THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES CIRCULATING LIBRARY. ESTABLISHED 1832. 37 and 39, LONDON ST., READING. CATALOGUES and TERMS SENT ON APPLICATION. Subscriptions from Haif-a-Guinea. mm R;i;);!:;;';V;;|ii|'''>: The Southern Counties Circulating Library. Established 1832. Title Folio ^Mb ^■^^ ^ Supplements to the General Catalogue are issued periodically ;and can be had on application. L I E, RARY OF THE U N IVER.5ITY or ILLINOIS M46BS v.\ SYDNEY. VOL I. /... Digitized by the Internet Arcinive in 2009 witii funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://www.archive.org/details/sydney01crai SYDNEY BY GEOEGIANA M. CRAIK AUTHOR OF "DORCAS," "ANNE WARWICK," &c., &c. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. L LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1881. All rights reserved. LONDON ! PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE. I/. / SYDNEY. CHAPTER I. ^' TITELL, five and four make nine," said ^ * Mrs. Godwin, complacently. : '^; "But, dear mother," exclaimed Sydney, " 1^^ " they will fill the house !" '' Yes, my dear," answered Mrs. Godwin, ; - plaintively; "but why should not the house I "be filled ?" ^ And then for a moment Sydney had no ^ answer ready. The truth was that, on the question of hospitality, Mrs. Godwin and her daughter ^- VOL. I. B 2 SYDNEY. were not quite of the same mind. Mrs. Godwin was a social woman, and Sydney was not social, and this difference of taste between the two naturally produced at times a little friction ; only happily they were both sweet-tempered women, and too fond of one another ever to let their momentary disputes rankle. The mother and daughter were sitting together this evening in the large drawing- room at Broadbelt, with their chairs drawn near to the fire, for the month was Decem- ber. Mrs. Godwin was knitting. Sydney had been reading, and her book was still open on her knees. She was a large, fair girl, with a quantity of blond hair, and changeable grey eyes, a girl whom many people did not call pretty, but whose claims to beauty provoked a good deal of discussion amongst her acquaintance generally. There were some who admired her greatly ; some SYDNEY. 6 thought her noticeable ; one or two before this time had fallen in love with her. But on the whole she was not considered very handsome. It had been said of her often that you could not help looking at her, but that she was a girl who, before you could come to any settled opinion about her, forced you to change your mind a dozen times. There never were a mother and daughter less alike than Sydney and Mrs. Godwin, and yet, though they seemed hardly to have a taste in common, they were never happier than when they were together. Sydney had somehow accomplished the difficult task of loving and admiring her mother, in spite of knowing that her mother looked at life from a standpoint wholly different from her own. She herself was a little highflying probably in some of her notions at this time; she was not very fond of humdrum duties ; she B 2 >t that." "If you only half meant it I shall be SYDNEY. 127 satisfied. And you did half mean it, I hope ?" And then she laughed, but with a little colour in her face, and — " I shall remember that you are a lawyer another time," she said, and rose up, and, for that moment, would say no more to him. But, as I have already stated, Sydney was by this time very fair friends with Mr. Marmaduke, and he was beginning to be not very doubtful of his footing with her. He knew that she liked him a little, and he was tolerably eager to get her to like him more, and yet not eager as to make her take alarm. For his own part he began to find her wonderfully attractive. She was unlike any other woman he knew, and her simplicity and truthfulness, her freedom from coquetry, her very coldness and un- approachableness had all a novel charm for him. 128 SYDNEY. He had liked many other girls before now, but by the time he had been a week at Broadbelt it seemed to him that he had never liked any other girl so well or so seriously as he did Sydney. He hardly in- deed as yet imagined himself in love with her, but he had begun very distinctly to contemplate the possibiUty of his becoming in love with her, and to argue the matter very rationally and deliberately with himself. If he should get to care for her, and be able to make her care for him, his marriage with her, he knew, would be one likely to be ap- proved of, both by her parents and his own. Everything requisite indeed existed to make it acceptable. There was money on both sides, and old friendship : the social position of the two families was about equal ; he and Sydney were well suited in age, and it seem- ed to him that they would be excellently suited in disposition ; with the income his SYDNEY. 129 father would give him, and the fortune Syd- ney would bring, they would be in more than easy circumstances. There were no prudent considerations whatever to stay Mr. Marmaduke in his wooing ; he only awaited the decision of his own mind. But as to that, he said wisely enough, there was no need for haste. Sydney was not the kind of girl, he felt, to be either wooed or won in a day. "I will let thingjs take their natural course," he told himself. "Delightful as she is to those who can understand her, she is not the kind of woman that men in gen- eral will fall in love with. I can venture to take my time. Tt will be soon enough to make up my own mind six months hence, and after that, if she kept me in suspense for years, I don't think I should much mind it." And Mr. Marmaduke, who was something of an epicure, and liked to taste the sweets VOL. I. K 130 SYDNEY. of life with dainty deliberation, not to swallow them greedily at a gulp, began to picture to himself the pleasure of making love to Sydney, till at moments he almost brought himself to think that, few other pleasures would be able to equal it. 131 CHAPTER VII. fTIHE last days of the old year were stormy -*- and wet, and the party at Broadbelt had to amuse itself as best it could for the most part within doors. Lucy and xAniy yawned a little during this unfavourable weather, yet, on the whole, they did not lack entertainment, for Mr. Horton was a most efficient person in a country house, and his good-natured, if not very serious devotion to the two guests for whom Sydney would have found it so difficult without him to procure amusement, won even her gratitude. "You see there are times when folly is of use," Mr. Marmaduke said to her K 2 132 SYDNEY. a little maliciously once ; and she thought it wisest to let the remark pass without dis- puting it. Mr. Marmaduke too lent his aid in keep- in2j the demon of dulness from the house. He was not so great a favourite with Amy and Lucy as he had been at first, but yet these girls belonged to the class who never reject the attentions of a man to-day because he was cool to them yesterday, and he him- self knew (and Sydney, rather with a feeling of irritation, was conscious that he knew) that he might treat them like a young Sultan if he liked, and that he had but to throw the handkerchief to them, with what delay he pleased, to be certain that they would in- stantly pick it up. *' A queer pair of girls !" the young man often said to himself. But yet sometimes^ during these days, when Sydney's back was turned, he did, nevertheless, condescend to SYDNEY. 133 fling his handkerchief, — and to accept the consequences. They were, on the whole, rather tedious days to Sydney. She got very tired, while they lasted, of the sound of Lucy's and Amy's voices. She used to retire sometimes to her own room, and sit there and read ; but she could not get much repose or satis- faction out of these stolen hours. Once or twice, wrapped in her waterproof, she went down to the village, where she had old pensioners, whom she liked to visit ; but though she accomplished the first of these expeditions unperceived, or, at least, un- molested, on the second occasion on which she left the house she found herself in a few moments joined by Mr. Marmaduke. He ran after her, and placed himself by her side. '' Where are you going? May I not come with you ?" he asked. 134 SYDNEY. " I am going to see an old woman, so I think you had better not/' she answered. " But surely I may walk to where the old woman lives ?" " I don't know why you should," she replied. And then she added, half impa- tiently, " I came away because I was so tired of the talking in the drawing-room ; but you like it, so you had better go back to it again." " Yes, I like it so much better than talk- ing with you ; that is exactly how the case stands," he answered, coolly. And then she held her tongue, and he walked on. It was just raining enough to make it desirable to keep up an umbrella, so he took hers out of her hand and held it over her. Her temper was a little ruffled, he perceived ; he was perhaps conscious that during the preceding hours he had been SYDNEY. 135 vexing her a little ; but his position pleased himself, so he walked on rejoicing. It gave zest to the days, he had begun to think, to make her a trifle angry now and then. '' I think it is very foolish of you to come out when you have nothing to come out for," she said presently, " and when the people you have left want you, and — I don't. For you know I don t," she repeat- ed. "I think it is foolish of you to come and escort me to the village in this way, as if I could not hold an umbrella over m}^ own head." " Do you think, then, that I have come for the purpose of holding your umbrella ?" he asked. *' That is a very odd notion. As for you not wanting me, of course, if that is really the case, I can't force myself upon you ; but you don't mean what you say seriously, do you ? It is a pleasure to me to walk beside you, and I don't think it 136 SYDNEY. can matter to you much, one way or the other." " I would rather that you would not come again in this kind of manner," she said. " Well, I won't. Let me stay now, and I'll do anything you like in the future." And then she was not pleased, but she said no more. It was a twenty minutes' walk, and Mr. Marmaduke was quite content as he paced on beside her, in spite of the fact, which was an evident fact enough, that she w^as not in a very gracious humour. He had rather offended her, as he knew, and not only in this matter of having come out to join her ; but the coldness with which she treated him was rather refreshing to a taste a little cloyed with the sweets with which Amy and Lucy had been feeding it. " What a dripping sort of morning it is !" SYDNEY. 137 he began to say, after a little while. " You are a very charitable visitor to come out on such a day to see your old people." " I told you why I came out," she an- swered, shortly. "Oh ! to escape from the foolish conver- sation in the drawing-room ? I forgot that you said that. Do you know" — abruptly — " I think you ought to have more tolerance for folly — I do indeed." " Yoit seem to have enough tolerance for it, at any rate," she answered, quickly, and then was angr}^ that she had spoken, and bit her lip. " I try to have tolerance for most things. The wisest people are always the most toler- ant, you know." "The wisest people may be very tolerant, only they know where to draw the line," she retorted. " No doubt. But they can forgive a great 138 SYDNEY. deal of folly as long as the folly is harra- Jess. And then she made no answer. She was not in the humour for entering into an argu- ment with him, and besides (possibly) she suspected that the position she had taken up was not a very tenable one. " You know you are too impatient of the things you despise," he said again, after a minute's silence. " I have no right to tell you so, of course, but you don't make allow- ance enough ; upon my word you don't. There is a curious w^ant of sympathy in you. Now — if I might say it — wdien we were all talking nonsense in the drawing-room just now it would have been a good thing if j^ou could have come and talked nonsense too. Can't you believe that ? Can't you conceive it possible?" '' I don't know," she answered, rather re- luctantly. She was vexed because he forced SYDNEY. 13^ her to speak. " What is the use of asking me if it would have been a good thing ?'^ she said, suddenly and impatiently. ''I could not have done it, however much I had tried. I should only have been awkward and stupid. You might almost as soon ask me if it would not be a good thing to dance on a tight-rope." "I don't see that at all." '* I think I could do the one thing as easily as the other." "Well, I don't think you could dance upon a tight-rope certainly; but, if you were to see some other people dancing upon tight-ropes, you would not all at once begin to despise them — would you ?" '' Not if they danced welL But if they proposed to entertain me with dancing, and their dancing proved so poor as to be not worth looking at, I should think they miglit do something else with great advantage. I 140 SYDNEY. know, however, that that does not touch the real question," she added, honestly the •next moment. ''The real question — your question," a little sharply and impatiently, '' is whether I ought not to be altogether different from what I am — more tolerant and more tractable and more — in one word somebody else and not myself ; and if you ask me that, then I say ' Yes' heartily. Do you think that I approve of myself as I am ? You can hardly believe that I should be better if I were different more thoroughly than / believe it too." And then, having made this speech with <:onsiderable emotion — for the girl was stir- red by more than one feeling as she spoke — Sydney walked on at rather a quickened pace, with the colour in her face ; and Mr. Marmaduke walked on too, enjoying his position. He liked to move her. He had not often SYDNEY. 141 succeeded in moving her yet, but he had tried to do it more than once. She was a little stung now, and he liked to feel that he had the power to sting her. He walked by her side, enjoying her anger, for a few moments before he answered her. "And so / want you to be different, you think?" he said, after this gratifying little silence. " I want you to be another kind of woman ! Well, one hears extraordinary statements made often, but I never heard a statement wider of the truth than that." " It is no consequence whether it is wide of the truth, or whether it is the exact truth : it is no conseqence at all. Talk about some- thing else," she said, quickly — and rather imperiously too. " Very well. I will talk about anything you like. So that you neither send me away, nor try to effect any transformation in 142 SYDNEY. yourself, I shall object to nothing you please to command." She made no answer for a moment or two, and then, still in a tone of vexation, she said, " I wish you would be more sensible this morning. I wish you would either talk rea- sonably, or be quiet." " I will talk as reasonably as you could •desire," he answered. And he kept Ins word. For the next ten minutes all went harmoniously between them ; and then they reached the village, and she made liim turn back. '' You don't want to be very long with that old woman, do you? May I not wait for you?" he asked. But she declined this proposal em- phaticall}^, and went her way, without troubling^ herself to thank him much for his company. SYDNEY. 143 The Harcourts were to take their leave on the 2nd of January, and on the evening of New Year's Day some other people dined at Broadbelt, and there was acting of charades at night. Both Amy and Lucy acted cleverl}^, and, with Mr. Morton's and Mr. Marmaduke's assistance, they got up some very good scenes. " Do come and help us," Mr. Marmaduke entreated Sydney. But she would not. "They do it well, and I should do it intolerably badly," she said. She could only be persuaded to play in one charade, where some one was wanted to personate Hermione. *' I will take the part of a statue, if you like," she told them, laughing. And so they draped her in white, and, with her clear, colourless face and fair mass of hair, she looked as beautiful a Hermione, Mr. Marmaduke declared with enthusiasm to 144 SYDNEY. Mrs. Godwin, as ever stepped from a pedestal. " You did it to perfection," he said to herself afterwards. " I knew 3^ou Avould. You could do anything of that kind that you pleased. If you would practise a little^ you would be splendid 2X ]Joses ]jlcLstiquesr " I am not very likely to practise," she answered, drily. And then he laughed. **No, I am afraid you are not," he said. " I am afraid you are much more likely to make this your first and last performance. And, after all, I don't know, but — I hardly think I am sorry," he added, suddenly. " I have seen you act once, and that is enough." " Yes — or more than enough," she an- swered, half aloud, and turned away, only glad for her own part that her w^ork was done. The Harcourt girls were in their element, and the evening was so great a success that SYDNEY. 145 ]\Irs. Godwin s kind eyes beamed with satis- faction. '' How well they act ! How pretty they look ! — don't they ?" she went about the room asking right and left. Mrs. God- win had all the tolerance that Sydney lacked in addition to her own legitimate share, and she liked those two light-headed girls, because they had lived for ten days under her roof, with quite a tender regard. She could not understand her daughter's reluctance to make friends with them. To her, whatever was pretty and young w^as likeable. " But Sydney was always pecu- liar — and stubborn in some things, my poor love," she often said to herself, trying in her good nature to excuse and account for the want of cordiality that she could not comprehend. Even Sydney, however, was amused to- night, and allowed that the two girls played their charades well. She looked on at their VOL. I. L 146 SYDNEY. performances witli an almost surprised ad- miration. " I don't wonder that people like to act who can do it so naturally," she confessed to Mr. Marmaduke, who, soon after her performance of Hermione, had €on]e and sat down beside her. *' Yes, it is an accomplishment that suits them," he answered, readily. ^'They really are very clever in their way, you know, and as for Miss Harcourt, she is looking positively handsome. What are they about now ? Let us try to guess this." The young man was very happy as he sat beside Sydney in the darkened room, talking to her below his breath. "Do they not want you for any part of this word ? I think they must," she said to him once, but he declared, in a tone that carried conviction with it, that they were overburdened with actors, — that they had SYDNEY. 147 more volunteers already than they knew what to do with. " Yes, but all volunteers are not equally efficient. I think they would find work for you if you went to them," she tried to insist; but he would not move from his seat. He knew well enough, of course, that the actors wanted him, but he had been letting them make use of him for an hour, and he perferred now to stay here and talk to Sydney. They were not sitting where they could see very well. He, especially, had got himself almost into a corner, but his position did not please him the less for that. It enabled him to bend towards her, and speak below his breath to her, almost unnoticed by anyone else. I am afraid he was rather a disturbing companion as he sat by her €lbow, making his comments in her ear ; 148 SYDNEY. but Sydney during these last days had be- come rather tolerant of Mr. Marmaduke's misdemeanours ; perhaps too she was not so deeply interested in what was going on upon the stage as to feel that she sacrificed much in having^ her attention now and then drawn from it. He had placed himself a little behind her, so that, when he spoke to her, he had to lean over the back of her chair, and she, when she answered him, was forced to turn her face round to him, and away from the rest of the company. Nobody could hear either his remarks to her or hers to him ; her words and looks and smiles, he told himself with satisfaction, were for him alone. " I think this is a delightful way of passing the evening," he exclaimed once, with warmth. '' Don't you like it a httle ? Here we sit, and do nothing, and our friends entertain us. I don't know that there are SYDNEY. H9 many pleasanter amusements than to sit with a companion at a play." " Yes, perhaps, — if the play does not last too long," she answered, laughing a little at his fervour. " But I am not very fond of plays. I should very soon get tired of them." " I don t know that I am specially fond of plays either, but I shouldn't get tired of this sort of thing, though it went on for a week," he instantly replied, rather indiscreetly. But the next moment he recovered himself, "lam very indolent, you know," he said, laughing, "and such a lazy entertainment suits me. I like to feel that other people are working for my benefit, while I sit at case and look on." "I don't think you mean that," she said. " Well, you know, they enjoy it too, so it does not lie upon one's conscience. I haven't 150 SYDNEY. the least idea what this word is — have you?" *'Not the slightest. But you are not letting me attend to it." " Very well ; let us attend now. There is Horton laying about him in fine style." He was silent for a minute, but, after that minute, his voice was at her ear again. "They want you to help them in this. That girl in red — Miss Turnbull, isn't it ? — is playing her part abominably; but I am glad you are here, and not with them." "So am I," Sydney answered, fervently. But he, of course, meant one thing by his remark, and she in her answer quite another. *' I wonder if you will ever act Hermione again to another Leontes !" '' I hope not," she answered. This speech too, however — which might also have borne a flattering interpretation^ SYDNEY. 151 for the Leontes to whom she had played to- night had been himself — she made without the slightest personal reference, nor, happily, was he coxcomb enough to misinterpret her. " With what ardour you say that !" he only whispered, laughing. *' If I am ever Leon- tes again, I shall think of to-night." ^'That sylhible must be ^ mast,'''' she said. *' Don't you think so ? What can the word be ?" "I haven't a conception. You don't really want me to try to guess it, do you? It is so much pleasanter not to take the trouble of guessing ; somebody else is sure to do it, you know. Now they will be half an hour preparing the next scene, and we can talk," he exclaimed, cheerfully. " Do you think you have been silent hith- erto?" she asked, with a laugh. *' Well, not entirely, perhaps ; but still I 152 SYDNEY. have been more silent than I like to be. You know after to-morrow I shall not have the power of talking to you any more." " No, but you will scarcely be reduced to silence because of that. Going to London is not much like going to a desert island." *' I am afraid that — in one sense — it will be rather like a desert island to me." And then he said, suddenly, " Don't you think I shall be sorry to go away ? Don't you think I have been very happy here ?" "I am glad if you have been happy," she answered, simply. She made the response with a little shyness, but the next moment she let her eyes frankly meet his, and, '* I hardly thought before you came that you would care to stay with us," she added. " I rather opposed mamma at first when she wanted to ask you." ''Ah," — quickly — "I might have been SYDNEY. 153 sure I did not owe my invitation to you ! But indeed, I was sure of it." '^Well, it is true,"~laughing. ^^ I told mamma not to ask you." " Now why did you do that ? How had I offended you ?" " You had not offended me, only I thought you were too much of a fine gentle- man. But then I rather wanted Mr. Hor- ton," said Sydney, with a little gleam of fun in her eyes, '* and of course I saw that we could not ask him and not you." '*0h, — so he was the favourite, was he?" " Yes, I liked him. I thought he would be a capital person to have." " And you did not think that of me ?" ''No, not quite." " So you were rather sorry when I agreed to come ?" "Yes." '* And are you sorry still ?" 154 SYDNEY. She gave an unembarrassed laugh. '* Oh, no, not in the least. Do you think I am ?" " I should be awfully cut up if I did. You did dislike me terribly at first though^ didn't you ?" "No, that is far too strong a word. I didn't like you less than many other people."^ " When I meet you again after this, — the next time we meet (I don't know when that may be), will you keep in mind that we have got to be better friends ? You will surely, won't you ?" " I can't think," — very quietly, and rather indifferently — " whyjyou should think you need ask that." " Because I should feel it so hard if you dropped me, and made me pick up all this fortnight again." " But I should be very odd if I treated anybody so." SYDNEY. 155 '' I don't know about it being objection- able to treat anybody so. I don't care much about laying down these universal rules. But I shouldn't like you to treat me so, I am very certain. What in the world are they drawing up the curtain again for ?" " Because they are ready to begin. Now please stop talking. I think you talk a great deal too much." '* But why ? I don't disturb anybody." '' Except me." " Oh, you are so good-natured that you don't mind. Seriously, you don't mind, do you?" "Yes, indeed I do. I want to listen. Be quite quiet, please, for five minutes." So then he crossed his arms over the back of her chair, and at last held his tongue. Perhaps it was just as well that, very 156 SYDNEY. soon after this, the acting came to an end, and the lights were brought back into the room, and the audience rose from their seats. " Why, Marmaduke, you deserted us !" Mr. Horton said, encountering his friend presently ; and Mr. Marmaduke, with great composure, though with something of a twinkle in his eye, admitted the charge. He was in rather an elated state. Mr. Hor- ton knew well enough how he had been spending the time of his absence. They were going to end the evening with a dance, and Mr. Marmaduke was soon again in search of Sydney ; but, when he found her, she was at the piano, prepar- ing to play dance music, and she could not give him what he came to ask. '' But surely somebody else can play waltzes besides you ? It is a shame for you to be employed in this way !" he SYDNEY. 157 exclaimed, indignantly, when she refused his request. " Oh, but I like to do it," she said, undis- turbed by his indignation. " But I want you to dance with me so much — I do indeed.'' *'Well, I will do it presently. There is plenty of time," she answered, coolly. . And then she began to play, and he had to retire, and look for another partner. She played for a long time — an absurdly long time, he thought ; but at last she resigned her place at the piano to Mrs. Harcourt, and he made his way back to her instantly, and claimed her promise. '' I knew you danced beautifully — I was quite sure you did," he told her, with im- mense satisfaction, ten minutes afterwards. "And how admirably we match ! It never does for a man of my height to dance with little women, but with you I could dance a whole evening." 158 SYDNEY. '' Ah ! I shouldn't like to have to do that, though," she answered, a little drilj. ''Well, no, I suppose you would not/' He seemed, however, a trifle crestfallen. " Of course, you would get tired of me. I could hardly expect that you shouldn't." " I did not mean that I might get tired of you. (I might do that, or not.) I only meant that I am not as fond of dancing — with anybody — as you are." " I think I could make you fond of it, if I had the chance. Now let us begin again. That is a charming waltz that Mrs. Harcourt is playing." He got three dances with Sydney, by dint of importunity, so that, as they only danced in all for an hour and a half, he did not, on the whole, make bad use of his time. They danced till twelve, and then the guests took their departure, and Lucy and Amy, when all of them were gone, declared SYDNEY. 159 that it had been a delightful evening. " Well, yes, it has," echoed Mr. Horton, heartily. "It has indeed," murmured Mr. Mar- mad uke. " I am sure, my dears, if it has been de- lightful, it has been yourselves who have made it so," Mrs. Godwin exclaimed warm- ly, answering the two girls ; and then Mr. Horton readily assented again. '' Indeed you have," he declared. And even Sydney said something civil. But Mr. Marmaduke forgot himself for the moment and remained silent. '' He is not half as nice as he seemed at first," Amy said presently to Lucy, as they were sitting over their fire and brushing their hair. '' I thought to-night that he was downright rude. Just as if he considered himself too grand to act with us !" " Oh, he went away because Sydney 160 SYDNEY. went," retorted Lucy, shortly. ^^ If she had gone on acting he would have been ready enough to stay, you may be sure. Did you see how he looked at her when she was doing Hermione ? And I heard him talking such rubbish about her to Mrs. Godwin afterwards." "Well, but she did look very nice^ really," said Amy. ''Oh, yes, she looked very well ; only I think it was very vain of her just to do that one thing, and then to refuse to act anything else. She was afraid Mr. Marmaduke wouldn't admire her so much in any other part, I suppose." "I really can't make out whether she cares about Mr, Marmaduke admiring her. She is such a very odd girl," said Amy, thoughtfully. *' I don't suppose she cares particularly ; I don't think she cares much for anything ; SYDNEY. 161 but slie likes to lead him on," said Lucy. *'I wonder if he is really going to fall in love with her !" exclaimed Amy. And then Lucy said, sharply, '' I don't believe it a bit !" and put her brushes to- gether with a clap. ^' Well, when shall we all meet again?" Mr. Marmaduke said to Sydney next morning, just before they parted. He made his remark with a decided dash of sentiment in his tone, but Sydney replied without any sentiment at all. "I hope it may be a good while before some of us meet again," she merely answered, smiling. *' Ah, you are too hard to please," replied the young man. " Now, / have been so happy that I should want nothing except to live this fortnight over again exactly as I have lived it already." " Should you not ?" she answered. " You VOL. I. M 162 SYDNEY. are — very good, I think." And then after a moment she added, quickly, " I am afraid I ought to take a lesson from you in con- tentment. I think you are, both of you, — both you and Mr. Horton, — so wonderfully good in making the best of things, — so wonderfully good in getting enjoyment out of tilings that are — not particularly pleasant in themselves." "Such as our visit here, do you mean?" he inquired with a twinkle in his eyes. "Yes," she replied, frankly. "I think, if _you had been — well, like me, you would have found it very dulL" "Then to you, this fortniglit has been dull, I suppose you mean ?" he asked. She stood still for a moment and made no answer ; then a little colour came into her cheek, and she looked straight at him, and, " It would have been, if you and ]\fr. SYDNEY. 163 Horton had not helped us so much," she said. "Iain very grateful for your help. I don't know how we should ever have amused the Harcourts if you had not been here." And then, after that, he did not press her an}^ farther. He had taken note of her momentary embarrassment, and had been pretty well pleased with it. Perhaps he felt that it was a sufficiently satisfactory result of his fortnight's intercourse with her to have been able, though only for a second, to bring the colour to her face. The Harcourts were going to London, as well as Mr. Marmaduke and Mr. Horton ; so, to Amy's and Lucy's unconcealed satis- faction, they all travelled by the same train. But the two young men walked down to the station together, and so made their adieux before the rest of the party started. "Thank you so much for such a delight- m2 164 SYDNEY. ful visit," Mr. Horton said, briskly and neatly, as he bade Mrs. Godwin good-bye. But Mr. Marmaduke only murmured some- thing rather unintelligibly, and did not make his parting with at all the same grace as his friend. In fact, he was more moved at leaving Sydney than he had at all expected to be. As for her, however, she stood at the open door, cool and colourless, and gave the same smile and the same frank and moderately cordial clasp of the hand ta each of her departing guests, with such com- posed and placid courtesy that Mr. Marma- duke felt almost enraged at the emotion in his own breast. *' What a piece of marble she is !" he exclaimed, impatiently, as he walked rapid- ly by Mr. Horton's side down the avenue. ^'She wouldn't care, I do believe, though a fellow were sunk at the bottom of the sea !" SYDNEY. 165 " Well, and what else would you have?" retorted the other, with a laugh. "Did you want her to begin to wring her hands, and stand looking after you like a weeping Calypso ?" And he made a jest of his friend's suscep- tibility, and turned it into ridicule rather mercilessly, as they strode side by side along the muddy roads. 166 CHAPTER VIII. QYDNEY was glad to get rid of her ^ visitors, and yet, even to her, when they were gone the house seemed a httle empty. '* We shall have to drop back again now into our old quiet ways, mamma," she said to Mrs. Godwin, " and you won't like that so well as I shall. You see, I am always contented to be alone with you ; but you never return the compliment and want to be alone with me," she ended, with a laugh. " My dear, is it not enough if I want no- SYDNEY. 167 body iQ the world half as much as I do you ?" Mrs. Godwin answered. But it was true that in general they led a quieter life at Broadbelt than so social a woman would have chosen to do if she had had the power of choice. Mr. Godwin was in town all day ; they had few neighbours ; sometimes, especially in winter, for days together they did not see a visitor of any kind. And this suited Sydney, but it did not suit her mother. '* I do enjoy having the house full/' the kind soul admitted, almost plaintively ; " but then, my dear, I enjoy everything. I liked those young people being here. It made the place so cheerful. And the young men were nice — I think they were very nice, Sydney." "Yes, they were, no doubt," Sydney assented. " I am so glad we asked them. Even 168 SYDNEY. your father is very tolerant of them, and he does not like 3^oung men much generally, you know." *'No — and I don't wonder. But these two are very pleasant, certainly ; I had no idea they would be so pleasant. I think I like Mr. Marmaduke best, though," said Sydney, with unembarrassed decision. '' I fancy I should get a little tired of Mr. Horton if I saw much of him. Of the two, Mr. Marmaduke seems to me the more interesting." " I was so glad to see you friendly with Mr. Marmaduke, Sydney, for you are so slow to make friends generally. I always liked to see you talking to him." " Well, he is very fond of talking, so you enjoyed that pleasure often," the girl an- swered, laughing. In general, as I said, they had few visitors. Mr. Loudoun was the only person amongst SYDNEY. 169 their neighbours who ever came to the house uninvited to dinner, or made a fourth in their quiet evenings. With him, however, they were so much at home that Sydney hardly considered him as a visitor, and she would pursue her own avocations in his presence, and read or draw or even absent herself when he was with them, without having any sense of his being an outsider whom it was her business to enter- tain. She always liked him, and liked his cominsj. Her silent father used to rouse himself to talk to him, and Mrs. Godwin's kind face would beam at his approach with an even more than usually cordial smile. After January had passed away quietly at Broadbelt, Sydney, one Sunday afternoon, hearing a step upon the gravel, looked up and exclaimed quickly, "There is Mr. Marmaduke !" She felt a distinct sensation of pleasure as 1 70 SYDNEY. she saw him, vivid enough to bring the colour to her face. She received him too, when he came in, frankly and cordially. ''I had been wanting to come and call very much. I thought after church on Sunday I should be sure to find you at home," he said, as he shook hands with Mrs. Godwin. He was anxious enough about his reception to show a little nervousness at first, but they soon put him at his ease. '' It is so nice of you to have come. Now you must not talk of going away till evening," Mrs. Godwin said with warmth. " I hope Mr. Horton is quite well ? Why did you not bring him with you?" " Well, I am sure he Avill be very happy to come some other day, but this afternoon — " and then Mr. Marmaduke mumbled some- thing about *^ another engagement," — the SYDNEY. 171 fact being that Mr. Horton had refused to acconipan}^ him on his expedition to-day, on the ground that the Godwins would not care to be bothered again so soon with either of them ; in consequence of which declaration Mr. Marmaduke, having an un- reasonable desire to find himself once more in Sydney's company, had come off to Broadbelt by himself, boldly resolved to test the kind of welcome he should get. He felt, as I said, a little nervous at his entrance, but they quickly made him as welcome as he could desire. It was about three o'clock, and the last train left for town at ten, and they made him stay with them till this last train was due. He passed a most delightful afternoon and evening. The day had been fine, and before the sun set Sydney took him into the garden, ta show him the camellias and azaleas in the 172 SYDNEY. greenhouse, and he contrived by dexterous management to keep her out of doors for a long time. ^'The air is so delicious," he told her, *' after you have been breathing nothing but smoke for a month. If you want to feel delight in the mere fact of existence I am convinced you must live in the country. I am wonderfully happy to be here again. I can't tell you how happy I am. I have been thinking of those weeks at Christ- mas a thousand times ever since I saw you." " I had no idea you cared for the country so much," she said, a little surprised. " Oh ! I like it amazingly. Now I think an afternoon like this is perfectly enchant- ing. Look at that pure sky, clear down to the horizon — not a touch of anything foul about it — and all that tracery of interwoven branches, and the silence and the sweetness SYDNEY. 17{^ of it all. I think — upon my word I do ! — that you ought to be a happy woman." "Well — and am I not a happy woman?" she answered, laughing. ** Do you think I do not love what is beautiful here rather more, perhaps " — with a very little touch of sarcasm — " than you do ?" "I daresay you do. I am not likely to think you insensible to anything of that sort. But, you see," exclaimed the young man, "it strikes a fellow so when he has just turned his back on London. Would you mind our going a little bit across the meadow there? I should like to get to that point where the view is so pretty. You have thick enough boots on, have yoa not? You won't get wet ?" " Oh, no — I am not afraid of wet." So then they went across the meadov/, and after that a little farther still, and they watched the sunset ; and, altogether, he 174 I^YDNEY. got his own way so well that it \vas twilight before they returned to the house. " Have I kept you out too long ?" he said to her then, when it did not matter what her answer might be. But she was hardly conscious, I think, of the deep design with which he had pursued his course, and replied to his question quite simply and naturally. He had rather sur- prised her by the ardent interest he had shown in the beauty of the afternoon ; but, on the whole, his appreciation of it had pleased her too. Perhaps she was becom- ing a little disposed to be pleased with what he did more easily than with the doings of other people. He was a likeable person, and he was (naturally enough) showing the best side of himself to her, and that best side was such as any girl might have found attractive. SYDNEY. 175 Even in the twilight he made her linger under the porch with hira for a little longer. He was fond of talking, as she had told her mother — and, indeed, as she had told him- self, laughing, more than once, — and he poured out a stream of words to her at the hall-door (for the express purpose of de- taining her there) that she tried in vain to stem or interrunt. i. " We must come in? Well — yes, I know we must come in," he said at last; "but you don't take in how delightful all this is to jne. Look at that little bar of light still in the west. I fee], as long as it lasts, as though it were a shame to go indoors. And — why, by the way " — suddenly, — ^' ought there not to be a moon ? Why, to be sure there ought — and there she is ! We have been standing with our backs to her. Now do come out here again, just for 176 SYDNEY. two minutes. We must have a look at the moon." She was laughing at him, but she did what he wished. It was a mild evening, and she had on a sufficiently warm shawL So she stood beside him in the avenue, and contemplated the round silver orb that was just rising above the tree-tops — not for twa minutes only, but for ten. He was very happy, and she was, at any rate, moder- ately content. The evening was so still and beautiful that perhaps she could not reasonably be dissatisfied at being induced to enjoy its loveliness for so long. *' Why, you must have had quite a long w^alk. I was wondering what had become of you," Mrs. Godwin exclaimed when they came back into the drawing-room at last; and then Sydney laughed, and began, I am afraid, rather to throw her companion into ridicule. She was a good deal amused at SYDNEY. 177 him, and had already been telling liim that he seemed to be very like a schoolboy out for a holiday. " And so I am out for a holiday," he had answered, '' and no schoolboy ever enjoyed his freedom more. Do you think the holidays of after-life are not better than those we have when we are children ?" And then she had not answered him ; but she fell to laughing at him again when they returned to the drawing-room, as she told Mrs. Godwin how they had spent their afternoon. It was the first time that Mr. Marmaduke had dined at Broadbelt without any other company save himself, but the quietness of the evening that he spent seemed not dull but delightful to him. He did not sit long with Mr. Godwin when dinner was ended, but in less than half an hour followed Mrs. Godwin and Sydney to the drawing-room, VOL. I. N 178 SYDNEY. and there, over the fire, they talked to- gether. It was very homelike, and won- derfully pleasant, the young man thought. He was too contented to be with Sydney to want anything but this simple enter- tainment. They were hardly a musical household, but Mrs. Godwin had an old fashioned fondness for hearing Sydney sing hymns on Sunday evenings, and the girl always used to do it when they were alone. " I like those nice old hymns so much," the mother said, " and Sydney sings them very prettily. Go and sing a few now, my dear ; Mr. Marmaduke won't mind hearing them perhaps." Mr. Marmaduke was only too glad to hear them, and for half an hour Sydney sang her hymns in the quiet room. It seemed to her new listener a simple, reverent service SYDNEY. 179 that touched him indescribably. He sat looking at the girl's fair still face, listening to her voice, feeling almost as if he should like to take up the hem of her dress and kiss it. *' I won't tr}^ to thank you. You don't know how much I have liked this/' he said to her at the end. Mr. Godwin was sitting in his own room, and the other three stayed together till it was time for him to start ; then, as she bade her guest good-bye, Mrs. Godwin said, cordially, " I hope you w^on't be long in coming again. Don't wait for an invitation. Come any time when you have a disen- gaged afternoon." '' Will you really let me do that ?" he replied ; and then in his gratitude he shook hands with her twice over. ''Tve had the divinest day," he told Mr. n2 180 SYDNEY. Horton when he got back to his chambers, and that gentleman laid down his book and laughed at him. *' What, they treated you better than you deserved, did they?" he asked. "I think you have been an impudent fellow to go and push yourself upon them again so soon. Why don't you learn modesty and self- distrust from me ? — So they were civil to you?" *' They asked me why you had not come too. I think they are the sweetest pair of women in England, — upon my word I do !" exclaimed Mr. Marmaduke, enthusiastically. " Hm !— And how is the beauty ?" Mr. Horton said. " I need not ask if she was gracious. It's clear that she was, or you would not be in this effervescent state." And then Mr. Marmaduke sat down and began to talk about Sydney. He was very full of her. He said, gravely, after SYDNEY. 181 a little while, " I never liked a girl so well in all my life. She is the only girl I have ever known that I have distinctly felt I should like to marry." " Well, I like her too ; and, if she is what she seems, I think you might do worse than marry her," his friend assented presently. " Only don't be rash, and make up your mind in a hurry. They're a queer lot, these young women, and as deep as Lucifer, some of them. But I like this one, I confess. I was sweet on her myself for a day or two till you stepped in and cut me out." " I didn't cut you out. You never meant anything," retorted Mr. Marmaduke. "Don't you think I meant as much as you did at first ?" said the other. " No, I didn't mean anything, it's true ; but no more did you when you came with your con- founded conceit, and put yourself between us. When it pleased you to interfere, I 182 SYDNEY. gave in, of course, as I always do, for I am a weak, peaceable sort of fellow ; but, if I had chosen to show fight, do you feel sure that you wouldn't be in a different position now?" And then Mr. Marmaduke looked disturb- ed, and the other rubbed his hands and chuckled to himself Mr. Marmaduke paid his first chance visit to Broadbelt at the end of January. Dur- ing the months that followed he paid a great many more such visits, accompanied now and then by Mr. Horton, but more frequent- ly taking his way alone, till gradually the little journey became a very familiar one to him, and the goal to which it led him grew in his imagination to be very like the gates of Paradise. Unless he had cared for Sydney these Sundays spent at Broadbelt (for it was gen- erally on Sundays that he went down) would SYDNEY. 183 have been dull and unexciting days enough to the young Londoner, but the increasing strength of his feeling for her made them infinitely delightful. He used to keep up a sort of fiction that it was his intense suscepti- bility to the loveliness of the country that im- pelled his steps to turn so often to the God- wins' house, but he never knew how much this figment was believed in by Sydney, or even by Mrs. Godwin. They both seemed always glad to see him, and never appeared to need him to explain why he had come. In a very short time he lost all fear of not being welcomed ; he grew happily accustom- ed to Mrs. Godwin's cordial greeting, and to the greeting, less warm, but not less sweet, of the smile on Sydney's lips. He could not doubt, as the months went on, that both the mother and the daughter liked him. They liked him, and they must be well aware that he liked them ; if in due 184 SYDNEY. time he chose to avow himself as a lover, was it not probable, he asked himself, that the course of his wooing would go smoothly ? There seemed a whole long, dim vista of coming days of happiness stretched out before the poor young fellow ; he knew that Sydney was becoming more and more dear to him ; he believed that he had no rival ; he felt convinced that, slow to win though she might be, yet at least she cared for no one else more than she cared for him ; the prospect before him appeared all so fair and full of hope that it was no wonder he was happy, and that the spring of this year be- came the brightest and most golden spring that he had ever known. It was very pretty round Broadbelt when all the trees were bursting into life, and many an hour did Mr. Marmaduke persuade Sydney to spend out of doors with him. She liked him well enough to have her own SYDNEY. 185 pleasure in these rambles, which were some- times confined to the garden, sometimes ex- tended farther ; she enjoyed his admiration of the things that she herself so much ad- mired ; by degrees he inspired her with a firm belief in the genuineness of his delight in country sights, — which indeed, perhaps, was little wonder, seeing that he even grew wholly credulous of this himself, and, through the happy months of this happy year, gravely and ardently held the con- viction, and discoursed to her about it by the hour together, that the paved streets of a town were abominations, and that only in the sweetness of the country, with the grass beneath his feet and the pure sky above his head, was true happiness to be found. To be sure, as he talked to Sydney, there was one little item of the account that he left out, and how much of his rapture in the sights and sounds around him came into 186 SYDNEY. existence through the inspiration caused by her presence at his side he left untold — nor did it occur to her to suspect it. For it was true that by this time Sydney knew he liked her, but she did not know yet that he was her lover. She only guessed that fact at moments very vaguely and doubt- fully, and she could not tell whether she wanted him to be her lover or not. He was very pleasant to her, and there were moments when she could almost have thought of passing her life beside him with- out reluctance ; but yet, for the most part, she was in a state of feeling that made her unwilling to face the question of whether she could pass her life beside him. She could not tell ; she did not know him well enough ; she hardly more than half knew even if he cared for her. " I could part from him, and not mind it much," she said to herself sometimes ; and she told herself SYDNEY. 187 that as long as she could say that she need not be disturbed. As for him, he liked her, she knew; but she always told herself that she knew nothing else. No doubt Mr. Marmaduke was on the whole a cautious lover. Perhaps nature had made him rather prudent. As I have said already, he was not a man who was disposed to rush headlong at happiness ; he was so happy just now that he was content to go on without seeking for any change. He knew that he was gradually making way with Sydney, and he had no desire to hasten to the end of that pleasant occupation. He felt like a man set out on a delightful jour- ney, who has the wisdom to take his way on foot by leisurely paths and flowery fields^ instead of dashing in an express train to his destination. What could be sweeter than these quiet days with Sydney ? — what could be more exquisitely satisfying than his half- 188 SYDNEY. confessed, half- withheld wooing of her? He enjoyed his slow progress with a per- fectly Sybaritish enjoyment. Had any other aspirant to her favour been in the field, his sensations no doubt would have been different ; but, as it was, he found his satisfaction complete. " Some day we shall grow old. Does it not seem strange to think that we shall ever be old?" he said to her abruptly once — " that we may ever be in the midst of all this bright world and not care for it ? I wonder if we shall have any knowledge of one another then ! What a ludicrous thing it seems to think of you as — about eighty, suppose — sitting knitting perhaps, with a pair of old hands, by the fire !" She laughed when he made this speech, but presently she answered, quietly, " One may grow old, and yet in many ways remain not much changed. Mrs. SYDNEY. 189 Loudoun was over seventy when she died last year, and I think I have known many women of forty less fresh and full of interest in things than she was. If I ever live to be an old woman, I should like to be such an old woman as that." " But I cannot imagine you old at all," he insisted. "You seem to me always like some one made to live in perpetual youth — just as you are now. I can no more think of you growing old than I can think of those women growing old that Sir Joshua painted." " But all Sir Joshua's women are not young," she said. '' Ah, well, that is true. But the old ones are only the exceptions. I wish there were a Sir Joshua to paint you now." " I should not deserve to sit to him," she said, quickly. And then she prevented him from answer- 190 SYDNEY. ing her by speaking of something else. There was nothing in which Sydney was more delightful to her lover than in the kind of dubious beauty that she possessed. The character of it charmed him far more than decided and unquestionable beauty would have done ; there was a changeable- ness in it that gave it an infinite interest, — a vagueness that made it always like some- thing to be sought. He looked for it, and lost it, and found it again a hundred times. Its indefiniteness, and the quality that made it poetical, were endlessly delightful to him. He told her once that she was like twi- light, and laughed at her when she could not comprehend his meaning. He teazed her for a few moments, and then dared to say, suddenly, '' Should you understand me better if I said you were like music ?" And on that she answered quickly, '^No." But SYDNEY. 191 after saying no, she would say nothing else. From January till May Mr. Marmadake paid his pleasant visits to Broadbelt. Dur- ing May the weather was hot, and the country became even more than ever delight- ful to him. For three Sundays in succession he presented himself in the Broadbelt draw- ing-room, although on the third occasion he was so far ashamed to do it that he attempt- ed to apologise for his appearance. '* I really had not meant to come to-day. I am afraid I ought not to have done it," he began to say, with an affectation of penitence; but Mrs. Godwin in her kindness would let him proceed no further. '' ISTow why do you say a word ? Are we not always glad to see you ?" she replied. *' I am quite pleased that you have come again to-day, for London, I am sure, in this weather, must be intolerable^' 192 SIDNEY. *^ Well, it is indeed," he answered, fervent- ly (entirely oblivious for the moment that it was May, and that till now his fixed opinion had been that May in London was perfec- tion). " Yes, it is terribly hot weather. I think when heat comes early in the year it is always so difficult to bear. My husband feels it so much," Mrs. Godwin went on, plaintively. ''He has been quite poorly this last w^eek. You see, he has a great deal to try him just now." '*0h — ah — you mean, on account of matters in the city ?" Mr. Marmaduke said, rather hesitatingly. " Yes, men of business are rather anxious, you know. Of course I don't mean that he is afraid for himself, but there have been so many failures, and some of them of people he knew so well. That great house, Moncrieff and Preston — thinkof it going yesterday! and SYDNEY. 193 Mr. MoncriefF is such an old friend of ours. Mr. Godwin came home last night quite upset." *• It is very serious, — very terrible indeed," Mr. Marmaduke said, with a long face. . But, to tell the truth, he did not let his sympathy depress him much as the day went on. Sydney, indeed, was a little grav- er than usual, but the young man, as he always did, made himself abundantly happy, not at all letting Sydney's quietness be a bar to his customary enjoyment. In fact he had sense enough to enjoy silence sometimes as much as talk ; he by no means always wanted to laugh and jest ; he was contented with Sydney whether she were grave or gay, whether she talked to him or was silent. She said to him in the course of to-day, " I am troubled about papa. All these failures in the city try him so terribly. You can't think how unwell he has been all VOL. I. o 194 SYDNEY. this week. I wish I understood something more " — and then she stopped. ^' But you can't understand, you know. Nobody does thoroughly except those who are in the midst of it. No doubt it is a bad time, but, depend upon it, Mr. Godwin is all right," Mr. Marraaduke answered, cheer- fully. ''It seems to me that at these times nobody can know that they are right/' the girl replied, gravely ; and then there was a little pause. But yet she was young enough and hopeful enough to be cheered by his sanguine talk, and this day, though she was anxious, was not an unhappy one even to her. Mr. Marmaduke found his host certainly looking ill when they met at dinner, but he would not allow that he saw much the matter with him. ^'Heis only overworked," he said. ''I SYDNEY. 195 am sure you must have seen him so before. Men of business lead such terribly trying lives. We who become lawyers show ourselves much more like the wise virgins. You seldom hear of lawyers injuring their brains, and as for their hearts, you know they have got none to injure. In my own case, for instance, for anything I can see to the contrary, I am likely to live to be a hundred." It had been too hot to leave the house during the afternoon, but when dinner was over the evening was delightful, and they lingered about the garden together for a long time, rambling up and down the walks, sitting down more than once, standing last of all for ten minutes at a certain boundary- gate — that poor Frederick Marmaduke came back to and leant on again in after-years, with a bitter sense of all that his life had lost. o2 196 SYDNEY. It was one of those balmy golden evenings that one could almost fancy to be made for the delight of lovers, and he stood by the girl's side, nearly touching the white dress she wore, and feeling with a happy certainty that almost every hour they spent together was bringing her a little nearer to him. His course seemed all to lie so plain before his eyes ; the future that they were to spend together seemed hardly any longer to be doubtful ; he felt contented with the intense content of a man who knows the present that he holds to be sweet, and who can look forward, with neither haste nor fear, to a still sweeter and dearer issue. He had been talking to her about the first time he ever saw her. That was nearly a year ago now, a day when he had been asked with Mr. Horton to dinner. "And you had the Cholmondeleys here, and those SYDNEY. 197 people from Westcroffc, and I remember I thought it — not a very exciting evening," he said, frankly. " You did not condescend to give me much of your company in the course of it. In fact you never took the trouble, you know, to be decently civil to me for months after that. Why were you always so desperately frigid ? I never could get a pleasant word out of you till I came at Christmas." " I don't think you got many then," she answered, laughing. ''Not at first perhaps, but you were very nice to me before that fortnight came to an end. Do you know what it was that made me want to be friends with you first? It was your being so — well, I must say it — so confoundedly unjust to me that night about the Harcourts. When you gave me that annihilating look that you did, you cut me up in a way I couldn t stand. I do believe I 198 SYDNEY. had never cared a bit about you before that minute, but you made me so angry then that — I never afterwards was able to get you out of my head." " Great results follow sometimes from small beginnings, you see," she said, with mock gravity. " Yes — I don't think you knew much of what you were doing. You wouldn't have done it perhaps if you had guessed, for you were terribly unwilling to be troubled with me in those days — weren't you ? I hardly know how I got you to be as pleasant to me as I did before I came away." " I think, when we began to talk to- gether, it was not unnatural that we should become friendly. Besides, you made me feel," she said, with a little hesitation, '* that I had not been very just to you." "You never made that admission before!" he exclaimed. SYDNEY. 199 '' Well," — laughing a little, — " you never perhaps asked me to make it." "But if you felt that it was true you ought to have made it to relieve your conscience." " Oh, my conscience was not much bur- dened. It has never troubled me upon that account." "You are very hardened, I am afraid. Do you know," — abruptly, — "really long ago I used to think you — not hardened in- deed in that sense, but rather disposed to be hard. It is one of the mistakes I made about you. I don't know" — quickly — " that I have made many on the whole, and I corrected that one long ago." "Listen! Do you hear that nightin- gale?" she said. "The nightingales have been singing so all this week. I have come out every night to hear them." 200 SYDNEY. '* I wish I could have been with you to hear them too." "Well, listen to them now, and stop talking for a few minutes, if you can." '' I can stop talking for any length of time you please." So he held his tongue for five minutes, during which they both stood silent in the warm twilight. *' You have made this year a very happy one to me," he said, abruptl}^ after this pause. " I often think now that I was very poor six months ago. I often fear that you don't know how grateful I am." *' I don't think we have done much to cause you to be grateful," she answered, after a moment's silence. '* You have been endlessly kind to me." "We have all Hked you," she said> simply. SYDNEY. 201 *'Well, and do you suppose that doesn't call for gratitude ?" "Does it, do you think? When people like one another, do they not receive as much as they give ?" '*I can't see it in that way," he said. " I think everything you give me is a boon, and everything T give you seems to be yours of right." " Then your judgment, I am afraid, is a little astray," she answered, and laughed. " I get more and more encroaching about coming here. I feel it, till I aui quite ashamed of myself," he suddenly exclaimed. "This is the third Sunday running that I have imposed myself upon you. Now next Sunday" — in a tentative way — " I must stay away, I suppose ?" " I don't know why you should, if you like to come," she said, with just a touch of hesitation. 202 SYDNEY. *' I am afraid of tiring you out." " I don't think you need be afraid." " Shall I stay at home next Sunday, and come back the Sunday after ? Will that be best? Tell me not to come next Sunday, or I shall do it." " But I don't want to prevent you from doing it." " If you say that, you know, 1 shall come — as sure as fate." '^ Very well." "Do you mean really that I may ?" '* Why should you not, if you care to do it? It is always pleasant to us to have you." '' And you don't want to devote next Sunday to any other purpose ?" "Except that of talking to you?" — with a little laugh. " No, not that I know of at present." " Then if I should come (I must see if SYDNEY. 203 your mother will let me), and the evening should be fine, shall we take another walk here ? And shall we come back to this gate and talk? I should like to come here again — because of these nightingales, you know," he ended, abruptly. "To whose songs you have listened so much," she said. And then he laughed, and she said next moment that they had better be going in, for it v/as getting late. 204 CHAPTER IX. II /TRS. GODWIN and Sydney were in •^^-^ the garden together one afternoon two days after this, when Sydney, hearing the sound of wheels upon the gravel, said, "There is papa," and they turned to the avenue to meet him ; but when the carriage came in sight, they found that Mr. Godwin's place was empty, and the groom drew up and told them that he had not found his master at the station. *' Dear me! And there's no message either? How very strange!" Mrs. Godwin exclaimed; and Sydney thought it was strange, too, though she said nothing ; for her father was SYDNEY. 205 a man who in general carried his business habits strictly into private life, and that he should be detained in town, and send home no notice of his detention, was an occurrence quite unusual enough to startle her, coupled especially as it was with the fact that he had been evidently both ill and anxious of late, and that his state for some days past had given Sydney a sense of vague alarm. It had troubled her more than it had troubled Mrs. Godwin, who was a placid and sanguine-natured woman, and who be- sides had seen her husband pass through conditions of this kind before. *' These dreadful failures are what are up- setting him so ; and I am sure it is no won- der," she had said confidently to Sydney. '* I don't think he is afraid for himself, — I don't think that at all. He was just like this in ^66 J when nothing happened to us, though you know 'QQ was a terrible year, 206 SYDNEY. much worse than this has been yet. But he can't help being anxious and wearing himself out. That is his nature, poor dear, and a very bad nature it is for a man in busi- ness. I often wish he was out of it all, and I don't know why he shouldn't be, for riches don't make happiness, and I am sure we have got as much money as we want. But your father doesn't like me to talk in this way, and so I don't do it, and we must just make the best of things and not bother him." And so the gentle little woman had not bothered him, but had let herself pass through these days, not indeed without anx- iety for her husband's health, but in an ignor- ance of everything concerning his affairs that was as placid as it was complete. And Sydney was ignorant too, only her ignorance had not been placid. " In a time like this, how is it possible to SYDNEY. 207 know what may happen to anybody ?" she had thought a thousand times, though she had hardly ventured to put her thought into words; ^'and papa, I am almost certain, is not at ease. I wish I could dare to ask him ; but it would be no good, he would not tell me. And perhaps I am only frightening myself for nothing. "We are so happy, — it is all so lovely here, — it is hard to believe that trouble may be at hand." And the girl, to whom sorrow was such an unfamiliar companion, and whose heart in these months was beginning for the first time to be touched by the greatest gladness of a woman's life, would turn away from her fear, and set it behind her, and feel, at moments at least, as though what she dreaded were an incredible thing. But yet again and again the dread came back. And now this non-return of her father startled her. It was a small matter, taken 208 SYDNEY. alone, but it seemed to her an almost certain sign that something was wrong. She tried to answer her mother cheerfully when Mrs. Godwin went on wondering why he had neither come nor telegraphed, but in her heart she was uneasy with the sharpest uneasiness that she had ever known ; nor was her anxiety much relieved when about an hour later, and just before the next train was due, the expected telegram arrived, for the message that it brought was merely to the effect that Mr. Godwin was unexpectedly kept in town, and would not return home until the following day. Mrs. Godwin and Sydney read it to- gether. " Oh, dear, I am vexed !" Mrs. Godwin exclaimed at once ; but Sydney was more than vexed, and for a few moments could say nothing. For the first time her fear seemed to take actual form, — to be something more than a shadow, — to face her SYDNEY. 209 like a bodily presence, and to refuse to be set aside. *' We can't help it, but I wish he was here," she merely said softly, after a little silence. And then Mrs. Godwin went on talking, in her half plaintive way. *' He will be so worn out. He is not fit for any extra work. I wish I was with him, just to see that he got to bed, — only he wouldn't let me interfere ; he never does like to be interfered with, poor fellow," she said to Sydney, with gentle complaint. And then presently she began to wonder if there would be a letter in the morning ; but when the morning came both her hopes and Sydney's met with disappointment, for the post came in and brought them nothing. " What, he has not written ? Dear rae, I cannot understand it !" she exclaimed^ blankly then. VOL. I. r 210 SYDNEY. But still after a little while she recovered her spirits. " Well, at any rate, as he has not written, he will be sure to come at the usual hour," she said, hopefully, and in this expectation she began quietly to go about her customary household duties. It was a longer and a harder day to Sydney than to her. All day the girl waited and counted the hours, with a cold fear holding possession of her. She often thought afterwards that it was strange how, eager as she was for intelligence, it should never have occurred to her all throusjh those hours to look at the newspaper that lay unopened on the table. The thing that she feared was clear to her own mind, but that it could have already become a fact, pro- claimed to the world, was too terrible even to strike her once. Very early in the day she saw Mr. Loudoun speaking to one of the servants in SYDNEY. 211 the avenue, and it gave her a momentary feeling of surprise both that he should come at that hour and that, having come, he should turn back without entering the house, and she asked the servant presently if he had left no message. '^No, he didn't, Miss. He was wanting the master," the man answered. " And did you tell him that my father slept in town last night ?" Sydney in- quired. And then the man said, " Yes, Miss, I did. I told him that, and he seemed rather put out." '' I wonder what he wanted !" Sydney thought. But yet, uneasy though she was, it did not occur to her then to feel any alarm at Mr. Loudoun's visit. She did not at the moment connect it with her anxiety about her father. At the usual hour they sent the carriage p2 212 SYDNEY. again to meet Mr. Godwin, and, as the time came near for its return, the mother and daui^hter stood toojether at one of the drawing-room windows watching for it. The first moment that it came in sight Mrs. Godwin gave a little joyful exclamation. *' Ah, there he is !" she said. " I was sure he would come by this train. It is all right." And, with a happy smile upon her lips, she hurried out into the hall ; but the smile first faded away, and then passed into a look of helpless terror when she saw her husband's face. He stepped down from his seat, and came slowly into the hall, giving no sign of recognition to either her or Sydney. *' Why, George ! — why, George !" the poor woman said, in a startled voice, and caught him by the arm. " Oh, my dear, you are ill !" she cried next moment. He said nothing, but he let her take him SYDNEY. 213 by the hand, and lead him to the drawing- room door. Two or three of the servants were standing by with wide-opened eyes. They probably all knew already what the poor wife did not know. Half clinging to her husband, and half trying to support him, she passed with him into the room, and Sydney followed them, and closed the door. "Are you both here ?" he said, suddenly. They were the first words he had spoken, and he stood still for a moment, and half turned his head. ''Yes, father," Sydney answered. "Then come — sit down with me," he said. They took him to the nearest sofa, and sat down one on either side of him, and then he felt for their hands, and, grasping them, held them in silence, in a close clasp that grew presently convulsive, while his 214 SYDNEY. face quivered and worked till Sydney could not bear it, but with a cry of passionate pity threw herself upon his neck. She asked no questions ; she knew that she needed to ask none. " Oh, my darling, don't tremble so — don't take it like this !" she only began to sob. " Mother, kiss him — say something to comfort him. Oh, my dear, we are all to- gether — we can bear it, however bad it is !" the girl cried, in her quivering voice. The poor wife was still looking at him in miserable bewilderment. " George, I don't understand — " she said, trembling, and almost below her breath. "The other understands," he only an- swered. But, after he had said this, he turned his haggard, pathetic face to her, — and then all at once she too knew the truth, and a mo- ment afterwards she was clasping him, like SYDNEY. 215 Sydney, in her arms, with such words of love and consolation as women use at times like these. Early that morning Mr. Loudoun had read the announcement of Mr. Godwin's failure in the Times; and poor Frederick Marmaduke, too, had read it as he and Mr. Horton sat at breakfast in their chambers. " More failures in the city," he had said, glancing his eye over the column in which they were announced. " Simcox and Rutland, wool merchants. Gascoigne and — God bless me !" he suddenly exclaimed, and stared at the paper for a moment longer, and then dashed it to the ground. " What ! you don't mean that Gascoign e and Godwin are down ?" cried Mr. Horton . He picked the paper up, for the other made no answer, and began to read for himself. '' Well, yes, it's Godwin's firm, sure enough, 216 SYDNEY. and a precious bad business it seems to be too," he said. '' It will be an entire smash, I imagine, of the whole concern ; and that pretty place down there — and that nice pair of women Upon my soul, Marmaduke," he said, earnestly, all at once, '' I am sorry for you." "Good Heavens, what will become of them !" poor Marmaduke ejaculated. He had been sitting for a minute staring blankly through the opposite window ; on the sud- den he looked up eagerly into Mr. Horton's face. " I must go down — I think I must go down," he said, hesitatingly. " Go down? What the devil for?" ex- claimed Mr. Horton. *' Because they will expect it. I think she will,' — and I might do something — possi- bly," he said, in an agitated way. " There's not a mortal thing you could do — except one, and that is out of the ques- SYDNEY. 217 tion. Confound it, man," cried the other, ^' I'm as sorry for you as I can be. but you might as well put your head into a hornet's nest as go down there just now. You would never come away again until you had asked the girl to marry you, — and then, if she accepted you, where would you be ?" *' I should not ask her to marry me," retorted Mr. Marmaduke, rather fiercely. *' I have never had any thought of doing that for many a month to come, if I ever do it at all." " Well, that may be ; you're such an un- commonly cool sort of fellow that I can believe it ; but, if you didn't feel your tongue quickened when you saw her in trouble, you would be a queerer lover even than I take you to be. Come, old boy," Mr. Horton said, and he suddenly changed his tone, and, rising from his seat, put his hand on his friend's shoulder, ^' don't go and run your- 218 SYDNEY. self into danger. You can't do any good. It won't do. Think of your father." '^ Well, and do you suppose I am not thinking of him ?" cried the poor young man, in a fury. And then Mr. Horton wisely held his tongue ; but he had gained his point, and his friend made no effort that day to go down to Broadbelt. He neither went to Broadbelt on that day nor for several succeeding days ; in fact he was in twenty moods about his visit, and, do what he would, he could not come to any conclusion as to whether he should pay it or not. Of course he desired to pay it with all his heart ; he was not such a lag- gard in love as to have any doubt about that ; but what troubled him, till it gave him little rest either by day or night, was the question of what he could say to Sydney when he saw her, how he could express his SYDNEY. 219 sympathy to her without involving himself in the expression of something more than sympathy, how he could retain his present position with regard to her without compro- mising himself as to the future. For the truth was that he was in love wath her, and yet he was not so deeply in love as to feel that he was willing to lose, or even to risk, all things for her sake. His father was a worldly and prudent old man, and he had not been made without some grains in him of his father's nature. He loved Sydney so well that, if at this time he had been his own master, he no doubt would have decided without hesitation to ask her to marry him ; but, as it was, — not being, that is to say, his own master at all, but entirely dependent on a father whom he knew would (theoretically at least) almost as soon see him in his grave as the husband of a bankrupt's penniless daughter — he sadly 220 SYDNEY. told himself that it would be impossible for him to do what in his heart he wished. All that pleasant castle that the poor young man had been erecting for himself of late, had fallen to the ground with a clap as he read the announcement of Mr. Godwin's failure. He was miserable about Sydney ; he said to himself almost passionately that he must go to see her ; he told himself that he could not endure not to see her ; his days became unhappy and his nights restless because of her; but yet he never once said that in spite of fortune, and in spite of his father, if she would have him he would marry her. On the contrary, he declar- ed, with a wisdom and prudence possibly a little rare in a lover, that to marry her now had become a thing out of his power. His was a cool nature, perhaps, and yet too he suffered pretty keenly. If Sydney were gone beyond his reach her sweetness SYDNEY. 221 did not, at least, seem the less to him be- cause he had lust her. ^' You might write to some of them. I don't say that there would be any harm in writing," Mr. Horton growled out to him rather impatiently, when on the second day he had begun to get a good deal tired of his friend's moping and misery. "You can be on your guard in a letter. It's not the same as meeting people face to face. I would write to Mrs. Godwin if I were you." '' What is the good of writing when you don't know what to say ?" the other retorted,, angrily. But yet he began to meditate on his friend's advice, and, before the day came to an end, he took it. He wrote to Mrs. God- win, and the composition of his letter gave him an undoubted though a melancholy satis- faction. It was a kind, and even an ardent letter, full of warm and genuine sympathy. 222 • SYDNEY. It told Mrs. Godwin how he longed to see them, — how his first impulse had been to come to them, only he had not dared ; he said he was forcing himself for a little long- er to keep away, but it could only be for a little longer ; if it should be for no more than half an hour they must let him see them soon, he wrote. And then he told them how the thought that they were in dis- tress was haunting him day and night, how he was thinking constantly of all the happy hours he had spent with them, — those hours that he could never forget ; and so he went on, through four pages, the eloquent words slipping from his pen only too easily and quickly. Indeed, after he had once begun, he found that the difficulty was not to write but to stop writing. His heart grew hot within him, as he thought that Sydney's eyes would read the lines that he w^as tracing ; of course they were all in reality meant for her, SYDNEY. 223 though he had to address his letter to her mother ; she would read thera, and would she also guess, he asked himself, all that he did not dare to speak ? " Oh, my darling !" the poor fellow murmured to himself, when his work was done. Was there any hope left in the future for him ? — any chance that in the years to come it would ever be in his power to regain what he was losing now? There were moments when he told himself that he could not give her up, — that it would be better for him to tell her that he loved her, even though he should have to wait for her half his life, and one such moment came now as he kissed his letter because her hands would touch it, and for a little while (but only for a little while) let his mind lose its balance. Even before Mr. Marmaduke's letter reached Mrs. Godwin, there were out- 224 • SYDNEY. ward and visible changes at Broadbelt. •MVhat are you going to do?" Mr. Loudoun had asked them, coming up again on the evening of the day on which Mr. Godwin had returned home ; and when no one was ready at once with an answer he said, " What I want to propose is that, until something is settled, you should become my guests. You see/' he went on, '' it is undesir- able for you to keep up this house even for a day longer, you know, but my house, is at your service for as long as you will consent to make use of it. Better stop expenses here at once. If you will do what seems best to me, you will send the servants off to-morrow, merely leaving some one — Williams and his wife, or whoever you like — in charge of the place, and then come and stay with me. Will you do this, Mrs. Godwin? or can you think of anything better to suggest ?" She could not think of anything better, or SYDNEY. 225 at least of anything half so advantageous to themselves, but at first neither she nor Sydney would consent to do what he wished. It was only after he had urged them strongly and repeatedly that they agreed to accept his hospitality. '^ Surely your coming to me is a natural thing?" he argued with them. "To what other neighbour would you go ? I have no one's inclination but my own to consult ; I think you will be at least as much at home with me as you could be with anyone. The whole house will be at your disposal ; you may be as much mistresses of it and as inde- pendent as you are here. Do not refuse to come. You will disappoint me greatly if you do." They yielded after that. The tears came to Mrs. Godwin's eyes, and she put her hand in his. '^ We will come then," she said. " I should VOL. I. Q 226 SYDNEY. like to come. I — I daresay it will be best, as you say, to stop everything here at once. That will be best, George, won't it?" she asked, timidly. It seemed to the poor little woman as if she hardly knew yet how to address her husband, — as if these last hours had flung her into a new world, in which he and everything else were strange. She had been sitting by his side for a long time, holding his hand in hers, but though he had per- mitted that sign of tenderness he had hardly in any way responded to it. He was not the kind of man who, even at a crisis like this, could talk out his troubles with the women of his household. He had sat brooding over them, answering a few questions that they asked him now and then without impatience (he seemed too broken down to be impatient), but volunteering no information, giving no directions, submit- SYDNEY. 227 ting merely but not responding to their caresses. " Loudoun is very kind. Do what he bids you," was all he said now, in answer to his wife's question. " I will come over again in the morning," Mr. Loudoun told them before he went away. " Mr. Godwin, I suppose, will have to be in town again ? but I shall be entirely at your service, and I hope you will make all the use of me that you can." And so in the morning he did return, and a little while after he came, contriving to be alone for a few minutes with Mrs. Godwin, he said to her very frankly, " I want you to consent, without saying anything to the others, or at least without saying anything to Sydney, to draw upon me for whatever ready money you want. You must let all wages and small accounts be cleared off, you know, and to do that may q2 228 SYDNEY. need more than you have in the house. I couldn't say this to Sydney, but you and I are very old friends, and you won't take my interference amiss." He put his purse on the table at her side as he spoke ; but she flushed all over when he did this, and burst into tears. The hith- erto unknown humiliations of poverty were hard to her to bear. *' Oh, I can't take it— I can't !" she said, at the first moment; but after a minute he made her take it. He said a few strong words to her that broke down her resist- ance. ^' I would gladly share everything I have with you and yours," he told her. " I am too old to ask you to treat me as your son, but treat me at least as if I were your brother, and let me do the little that is in my power for you. Only say nothing to Sydney," he repeated, emphatically. And SYDNEY. 229 then he added, with a laugh, ^* She is too young to be wise." It was easy enough to say nothing to Sydney, for their changed fortunes were as yet so unfaniihar to her that the thought of her mother being in actual want of money to discharge the day's expenses was a thing that luckily did not occur to her. She saw Mrs. Godwin portioning out her little piles of gold without a suspicion of where they came from. " Have you to pay away all that, mother ?" she merely said once, in a tone of half re- gret, trying, w^ith a strange sense of unreality, to take in the new knowledge that money henceforward would have a value for them that it had never had before. How unreal indeed the whole world seemed to-day to Sydney ! She went about the house, gathering the little personal things together that Mr. Loudoun had advis- 230 SYDNEY. ed her and her mother to remove at once. " Shall we have to sell this place?" she had asked Mr. Loudoun, half reluctantly, looking wistfully at him when he gave this direction to her; and when he answered as gently as he could, "I fear it will have to be sold," she said nothing more, but began quietly to do as he had told her. Both she and her mother were almost blankly in the dark yet as to the extent of her father's losses; theyhad been great, they of course un- derstood ; they should have to live in future very differently from how they had lived hitherto ; but everything at any rate could not be gone, they thought. " If we sell this house we shall get a good deal for it, surely," Sydney said innocently, to herself. But was it never indeed to be home to them any more ? The girl had been born here, she had lived here for twenty-one yearSy SYDNEY. 231 there was not a foot of the gardens and grounds she knew so well that was not dear to her, not a room that had not its as- sociations with happy days. If she could have believed that she was going away from it all for ever, it seemed to her that it would break her heart ; but it was all incredible to her : she went about the work she was told to do like some one in a dream. Had they been allowed to do as they wished, both Mrs. Godwin and Sydney would have lingered at Broadbelt beyond this day. They had more work to do than could be done in a few hurried hours, and they would gladly have stayed till it could be completed ; but the house was already in confusion, the servants were taking their departure, and Mr. Loudoun urged their coming to him without delay so strongly that he gained his point, and in the quiet summer evening he drove them through the 232 SYDNEY. avenue along which they were never to pass again with any sense of returning home. That young happy life of Sydney's ended to- night, as the carriage turned into the road and the lodge -keeper closed the gates behind it. 233 CHAPTER X. II TR. LOUDOUN'S house, which was 1.1 A. generally merely called the Hall, was only a mile from Broadbelt. It was an older place than Mr. Godwin's, and, if not perhaps larger, was altogether a house of greater note and name. The Loudouns too occupied a different position in the county from that which Mr. Godwin held. They had been possessors of the Hall for long gener- ations, and for many a day past, at any rate, had been wholly guiltless of any connection with trade. The last Mr. Loudoun had sat for the county for many years, and the present was also spoken of as a possible 234 SYDNEY, future member. In his youth he had entered himself at the bar, but he had never prac- tised. While he was still quite young his father's death had brought the property into his hands, and since that time he had lived with his mother at the Hall in a quiet and rather studious way. It was a picturesque old turreted house, built of grey stone, and with great part of it covered with ivy, — with stately and rather formal gardens, which Sydney used to laugh at, though she half liked them too. She had often walked in them, and spent pleasant enough hours in them in old Mrs. Loudoun's time. " I never thought to receive you here with so much sorrow," Mr. Loudoun said to her to-night. She was standing in the twilight by one of the windows as he said this, doing nothing (for what had she got to do, or to try even to SYDNEY. 235 do, in this new empty place ?) merely look- ing blankly before her with eyes that hardly saw what they were gazing at, and thoughts that had gone far away. "No — our visits have always been so pleasant hitherto — so unlike this one," she answered him, wearily. She turned away the next moment, as if she had no heart to talk to him. "It all seems too strange to understand," she only said, half below her breath. There were some letters sent up from Broadbelt the next morning, and amongst them was Mr. Marmaduke's. Sydney, who received it first, passed it on to her mother without a word ; but Mrs. Godwin as she read it began to cry, and then at that sight the colour came uncontrollably to the girl's face. ^' Oh, it is such a kind letter — it is such a beautiful letter, my dear," the good soul 236 SYDNEY. said softly when she had finished it, and then she passed it on to Sydney. *' It is from Mr. Marmaduke," she explained to Mr. Loudoun, still with her eyes full of tears. '' Poor young fellow, he is so sorry for us; I knew he would be." Sydney had placed herself, perhaps inten- tionally, where they could not see her face, and she read the letter and put it back into its envelope in silence. ''Isn't it very nice, Sydney ?" her mother asked, presently, but she merely answered, "Yes," very quietly. She sat for a little while afterwards without speaking, while Mrs. Godwin went on talking to Mr. Loudoun. It could hardly be but that the girl had thoughts in her heart during these days that she could share with no one. One figure had mingled too largely in her life of late for even the shock of such a blow as had fallen upon them now to be able to banish it. SYDNEY. 237 And yet, if anything could have banished it, this disaster might have done so, for it literally to the Godwins changed the whole -world. It was so great that, as was natural, they could not at first grasp the extent of it; their ears received the fact that they were ruined, but their minds only gradually and with a bewildered effort took in the truth that ruin meant beggary ; for in their case it did mean that. " George, shall we have nothing left at all ?" Mrs. Godwin said trembling, to her husband after a few days had passed ; and he answered, bitterly and sullenly, ^'No- thing." " I have not a penny in the world," he repeated, after a few moments' silence. ''Syd- ney has that fifty pounds a year from your sister's legacy ; if she will share it with us, perhaps we shall be able to get bread enough to keep as from the workhouse." 238 SYDNEY. And then for a little while the poor wo- man sat almost paralysed. " But what are we to do then ? Good Heavens, George, what are we to do ?" she said presently ; and he could not tell her. He only answered with a groan, " God knows." He was so broken down that he could give her no help : all the steady perseverance that he had had throughout his life, all the power that he had had till now, had collapsed utterly, -as if the blow he was forced to bear had crushed him. " Oh, Mr. Loudoun, it is terrible to me to see him," Mrs. Godwin said to her host ; *' and what are we to do ? what is to become of us ? We can't stay here, and I don't know where we are to go next. George can't help me to decide anything. I could get a little money to begin with, for Sydney and I have our few jewels, you know, and they would bring something if they could SYDNEY. 239 be sold ; but, if George can do nothing, what are we to live on afterwards ?" *' You must let your friends help you. It is a case in which you must submit to take help," Mr. Loudoun answered, rather hesi- tatingly. " But I have no friends that I have any claim upon." " You have one here," he said. '* You mean yourself? Oh, yes, I know that; but you have done only too much already." *^I have done nothing yet that is worth speaking of. If you want to make me feel that you trust me, you must let me do a great deal more." "• But, Mr. Loudoun, I could not. Oh, you are very good," she said, nervously, ^' I can't speak of your goodness ; but, even if I were willing to take more from you, the others would not do it. At least Sydney 240 SYDNEY. would not. She doesn't know half of what you have done now, and yet even already she is getting restless, and saying that we are letting you do too much for us." "Sydney is a foolish girl," he answered. "Tell her nothing, and leave me to manage her." " But I can't tell her nothing. She will insist upon knowing everything." " Well, sell those jewels then, if you like. 1 will get them sold for you. Let her see the money they bring, and that will keep her quiet. But can't you have another purse in your pocket that she need not know anything about ? You look as if you thought me very unconscientious for trying to persuade you to deceive her," he said, with a sudden laugh. "Oh, but that is non- sense ! When people are unreasonable they had better be deceived." ** I am all at sea," she said plaintively. SYDNEY. 241 " I never had a head for planning. The others used to plan; but now it seems all to be coining on my shoulders, and I don't know what to do." "Do what I ask you," he replied. '' Take the help that it is so easy for me to give. And, as for your going away, if you want to leave me I won't oppose you, — only, where do you want to go ?" " I don't know," she said, helplessly. "You had better consult with Mr. Godwin and Sydney. Take Sydney's opinion upon that question if you like. With re- gard to the other," he said, with emphasis, "let me decide for you. Tell Sydney nothing, and do as I wish." She would not agree then, but in the end she did agree. He said to her, "It is quite clear that Mr. Godwin is too broken down at this moment to make any plans about the future. You must wait and see VOL. I. R 242 SYDNEY. what complete rest can do for him. In six months he may be a different man from what he is now. Say in the meantime that I merely help you to get through these six months ? Other arrangements, if you like, may be made after that. But surely you will let me at least do this small thing ?" And then finally she let him do it. She promised that she would borrow so much from him as would enable them, with the help of the little they could gather together of their own, to live during the next few months. " Only, say nothing to Sydney," he once more repeated ; and she thought that she wholly understood, from her own know- ledge of Sydney's character, why he was so earnest in desiring that she should be kept in ignorance of the arrangement they had made, and readily gave him her promise to be silent. SYDNEY. 243 But, though she thought that she understood, she was mistaken, for something had passed very lately between Sydney and Mr. Loudoun of which she did not know. There had always been a certain intimacy between Mr. Loudoun and Sydney. She liked him, and was less reserved with him than it was her habit to be with people generally; yet perhaps just at this special time his very kindness, which wounded her pride a little, made her unconsciously treat him with a touch of coldness. He had come to their aid when she hardly wanted him to have come to it, and she was a little sore be- cause they had been forced to take so much from him. She had once or twice already begun to speak to Mrs. Godwin of her desire to get away from his house. '* I would rather go anywhere else and live on ever so little. I know how good he is, but we 244 SYDNEY. have in reality no claim upon him, and I cannot bear to feel that he is giving us the ver}^ bread we eat," she had said. And so, though she knew she ought to be grateful to him, and though with her reason she teas grateful, still in her heart she did not feel more but less cordially to him than she had been accustomed to do in the days when she owed him less. She had been saying something to him about her desire to go away one evening, when they happened to be together for a little in the garden. By this time ten days had passed since they had left Broadbelt ; the necessary work that they had had to do there was all ended ; following the first confusion and the hurry of departure there had come a heavy and dreary lull. *'We have nothing left to keep us here," Sydney said this evening, abruptly, " and I think we ought to make arrangements now SYDNEY. 245 for 2;oin£j somewhere else. I would rather go at once, for I shall never feel as if we were awake until we are away." '' And where do you want to go to ?" he asked, when she said that. "I have been trying to think," she answered, after a few moments, rather tremulously. *' It will perhaps depend mainly on where we can go. Are there not places abroad where people can live more cheaply than in England?" she asked, reluctantly. " And would it be possible " — and she turned her face to him — " tell me honestly — do you think it would be possi- ble for me to earn anything by teaching ?" " What could you earn that would help to keep a house ?" he said. ^' We could not take a house, of course," she answered. "W^e have fifty pounds a-year left ; we have a few things that w^e could sell (mamma and I have been talking 246 SYDNEY. of it), and if I could get a little by giving lessons, I thought we might possibly manage till — till papa got better." " And then ?" he said. " Oh, how can I tell you that?" she an- swered, impatiently. " One can only try to look forward for a little way ; the future will get provided for somehow — perhaps." '' Will you let me provide for it ?" he said, after a few moments' silence. He spoke in a low voice, but not without some unmistakeable emotion. "If there were not a strong reason for doing it, I would not speak to you now, Sydney, — but you will understand why I take this moment to ask 3^ou if you will be my wife." "/.^" she answered, almost indignantly. Her first impulse was one of actual anger; the colour flamed up in her face. For the moment she gave him no credit for loving her; she thought that in making his SYDNEY. 247 offer he was only impelled by a Quixotic passion for conferring benefits. ** You know I will not. Do you think we do not owe you too much already ?" she said, in no very gracious tone, after only a few moments' pause. '^I don't know what you suppose you owe me," he answered, quietly; *'but what- ever it may be, it seems to me a curious moment to throw the fact of it in my face, when I am asking so great a thing from you as I have just done. You can never be my debtor ; you may be deeply assured of that, whatever answer you give me now. I have loved you too long not to owe you far more than I can ever, I fear, make you owe to me." " I do not know how to believe that you mean this," she said, after a few moments, in a faltering voice. Her first tone had changed ; she began to see that he was in 248 SYDNEY. earnest in saying that he cared for her, but she was terribly troubled at seeing it. " We have always been friends, and nothing more," she said. ''I never could be any- thing more than a friend to you ; I never could think of you as anything else." '' You have never thought of me as any- thing else hitherto, but how do you know that you could not do it?" he answered. *' I tell you again that if I could have chosen my time, I would not have spoken to you at this moment, for I am not fool enough to suppose that you have any feeling for me yet, except one of very ordinary regard; but, Sydney, it is possible for ordinary regard to become something else ; you have known me for a long time, and I hope you believe that I aiu at least worthy to be trusted ; do you think, for your father's and mother's sakes, that you could not find it possible to give yourself to me, knowing how it would relieve SYDNEY. 249 them of a great difficulty, how it would make it simple and natural for them to take the support from me that I do not know how to make them consent to take now." "" Oh, do not say all this to me ! I can- not bear it !" the girl cried, suddenly, in a tone of passion. And then he did not answer her, and they walked on in silence for some moments be- fore he spoke again. What could she say to him beyond re- peating that first declaration that she could not marry him ? When he told her that by becoming his wife she might save her mother and father from want, he seemed to be plunging a knife into her heart, and yet she still cried passionately to herself that she could not become his wife. It was not only that she was indifferent to him. She might have been merely indifferent once, but now a wild, desperate feeling came 250 SYDNEY. over her that, rather than be driven to be- long to him, she would throw her life away — her life, her youth, everything that she cared for and clung to. '' I cannot do it," she said, hurriedly, after two or three minutes' silence. *' I seem selfish to you, I suppose — I am selfish, I can believe, — but yet if I tried to do what you want I should break down. You don't know what it is," she cried, with sudden indignation, " to talk of a woman marrying you when she has no love for you. You mean kindly by us all, perhaps, — I suppose you do ; but when you urge me like this, when you tell me what you will do for us if I marry you, you are simply trying to make me a shame and a horror to myself." She was not treating him very generously, perhaps, for he had scarcely deserved so bitter a reproach from her, and possibly he felt that, for he made no answer for a little SYDNEY. 251 while, and then he said, in rather a changed tone, "Let us say no more. I can only be sorry that I have spoken to you, but I ask you to forgive me for having pressed you for a moment to do what you consider so base a thing." " I did not say that it was base," she ejaculated, half deprecatingly, but he took no notice of her interruption. He merely added after a moment, *'Try as far as you can to forget what I have said to you." *' I will try. I shall want nothing so much as to forget," she answered, quickly. And then they neither of them spoke again till they came near the house, when she stood still, and looked hesitatingly and timidly into his face, and all at once, " You won't say anything to my mother, will you?" she asked. " If you did, she might 252 SIDNEY. think I ought to have answered you differ- ently, and — oh, it is bad enough as it is !" cried the girl, almost with a sob; "you have made me n:iserable enough without that !" " Do not let me think that I have made you miserable," he answered, quickly. *' You ought not to be, — you need not be. Of course no one shall know anything from me. Do not reproach me if you can help it. I may seem base to you, and yet God knows if I would have vexed you with any wishes of my own at present if I had not been thinking more of you and your difficulties than of myself." ''Oh, yes, I know ; I daresay I was unjust to you," she said, sadly. And then she stood still for a few moments; but after these mo- ments she looked at him again, and — " Only you do not understand what you have done — at least, you do not seem to understand SYDNEY. 253 it," she said, abruptly, and with agitation. "An hour ago I knew no way in which I could help them ; now you have told me a way, and the thought of what I have refused to do will haunt me. You ought not to have told me what you have. If you had really cared for me, do you suppose you would have done it?" And she turned away from him with her voice quivering, and her face suddenly hot, and would have gone into the house, but he called her back. " You must not let these be the last words between us," he said. *'Come here again. Walk with me once more round the lawn." And then, when she came — for she did come — '' If I cared for you," he went on, " I would not have asked you to marry me, you say? Do you suppose I should have asked you, then, if I had not cared for you? What could have induced me to make such a proposal to you at this, or any 254 * SYDNEY. Other time, unless I loved you ? You have been dearer to me than any words of mine can tell you for years past. I do not know whether you will believe this or not (for you do not seem to be much in- clined to believe anything that I say to you), but I tell it you for my own justification. I cannot even imagine what you suppose, except genuine affection for you, could ac- count for my asking you to marry me ?" '' Oh — I don't know. I am very unhappy. I — I beg your pardon," she said, tremu- lously. " I don't want you to beg my pardon, dear ; and, if I have made you unhappy, heaven knows I am sorry for it. But could I let you go away without saying this to you ? Try to put yourself for a moment in my place. Could I have remained silent, and have let you go, while there existed a SYDNEY. 255 chance that, if I had spoken, I might have kept you with me ?" " But you knew I did not care for you," she said, quickly. " I knew you had only a friendly feeling for me, but I thought that possibly it might be strong enough to make you willing to become my wife. You have shown me very plainly how mistaken I was. And yet even now, at this moment, Sydney,'^ he said, suddenly and passionately, " if you would give yourself to me, do you think I would not take you ?" She made an impatient movement, and the blood came to her face. But, though she seemed about to speak, she controlled herself, and her lips, which had parted, quickly closed again. Then, after a few moments, he added in a different tone, "I must lose you now, I am well aware. 256 • SYDNEY. Do not suppose that I fail to understand that, or that I shall annoy you at present by saying anything more about this matter. If we both live I will try my chance with you again, but for the remaining time that you stay here do not be afraid that I shall trouble you. God bless you, Sydney," he suddenly said. " Thank God that, reject me as you may, you cannnot make yourself less dear to me." '' I wish I could ! Oh, I wish I could !" slie answered, hurriedly and vehemently ; and then they had reached the house again, and she turned away from him and went in without another word, almost sobbing as slie ran upstairs with the excitement that she had tried to repress. She was not flattered by the proposal that Mr. Loudoun had made to her ; she was not pleased with it even in the bottom of her heart. She had so little of a co- SYDNEY. 257 qiiette in her nature that when she reached her own room she burst into genuine tears of distress and regret. She was angry with Mr. Loudoun with what even she herself felt to be an unreasonable answer. She was so angry that she began to allow herself to recoil from hira. His offer seemed to her like some cruel thing made by hira to tempt her. She had rejected it instantly, with quick, and, indeed, with unnecessary indig- nation ; but, though she had rejected it, how could she forget what he had told her, that if she would marry him she would make the future easy for the people who were dearest to her in the world ? " He should not have said that — it was ungenerous of him ; a nobler kind of man would never have done it," she went on crying bitterly to herself. She was not, you see, either very tender or very just to Mr. Loudoun ; but it is some- VOL. I. S 258 SYDNEY. times not easy to be just to the people who offer us more than we desire to accept, and bestow an affection upon us that we cannot return, and place themselves in such a rela- tion to us that we writhe beneath the sense that we are their debtors, and that by their generosity they are heaping coals of fire upon our heads. There was little that Mr. Marmaduke found himself in a position to do for Sydney's benefit, yet I am afraid that the expression of his impotent sympathy had roused feelings of ten times warmer gratitude in the girl's heart than ever were awakened there by all Mr. Loudoun's help and kindness put together. When the young man came out one day presentl}', as he did, to the Hall, and looked into Syd- ney's eyes and silently wrung her hand, he moved her more in a moment than all Mr. Loudoun's efforts could have done in six months. SYDNEY. 259 Mrs. Godwin had answered that letter of Mr. Marmaduke's, and had told him to come some day and see them. " Not quite yet, but in a little while," she wrote, — " if you really won't mind coming only for a call, for you know we have no house now to ask you to. But we should like you to come, if you would, just to bid you good- bye ; for your letter has made us feel, even more than we did before, that you are one of the few friends whom we should be glad to see at least once more before we go away." It was on a Tuesday that he had this note, and on the following Sunday he went down to the Hall. He went with some doubt as to whether he was not making his visit too soon, but it seemed to him already like years since he had parted last from Sydney, and his desire to see her again had become too strong for him to resist, so he s2 260 SYDNEY. went; and though, when he asked for Mrs, Godwin at the door, the servant to whom he spoke replied with some hesitation that he hardly thought Mrs. Godwin was at home, he had no sooner sent in his name than he was admitted, and in another min- ute, with his heart beating in great throbs, he found himself once more in Sydney's presence. They were all three sitting in the room together, Mrs. Godwin near her husband, Sydney alone by one of the windows, with a book on her knees. Hardlv a word was spoken as the young man came in. Mrs. Godwin gave him some half-inaudible wel- come, but Mr. Godwin said nothing, and Sydney's face only flushed for a moment as she rose at his approach. "I was so grateful to you for your letter," lie said to Mrs. Godwin. He had already shaken hands with her SYDNEY. 261 once, but after he had greeted Sydney he went back to her and grasped her hand again. " I can t tell you how good I feel it is of you to let me come. I have been thinking of you constantly, day and night," he said. *' Yes, I knew you would be sorry," the poor little woman answered, in rather a trembling voice. *' And everybody has been so kind, so very kind. But sit down now, and tell us about yourself. We don't talk much about our own troubles — not before Mr. Godwin," she said, in a quick aside. He took his place in the midst of them, and they began to talk of common things, almost as if he had been paying them an ordinary visit. Mrs. Godwin had resumed her seat by her husband's side, and Sydney came to another chair near to them. Now and then, as they talked, one or other of 262 SYDNEY. the women spoke to Mr. Godwin, putting some question to him, or making some effort to draw him ij;ito their conversation, but he merely replied shortly to anything they said, and then relapsed into silence. " We can't rouse him now to take interest in anything," Mrs. Godwin said sadly once, below her breath. It was rather a dreary half hour that they spent together ; they all did their best, but the talk only grew more and more diffi- cult, till at last it almost ceased, and then Mr. Marmaduke, with a little hesitation, rose and said, '' I am afraid I ought to go and catch my train." He held out his hand to Mrs. Godwin. The little woman's lips trembled, and the tears came to her eyes. Half aloud she said, *'God bless you." Then he took leave of Mr. Godwin, and turned to Sydney, ''Will you come down to the gate with me ? I SYDNEY. 263 want to speak to you," he said to her, in a low voice. Without any hesitation she answered, *' Yes," and they left the room together. " I could not bear to go away without seeing something of you," he said, eagerly, as soon as they were in the open air. " How can I tell you how I have been thinking of you all these days? I don't know how to bear it all. Simply and truly that is the only way in which I can put it. I am afraid you think I am a brute not to say first that I don't know how you are to bear it, but literally I do not believe this can be as terrible to you as it is to me ; upon my life, I do not. My loss is greater than yours, for you have only to bear the loss of fortune, while 1 — " and then he broke off, or she interrupted him. " I like you to be sorry for us," she said, simply, though with a little tremor in her 264 SYDNEY, voice. "There are some people whose sympathy is a burden, but I am glad to have yours. And I am glad too that you have come," she said, and looked at him straight- ly and honestly, ^'for I should have been grieved not to have said good-bye to you." " Where are you going that you talk of saying good-bye ?" he asked, quickly. " I think we are going to Switzerland, but I am not quite sure. Mr. Loudoun is making some inquires," she said this with a perhaps unconscious touch of coldness in her voice, " and we have to wait to see what he learns before we decide. He is trying to get some pupils for me." ''Some pupils? Shall you have to teach? Has it really come to that?" he said, hurriedly. *' Did you not know ?" she answered, with the colour getting suddenly a little deeper in her cheek. SYDNEY. 265 "I knew nothing positive]}^ I only feared — Have you lost — everything?" "Yes, everything; except only a little legacy that was left to me two years ago. Perhaps I ought not to have told you this," she said, quickly, after a moment, " only you will not repeat it, I know." He made no answer to her, but merely walked on, hardly seeing the sunshine, hard- ly knowing where his steps were going, only conscious of a conflict within him that seemed to him to be tearing his very soul. Had he ever suffered as he was suffering now? had he ever before so longed for what was passing beyond his reach ? "Is there nothing I can do ?" he cried, passionately, after a few minutes' silence. ** I stand here beside you, as little able to help you as if I were a child, — and it is breaking my heart. Is there no way in which you can make use of me ? 266 SYDNEY. You let other people help you, and " **Do not say that I let them ; I submit to what Mr. Loudoun does because I cannot prevent it," she said, quickly, interrupting his sentence with a kind of sharp impa- tience. "Well — but at least he does help you, and here am I, who would give my life for you ! Is there nothing I can do for you — not one thing ?" "No; what could there be?" she an- swered, sadly. " What, indeed ! I ask myself that till I am weary. I feel that I am utterly help- less. If I were but my own master, — if I were only in a position to ask you to listen to me ! But it makes me mad to think of it !" cried the poor fellow. " Do not mis- judge me, that is all I pray of you ; do not misjudge me, Sydney." "I am not likely to do that," she an- SYDNEY. 267 swered, in a low, grave voice, though the colour was in her face, and she did not look at him. And then after a moment she said, "I am glad that we have known one another, and that we have been friends." "The happiest hours of all my life have been the hours that I have spent with you," he said. "Do you think that I shall ever forget them ? I do not know how I should have courage to work, or hope, or live now if I could believe that they were gone for ever." They had turned off the avenue into a patch of shrubbery, through which there ran a path that led to a side gate into the road. When thev had almost reached this gate, he turned round and said, "Let me walk back with you. Perhaps this may be almost the last walk that we shall have together." "It is not a year yet since I saw you 268 SYDNEY. first," he said to her, after a little while; '' it seems to me now as if all my life — all in it that was worth anything — had been gathered into these last months. Will you remember them sometimes ? I daren't ask more from you than that; but will you sometimes think of them ?" " Am I likely to be so happy that I shall forget them ?" she asked, with a little sud- den jar in her voice. But the next moment she made a strong effort, and regained her self-control. *' I think when people are in trouble they never forget," she said, gently ; "I think they hold very fast to all the things that they ever cared for." " There is one of us two at least who will do that," he answered, passionately ; " there is one of us to whom the memory of these days will be something to carry with him to his grave." He walked back with her till the avenue SYDNEY. 269 was again within sight, and then she stood still. "I think you had better go now," she said. She was very quiet : except that some- times when she spoke her lip had quivered a little, her face almost wore its usual look ; either she felt less than he did, or she had more command over what she felt. " Yes, I suppose I must go," he answered, "but this is not good-bye; I am coming again." ** Are you ?" she said. She hesitated for a moment, but after that little hesitation she said nothing more ; they gave one another their hands, and then, for the first time that he had ever dared to do it, he stood silently holding hers in a long clasp till her eyes, which had been turned away from him at first, rose to his face — the sweetest eyes that he had ever 270 ' SYDNEY. known — the sweetest eyes, he thought, through many an after day, that he had ever seen in any woman's face. She was the first to break the silence, but she merely said '^ Good-bye " in a low voice. And then she stood quite still, with only the colour coming a little to her cheek as he suddenly lifted her hand to his lips. *' I cannot bear to go," he said, next moment, — "but I shall see you again. I shall see you soon." At the last instant as he let her go he said, '' God bless you !" in almost a broken voice. He was thinking to himself that in ano- ther week he would come back, and that he should have the bliss and the torture of another final hour with her. But before another week had gone the Godwins had left the Hall, and Mr. Marmaduke and Sydney never met again. This proved to be their last parting. A day or two SYDNEY. 271 after his visit Mr. Godwin's health grew worse, and his doctor ordered an immediate change of scene for him, so his wife and Sydney took him to Dover ; and two or three weeks afterwards, as soon as he was able to travel farther, they crossed the Channel. Mr. Loudoun had obtained a promise of two pupils for Sydney from some friends of his near Thun, in a quiet country place, where it was thought they could all live for a time at little cost, so they set out on their journey to Switzerland, Mr. Lou- doun joining them before they started, and accompanying them as far as Paris, — not much, perhaps, to Sydney's satisfaction. The girl was perverse possibly as far as Mr. Loudoun was concerned. Her heart was sore within her, and perhaps the only friend whose help would have been sweet to her was some one else than he. Before they left the Hall Mrs. Godwin 272 SYDNEY. wrote to Mr. Marraaduke, bidding good-bye to him for them all. *' I am not telling him that we are going to make any stay at Dover," she said to Sydney, *'for he might run down, if he thought we were there, and your father wouldn't like it." So Mr. Mar« maduke was merely informed that they were ordered to begin their journey at once, and a few kind words and kind regrets were added ; and then, before Mrs. Godwin folded up her note, with a sudden impulse, Sydney took the pen out of her hand, and wrote beneath her signature, " I am sorry we shall not see you any more. — S. G." She looked at the words for a moment when she had written them, and then turn- ed abruptly away; and the letter was closed, and sent to its destination, with her brief farewell in it — her only farewell to SYDNEY. 273 the man who loved her, and whom, if fate had been kinder, she might have loved in return. VOL. I. 274 CHAPTER XL TT was almost with tears that Mrs. God- -*- win parted from Mr. Loudoun at the station of the Lyons railway. But Sydney saw his departure without any such sign of emotion. And yet the girl, too, felt lonely enough when he was gone, and the long journey had begun that was to carry them farther and farther away from every face that they had ever known. In happier days she had looked forward a hundred times to this journey that they were taking now, but with what different feelings ! The day was gloomy, with grey, low-hanging SYDNEY. 275 clouds, and the level country, with its end- less lines of grey-green poplars, like scat- tered columns of an incalculable army, seemed in its monotony to lend another touch of sadness to spirits sad enough already. " I don't think this is beautiful at all. Do you call this beautiful, Sydney ?" Mrs. Godwin said once or twice, in a tone of gentle wonder. *' There are parts of France that I have seen before that I think very nice indeed, but, really, this all seems to me about the dullest place that I was ever in. For all they talk about the continent, there's a great deal more, I should say, to see in England." And she fairl}/ turned her face away from the window at last, and devoted herself to her husband and her newspaper. But Sydney all day went on gazing and thinking. As the train sped on she many a t2 276 SYDNEY. time saw other sights than the grey poplars ; while her eyes were fixed on the wide, level fields, she saw often in reality another country and another sky. A hundred visions rose before her. To her, in imagi- nation, the sun was shining, and the birds were singing in her English woods. With a great yearning and with an aching heart the girl sat thinking of days that had been sweet, and that were gone, of faces that she might never see again. They were tired enough at night when they reached Dijon, and the rain had begun to fall ; it was chill, too, and Mr. Godwin complained of the cold. They could not go out, and there was no fire in the house ; they dined and sat for half an hour in a little bare, boarded room ; and then, for very lack of knowing what else to do, they went to bed. It was all cheerless enough. But the next morning the sun rose in a cloudless SYDNEY. 277 sky, and they opened their eyes as if to a new world. That next day's journey, ending at Neu- chatel, roused even Mr. Godwin at moments out of his dull lethargy. Who can for the first time travel along that road that, through the splendours of the Val de Travers, leads to the first view of the snow-covered Alps, without feeling something in his heart before which his lips grow dumb ? Mrs. Godwin gave one half cry as the blue lake flashed suddenly into sight at last, with beyond it the great line of mountains, each snowy peak standing against the pale pure sky like a white vision ; and then for some minutes no word was spoken, hardly another sound broke from them, as they gazed till they could gaze no longer. It was on the third day after they left Paris that they reached their destination — a village on the Lake of Thun, where Mr. 278 SYDNEY. Loudoun chanced to have some friends, from whom he had obtained the situation for Sydney of English governess to their daughters, two girls of fourteen and fifteen, at the very moderate salary of eight hun- dred francs. " I am afraid you will think it is hardly worth your while to give your labour for such a small return," Mr. Loudoun had said to her, doubtfully, when he first told her of the offer he had procured for her; but she had the good sense to answer that she knew she could not expect to be paid much for anything she could do. " I have to find out yet that I can teach at all," she said. " Perhaps I shall fail alto- gether, and not be worth even my two shillings a day." Monsieur and Madame von Erlach had advised that the Godwins should take up their abode in a pension, and had kindly SYDNEY. 279 made arrangements for their reception in one that was within half a mile of their own house, — a pretty, cheerful-looking little establishment, standing on high ground, and facing the lake, with its garden full of vines and roses. " Really as nice a place as one could wish to be in, isn't it, Sydney?" Mrs. Godwin said, quite cheerfully, as, after they had been shown to their rooms by the JiUe de cJiamhre, to whom Sydney alone could make herself intelligible, she began to look about her. *' There is not a room that is not as clean and neat as if it was in England ; and, oh ! child, come out here — come to this balcony, and look at the mountains ! Sydney, I think a sight like that ought to help one to bear many things. It seems to me as if it made all that was little sink away out of one's mind." The Von Erlachs had met them at the 280 SYDNEY. tiny pier where the steamer landed them, a pair of quiet, homely-looking people, who, having married late in life, had already, though their eldest daughter was only fif- teen, almost passed middle age. They spoke English enough to enable Mrs. God- win and Madame von Erlach to talk to- gether, as, the Von Erlachs having offered to lead the way to the pension, they all walked in a group along the pretty country road. "Monsieur Loudoun, he has told me much about you. My girls have been mak- ing holiday to-day, thinking so soon to see their English governess/' Madame von Er- lach told her companion, with a kindly cordiality, and, before they parted, she invited Sydney to come up later in the day and see them. " They were a little — what you call shy, or they would have come with us now," she SYDNEY. 281 said ; '' but if mademoiselle would kindly come to us, two, three hours hence, if it should please her, — and if monsieur and madame would do us the pleasure to ac- company her " But Mrs. Godwin excused herself, on the ground that her husband was very tired, and that she should not like to leave him ; so it was arranged that Sydney should go alone ; and presently, in the afternoon, the girl took her first walk along that half-mile of road that was soon to grow so familiar to her. The Von Erlachs' was a larcre, irresrular old house, with a gabled roof, and with in- ternal arrangements that seemed quaint, and in their quaintness very charming, to Sydney. There was a fountain in the court- yard that made a cool, plashing sound, and beyond the garden stretched a vineyard, sloping down to the edge of the lake, 282 SYDNEY. and terminating in a pleasant walk, with a little, low, broad-topped parapet beside it, against which the blue water lapped. There were seats along this walk under the trees, and looking towards the mountains ; and here, seated on one of them, with books in their hands, Sydney, after a little while^ found her two pupils. " They are reading a little history. They are good girls. I told them to be tranquil, and I would bring you to them," Madame von Erlach said to Sydney, when she had received her in a large ground-floor room, where doors and windows all stood open. And so presently they went out together to the garden, and, passing by a trellised walk through the vineyard, came to the two girls sitting at their quiet occupation, in their holland frocks, with their fair, plaited hair and blue eyes and honest Swiss faces. They were not pretty ; they were, on the SYDNEY. 283 whole, decidedly plain, and they rose up to greet Sydney with more awkwardness than grace of manner. Sydney too, on her side, was shy, and so the meeting was a suffi- 6ently silent one. " Do you come here sometimes to learn your lessons ?" she said to Lotte, the elder ; and Lotte looked nervously at her mother for support, and murmured an almost in- audible " Yes." And then Sydney remarked that that must be very pleasant — after which there probably would have been silence if Madame von Erlach had not after a moment struck in with a timely remark. '*They seem very quiet," was Sydney's report to Mrs. Godwin when she returned to the pension. " Lotte looks rather stupid, I think. Marguerite seems quicker. 1 dare- say they are very good children ; but oh, mother, I wish I were not so afraid of them — I wish it did not all seem so 284 SYDNEY. Strange !" the girl said, with rather a quiver in her voice. She felt altogether, in the midst of these new scenes, in the midst of all this unfa- miliar life, as if she were some one else*; and not herself. How could it be other- wise? She had never known sorrow or poverty till now ; she had lived a life that had been so full of ease and happiness, and now the change was so bitter, — if she could believe in it. Was it better not to believe ? she sometimes thought — to go on feeling, as she did now, that she was living in a world of shadows ? The pleasant little pension was full of visitors. "And English people too, my dear!" Mrs. Godwin informed Sydney, in a tone of congratulation. She had been making in- quiries and discoveries in her daughter's absence. " There are three English people SYDNEY. 285 and five Americans. They may not all be very nice — indeed, I saw one just now who looked — well, I thought she looked rather odd ; but they will be something to speak to, at any rate, and I do like to be able to speak to people if 3^ou have to sit at meals with them." And presently the good woman, who was so much more social than Sydney or her father had ever been, when they went to din- ner fell to talking pleasantly with a rather gentlemanly-looking old man, who was her neighbour on her left hand ; while Mr. Godwin and Sydney ate their dinner almost in silence; Mr. Godwin, as usual, taking very little heed of anything that went on around him, and Sydney, in her shy reserve^ shrinking from the strange sound of the unaccustomed :^oices, and longing for the seclusion of her own table and her own house. It seemed almost as yet to her a 286 SYDNEY. sad jest to tell her that these people, whom she saw about her now, were to be her future companions, — that this place was henceforth to be her only home. Her work began next day, and after a time she began to go to it with a certain kind of pleasure. Her pupils proved dull but docile. Madame von Erlach was very kind. Her occupation was easy ; for she was only required to teach the girls to read and speak in English. She spent three hours a day with them. Presently they got fond of her in a faithful but undemonstrative sort of fashion, and their mother, too, showed her approval of her in many ways. " I am obliged to Monsieur Loudoun for hav- ing brought you to us, mademoiselle," she often said to her, cordially. One day she said, ^ " I have been writingr to Monsieur Lou- SYDNEY. 287 doun. Your good mother, too, she corre- sponds with him ? She has news of him often ? You are all very dear friends with him r *' Mr. Loudoun is an old friend of ours, and he has been very good to us," Sydney answered. *' Ah, I can believe that he is good !" Madame von Erlach responded, with en- thusiasm. *' We have not known him much — no, but we have heard already of kind things that he has done. And he is not married yet ? He lives then alone since his mother died ? Ah, it is time that he did marry. Are there none of your English girls, mademoiselle, who would like so good a husband as Monsieur Loudoun ?" She used to look at Sydney with shrewd, inquiring eyes sometimes when she put 288 SYDNEY. questions of this sort to her. She was something of a gossip, though a very kindly one, and she would gladly have had Syd- ney tell her more of her past life than the girl was ever disposed to do, or than, indeed, she ever did. '* My dear, you have known trouble. I see it in your face," she told her one day. *' You have lost your fortune — good ; I know that — but it is not the loss of fortune that makes the sorrow of young girls. "Will you not tell your grief to me ? My heart is yet soft, though I am growing old." But Sydney's only answer to this appeal was a iSush, betokening as much vexation as emotion, and rather a hasty denial that she had any confidence to give. " You are very good ; but you are mis- taken. I have no grief to tell," she said, " except what you know. My father is SYDNEY. 289 very ill, and we are very poor. When I think of these things have I not reason enough to look grave ?" And Madame von Erlach could get her to say no more. Nor did she surely need any other source of trouble than these two, which pressed upon her with a weight that never ceased, and that, as the months went on, only grew heavier. For this time of rest, from which they had hoped for so much, seemed to be doing nothing for the improvement of Mr. Godwin's health, either of body or mind, and every week that passed brought them nearer to the end of their resources. It was true that this sure diminution of their small means seemed, Sydney could not but sometimes think, to cause less anxiety to her mother than to herself; the girl used to get puzzled sometimes by the rather vague VOL. 1. u 290 SYDNEY. manner in which Mrs. Godwin spoke. " Oh, we must not vex ourselves with thinking about money yet, my dear ; we are not spending much," she would say, in what seemed to Sydney an almost recklessly un- calculating manner. " It is not our expenses that trouble me so much just now as your poor father's state. If I could only see some improvement in tliat T But, alas ! of such improvement there was none to see ; for, to all lookers-on, it was evident that Mr. Godwin was a broken- down man, who would never do work again in this world. He had always, even in the days of his prosperity, been subject to fits of depression, and now his misfortunes had crushed him altogether. He had become already almost like a child in his wife's hands. From having been dependent on her for nothing, he had become dependent SYDNEY. 291 on her for nearly all things. He leant upon her far more than he did on Sydney. Though his daughter was very tender and gentle to him, he was never contented to be alone with her ; he would get restless if his wife absented herself even for half an hour. '' I don't know where your mother can be. It is a strange thing that she goes so much away," he would say again and again to Sydney, in a querulous, injured tone. These weeks had changed him into an old man. He used to sit constantly in his arm-chair, silent and unoccupied. He had not energy enough left to open a newspaper or a book, but Mrs. Godwin read to him, and took him out for walks, and tried to interest and amuse him, with an endless patience and tenderness. Perhaps, to the gentle little woman, there was a sad sweet- ness in his sudden dependence on her. She u2 292 SYDNEY. had never been much to him till now, and now she was become everything, and her care of him filled her time and thoughts almost to the exclusion, it sometimes seemed to Sydney, of every other thing. It had been the beginning of July when they left England, and, after they were once established in their new quarters, the rest of the summer and the autumn passed un- eventfully away. When October came the pension was almost empty, and the moun- tains were covered with new-fallen snow. But the Von Erlachs lived at Untermdorf all the year, so Sydney did not lose her pupils, nor did the winter, when it set in, prove hard to bear. " We have it colder than you — yes, that is true ; but we do not have your terrible fogs. We can see the sun — we can tell that the sky is blue. Ah, mademoiselle, I think it is better here than in your great, SYDNEY. 293 black London !" Madame von Erlacb would sometimes say, with a gentle, self-congratu- latinoj laudi. "Look there at our Junorfrau, at our Weisshorn, at our Finsterraahorn — are they not finer sights than the best sight in your biggest city ? When I was a young girl, when I was a girl like Lotte, I used not to care about the mountains — I used to think then, if I could live in Paris, it would be like heaven ; but, now I am old, ah ! you may keep your Paris. I think we are nearer heaven here." As long as the summer lasted, Sydney and her pupils not unfrequently used to sit and do their reading out of doors ; in winter their school-room was a sunny, many-win- dowed gallery that ran along one side of the house, and communicated with the garden by an outer stair; a charming room, used both for work and play, and large enough for both. It was the prettiest bit 294 SYDNEY. of all the house, Sydney thought. She used to amuse Madame von Erlach with her ad- miration of it, and with her interest in a hundred small domestic fashions and ar- rangements that, to the elder lady, seemed all too common-place to awaken curiosity in anybody. '^ But mademoiselle is so amiable that she interests herself in everything, let it be what it may," she would say, with her graceful foreign courtesy. ''And it is good to do that. It is only those of small minds who are afraid to condescend — who think, ' this and this is too little for me.'" She used to pay Sydney many compli- ments, — more, perhaps, than the girl liked at first, but they were uttered always so pleas- antly and kindly that by degrees she got to be amused by them, and even at times half to believe in their genuineness. For, as SYDNEY. 295 time went on, she could hardly fail to see that Madame von Erlach liked her; she showed her too much kindness for Sydney to doubt that. She used to say pretty things in German to her that Sydney only half understood (for her acquaintance with that language was very small) ; in French she used to call her "?7ia belle Anglaise:' " You know I am not helle^' Sydney said to her once, blushing a little ; and then she broke out into the most flattering criticisms. She might not be beautiful in the strict sense of the word, she said, but she was gracieuse ; she had Tair fine, Tair douce ; she had les yeux et la houclie comme une ange ; she was an Englishwoman, toute entiere, and what country produced such beautiful women as England ? "Ah ! my dear, I cannot understand how you have come here," she ended by exclaim- 296 SYDNEY. ing. " You will not tell me, but I look at you, and look, and wonder. Some day, when you are married, you will tell me, will you not?" But Sydney's face at this proposition only grew cold, and lost its laughter ; and then the other, with instant self-reproach, went close to her, and kissed her on both cheeks. ''Am I a too curious woman with my questions?" she said, quickly. "And you, you are too English and too proud to an- swer them. Well, you shall keep your secret, and I shall not tease you any more. But you must not be angry with me that I love you — that I say to myself a hundred times, *Some day surely I shall see her happy!-' *' If I could be angry with you for that, I should indeed deserve all your kindness very little," Sydney answered, warmly, to this speech. SYDNEY. 297 But, though she said this, she said no more; and Madame von Erlach remained in ignorance of the thing that her innocent heart was yearning to know. "Yes, she has had a history. I know it, but she will not speak one word. They are wonderful, these Englishwomen !" she said to her husband, presently, with a resigned shake of the head. In the pension, as its winter inmates, there only remained, besides the Godwins, a little American woman, who was very like a winter apple, and her husband. They were a Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler, who had come to Europe for the education of their two sons, and who, having placed the boys at school at Zurich, were moving deliberately from place to place, spending a few months here and a few months there, and letting the lads always join them in winter and summer holidays. 298 SYDNEY. • " You see we might go and live at Zurich too," Mrs. Wheeler told Mrs. Godwin, ''but then I think if we were always at hand it would be harder for the boys. We had better be somewhere where they can't always be hoping to see us. Now we are going to stop here for the winter, and at Christmas the boys will come and spend their holidays with us. Last winter we were at Montreux, and this summer we took them to the Engadine. We have been in Switzerland now for these two years, and we expect to be here two more. Yes, it is a long time to be away from one's own countiy ; I am so homesick sometimes that I feel as if I could sit down and cry ; but we have only got these two boys, and we want to do the best we can for them. You see, when we take them back to America, they will know French and German as well as they know SYDNEY. 299 English, and, when they begin to go to business, think what an advantage that will be to them ! Oh, yes, I am pretty tired of it ; I shall be happy when I see New York again ; but if we did not do the best in our power for the boys, you know we should never be satisfied." She was not, Mrs. Godwin thought at first, a very interesting woman ; " she looks so much, my dear, as if all the sap had been dried out of her," she said to Sydney, but the two ladies presently became very good friends, and after a few weeks Sydney too came in for a share of Mrs. Wheeler's favour; nor when Christmas brought her two sons to Untermdorf did she regard the girl with less kindness, for Sydney, whose heart turned instinctively to what was young, liked the two lads, and took enough notice of them to win a feeling of gratitude from 300 SYDNEY. the mother's heart. It was bright weather when the holidays began, and they used to go together for many a ramble. Long ex- peditions at this time of year were im- practicable, but pleasant walks about the near •hills were very possible, and Sydney and her two young knights took many such together. They were a pair of frank, bright lads of four- teen and sixteen. A year ago she had other companions, — one other whom she had found hard since to forget. The Christmas of this year must have brought the thought of that other Christmas back to her a thousand times, but yet she never spoke of it — even her mother never knew whether it was much or little in her mind. It was pleasant for the Godwins that the house remained so empty throughout the winter, for Mr. Godwin was in no state to be brought into contact with many people. ■" I wish we could have our own sitting- SYDNEY, 301 room/' Mrs. Godwin had begun by saying fervently; but they could not afford to pay what a private sitting-room %vould have cost, so while the warm weather lasted they had sat for the greater part of the day in their own bed-room, and then, when that became no longer practicable, it was no small comfort to them to find the salon shared with them by no one else except the Wheelers. The room, that had been so full during the summer of noisy voices, was pleasantly quiet now, — so quiet that Mr. Godwin w^as frequently left for hours in it undisturbed. ''We are very fortunate in how we are placed," Mrs. Godwin often said to Sydney, and her daughter gave always a cordial as- sent. Yes, — as far as the present went, they had a great deal to be thankful for : their days were peaceful if they were not bright : they had kindly companions, they had even 67 302 SYDNEY. friends near at hand. But what of the future? Every day, with more and more anxiety, with more and more perplexity, she thought of that. END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. j% LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE.