. 
 
 At a period when almost every woman who wore 
 black glittered with beads and bugles from head to 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 258 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 foot, Mrs. Hillersdon's costume was unembellished 
 by a single ornament. The Parisian milliner had 
 known how to obey her orders to the letter when she 
 stipulated — siirtout point cle jais — and the effect was 
 at once distinguished and refined. 
 
 Clement Canceller greeted his old pupil with 
 warm friendliness, and meekly accepted her reproaches 
 for all those invitations which he had refused in the 
 past ten years. 
 
 "You told me so often that it was impossible 
 for you to come to Enderby, and yet you can go to 
 my neighbour," she said. 
 
 *' My dear Mildred, I went to Eiverdale because 
 I was wanted at Romsey." 
 
 " And do you think you were not wanted at Rom- 
 sey before to-day ? — do you think we should not have 
 been proud to have you preach in our church here ? 
 People would have flocked from far and wide to hear 
 you — yes, even to Enderby Church — and you might 
 have aided some good work, as you are going to do 
 to-morrow. How clever of Mrs. Hillersdon to know 
 how to tempt you down here !" 
 
 " You may be sure it is not the first time I have
 
 SHALL SHE BE LESS THAN ANOTHER ? 259 
 
 tried, Mrs. Greswold," said that lady, with her fas- 
 cinating smile. " Your influence would have gone 
 further than mine, I daresay, had you taken half as 
 much trouble as I have done." 
 
 Mr. Kollinson, the curate of Enderby, was an- 
 nounced at this moment. The Vicar was a rich 
 man with another parish in his cure, and his own 
 comfortable vicarage and his brother's family man- 
 sion being adjacent to the other church, Enderby 
 saw him but seldom, whereby Mr. Eollinson was a 
 person of much more weight in the parish than the 
 average clerical subaltern. Mildred liked him for 
 his plain-sailing Christianity and unfailing kind- 
 ness to the poor, and she had asked him to tea this 
 afternoon, knowing that he would like to meet Cle- 
 ment Canceller. 
 
 Castellani looked curiously unlike those, three 
 other men, with their grave countenances and un- 
 studied dress; George Greswold roughly clad in 
 shooting jacket and knickerbockers ; the two priests 
 in well-worn black. The Italian made a spot of 
 brightness in that sombre assembly, the sunlight 
 touching his hair and moustache with glints of
 
 260 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 gold, liis brown velvet coat and light gray trousers 
 suggestive of the studio rather than of rustic lanes, 
 a gardenia in his button-hole, a valuable old intaglio 
 fastening his white silk scarf, and withal a half- 
 insolent look of amusement at those two priests and 
 the sombre-visaged master of the house. He slipped 
 with serpentine grace to the further side of the 
 piano, where he contrived his first tete-a-tete with 
 Pamela, comfortably sheltered by the great Henri 
 Deux vase of gloxinias on the instrument. 
 
 Pamela was shy at first, and would hardly speak ; 
 then taking courage, told him how she had wondered 
 and wept over Nepenthe, and thereupon they began 
 to talk as if they were two kindred souls that had 
 been kept too long apart by adverse fate, and thrilled 
 with the new delight of union. 
 
 Round the tea-table the conversation was of a 
 graver cast. After a general discussion of the 
 threatening clouds upon the political and ecclesiasti- 
 cal horizon, the talk had drifted to a question which 
 at this time was uppermost in the minds of men. 
 The Deceased Wife's Sister's Bill had been thrown 
 out by the Upper House during the last session, and
 
 SHALL SHE BE LESS THAN ANOTHER ? 261 
 
 everybody had been talking of that debate in which 
 three princes of the blood royal had been attentive 
 auditors. They had recorded their vote on the side 
 of liberty of conscience, but in vain. Time-honoured 
 prejudices had prevailed against modern enlighten- 
 ment. 
 
 Clement Canceller was a man who would have 
 suffered martyrdom for his faith ; he was generous, 
 he was merciful, gentle, self-sacrificing, pure in 
 spirit; but he was not liberal-minded. The old 
 shackles hung heavily upon him. He could not 
 love Wycliffe; and he could not forgive Cranmer. 
 He was an ecclesiastic after the antique pattern. To 
 him the marriage of a priest was a base paltering 
 with the lusts of the flesh ; and to him a layman's 
 marriage with a dead wife's sister was unholy and 
 abominable. He had been moved to indignation by 
 the words that had been spoken and the pamphlets 
 that had been written of late upon this question ; 
 and now, carried away by George Greswold's denun- 
 ciation of that prejudiced majority by which the 
 Bill had been rejected, Mr. Cancellor gave his in- 
 dignation full vent, and forgot that he was speak-
 
 262 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 ing in a lady's drawing-room, and before feminine 
 hearers. 
 
 He spoke of such marriages as unholy and im- 
 moral, he spoke of such households as accursed. 
 Mildred listened to him, and watched him wonder- 
 ingly, scared at this unfamiliar aspect of his charac- 
 ter. To her he had ever been the gentlest of teach- 
 ers ; she saw him now pallid with wrath — she heard 
 him breathing words of fire. 
 
 George Greswold took up the glove, not because 
 he had ever felt any particular interest in this ques- 
 tion, but because he hated narrow-minded opinions 
 and clerical prejudices. 
 
 " Why should the sister of his wife be different 
 to a man from all other women?" he asked. "You 
 may call her different — you may set her apart — you 
 may say she must be to him as his own sister — her 
 beauty must not touch him, the attractions that 
 fascinate other men must have no influence over 
 him. You may lay this down as a law — civil — can- 
 onical — what you will — ^but the common law of 
 nature will override your clerical code, will burst 
 your shackles of prejudice and tradition. Shall
 
 SHALL SHE BE LESS THAN ANOTHER ? 263 
 
 Rachel be withlield from liim who was true and 
 loyal to Leah ? She has dwelt in his house as his 
 friend, the favourite and playmate of his children. 
 He has respected her as he would have respected 
 any other of his wife's girl-friends ; hut he has seen 
 that she was fair ; and if God takes the wife, and 
 he, remembering the sweetness of that old friend- 
 ship, and his children's love, turns to her as the one 
 woman who can give him back his lost happiness — 
 is he to be told that this one woman can never be 
 his, because she was the sister of his first chosen ? 
 She has come out of the same stock whose loyalty 
 he has proved, she would bring to his hearth all the 
 old sweet associations — " 
 
 " And she would not bring him a second mother- 
 in-law. What a stupendous superiority she would 
 have there /" interjected the jovial Eollinson, who 
 had been wallowing in hot-buttered cakes and strong- 
 tea, until his usually roseate visage had become start- 
 lingly rubicund. 
 
 He was in all things the opposite of the Vicar of 
 St. Elizabeth's. He wrote poetry, made puns, 
 played billiards, dined out at all the houses in the
 
 264 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 neighbourhood that were worth dining at, and was 
 only waiting to marry until Tom Hillersdon should 
 be able to give him a living. 
 
 Mr. Cancellor reproved the ribald jester with a 
 scathing look before he took up the argument against 
 his host. 
 
 " If this Bill were to pass, no virtuous woman 
 could live in the house of a married sister," he said. 
 
 " That is as much as to say that no honest 
 woman can live in the house of any married man," 
 retorted Greswold hotly. *'Do you think if a man 
 is weak enough to fall in love with another woman 
 under his wife's roof he is less likely to sin because 
 your canonical law stares him in the face, telling 
 him, ' Thou canst never wed her '? The married 
 man who is inconstant to his wife is not influenced 
 by the chances of the future. He is either a bold, 
 bad man, whose only thought is to win the woman 
 whom he loves at any cost of honour or conscience ; 
 or he is a weak fool, who drifts hopelessly to destruc- 
 tion, and in whom the resolution of to-day yields to 
 the temptation of to-morrow. Neither the bold sinner 
 nor the weak one is influenced by the consideration
 
 SHALL SHE BE LESS THAN ANOTHER ? 265 
 
 whether he can or cannot marry the woman he loves 
 under the unlikely cu'cumstance of his wife's untimely 
 death. The man who does so calculate is the one 
 man in so many thousands of men who will poison 
 his wife to clear the way for his new fancy. I don't 
 think we ought to legislate for poisoners. In plain 
 words, if a married man is weak enough or wicked 
 enough to be seduced by the charms of any woman 
 who dwells beneath his roof, he will not be the less 
 likely to fall because the law of the land has made 
 that woman anathema maranatha, or because he has 
 been warned from the pulpit that she is to be to him 
 as his own flesh and blood, no dearer and no less 
 dear than the sister beside whom he grew from 
 infancy to manhood, and whom he has loved all his 
 life, hardly knowing whether she is as beautiful as 
 Hebe or as hideous as Tisyphone." 
 
 " You are a disciple of the New Learning, Mr. 
 Greswold," Cancellor said bitterly; "the learning 
 which breaks down all barriers and annihilates the 
 Creator of all things — the learning which has de- 
 graded God from infinite power to infinitesimal 
 insignificance, and which explains the genius of
 
 266 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 Plato and Shakespeare, Luther and Newton, as 
 the ultimate outcome of an unconscious primeval 
 mist." 
 
 "I am no Darwinian," replied Greswold coldly, 
 " but I would rather belong to his school of specula- 
 tive inquiry than to the Calvinism which slew 
 Servetus, or the Eomanism which lit the death-pile 
 of the Oxford martyrs." 
 
 Mildred was not more anxious than Mrs. Hillers- 
 don to end a discussion which threatened angry 
 feeling. They looked at each other in an agony, 
 and then with a sudden inspiration Mildred ex- 
 claimed, 
 
 "If we could only persuade Mr. Castellani to 
 play to us ! We are growing so terribly serious;" 
 and then she went to Clement Cancellor, who was 
 standing by the open window, and took her place 
 beside him, while Mrs. Hillersdon talked with Pamela 
 and Castellani at the piano. " You know what a 
 privilege it is to me always to hear you talk," she 
 murmured in her sweet, subdued voice. " You know 
 how I have followed your teaching in all things. 
 And be assured my husband is no materialist. We
 
 SHALL SHE BE LESS THAN ANOTHER ? 267 
 
 both cling to the old faith, the old hopes, the old 
 promises. You must not misjudge him because of 
 a single difference of opinion." 
 
 "Forgive me, my dear Mildred," replied Cancel- 
 lor, touched by her submission. *'I did wrong to 
 be angry. I know that to many good Christians 
 this question of marriage with a sister-in-law is a 
 stumbling-block. I have taken the subject too 
 deeply to heart perhaps — I, to whom marriage alto- 
 gether seems outside the Christian priest's horizon. 
 Perhaps I may exaggerate the peril of a wider 
 liberty ; but I, who look upon Henry VIII. as the 
 arch-enemy of the one vital Church — of which he 
 might have been the wise and enlightened reformer 
 — I, who trace to his unhallowed union with his 
 brother's widow all the after evils of his career — 
 must needs lift up my voice against a threatened 
 danger." 
 
 Castellani began Mendelssohn's " Wedding 
 March " with a triumphant burst that sounded like 
 mockery. Do what the preacher might to assimilate 
 earth to heaven, here there would still be marrying 
 and giving in marriage.
 
 268 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 After the march Mildred went over to the piano 
 and asked Castellani to sing. 
 
 He smiled assent, and played the hrief symphony 
 to a hallad of Heine's, set hy Jensen. The exquisite 
 tenor voice, the perfect taste of the singer, held his 
 audience spellbound. They listened in silence, and 
 entreated him to sing again, and then again, till he 
 had sung four of these jewel-like ballads, and they 
 felt that it was impertinence to ask for more. 
 
 Mildred had stolen round to her own sheltered 
 corner, half hidden by a group of tall palms. She 
 sat with her hands clasped in her lap, her head bent. 
 She could not see the singer. She only heard the 
 low pathetic voice, slightly veiled. It touched her 
 like no other voice that she had ever heard since, in 
 her girlhood, she burst into a passion of sobs at first 
 hearing Sims Reeves, when that divine voice touched 
 some hyper- sensitive chord in her own organisation 
 and moved her almost to hysteria. And now, in this 
 voice of the man who of all other men she instinct- 
 ively disliked, the same tones touched the same 
 chord, and loosened the floodgates of her tears. 
 She sat with streaming eyes, grateful for the shel-
 
 SHALL SHE BE LESS THAN ANOTHER ? 26^ 
 
 tering foliage which screened her from observa- 
 tion. 
 
 She dried her eyes and recovered herself with 
 difficulty when the singer rose from the piano and 
 Mrs. Hillersdon began to take leave. Mr. Rollinson 
 button-holed Castellani on the instant. 
 
 "You sing as if you had just come from the 
 seraphic choir," he said. " You must sing for us on 
 the seventh." 
 
 " Who are * us ' ?". asked Castellani. 
 
 ** Our concert in aid of the fund for putting a 
 Burne-Jones window over the altar." 
 
 "A concert in Enderby village? Is it to be 
 given at the lock-up or in the pound ?" 
 
 " It is to be given in this room. Mrs. Greswold 
 has been good enough to allow us the use of her 
 drawing-room and her piano. Miss Ransome prom- 
 ises to preside at the buffet for tea and coffee." 
 
 " It will be glorious fun," exclaimed Pamela ; 
 ** I shall feel like a barmaid. I have always envied 
 barmaids." 
 
 "Daudet says there is one effulgent spot in 
 every man's life — one supreme moment when he
 
 270 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 stands on the mountain-top of fortune and of bliss, 
 and from whicli all the rest of his existence is a 
 gradual descent. I wonder whether that afternoon 
 will be your effulgent spot, Miss Kansome ?" said 
 Mrs. Hillersdon laughingly. 
 
 "It will — it must. To superintend two great 
 urns of tea and coffee — almost as nice as those 
 delicious beer-engines one sees at Salisbury Station 
 — to charge people a shilling for a small cup of tea, 
 and sixpence for a penny sponge-cake. What splen- 
 did fun !" 
 
 " Will you help us, Mr. Castleton ?" asked the 
 curate, who was not good at names. 
 
 "Mrs. Greswold has only to command me. I 
 am in all things her slave." 
 
 " Then she will command you — she does com- 
 mand you," cried the curate. 
 
 " If you will be so very kind — " began Mildred. 
 
 " I am only too proud to obey you," answered 
 Castellani, with more earnestness than the occasion 
 required, drawing a little nearer to Mildred as he 
 spoke ; " only too glad of an excuse to return to this 
 house."
 
 SHALL SHE BE LESS THAN ANOTHER ? 271 
 
 Mildred looked at liirn with a half-frightened 
 expression, and then glanced at Pamela. Did he 
 mean mischief of some kind ? Was this the begin- 
 ning of an insidious pursuit of that frank girl, whose 
 fortune was quite enough to tempt the casual adven- 
 turer ? 
 
 " Of all men I have ever seen he is the last to 
 whom I would entrust a girl's fate," thought Mildred, 
 determined to be very much on her guard against 
 the blandishments of Cesar Castellani. 
 
 She took the very worst means to ward off danger. 
 She made the direful mistake of warning the girl 
 against the possible pursuer that very evening when 
 they were sitting alone after dinner. 
 
 "He is a man I could never trust," she said. 
 
 "No more could I," replied Pamela; "but 0, 
 how exquisitely he sings !" and excited at the mere 
 memory of that singing, she ran to the piano and 
 began to pick out the melody of Heine's *' Ich weiss 
 nicht was soil es bedeuten," and sang the words 
 softly in her girlish voice; and then slipped away 
 from the piano with a nervous little laugh. 
 
 " Upon my word, Aunt Mildred, I am traurig
 
 27.2 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 myself at the very thought of that exquisite song," 
 she said. " What a gift it is to sing like that ! How 
 I wish I were Cesar Castellani !" 
 
 *' What, when we have hoth agreed that he is not 
 a good man ?" 
 
 "Who cares about being goodV exclaimed 
 Pamela, beside herself; " three-fourths of the people 
 of this world are good. But to be able to write a 
 book that can unsettle every one's religion ; to be able 
 to make everybody miserable when one sings ! Those 
 are gifts that place a man on a level with the Greek 
 gods. If I were Mr. Castellani I should feel like 
 Mercury or Apollo." 
 
 " Pamela, you frighten me when you rave like 
 that. Remember that, for all we know to the con- 
 trary, this man may be a mere adventurer, and in 
 every way dangerous." 
 
 " Why should we think him an adventurer ? He 
 told me all about himself. He told me that his 
 grandfather was under obligations to your grand- 
 father. He told me about his father, the composer, 
 who wrote operas which are known all over Italy, and 
 who died young, like Mozart and Mendelssohn.
 
 SHALL SHE BE LESS THAN ANOTHER ? 273 
 
 Genius is hereditary with him ; he was suckled upon 
 art. I have no doubt he is bad, irretrievably bad," 
 said Pamela, with unction ; " but don't try to persuade 
 me that he is a vulgar adventurer who would try to 
 borrow five-pound notes, or a fortune-hunter who 
 would try to marry one for one's money," concluded 
 the girl, falling back upon her favourite form of 
 speech 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 LIFTING THE CURTAIN. 
 
 The charity concert afforded Cesar Castellani just 
 the necessary excuse for going to Enderby Manor 
 House as often as he liked, and for staying there 
 as long as he liked. He was now on a familiar 
 footing He drove or rode over from Riverdale 
 nearly every day during the three weeks that inter- 
 vened between Mr. Canceller's sermon and the after- 
 noon concert. He made himself the curate's right 
 hand in all the details of the entertainment. He 
 chose the music, he wrote the programme, he sent it 
 to his favourite printer to be printed in antique 
 type upon ribbed paper with ragged edges : a perfect 
 gem in the way of a programme. He scoured the 
 country round in quest of amateur talent, and was 
 much more successful than the curate had been in 
 the same quest. 
 
 *' I'm astounded at your persuading Lady Mill-
 
 LIFTING THE CUKTAIN. 275 
 
 borough to show in the daylight," said Eollinson, 
 laughing. " You have the tongue of the serpent to over- 
 come her objection to the glare of the afternoon sun." 
 
 " Estote prude ntes sicuti serpentes,^^ saidCastellani. 
 " There's a fine old ecclesiastic's motto for you. I 
 know Lady Millborough rather dreads the effect of 
 sunlight upon her nacre Bernhardt. She told me 
 that she was never equal to singing in the after- 
 noon : the glare of the sun always gave her a head- 
 ache. But I assured her in the first place that there 
 should be no glare — that as an artist I abhorred a 
 crude, white light — and that it should be my busi- 
 ness to see that our concert-room was lighted upon 
 purely aesthetic principles. We would have the dim 
 religious light which painters and poets love. In 
 the second place I assured her that she had as fine a 
 contralto as Madame Alboni, on whose knees I had 
 often sat as a child, and who gave me the emerald pin 
 I was wearing." 
 
 "My hat, what a man you are !" exclaimed Eol- 
 linson. "But do you mean to say we are to give 
 our concert in the dark ?" 
 
 " We will not have the afternoon sun blindino:
 
 276 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 half our audience. We will have the auditorium in 
 a cool twilight, and we will have lamplight on our 
 platform — just that mellow and flattering light in 
 which elderly women look young and young women 
 angelic." 
 
 ** We'll leave everything to you," cried the curate. 
 ''I think we ought to leave him free scope; ought 
 we not, Mrs. Greswold ?" 
 
 Mildred assented. Pamela was enthusiastic. 
 This concert was to be one of the events of her life. 
 Castellani had discovered that she possessed a charm- 
 ing mezzo-soprano. She was to sing a duet with 
 him. 0, what rapture ! A duet of his own com- 
 position, all about roses and love and death. 
 
 " 'Twere sweet to die as the roses die, 
 
 If I had but lived for thee ; 
 A Hfe as long as the nightingale's song 
 Were enough for my heart and me." 
 
 The words and the voices were interwoven in a 
 melodious web ; tenor and soprano entwined together 
 — following and ever following like the phrases in an 
 anthem. 
 
 The preparation of this one duet alone obliged
 
 LIFTING THE CURTAIN. 277 
 
 Mr. Castellani to be nearly every day at Enderby. A 
 musician has inexhaustible patience in teaching his 
 own music. Castellani hammered at every bar and 
 every note with Pamela. He did not hesitate at 
 unpleasant truth. She had received the most expen- 
 sive instruction from a well-known singing-master, 
 and, according to Castellani, everything she had been 
 taught was wrong. " If you had been left alone to 
 sing as the birds sing you would be ever so muci 
 better off," he said ; *' the man has murdered a very 
 fine organ. If I had had the teaching of you, you 
 would have sung as well as Trebelli by this time." 
 
 Pamela thrilled at the thought. 0, to sing like 
 some great singer — to be able to soar skyward on the 
 wings of music — to sing as he sang ! She had 
 known him a fortnight by this time, and was deeply 
 in love with him. In moments of confidence by the 
 piano he called her Pamela, treating her almost as if 
 she were a child, yet with a touch of gallantry always 
 — an air that said, *^You are beautiful, dear child, 
 and you know it ; but I have lived my life." Before 
 Mrs. Greswold he was more formal, and called her 
 Miss Kansome.
 
 278 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 All barriers were clown now between Riverdale 
 and the Manor. Mrs. Hillersdon was going to make 
 an extra large house -party on purpose to patronise 
 the concert. It was to be on the 7th of September : 
 the partridge-shooting would be in full swing, and 
 the shooters assembled. Mrs. Greswold had been 
 to tea at Riverdale. There seemed to be no help 
 for it, and George Greswold was apparently indif- 
 ferent. 
 
 *•' My dearest, your purity of mind will be in no 
 danger from Mrs. Hillersdon. Even were she still 
 Louise Lorraine, she could not harm you — and you 
 know I am not given to consider the qu'on dira fon 
 in such a case. Let her come here by all means, so 
 long as she is not obnoxious to you." 
 
 " She is far from that. I think she has the 
 most delightful manners of any woman I ever met." 
 
 " So, no doubt, had Circe, yet she changed men 
 into swine." 
 
 " Mr. Canceller would not believe in her if she 
 were not a good woman." 
 
 "I should set a higher value on Cancellor's 
 opinion if he were more of a man of the world, and
 
 LIFTING THE CURTAIN. 279 
 
 less of a bigot. See what nonsense lie talked about 
 the Deceased Wife's Sister's Bill." 
 
 ** Nonsense ! 0, George, if you knew how it 
 distressed me to hear you take the other side — the 
 unchristian side !" 
 
 "I can find no word of Christ's against such 
 marriages, and the Church of old was always ready 
 with a dispensation for any such union, if it was 
 made worth the Church's while to be indulgent. It 
 was the earnest desire of the Eoman Catholic world 
 that Philip should marry Elizabeth. You are Can- 
 cellor's pupil, Mildred, and I cannot wonder if he has 
 made you something of a bigot." 
 
 *' He is the noblest and most unselfish of men." 
 
 "I admit his unselfishness — the purity of his 
 intentions — the tenderness of his heart ; but I deny 
 his nobility. Ecclesiastic narrow-mindedness spoils 
 a character that might have been perfect had it been 
 less hampered by tradition. Cancellor is a couple of 
 centuries behind the time. His Church is the 
 Church of Laud." 
 
 " I thought you admired and loved him, George," 
 said Mildred regretfully.
 
 280 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 "I admire bis good qualities, Hove him for his 
 thoroughness; but our creeds are wide apart. I 
 cannot even pretend to think as be thinks." 
 
 This confession increased Mildred's sadness. 
 She would have had her husband think as she 
 thought, believe as she believed, in all spiritual 
 things. The beloved child they had lost was wait- 
 ing for them in heaven ; and she ^ould fain that 
 they should both tread the same path to that better 
 world where there would be no more tears, no more 
 death — where day and night would be alike in the 
 light of the great Throne. She shuddered at the 
 thought of any difference of creed on her husband's 
 part, shuddered at that beginning of divergence which 
 might end in infidelity. She had been educated by 
 Clement Cancellor, and she thought as he thought. 
 It seemed to her that she was surrounded by an 
 atmosphere of doubt. In the books she read 
 among the more cultivated people whom she met, she 
 found the same tendency to speculative infidelity, pessi- 
 mism, Darwinism, sociology, Pantheism, anything but 
 Christian belief. The nearest approach to religious 
 feeling seemed to be found in the theosophists, with
 
 LIFTING THE CURTAIN. 281 
 
 their last fashionable Oriental improvements upon 
 the teaching of Christ. 
 
 Clement Cancellor had trained her in the belief 
 that there was one Church, one creed, one sovereign 
 rule of life, outside which rigid boundary-line lay 
 the dominion of Satan. And now, seeing her hus- 
 band's antagonism to her pastor upon this minor 
 point of the marriage law, she began to ask herself 
 whether those two might not stand as widely apart 
 upon graver questions — whether George Greswold 
 might not be one of those half-hearted Christians who 
 attend their parish church and keep Sunday sacred be- 
 cause it is well to set a good example to their neigh- 
 bours and dependants, while their own faith is little 
 more than a memory of youthful beliefs, the fading 
 reflection of a sun that has sunk below the horizon. 
 
 She had discovered her husband capable of a 
 suppression of truth that was almost as bad as false- 
 hood ; and now having begun to doubt his conscien- 
 tiousness, it was not unnatural that she should 
 begin to doubt his religious feeling. 
 
 "Had he been as deeply religious as I thought 
 him, he would not have so deceived me," she told
 
 282 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 herself, still brooding upon that mystery of his first 
 marriage. 
 
 Castellani's presence in the house was a con- 
 tinual irritation to her. It tortured her to think 
 that he knew more of her husband's past life than 
 was known to her. She longed to question him, 
 yet refrained, feeling that there would be unspeak- 
 able meanness, treachery even, in obtaining any 
 information about her husband's past life except 
 from his own lips. He had chosen to keep silence, 
 he who could so easily have explained all things ; 
 and it was her duty to submit 
 
 She tried to be interested in the concert, which 
 involved a good deal of work for herself, as she was 
 to play all the accompaniments, the piano part in a 
 concertante duet by De Beriot with an amateur violin 
 player, and a Hungarian march by a modern classic 
 by way of overture. There were rehearsals nearly 
 every day, with much talk and tea-drinking. Ender- 
 by Manor seemed given over to bustle and gaiety — 
 that grave old house, which to her mind ought to 
 have been silent as a sepulchre, now that Lola's voice 
 could sound there never more, except in dreams.
 
 LIFTING THE CURTAIN. 283 
 
 ''People must think I am forgetting her," she 
 said to herself with a sigh, when half-a-dozen car- 
 riages had driven away from the door, after two hours 
 of bustle and confusion, much discussion as to the 
 choice of songs and the arrangement of the pro- 
 gramme, which everybody wanted different. 
 
 '* I cannot possibly sing ' The Three Fishers » 
 after Captain Scobell's ' Wanderer,' " protested Lady 
 Millborough. " It would never do to have two 
 dismal songs in succession." 
 
 Yet when it was proposed that her ladyship's 
 song should succeed Mr. Eollinson's admirable ren- 
 dering of George Grossmith's " He was such a 
 Careless Man," she distinctly refused to sing imme- 
 diately after a comic song. 
 
 "I am not going to take the taste of Mr. Eol- 
 linson's vulgarity out of people's mouths," she told 
 Mildred, in an audible aside. 
 
 To these God-gifted vocalists the accompanist 
 was as an inferior being, a person with a mere 
 mechanical gift of playing anything set before her 
 with taste and style. They treated her as if she 
 had been a machine
 
 884 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 " If you wouldn't mind going over our duet just 
 once more, I think we should feel more comfortable 
 in it," said one of the two Miss Tadcasters, who were 
 to take the roof off, metaphorically, in the Norma 
 duet. 
 
 Mildred toiled with unwavering good-nature, and 
 suppressed her shudders at many a false note, and 
 cast oil on the waters when the singers were in- 
 clined to quarrel. She was glad of the drudgery 
 that kept her fingers and her mind occupied; she 
 was glad of any distraction that changed the current 
 of her thoughts. 
 
 It was the day before the concert. Cesar Cas- 
 tellani had established himself as Vami de la maison, 
 a person who had the right to come in and out as 
 he liked, whose coming and going made no differ- 
 ence to the master of the house. Had George 
 Greswold's mind been less abstracted from the 
 business of everyday life he might have seen danger 
 to Pamela Ransome's peace of mind in the frequent 
 presence of the Italian, and he might have considered 
 it his duty, as the young lady's kinsman, to have
 
 LIFTING THE CURTAIN. 285 
 
 restricted Mr. Castellani's privileges. But the blow 
 which had crushed George Greswold's heart a little 
 more than a year ago had left him in somewise a 
 broken man. He had lost all interest in the com- 
 mon joys and occupations of every-day life. His 
 days were spent for the most part in long walks or 
 rides in the loneliest places he could find, his only 
 evening amusement was found in books, and those 
 books of a kind which engrossed his attention and 
 took him out of himself. His wife's companionship 
 was always precious to him ; but their intercourse 
 had lost all its old gaiety and much of the old fami- 
 liarity. There was an indefinable something which 
 held them asunder even when they were sitting in 
 the same room, or pacing side by side, just as of old, 
 upon the lawn in front of the drawing-room, or 
 idling in their summer parlour in the shade of the 
 cedars. 
 
 Again and again in the last three weeks some 
 question about the past had trembled upon Mildred's 
 lips as she sat at work by the piano where Castel- 
 lani played in dreamy idleness, wandering from one 
 master to another, or extemporising after his own
 
 286 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 capricious fancies. Again and again she had strug- 
 gled against the temptation and had conquered. 
 No, she would not stoop to a meanness. She would 
 not be disloyal to her husband by so much as one 
 idle question. 
 
 To-day Castellani was in high spirits, proud of 
 to-morrow's anticipated success, in which his own 
 exertions would count for much. He sat at the 
 piano in a leisure hour after tea. All the per- 
 formers had gone, after the final adjustment of 
 every detail. Mildred sat idle with her head resting 
 against the cushion of a high-backed armchair, ex- 
 hausted by the afternoon's labours. Pamela stood 
 by the piano watching and listening delightedly as 
 Castellani improvised. 
 
 " I will give you my musical transcript of St. 
 Partridge Day," he said, smiling down at the notes 
 as he played a lively melody with little rippling runs 
 in the treble and crisp staccato chords in the bass. 
 " This is morning, and all the shooters are on tip- 
 toe with delight — a misty morning," gliding into a 
 dreamy legato movement as he spoke. " You can 
 scarcely see the hills yonder, and the sun is not yet
 
 LIFTING THE CURTAIN. 287 
 
 Up. See there he leaps above that bank of purple 
 cloud, and all is brightness," changing to crashing 
 chords in the bass and brilliant arpeggios in the 
 treble. " Hark ! there is chanticleer. How shrill 
 he peals in the morning air ! The dogs are leaving 
 the kennel — and now the gates are open, dogs and 
 men are in the road. You can hear the steady 
 tramp of the clumsy shooting-boots — your dreadful 
 English boots — and the merry music of the dogs. 
 Pointers, setters, spaniels, smooth beasts and curly 
 beasts, shaking the dew from the hedgerows as they 
 scramble along the banks, flying over the ditches — 
 creatures of lightning swiftness ; yes, even those fat 
 heavy spaniels which seem made to sprawl and snap 
 at flies in the sunshine or snore beside the fire." 
 
 He talked in brief snatches, playing all the time 
 — playing with the easy brilliancy, the unerring 
 grace of one to whom music is a native tongue — as 
 natural a mode of thought-expression as speech 
 itself. His father had trained him to improvise, 
 weaving reminiscences of all his favourite composers 
 into those dreamy reveries. They had sat side by 
 side, father and son, each following the bent of his
 
 288 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 own fancy, yet quick to adapt it to the other, now 
 leading, now following. They had played together 
 as Moscheles and Mendelssohn used to play, delight- 
 ing in each other's caprices. 
 
 " I hope I don't hore you very much," said Cas- 
 tellani, looking up at Mildred as she sat silent, the 
 fair face and pale gold hair defined against the olive 
 brocade of the chair cushion. 
 
 He looked up at her in wondering admiration, as 
 at a beautiful picture. How lovely she was, with a 
 loveliness that grew upon him, and took possession 
 of his fancy and his senses with a strengthening 
 hold day by day. It was a melancholy loveliness, 
 the beauty of a woman whose life had come to a dead 
 stop, in whose breast hope and love were dead — or 
 dormant. 
 
 " Not dead," he told himself, " only sleeping. 
 Whose shall be the spell to awaken the sleepers. 
 Who shall be the Orpheus to bring this sweet 
 Eurydice from the realms of Death ?" 
 
 Such thoughts were in his mind as he sat look- 
 ing at her, waiting for her answer, playing all the 
 while, telling her how fair she was in the tenderest
 
 LIFTING THE CURTAIN. 289 
 
 variations of an old German air whose every note 
 breathed passionate love. 
 
 "How sweet!" murmured Pamela; "what an 
 exquisite melody !" taking some of the sweetness to 
 herself. "How could such sweetness weary any one 
 with the ghost of an ear ? You are not bored by it, 
 are you, aunt ?" 
 
 "Bored? no, it is delightful," answered Mil- 
 dred, rousing herself from a reverie. " My thoughts 
 went back to my childhood while you were playing. 
 I never knew but one other person who had that 
 gift of improvisation, and she used to play to me 
 when I was a child. She was almost a child herself, 
 and of course she was very inferior to you as a 
 pianist; but she would sit and play to me for an 
 hour in the twilight, inventing new melodies, or 
 playing recollections of old melodies, describing in 
 music. The old fairy tales are for ever associated 
 with music in my mind, because of those memo- 
 ries. I believe she was highly gifted in music." 
 
 "Music of a high order is not an uncommon 
 gift among women of sensitive temperament," said 
 Castellani musingly. " I take it to be only another 
 
 VOL. I. u
 
 290 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 name for sympathy. Want of musical feeling is 
 want of sympathy. Shakespeare knew that when he 
 declared the non-musical man to be by nature a 
 villain. I could no more imagine you without the 
 gift of music than I could imagine the stars without 
 the quality of light. Mr. Greswold's first wife was 
 a good musician, as no doubt you know." 
 
 '* You heard her play — and sing ?" faltered Mil- 
 dred, avoiding a direct reply. 
 
 The sudden mention of her dead rival's name 
 had quickened the beating of her heart. She had 
 longed to question him and had refrained ; and 
 now, without any act of hers, he had spoken, and 
 she was going to hear something about that woman 
 whose existence was a mystery to her, whose Chris- 
 tian name she had never heard. 
 
 " Yes, I heard her several times at parties at 
 Nice. She was much admired for her musical 
 talents. She was not a grand singer, but she had 
 been well taught, and she had exquisite taste, and 
 knew exactly the kind of music that suited her best. 
 She was one of the attractions at the Palais Mon- 
 tano, where one heard only the best music."
 
 LIFTING THE CUETAIN. 291 
 
 *' I think you said the other day that you did 
 not meet her often," said Mildred. " My husband 
 could hardly have forgotten you had you met 
 frequently." 
 
 " I can scarcely say that we met frequently, and 
 our meetings were such as Mr. Greswold would not 
 be very likely to remember. I am not a remarkable 
 man now, and I was a very insignificant person fif- 
 teen years ago. I was only asked to people's houses 
 because I could sing a little, and because my father 
 had a reputation in the South as a composer. I was 
 never introduced to your husband, but I was pre- 
 sented to his wife — as a precocious youth with some 
 pretensions to a tenor voice — and I found her very 
 charming — after her own particular style." 
 
 "Was she a beautiful woman?" asked Mildred. 
 *' I — I — have never talked about her to my husband, 
 she died so young, and — " 
 
 *' Yes, yes, I understand," interrupted Castellani, 
 as she hesitated. " Of course you would not speak 
 of her. There are things that cannot be spoken 
 about. There is always a skeleton in every life — 
 not more in Mr. Greswold's past than in that of
 
 292 THE FATAL THKEE. 
 
 other people, perhaps, could we know all histories. 
 I was wrong to speak of her. Her name escaped me 
 unawares." 
 
 "Pray don't apologise," said Mildred, indignant 
 at something in his tone, which hinted at wrong- 
 doing on her husband's part. " There can be no 
 reason why you should keep silence — to me ; though 
 any mention of an old sorrow might wound him, I 
 know my husband too well not to know that he must 
 have behaved honourably in every relation of life — 
 before I married him as well as afterwards. I only 
 asked a very simple question : was my predecessor 
 as beautiful as she was gifted ?" 
 
 "No. She was charming, piquant, elegant, epiri- 
 tuelle, but she was not handsome. I think she was 
 conscious of that want of beauty, and that it made 
 her sensitive, and even bitter. I have heard her 
 say hard things of women who were handsomer than 
 herself. She had a scathing tongue and a capricious 
 temper, and she was not a favourite with her own 
 sex, though she was very much admired by clever 
 men. I know that as a lad I thought her one of 
 the brightest women I had ever met."
 
 LIFTING THE CURTAIN. 293 
 
 " It was sad that she should die so yonng," said 
 Mildred. 
 
 She would not for worlds that this man should 
 know the extent of her ignorance about the woman 
 who had borne her husband's name. She spoke 
 vaguely, hoping that he would take it for granted 
 she knew all. 
 
 "Yes," assented Castellani with a sigh, "her 
 death was infinitely sad." 
 
 He spoke as of an event of more than common 
 sadness — a calamity that had been in somewise 
 more tragical than untimely death must needs 
 be. 
 
 Mildred kept silence, though her heart ached 
 with shapeless forebodings, and though it would 
 have been an unspeakable relief to know the worst 
 rather than to feel the oppression of this mystery. 
 
 Castellani rose to take leave. He was paler 
 than he had been before the conversation began, and 
 he had a troubled air. Pamela looked at him with 
 sympathetic distress. " I am afraid you are dread- 
 fully tired," she said, as they shook hands. 
 
 " I am never tired in this house," he answered ;
 
 294 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 and Pamela appropriated the compliment by her 
 Tivid blush. 
 
 Mildred shook hands with him mechanically and 
 in silence. She was hardly conscious of his leaving 
 the room. She rose and went out into the garden, 
 while Pamela sat down to the piano and began sing- 
 ing her part in the everlasting duet. She never 
 sang anything else nowadays. It was a perpetual 
 carol of admiration for the author of Nepenthe, 
 
 ** 'Twere sweet to die as the roses die, 
 If I had but lived for thee ; 
 'Twere sweet to fade as the twilight fades 
 Over the western sea," 
 
 she warbled, while Mildred paced slowly to and fro 
 in front of the cedars, brooding over every word Cas- 
 tellani had spoken about her husband's first wife. 
 
 "Her death was infinitely sad." 
 
 Why infinitely? The significance of the word 
 troubled her. It conjured up all manner of possi- 
 bilities. Why infinitely sad ? All death is sad. 
 The death of the young especially so. But to say 
 even of a young wife's death that it was infinitely sad 
 would seem to lift it out of the region of humanity's
 
 LIFTING THE CURTAIN. 295 
 
 common doom. That qualifying word hinted at a 
 tragical fate rather than a young life cut short by 
 any ordinary malady. There had been something in 
 Castellani's manner which accentuated the meaning 
 of his words. That troubled look, that deep sigh, 
 that hurried departure, all hinted at a painful story 
 which he knew and did not wish to reveal. 
 
 He had in a manner apologised for speaking of 
 George Greswold's first wife. There must have 
 been a reason for that. He was not a man to say 
 meaningless things out of gaucherie ; not a man to 
 blunder and equivocate from either shyness or stu- 
 pidity. He had implied that Mr. Greswold was not 
 likely to talk about his first marriage — that he would 
 naturally avoid any allusion to his first wife. 
 
 Why naturally ? Why should he not speak of 
 that past life? Men are not ordinarily reticent 
 upon such subjects. And that a man should sup- 
 press the fact of a first marriage altogether would 
 suggest memories so dark as to impel an honourable 
 man to stoop to a tacit lie rather than face the horror 
 of revelation. 
 
 She walked up and down that fair stretch of
 
 296 
 
 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 velvet turf upon which her feet had trodden so 
 lightly in the happy years that were gone — gone 
 never to be recalled, as it seemed to her, carrying 
 with them all that she had ever known of domestic 
 peace, of wedded bliss. Never again could they two 
 be as they had been. The mystery of the past had 
 risen up between them — like some hooded phantom, 
 a vaguely threatening figure, a hidden face — to hold 
 them apart for evermore. 
 
 " If he had only trusted me," she thought des- 
 pairingly, " there is hardly any sin that I w^ould not 
 have forgiven for love of him. Why could he not 
 believe in my love well enough to know that I should 
 judge him leniently — if there had been wrong- 
 doing on his side — if — if — " 
 
 She had puzzled over that hidden past, trying to 
 penetrate the darkness, imagining the things that 
 might have happened — infidelity on the wife's part 
 — infidelity on the husband's side — another and 
 fatal attachment taking the place of loyal love. Sin 
 of some kind there must have been, she thought ; 
 for such dark memories could scarcely be sinless. 
 But was husband or wife the sinner ?
 
 LIFTING THE CURTAIN. 297 
 
 " Her death was infinitely sad." 
 
 That sentence stood out against the dark back- 
 ground of mystery as if written in fire. That one 
 fact was absolute. George Greswold's first wife had 
 died under circumstances of peculiar sadness; so 
 painful that Castellani's countenance grew pale and 
 troubled at the very thought of her death. 
 
 " I cannot endure it," Mildred thought at last, in 
 an agony of doubt. " I will not suffer this torture 
 for another day. I will appeal to him. I will ques- 
 tion him. If he values my love and my esteem he 
 will answer faithfully. It must be painful for him, 
 painful for me ; but it will be far better for us both 
 in the long-run. Anything will be better than 
 these torturing fears. I am his wife, and I have a 
 right to know the truth." 
 
 The dressing-gong summoned her back to the 
 house. Her husband was in the drawing - room 
 half-an-hour afterwards, when she went down to 
 dinner. He was still in his jacket and knicker- 
 bockers, just as he had come in from a long ramble. 
 
 " Will you forgive me if I dine with you in these 
 clothes, Mildred, and you, Pamela ?" to the damsel
 
 298 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 in white muslin, whom he had just surprised at the 
 piano still warbling her honeyed strain about death 
 and the roses ; *' I came in five minutes ago — dead 
 beat. I have been in the forest, and had a tramp 
 with the deerhounds over Bramble Hill." 
 
 " You walk too far, George. You are looking 
 dreadfully tired." 
 
 ''I'm sure you needn't apologise for your dress 
 on my account," said Pamela. "Henry is a per- 
 fect disgrace half his time. He hates evening-clothes, 
 and I sometimes fear he hates soap-and-water. He 
 can reconcile his conscience to any amount of dirt 
 so long as he has his cold tub in the morning. He 
 thinks that one sacrifice to decency justifies any- 
 thing. I have had to sit next him at dinner when 
 became straight from rats," concluded Pamela, with 
 a shudder. " But Kosalind is so foolishly indulgent. 
 She would spoil twenty husbands." 
 
 "And you, I suppose, would be a martinet to 
 one ?" said Greswold, smiling at the girl's animated 
 face. 
 
 "It would depend. If I were married to an 
 artist I could forgive any neglect of the proprieties.
 
 LIFTING THE CURTAIN. 299 
 
 One does not expect a man of that kind to be 
 the slave of conventionalities ; but a commonplace 
 person like Sir Henry Mountford has nothing to 
 recommend him but his tailor." 
 
 They went to dinner, and Pamela's prattle 
 relieved the gloom which had fallen upon husband 
 and wife. George Greswold saw that there were signs 
 of a new trouble in his wife's face. He sat for nearly 
 an hour alone with the untouched decanters before 
 him, and with Kassandra's head upon his knee. The 
 dog always knew when his thoughts were darkest, and 
 would not be repulsed at such times. She was not 
 obtrusive : she only wanted to bear him company. 
 
 It was nearly ten o'clock when he left the dining- 
 room. He looked in at the drawing-room door, and 
 saw his wife and his niece sitting at work, silent 
 both. 
 
 " I am going to the library to write some letters, 
 Mildred," he said : " don't sit up for me." 
 
 She rose quickly and went over to him. 
 
 " Let me have half-an-hour's talk with you first? 
 George," she said, in an earnest voice : " I want so 
 much to speak to you."
 
 300 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 " My dearest, I am always at your service," he 
 answered quietly; and they went across the hall 
 together, to that fine old room which was essentially 
 the domain of the master of the house. 
 
 It was a large room with three long narrow 
 windows — unaltered from the days of Queen Anne — 
 looking out to the carriage-drive in the front of the 
 house, and the walls were lined with books, in severely 
 architectural bookcases. There was a lofty marble 
 chimneypiece, richly decorated, and in front of the 
 fireplace there was an old-fashioned knee-hole desk, 
 at which Mr. Greswold was wont to sit. There 
 was a double reading-lamp ready-lighted for him 
 upon this desk, and there was no other light in the 
 room. By this dim light the sombre colouring 
 of oak bookcases and maroon velvet window-curtains 
 deepened to black. The spacious room had almost 
 a funereal aspect, like that awful banqueting-hall 
 to which Domitian invited his parasites and straight- 
 way frightened them to death. 
 
 "Well, Mildred, what is the matter?" asked 
 Greswold, when his wife had seated herself beside 
 him in front of the massive oak desk at which all
 
 LIFTING THE CURTAIN. 301 
 
 the business of his estate had been transacted since 
 he came to Enderby. " There is nothing amiss, 
 love, I hope, to make you so earnest ?" 
 
 *' There is something very much amiss, George," 
 she answered. " Forgive me if I pain you by what 
 I have to say — by the questions I am going to ask. 
 I cannot help giving you pain, truly and dearly 
 as I love you. I cannot go on suffering as I have 
 suffered since that wretched Sunday afternoon 
 when I discovered how you had deceived me — ^you 
 whom I so trusted, so honoured as the most upright 
 among men.'* 
 
 "It is a little hard that you should say I 
 deceived you, Mildred. I suppressed one fact which 
 had no bearing upon my relations with you." 
 
 " You must have signed your name to a false- 
 hood in the register, if you described yourself as a 
 bachelor." 
 
 "I did not so describe myself. I confided the 
 fact of my first marriage to your father on the eve 
 of our wedding. I told him why I had been silent — 
 told him that my past life had been steeped in 
 bitterness. He was generous enough to accept
 
 802 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 my confidence and to ask no questions. My bride 
 was too shy and too agitated to observe what I 
 wrote in the register, or else she might have noted 
 the word * widower ' after my name." 
 
 " Thank God you did not sign your name to 
 a lie," said Mildred, with a sigh of relief. 
 
 ** I am sorry my wife of fourteen years should 
 think me capable of falsehood on the document 
 that sealed my fate with hers." 
 
 " 0, George, I know how true you are — how 
 true and upright you have been in every word 
 and act of your life since we two have been one. 
 It is not in my nature to misjudge you. I cannot 
 think you capable of wrong-doing to any one under 
 strongest temptation. I cannot believe that Fate 
 could set such a snare for you as could entrap you 
 into one dishonourable act ; but I am tortured by 
 the thought of a past life of which I know nothing. 
 Why did you hide your marriage from me when 
 we were lovers? Why are you silent and secret 
 now, when I am your wife, the other half of yourself, 
 ready to sympathise with you, to share the burden 
 of dark memories ? Trust me, George. Trust me,
 
 LIFTING THE CUBTAIN. 303 
 
 dear love, and let us be again as we have been, 
 united in every thought." 
 
 " You do not know what you are asking me, 
 Mildred," said George Greswold, in his deep, grave 
 voice, looking at her with haggard reproachful 
 eyes. " You cannot measure the torture you are 
 inflicting by this aimless curiosity." 
 
 " You cannot measure the agony of doubt which 
 I have suffered since I knew that you loved another 
 woman before you loved me — loved her so well 
 that you cannot bear even to speak of that past life 
 which you lived with her — regret her so intensely 
 that now, after fourteen years of wedded life with me, 
 the mere memory of that lost love can plunge 
 you into gloom and despair," said Mildred passion- 
 ately. 
 
 That smothered fire of jealousy which had been 
 smouldering in her breast for weeks broke out all 
 at once in impetuous speech. She no longer cared 
 what she said. Her only thought was that the 
 dead love had been dearer than the living, that she 
 had been cozened by a lover whose heart had never 
 been wholly hers.
 
 304 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 "You are very cruel, Mildred," her husband 
 answered quietly. " You are probing an old wound, 
 and a deep one, to the quick. You wrong your- 
 self more than you wrong me by causeless jealousy 
 and unworthy doubts. Yes, I did conceal the fact 
 of my first marriage — not because I had loved my 
 wife too well, but because I had not loved her well 
 enough. I was silent about a period of my life 
 which was one of intense misery — which it was my 
 duty to myself to forget, if it were possible to forget 
 — which it was perilous to remember. My only 
 chance of happiness — or peace of mind — lay in 
 oblivion of that bitter time. It was only when I 
 loved you that I began to believe forgetfulness was 
 possible. I courted oblivion by every means in my 
 power. I told myself that the man who had so 
 suffered was a man who had ceased to exist. George 
 Bansome was dead. George Greswold stood on the 
 threshold of a new life, v/ith infinite capacities for 
 happiness. I told myself that I might be a beloved 
 and honoured husband — which I had never been — 
 a useful member of society — which I had not been 
 hitherto. Until that hour all things had been
 
 LIFTING THE CURTAIN. 305 
 
 against me. With you for my wife all things would 
 be in my favour. For thirteen happy years this 
 promise of our marriage morning was fully realised ; 
 then came our child's death ; and now comes your 
 estrangement." 
 
 "I am not estranged, George. It is only my 
 dread of the beginning of estrangement which tor- 
 tures me. Since that man spoke of your first wife, 
 I have brooded perpetually upon that hidden past. 
 It is w^eak, I know, to have done so. I ought to 
 trust unquestioningly : but I cannot, I cannot. I 
 love you too well to love without jealousy." 
 
 " Well, let the veil be lifted then, since it must 
 be so. Ask what questions you please, and I wiU 
 answer them — as best I can." 
 
 " You are very good," she faltered, drawing a 
 little nearer to him, leaning her head against his 
 shoulder as she talked to him, and laying her hand 
 on his as it lay before him on the desk, tightly 
 clenched. '' Tell me, dear, were you happy with 
 your first wife ?" 
 
 "I was not." 
 
 *' Not even in the beginning ?" 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 306 THE FATAL THllEE. 
 
 " Hardly in the beginning. It was an ill-advised 
 union, the result of impulse." 
 
 " But she loved you very dearly, perhaps." 
 
 ** She loved me — dearly — after her manner of 
 loving." 
 
 *' And you did not love her ?" 
 
 "It is a cruel thing you force me to say, Mil- 
 dred. No, I did not love her." 
 
 " Had you been married long when she died ?" 
 
 She felt a quivering movement in the clenched 
 hand on which her own lay caressingly, and she 
 heard him draw a long and deep breath. 
 
 "About a year." 
 
 " Her death was a sad one, I know. Did she go 
 out of her mind before she died ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Did she leave you — or do you any great wrong?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Were you false to her, George — 0, forgive 
 me, forgive me — but there must have been some- 
 thing more sad than common sadness, and it might 
 be that some new and fatal love — " 
 
 " There was no such thing," he answered sternly.
 
 LIFTING THE CURTAIN. 307 
 
 '^ I was true to my duties as a husband. It was not 
 a long trial — only a year. Even a profligate might 
 keep faith for so short a span." 
 
 '* I see you will not confide in me. I will ask 
 no more questions, George. That kind of catechism 
 will not make us more in sympathy with each other. 
 I will ask you nothing more — except — just one 
 question — a woman's question. Was your first 
 wife beautiful in your e^-es." 
 
 " She was not beautiful ; but she was intellectual, 
 and she had an interesting countenance — a face that 
 attracted me at first sight. It was even more attrac- 
 tive to me than the faces of handsomer women. But 
 if you want to know what your fancied rival was like 
 you need not languish in ignorance," with some touch 
 of scorn. *' I have her jjhotograph in this desk. I 
 have kept it for my days of humiliation, to remind 
 me of what I have been and what I may be again. 
 Would you like to see it ?" 
 
 " Yes, George, if it will not pain you too much 
 to show it to me." 
 
 "Do not talk of pain. You have stirred the 
 waters of Marah so deeply that one more bitter drop
 
 308 THE FATAL THREE. 
 
 cannot signify." He unlocked his desk as lie spoke, 
 lifted the lid, which was sustained hy a movable 
 upright, and groped among the accumulation of 
 papers and parchments inside. 
 
 The object for which he was seeking was at the 
 back of the desk, under all the papers. He found 
 it by touch : a morocco case containing a cabinet 
 photograph. Mildred stood up beside him, with one 
 hand on his shoulder as he searched. 
 
 He handed her the case without a word. She 
 opened it in silence and looked at the portrait within. 
 A small, delicately-featured face, with large dark 
 eyes — eyes almost too large for the face — a slender 
 throat, thin sloping shoulders — eyes that looked out 
 of the picture with a strange intensity — a curious 
 alertness in the countenance, as of a woman made 
 up of nerves and emotions, a nature wanting the 
 element of repose. 
 
 Mildred stared at the picture three or four 
 seconds, and then with a choking sound like a 
 strangled sob fell unconscious at her husband's feet, 
 
 E^■D OF VOL. I. 
 
 V-?