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 LIFE THE ACCUSER
 
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 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 A Novel 
 
 E. F. BROOKE 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 A SUPERFLUOUS WOMAN," "TRANSITION," ETC. 
 
 IX THREE VOLUxMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON 
 WILLIAM HEINE MANN 
 I 896 
 
 [All rights reserved]
 
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 » ^ 
 
 HOT SUMMER 
 
 \^- VOL.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Armstrong family, witji one ex- 
 ception, accepted their own theory of 
 existence without misgiving. The exception 
 rebelled. Unfortunately this single enter- 
 prise was strategically ill-managed and 
 returned upon the rebel in suffocating bitter- 
 ness of heart, against which there was no 
 resource save in private explosions whose 
 point was lost to the world. 
 
 This is how it came about that on a fine 
 summer afternoon in the year 1876, Eliza 
 Armstrong, a girl of something over twenty 
 years of age, declared to herself with every 
 evidence of sincerity, that " life was not 
 worth living," and that she ''did not know 
 why she had been born." 
 
 The mischief was that intellectually Eliza 
 3
 
 4 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 Armstrong's eyes were too wide-open, while 
 affectionally they were too close shut. In 
 her aspect a similar contradiction prevailed. 
 Undeniably pretty, the effect of her whole 
 personality was singularly inharmonious, so 
 that the mere regularity of feature and the 
 fair vivid colouring were lost. It is not 
 actual beauty, it is " charm " that succeeds ; 
 and Eliza had not this "charm." Nature 
 apparently had not decided whether to turn 
 the girl out a beauty or the reverse, a genius 
 or something else ; and in this incoherent 
 predicament she had been thrown upon the 
 world to solve the problem for herself. 
 
 Eliza's medium was a family of seven with 
 a commercial basis. 
 
 The foundation had been of a hasty 
 construction, the Armstrongs having barely 
 escaped the obscurity which was their native 
 element. The truth was that the hang of 
 the Armstrong family was as inharmonious 
 as the personality of Eliza. The clan was of 
 two distinct branches ; the stem from which 
 Eliza's father, old Mr. Samuel Armstrong, 
 had sprung being that of simple working-
 
 HOT SUMMER 5 
 
 class folk who for generations had lived and 
 died in the same northern locality, and whose 
 later history was a running commentary on 
 the changes and vicissitudes of the manu- 
 facture of cotton cloth. At the present 
 moment most of the members wore the 
 artisan jacket and worked as factory hands 
 in the near cotton-mills, whilst still inhabiting 
 old stone cottages wherein their forebears 
 had driven hand-looms of their own ; others 
 of them netted poor gains into the tills of 
 small retail village shops, and tasted with the 
 operatives the ups and downs of fortune 
 which include the element of ''strikes"; 
 while one member of repute, commonly 
 called in his native village " Owd Union 
 John," had curiously risen from the condition 
 of a cotton operative to that of a second- 
 hand bookseller in Cottonopolis. 
 
 The other branch of the clan from which 
 Mrs. Armstrong had sprung was of a much 
 more genteel standing. Mrs. Armstrong in 
 marrying her husband had not changed her 
 name ; she was his second wife, and the 
 step-mother of his four children, Edward
 
 6 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 and Gilbert, Eliza and Sylvia. She came 
 from the master branch of the Armstrongs — 
 from the class of the owners of cotton- 
 mills instead of the workers therein. The 
 nature of the cleavage in the original clan 
 leading to this marked division was lost in 
 history. The story of how old Mr. Arm- 
 strong bridged the chasm from the operative 
 to the master w^as a secret locked in his 
 own breast, and not fully known even to his 
 wife. 
 
 Eliza had been taught to glide skilfully 
 over her connection with that branch of 
 the Armstrong family which included '' Owd 
 Union John," and to lay stress upon her 
 much more remote kinship with the small 
 stock of Armstrongs who moved in the 
 genteel circle and ruled the cotton-mills from 
 afar. 
 
 *' Papa was partner to old Mr. Theophilus 
 Armstrong of Harebarrow, his relation. And 
 when my own mother died, he married his 
 partner's daughter. That is why my step- 
 mother never really changed her name." 
 
 Thus ran the formula from the lips of
 
 HOT SUMMER 7 
 
 Eliza and Sylvia Armstrong. When Edward 
 the elder brother pulled up his shirt-collar 
 and referred to themselves as ''belonging to 
 the rich Armstrongs of the Clough of Hare- 
 barrow, don't you know," the family appeared 
 to be thrown into a distinction that made 
 Eliza feel vaguely uneasy. 
 
 ''We're on promotion," Edward would 
 say. " Really, any day we're as good as the 
 Peels — and we mean to reach the top. The 
 Peels began on cotton." 
 
 " What are we being promoted into ? " 
 Eliza would ask, without any intention of 
 being sharp-tongued. 
 
 Her inquiry would be answered by the 
 silence of contempt. 
 
 The elegance of the second Mrs. Arm- 
 strong, and of her sister, Miss Caroline Arm- 
 strong, was evidence of the Harebarrow 
 connection, living and moving amidst them. 
 Old Mr. Armstrong had himself not advanced 
 beyond a prejudice in favour of Dissent and 
 Smiles's Self- Help, as forming the most 
 reliable title to respectable distinction on 
 earth and a final " mansion in the sky." But
 
 8 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 his early ambition had set moving causes 
 which had issued in results, in many parts 
 wearisome and distasteful to himself. It was 
 natural that the second Mrs. Armstrong, who 
 was a very superior and coldly gentle person, 
 with a final set of prejudices and a perfect 
 habit in housewifery, should desire to bring 
 her own connection into as strong a light as 
 possible, and to exercise a gently effacing 
 effect upon allusions to the closer but more 
 obscure branch to which her husband be- 
 longed ; and it was natural that ''Aunt Caro- 
 line Armstrong," the sister whom she had 
 taken to live with her upon her marriage, 
 should aid and abet her in this. Nor was 
 Mr. Armstrong altogether averse to the 
 obliteration of his immediate family obliga- 
 tions ; but from the two ladies emanated an 
 atmosphere of superiority and nice conduct 
 and accomplishment which was chilling and 
 irksome in the extreme. Again, they were 
 Churchwomen, and sniffed at Dissent. 
 
 Indeed, as regards religion, Mr. Armstrong 
 stood between two batteries of opinion. Mrs. 
 Armstrong had the rigid beliefs of a strict
 
 HOT SUMMER 9 
 
 Evangelical, while Miss Caroline was sup- 
 posed to be ''well read" and of a sceptical 
 tendency. For the rest, Miss Caroline 
 sacrificed to convention and Harebarrow 
 by attending church regularly, and going 
 through the service with an inscrutably bored 
 demeanour. 
 
 Six years before the opening of this story, 
 and probably — though this was not the osten- 
 sible reason — in order to be rid of the too 
 prominent evidences of their origin, old Mr. 
 Samuel Armstrong, acting under the pressure 
 of Edward, who was again backed by his 
 step-mother, had consented to migrate from 
 the cotton district, to which from time imme- 
 morial they had belonged, to a southern 
 county. He selected, in a preliminary visit, 
 a small estate, in the purchase of which he 
 invested a tolerable sum of money. This 
 estate was a quiet bit of agricultural land, 
 having in its centre an old farmhouse and a 
 number of farm buildings. The land had 
 been used for hop culture, for clover and 
 grass-growing, and for the culture of beans. 
 A sweet and homely aroma hung over it.
 
 lo LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 The garden grounds, straggling and pictur- 
 esque, were full of old fruit trees, which in 
 the sunny patches of the spring and summer 
 continued punctually to push out from the 
 knotted, lichen-covered twigs and branches, 
 clusters of blossom, and afterwards glistening 
 rounds of richly-coloured and sweet-tasting 
 fruits. Something in the homeliness of the 
 place appealed to the heart of old Mr. Arm- 
 strong, and since by the will of his family 
 and by the drift of his own ambition he was 
 being removed from the familiar atmosphere 
 of oil, cotton waste, and machinery, and 
 from the grey-looking stones of the northern 
 village, set in stern prose amidst the utter- 
 most romance of landscape scenery, he 
 fastened on this peaceful farmstead as fur- 
 nishing at least something consonant with 
 the remote reaches of his inherited nature 
 and habits. 
 
 In this, however, he reckoned without his 
 host. 
 
 Edward stood out to the rest of the family 
 as something of large import. He had been 
 the idol of his father, and still was the
 
 HOT SUMMER ii 
 
 favourite with his step-mother and aunt, who 
 permitted their refined opinion to be added 
 to from within the home-circle only in this 
 instance. At the time of the purchase of the 
 estate he was at the University, and was 
 accepted by them as an authority upon what 
 was "correct," "the thing," "good form." 
 
 " We must improve the place, father," said 
 the young gentleman, when he heard of the 
 purchase. 
 
 And his father, not understanding the 
 scope of the word " improve," and believing 
 the University standard to be final, nodded 
 good-naturedly. 
 
 It happened that the ancient farmstead 
 was a dogged survival from a cluster of like 
 places which had been gradually absorbed by 
 the great landowners of the district, whose 
 passion for space, park-growing, and privacy, 
 exercised through centuries of opportunity, 
 had gradually shaped this corner of the 
 country into a series of fine and mellowed 
 instances of England's "stately homes." 
 The estate, for example, immediately conti- 
 guous to the acres which old Mr. Armstrong
 
 12 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 purchased, was an over-flowing portion of the 
 immense possessions of Lord Warrenne in 
 the neighbouring county ; and this intruding 
 foot of some twenty-five acres of his land was 
 the residence of Mrs. Trelyon, his kinswoman. 
 It was a beautiful place, and had received 
 the modest name of ''South Downs." Mr. 
 Armstrong's farmstead, on the other hand, 
 was a freehold, said to have been for genera- 
 tions an irritating thorn in the flesh to the 
 great family of the Dayntrees, who were lords 
 of the manor in this part of the county. 
 The residence of the Dayntrees, which was 
 called '' The Manor House," lay on the 
 western side of two great commons. These 
 were timidly hedged by small private villas 
 and cottages, rows of which occurred at inter- 
 vals between the woods and spinneys ; no 
 railway or station was permitted in the neigh- 
 bourhood, but the commons, with their gorse 
 and heath and scanty pasture, intruding thus 
 in a rugged protest of popular right amidst 
 the stately seclusion of the landed gentry, 
 were intersected by white roads over which 
 the carriages of the Families rolled in their
 
 HOT SUMMER 13 
 
 visitations one upon another. The commons 
 were the highest lands of the district, and to 
 any one standing upon them with the face 
 turned westwards, it was possible on a bright 
 clear day to see thrown up against the sky 
 the faint tracings of the roofs and pinnacles of 
 a great city — the delicate spirit and flower 
 and poetry of it shadowed, with its poignant 
 suggestion and solemn romance, as a living 
 dream in the burning fires of a western sky. 
 
 The subject of the purchased land was 
 spoken of amongst the Families when they 
 met in casual social intercourse. It was felt 
 as an annoyance that a stranger had broken 
 into the circle and snapped up the land. 
 
 ** Who's Armstrong ? " was on every 
 tongue. 
 
 Nobody knew. He was not even an 
 American. Dayntree, into whose composi- 
 tion something cosmopolitan rather than 
 democratic had entered, said he understood 
 he came from the north ; these risen fellows 
 were often shrewd enough, and probably 
 the place would be improved. 
 
 The amiable hope was unfortunately
 
 14 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 short-lived ; the nature of the improvements 
 when they began exciting the horrified com- 
 ment of the neighbourhood. The sturdy- 
 farmstead, with its sunny, ripened homeHness, 
 lying like a country smock amongst the 
 velvet mantles of the Parks, was cleared 
 away in favour of a brand-new idea. The 
 hop-fields, the beans, the orchards and low 
 hedges — in spring and summer nourishers 
 of a tangle of black-thorn, wild-rose, con- 
 volvulus, and blackberry — were rooted up ; 
 the old picturesque red-roofed outbuildings, 
 the rambling and ancient farmhouse, all 
 were cleared away amidst dust and desola- 
 tion, and the estate given by contract into 
 the hands of the landscape gardener, the 
 modern architect, and the newest art up- 
 holsterer. The erasure of everything which 
 in the eyes of old Mr. Armstrong had made 
 It worth while to invest his money in the 
 land, caused him a sickening twinge of the 
 heart-strings. The erection of a brand-new 
 mansion, fantastically copied from the ancient 
 by the most modern of architects, and the 
 deposit therein of the new art furniture,
 
 HOT SUMMER 
 
 modelled on the idea of an historic family in 
 decay, put the finishing touch to his distaste. 
 The furniture arrived in vans simultaneously 
 with the suits of armour and second-hand por- 
 traits, the whole miscellany being planted 
 down according to the taste of the upholsterer. 
 
 Old Mr. Armstrong felt himself not to be 
 a judge, but his common-sense was offended 
 by an assumption of ancestral armour in a 
 family whose heraldic bearing was at most 
 a shuttle. For the rest, this total obliteration 
 of all that was consonant with the habitual 
 past, this transplantation into surroundings 
 as much like home to one of his upbringing 
 as the stage of a theatre would be, struck him 
 with a mortal pain and sickness under which 
 he secretly dwindled and pined. 
 
 The girls, mere children at the time, ac- 
 cepted the change without open criticism. 
 Gilbert, a young man still in his teens, whose 
 career so far had been a secret downward 
 slide along the road " paved with good inten- 
 tions," felt in face of the new surroundings a 
 vacuity of resource and paralysis of the will 
 which were indescribable.
 
 i6 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 The two rooms allotted to Eliza and Sylvia 
 opened out of each other, but the first night 
 they preferred to occupy one together. Next 
 morning Eliza waked early. Her ruffled red- 
 gold hair fell about the pillow like poured-out 
 sovereigns ; Sylvia s smoother and less bril- 
 liantly coloured locks were just visible above 
 the coverlet. Eliza put out a cautious finger 
 and touched them. 
 
 " I'm wide awake," said Sylvia, creeping a 
 little from under cover, so that the light fell 
 on her delicate girlish face and large inex- 
 perienced blue eyes ; ''I listened ever so 
 long for the humming of the mills and then 
 remembered." 
 
 ''We shall never hear that again," said 
 Eliza plaintively ; ** I've had bad dreams, 
 I'm all worked up. This newness and the 
 new people about terrify me." 
 
 *' It's best not to think," said Sylvia 
 crisply. 
 
 '* That's all very well for you, who are so 
 pretty, and slide about like an eel. You 
 don't know what it is to feel quite the largest 
 and most fixed thing in a room. And to
 
 HOT SUMMER 17 
 
 know that your hair burns under the chan- 
 deliers like flames." 
 
 "Well, oil it, and plait it tighter." 
 
 *'But tell me, Sylvia, do you remember 
 what papa said was the lord of the manor's 
 name ? " 
 
 '' Mr. Dayntree, he called him. The 
 Rector's name is Mr. Woodruff." 
 
 Eliza sat up in the bed. 
 
 '' Don't you remember the red strawberry 
 emery cushion that I keep in my treasure- 
 box ? " asked she. 
 
 '* Yes. ' Constantia's cushion' you call it." 
 
 '' I seem to know where I am quite sud- 
 denly," said Eliza. *' Constantia is Mrs. 
 Dayntree. Miss Mincing Racker's school 
 where I was sent when I was such a tiny 
 little mite is on the other side this county. 
 Constantia's carriage came sometimes on 
 Saturdays to take me away a long distance. 
 And I used to stay all Sunday and play with 
 a boy called Evan. He was a dear little 
 boy, Sylvie. I remember the smell of the 
 old cabinet in the drawing-room that he used 
 to open and show me. I sat on a high chair 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 i8 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 to reach It, and Evan held me on lest I should 
 fall. It was because he called Mrs. Dayntree 
 * Constantia' that I did so too." 
 
 " Who was Evan ? " 
 
 *' I don't know, except that he belonged to 
 the Dayntrees." 
 
 *' Mother and Aunt Caroline will be glad 
 that you know the Dayntrees." 
 
 '' But I don't ! " said Eliza, exceedingly 
 alarmed. ''And I dread the idea of them. 
 I am terrified — monstrously terrified — of all 
 these grand new people. It would be better 
 to be back in our old home."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 In other ways than in the matter of his 
 present exile amidst art upholstery, Mr. 
 Armstrong had set causes going that he wot 
 not of. The effect had already been parti- 
 cularly exemplified in the character of Eliza, 
 and was destined to fulfil its influence in her 
 fate. 
 
 Mr. Armstrong was in this instance, 
 however, again merely an ignorant agent. 
 It had been his early boast that he could 
 afford his children "the best of everything"; 
 by this he meant that he could afford for 
 them to do and have things which were not 
 usual in his own class, but which he remarked 
 were common in a class of life to which he 
 did not belong. He had no idea that the 
 things he coveted were the accidents and not 
 
 19
 
 20 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 the essentials of that other class. Expense, 
 again, was Mr. Armstrong's standard of 
 probable excellence. His limited knowledge 
 gave him no other criterion. But in the 
 days when his children were young it was 
 a much more difficult thing to arrive at a 
 proper distinction of ''the best" from the 
 shoddy and showy than it is now, because 
 it required a preliminary culture to know of 
 it at all. In matters of education this was 
 pre-eminently the case ; education, especially 
 education for girls, as offered in the market, 
 being an inconceivably spurious and shame- 
 lessly fraudulent affair. In this era of 
 certificates and inspection, and of the ideal 
 of *' a ladder from the Board School to 
 the University," the most ignorant man 
 who is sincerely desirous of educating his 
 children, may toss them blindfold into the 
 educational mill and be pretty certain that he 
 is subjecting them to some genuine training, 
 and that they will come out in the end with 
 at least some useful acquirement. 
 
 In the days when the Armstrong girls 
 were children this was not so. '* Dothe-
 
 HOT SUMMER 21 
 
 boys " schools might have been abolished ; 
 Dothegirls schools were rampant in every 
 county as respectable and established insti- 
 tutions. An expensive girls' school was, in 
 the vast majority of instances, merely a last 
 resource of distressed gentlewomen, who saw 
 their way to amassing '' an independence " at 
 the expense of credulous middle-class parents, 
 the crop of risen families springing up like 
 mushrooms in the forcing-bed of the textile 
 industries, affording a fine field for these 
 ignorant and narrow persons to pasture on. 
 It was easy for the distressed gentlewoman 
 to impose on rich vulgarity by an assumption 
 of refinement, and in return for substantial 
 cheques to starve the minds (sometimes the 
 bodies) and oppress the spirits of female 
 children by a " genteel " diet and a routine of 
 inanities, puerilities, vile pruderies, and petty 
 cruelty. It was in those days possible to 
 pay two or three hundred pounds a year 
 for a daughter's education, and to bring 
 her out at the end not only with far less 
 mental equipment than is now possessed by 
 a child of the people in the standards of the
 
 22 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 free Board Schools, but with her health 
 injured and her character warped. 
 
 Years aeo, when Eliza was a mite of six 
 when they still lived in the North, and when 
 the second Mrs. Armstrong was making her 
 first experiments within her husband's house- 
 hold, the child had been sent away from home 
 by her step-mother's advice, to a fashionable 
 boarding-school for young ladies in the 
 same distant county to which the whole 
 family afterwards migrated. The experiment 
 proved to Eliza as a life-long fatality. Some 
 natures thrive rather better amid conventions 
 than amid freer surroundings. Eliza did 
 not ; her nature would neither fit into nor 
 develop amid conventions, and dating from 
 that disastrous school-experiment, a sense 
 of scare, timidity and failure, attached itself 
 to her character as the shadow to the man. 
 The horrors of Miss Mincing Racker's 
 establishment for young ladies were, how- 
 ever, mitigated by pleasanter events, for 
 example, those which she connected with the 
 strawberry emery cushion. It had happened 
 that on a summer morning when Eliza's
 
 HOT SUMMER 23 
 
 second school-term was coming to a close, 
 two beautiful young women of the county 
 paid the fashionable boarding-school a visit. 
 The eldest of the two was Mrs. Norman 
 Dayntree, a young wife who was not yet the 
 mother of children ; the other was her 
 younger sister, Miss Irene Severne. They 
 were both in the hey-day of youth, beauty, 
 and success, and their personalities were 
 such as to make one tremble lest any alter- 
 ation in the scheme of things should forever 
 deprive the world of just that turn of human 
 sweetness and gracious demeanour. 
 
 Constantia Dayntree was dark, but not too 
 dark, tall and noble-looking. She had the 
 serenity of happiness in which her mere 
 physical beauty merged and melted as in 
 something more exquisite than itself; she 
 was of the very essence of womanliness, and 
 gave it away at every turn of hand and face. 
 She had the primal qualities which still sur- 
 vive in womanhood, qualities out of which the 
 world grows, upon which it rests and lives, 
 and with which perfected it will fall asleep at 
 last as a child that is comforted.
 
 24 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 Irene carried with her a pair of dove-like 
 eyes, the quiet manner of one who takes her 
 own course in preference to that of others, 
 and even as early as that, a dry humorous 
 twitch of a smile upon a gentle pair of 
 lips. 
 
 This was the vision that broke suddenly 
 on the lack-lustre eyes of a school-room full 
 of miserable ''young ladies" who, on a hot 
 summer afternoon, bent wearily over the 
 ridiculous studies which formed the scheme 
 of education in the establishment. 
 
 The door had been opened by one of the 
 "gentlewomen," a middle-aged spinster with 
 all the attributes formerly connoted by the 
 word. She was small and hard as a dried 
 chip, her thin grey hair was rolled under a 
 cap in two curls on either side her church- 
 woman's brow, and fastened in securely by two 
 side-combs ; on her bitter narrow mouth was 
 for the moment a false, forced smile. She 
 preceded her two guests, and opening the 
 door led them into a close and jaded atmo- 
 sphere, which seemed to smite them in the 
 face with stifling unwholesomeness, both
 
 HOT SUMMER 25 
 
 physical and mental. The room was a large 
 and fine one (for show was everywhere In the 
 programme), and a row of windows looked 
 towards the west. Through the unopened 
 glass fell great sunbeams down which the 
 dust sailed, and at the desks beneath, on 
 wooden stools without backs, in excruciat- 
 ingly upright postures, pined and panted the 
 budding girlhood which should have been 
 lying full length on the fragrant lawn, or 
 reposing outside in hammocks, or exercising 
 its strength (as lads do at that hour) in 
 cricket, boating, climbing trees, or sports of 
 any kind. But neither good sense, a know- 
 ledge of hygiene, or sympathy with the im- 
 pulses of active youth, were in the programme 
 of the distressed gentlewoman, nor anywhere 
 lodged in her wicked, little brain. Amongst 
 the rows of ill-natured, fatigued faces one girl 
 was distinguished from the rest, because she 
 happened to be walking from a table (behind 
 which sat *' Mademoiselle" in state) back to 
 her desk. A sulky flush came to her cheek 
 as the visitors appeared on the threshold, and 
 she made a dart to her stool.
 
 26 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 The false smile on the " gentlewoman's " 
 face changed to an acrimonious twist. 
 
 " Miss Bryant, stand out ! " cried she, in a 
 harsh tone of command. 
 
 The girl thus addressed, dived her hand 
 under the desk and made a pull at her stock- 
 ing, and then sulkily obeyed. All the other 
 ** young ladies " suspended their work and 
 stared, a trifle of interest enlivening their 
 cross and jaded faces. The unfortunate Miss 
 Bryant being now, in obedience to the stiff 
 directing fore-finger of the ''gentlewoman," 
 planted conspicuously in a bare space on the 
 floor, exhibited the '' elastics " of the thin 
 shoes dragging loose behind her, while a 
 soiled white stocking slipping from the 
 garter, fell over one ankle. She had an un- 
 conquerable sin of untidiness ; and the hasty 
 snatch underneath the desk had not availed 
 to pull the stocking back over her knee. 
 The " gentlewoman " indicated the lapse by 
 a wave of one hand, which she afterwards 
 brought back into contact with the other in a 
 finished gesture of disdain peculiarly exasper- 
 ating to the victim.
 
 HOT SUMMER 27 
 
 " An exhibition of disorder. Return to 
 your desk, Miss Bryant. Miss Marsh, kindly 
 remember that Miss Bryant loses her mark 
 for conduct." Then in a more confidential 
 tone, and changing the bitterness of her 
 lip back to the false smile, she turned to 
 Constantia — 
 
 ** I always tell my dear girls that to be 
 bien chatissde, bieii gantde, et bien coiffde is the 
 mark of a true lady," said she. 
 
 Mrs. Dayntree did not seem to hear her. 
 Shaking off the shy and startled feeling with 
 which she had hesitated on the threshold of 
 this academy of the rich middle-class, she 
 advanced amongst the rows of Unfortunates. 
 She spoke first to a girl whose swollen glands 
 were tied up in a handkerchief that seemed 
 to frame her sickly face in woe. A good 
 many of the young ladies watched the easy 
 grace of her movements, and devoured the 
 details of her apparel with the critical envy 
 born of their education ; a few '' favourites," 
 whose ineradicable vanity had been pampered 
 by the system, pursed their lips. Constantia 
 reached the sulky victim of the untidy stocking;
 
 28 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 she slipped the embroidered scarf which it 
 was the fashion to wear about the person 
 from her own shoulders, and placed it on 
 those of the girl. 
 
 " Do take this!" said she, in the voice of 
 one who asks a favour. '' It suits your pretty 
 face so well. You are Irish, I think, from 
 your nice-sounding name ? I love the Irish." 
 
 She was gone before either the girl or the 
 other pupils could recover their surprise, and 
 returned to the side of her sister. Irene laid 
 her hand on her arm. 
 
 '' Constantia," said she, in a low voice, 
 ''look there!" 
 
 In a far corner of the room, with her 
 face turned from the windows and directed 
 to a blank space of wall, stood a tiny creature 
 between seven and eight, whose red-gold hair 
 burned in the sunlight. She was holding in 
 her little hands a long heavy pole ; it was 
 placed behind her shoulders, under her arm- 
 pits and within the hollow of the elbow, her 
 mites of hands being turned backwards at the 
 wrist to clutch the instrument of torture as 
 well as they could in the excruciating position.
 
 HOT SUMMER 29 
 
 Her face, heavy and white, drooped forward, 
 and her lids were closed in pain and exhaus- 
 tion ; she stood now on one leg and now on 
 another ; her breath came in difficult gasps, 
 and her look was of stupefied misery ; she 
 seemed to be unaware of what was going on 
 in the room behind her. 
 
 Lost to consciousness of the outside world 
 the child certainly was, for she was temper- 
 ing the cruelty of her position by an absorb- 
 ing and imaginative day-dream. Her little 
 spirit had escaped from the dull school-room 
 with its faded atmosphere, and was out in 
 the open air, amongst green trees and green 
 places and gentle breezes, that turned the 
 burning sun — just now so dismally smiting 
 her red-gold head — into a joy. 
 
 "Cool grass to roll in," said she to her- 
 self; "plenty of primroses, and nice baskets 
 to put them in. And nobody will gather a 
 big mother primrose when there is a little 
 one for it to take care of. I shall have a 
 basket on my arm, and the big girls won't 
 take it from me. Everybody will have a 
 basket. Then there will be a bank, and we
 
 30 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 shall know from the smell that violets — 
 white ones — are hidden somewhere. And 
 we shall begin to look. They will hide 
 under the leaves as if it was a game. 
 
 ''They don't mmd being gathered; it 
 doesn't hurt; they only hide because it is 
 fun to play with us. And nobody will 
 snatch. If I find one a big girl won't say : 
 * Now, Miss, I saw that first.' 
 
 "And in the grassy place under the wild 
 crab-tree, there will be a table-cloth spread, 
 and cups and plates on it — white cups, with 
 pretty blue speckles. And somebody — like 
 a nurse, and not like a governess — will be 
 spreading out our tea. She shall have a cap 
 on, and round cheeks, with a little hole in 
 one when she laughs, and she will smile all 
 the time. And Pollie Wimpenny will be 
 climbing the crab-tree, and the nurse won't 
 mind at all. Pollie Wimpenny will peep 
 down from the leaves with her eyes twink- 
 ling, and will say : ' Little Eliza, you try 
 too ! It is so nice up here. I'm a bird in a 
 nest.' And the birds will sing. 
 
 "And then the nurse will say: 'Tea!
 
 HOT SUMMER 31 
 
 Tea ! Tea ! ' and clap her hands as if it were 
 a bell, and everybody will come running. 
 And Pollie will slide out of the tree with 
 green smudges on her stockings. And it 
 won't matter. Tea will be lovely." 
 
 Here the little dreamer sighed deeply be- 
 cause of physical pain, and drooped her head 
 lower, and stood on the left leg instead of 
 the right, her body all falling to one side 
 because of the weight of the pole. 
 
 ** There will be bread and butter — plenty. 
 And jam. Not sour gooseberry, but some- 
 thing else. Strawberry probably. And a 
 sugar cake, that nurse will cut into slices. 
 And Miss Mincing Racker won't be there to 
 make me say with her eye, ' Not any more, 
 thank you,' when I'm feeling hungry. Nurse 
 will hand the plate round, and say : ' Take 
 a piece of cake, little Eliza. Two pieces.' 
 And I shan't feel ashamed. Two pieces for 
 all of us. 
 
 "There won't be a Miss Mincing Racker. 
 She will have gone into a picture. She will 
 be one of the Inquisitors in Fox's Book of 
 Martyrs, and she can't get out from between
 
 32 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 the leaves ever again. And when she is 
 nothing but a picture, Sylvie and I may pick 
 out her eyes — with a pin, just like we pick 
 out the Inquisitors' eyes — without being 
 punished. We may do it on Sunday after- 
 noon, when we have our clean pinafores on, 
 and are allowed to look at The Book of 
 Martyrs and Pilgrims Progress, because it 
 will be a religious game. 
 
 " Nurse will say : ' Two pieces, Pollie 
 Wimpenny ! l^wo pieces, Adeline Bryant.* 
 
 *' There won't be a Miss Mincing Racker. 
 And there won't be God. Because if there 
 were, we should know it would have to come 
 to an end, and there would be church, and 
 hard benches to sit on, and the Litany and 
 the Ten Commandments, and a long sermon, 
 and an ache in my back. But I think there 
 anight be angels. Not too close, lest they 
 dazzle. And as it's very hot" — the poor 
 head twisted, to get out of the sun — ''there 
 will be a sound of a brook under the hedge, 
 and under the plank on the stile, as if some 
 one was laughing all the time. And perhaps 
 — perhaps — if nurse would let us — we might,
 
 HOT SUMMER 33 
 
 just when the angels weren't looking — we 
 might take off our shoes and stockings, and 
 paddle ! " 
 
 Thus had run the child's dream, for a 
 quarter of an hour at least, during the inflic- 
 tion of the pole punishment. 
 
 The two sisters walked up to her. The 
 gentlewoman followed, with a sour look of 
 disgust on her lips. 
 
 *' Little one ! " said Constantia, in a 
 motherly voice. 
 
 The child's head simply drooped lower, in 
 increased stupefaction. That, of course, was 
 part of the dream. The gentlewoman tried 
 her method. There was hate in her eye as 
 she did so — grown-up hatred of a child. 
 She darted her hard hand out with a well- 
 directed prod on to the little creature's aching 
 backbone ; starting with sensitive pain, the 
 mite drew herself up suddenly to impossible 
 rigidity, and opened her eyes wide in a 
 frightened stare. When she became aware 
 of the two new faces watching her, the 
 innocent and sinless creature flushed to the 
 roots of her hair with an unutterable and 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 LIFE THE ACCUSED 
 
 indescribable look of abject guilt. At the 
 same time her eyes, unflinching and steady, 
 gazed deep into those of Constantia, and 
 they had a look as though drinking. 
 
 **Why are you standing in this corner, 
 and in this position ? " asked the latter 
 gently, without more ado relieving the child 
 from the pole. 
 
 '' Speak the truth. Miss Eliza. Don't 
 prevaricate," put in the gentlewoman. 
 
 The pale frightened eyes veered a mo- 
 ment in the direction of the voice, and then 
 returned to Constantia. 
 
 ** / poke,'' murmured she, in a miserable 
 tone of self-confession. 
 
 " Do you ! " said Irene suddenly, kneeling 
 down on the floor and clasping the little 
 thing in her arms. " So do I ! I always 
 poked when I was a child. Is it the fire or 
 your chin, you mean ? " 
 
 The little victim laughed shrillily. 
 
 *' Don't scream, Miss Eliza ! a little lady 
 never makes a noise like that," put in the 
 gentlewoman, with a sneer. 
 
 ** Do you know, Eliza," said Irene, "we
 
 HOT SUMMER 35 
 
 are going to ask Miss Mincing Racker to 
 give you all half-a-holiday this beautiful after- 
 noon. Where would you like to go and 
 play?" 
 
 ** Speak the truth ! " again put in the 
 gentlewoman threateningly. 
 
 Eliza closed her eyes obediently, and 
 thought. 
 
 '' The primrose wood to gather primroses," 
 answered she, opening them again. 
 
 "■ Now, Miss Eliza, don't be stupid. You 
 know there are no primroses this time of the 
 year," put in the gentlewoman. 
 
 " Then violets," murmured the child, crest- 
 fallen. 
 
 *' Nor violets either. Try to think,'' put 
 in the gentlewoman. 
 
 The child thus adjured, dropped back into 
 a condition of distressed stupefaction. The 
 gentlewoman assisted her with another prod. 
 
 " You have been asked what you would 
 like, by these ladies who are good enough to 
 take notice of you, Miss Eliza. Don't show 
 obstinacy, but answer at once." 
 
 The pale frightened eyes wandered from
 
 36 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 face to face. The little mind had still not 
 cleared its dream away ; it remained midway 
 between that world of its imagining and this 
 cruel place of prods, and bullying, and pain, 
 and confusion. She was unaware of the anxious 
 waiting of all the elder girls upon her choice. 
 Fast between her dream and her terror, she 
 had no resources. 
 
 **Tea — tea," faltered she ; *'jam and cake. 
 Two pieces." 
 
 The gentlewoman turned a little pale. 
 Her lips seemed to quiver. The elder girls 
 shrugged their shoulders and pursed their lips. 
 The child stared abjectly — the picture of 
 heavy stupidity. The gentlewoman laid her 
 hard nipping hand on her shoulder. She 
 turned towards the two distinguished guests. 
 
 ''Miss Eliza was always a greedy, obstinate 
 child," said she. '' I do not ask you to 
 excuse her. She is selfish, and thinks of no 
 one but herself. Pray take no notice of her. 
 Pray address your kind inquiry to some child 
 with a less vulgar mind. Miss Eliza, you 
 have committed a breach of manners." 
 
 As she spoke, the nipping hand tightened
 
 HOT SUMMER 37 
 
 and the arm administered a shake to the 
 exhausted frame. 
 
 ''Irene," said Constantia quickly, *'let us 
 go home." 
 
 Neither sister saw the final fate of Eliza 
 that day. Hate hunted the tender spirit 
 up-stairs to bed in the beautiful early hours of 
 the evening ; falseness harried the natural 
 candour and clearness of the young soul ; 
 threats cowed her nerve ; sneers cut at 
 her self-respect ; a vile parody of religion 
 swooped like an obscene thing upon all the 
 singing birds of her sweet fancy ; joy, 
 natural confidence, and innocence itself, 
 swooned away in face of that bitter counten- 
 ance of incarnated narrowness. 
 
 ''What have I done, Miss Mincing 
 Racker ? What have I done ? " piped the 
 anxious little voice over and over. And for 
 answer there was nothing but, as it were, the 
 whirling before her frightened eyes of two 
 bobbing grey curls and a hard, enraged 
 face — too ugly for childhood to see — accom- 
 panied by the reiterated and torturing prods 
 of an insulting hand.
 
 38 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 Left alone in the far corner of a dreary 
 bedroom whence she could not see the garden, 
 with a heart beating in the perplexed inarticu- 
 late passion of childhood, little Eliza heard 
 the steps of her school-mates passing out to 
 the treat the guests had secured them ; she 
 heard also the mocking voices — the voices of 
 those insensibly trained to falseness and un- 
 kindness — that cried in the corridors — 
 
 ''Miss Eliza asked for two pieces of cake 
 for herself ! Two pieces of cake ! Greedy 
 Miss Eliza ! " 
 
 One hung her head and pondered silently, 
 and fingered the gay scarf she wore about 
 her neck. That was the girl with the 
 untidy stocking. She thought she would 
 give Miss Eliza her new pencil-case to- 
 morrow. 
 
 Up-stairs the child sat on her bed, her 
 chin on her knees, her eyes startled and too 
 wide-open, staring at the bare white walls 
 and the dusty panes until they darkened. 
 She understood nothing of what had hap- 
 pened, had no power to discriminate, and 
 was too wounded in her sensitiveness to hurl
 
 HOT SUMMER 39 
 
 defiance at the injustice done her. The air 
 still rang with hootings, with the pointless 
 upbraidings of Miss Mincing Racker, and the 
 assurances of the wrathful sneers of God in 
 heaven. 
 
 What seven-year-old child of vivid imag- 
 ination could hold up against this accumu- 
 lated testimony to the abject disgustfulness 
 of her own nature ? The white lids closed 
 once or twice over the staring eyes ; but 
 they shot open again, gazing vaguely at the 
 spot of fading light, while slowly within her 
 tender innocence the courage of innocence 
 died out and the damnable lying horror of 
 '* a sense of sin " was born. Not even young 
 Mrs. Dayntree's after kindness could save 
 her. 
 
 Such was the particular effect which the 
 distressed gentlewoman, in pursuit of an 
 *' independence" by the simple expedient of 
 farming out the souls of children, achieved in 
 the case of Eliza. For the rest the result 
 was not so evident. The second Mrs. Arm- 
 strong and Aunt Caroline voted the girl 
 a failure when, at seventeen, she finally
 
 40 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 returned home after a ten-years course 
 of various spinsters' '' Establishments for 
 Young Ladies," without having acquired 
 distinction in manners, or readiness at the 
 proprieties, or even the art of *' playing the 
 piano."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Miss Mincing Racker, her avarice and 
 her petty wickedness, had long been 
 gathered to ignominious shades, but the 
 county famiHes remained. 
 
 One of Miss Mincing Racker's methods 
 had been to refer to these estabHshed names 
 in such a manner as to be inferentially con- 
 temptuous to the rising middle-folk on whom 
 she fed ; this was inexpressibly galling to the 
 young creatures she farmed, and whom she 
 suppressed beneath her narrow thumb ; pro- 
 bably it was at the basis of Eliza s dread. 
 
 The transplantation of the Armstrongs to 
 the district could hardly be called a success as 
 time went on. There was a degree of truth 
 in Mr. Armstrong's notion that the difference 
 between one class and another was a matter 
 of expenditure, his error lay in considering 
 
 41
 
 42 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 it from the point of view of quantity instead 
 of quality. Moreover, there are things which 
 no expenditure and scarcely any study can 
 acquire. The Families, after one or two 
 attempts, held nervously aloof ; and the 
 attempt would hardly have been made had it 
 not been for the singular exception of Eliza. 
 Mrs. Norman Dayntreeand Mrs. Trelyon led 
 the running in the neighbourhood ; to be in 
 either of their sets was to be in every other ; 
 owing to the accident related in the last 
 chapter Eliza found herself welcomed in the 
 first circle, another chance brought her into 
 the second. 
 
 Until the year 1875 the Trelyonshad been 
 represented in the neighbourhood by Mrs. 
 Trelyon, who had taken the pleasant estate 
 known as "South Downs'' some seventeen 
 years previously. Mrs. Trelyon was the wife 
 of the Honourable Leonard Trelyon, who 
 was Governor of one of the English Colonies ; 
 he had resided abroad for years, in a land 
 presumably too sultry and too distant for 
 Mrs. Trelyon's health. A lady thus content 
 to be separated by a hemisphere from her
 
 HOT SUMMER 43 
 
 husband might easily become the target for 
 gossip, but Mrs. Trelyon's selection of a 
 residence had silenced tongues. A faint 
 rustle of arrowy talk, rumours shaken from 
 arched eyebrows, suggested rather than ex- 
 pressed, had clustered about her name for a 
 short period at the time of Mr. Trelyon's 
 departure abroad. No one quite knew what 
 had been the difficulty between himself and 
 his wife — the latter a beautiful person exist- 
 ing in a zone of lassitude. A hitch was 
 suspected, but her discreet choice of residence 
 stilled the beginnings of inquiry. For her 
 withdrawal from the world to live under the 
 immediate protection of her august relative 
 Lord Warrenne, suggested rather a timid 
 clinging to propriety than a wandering 
 course. At Lord Warrenne's time-mellowed 
 habitation, with its moat, its antiquities, its 
 Anne-a-Boleyn chamber, she had been an hon- 
 oured guest before coming into residence at 
 "South Downs," and when she actually settled 
 in the neighbourhood a string of notable and 
 titled persons drove tentatively to her door 
 and left cards upon her hall-table. Having
 
 44 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 come the first time, they came yet again a 
 second, to enjoy (upon others) the amusing 
 sting which she hid under her velvet voice, 
 and used with an innocent uplift of her eyes. 
 
 No one for a moment was deceived by 
 Mrs. Trelyon's occasional air of the inginue. 
 It came to be regarded as the precursor of a 
 rankling shaft, and nervous folk were apt to 
 be undone by the mere look without the 
 words ; but her character for cleverness, 
 together with her great beauty, secured in 
 time not exactly her popularity, but a long 
 visiting list, and a crowded drav/ing-room. 
 
 Meanwhile during the seventeen years of 
 her residence at " South Downs " — a passage 
 of time which had changed her fresh beauty 
 to something more mellow — she had not 
 been known either to pay or to receive a 
 visit from her husband. Suspicion, however, 
 of unseemly estrangement was assuaged by 
 the regularity of the correspondence, and the 
 decorous dispatch of presents of great value 
 and uncouth appearance from the far West, 
 with which she dutifully made her drawing- 
 room hideous.
 
 HOT SUMMER 45 
 
 It was five years after the coming of the 
 Armstrongs — during which period they had 
 hung unvislted upon her outskirts — that the 
 event occurred which re-awakened the slum- 
 bering rumours as black crows from their 
 nests. In this event the little creature Eliza 
 was involved. Early in 1875 the death of 
 the Hon. Leonard Trelyon was announced, 
 and Mrs. Trelyon went into absence and 
 mourning. After six months '' South Downs " 
 was prepared to receive her again, but upon 
 her return it was discovered that a daughter 
 whose existence had hitherto been unsus- 
 pected, had come from beyond the seas with 
 other miscellanies belonging to the late Mr. 
 Trelyon, to establish herself in a prominent 
 place in Mrs. Trelyon's household — a 
 daughter whose exceptional beauty and 
 original charm accentuated the fact of her 
 own undreamed-of existence into a very 
 piquant mystery indeed. 
 
 But if this could have been all ! Mal- 
 adroit Eliza Armstrong, who had lost some of 
 her first awe of the Families without gaining 
 worldly knowledge or discretion, succeeded
 
 46 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 in betraying to a perplexed neighbourhood 
 that this did not cover the extent of the 
 irregularity. For was not " Rosalie Trelyon " 
 the very girl whom she had met at Miss 
 Edwards's finishing-school at Clapham ? — 
 the girl who never went home for the 
 holidays, and with whom she had struck up 
 one of those strong girlish friendships that 
 often serve the purpose of first love ? The 
 bond formed between the two lapsed when 
 either girl left school, for Rosalie was not 
 expansive in letter-writing, nor communica- 
 tive about herself. Eliza had remained as 
 ignorant as the rest of the world of her 
 relation to Mrs. Trelyon of '' South Downs," 
 but when her friend, without a word of 
 warning or of explanation, suddenly appeared 
 on the scene in the role of that lady's only 
 daughter, she flew, in unabated affection and 
 with characteristic unsophisticatedness, to 
 re-embrace her. 
 
 The Armstrong family felt that Eliza had 
 played the part of enfant terrible. Nor were 
 the rest of the neighbours particularly grate- 
 ful ; they would have preferred to accept
 
 HOT SUMMER 47 
 
 Miss Trelyon's existence without a know- 
 ledge of the London school-days on which 
 the mother had kept so singular a silence. 
 A cold look or two crept Eliza's way. Un- 
 sophisticatedness is the least successful of 
 the qualities ; no one believes in it ; it 
 presents indeed to the general mind the 
 effect of deep duplicity. 
 
 Mrs. Armstrong, whose severity could be 
 mollified for a whole day by a chance bow 
 from the Trelyon carriage, sat down in 
 perplexity to seek how the worldly situation 
 might be over-reached by an Evangelical 
 Christian. 
 
 Miss Armstrong rated Eliza. 
 
 '' With your forwardness and your want of 
 ton, you have placed your whole family in a 
 most serious and compromising position," 
 said she, with a bitter and superior air. 
 
 "What have I done. Aunt Caroline?" 
 inquired small fatal Eliza, opening her pale 
 clear eyes. *' I thought you wished to know 
 Mrs. Trelyon better." 
 
 Aunt Caroline shook a derisive and dis- 
 carding finger. Eliza remained submerged.
 
 48 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 Meanwhile Mrs. Trelyon took hold of the 
 situation and overcame it. All Mrs. Trelyon's 
 qualities were apparently passive ones — she 
 existed by implication. Her very attire was 
 unaccountable ; she might be found dressed 
 in fashion's height, or clothed in garments of 
 a date so ancient and a cut so strange that 
 they suggested a rag-shop. In her per- 
 sonality she had the gift of mystery, of an 
 historical manner and brow, a reminiscent 
 air which revealed nothing, but enfolded her 
 in remoteness and silenced inquiry. When 
 this poetic and commemorative vagueness 
 was disturbed by so pronounced a fact as the 
 appearance of a beautiful daughter, she met 
 the situation with that tranquil candour which 
 is the most powerful of reserves. 
 
 '' My daughter," said she, introducing the 
 beautiful enigma with her carelessly abstracted 
 air. 
 
 As to Eliza, she met that disconcerting 
 fact by a conduct too delicate and perfect to 
 earn a name. 
 
 •'My daughter's school-friend, Miss Arm- 
 strong," said she, when some exalted but
 
 HOT SUMMER 49 
 
 rather hesitating guests stumbled on the pair 
 hand-in-hand, happy and chatting. 
 
 Her manner included Eliza in the all- 
 pervading courtesy which was usual to her. 
 A less clever woman would have petted the 
 girl ; an idiot would have snubbed her. 
 Mrs. Trelyon had been candour itself, 
 curiosity quailed before it, yet had learnt 
 nothing. 
 
 Mrs. Dayntree was the first, shortly after 
 Mrs. Trelyon's return with her mysterious 
 appendage, to direct her coachman to drive 
 to '' South Downs." Later, Irene Severne 
 was heard to announce over the tea-cup edge 
 at Lady Susannah Woodruff's, that she found 
 Miss Rosalie Trelyon ''quite charming." It 
 is moreover dlf^cult to be too critical of any 
 one shadowed under the stem of a great 
 earldom, and so the long and shining list 
 returned up the avenue to " South Downs " 
 as though nothing strange had occurred, and 
 Lady Susannah, the Rector's wife, resolved 
 to give an " At Home/' and cards of in- 
 vitation, including Mrs. Trelyon and her 
 daughter, were Issued. 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 As far as the county is concerned, the 
 black wings of rumour had sunk to their 
 nests after an ineffectual rustle. Meanwhile 
 in the London clubs was a much more 
 considerable flutter ; there the world's eye 
 winked indeed, and the world's tongue found 
 a wicked word or two to say. But club 
 scandal was just what Norman Dayntree 
 dropped behind the club doors when he left 
 them for his house. A hint of what was said 
 there never passed his lips. No man in 
 England was so careful to keep that white 
 patch of his existence, which he named 
 "■ home," and which bore in the forefront of 
 his mind the perfect figure of his wife, 
 uncontaminated by the world. He had a 
 special and nervous sensitiveness on the 
 subject of his own particular women ; to his 
 mind they were "set apart," scarcely tasting 
 the common nature which compounds the 
 common world — human enough to thrill a 
 man's sense, but not so human as to be 
 thrilled in return, spiritually adjusted, poetized 
 and refined to a delicacy attributable to the 
 highest blossom of the tree, which the sun
 
 HOT SUMMER 51 
 
 hits but which the elements of earth hardly 
 mount to, and winging the fancy to higher 
 things even in the moment that the warm 
 hand sacrilegiously gathers it. It shocked 
 him in this region of artistic fastidiousness 
 even to think of the coarse and mingled 
 flood of the world's life sweeping so much as 
 the hem of Constantia's garment. In his 
 opinion men and women stood upon entirely 
 different planes, and it was part of his business 
 as a husband jealously to protect his wife, 
 and to prevent any whiff of the atmosphere 
 of the manly plane from invading the purer 
 air of her refined existence. 
 
 So Norman shut his mouth on the whis- 
 pers of the clubs, and said not a word. If 
 it had happened at all — and he doubted it 
 — it had happened so long ago that it hardly 
 mattered now. 
 
 Lady Susannah's party was a subject of 
 expectation. Usually the formalities at the 
 Rectory were dull. Lady Susannah's chief 
 claim to interest was that, though of the 
 bluest blood, she had eloped with the curate 
 in her youth, the curate having justified his 
 
 IWrVERSITY OF 
 VaiNOiS UBRARYi
 
 52 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 audacity by a series of Church preferments, 
 which had finally settled him In a fat living. 
 Lady Susannah had studied court life in 
 earlier days in both the English and French 
 capitals, and remained an admirer and In- 
 timate friend of the ex- Empress Eugenie, 
 her manner of concluding an afternoon call 
 by '' Ah ! the dear Empress ! But I must 
 fly. Good-hy^ ! " having passed with some 
 into a by-word. 
 
 On this particular occasion, however, 
 recollections of the Tuileries were to be 
 taken with a biting sauce ; so far only 
 glimpses of Miss Trelyon had been obtained, 
 but startling bits of gossip had flown from 
 tongue to tongue. She was more beautiful 
 than her mother, and had an extraordinary 
 vivacity ; but it was the gossip emanating, if 
 truth were known, from the servants' hall, 
 and trickling into the ears of the higher 
 circles from the lips of ladies'-maids, that 
 caused the real excitement. Somehow it 
 crept out that Mrs. Trelyon's maid on un- 
 packing the numerous boxes of the young 
 lady had been unable to discover one scrap
 
 HOT SUMMER 53 
 
 of the regulation linen, whereas she had 
 turned out some singularly masculine-looking 
 garments, and at length amongst the brilliant 
 but bizarre costumes had come upon a set of 
 clothes more suitable for a masquerading 
 boy than an English "young lady." The 
 blushing maid being at a loss, and with her 
 breast thumping with the terrors of this 
 Babylonish raiment, had appealed to her 
 mistress, whereupon she received the languid 
 explanation that it was believed Miss Trelyon 
 had ridden much with her father when 
 abroad, and had used them for the con- 
 veniences of hard travel. A movement in 
 favour of putting them on at '' South 
 Downs " had been cut short in a hot alter- 
 cation between the mother and daughter. 
 
 For a lady as devoted to conventions as 
 was Mrs. Trelyon, the lovely Rosalie seemed 
 likely to prove an unmanageable portion. 
 Little by little it oozed out that the Hon. 
 Leonard Trelyon had brought up his daughter 
 as much like a boy as natural circumstances 
 would permit. He had kept her by his side 
 on every occasion, and had accustomed her
 
 54 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 to participation in his life. She had jour- 
 neyed with him on horseback through miles 
 of country, had encamped with him days and 
 nights together, had sailed with him up the 
 long mysterious rivers, and cruised about the 
 lakes ; she could climb and leap like a lad, 
 ride and shoot and manage a canoe. More- 
 over, she did a part of his secretarial work 
 for him, read the dispatches, and was reported 
 to have understood them. Her life had been 
 a romance of adventure, taken for the most 
 part in the open air, and filled in — none save 
 herself perhaps knew how — by the flaming 
 colours appropriate to a young and beautiful 
 woman in the tropics. 
 
 When she passed from this stirring colonial 
 life with her father to the charge of her 
 conventional mother at "■ South Downs," she 
 brought with her not only Mr. Trelyon's last 
 testament and bequest — by which she herself 
 was left his sole heiress — but a sealed en- 
 velope and a variety of odd *' treasures." 
 
 With her mother, her manner was short 
 and reticent, somewhat patronizing it may 
 be, and not without an infusion of contempt.
 
 HOT SUMMER 55 
 
 Mrs. Trelyon followed her about with curious 
 watchfulness, but as a rule avoided any 
 attempt at inquisitorial questions. On one 
 occasion, however, an inquiry escaped the 
 tongue it burned. Two rooms opening from 
 an upper passage had been accorded to 
 Rosalie as her own ; the passage ended in 
 doors of coloured glass, which opened on a 
 covered bridge that arched a space behind 
 the house, and led on to a terrace of the 
 garden. These rooms the girl decorated 
 with the treasures she had brought from 
 abroad, in such a manner as to recall to her 
 continual remembrance the old home in the 
 far-off land. In such a moment of her work 
 the door opened, and her mother entered 
 unannounced. The girl turned with a flush 
 on her cheek and a look under her lids to 
 match Mrs. Trelyon's own. Two miniatures, 
 finely executed, of two young men in old- 
 fashioned dress had just been hung on the 
 wall in a place of honour. Her eyes travelled 
 up her mother's person from her feet to her 
 forehead ; Mrs. Trelyon's leapt to the por- 
 traits. She extended a delicate high-bred
 
 56 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 hand and pointed. The act had less leisurely 
 indifference than was her wont. 
 
 ** My husband I perceive. But the other ? 
 Am I allowed to inquire ? " 
 
 ''His friend — whom my father bade me 
 love and honour." 
 
 The words '' my father " left her lips with 
 a lingering accent of appropriating pride. 
 
 ''His name?" murmured Mrs. Trelyon 
 softly. 
 
 Rosalie shook her head as calmly. Mrs. 
 Trelyon beheld her entrenched in her most 
 reticent mood. She met it by a glance — too 
 small for observation — of curiosity and 
 derision from heavily - lashed lids. Her 
 daughter, at the moment unlocking a box, 
 handed her a sealed envelope. 
 
 " For you," said she briefly, with her 
 coldest manner. 
 
 The envelope contained the single con- 
 fidential document which had passed between 
 the husband and wife during all the years of 
 their separation. The letter, save for one 
 sentence, was simply a careful piece of advice 
 as to the treatment of the girl whom the final
 
 HOT SUMMER 57 
 
 circumstance of Death obliged him to hand 
 to another guardianship than his own. The 
 exceptional sentence riveted Mrs. Trelyon's 
 attention, and brought into her eyes a re- 
 flective look. Thus did it run — 
 
 **/ have brought her up to a mans 
 vigorous activity. I have done this of set 
 
 purpose, BECAUSE 
 
 It was the only chance. So far I believe it to 
 have prospered. Continue my work in the 
 beloved child.'' 
 
 It was upon the long gap after the word 
 "• because" that Mrs. Trelyon laid her finger, 
 with the light gleaming in her eyes. It was 
 the wordless portion which was the under- 
 stood and intimate thing ; the symbolic dots 
 contained the innermost meaning. But when 
 the utmost has been spoken from one to 
 another, news lies hidden in either breast. 
 Presumably Mrs. Trelyon read into the 
 eloquent symbol something more than her 
 husband had thrown there, or something 
 different : or it may be that cleverness is no 
 security for the depth of judgment called 
 wisdom ; however it might be, Mrs. Trelyon,
 
 58 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 after prolonged reflection, destroyed the letter, 
 and made up her mind to totally reverse the 
 policy. She sent a confidential epistle of 
 her own — one with no silent spaces in, but 
 frank and candid as the day, and with all 
 the sentiments fully expressed — to a lady 
 of eminent and established propriety. The 
 result of the communication was that there 
 arrived at " South Downs " a *' perfect 
 treasure," recommended by the eminent lady 
 as a suitable chaperon and care-taker of the 
 lovely Rosalie. 
 
 By the time that Lady Susannah issued 
 her cards of Invitation, Rosalie had been for 
 three months an Inmate of her mother's 
 house. Her father was her god and her 
 standard ; she tried all men by It ; his treat- 
 ment of her as a woman was the treatment 
 she exacted from all. '' My father " ran on 
 her tongue with frequency, and with a pretty 
 unquestioning pride that was winning. Mrs. 
 Trelyon listened with lowered lids. Rosalie 
 quoted his views on Colonial policy, and 
 believed them to be the ultimate wisdom. 
 Colonial matters were prior in her view to
 
 HOT SUMMER 59 
 
 home and foreign affairs. She burned with 
 ardent partisanship on topics that drawing- 
 room politicians knew nothing of. England 
 was a trifling item in the great Imperial 
 Empire. She thrilled responsive to the beat 
 of waves on the distant edges of another 
 hemisphere ; and the talk she heard tinkled 
 in her ears like domestic cattle-bells. 
 
 One day, shortly before the party, Lady 
 Susannah inadvertently kindled a small fire 
 of interest. 
 
 *' You must talk of these things with Mr. 
 Dayntree one day," said she, stealing a well- 
 bred glance at the easy-fitting school-girl 
 gown in which Rosalie could without impedi- 
 ment have climbed a tree ; '* people so often 
 indicate him as a future Secretary for the 
 Colonies — he has all the knowledge. My 
 interests are in the European courts, I 
 was intimate at the Tuileries. The dear 
 Empress " 
 
 The girl's proud glowing face belied her 
 gown. 
 
 '' A nymph ! an Amazon ! " ejaculated the 
 Rector, with so much enthusiasm — being in
 
 6o LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 spite of his cloth at bottom but a man — on 
 his way down the drive, that Lady Susannah 
 abruptly recalled the talk to duty and the 
 church poor-box. 
 
 A future Colonial Secretary ! It was the 
 first stirring of real interest she had felt in 
 her new home. How slow they all were ! 
 Was there anything anywhere to take hold 
 of ? Anything which might draw her again 
 within the rushing current of genuine life } 
 A picture shone in her mind for a moment — 
 she saw herself mounted close by her father's 
 side on a star-lit night, she felt again the 
 mettle of the horse that her knees gripped, 
 and the bridle tightening in her left hand, 
 while her ear bent towards her father's rapid 
 and murmured counsels. Then the silent 
 wait and the wild thrill of danger, and the 
 tension of her body and nerves up to the 
 reach of the moment, her hands stretching 
 as it were between death and life ; and after 
 that the mysterious rush by of an unseen 
 troop of Indians somewhere In the night, and 
 the twang and rustle of a stray arrow shot at 
 random and flying overhead.
 
 HOT SUMMER 6i 
 
 That sort of thing quickened existence 
 and made life worth living. A hair-breadth 
 escape from death brought one to clasp one's 
 own flesh and bones in rapture ; to have 
 been certain of one's nerve while the King 
 of Terrors passed, uplifted the sense of one's 
 own personality — as though nature itself had 
 kissed one on the mouth. 
 
 But this suppressed existence of stays and 
 sofas ! How was she to run a scarlet thread 
 of interest within the dun-coloured material ? 
 The two words, ** Colonial Secretary," sug- 
 gested that at least in the neighbourhood 
 was one man who could talk ; her need for 
 adventure and for touching the moment with 
 skilled appropriating handling, brought about 
 a second suggestion for creating secret amuse- 
 ment out of Lady Susannah's party. As she 
 walked to her dressing-table she determined 
 to undertake for the evening the role of 
 decorum and fashion, and to play it off on 
 the local inquisitors whom she rightly sur- 
 mised as being preoccupied by her personality 
 and dying of curiosity concerning it. 
 
 The eyes of the interested discovered her
 
 62 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 therefore seated meekly on a lounge, in a 
 Worth gown, and holding the fire of her 
 glance beneath a downcast lid, while prettily 
 accepting the homage of a number of gentle- 
 men and of some ladies to her youth, her 
 exceptional experience, and her beauty. 
 
 *' Trousers and leggings ! " whispered a 
 disappointed gossip to Irene Severne, '' if 
 it weren't for her eyebrows one would swear 
 she still ate bread-and-treacle with the nurse- 
 maid, and played ' La Grace ' in the garden." 
 
 Mrs. Trelyon viewed the proceedings of 
 her daughter with a watchful eye ; presum- 
 ably she recognized the hereditary principle ; 
 an appreciative understanding kindled in her 
 sleepy glance. 
 
 Lord Warrenne — specially entreated for 
 the occasion — hurried up first, and a sequence 
 of the dull and decorous followed. A mis- 
 cellany of conversation was offered up in 
 bits. She got the foxhounds from one, and 
 the proceedings of the Royal Institution from 
 another. Her ears yearned for the Colonies, 
 and the nearest she arrived at was the recent 
 insurrection in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
 
 HOT SUMMER 63 
 
 ** What we want," said a sententious poli- 
 tician, expounding the Eastern question, '' is 
 simply to get at the facts, and then to apply 
 free, fresh, moral principles to them." 
 
 Lord Warrenne, who was a Whig, and 
 regretted the late Government, kept his 
 mind in a constant state of opposition ; he 
 had secret information that the present 
 Foreign Secretary was committed to a totally 
 wrong course. 
 
 *' Lord Derby," he began, '*as every one 
 knows " 
 
 Rosalie languished under it, and grew a 
 trifle pale. Lord Warrenne having un- 
 hooked his button from the politician with 
 the ready remedies, returned to her side. 
 
 " I recall your father in old days," he said 
 kindly. 
 
 That secured her attention ; and it was at 
 this moment that the room, which seemed 
 sinking into the hopeless neutral tints of 
 inanity, shot all over as with crimson light 
 and colour. The voice of an invisible 
 servant announced — 
 
 '' Mr. and Mrs. Dayntree."
 
 64 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 Her gaze was upon Norman in a moment, 
 and after a brief and anxious inspection she 
 emitted a faint, satisfied sigh. Here was 
 quarry worth the game at last ! Lord 
 Warrenne remarking her wandering eye, 
 thought her breeding, which had appeared 
 perfect, might after all be improved ; he 
 must persuade his wife to ask their little 
 kinswoman to the Castle. Catching the 
 critical glance, she softened it by a pretty 
 appeal. 
 
 '' Who is this Mr. Dayntree ?'' asked she. 
 
 *' Dayntree ? Well, he is lord of the 
 manor, and a prince amongst merchants, 
 and the handsomest man in the county, and 
 married to the best of women, and old 
 enough to be your father," spoke Lord 
 Warrenne to the very young miss whose 
 harmless muslins had so prettily bespread 
 the sofa all evening. 
 
 " Introduce him, please ; some one called 
 him the Colonial Secretary." 
 
 *' Ah, yes!" responded her august kins- 
 man, wondering he had not remarked her 
 eyebrows before; **so they say. It isn't
 
 HOT SUMMER 65 
 
 much more than aspiration at present I 
 fear." 
 
 *' I was told he had all the knowledge. 
 He ought to be Secretary." 
 
 ** Ah, yes ! But I'm afraid we don't 
 choose our State Secretaries that way, 
 Rosalie, my dear. Though I admit if 
 Dayntree chose to put himself in the way of 
 it, he'd get the office for the asking." 
 
 A man who might be Colonial Secretary 
 and who stood aloof, was even more stimulat- 
 ing than a man caught and entrenched in 
 the Cabinet. 
 
 '' I wish to talk to him about the Colonies. 
 I was my father's secretary, and read the 
 dispatches." 
 
 Her eye kindled. Lord Warrenne laughed 
 pleasantly. He liked an English girl to be 
 modest in her manner and coimne-il-faut, but 
 this kindling eye gave a pleasant touch of 
 sauce and interest. He was of course willing 
 to humour and please her, and leaving her 
 side he skirted slowly towards Dayntree ; 
 presently he had him by the elbow and said 
 something laughingly in his ear. Dayntree 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 responded by an amused nod and a raised 
 eyebrow. Rosalie saw without appearing to 
 watch. Her mind, body, and nerve steeled 
 itself to the encounter. She had seen the 
 good-natured mirth and her spirit was fired. 
 Her mood rose on a wave of presumptuous 
 resolve. When Dayntree, still with the 
 amused light in his eyes, approached, and 
 Lord Warrenne made the introduction, she 
 bent her head with the air of a princess and 
 signed to him to take a seat by her side ; at 
 the same moment she threw from under her 
 lashes a challenging glance that pricked like 
 a pin. Dayntree caught it again on a raised 
 eyebrow, and seating himself by her side to 
 discourse on the Colonies, looked for a brief 
 moment penetratingly into the dark irises.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 " The Manor House," Norman Dayn- 
 tree*s ancestral home, was a show-place 
 amongst English antiquities. He had in- 
 herited it when a young man through the 
 unlooked-for death of an elder brother, but 
 had not for that reason relinquished the 
 career to which his tastes led him. It was 
 out of deliberate choice that he had thrown 
 his activities into commerce ; to discover the 
 resources of a country, to develop them, and 
 to run the show for all it was worth, was his 
 ideal of activity. The commercial Idea was 
 with him by no means limited to money ; 
 personal gain was not his last and ultimate 
 object. There was a streak of the magnifi- 
 cent in his transactions, and the line between 
 his commercial policy and the significance of 
 
 political affairs was not always clear. 
 
 67
 
 68 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 Dayntree's knowledge was, however, not 
 a thing acquired poHtically, but was rather 
 an accidental result pertaining to his business 
 method. Consequently there was a practi- 
 cality in his Colonial attitude that appealed to 
 the English type of mind ; he seemed to 
 handle the thing as it were in substance, and 
 folk who were suspicious of mere theorists, 
 political or otherwise, got into a habit of 
 saying that he had a wider knowledge of the 
 Colonies and saner views on Colonial ques- 
 tions than most men, and as he combined 
 these supposititious attributes with a fine 
 social position, an impressive presence and 
 great riches, the suggestion of the Secretary- 
 ship followed as a natural sequence. 
 
 So far, however, Norman was not even in 
 Parliament ; a flood of affairs had swept him 
 even from that threshold to ambition. In 
 early days he had travelled much and at the 
 present time still kept well-selected emissaries 
 to do the travelling no longer possible for 
 himself. His office in the City sent out sen- 
 sitive feelers into many distant lands, and 
 news of every kind — that eager impress of
 
 HOT SUMMER 69 
 
 fresh development that keeps the best minds 
 awake and aware to the finger-tips of natural 
 and human movement throughout the world 
 — tumbled by letter, by newspaper, by tele- 
 gram, daily into his office, to be dissected 
 and analyzed by his clerks and brought up to 
 him to deal with. Possibly he felt that his 
 office door opened to an arena wider than 
 that of routine politics ; at any rate he had 
 justified his choice of a career by supreme 
 success. Nevertheless, the political side 
 remained an ambition to him, and he habitu- 
 ally felt about his shoulders the mantle of an 
 honour still to be. 
 
 In appearance he justified Rosalie's sigh of 
 satisfaction ; he was handsome, and forty 
 years of existence had mellowed his natural 
 grace into a very dignified appearance ; some 
 said he was courtly enough for a Speaker ; 
 others said, '* Don't throw Dayntree away 
 on that ; he is a born administrator." 
 
 " He is a profoundly clever man," said 
 Mrs. Trelyon, with her innocent air ; "every- 
 thing appears to hang on his silence." 
 
 At the same time there was a point of
 
 70 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 Norman's physiognomy to which the eye 
 returned, and which on occasion repulsed the 
 average man and sent him away wondering 
 whether Dayntree was so " safe " after all. 
 To women the look — it lay chiefly in his 
 eyes — was attractive ; Constantia, his wife — 
 unconsciously perhaps — read it as a testi- 
 mony to that portion of his nature which 
 she alone knew by heart and loved him the 
 better for. 
 
 It happened that one afternoon of this hot 
 summer of 1876 (on the same day as that on 
 which Eliza Armstrong concluded that death 
 was preferable to life) Mrs. Dayntree awaited 
 the visit of her sister Irene Severne in a large 
 up-stair room of the Manor House. The 
 place was the very home of peace. She 
 stood by a clothes-press which lay along one 
 side of the wall. The doors were open and 
 disclosed the miscellaneous collection of a 
 boy's wearing apparel. She was searching 
 amongst them, and presently drew forth a 
 small muddy heap from a corner. It was 
 a pair of child's knickerbockers. Turning 
 with them to the light she held them with
 
 HOT SUMMER 71 
 
 the thumb and fore-finger of both hands, so 
 as to secure to her motherly sense the 
 luxury of the outline while measuring the 
 damage she had suspected and discovered. 
 Then she imprinted a butterfly kiss upon 
 the rough material, and prosaically sat down 
 to mend them. 
 
 It was now the heart of the day, late in the 
 afternoon. The room was a bright airy place 
 which she called her sewing-room. Mrs. 
 Dayntree's work-table was near the hearth. 
 Immediately above the chair where she 
 was sitting was a photograph of a number 
 of boys from her Majesty's training ship 
 Britamiia. From amongst these indistin- 
 guishable personalities, Mrs. Dayntree was 
 wont to pick out one, and to name it with 
 a tender air of pride, '' Our Ronald." 
 
 At this period, Constantia was a handsome 
 woman of thirty-nine. If she had lost the 
 graces of early youth, she had taken on new 
 beauties. Her face was full of serene experi- 
 ence ; there was not a small or fretful line 
 upon it ; her personality was harmonious and 
 full of repose. When Irene appeared, she
 
 72 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 looked up with a smile of welcome, and ex- 
 tended the damaged knickerbockers to her 
 view. Irene glanced at them with amused, 
 melting eyes, and touched the outline whim- 
 sically. Neither spoke, but the looks of the 
 two women met on one of the delicious 
 secrets of the affections. 
 
 '' Shall I ring for tea ? " asked Mrs. 
 Dayntree. 
 
 *' Thanks, no. I drank it in the splendid 
 atmosphere of Rosalie Trelyon, with Mrs. 
 Trelyon looking silently on. And I have 
 come away feeling my age." 
 
 ** Nonsense about your age. Rosalie is a 
 school-girl ! " 
 
 *' On the contrary, she has never been 
 young. I like her ; but so much originality 
 in a girl in her teens withers me up. It used 
 to be my quality ; but I turn into a platitude 
 in her presence." 
 
 " I don't think Norman quite approves of 
 her," said Constantia. 
 
 " He does not count. We are all ridicu- 
 lously old-fashioned people. Let us talk of 
 the past, Constantia."
 
 HOT SUMMER 73 
 
 Irene seated herself close to the window, 
 and the trees threw a shadow over her ; but 
 presently a small breeze arose and disturbed 
 the leaves and a sunbeam came through 
 and touched her cheek. Constantia gave a 
 delighted cry. 
 
 " It Is the sunlight on your cheek," she 
 explained ; '' It made you look ten years 
 younger. It brought back the old look 
 I remember so well — the look of your face, 
 dear, that even a fashionable bonnet could 
 not prevail over." 
 
 '* I recall the bonnets. They were flat over 
 the forehead, and had composite side- whiskers 
 of tulle and roses, and a 'curtain' behind." 
 
 '* It Is twenty years ago," said Constantia, 
 sighing ; '' Norman must just have proposed 
 to me. And here I am now with a son 
 sixteen years of age, while you " 
 
 ** While I am still on the market labelled 
 * Damaged Goods : a Reduction.' " 
 
 '' Irene " 
 
 *' Don't hesitate, Constantia ! I have 
 reached my last matrimonial chance. Mr. 
 Dixon has, as you have constantly forewarned
 
 74 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 me, proposed In the most proper manner, 
 and I have refused him. Done it, my dear, 
 in a final and emphatic way." 
 
 '' Oh, Irene ! And those two nice little 
 girls of his ! " 
 
 *' I am not, at my age, prepared to open 
 an orphanage, Constantia." 
 
 '' But I was going to say — such an excellent 
 man ! " 
 
 *' Ah, yes ! An eminent Whig. He carries 
 his political opinions as an accumulated growth 
 upon him. I know the correctness of his 
 liberality by the cut of his whiskers. I'm 
 afraid I'm provoked into red-hot Toryism 
 when he is present. Generally I begin to 
 uphold the integrity of the Turkish Empire ; 
 the sufferings of Bosnia and Herzegovina 
 cease to appeal to me ; and I'm seized with 
 perversity on the subject of the Berlin Note ; 
 or at least I take an early opportunity of 
 admiring Disraeli's novels, and wondering 
 with what title the Queen is about to reward 
 his eminent services to our country. Now, 
 Constantia! Imagine the domestic hearth 
 under these circumstances ! "
 
 HOT SUMMER 75 
 
 *' But consider " 
 
 **0h yes! I've considered everything. 
 I've considered the furniture in the drawing- 
 room, the curtains, the upholstery. Very 
 likely he would allow me three hundred a 
 year to dress on. Even that does not move 
 my heart." 
 
 Constantia laughed and then sighed. 
 The fact that her beautiful sister remained 
 unmarried had always been a grievance. 
 She was of opinion that no life was complete 
 for a woman save that of a wife or mother. 
 But Irene was incorrigible. And after all a 
 marriage with Mr. Dixon the widower was 
 not, even in her estimation, quite the genuine 
 thing, and she suspected that her tone in 
 recommending him lapsed into that of the 
 second-hand dealer. Irene would be sure 
 to say so if she persisted ; and when her 
 sister finally complained that she was in 
 effect being asked to exchange her brown 
 hair and pallor for a blonde wig and rouge, 
 Constantia smilingly dropped the subject and 
 put her hand out caressingly towards the 
 quiet coils of hair.
 
 76 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 When, about half-an-hour later, Irene left 
 she laid aside her sewing and glanced at 
 the clock ; the hands moved towards six, 
 and the dinner-hour was at seven. Her 
 husband usually contrived to be at home by 
 this time. She opened the door and went 
 out into the passage and called his name. 
 There was no answer, and, returning to the 
 room, she began to pace about rather rest- 
 lessly. The swing of a side-door and a distant 
 step re-assured her ; she paused, and then 
 heard a servant speak while the step came 
 on up the stairs towards the sewing-room. 
 It was not, however, Norman, but a fair girl 
 with red-gold hair who appeared on the 
 threshold. She stood there hesitatingly, 
 pushing before her a bunch of splendid 
 cream roses.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 If Constantia felt her spirits dashed by 
 the disappointment she did not show it ; she 
 extended her hand with one of her kindest 
 smiles. 
 
 Eliza Armstrong came forward and laid her 
 roses on her friend's knee silently and shyly. 
 
 ** What have you been doing lately ? " 
 asked Constantia, when the girl had seated 
 herself by the window. 
 
 ** Practising scales chiefly. I wish to play. 
 Music is what Edward and Sylvia care for. 
 I am far behind them. Music won't come 
 for me out of strings or keys. I practise ; 
 but when all is done I can only listen. I 
 haven't the right sort of hand for the piano." 
 
 *' It is a very pretty hand," said Constantia 
 quickly, '' and a good listener is rare." 
 
 ** But," said Eliza, "that is not what they 
 77
 
 78 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 • 
 
 care for. Edward wants more noise. This 
 afternoon " 
 
 ** Well } " said Constantia, for the girl 
 paused. 
 
 '' Edward was playing with Sylvia and she 
 was called away. I went on listening to 
 Edward. Not that I like his playing, but I 
 liked what he was playing. Edward con- 
 siders me a fool." 
 
 *'Why?" asked Constantia, her brow 
 darkening. 
 
 ** Because I did not take up the piece and 
 go on just where Sylvia had broken off. He 
 said he wanted a glorious crescendo at the 
 end — a voice or a clash of keys. Why 
 should he expect that from me when I can 
 do neither ? He considers me a fool." 
 
 ** x^h ! " said Constantia, *' and so the piece 
 had to end after all in the extremely harsh 
 sounds of Mr. Edward Armstrong's violin '^. " 
 
 Eliza looked puzzled. She detected satire 
 in Mrs. Dayntree's voice. But her judgment 
 was disordered by the family atmosphere of 
 the glorification of Edward. It was Im- 
 possible to conceive that he was satirized ;
 
 HOT SUMMER 79 
 
 if there were satire, it was probably in some 
 way pointed at herself. 
 
 ** So many people," said Constantia gently, 
 *' mistake the unimportant for the important, 
 and worry their lives out over a trifle. But 
 you have no need to do that, Eliza." 
 
 '' Need I not ? " 
 
 '' Certainly not. There is something 
 better in store for you. I do not say that life 
 will be easy for you. I have often remarked 
 that you see more and less than others do. 
 That is a difficult combination of qualities." 
 
 Eliza leaned forward and touched her 
 friend's hand. 
 
 " I know I have got some power," said 
 she, "but I do not see that it is any use. 
 Power in my head and none in myself." 
 
 ** You ought to trust yourself. You should 
 be strong." 
 
 '' Ah ! " said Eliza. " And I would give a 
 good deal for permission to be weak. In 
 other ways," she added, with a gleam of 
 humour, '' I have much to contend with. 
 There is my hair, for example. I do think 
 when Providence made me stupid he might
 
 8o LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 have made me Inconspicuous too. But when 
 a bonnet or a dress is In question they say : 
 ' Eliza vmst be toned down.' " 
 
 *' My dear child ! You have talent. And 
 your hair and complexion are lovely.'' 
 
 *' Well ! If so, It Is an Inconsistency the 
 more. I envy the consistently stupid — 
 those who have all their edges blunted — 
 just as I feel It would have been better to 
 be ugly outright. The hard fate Is to be 
 neither one thing nor another — to be all in- 
 consistency. I envy the very gardener's boy. 
 He knows exactly what he is, neither more 
 nor less. He gets up every morning to 
 certain work, and knows from hour to hour 
 that nothing fresh can by any possibility 
 occur. Yes, I envy the gardener's boy ; he 
 Is a quite consistent example of plainness and 
 dulness." 
 
 Constantia laughed and patted the girl's 
 hand kindly. 
 
 '* If I could get into my own planet!" she 
 continued whimsically. '' My powers, you 
 see, are those of a telescope — It would be 
 more convenient to be able to see what is
 
 HOT SUMMER 8i 
 
 under my own nose. The gardener's boy 
 has at least this much advantage over me — 
 his mother adores him. But Aunt CaroHne 
 said to me the other day : * EHza, you will 
 never be loved.' " 
 
 '* That was an exceedingly wrong remark 
 to make," said Constantia, with emphasis. 
 
 "• But true," returned Eliza gloomily ; *' I 
 see it in my telescopic moods. Even you 
 have nothing better to advise than that I 
 should be strong. If you only knew how 
 gladly I would accept insignificance if only 
 it were accompanied by affection ! I have 
 dreams — that is the worst. But I am con- 
 demned to be founded upon a rock ! The 
 pupil of Marcus Aurelius and all the Stoics — 
 with a hand like this, red hair and pale eye- 
 brows, and the Christian name ' Eliza ' ! " 
 
 *' I am very fond of you, little Peri ! " said 
 Constantia, laughing and kissing the tips of 
 her fingers towards her. 
 
 Eliza rose and reached the door without 
 responding. There she stood touching the 
 handle and turning over Constantia's last 
 words thoughtfully. 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 " Yes,'* said she, '' so you think. And I 
 am certain of my own love for you. Never- 
 theless, at the bottom of my heart lies a 
 conviction that the irony of things has 
 selected me out of all others to bring you 
 annoyance and pain." 
 
 She turned the handle and was gone. 
 
 *' Eliza ! " cried Constantia, starting from 
 her seat in kind dismay. 
 
 But the hurrying feet went too quickly. 
 Constantia turned back to the window. 
 Glancing at the clock, she saw that the hands 
 were moving close on to seven. Possibly 
 her husband had already arrived ; she opened 
 the door and went out a second, time and 
 stood leaning over the banisters to listen ; 
 then, once more, called his name softly. 
 
 Silence followed the first attempt ; a 
 second brought after it a sound of feet in a 
 great hurry ; and a small boy appeared in the 
 hall beneath. He was breathless, dirty, and 
 voluble ; he raced up the stairs, talking in 
 gasps of excitement as he came, his sentences 
 being Interspersed by cries of ''Mother!"; 
 and he made without pause straight at the
 
 HOT SUMMER 83 
 
 cool lavender-hued gown and burrowed his 
 curly head into the soft and perfumed folds. 
 A casual glance at her face had caused him 
 to anticipate reproach. 
 
 The gong struck for dinner. 
 ** Ted ! Ted ! " said Constantia reprovingly, 
 " have you washed your hands ? " 
 
 The face came out from its refuge red and 
 ruffled, the eyes dancing with mirth. 
 
 " You are a shocking grimy boy ! And the 
 dinner-gong has struck ! Where is father ? " 
 '' He hasn't come in. But come along, 
 mother! If he isn't there I can sit in his 
 place and say : ' Charles, fill your mistress's 
 oflass with claret.' " 
 
 Constantia caressed the curly head. 
 '' I don't know what father will say," said 
 she. " But go and make yourself tidy first 
 while I change my dress." 
 
 Ted, from long experience, knew that the 
 compromise was effected : and in the end the 
 two proceeded to the dining-room together. 
 The master of the house was absent. Ted 
 got his wish, and sat in his father's chair and 
 embarrassed the butler by his orders. His
 
 84 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 mother seated opposite fell in with his humour 
 and smiled at her small vis-a-vis, and listened 
 to his account of the adventures of the day. 
 There was hardly opportunity for feeling that 
 Norman was away. 
 
 It was after Ted had gone to bed that the 
 consciousness of his absence became again 
 oppressive. And to lose the pertinacity of 
 the feeling she left the drawing-room and 
 went into the garden. 
 
 It was a beautiful still night, the darkness 
 too pale to be illumined by many stars ; 
 dying colours were visible on the horizon, 
 night clasping a fainting day upon its breast. 
 Not a breath stirred, and the scent of flowers 
 rose heavily. From the windows of the front 
 rooms patches of light fell on the terrace, and 
 in and out of them the quiet meditative figure 
 of Constantia passed, rolling small stones of 
 the gravel with a tiny rustle of her skirts. 
 
 The Manor House, beneath whose ivy- 
 covered historic walls she paced, had been 
 her home ever since her marriage ; her exist- 
 ence amid these established surroundings was 
 an additional element in forming within her
 
 HOT SUMMER 85 
 
 life and character the sense of unassailable 
 tranquillity and happy security to which 
 nature pre-disposed her. It was the peculiar 
 attraction of her personality that nothing in 
 the nature of fretful anxiety rippled the deep 
 leisure of her feeling towards men and things. 
 There was time as well as depth in her 
 sympathy. Life had been Indulgent to her 
 mellowing. 
 
 Through the quiet of the night, sounds 
 travelled far. She heard the striking of the 
 hour from the church clock and the hum, 
 small as the flight of bees, which told that 
 the commoner, more urgent, life of the 
 village was still awake. She touched that 
 life chiefly by her benevolences, her own 
 existence being set apart. She learned human 
 woe as through a mirror, leaning towards it 
 with sad, wondering eyes, and extending over 
 it healing hands, but not In her own heart 
 knowing the smart of it. She was the woman 
 sheltered by the man, placed by his pride and 
 love in an enchanted tower, and locked therein 
 by the secret invisible key of jealous defence. 
 
 The drawing-room when she returned to it
 
 86 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 was Still empty. In the continued absence of 
 her husband it was difficult to set to any 
 occupation. She seated herself upon the sofa 
 with a sense of languid depression, and lean- 
 ing back amongst the cushions fell suddenly 
 into deep slumber. 
 
 The sleep was filled by a dream — by a 
 visionary uneasiness at variance with her 
 habitual peace. It may be that through the 
 doors left unprotected by vigilant reason, the 
 restless spirits of the earth crept in to touch 
 the sensitive fabric of her mind with desolating 
 fingers, and to write upon it their warning. 
 
 She thought in her dream that she stood 
 again outside on the terrace of her home ; 
 but in place of the evening peace of the old- 
 fashioned garden, she saw the familiar scene 
 dissolve into disaster and chaos, while the 
 house, to which she turned as to an habitual 
 refuge, met her by a strange and treacherous 
 repulse — inanimate things filled by conscious 
 malice — the bolts and bars of the doors and 
 windows shooting themselves back against 
 her entry, as under invisible hands. 
 
 Constantia gave a start forward and woke
 
 HOT SUMMER 87 
 
 with a cry on her lips, to find that the dick of 
 Norman's latch-key was In her ears. He was 
 coming in by a side door, and as she rose to 
 meet him, it faintly passed her mind that she 
 did not remember his coming in at night by 
 that particular entrance before. The door 
 did not open promptly, he seemed to fumble 
 with the key, and then as she advanced, her 
 eyes fixed upon it, it was pushed open quietly, 
 almost stealthily. She saw the pale summer 
 darkness of the sky behind with a branch 
 darkly etched against it, and a star in the 
 heavens, and in front the form of her husband 
 upon the threshold. Gladness at his appear- 
 ance sounded in her voice. 
 
 " Norman ! I have waited so long ! " she 
 cried. 
 
 The words dropped upon an embarrassed 
 silence. She had run towards him, and 
 caught at his arm with her hands ; her breast 
 pressed it. From the touch she received a 
 strange impression of his agitation. 
 
 *'Why!" cried she, '* your heart beats 
 against my hand. Come into the light that 
 I may see you."
 
 88 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 Norman freed himself from his wife's 
 dinging fingers, came forward, and stooped 
 down. 
 
 "- Let me get my boots off," said he ; '' you 
 startled me. Yes. I am very late. I 
 thought you would have been in bed." 
 
 He sat upon a chair and occupied himself 
 with his bootlaces. Constantia stood for the 
 moment amazed, but only for the moment, 
 her mind instantly excusing what was un- 
 usual by a vague reference to something that 
 had possibly happened in the *' City." Out- 
 side the peaceful home things often went 
 wrong, and reverberations of trouble would 
 be carried in her husband's voice. As a rule, 
 indeed, he discarded ''business" on the 
 threshold, or permitted it only to reach her 
 in intimate confidences that increased her 
 sense of oneness with him. She was the last 
 to allow personal trifles to change her bearing, 
 and at once dropped her surprise into that 
 zone of the temperate in which it was her 
 habit to exist. 
 
 *' Your slippers, dearest," was all that es- 
 caped her ; '' I will fetch them."
 
 HOT SUMMER 89 
 
 He raised his head. 
 
 " No : I do not Hke your doing things of 
 the kind for me. Where is Ted ? " 
 
 " In bed long ago, Norman." 
 
 The wonder increased. 
 
 ** To be sure. I had forgotten. I will 
 fetch them myself. I will follow you to the 
 drawing-room directly." 
 
 His wish to be alone was expressed by his 
 manner. Constantia moved away. The soft 
 chiming of a clock announced that it was a 
 quarter to midnight. She passed down the 
 hall between the array of portraits and 
 ancestral curiosities, her aspect nobly femi- 
 nine, her walk neither a march nor a glide, 
 but steady and tranquil, with the flow of 
 skirts about It. She carried the dignity of 
 the house well. Norman glancing after her 
 thought so, and wondered — and went on 
 unlacing his boots. She passed into the 
 drawing-room and remained there awaiting 
 him. Her face had been subtly changed by 
 his presence. There was not merely the 
 stirring of affection, as when a loved friend 
 approaches, but she had the look — pleasant,
 
 90 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 dignified, something between resistance and 
 a gentle elation — which women wear because 
 of men, as though their coming opened the 
 door to a world towards which they yearn, 
 but which is not altogether theirs. 
 
 She heard her husband run lightly up-stairs 
 to his dressing-room ; five minutes later his 
 step was on the stair again. By this time 
 she was on the hearth, one hand resting on 
 the mantel-shelf, and looking towards the 
 door. When Norman entered he wore the 
 air of courteous, somewhat ceremonious, reve- 
 rence which was his habitual demeanour in 
 the presence of his beautiful wife. He came 
 up to her and took her hand and kissed 
 it in the way to which she had been accus- 
 tomed all the days of their life together ; 
 and he inquired how she had spent her 
 time. 
 
 " Irene has been here. But what detained 
 you, Norman ? " 
 
 '' I have been over to the Armstrongs' 
 place." He passed his hand over his beard 
 with the musing smile of a confident man. 
 "• It was the old fellow who invited me. The
 
 HOT SUMMER 91 
 
 younger I have not quite fathomed. He is 
 not merely shallow." 
 
 *' You mean Edward ? " 
 
 " Yes : he gives out false notes if you 
 hit him unprepared. He has a suspicious 
 fluency. I am reminded of an advertising 
 agent of bogus pills." 
 
 " I dislike him," said Constantia, with femi- 
 nine emphasis ; " what is his conduct to his 
 sisters ? " 
 
 '' I am not in the domestic secrets. I 
 should say that he had a rough side. The 
 Armstrongs are too new to be civilized. 
 But what of the sisters ? " 
 
 " Eliza called here to-day." 
 
 '' A very unattractive personality." 
 
 " Oh ! she has a fine underlying character, 
 and, I think, genius." 
 
 " A man does not care to probe deep into 
 feminine eccentricity. The charm should be 
 expressive. How about Ted ?" 
 
 '' He has been so sweet to-day, dearest." 
 
 The father and the mother looked into 
 each other's eyes and smiled. That was 
 an intimate moment. Constantia brought
 
 92 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 her shoulder against the hollow of his 
 arm. 
 
 ** All the same," said Dayntree, as though 
 thinking aloud, " I may have to see a good 
 deal of Eliza Armstrong in the future ! " 
 
 *' How is that ? " 
 
 '' One of the secrets that I confide to my 
 wife. Old Armstrong is, I believe, a man 
 haunted by a past. His face has a padlock 
 look, as though he feared his secrets would 
 be rifled. I have the advantage of being 
 a stranger, eminent enough, far enough 
 away, to be trusted. He sent to me to 
 make a singular proposal." 
 
 '' Yes ? " 
 
 '' He desired me to become sole executor 
 of his property under his will." 
 
 '' That is unusual ? " 
 
 " Very. I hesitated. But, after all, why 
 not ? The old man's eyes were haggard 
 with their thought. I could hardly refuse 
 him. He laid stress on it. And the will 
 is a simple one." 
 
 "" And you accepted ? " 
 
 *' Yes. The will is too simple to involve
 
 HOT SUMMER 93 
 
 me In serious trouble. I have but to divide 
 his property fairly — there is no trusteeship. 
 And one cannot refuse a neighbourly act to 
 an old fellow standing on the brink of the 
 grave, and with a constitutional terror of life 
 troubling him. I believe he distrusts his 
 son. He was relieved by my consent." 
 
 *' And I am glad. At least you will see 
 that Eliza receives just treatment." 
 
 *' I shall do that." 
 
 '' Ah, thanks ! Poor litde Eliza is safe 
 then." 
 
 '' You take too many protegees into that 
 great heart of yours," said he, smiling at the 
 proud assurance of her look. 
 
 ** There is room for them all," said she ; 
 *'and have you not got Evan for your 
 own ? "
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Trelyons' drawing-room was a long 
 place divided in the centre by folding doors 
 which Mrs. Trelyon preferred to keep closed. 
 
 Originally the place had been furnished in 
 the Louis Quinze style ; and the rather 
 faded cool-coloured carpet with its sketchy 
 groups of flowers, the painting on the walls 
 and panels, and the polished civilization of 
 the furniture remained, but the effect, suave- 
 ly uncompromising, was bewildered by the 
 bizarre introduction of a multitude of foreign 
 things — handsome rags of costly embroidery, 
 odd-shaped and brightly-coloured objects, 
 screens, fans, exotics — all of them products 
 and inventions of a sunny clime, and all 
 needing brilliant light to carry their effect. 
 
 Mrs. Trelyon preferred things in shade. 
 Irene Severne, speculating upon the 
 94
 
 HOT SUMMER 95 
 
 Strange taste which permitted in a room 
 of habitual occupation so incongruous a 
 jumble as to suggest the hasty transference 
 of the contents of a heathen temple to a 
 European fireside, sometimes fancied that 
 she caught Mrs. Trelyon's abstracted eyes 
 wandering over the idolatrous miscellany 
 with a sarcastic ray in them. 
 
 On this hot afternoon of Irene's early call, 
 the light wherever possible had been ex- 
 tinguished or modified, and Mrs. Trelyon, 
 from a comfortable lounge, talked to her 
 guest in a fatigued voice that matched the 
 semi-darkness. 
 
 Suddenly the folding doors were pushed 
 back, and a stream of sunlight ran along 
 the floor and leapt to the polished points 
 of the furniture and the barbaric tinsel. 
 Mrs. Trelyon closed her large-lidded eyes, 
 and Irene turned with an expectant smile. 
 In the middle of the light stood Rosalie, 
 holding a cricket bat and wearing on her 
 head a scarlet knitted cap. Her hair es- 
 caped from under it in a dark fluffy cloud 
 edged by sunlight ; her dress, a bright-tinted
 
 96 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 cotton, oddly mitigated by a black sash for 
 mourning, was short, loose, and scanty, her 
 poise as she stood hesitating for a moment to 
 peer into the darkness, was easy and graceful. 
 With her bat and her careless head-gear, 
 she looked like a tall, unconscious child. 
 The moment afterwards, as she passed down 
 the room towards Miss Severne, the equi- 
 librium of her bearing, her power of throwing 
 out a charmed circle of distance around her 
 own personality, a hint of experience in her 
 splendid eyes, and, above all, her soft, ripe 
 voice, corrected the impression. 
 
 Irene Severne considered Rosalie a de- 
 parture from anything she had ever en- 
 countered before, and for this reason was 
 Inclined to favour her ; for Irene preferred 
 new types to routine Individuals. As the 
 girl advanced she held out her hand with a 
 smile ; Rosalie smiled a little too. 
 
 " Miss Severne, come out with me," said 
 she ; " mother, your head aches ; it always 
 does, and you will be glad to be rid of your 
 visitor. I like this one of our guests, and I 
 mean to entertain her. She shall come out
 
 HOT SUMMER 97 
 
 with me instead of staying in here in an 
 over-scented room boring you — and herself ^ 
 
 Irene started a little, and slightly coloured. 
 What Rosalie said was so obviously true that 
 she was naturally anxious to deny it. 
 
 " Come," said Rosalie softly, " you have 
 really not the occasion to invent." 
 
 Irene, who had not spoken, rose. 
 
 " Show Miss Severne the rose-garden," 
 said Mrs. Trelyon suavely. 
 
 " If you wish it, mother. But Miss Severne 
 would certainly prefer the loft or the hay- 
 field." 
 
 *' As you wish." 
 
 Mrs. Trelyon waved a white hand in dis- 
 missal. Irene, who was being hurried to- 
 wards the folding doors, glanced back, and 
 saw her in rumpled and tarnished mourning 
 sinking to the cushions with an air of relief. 
 
 ''Rosalie!" 
 
 The pair were already half across the outer 
 drawing-room, and Rosalie had closed the 
 folding doors. Mrs. Trelyon's voice was a 
 little raised. 
 
 "Well, mother?" 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 "If you go to the loft or the hayfield, take 
 Miss Glynn." 
 
 Rosalie, who was at the moment ushering 
 Irene into the hall, smiled to herself, but she 
 obeyed. 
 
 She went to the bottom of the stairs and 
 called — 
 
 -Glynn!" 
 
 Irene waited on events. The monosyl- 
 lable was twice repeated. After the third a 
 commotion, composed of a slamming door, 
 slippers, a skirt and a voice, was heard above. 
 It came on towards the banisters, over 
 which at length the head of a middle-aged 
 lady was thrust. A loud tremulous whisper 
 came down the stairs. 
 
 '' My dear Rosalie — the footman ! The 
 footman, Rosalie ! Consider, my love ! " 
 
 '* What is wrong with the footman ? Come 
 down, Glynn. You are required to chaperon 
 me into the hayfield and the loft. You will 
 have to climb a ladder. Miss Severne is 
 here." 
 
 "Hem!" 
 
 Miss Glynn, perceiving an eminent stranger,
 
 HOT SUMMER 99 
 
 scuttled down-Stairs in effusive hurry, with a 
 smile nicely compounded of an apologetic 
 sense of inferior station and a consciousness 
 of merit. 
 
 ''There's no time for a bonnet, Glynn, nor 
 for curling your fringe, nor changing your 
 old comfortable boots for some that pinch. 
 Miss Severne and I are in a breathless 
 hurry. Take that parasol and come ! " 
 
 Miss Glynn found her version of an elegant 
 bow cut short. She was scarcely able to de- 
 termine whether or no she was smitten to the 
 heart by the girl's words. She hurried to the 
 umbrella stand, one hand nervously straying 
 towards her hair to gauge the extent of the 
 disorder, the other ready to seek out the most 
 prosaic amongst the bright-hued sunshades. 
 She chose an old brown one rather than one 
 of crimson. It was not that she did not prefer 
 the latter ; her genuine taste in colour was 
 furious ; but a stern interior monitress kept 
 plucking back any small vital promptings 
 which she might have had. She dieted 
 on shreds, and called it merit ; conduct to 
 her meant contortion ; as to nature, the very
 
 loo LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 perroquets, had she had her way, would have 
 been sent to the dyer's and reduced to mourn- 
 ing hues. 
 
 As Rosalie ran forward to open a side 
 door, Miss Glynn had an opportunity of 
 imparting some explanatory fictions to their 
 guest. 
 
 '' I find it best," murmured she, looking 
 anxiously at Irene Severne, whose amused 
 composure she envied and found *' aristo- 
 cratic," ''to humour Miss Trelyon. Her 
 mother has done me the honour to commit 
 her to my charge. I find her an interesting 
 study, but she requires moulding^ 
 
 There was not time for more ; they were 
 out in the air and the sunshine, and Rosalie 
 was by Miss Severne's side again. Miss 
 Glynn the moulder, still assiduously seeking 
 opportunities to pat down her hair, followed 
 her charge with anxious eyes. They passed 
 the lawn, where little Ted was found before 
 a wicket, a bat in his hand, meditatively 
 practising the attitudes of manhood in shirt- 
 sleeves. 
 
 '' Rosalie ! you promised to come back.
 
 HOT SUMMER loi 
 
 Aunt Irene, where are you taking her ? " 
 shouted he, dropping back to childhood. 
 
 '' I think Rosalie is taking me, Ted," said 
 Irene. 
 
 ''Well ! she promised. I call it downright 
 mean." 
 
 Rosalie ran to the boy, and knelt on the 
 grass so as to bring her face on a level with 
 his. 
 
 '' Ted ! we will go to the loft," said she ; 
 ''isn't that better?" 
 
 Her face was full of soft colour and coaxing 
 dimples. Ted's large eyes stared into it ; he 
 found himself vaguely affected, and his indig- 
 nation melted. 
 
 " Be quick then," said he ; '' promise T 
 
 " But won't you come ? " 
 
 "No. It won't be any fun in the loft. I 
 don't so much mind Aunt Irene, but you 
 won't get that old lady to make slides down 
 the hay. Where have you hidden the bath 
 with the tadpoles in ? " 
 
 Ted appeased, the trio went on. Miss 
 Glynn's anxiety increased when they turned 
 from the well-ordered gardens towards the
 
 I02 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 back parts and the fields. She walked In 
 protest. Rosalie, always a little in front, 
 made a picture of elastic vigour and beautiful 
 swaying slimness charming to the eye. Every 
 now and then she raised her head, taking 
 deep looks into the foliage where the light 
 played and the bees hummed. Her senses 
 pastured on the beauty of things, and the 
 freedom and the air. Pausing with her hand 
 on a small iron gate, she turned back to 
 Irene. Her face under the scarlet cap, 
 caught thus after an interval, was astonish- 
 ingly vivid and softly brilliant ; to Irene's 
 imagination it seemed to blossom out of the 
 air itself, weaved of light and colour and joy 
 and health and changefulness. The voice, 
 when she spoke, so strangely ripe and full, 
 deepened the impression though the words 
 were nothing. 
 
 " Would you prefer the loft or the field } " 
 said she. 
 
 '' I think the field," returned Irene, in secret 
 deference to the tremors of Miss Glynn. 
 
 '' I am glad," said Rosalie, '' the light is too 
 beautiful to lose."
 
 HOT SUMMER 103 
 
 ** In the West from which you came there 
 is so much sunshine." 
 
 *' And freedom," added Rosalie. 
 
 ** Do you find us in England so very con- 
 ventional.^" asked Irene. 
 
 " There is conventionality everywhere," 
 said Rosalie; "use brings it about. But in 
 England I find you chiefly absurd." 
 
 Miss Glynn, in duty and fear, was inco- 
 herent but deprecatory under her parasol. 
 
 ''Glynn would have me lie," said the girl 
 tranquilly ; " she is here to teach me to do it. 
 Miss Severne, let us sit down on those hay- 
 cocks under the trees ; you will get a glimpse 
 of the pond ; the ripples of it and the sky 
 give me the best suggestions of liberty I can 
 get here." 
 
 " Liberty is a beautiful word," said Irene 
 softly. 
 
 Miss Glynn seated herself on a haycock at 
 a little distance in an attitude of decorum, one 
 hand still endeavouring to bring order amidst 
 the little wisps of her hair. She was, Irene 
 thought, an almost pathetic figure of the 
 keeper led about by the kept.
 
 I04 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 Rosalie sank into the dry grass with a 
 luxurious sigh, throwing herself down at full 
 length ; her hands were under her head ; her 
 breast rose and fell. The eyes of Irene, the 
 fair English- trained woman, wandered over 
 her with an unwilling, fascinated look ; the 
 figure was beautiful as a statue, but then it 
 was almost as expressive. 
 
 ''What makes you and Eliza Armstrong 
 such great friends ? " asked she suddenly. 
 
 '^ Because in one department of our natures 
 we suit," returned Rosalie ; " we meet on that. 
 Eliza is a wild bird with a cut wing." 
 
 " Is she ? " 
 
 ** Yes. And I am a bird whose wing has 
 not been cut. Miss Severne, I see under my 
 lids a field-mouse, brown, soft, staring at 
 us with his bright eyes from between the 
 blades of grass. His heart is thumping. 
 Softly ! " 
 
 *' Where ? where ? " screamed Miss Glynn, 
 clutching at her skirts. 
 
 '' Idiot ! " said Rosalie, without deigning to 
 turn her head ; '' you have frightened my 
 little brother."
 
 HOT SUMMER 105 
 
 '' I saw him, Rosalie," said Irene quickly, 
 ''pretty little fellow !" 
 
 And at the same moment she put out a 
 kind hand to soothe the lady wounded by the 
 word. Miss Glynn was still fidgeting and 
 searching. 
 
 " Come," said Rosalie ; " Glynn will have 
 no peace until we are out of this region of 
 monsters. She weeps at a spider. It is part 
 of the convention." 
 
 '* I have a sensitive nature," explained 
 Miss Glynn, ''and — I am told — I believe — a 
 weak heart." 
 
 Rosalie sprang to her feet. 
 
 *' You showed neither a weak heart nor 
 sensitiveness when you stamped on the ear- 
 wig last night. Come ! the haymakers are 
 going back to their work. They have had 
 tea, and will finish to-night. Splendid fellows 
 they look ! You see that gate ? It is 
 always kept locked. They will undo it now 
 — undo it for yoit^ Glynn. I can dispense 
 with a key." 
 
 So saying the girl ran down a slope 
 towards a gate at the bottom of the field.
 
 io6 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 A procession of young labourers was ap- 
 proaching it at the moment. She reached it 
 before them. Her hands touched the top in 
 a white flashing movement, and her beautiful 
 body flew over the barrier with a Hght rustle 
 of raiment. 
 
 The labourers stopped, clustered together, 
 and shouldered one another. Looks of sleepy 
 admiration stole from face to face. Rosalie 
 stood on the other side in cool unconcern, 
 pushing the falling hair back from her neck, 
 and panting gently. She looked scarcely 
 more conscious than a doe. 
 
 Miss Glynn was hurrying down the slope, 
 anger bursting over her countenance. 
 
 " She did it as a display — before men — 
 before labourers on the grounds," she cried 
 to Irene. 
 
 One of the labourers unlocked the gate 
 and held it open, while the other men trooped 
 through, followed by Miss Glynn, who imme- 
 diately planted herself by Rosalie. Irene 
 had descended the slope more at leisure ; 
 the man at the gate looked towards her ; 
 she passed through and thanked him. He
 
 HOT SUMMER 107 
 
 fastened It again, turned away indifferently, 
 and walked off to his work. Rosalie stood 
 watching every one of his actions. 
 
 *' Let us sit here," said she, leading the 
 way to a pleasant spot. 
 
 They all seated themselves again. Rosalie 
 took up her position much more staidly than 
 before, and sat for a long time in silence. 
 She still followed the labourer with her eyes ; 
 in her face was much the same expression 
 with which she had looked at the field- 
 mouse. Miss Glynn shed a tear or two under 
 her sunshade. 
 
 " This is a strange, beautiful, dangerous 
 nature," thought Irene to herself 
 
 She watched the expression deepening in 
 her features, it seemed to burn slowly up and 
 open vividly in the eyes at last — as coloured 
 petals break out from the sheath. But the 
 face was older for bearing it as the flower 
 is older than the bud ; and Irene hardly 
 knew whether it lightened or threw a shadow 
 over it. Could she have painted an imper- 
 sonation of the evening she would have set 
 there the look of Rosalie's — neither young
 
 io8 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 nor old, but written over with nature's Impress 
 rather than personal memories ; she could 
 have dreamed that thought was obliterated 
 in sensation, subtle, harmonious, and varied 
 as the hour ; within it also was the restless 
 human touch — the outstretch and yearning. 
 Songs of birds were in the air, the scent of 
 wild roses came from the hedge, a warm 
 grassy smell rose from the earth, ripples of 
 sunlight, heat, and colour came and went 
 on the wings of dancing creatures. Rosa- 
 lie's eyes still followed the man of the fields. 
 
 ''Watch him take the step forward," she 
 cried, "and stoop to the scythe with the 
 swing of his arms round. The sunlight runs 
 along the blade and bites the edge, and the 
 edge bites the grass ; and the grass tosses 
 the light and falls to his will with a little 
 rustle. So he reaps earth's fruit. There is 
 only one thing better than the reaper. That 
 is the reaped." 
 
 ''Yes," said Irene, rather vaguely. 
 
 " But have you ever wished to be a 
 working girl, brown, untidy, with burnt hair 
 and bare feet, and to belong to a strong
 
 HOT SUMMER 109 
 
 sinewy splendid man like that ? To be in 
 his power ? " 
 
 Miss Glynn screamed like a hare ; and a 
 startled look shot over Irene's delicate face. 
 She glanced at the girl's pearly ears almost 
 expecting to find them pointed. A sense 
 of civilization weighted her heart. She 
 sought for the right word and discarded all 
 she found. 
 
 *' What makes you say it ? " said she 
 presently. 
 
 ** Because it is there. It is part of the 
 colour and light and the sounds and the 
 warmth. It comes out of the earth. It is in 
 me — in you too." 
 
 *' I believe you are probably right, Rosalie," 
 said Irene; *'as you speak it, it sounds to me 
 simple and natural ; so that I cannot believe 
 I have been without the feeling. You trans- 
 late it ; I should not ; that is the difference." 
 
 By this time the incoherent anger and 
 alarm of Miss Glynn had risen to the point 
 of expression ; she was scandalized at Miss 
 Severne's participation ; a sense of duty was 
 urgent.
 
 no LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 *' I have no words to express my dis- 
 approval," she began ; '' the hint of such a 
 thing on the part of a young lady — you 
 ought not even to think, Rosalie, not even 
 
 to think I am incoherent, Miss Severne, 
 
 but my mind is, I hope, so constituted 
 that I can hardly in delicacy frame a 
 sentence " 
 
 She broke off with a drawn lip and offended 
 air, and then suddenly ejaculated in smothered 
 accents — 
 
 ** A man in corduroy trousers ! '' 
 
 Rosalie got up from the ground and gave 
 her hand to Irene to help her to rise. 
 
 '' Come," said she, addressing herself to 
 Miss Glynn, '* you piece of discord ! We 
 are going back to the over-scented drawing- 
 room and all the various pretences you love. 
 When I look into your mind I seem to see 
 a ruled copy-book with polite maxims in 
 copper-plate handwriting. When I attempt 
 to get a glimpse of your nature I am reminded 
 of Euclid's definition of a point. As to 
 myself, you mistake when you address me 
 as a young lady. I am no such thing.
 
 HOT SUMMER iii 
 
 Primarily I am, with other men, an animal, 
 and my sex is feminine. I am young, 
 vigorous, and ready for any pleasant emotions 
 that are going. My temperament is sensu- 
 ous, and my intellect has a touch of cynicism ; 
 I have no notion of concealment of facts 
 which are patent to every one as part of our 
 common nature. I pursue what I find good 
 and intend to do so. You can give notice 
 if you like, Glynn, for you are in a ridiculous 
 position. I am absolutely indifferent to your 
 opinion, for I find you not only imbecile 
 but also a humbug. I suspect — no, I am 
 sure — that the row of books with rigid bind- 
 ings and religious titles that you keep in 
 your bedroom, are only covers for improper 
 printed matter." 
 
 Then she walked forward by Irene's side, 
 the chaperon following in silence. The hint 
 about giving notice had terrified her, and 
 angry protest and moral asseveration were 
 lost in the anxious inquiry how so to manage 
 her tactics between mother and daughter as 
 to keep her place. On their return to the 
 lawn, Ted was found there bending over
 
 -112 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 a tin bath. He was eagerly inspecting the 
 manoeuvres of some tadpoles which Rosalie 
 had collected for him within. 
 
 '' I'm saving the little frogs," said he, when 
 the shadow of the beautiful girl covered 
 him ; '' they are in my pocket-handkerchief, 
 and they are very much obliged to me. 
 You can look at them if you like. I shall 
 go home with Aunt Irene." 
 
 '' There are strawberries and cream in the 
 drawing-room," said Rosalie gently. 
 
 Ted's brown eyes deepened meditatively 
 to their reflection in the bath. 
 
 'M might stay," said he, ''if Aunt Irene 
 would too. There are lots of people visiting 
 in there." 
 
 "Who has come ?" 
 
 *' Mr. Edward Armstrong for one. 
 Doesn't he think himself the swagger 
 thing!" 
 
 And Ted nimbly rising to his feet, puffed 
 out his chest and fondled an imaginary 
 moustache. Rosalie went in laughing, 
 accompanied by Irene. The drawing- 
 room was full of guests ; the tea-table was
 
 HOT SUMMER 113 
 
 Spread, and Mrs. Trelyon was pouring out 
 tea and casting, between her low musical 
 sentences, despairing glances at the door. 
 Upon Rosalie's appearance, the scarlet cap 
 still on her head, she beckoned her daughter 
 and murmured the monosyllable " Glynn " in 
 her ear, and Ted, who had crept in behind, 
 was dispatched on a message to that lady, 
 who upon hearing that she was wanted, 
 bounded up the stairs in joyful agitation and 
 completely restored good-humour, to touch 
 up her fringe and to fling on a muslin fichu 
 over her morning gown, just to give sufficient 
 finish to her attire to enable her to take her 
 place with satisfaction to herself ''amidst the 
 grace and fashion of the county." 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Mr. Edward Armstrong walked alone in 
 his father's garden at eventide. The light of 
 the setting sun, falling on his face, revealed 
 him as a good-looking, well-fed person, of 
 sanguine colouring. His most marked cha- 
 racteristic was the rise of a curling mass of 
 very beautiful brown hair from a white brow; 
 the least noticeable, was a slight tendency of 
 the feet to turn inwards. 
 
 " The thing will pan out right enough, if 
 only father has seen where his plain duty 
 lies," said the young man to himself, staring 
 at the horizon with a frown ; '' if he has not, 
 the very deuce is in it. Take the round 
 sum as two hundred thousand. Divide that 
 by five " 
 
 It was a habit of Edward's to be con- 
 tinually doing sums. 
 
 114
 
 HOT SUMMER 115 
 
 A constant fret in the smooth life of the 
 young man lay in the fact that his father, the 
 most yielding of men in many points, had a 
 few prejudices, from which no persuasion 
 could induce him to budge. One was an ex- 
 treme reticence on the subject of his fortune. 
 He would impart neither the amount nor the 
 event which had placed him in a position to 
 acquire it. Edward hated cotton, because 
 the very word suggested to him a possibility 
 of extreme obscurity of origin. The Arm- 
 strong children did not know that their father 
 had managed to sidle out of the operative 
 class to which he belonged, into the Olympic 
 superiority of the master's world. They 
 knew there had been a '' rise," but were not 
 wholly aware from what grade it had begun. 
 The "rise," Edward had reason to believe, 
 had taken place very long ago in the thirties, 
 and had connection with a cotton operatives' 
 strike, in which '' Owd Union John" had 
 figured as a leader. There had been a mob, 
 he believed, and some shooting from the 
 mill at Harebarrow Clough ; he was inclined 
 to conjecture that his father's conduct had
 
 ii6 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 been heroic, besides being marked by well- 
 conducted prudence ; he was sure that their 
 kinsman, Mr. Theophilus Armstrong, must 
 have considered that he owed him for some 
 inestimable service ; at any rate, the collapse 
 of the strike had been marked by the extra- 
 ordinary promotion of his father, and the 
 casting ^f " Union John " into gaol. From 
 that day to this no communication whatever 
 had passed between his father and this dis- 
 reputable relative. The young Armstrongs, 
 none of whom were born when the event 
 occurred, regarded it as a fine tradition 
 redounding to credit, and found their father's 
 obstinate refusal to relate the incident signi- 
 ficant of his detestation of the disgrace 
 brought upon them by his cousin. Edward 
 never for a moment suspected that his father 
 had been on an absolute equality with the 
 operative strike leader to begin with. Occa- 
 sionally he excited himself by romantic 
 theories as to the source of the family : ac- 
 cording to these theories Cousin John Arm- 
 strong had descended in the social scale, 
 falling to be ''a common workman" in his
 
 HOT SUMMER 117 
 
 youth, and momentarily dragging his father 
 after him. These theories his father neither 
 denied nor acquiesced in. Mrs. Armstrong 
 was, however, not quite so reticent. The 
 superior person can no more conceal his 
 superiority than the lover his love. 
 
 '' I should never have married your father," 
 she would explain to the depressedl ears of 
 her step-daughters, "if he had not proposed 
 through the penny post. On his first visit 
 to me, after my rash acceptance of him, I 
 said to myself as I opened the door, and my 
 eyes fell upon him : ' He will never do.' " 
 
 Somehow, taking one thing with another, 
 Edward felt himself to be on perhaps slippery 
 ground, when it came to the question of 
 origin, and that it would be the part of a 
 skilful skater to bring himself safely over. 
 Perhaps this was at the bottom of his distaste 
 for cotton. At any rate, so far from en- 
 couraging a hope that he might take up the 
 career natural to an Armstrong, he had, 
 when his expensive three years' sojourn at 
 the University came to an end, signalized his 
 dislike by entreating his father to sell out of
 
 ii8 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 the Harebarrow interest altogether, and to 
 invest his money elsewhere. 
 
 Of late he had been harassed by the 
 anxious question whether his father's income 
 was large enough to enable him in the future 
 to fulfil his rather ample ideas of the conduct 
 of life when he entered on his proposed 
 career of a rich man. 
 
 It was when he came to the divisor that 
 Edward pulled up his thinking with a 
 frown. He whistled slowly, gloom upon 
 his brow, and his eyes depressed to his 
 boots. 
 
 '' If father had really done his duty," said 
 he to himself, *' he would have set about 
 founding a Family long ago. He ought to 
 have concentrated himself on the one end. 
 If he had only done so, we should have had 
 a clear field before us by now, and could 
 begin to live I I am as certain as a man can 
 be of anything, that if father had done what 
 he ought, he would be able to establish his 
 successor in a fair position in the county. 
 And that was father's clear duty. Of course, 
 all other interests ought to be subordinated
 
 HOT SUMMER 119 
 
 to that of the Family. And the thing cannot 
 come out right if he has not seen it. For 
 let's go back to the round figure. Take it 
 again as two hundred thousand ; divide 
 by five — me, mother, Gilbert, Eliza, Sylvia. 
 Forty thousand apiece is absurd, on the face 
 of it. It is far too little to found a Family 
 on, and far too much to leave in the hands 
 of women. It is also not the right thing for 
 Gilbert, who would be best kept in hand by 
 having a limited income judiciously doled out 
 to him. The women, of course, ought to be 
 a charge on the Estate — dependents upon 
 the future Head of the House. Look how 
 all the big families manage it ! I am myself 
 an admirer of entail. Now that we possess 
 ' The Court,' an entail ought to have been 
 arranged. It is the proper thing ; no Family 
 can be founded without it. Then, look how 
 father has missed it with Gilbert ! It is just 
 his crass ignorance, about what is the proper 
 thing. The younger son, of course, ought to 
 enter a profession. All the big families do 
 that. He ought to have been made inde- 
 pendent of the Estate, and the burdens of
 
 I20 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 the Estate lessened by so much. Besides, 
 It's the aristocratic thing to do." 
 
 Edward sighed, as the sense of wasted 
 opportunity flowed over him. 
 
 ''What I always say is," he continued, 
 ''that there's only a step between us and the 
 top of the tree, if only father will concentrate 
 on the main idea, and see where his proper 
 duty lies ! " 
 
 At this point Edward clenched his hands 
 in his pockets with a sudden qualm. Sup- 
 pose he had not ? The baffling thing was 
 that circle of reticence and resistance in his 
 father's nature which he had never been 
 able to break down. Round this shut spot 
 his brooding thought prowled incessantly, 
 curious, anxious, insatiate. Why did his 
 father, for instance, want to talk so much 
 with Mr. Dayntree just now ? However, 
 Dayntree was a man of the world, and he 
 had confidence that he would see things in 
 the right light. 
 
 But suppose it wasn't two hundred thou- 
 sand after all, but only one ? Did they live 
 in the style of two hundred thousand ? One
 
 HOT SUMMER 121 
 
 hundred thousand divided by five. Good 
 Lord ! The paltriness of the thing was 
 enough to make a man sick. 
 
 A sudden consciousness of some one's pre- 
 sence directed his reflections to a new point, 
 without altering the quality of them. His 
 sister was coming across the lawn on her 
 return from an evening walk. He surveyed 
 her from beneath his eyelids, and found him- 
 self fastidiously critical of the glow which 
 exercise had brought to her cheek. Then 
 Eliza sometimes came back from a country 
 walk with a light in her eyes quite beyond 
 her brother's comprehension, and wholly 
 dissonant from his moods. Anything less 
 aristocratic, less in the style of '' Lady Clara 
 Vere de Vere," can hardly be imagined. 
 Edward groaned when he thought of her 
 in connection with '' Society." 
 
 "" Your face," said he, frowning, "is as red 
 as beet-root. I would have you know that 
 Mr. Dixon and Mr. Dayntree are here. I 
 do wish you would contrive to behave as a 
 sister of mine ought to behave." 
 
 The dreams which had lit Eliza's eyes
 
 122 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 died Instantaneously. When Edward saw 
 the look of pain and indecision rise into her 
 face he turned on his heel with a scarcely- 
 concealed expression of dislike. Eliza went 
 on to the house feeling indescribably hurt. 
 Upon entering she caught sight of the coach- 
 man in his best livery hovering in the side 
 passage. One of old Mr. Armstrong's pre- 
 judices lay in a dogged refusal to keep a 
 butler. Mrs. Armstrong, urged by Edward, 
 would silently introduce the coachman when 
 distinguished guests were in question. His 
 presence in the house was therefore to Eliza 
 a symptom of entertainment and unmanage- 
 able hours. 
 
 By this time she was precipitated into a 
 state fatal to herself and others, and before 
 she reached her room signalized it. Down 
 the passage up which she advanced her aunt 
 approached. Miss Caroline Armstrong was 
 a woman of thirty-five, with a graceful 
 carriage and striking features. At the 
 moment, Eliza's quick eyes detected an 
 unusual care in the toilette, and a little 
 pleasant excitement in the face. Some said
 
 HOT SUMMER 123 
 
 that Mr. Dixon called on Miss Armstrong's 
 account. In her anxiety to make no further 
 mistakes, the girl paused dead, with her 
 terrible wide-open eyes fixed on her aunt's 
 unusual elaboration of dress. 
 
 '' Aunt ! Ought I to put on my silk dress 
 or my delaine ? " 
 
 ** For what reason ? " was the reply, accom- 
 panied by a sudden stoniness of feature. 
 
 It increased the girl's perplexity and drove 
 her on to fresh indiscretions. 
 
 *' Edward says that Mr. Dixon and Mr. 
 Dayntree are here," faltered she. 
 
 ** Eliza," was the severe retort, '' it is 
 exceedingly vulgar to make these differences 
 on account of mere callers. Be what you areT 
 
 She got to her room. The details of life 
 were perplexing. She stared out of her 
 window with the merest meek yearning to 
 give satisfaction all round to everybody and 
 an entire despair of attainment. And at this 
 moment, in the hearts of both brother and 
 aunt, the idea of her personality smarted as 
 something almost too exasperating to be 
 borne.
 
 124 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 '* If aunt had only said ^ Your silk, Eliza,' 
 or * your delaine,' or * your muslin,' I would 
 willingly put on anything if I only knew 
 which to choose." 
 
 The zone of colour deepened in the west ; 
 an evening beauty fell on common and 
 uncommon things alike. Eliza moved to 
 the window, threw it wider and looked out. 
 A majesty of skies lay before her ; the deep 
 glimpse into it surprised away the momentary 
 fret and set her again into relation with that 
 wider existence which pressed upon her with 
 so strong a sense of reality in solitary hours. 
 She began to dress carefully, unconsciously, 
 and all too slowly. Thoughts prevented her 
 from marking the flight of time. When she 
 came to herself it was late ; a buzz of talk 
 and laughter in the hall recalled her ; the 
 glow vanished in face of a prosaic disaster 
 — in the realization that she had missed 
 a valuable opportunity. 
 
 For next to Constant ia and Irene, Mr. 
 Dayntree held the high place in Eliza's 
 estimation. In some respects he stood 
 highest of all. She adored him afar off as
 
 HOT SUMMER 125 
 
 the single embodiment of manly culture with 
 which she was acquainted. His mind was 
 the only one she knew that brought her into 
 touch with the world of men and things. 
 His fascination lay in this — he seemed to 
 carry the world with him, to have its heart 
 beating under his waistcoat ; processions of 
 actual beings, facts and experiences, passed 
 in and about his conversation, producing a 
 sense of stir and actuality that nothing in 
 her own life ever brought her. 
 
 Realizing that she was losing his visit, she 
 ran hurriedly down-stairs. A lively group 
 filled the hall. Her step-mother, effusive 
 and gracious, was bidding adieu to Mr. 
 Dayntree ; her sister Sylvia, as sweet and 
 easy as a bud in June, and in simple muslin, 
 had let fall one of her bright speeches ; 
 Norman himself, bearded, handsome, with 
 his forty years of mastered realities, was 
 smiling because of it. Aunt Caroline, restored 
 to composure, her cheek beautified by a 
 slight flush, stood near ; Edward was there, 
 and Gilbert hung behind with a smile of 
 good-natured participation on his face. From
 
 126 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 the drawing-room door her father looked on. 
 Eliza noticed that he leaned against the 
 doorway, that his face was grey, and that 
 it was pushed forward with a certain dogged 
 obstinacy in the jaw, and a startling depth of 
 expression in the eyes. By his side was Mr. 
 Dixon — obviously remaining for the evening. 
 Mr. Dixon, who was nothing whatever in 
 Eliza's eyes! But it is always thus — the 
 gods leave, the ordinary person lingers. 
 
 Eliza hovered for one moment on the last 
 step of the stair, and then advanced. It 
 seemed so sweet a picture. The poems 
 which slumbered in . her heart were apt to 
 be thrown out as an atmosphere for the 
 commonest incidents, the stature of men and 
 women being magnified thereby ; and those 
 who made up the group and could be easy 
 one with another, beautiful in demeanour 
 and gracious in speech, shone to her eyes 
 as visionary beings. Never was onlooking 
 heart less tainted with suspicion or more 
 wistful of participation. She advanced and* 
 extended a small white hand towards Mr. 
 Dayntree. The latter, naturally startled by
 
 HOT SUMMER 127 
 
 this salutation at a parting moment, broke 
 off his speech, took the hand, and bowed 
 with a twinkle in his eye. The merry 
 group seemed to fall to pieces in presence 
 of this bit of isolation ; Mr. Dayntree stepped 
 towards the door, and all that was harmonious 
 went with him. 
 
 ** Gawk ! " whispered brother Gilbert, as 
 one after another dispersed. 
 
 The darkness which was gathering in the 
 sky settled also on Eliza's heart. She heard 
 them collect in the drawing-room, and, from 
 the sounds which came from the closed door, 
 knew that the mirth of the evening was 
 resumed for Mr. Dixon's benefit. The 
 entertainment of Mr. Dixon, however, was 
 not very attractive, and turning to the front 
 door she stood watching the deepening 
 shadows and waiting for the stars. 
 
 A quarter of an hour passed. 
 
 Then Gilbert came out of the drawing- 
 room and paused to look at her with a 
 curious smile. He set his chin up in boyish 
 imitation of her attitude. 
 
 "Well, Miss Johnny-head-in-air!" cried
 
 128 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 he; ''star-gazing? They are laughing at 
 you in the drawing-room — how you go 
 about staring up into the sky and Seeing 
 nothing." 
 
 "" I see everything!' heavily retorted Eliza, 
 yet with a truth to which her less gifted 
 brother had no clue. 
 
 '' Oh, do you ? Dixon calls you ' II 
 Penserosa.' " 
 
 '' She saw everything." 
 
 Gilbert, not very clear as to the meaning 
 of the phrase, but wishing to assert his 
 superiority in age and sex, seized another 
 weapon. 
 
 '' They say you shook hands with Mr. 
 Dayntree like a pump-handle," said he. 
 
 Eliza stared at him silently. A sense of 
 outrage cut her heart like a scarlet thread. 
 
 " Elizer — I'm " continued Gilbert, not 
 
 ill-naturedly. 
 
 But she turned her shoulders on him, and 
 did not wait for the rest. Her name, always 
 a grievance, thus pronounced became an 
 insult. She fled up-stairs and took refuge in 
 her bedroom and a locked door.
 
 HOT SUMMER 129 
 
 The rest of the house went on its way. 
 In the kitchen the evening coffee was being 
 brewed, and the best china cups were spread 
 out for use. The old housekeeper bent over 
 the fire ; the waitress prepared a silver basket 
 with dainty cakes ; and the coachman, in his 
 best clothes — the fictional element which 
 Edward was so fond of introducing into 
 his surroundings — prepared to enhance the 
 family dignity by himself bearing in the tray. 
 
 "You know Dayntree well?" said Mr. 
 Armstrong in the drawing-room, addressing 
 himself to Mr. Dixon. 
 
 He stood on the hearthrug with an air 
 which Edward found too commercial. He 
 was still grave and thoughtful. His head 
 pushed forward in the particular attitude 
 Eliza had noticed, showed as something 
 rugged, forceful, and a little grim. 
 
 '* O dear ! Papa is in one of his moods," 
 thought Mrs. Armstrong. 
 
 *'Yes," returned Mr. Dixon; *' I may say 
 that, I suppose, seeing our acquaintance 
 dates from Oxford. Dayntree has not ful- 
 filled his early promise, you know." 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 I30 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 Mr. Armstrong turned his head sharply. 
 
 *' He made a figure at the Union debates 
 in undergraduate days. It was thought his 
 career would be political, and that he would 
 probably take office." 
 
 Miss Armstrong was of opinion that office 
 demanded more solidity of character. Mr. 
 Dixon smiled. 
 
 '* He showed his solidity of character to 
 some purpose when he threw himself into 
 a commercial career," said Mr. Armstrong, 
 speaking with marked decision ; ''his educa- 
 tion wasn't a mere bit of embroidery. He 
 has built up a splendid fortune." 
 
 *^ Oh ! there's no doubt he is a fine 
 manipulator of money affairs," assented Mr. 
 Dixon. 
 
 '* The man is a born financier," said Mr. 
 Armstrong, lifting his head suddenly, as does 
 one who knows what he is saying. 
 
 *' Well ! that's a very main thing in 
 business matters, of course." 
 
 " He has the whole thing in his finger-tips 
 — runs at the market like a dog with his 
 nose to the ground," said Mr. Armstrong.
 
 HOT SUMMER 131 
 
 *' Are we to judge everything by pecuniary 
 results ? " murmured Mrs. Armstrong, in her 
 elevated manner. 
 
 Edward frowned uneasily at his father's 
 metaphor, and disliked the turn the conver- 
 sation had taken. Whiffs from the mill, the 
 counting-house, the town-office, pervaded 
 the conversational air. ''A dog with his 
 nose to the ground." How Lancashire and 
 uncultivated ! Who but a cotton-operative 
 would say such a thing ! He sauntered 
 across the room — Oxford veneered on his 
 manner — and leaned against the corner of 
 the mantel-shelf. 
 
 '' I wonder the University didn't wash all 
 that sort of thing out of him," said he 
 shortly; ''a man ought to adopt the higher 
 ambition." 
 
 Aunt Caroline softly struck her hands 
 together in applause. 
 
 *' What I long to see," said Mrs. Arm- 
 strong, ** is both commerce and politics 
 brought under really Christian principles." 
 
 "What does Miss Armstrong say ?" asked 
 Mr. Dixon.
 
 132 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 Miss Armstrong turned her interesting 
 face — the long thin nose with a ripple in it, 
 the bitingly thin lips and the fine hatchet jaw. 
 
 "That the country carries on some of its 
 commercial enterprises under the Christian 
 flag with great advantage to its own pocket," 
 said she. 
 
 Mr. Armstrong's head had fallen forward 
 again, and he appeared to have lost interest 
 in the conversation. 
 
 It was a curious anomaly in the Armstrong 
 household that Aunt Caroline was permitted 
 thus to take her enjoyment in the utterance 
 of paradox. Mrs. Armstrong, however, 
 explained her sister's unorthodox speeches to 
 her own mind as eccentric manifestations of 
 the Armstrong cleverness, and in her pride 
 of family upheld her. As to herself, her 
 chief characteristics were a weak low voice 
 that suggested fatigue, and a coldly-balanced 
 demeanour. She affected also a rigid aus- 
 terity, which manifested itself in excessively 
 early rising, and in a neglect of the dainties 
 of the table. These traits were supposed to 
 signalize particular strength of character, and
 
 HOT SUMMER 133 
 
 they certainly afforded a basis from which to 
 harry the family with a sense of shortcoming. 
 Mrs. Armstrong's superiority and Aunt 
 Caroline's cleverness produced together a 
 subtle network of thin but highly effective 
 tyranny, under which the soul of Eliza 
 groaned and perished. 
 
 "Caroline! Are you not too radical? 
 Gilbert is present," murmured Mrs. Arm- 
 strong. 
 
 ''Original!'' supplied Mr. Dixon, with a 
 bow. 
 
 ''When you come to originality," re- 
 marked Gilbert with cheerful irrelevancy, 
 ''commend me to Mrs. Dayntree's sister. 
 She's a oner ! " 
 
 "You allude to Miss Severne ? " asked 
 Miss Armstrong. " A delicate-looking 
 woman. A ' rare pale Margaret ' sort of 
 creature. Gilbert, do avoid slang ! " 
 
 " Ah ! " said Mr. Armstrong suddenly ; " a 
 woman with a dry tongue." 
 
 Miss Armstrong had risen and was ap- 
 proaching the piano. Mr. Dixon followed 
 her with his eyes.
 
 134 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 " This is delightful," said he. 
 
 Aunt Caroline opened the piano and 
 glanced round on the rest. 
 
 ''Edward, are you in voice?" said she; 
 *' we might try a part-song. Come and sing 
 the second, Isabella. Now, Sylvia and 
 Gilbert ! I will accompany." 
 
 Mrs. Armstrong protested on her own 
 behalf, but her objections being overcome, 
 the family gathered round the piano. • After 
 some debate and delay a part-song was 
 selected. The four stood behind Aunt 
 Caroline. Sylvia led with her clear soprano ; 
 Mrs. Armstrong standing by her side, tall 
 and very upright, moving a long hand gently 
 and monotonously in time, contributed with 
 visible effort a sweet musical second ; Edward 
 gave a harsh tenor under a frowning brow ; 
 and Gilbert in boyish style the bass ; Miss 
 Armstrong seated at the piano kept them 
 firmly together, and showed Mr. Dixon a 
 graceful profile with a brow indicative of 
 rather shallow intellectual furnishing. Mr. 
 Armstrong extended himself upon an arm- 
 chair, and fell into immovable silence. Mr.
 
 HOT SUMMER 135 
 
 Dixon, eying Miss Armstrong, was troubled 
 by a vision of Miss Severne flitting across 
 his mind — of Miss Severne with her gentle 
 eyes and dry tongue. He followed the vision 
 by a sigh. 
 
 Outside stood the coachman and the 
 waitress with trays in their hands, both in 
 perspiring uncertainty whether to break in 
 on the melody or to wait. The melody 
 ended. It was followed by the tuning of a 
 violin. 
 
 '' Bide for the Lord's love, James ! That's 
 Mr. Edward on now," whispered the waitress 
 in agony. 
 
 A long-drawn cry from the fiddle, and an 
 undistinguishable welling of pianoforte notes 
 reached the untutored ears. 
 
 '' I tell you it's tuning up they're at. In 
 with you, Mary ! " 
 
 The door burst open and the small 
 procession entered with tramp and rattle. 
 Edward, his arm suspended on the second 
 note of Gounod's Melody, dropped his bow 
 and turned to his step-mother.
 
 136 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 '^ I never yet," said he, with subdued 
 savagery, " began to play anything on my 
 violin in this house, but that somebody 
 instantly put on coals, or the servants burst 
 in with coffee."
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The long-drawn scream of Edward's violin 
 stole from the drawing-room to Eliza, who 
 was still leaning out of her bedroom window ; 
 she caught her hands to her ears ; but the 
 uneasiness could only be avoided by escaping 
 into the open air. Eliza resolved to pay an 
 evening call on Rosalie Trelyon. Once out- 
 side she found again a beautiful quietude ; 
 indeed, all the summer had been wonderful — 
 days of sunshine linked to nights of breath- 
 less calm. She looked at the stars, which, 
 poetically irrelevant and exquisite, hung in 
 the sky. It was the fancy of her bewildered 
 but delicate soul to believe that from their 
 omen-lit edges remote relationships escaped. 
 The page of life, as learned in home experi- 
 ence, was a hunting of angry shadows round 
 a barren circle ; the life which dropped from 
 137
 
 138 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 the cool fingers of Nature had more of 
 actuality and substance, but so far it was an 
 existence suspended imminent behind a cloud, 
 and needing an energizing force to bring it 
 within vision. To-night this vibration upon 
 her sensibility affected her as a sharp tease of 
 presentiment ; she stood quite still, looking 
 up, and feeling as a ball poised in the hand 
 of a great thrower, and ready for the pitch 
 over barriers into the undiscovered beyond. 
 The estates of ''The Court" and of 
 ''South Downs" ran undulating edges one 
 into another ; and the feet of the two girl- 
 friends, in frequent visitations, had beaten a 
 path across a field flanked by a plantation, 
 which led into the upper fruit-garden of the 
 Trelyons. The garden was on higher ground 
 than the house, and was linked to it by the 
 covered stone bridge and glass doors which 
 led straight on to the passage in which the 
 rooms of Rosalie were situated. The fruit- 
 garden was quiet and retired — a picturesque 
 place, broadly cut into four parts by two 
 main paths intersecting each other in the 
 centre ; here they were linked by a creeper-
 
 HOT SUMMER 139 
 
 covered arbour constructed with four arched 
 openings, having as many corner seats. 
 EHza had made it a habit to reach the house 
 from the top of the path that led through the 
 rustic arches straight on to the bridge. A 
 visit by night was of course uncommon, yet 
 she ventured it without hesitation, having so 
 far never found her presence unwelcomed by 
 Rosalie. The pre-arranged three taps on 
 the inner glass door — recognized and allowed 
 by '' Glynn " and the servants — had scarcely 
 ever failed to draw to the entrance the face 
 of her friend with welcome in her eyes. 
 And if by day-time why not by night ? The 
 fair-haired dreamer, softly unopening the 
 small wicket from the plantation to the 
 garden, knew of no reason to the contrary ; 
 nor was it within her philosophy to surmise 
 that any save herself should ever use her 
 own preconcerted signal ; nor that the 
 innocence of her hand-beat upon the glass 
 might become a little sterile to an ear 
 expectant of the thrills of life, and ready for 
 new sensations. She stood for a moment 
 looking round and breathing the pungent
 
 I40 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 cleanly smell of fruit and herbs, her mind 
 no less than before over-shadowed by its 
 specially spiritual atmosphere. Eliza was so 
 peculiarly the pilgrim of hidden experience 
 that any sudden evidence of discreditable 
 affairs was bound to shock and overthrow. 
 Standing thus wrapped in her habitual 
 mood on the brink of this night of events, 
 the first thing that startled her was a sense 
 of the unusual near at hand. By choice she 
 had taken the broad grassy edge of the beds, 
 the silence being too precious to be broken. 
 It was this stillness of her own which enabled 
 her to catch the sound of steps elsewhere ; 
 the garden was, she discovered, already dis- 
 turbed by sauntering footfalls. They came 
 from the far end of the intersecting path, and 
 while she was approaching the arches from 
 the top, they made for the same spot from 
 the right. It did not occur to her to desist 
 from her own progress ; this garden and the 
 bridge were Rosalie's and hers by consecrated 
 right ; if others intruded she had but to slip 
 into or behind the arbour, wait until they 
 passed, and dart on to the glass doors to give
 
 HOT SUMMER 141 
 
 her habitual signal. Down the grassy edge 
 the girl passed on unheedingly, every trick 
 of habit and the just innocence of her heart 
 leading her, and having in her own nature 
 nothing that could turn her back. In spite 
 of this, Eliza's instinct — keen as any one's — • 
 dwelt on the sound of the steps and read into 
 them certain indications. They were quiet 
 and leisurely as of persons choosing to be 
 alone ; they told of snatched interviews, 
 precious because rare — or dangerous ; they 
 carried adventure and secrecy with them. 
 The wrong step in the wrong place — that is 
 eerie to the consciousness and brings the 
 heart into the mouth and pricks up the ear. 
 Something, she knew not what, trembled 
 through her blood. By and by came other 
 indications ; there was a murmur of low 
 voices, rippling laughs soft and with the in- 
 definite quality of close and intoxicated enjoy- 
 ment ; the interchange of sound, too, was 
 masculine and feminine — a vocal duet learned 
 so long ago in Paradise that it is recognizable 
 to the most unpractised. Eliza jumped to 
 the inevitable conclusion. A moment after-
 
 143 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 wards instinct lost that inference in reason. 
 As the sounds approached, hooded in caution, 
 she distinguished the quality of at least one 
 tone, and that was Rosalie's. Now Rosalie 
 had no accepted lover. Rosalie's affairs 
 were plain, she believed, to her reading as 
 the lines on her own palm ; Rosalie she 
 knew to be heart-free. There was no mas- 
 culine intimacy forbidding her intrusion ; 
 why then draw back ? and yet arrived as she 
 now was close to the arbour, her instincts 
 were so loud in warning- that she drew her 
 skirts together and shrank behind an arch 
 preparatory to flying back undetected on the 
 way she came. The moment afterwards her 
 capacity of coherent thinking was broken by 
 a crushing surprise. The advancing pair 
 were close upon her, they entered the arbour, 
 for a moment the rays from the lighted 
 bridge touched them. Eliza hardly con- 
 trolled her cry of astonishment. 
 
 That was Rosalie sure enough. The in- 
 explicable thing was the identity of the 
 person accompanying her. 
 
 Hardly conscious of what she was doing,
 
 HOT SUMMER i43 
 
 she walked forward and seated herself on 
 one of the corner seats without any attempt 
 at concealment ; the red light from the 
 bridge crept up her muslin skirt. There 
 was of course, she argued, no necessity to 
 retreat. Instinct was now almost obliterated 
 by reason. The pale eyebrows contracted 
 with a slight frown, and the features deli- 
 cately chiselled out against the darkness 
 became severely thoughtful. She could 
 bring nothing to bear on the event but a 
 girl's untarnished philosophy, and could do 
 nothing but lend it the protection of her 
 innocence. Rosalie was her own familiar 
 friend ; there were certain laws which one 
 never dreamed of transgressing — thus she 
 picked up the threads of thought possible to 
 her — obviously the presence of a third person 
 in an interview where the parties were pro- 
 saically distanced by fate and time, could 
 not be an intrusion. She sat quite still with 
 her small hands loose on her knee and 
 waited ; she could conceive no reason why 
 she should not do so. 
 
 And yet instinct kept alive in her breast
 
 144 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 as a thumping heart. The odd sensation 
 was not at all of the nature of thought. It 
 was one of those impressions which wait 
 months, even years, before they clothe them- 
 selves with so much substance as is compre- 
 hended in an expressible idea. When the 
 dim prophecy is fulfilled they return on the 
 mind with incredible vividness, forcing from 
 the tongue the cry, *' I said so! " when what 
 we mean is that so v^^felt. 
 
 Back the pair came on the return journey, 
 sauntering and talking ; they were near 
 enough for her to hear what was said. 
 
 '' Law then has no meaning to you unless 
 based on what is natural ? " 
 
 " None whatever. Need and nature — 
 those are my criterions." 
 
 '* It is a masculine idea — a man's standard." 
 
 "And must become a woman's too. It is 
 mine. I own no other." 
 
 [''Rosalie f '''] 
 
 The voice leapt from the centre of the 
 arbour, and a lightly robed figure rose 
 before them. After it there slowly blos- 
 somed from the darkness the face of Eliza,
 
 HOT SUMMER 145 
 
 its wide-open steadiness of gaze and inno- 
 cence of contour throwing out in the un- 
 certain light an impress of severity. It was 
 doubt on the one side, alarmed fancy on 
 the other, that thus sketched into the girl's 
 features an attribute of the kind. On her 
 part the grating of startled feet on the gravel 
 after the soft footfalls, struck on her ear as 
 with a lifetime of consequence ; and after it 
 utter silence fell. She held the pair in her 
 unwinking gaze, marvelling to see in either 
 face anger chasing dismay. That was erased 
 from the masculine eyes by a steely dislike 
 that cut like a knife ; then with hastily lifted 
 hat, he — the intruder — turned and walked 
 away. The two girls were left face to 
 face. 
 
 '' Rosalie r' repeated Eliza, astonished at 
 this quiver of emotion, in a moment pre- 
 judged by her as commonplace. 
 
 The heart in the breast of the beautiful 
 Rosalie stirred curiously. She blinked her 
 eyes once or twice and Eliza shivered. For 
 Rosalie's face held a cold immovable anger 
 not to be borne ; Eliza's intellectual capacity 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 seemed to shut up under it. In her helpless 
 pain she put out her hand and touched her 
 friend and cried her name again. 
 
 Rosalie turned away impatiently and stood 
 in the dark, her shoulder averted. 
 
 "• Why do you come stealing on me like 
 this — and spying?'' she asked in a voice of 
 the same cold immovable anger. 
 
 " / spy on you ! I just came. What is — is 
 —the matter ? " 
 
 Rosalie pushed into the arbour and sat 
 down suddenly. Eliza stood where she was, 
 the most perplexed creature between the 
 heavens and the earth. 
 
 '' You born fool ! " said Rosalie. 
 
 '' Rosalie — dont ! " 
 
 Rosalie sat silent, but the wild thumping 
 of her pulses in that insane access of anger 
 was getting stilled. 
 
 *' Why,'' asked Eliza, *' does he look at 
 me as though I were hateful ? what does it 
 all mean ? " 
 
 '' What are you here for ? " 
 
 '' I should like to have heard you talk ! " 
 was the irrelevant reply.
 
 HOT SUMMER 147 
 
 "■ You are a baby. How did you know 
 he was here ?" 
 
 ** I saw him." 
 
 ''Saw him! Where ?" 
 
 '' From the path behind this arch. I 
 meant to go back at first. But seeing who 
 it was of course I stayed. And why 
 not ? " 
 
 RosaHe threw her head back and suddenly 
 laughed. 
 
 '' Goose ! Goose ! Goose ! " said she. 
 " What on earth were you doing on the path 
 behind the arbour '^. " 
 
 '' I was coming to see you." 
 
 ** Come at a less crazy hour then. Where's 
 your maid, your chaperon ? Good gracious, 
 Eliza ! We're both lost women ! Glynn's in 
 her bedroom with her nose greased and her 
 toes in hot water and a glass of calliduin cttm 
 by her side. She has a bad cold, and I saw 
 her safely locked up for the night. Then 
 was the hour for sport, and we're both, you 
 and I, found — out without our chaperons. 
 The fat's in the fire." 
 
 ''Oh, Rosalie!" said Eliza forlornly, and
 
 148 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 in a tone singularly flat after the other's crisp 
 sentences, *' I don't have a maid, or a chape- 
 ron. Fm no beauty. Nobody takes that 
 much trouble over me." 
 
 '' Happy mortal ! Well ! skurry home now. 
 I'm dead tired. Good-night." 
 
 The tall beautiful girl rose from her seat, 
 and leaning down to the drooping face of 
 Eliza, kissed her cheek. Eliza turned away 
 giddily. Her brain was benumbed, and was 
 an absolute blank from anything like com- 
 prehension of the occurrence. She left the 
 arbour and stepped up the path. Then she 
 heard Rosalie call her again. Turning back 
 she caught sight of her face against the black 
 curve of an arch, wonderful with beauty in 
 the dim light, the mouth hungry and wistful 
 for life, the eyes gleaming and tantalizing. 
 
 ''Eliza!" 
 
 ''Oh, yes!" 
 
 "It was a dull talk you interrupted — mere 
 politics." 
 
 " Was it ? " said Eliza, without interest. 
 
 " And you shook the last phrase out of my 
 head."
 
 HOT SUMMER 149 
 
 *^ Oh — something about law. Does it 
 matter ? Not very interesting, I think." 
 
 The eyes held her with their smile and 
 drew her in a net of influence. 
 
 ''No, not very. I recall. We won't talk 
 of our little escapade — yours and mine — to 
 Glynn or Aunt Caroline, shall we ? " 
 
 "Oh, no! Why should I talk of it? 
 There's nothing to say." 
 
 ''Nothing at all." 
 
 The voice was lucid and emphatic.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Breakfast was spread In the dining-room 
 of'' The Court." It was a sunny morning and 
 the French windows were thrown open. Over 
 one of the lawns a Httle procession of two 
 gardeners and a mowing-machine passed up 
 and down, and the drowsy sound came In 
 with the scent of freshly-mown hay. 
 
 Aunt Caroline stood at the window ; she 
 had been reading Walt Whitman's poems — 
 they were quite In fashion for the moment ; 
 half the readers sternly disapproved, and the 
 other half became wildly emancipated under 
 them. Aunt Caroline was looking out on a 
 world tinctured newly by Whitman moods 
 and Swinburnlan expressions. 
 
 The whistle of a far-off engine was coin- 
 cident In her ear with the opening of the door 
 
 to admit her elder niece. Miss Armstrong, 
 
 150
 
 HOT SUMMER 151 
 
 whose attitude played the Hstener, raised her 
 hand and beckoned. There was nothing to 
 be heard but the mowing-machine and a 
 distant train. Eliza, her eyes still dimmed 
 by last night's weeping, approached. She 
 had a conviction that her aunt was going to 
 be too clever for her, and that she should 
 miss her meaning. But Miss Armstrong 
 was too much occupied to care who was her 
 auditor or what was the fashion. The whistle 
 sounded again. 
 
 ** Ah ! " said she softly, '' the sound of the 
 whistle of an engine and the whirl of wheels 
 through the dimness of a distance." 
 
 " I used to like it when I was a child," 
 began Eliza quite eagerly. " Don't you re- 
 member that puff of white steam that curled 
 along the plain in our old home every morn- 
 ing, in and out amongst the trees ? I knew 
 the time, and I used to run to the nursery 
 window with Sylvie every day." 
 
 Aunt Caroline turned away rather im- 
 patiently. She had never noticed a train in 
 her life before, and found the stale reminis- 
 cence tiresome.
 
 152 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 At the moment Mrs. Armstrong, for whom 
 the day was already old, entered. With a 
 glance at the clock and her hand on the bell 
 she surrendered her cheek to the morning 
 salutation and summoned the servants to 
 prayers. Sylvia and the boys straggled in, 
 and Mrs. Armstrong herself sat down to read 
 the psalm. 
 
 "Where's father?" whispered Gilbert, 
 thrusting his dark curly head and uncouth 
 face, as yet so unredeemed from barbarism, 
 close to Eliza. 
 
 Eliza shook her red mop expressively. 
 
 Between prayers and breakfast was a short 
 interval. Aunt Caroline moved softly about 
 with her air of intellectual aloofness. Sylvia 
 had disappeared at a sign from her step- 
 mother. Gilbert, with his hands in his 
 pockets, whistled a tune, and Edward paid 
 some attention to his nails. 
 
 " Edward," said Mrs. Armstrong suddenly, 
 from the breakfast-table, where she stood 
 rather absently re-arranging the cups, '' your 
 father is very strange this morning." 
 
 Everybody looked towards her ; Edward
 
 HOT SUMMER 153 
 
 left off polishing his nails, and the spell of 
 silence being broken, the family gathered 
 round the table. 
 
 ** Isn't he coming down ?" asked Edward, 
 when the maid had closed the door. 
 
 '' No. I have sent his breakfast up-stairs 
 by Sylvia. He is very strange. I believe 
 Gilbert had better take the dog-cart and drive 
 over for the doctor." 
 
 "Then he is ill?" 
 
 " He insists that I shall invite old Mr. John 
 Armstrong to stay with us. I have been 
 combating the idea for days." 
 
 Mrs. Armstrong made a plaintive gesture 
 with her hands and gently shook her head. 
 Everybody looked at everybody. Edward 
 leaned back in his chair, pushinghis plate away. 
 
 ** Of course that's impossible, mother," said 
 he ; '' yes, Gilbert had better go for the 
 doctor." 
 
 *' Why is it impossible for old Mr. John 
 Armstrong to come and stay with us ? " 
 asked Eliza. 
 
 "■ Eliza ! Do for goodness' sake not be an 
 idiot!''
 
 154 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 It was almost a chorus. 
 
 *' Isabella," said Aunt Caroline in a low, re- 
 proachful tone ; " surely you can manage him!" 
 
 " I cannot. I am at a loss, and wash my 
 hands of it. I repeat that he insists that old 
 Mr. John Armstrong shall come and stay at 
 'The Court.'" 
 
 Mrs. Armstrong's tones were as ever very 
 soft and measured. 
 
 " Why did not you appeal to me before, 
 mother ? " said Edward irritably. '' Father 
 must be off his head." 
 
 ''Will you try your influence with him 
 now then ? I am at an end of mine." 
 
 " I will reason with him certainly. I'll go 
 up to his room after breakfast. Of course 
 we can't let him wreck us by this ridiculous 
 whim." 
 
 " Old Mr. John Armstrong!'' murmured 
 Aunt Caroline very expressively, and with a 
 complete erasure of the democratic vistas of 
 Whitman. 
 
 At the moment Sylvia returned to the 
 dining-room. 
 
 " You have been very long," said Mrs.
 
 HOT SUMMER 155 
 
 Armstrong with enough severity to arrest 
 the girl on the threshold. *' Did father say 
 anything ? " 
 
 " He sent me with a message first. And 
 then he told me to come back and pour out 
 the tea." 
 
 Leaning against the door in her fresh 
 morning muslin, Sylvia turned her blue eyes 
 first to one face, then to another. 
 
 " A message ! " 
 
 *' A telegram," said Sylvia. '* He had one 
 written ready, and he sent me round to the 
 stable with directions that it was to be sent 
 off at once." 
 
 Eliza listened with all her ears. Something 
 very like panic was written in the faces of 
 her elders. Sylvia stood at the door the 
 picture of a pretty culprit. Edward sprang 
 from his chair with an expression which 
 sounded as much like an oath as was con- 
 venient to feminine ears to infer. 
 
 '' Edward," said Mrs. Armstrong rather 
 quickly, but in the most fatigued of her 
 evangelical tones ; '' this cannot be pre- 
 vented. It must be mety
 
 156 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 And at the last word she brought her 
 clenched hand down upon the table with a 
 silent emphasis which Eliza found dreadful. It 
 would have been less so had the cups jingled. 
 
 "At least let Gilbert hurry for the doctor," 
 implored Aunt Caroline. 
 
 '' Sylvia," said Mrs. Armstrong ; *' you 
 have carried one order to the stable. Carry 
 another now." 
 
 Gilbert began to drink down his coffee in 
 great gulps. 
 
 " The dog-cart I " shouted Edward, as 
 Sylvia's bright skirt vanished through a 
 second door. '' Gilbert will want to bring 
 the doctor back." 
 
 The blow fell heaviest upon Edward. He 
 had such a very long list of matters that 
 were of the highest importance. Things 
 were always "trembling in the balance" with 
 him. It was that which brought the sense 
 of instability into existence. When a hair's- 
 breadth or the cut of a collar may wreck 
 you, life is apt to present itself as a series 
 of cataclysms. 
 
 That morning, when he entered his father's
 
 HOT SUMMER 157 
 
 dressing-room (a place which the old man 
 had found it convenient to secure to himself 
 as a refuge), he stood as high in the estima- 
 tion of his family as it was possible to do. 
 He found his father partially dressed and 
 seated near the ^ window in the warm sun- 
 light. Mr. Armstrong did not at first notice 
 his son's entry, and Edward, as he opened 
 the door, hesitated, with his eyes fixed on a 
 little table by his father's side. Upon that 
 table lay the two books which Mr. Armstrong 
 was wont to say had formed the basis of his 
 conduct in life and his success. These books 
 were the Bible, and Smiles's Self-Help. The 
 look of the worn bindings was something as 
 familiar to Edward's eyes as the rough out- 
 line of his father's profile traced out against 
 the window-pane, the head a little bent in 
 moody reflection. From the Bible the old 
 man had culled an elastic and evasive morality, 
 a solid expectation of mansions and golden 
 floors in the future (not unmingled with a 
 curiously persistent taste for mahogany fur- 
 niture), and a rich knowledge of fine old 
 English phraseology. From the second
 
 158 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 book he had taken that line of conduct to 
 which throughout his career he had conscien- 
 tiously adhered. Smiles's Self-Help was his 
 epic of Hfe. That and the Bible occupied in 
 his mind places of equal importance, and he 
 accorded to them a like veneration. He 
 read with an equally satisfied sense of pious 
 emotion the resonant passages in which the 
 Psalmist damns his foes, and the sentences 
 in whose trim glow Smiles canonizes his 
 saints. To Edward himself the books had 
 become a superstition from long association. 
 As a child, by his father's side, and under 
 his father's guiding finger, he had stammered 
 through marked passages of Self-Help, and 
 had accepted them as the very foundation 
 of life's success, and the corner-stone of that 
 moral bridge by which you pass on to an 
 affluence and distinction not shared by your 
 fellows. He knew certain of the passages 
 by heart, could see them in the eye of his 
 mind through the closed covers on the 
 fading, well-thumbed page, with the deeply- 
 marked pencil lines beside them — 
 
 " The other barbers found their customers
 
 HOT SUMMER 159 
 
 leaving theifiy and redttced their prices to his 
 standard, when Arkwright, deterjnined to 
 push his trade, announced his determination 
 to give * a clean shave for a halfpenny! " . . . . 
 
 '^ Sir James Graham rose after him, and 
 declared, amidst the cheers of the House, that 
 it rendered him. more prozcd than he had ever 
 before been of the H. of C, to thifik that a 
 person risen from that condition should be 
 able to sit side by side, on equal terms, with 
 the hereditary gentry of the land!* .... 
 
 ^' He had many sons, and placed them all 
 in sittcations where they might be usefiU to 
 each other. . . . He lived to see his children 
 connected together in business!' .... 
 
 '' The family was worthily ennobled in the 
 reign of Charles //." . . . . 
 
 '' Search was made, and presently a diver 
 came up with a solid bar of silver in his arms. 
 When Phipps was shown it, he exclaimed, 
 * Thanks be to God I we are all made 7ne7i. . ! 
 Phipps share was about ^20,000, and the 
 king, to shozu his approval of his energy and 
 honesty in condztcting the enterprise, conferred 
 tipon him the ho7iour of knighthood!'
 
 i6o LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 And so on, in the style of that famous 
 little Jack who '* pulled out the plum," and 
 reflected upon his own virtue. Edward, 
 with his eyes on the old leather binding, 
 recalled the familiar and encouraging lessons. 
 They were like a good omen, and shaking 
 off his hesitation, he came forward and 
 showed himself to his father. The old man's 
 eyes glistened, and his face wakened up. 
 
 '' Well, Edward lad ! " said he. 
 
 " You're not quite yourself, father, this 
 morninof, I understand," said Edward. 
 
 The old man shook his head, and then let 
 it droop again to his breast. Edward seated 
 himself opposite, and looked stealthily at the 
 handsome crown of wavy white hair, and the 
 sleepy mask of the old face. How should 
 he reach his finger to the secret which that 
 imperturbability concealed ? 
 
 *' We've sent for the doctor, father," said 
 he cheerily ; *' we're not going to let you 
 slip through our hands, you know." 
 
 The old man's eyebrows moved slightly 
 upwards, and he lifted the fingers of one 
 hand from the arm of the chair over
 
 HOT SUMMER i6i 
 
 which they fell ; but that was his only 
 response. 
 
 *' Still — you aren't over bad, you know. 
 For you were brisk enough to send off a 
 telegram this morning." 
 
 The old man did not raise his head, but 
 he opened his faded lids and stole a quick 
 glance at his son. Mr. Armstrong's eyes 
 were of a light-blue colour ; and if there is 
 an eye which can dart a ray of suspicion and 
 lively cunning better than another, it is a 
 smallish eye of a skyish-blue. Edwards 
 heart jumped under the glance. 
 
 '' Who — told — you — that I had sent out 
 a telegram ? " said Mr. Armstrong slowly, 
 when his lids had fallen back to their former 
 posture. 
 
 *' Sylvia, of course," said Edward lightly. 
 
 Old Mr. Armstrong moistened his lips 
 once or twice. 
 
 *' You know," said Edward, encouraged 
 by this sign of nervousness, " you have 
 never any occasion to worry yourself, father. 
 I am here. You should just send fof me 
 when you want things done." 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 1 62 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 Mr. Armstrong blinked his eyes. He 
 looked like an obstinate child who has done 
 the mischief, and has some satisfaction in 
 reflecting that it is irreparable. It was very- 
 difficult for Edward to keep up his sym- 
 pathetic tone in face of this provoking 
 demeanour, and whilst his heart was groaning 
 under the weight of important affairs which 
 had to be carried through this narrow way 
 of gins and snares, a ditch on either side. 
 
 " You have telegraphed for old John Arm- 
 strong, I understand ? " ventured he, rendered 
 desperate by his father's enigmatical silence. 
 
 *'Who — told — you — I had telegraphed for 
 John Armstrong ? " said the latter in a slow 
 loud tone. 
 
 " Sylvia, of course," replied Edward, quite 
 in the role of Adam. 
 
 " I gave Sylvia a sealed envelope. If she 
 opened it " 
 
 Evidences of extreme anger struggled in 
 his face, and prevented further utterance. 
 He looked at his son with a helplessly tragic 
 rage in his dim blue eyes. 
 
 *' No — no ! " cried Edward quickly ; ** when
 
 HOT SUMMER 163 
 
 I come to think of it, she only said you told 
 her to carry a telegram to the stable." 
 
 " That is as it may be," returned Mr. 
 Armstrong, instantly mollified. 
 
 He turned his head a little and looked 
 out at the garden. A cold, steely fear lay 
 between the two. On Edward's side were 
 those high importances. On his father's was 
 a thought running like a rat through hair- 
 breadth escapes to its lair. 
 
 " Then you did not telegraph to old John 
 Armstrong ? " questioned Edward, as care- 
 lessly as he could. 
 
 '* No," said his father, suddenly and 
 shortly. 
 
 The extreme unexpectedness of the reply 
 knocked Edward's mind flat. He was not 
 in reality a ready man. People who have 
 so many selfish issues risked on the moment 
 rarely are adepts at this kind of duel ; they 
 give themselves away in their colour, their 
 lips, their glances. And Edward, when the 
 special fear was killed by the leaping upon 
 it of a host of vaguer but more terrible sur- 
 mises, showed obvious trepidation. He was
 
 i64 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 pale in the jowl, and his lips drew in. He 
 was not one to stand with equanimity under 
 the startling shifts of fortune. Mr. Arm- 
 strong watched him reflectively, moistening 
 his lips and ruminating this manifestation of 
 alarm. 
 
 *' I telegraphed to Dayntree," said he 
 quietly, at last, ''in reply to a letter from 
 him." 
 
 '* To Dayntree ! " exclaimed Edward, in 
 the deepest surprise. 
 
 ''Yes. You know, Edward, when I'm 
 gone I want you to have a strong man of 
 affairs to help you with advice. And Dayn- 
 tree has been good enough to yield to my 
 wish." 
 
 He stole a cunning, half-frightened glance 
 at his son as he spoke, which was not noticed. 
 The inference Edward made was that Mr. 
 Dayntree was appointed co-executor with 
 himself, and he sorted the news with a 
 rapid finger, nipping his small fair moustache 
 between his lips and frowning the while. 
 Dayntree's position was so high that his 
 name could not fail to cast a reflected glory ;
 
 HOT SUMMER 165 
 
 but Edward did not like the idea of being 
 overshadowed. He wanted a freer hand 
 than was comprehended in a partnership 
 with Mr. Dayntree, for he was by no means 
 certain of his ability to manage things exactly 
 as he wished over the head of such a man as 
 he. And yet the attraction of this glittering 
 alliance was very great ; it had in itself its 
 own uses. 
 
 '' Dayntree of course is in a first-rate 
 position," said he slowly, without removing 
 his frowning stare from the ground. 
 
 ** Dayntree is the square man in the square 
 hole," said his father. 
 
 But Edward did not want the assistance 
 of a square man. He had supreme belief in 
 his own power so to manipulate things that 
 they should bring him out top. He had 
 no intention whatever of cheating his rela- 
 tions, but he very much resented having the 
 opportunity of doing so completely erased 
 from the calculation. He disliked anything 
 so fit and straightforward as his father had 
 planned. 
 
 '' I tell you what, Ned, my lad," said old
 
 1 66 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 Armstrong, his face softening at the obvious 
 depression of his son, ** I've got my property 
 very well invested. But there's one lot 
 worth the whole of the rest put together." 
 
 Edward's eager eyes leaped to his father's 
 face, and hung there. 
 
 ** Yes, lad ; that's the way of it. Now I 
 must talk things over with Dayntree, and 
 see how we can manage to put the bird 
 that lays the golden ^^^ in your hen-roost. 
 Eh?" 
 
 The old man's eyes turned upon his son. 
 The thing which he had just said was the 
 last thing he intended to say. But the habit 
 of his infatuated affection for Edward made 
 him fall to inconsistent postures ; at the 
 moment this uneasy yearning found no other 
 outlet than concessions to his son's spirit of 
 selfishness and greed. His glance sought 
 over Edward's face and read it quite clearly, 
 but he had no power for the moment to recall 
 his own determination, or to rescue himself 
 from the old influence. His lids dropped 
 again, leaving his face a rugged mask — the 
 curved lines above the eyebrows lending it
 
 HOT SUMMER 167 
 
 a tragic force ; the subtle marking of the 
 chin indicating a rather gross form of pride ; 
 while the folding of the lips in habitual 
 reticence, and the depressed pose of the 
 head, gave the whole the touch of pathos. 
 
 "You are very good, sir," said Edward 
 in cautious effusion and profound respect. 
 
 '* I'm not sure that you'll like the colour of 
 your money when you get it, all the same," 
 said Mr. Armstrong with a sigh. 
 
 '^ I think, sir, you must mean that it lies 
 in the direction of cotton," insinuated 
 Edward. 
 
 *• No," came his father's cautious tones — 
 ''not cotton." 
 
 Edward was startled again ; he hardly 
 knew whether to be gratified or the reverse. 
 
 " You really are very good, father," he 
 murmured, as he held in his features to 
 moderate composure. 
 
 That softening on his son's face melted the 
 old man to a feebler mood. 
 
 "■ I want to see you succeed, Edward," he 
 whimpered. 
 
 ''Thanks. I believe I'm well on the way
 
 i68 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 to it," said Edward, stroking down the leg 
 of his trouser complacently. 
 
 " I've tried to bring you up right, Edward," 
 continued the old man wistfully ; "I hope 
 you'll remember. Read your Bible, my lad, 
 and — help your self y 
 
 "■ Yes, father. I won't forget," said Edward, 
 a little impatient at these generalities when 
 he so yearned for the particular. 
 
 The old eyes closed for a moment. 
 
 "You were speaking of — cotton," urged 
 Edward. 
 
 '' Of cotton ! Nothing of the sort. Cotton ? 
 There is none. I sold out of that years ago." 
 
 Edward was too much astounded to speak 
 at first. His father's eyes were wide-open 
 again and the face excited. 
 
 '' Aye ! I sold out of it ! I sold out of it ! 
 Wasn't it your wish I should do so ? " 
 
 Edward rose and took his father's hand 
 and shook it kindly. But the old man's head 
 sank to sudden quiescence upon the pillows, 
 and he hardly seemed conscious of his son's 
 presence. 
 
 " Hold up, father ! " said Edward, speaking
 
 HOT SUMMER 169 
 
 loud and clear in his ear ; '' you're all right at 
 present, you know. What did you do with 
 the money ? " 
 
 '' Mines," answered Mr. Armstrong ; ** I 
 put it into mines — ' Sherman's Reward ' is 
 the name. The mills were the bird that laid 
 the golden ^^<g and the mines can hatch it." 
 
 *' You did very well, father," said Edward 
 emphatically and with a sudden rise of respect 
 for his progenitor ; '' I am exceedingly glad 
 of this good news. And this is my portion ? " 
 
 Mr. Armstrong opened his eyes again and 
 looked straight into the face of his son. If 
 there was one thing clear to his mind in that 
 moment, it was that Edward was the child of 
 some moral obliquity of his own, the direct 
 issue of that part of his own nature which had 
 tinctured all his life with ruinous remorse. 
 
 *' That is as it may be," said he, moving 
 restlessly in his chair. '* I shall look after 
 you, lad — be sure of that — and, Edward, don't 
 you forget. ' Look after the main,' as old 
 Theophilus — damn him — used to say." 
 
 '*Mr. Theophilus Armstrong of Harebarrow 
 Clough } " questioned Edward, scandalized.
 
 I70 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 He had an image of a marble tomb re- 
 cording virtues, of a portrait of a person of 
 rather sanctimonious respectability with baggy 
 under-lids and a gold chain. 
 
 " Well, lad," whimpered his father irrele- 
 vantly, *' ' the Lord gave, and the Lord hath 
 taken away,' and you must forgive me, for I 
 wrote to my cousin, John Armstrong, and 
 he's coming to-morrow." 
 
 *' What on earth did you do that for ? " 
 asked Edward in consternation tempered by 
 the good news he had heard. 
 
 " A man is glad to see an old face before 
 he dies," returned his father. 
 
 *' Well ! you shall ! " said Edward in 
 diplomatic yielding; " I'll talk mother over." 
 
 " Tell her to get the best bed ready," said 
 old Armstrong. 
 
 Edward nodded as he left the room.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 The summer days burned on exhaustlngly. 
 
 A young fellow In the dress of a mechanic, 
 
 who had walked the five miles between the 
 
 station and the lodge gates of the Manor 
 
 House, turned Into them with a sense of 
 
 relief. Some coolness was to be found under 
 
 the shadow of the century old trees, and the 
 
 grass was delicious after the beaten road. 
 
 He knew what heat was in tropical lands, but 
 
 declared to himself that when England chose 
 
 to be hot, It was hotter than anywhere else. 
 
 He was a tall young fellow with a graceful 
 
 figure that gave the Impression of agile 
 
 strength, and he had the general appearance 
 
 which led men to sum him up colloquially as 
 
 having "a head on his shoulders." He came 
 
 in at the side gate In a quiet unpretentious 
 
 sort of way, closing It after him gently, so 
 
 171
 
 172 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 that his step on the gravel was the only 
 thing that signalized his passing to the lodge- 
 keeper's wife. That personage threw a care- 
 less glance out of a diamond-paned window, 
 then she pressed a good-humoured face 
 eagerly against it, then she snatched up a 
 clean apron and ran outside, binding it about 
 her portly waist. The graceful figure in the 
 worn and scanty blue serge suit was passing 
 along up the drive in the shadow of the 
 trees ; she stared after him, her lips breaking 
 into ejaculations. 
 
 ''Well! If ever I did! No, it never is! 
 But it is though ! 'Ome from his travels — 
 for them clothes has seen some wear. Lord, 
 love the boy ! There'll be some mending 
 to do ! " 
 
 And she wiped a benedictory tear from 
 her eye. 
 
 The young workman did not take the way 
 to the back of the house as became one in 
 his station ; he walked straight to the front 
 terrace. A bed of laurels and a group of 
 beech trees separated the part of the gravel 
 terrace up which he was walking from a
 
 HOT SUMMER 173 
 
 lawn ; he heard voices beyond, and caught 
 sight between the foliage of the summer 
 muslins of women. He walked more slowly, 
 a pleasant hesitation in his manner and glad- 
 ness in his eyes. He could see them there 
 in a group under the trees drinking afternoon 
 tea and talking. Constantia was there, and 
 Irene, and a girl whose appearance he rather 
 liked. It was she who caught sight of him first. 
 She saw him stepping on to the grass between 
 the beech trees, lifting a shabby blue cap. 
 
 " Some one is coming," said Eliza, her eyes 
 held by the stranger's brown ones. 
 
 The freshness of the whole picture was a 
 poem to the young fellow after a dusty day, 
 and he was considering amongst other items, 
 that a pink and white skin and red-gold hair 
 made a delicate bit of tinting under a wide 
 hat drawn with apple-green silk. Constantia 
 turned. 
 
 ** It is Evan ! Irene ! It is Evan ! " 
 
 "• I am really not fit to touch," said the 
 young man, glad under the caressing fingers 
 of his kinswoman ; " I preferred to come up 
 on the engine."
 
 174 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 His eyes wandered again to the girl's face 
 — delicate, he thought, like a shell or a moth 
 — under the apple-green hat. 
 
 '' This is a very old friend of ours, Eliza," 
 said Constantia, when Irene had finished her 
 admiring astonishment at his growth, his 
 moustache, and his broad shoulders ; '' he is 
 a relation of Norman's — one we have not 
 seen for some years. His name is Evan 
 Dayntree." 
 
 "He had a bald head and a long white 
 frock on when we first saw him," said Irene, 
 *' and was, his nurse said, ' a very masterful 
 young gentleman.'" 
 
 *' But I remember the name ! I think — do 
 I not know him ? " 
 
 The two young people were looking hard 
 at each other, and out of either face peeped 
 for the moment, to each pair of eyes, the 
 round unformed physiognomy of a child, and 
 then was lost again in the maturer features. 
 It was towards this flashing reminiscence of 
 a laughing familiar playmate that the two 
 stretched hands and clasped them. 
 
 **Why, it's Eliza!"
 
 HOT SUMMER 175 
 
 -Evan!" 
 
 ''Of course!" cried Constantia, utterly 
 delighted. 
 
 " You were the funniest little girl ! " said 
 he of the brown eyes. 
 
 "■ And you such a merry boy ! " 
 
 ** And you're kind enough to recognize me 
 in spite of my clothes ? I'm afraid I was a 
 rough playmate. You were a trustful little 
 thing, and believed everything I said " 
 
 "• I remember only kindness." 
 
 *' Oh ! you were a small brick and followed 
 on splendidly. I'm afraid I tormented you " 
 — he had rubbed his hair back uneasily at 
 the praise. *' And so you don't mind my 
 clothes ? I've been walking as well as driv- 
 ing the engine," said he, turning to Con- 
 stantia. ''It must be six miles from the 
 station here round by the commons. I came 
 up from the north with my old friend John 
 Armstrong ; he is staying somewhere in the 
 neighbourhood, and he chose to walk. I 
 accompanied him to the gate where a most 
 exquisite young gentleman dismissed me as 
 a tramp."
 
 176 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 That last was not to be mistaken, and Eliza 
 pricked up her ears. 
 
 ** Armstrong ! " she exclaimed ; '' that must 
 be my relative." 
 
 Evan thought for a moment, and then 
 faced round. 
 
 '' Your name is Armstrong too, of course ; 
 I am getting it all into line at last. Well ! if 
 old John Armstrong is kin of yours, you are 
 fortunate. But I remark that there are 
 points where you resemble him." 
 
 His finger in quick succession touched his 
 brows, lips, and chin. The old acquaintance 
 threw them into familiarity from the first. 
 
 " Good-bye, Constantia," said Eliza, feel- 
 ing unaccountably happy ; '' I must go now. 
 Good-bye, Irene." 
 
 She held her hand to Evan. 
 
 "■ I am glad I resemble old Mr. Arm- 
 strong," said she. 
 
 '' And so am I," said he. 
 
 ''We shall keep Evan here ever so long," 
 said Constantia. ''You must come and tell 
 us about your relative. But we shall hear 
 from Norman perhaps. He is going to your
 
 HOT SUMMER i77 
 
 house to-night ; he is expected there, I 
 beheve." 
 
 The glow on Eliza's face faded. Upon 
 leaving the Manor House she turned in the 
 direction of '' South Downs." She had called 
 on Constantia first, really with a view to 
 bracing her spirit before making the visita- 
 tion upon Rosalie ; she wanted to erase as 
 quickly as possible the confusedly unpleasant 
 impressions of the last interview — impressions 
 which, with habitual humility, she set down 
 to her own mistakes. But so strong had been 
 the uneasiness created, that her feet seemed 
 to drag on the way, and to make as though 
 they would turn back of themselves. She 
 found it impossible to pass round to the fruit- 
 garden, and to enter unobserved by the glass 
 doors over the bridge according to the usual 
 plan, and so rang the front bell formally. 
 Rosalie, when summoned, entered the Louis 
 Quinze drawing-room with a face of bright 
 defiance. She found Eliza seated on the 
 sofa under a heathen god and banner, mak- 
 ing depressed efforts to converse with Mrs. 
 Trelyon, whose cleverness was not apt to 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 waste itself on unconsidered hearers, and who 
 responded in sleepy monosyllables. Rosalie's 
 face changed instantly to comic amazement. 
 
 '' Eliza ! The front door-bell ! We advance 
 in civilization indeed ! I thought it was at 
 least ' Aunt Caroline ' come to inform mother 
 that I took a lonely gallop over the commons 
 yesterday afternoon without attendance. But 
 mother found it out herself. The servants, 
 you know, are paid spies, and Glynn has been 
 in tears. But I ask mother to look at the 
 matter from the bright side, and to be thank- 
 ful that I took a saddle. A saddle is suffi- 
 cient chaperon, I consider." 
 
 Eliza was extricated from her conversa- 
 tional difficulties, and Mrs. Treylon in relief 
 vouchsafed a phrase. 
 
 " Our local Ccelebs is once more actively 
 in search, I believe ? " said she with an 
 inquiring smile. 
 
 Eliza looked bewildered. 
 
 '' Oh, never mind ! " said Rosalie kindly ; 
 ** mother, you need not talk local politics to 
 Eliza : it is pure waste of time." 
 
 On the way from the drawing-room to her
 
 HOT SUMMER 179 
 
 own particular sanctum, Rosalie called at the 
 pantry and brought out a plate of cherries ; 
 when in her room she took some freshly- 
 gathered flowers from a vase, and made 
 them into a knot for Eliza's breast. In her 
 bright friendliness no hint of last night's 
 trouble was discoverable ; she had the art of 
 discarding a past shadow, and throwing into 
 a new moment all the freshness of her spirit. 
 Eliza's timid overture was royally met — and 
 yet the anxious wonder lying at the bottom 
 of her heart won no reply. 
 
 ''What did Mrs. Trelyon mean?" said 
 Eliza, taking a low seat in the shadow which 
 the sun-blinds made near the window. 
 
 **She meant that a man honestly deter- 
 mined to make an honest woman of some 
 one, adjusts his benevolence to the circum- 
 stances." 
 
 " Rosalie ! You know I can't make out 
 what you mean." 
 
 "And what /meant was that sarcasms of 
 the kind were lost on the dove-winged in- 
 nocence of my friend. Eliza ! there are 
 moments when I envy you."
 
 i8o LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 Out of habitual determination to be at all 
 moments aggressively defiant of Glynn's 
 sense of the proper, Rosalie seated herself 
 upon the table ; she swung a daintily slip- 
 pered foot idly up and down, and contem- 
 plated her friend with eyes that deepened to 
 a beautiful melancholy. 
 
 *' Of me ! " cried Eliza, humbly incredulous. 
 
 '' Of you. I see wings folded under your 
 muslin, and a halo over your hair. What a 
 safe creature you are to be sure ! If one 
 strikes you, the quality of the note is sound." 
 
 *' Rosalie ! I don't like being compared to 
 an angel." 
 
 " There ! what did I say ? ' strike you and 
 the quality of the note is sound.' You re- 
 pudiate the angelic ; your human nature is 
 rich and safe.^ Now look here ! " 
 
 She took some cherries from the dish, 
 dangled them by the stalk above her face, 
 and snapped at them with her teeth. 
 
 '* You bet I catch this one ! " said she, 
 tossing up another and snatching at it with 
 her mouth. 
 
 " There ! " said she as her lips closed over
 
 HOT SUMMER i8i 
 
 it; ''it's in!" Her eyes shone in childish 
 delight and a little surprise. '' Now try." 
 And she threw some over to Eliza. 
 
 With all her boyish movements and ways, 
 she never for a moment looked masculine. 
 That was sometimes inexplicable to Eliza. 
 It was the feminine attractiveness, her great 
 grace and charm as a woman binding and 
 limiting her audacity, that rendered her Irre- 
 sistible. Eliza accepted the cherry without 
 trying the trick. 
 
 " I saw some one new this afternoon," said 
 she. 
 
 " New ! * Can any good thing come out of 
 Nazareth ? ' Man or woman ? " 
 
 '' Man. His clothes were remarkable." 
 
 '' Not a foreigner ? I am sick to death of 
 them. One makes havoc of them so easily. 
 There's no joy of conquest." 
 
 '* I never said a foreigner." 
 
 ** Englishman then. That's better. An 
 Englishman is like a fortress of which you 
 haven't got the plan. Let me see. You 
 said clothes. Oh, an acrobat ! Now, fairly, 
 I do love acrobats."
 
 i82 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 ** An acrobat ! As if I should notice an 
 acrobat ! " 
 
 *' That's where you're so silly, Eliza. An 
 acrobat is beautiful." 
 
 *' Well ! He isn't an acrobat." 
 
 "■ An ordinary Englishman ? As I say, in 
 an Englishman there are generally infinite 
 possibilities." 
 
 '' Not ordinary." 
 
 " Where did you meet him ? " 
 
 ** At the Manor House." 
 
 Rosalie tossed another cherry in the air, 
 snapped at it and missed it. 
 
 "Now out with it, Eliza ! Why isn't he 
 ordinary ? " 
 
 ** Because of his clothes." 
 
 *' Had he perhaps been dressed exclusively 
 at a ready-made clothing establishment ? 
 Oh ! a soldier, perhaps." 
 
 "• Nothing as grand as that." 
 
 *' A clergyman ? But you said ' not ordi- 
 nary.' A sailor ? " 
 
 " Neither. He is just a gentleman." 
 
 "" Ugh ! The description makes me creep. 
 Young ? "
 
 HOT SUMMER 183 
 
 '' Yes." 
 
 '' A young geittleman. Why do I Infallibly 
 think of smooth thin hair, and nursery inno- 
 cence ? I hate the Inexperienced." 
 
 '•' He Is about twenty-five. His hair was 
 dark brown, and very untidy. I'm not sure 
 that his hands were quite clean. There may 
 have been a smudge on his forehead. He 
 had been driving an engine, and he was 
 dressed like a common man. And yet he Is 
 a friend of Constantia s. You don't guess at 
 all well." 
 
 '' I know the sort of person," said Rosalie, 
 with a little grimace ; '' I detest him already. 
 He is a reformer — a person with a craze 
 about the People, who shows a great deal 
 more throat than is at all nice, and yet fails 
 of being as interesting as a Cowboy. / don't 
 distinguish them from local preachers." 
 
 '' Rosalie ! " 
 
 '' Well ? " 
 
 '' I thought him — I thought I had never 
 seen any one in the least like him." 
 
 Rosalie's eyes laughed. 
 
 *' YouVe seen such a small assortment of
 
 1 84 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 anything." She sought amongst the cherries. 
 EHza s eyes dreamed. " I'll leave you your 
 hero. You shall have him all to yourself." 
 
 ** What do you say things like that for ? " 
 said Eliza shrinkingly. *' It is nothing but 
 my old friend Evan — the boy I told you of 
 that I used to play with." 
 
 She felt as though she had been bending 
 her face over some darkly clear and wonder- 
 fully still pool, and some one had carelessly 
 cast a stone in over her shoulder. 
 
 " Come ! Don't curl up like a sensitive 
 plant. It occurred to me to make the re- 
 mark. I believe you would be offended if I 
 said you were pretty." 
 
 Eliza blushed and looked shy. 
 
 " No, I shouldn't," said she ; '' I should 
 like to hear It ; but I don't think I should 
 believe it." 
 
 '' Not with that hair ? " 
 
 '' My hair is nothing — except conspicuous." 
 
 '' But there's your fair skin and colour." 
 
 " That lacks mystery and shadow. I 
 prefer a Hindoo. But don't catalogue me, 
 please ! "
 
 HOT SUMMER 185 
 
 " I'm not to be stopped. I think you 
 clever. Your remarks often amaze me." 
 
 '* I only talk my best to you." 
 
 " Eliza ! when they pruned you into a 
 stick, they spoiled you." 
 
 '' Oh, yes." 
 
 " Nevertheless you are pretty, and you are 
 clever." 
 
 '' If I am, I might just as well not be." 
 
 "• How is that ? But I know. Clever 
 girl ! straight to the point as usual. You 
 mean that it's no use possessing beauty un- 
 less you have in addition the indescribable 
 power of looking as though you possessed it." 
 
 " Just so. Some have only the second gift, 
 and it does just as well without the first," 
 said Eliza. 
 
 " Possibly. It's a refined kind of cheek — 
 that's all. But there's neither cheek nor 
 humbug about you. You are all dove and 
 none of the serpent. Unfortunately men 
 (and women too) like being humbugged." 
 
 ** You have everything, Rosalie ! " said 
 Eliza in fervent admiration. *' I don't think 
 it would matter very much to you if you
 
 1 86 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 were not pretty. I don't think it would 
 make any difference." 
 
 Rosalie reflected with half-shut lids, her 
 eyes shining between. 
 
 '' No : fairly, I don't think it would. But 
 all the same, it's convenient to have the 
 other attribute as well." She laughed. She 
 was too handsome, too unselfconscious not 
 to be able to mention an obvious fact without 
 the smirk of it. " Now, Eliza," she con- 
 tinued, " why not put on a new man ? The 
 world is so infinitely grateful for audacity in 
 the midst of its platitudes. There's nothing 
 from which men are so anxious to be de- 
 livered as their own piety." 
 
 '* I know. But I have at least enough 
 sense not to play the part of the ass who 
 imitated the pet dog." 
 
 She rose from her seat, and took up the 
 wide apple-green hat to replace on her head 
 preparatory to a return home. Rosalie 
 watched in admiration. 
 
 '* You really are lovely y Eliza ! — a perfect 
 picture." 
 
 Eliza stamped her foot.
 
 HOT SUMMER 187 
 
 *' You can't prevail over me," said she. 
 " You can't deceive me. I am what I am. 
 I am aware of myself. Don't you know that 
 figure — a subjective one of the fancy — who 
 lurks in the obscure corners of the mind, or 
 creeps about its intricate windings, and who 
 solemnly, inexorably, patiently, turns the 
 ever-same thought over and over, and judges 
 the self as no exterior judge can ever judge 
 it?" 
 
 Rosalie, from her table, stared for a few 
 seconds in blank silence, her cheek percep- 
 tibly paler. Then the colour flushed into it 
 more deeply. 
 
 *' Eliza ! " cried she. '' You talk like 
 Isaiah and Jeremiah, Moses, and all the 
 lesser prophets ! No. Indeed. I know 
 nothing about such creepy things. And I 
 would advise you not to either. Except 
 that you look like a Sybil when you talk 
 like that, or Deborah, or some one. It's 
 really very fine talk. Like a bit of Beet- 
 hoven, you know. Why not do it — before 
 Mr. Dayntree, for example ? " 
 
 Something flew over her face as she
 
 1 88 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 spoke, it reflected an Inward thought which 
 certainly made no appearance in her words. 
 
 '' I can't even think anything when any 
 one is near me — as a rule," said Eliza, 
 ** much less talk." 
 
 ** As I say, the one thing you lack is 
 audacity. I recommend you to get audacity 
 and badness as they recommend you to get 
 wisdom and understanding in the Bible. 
 Just enough wickedness to give piquancy, 
 you know. Then you're made. Your great 
 white thoughts want two black wings apiece. 
 Come ! Encourage yourself." 
 
 The tears came into Eliza's eyes. 
 
 *' I am going," she said. '' I want to 
 hurry home. Constantia told me that Mr. 
 Dayntree is coming to-night. I don't want 
 to meet him. I shall escape as soon as 
 dinner is over and avoid him. I hate to 
 be so foolish " She stumbled into in- 
 coherence. 
 
 Rosalie listened with downcast eyes, a 
 reddening cheek, and a musing smile. 
 
 " Yes," said she with the faintest sus- 
 picion of mockery in her voice when Eliza
 
 HOT SUMMER 189 
 
 concluded her confused and broken speech ; 
 '' I would hurry if I were you. You may 
 meet him coming along, you know. Off with 
 you ! Fly ! " 
 
 The next moment she leapt from the table, 
 her manner full of warmth and kindness, and 
 took her friend into a fervent embrace. 
 
 '' Don't fret and be so hopelessly ridicu- 
 lous," said she. '' Have some pluck. Your 
 little finger is worth most people's whole 
 bodies." 
 
 It was honest affection ; there was not a 
 note of falseness in it. The two faces were 
 pressed together ; the two girlish figures 
 clung within each other's arms.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 ** You have quite a nursery garden here ! " 
 The words uttered in Mrs, Trelyon's 
 velvet tones — a wasp's sting from a flower 
 — had first opened Edward's eyes to the 
 effect of the improvements at '' The Court." 
 It is one iK.ng to walk in imagination in 
 the shades of an avenue of a hundred years' 
 growth, and another to pass in sober reality 
 between a row of little trees of your own 
 planting. Mrs. Trelyon's remark hung cor- 
 rosively in his memory, but old John Arm- 
 strong's observations as he walked up the 
 drive from the gate where Edward had met 
 him were, in the utter absence of malicious 
 intent, a worse offence. 
 
 '' Now what trees does the soil suit best ?" 
 
 asked he, eying the striplings that flanked 
 
 190
 
 HOT SUMMER 191 
 
 either side with a ribbon of many-tinted 
 green. 
 
 "■ I really don't know," said Edward 
 coldly; '^that's the gardener's department." 
 
 '' Every tree to its soil," pursued old John, 
 laying his stick against the slender stem of a 
 beech and innocently measuring its height ; 
 "in my country it is the mountain ash and 
 the larch. Not but what we have oaks ; 
 but they don't express themselves. They tell 
 a tale of experience instead, clinging like 
 half-daft thino^s to the soil with the scare of 
 the north-west wind in their hair. But here 
 I reckon the oak and the beech will do." 
 
 ** There are some fine oaks in a park the 
 other side of the common," said Edward 
 sulkily. 
 
 '' Ah, yes. I noted them. Fine old 
 fellows — rooted in time itself. There's a 
 Holm oak there, too, that's doing well 
 enough seemingly ; we stopped a bit to see 
 the wind toss its branches. Winter and 
 spring in one moment." 
 
 Edward wished that instead of interesting 
 himself in detail, his humble relative would
 
 192 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 permit the full effect of the surroundings to 
 touch him. But just as they came in sight 
 of the handsome facade of the house, old 
 John stopped again and poked up the soil to 
 examine its nature. 
 
 *' Ay dear ! dear ! " said he ; '' what a soil 
 for pansies ! Do you cultivate them ? " 
 
 **We don't cultivate anything in parti- 
 cular," returned Edward ; '* though," he added 
 as an afterthought, " I intend to build glass 
 and take up orchids." 
 
 " Ah ! " said John absently ; '' well, I don't 
 blame you. They're tickle things, are pan- 
 sies. It takes a man's patience to grow 'em, 
 and then you may fail. Oh, it's heart- 
 breaking work. I don't blame you. You 
 may select your seed, and give a deal of 
 thought to the mixing, and you may nourish 
 'em and watch 'em up — and then they don't 
 meet your expectation. Not," he added, 
 *' but what I've a good few at home." 
 
 Mr. Armstrong sank that evening into a 
 lethargic state, from which it was not thought 
 well to rouse him, and Mr. John Armstrong's 
 visit to his chamber had to be postponed
 
 HOT SUMMER 193 
 
 until the morning. He was conducted to 
 the drawing-room, there to await dinner in 
 the charge of Mrs. Armstrong. The moment 
 of his entry was more trying to his hostess 
 than to the guest. She came forward with a 
 flush of anxious trepidation, to find a fine old 
 man with a quiet musing face standing before 
 her, and gently waiting upon her initiative. 
 There was a simplicity about Old John that 
 carried off any surroundings, and the nil 
 adniirari air, which was the result of that 
 simplicity, would have saved him from 
 disaster anywhere. Mrs. Armstrong's good 
 breeding was too genuine not to find it a 
 relief; she had dreaded boisterous encroach- 
 ment, but this man was no strange animal to 
 whom she had to act as keeper ; he kept a 
 circle of distance of his own, and left her to 
 hers. She led him to the window and 
 showed him where, beyond the " nursery 
 garden " and a peep of the common, lay, on 
 such a summer evening as this, a soft faint 
 pencilling against the sky, which men called 
 London. The nature of Old John drew the 
 best out of Mrs. Armstrong ; there was an 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 194 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 inextinguishable gentleness about his lips 
 that was as dew after the arid atmosphere 
 of home bickerings ; and his unpretentious- 
 ness made it a pleasant think to talk to him. 
 
 ** He'll be an old man now — my Cousin 
 Sam ? " he inquired. 
 
 ** My husband is seventy years of age," 
 returned Mrs. Armstrong. 
 
 ''That will be it," he said; "and yet his 
 face lies before me as a lad's." 
 
 He moved his hand slowly over his knees, 
 to indicate the clearness with which the 
 young face of Old Sam presented itself. 
 
 " My husband's mind is dissipated, I fear, 
 upon worldly matters," said Mrs. Armstrong, 
 "when I so earnestly desire to see him 
 concentrate it upon things heavenly." 
 
 "Ah?" said Old John. "And so you 
 distinguish between them, ma'am .^ " 
 
 All dinner-time, Eliza's eyes surreptitiously 
 watched the visitor ; as a relative he was 
 doubly interesting. He spoke little and 
 chose the plainest fare. Now and then he 
 joined in the conversation with a remark that 
 seemed to her of a finer quality than she was
 
 HOT SUMMER 195 
 
 accustomed to ; Aunt Caroline in her replies 
 sounded strained and tawdry ; old Cousin 
 John turned and looked at her once or twice, 
 and when she directed her smart speech to 
 him merely answered — 
 
 ''Just so, ma'am." 
 
 He was more silent after that. So was 
 Aunt Caroline. 
 
 " Who was that young man you had with 
 you at the gate, Mr. Armstrong?" asked 
 Edward, to fill the gaps of silence; "an 
 acquaintance picked up on the road ? " 
 
 Mr. John Armstrong turned politely 
 towards the young fellow handling the carver 
 at the head of the table. 
 
 '' An old friend, sir. We came from the 
 North together." 
 
 He bent his head courteously to Edward's 
 superior social position, which was somehow 
 asserted in all his movements. 
 
 *' Cousin John ! " — everybody turned and 
 looked at Eliza — ** I know who he is." 
 
 *' Cousin John," seeing a timid girl face 
 opposite with the nervous pink creeping into 
 the cheek, irradiated into a smile.
 
 196 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 '' He Is Evan Dayntree — a relative of the 
 Dayntrees of the Manor House. I saw him 
 there this afternoon." 
 
 *' Yes, my dear. That is it." 
 
 Gilbert, opening eyes and mouth, was 
 about to express astonishment, when Edward, 
 scarlet to the brow, kicked him under the 
 table. Eliza remembered that Evan had 
 said she resembled old John Armstrong, and 
 she raised her finger to her lips and chin to 
 trace the small copy there. Evan had 
 spoken of her relative as his friend, and it 
 thrilled her with pleasure that he had added 
 the rest. 
 
 The mention of the Dayntrees, however, 
 recalled to her mind Constantia's announce- 
 ment of her husband's probable visit. After 
 old John Armstrong's claim of acquaintance- 
 ship with Evan, it appeared so likely a thing 
 that they should receive some call from the 
 Manor House, that Eliza said nothing about 
 her expectation, but the moment the front- 
 door bell rang, quietly slipped out of the 
 drawing-room, and, as was her habit when 
 desiring to avoid a social occasion, escaped
 
 HOT SUMMER 197 
 
 from the house on a long evening ramble. 
 Towards ten o'clock she returned home, and 
 hurried up the stairs straight to her bed- 
 room. Her face was very pale and a little 
 drawn, and there was a strained startled look 
 in her eyes. Sylvia's bedroom was empty, 
 and the lights were turned low ; she closed 
 the door between, and sat down to think. 
 Her condition was one peculiar to her nature. 
 On the one hand was the stultifying effect 
 of her inexperience, her innocence and self- 
 distrust ; on the other, there remained in her 
 mind a picture suspended between reality 
 and vision, the meaning of which she could 
 not endure to contemplate, but upon which 
 her memory kept tenacious hold ; it was 
 something that had struck upon her ken in 
 a place of shadows and dim light, that had 
 come before her as a momentary and pass- 
 ing phantom in chiaroscuro, and yet had 
 conveyed to her mind only too fixed an 
 impression of unmistakable identity. 
 
 She sat thinking of what she had acci- 
 dentally seen, in intense agitation of mind. 
 Then she undressed and got into bed, and
 
 198 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 out of pure exhaustion fell into a sound short 
 sleep, from which she was wakened by a 
 light in her room. Her step-mother was 
 there, standing by her bed, and shading a 
 light with her hand ; from Sylvia's half-open 
 door streamed more light. Eliza rose up in 
 bed, her thought fixed in wild apprehension 
 upon the picture with which she had fallen 
 asleep. Mrs. Armstrong placed the candle 
 on the table near, and sat down by the bed- 
 side. Eliza saw that the pale, well-chiselled 
 face, the small well-kept curls, the air of per- 
 fection that Mrs. Armstrong always carried 
 with her, were faintly ruffled at this moment 
 by excitement. 
 
 ** My dear child," she murmured, in that 
 half-breathed voice of hers, which reminded 
 one of dead rose-leaves in ancient china. 
 
 *' Yes, mother," said Eliza ; '' did — did — 
 Mr. Dayntree stay long ? " 
 
 "What did you say, dear?" asked Mrs. 
 Armstrong wonderingly. 
 
 *' I heard some one in the drawing-room 
 besides Cousin John when I came back from 
 a walk. It was Mr. Dayntree, mother '^, "
 
 HOT SUMMER I99 
 
 She unconsciously clasped her hands, as 
 though in entreaty. 
 
 *' Mr. Dixon's voice," said Mrs. Armstrong, 
 smiling a little. 
 
 '' No ! Mr. Dayntree's. When did he 
 come ? When did he leave ? " 
 
 Mrs. Armstrong's expression changed first 
 to surprised annoyance, then to alarm. She 
 stretched her hand and laid a finger on 
 Eliza's wrist. The pulse was certainly 
 leaping. 
 
 '' Does this indicate illness ? " murmured 
 she, rapidly and anxiously. *'Oh, Eliza! and 
 with your dear father stretched on a bed of 
 sickness, and the house already upset ! " 
 
 '' I'm not ill," exclaimed Eliza. '' Mr. 
 Dayntree was expected. Did he stay long ? " 
 
 "- ' Mr. Dayntree ! ' Are you delirious } 
 He has not been here at all. No one ex- 
 pected him. Mr. Dixon has been here. 
 Surely you knew ? " 
 
 Eliza gazed at her step-mother like a wild 
 thing. 
 
 *' Surely you have remarked Mr. Dixon's 
 attentions to your aunt?" continued Mrs.
 
 200 LIFE THE ACCUSER 
 
 Armstrong, her mind full of her event, while 
 Eliza's as tenaciously clung to its own. 
 "To-night he made her an offer. It was 
 what we expected. He tells us that it has 
 been a long and serious attachment. He has 
 left the house the happiest of men." 
 
 END OF VOL.