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TWO ON A TOWER 
 
 VOL. I 
 
LONDON : 
 
 kinted by gilbert and rivington, limited, 
 st. John's square, e.c. 
 
TWO ON A TOWEE 
 
 $ §,mimtL 
 
 THOMAS HARDY, 
 
 AUTHOR OF " FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD, 
 " THE TRUMPET MAJOR," ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 EontJon : 
 SAMPSON LOW, MAESTON, SEARLE, & EIVINGTON, 
 
 CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET. 
 
 1882. 
 [All rights reserved.'] 
 
Wlltw 
 
 TWO ON A TOWER 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 On an early winter afternoon, clear but not 
 cold, when the vegetable world was a weird 
 multitude of skeletons through whose ribs 
 the sun shone freely, a gleaming landau 
 came to a pause on the crest of a hill in 
 Wessex. The spot was where the old 
 Melchester Road, which the carriage had 
 hitherto followed, was joined by a drive 
 that led round into a park at no great 
 distance off. 
 
 The footman alighted, and went to the 
 occupant of the carriage, a lady about 
 eight- or nine-and-twenty. She was looking 
 
 VOL. J. B 
 
Z TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 through the opening afforded by a field- 
 gate at the undulating stretch of country 
 beyond. In pursuance of some remark 
 from her the servant looked in the same 
 direction. 
 
 The central feature of the middle dis- 
 tance, as they beheld it, was a circular 
 isolated hill, of no great elevation, which 
 placed itself in strong chromatic contrast 
 with a wdde acreage of surrounding arable 
 by being covered with fir-trees. The trees 
 were all of one size and age, so that their 
 tips assumed the precise curve of the hill 
 they grew upon. This pine-clad protuber- 
 ance was yet further marked out from the 
 general landscape by having on its summit 
 a tower in the form of a classical column, 
 which, though partly immersed in the 
 plantation, rose above the tree-tops to a 
 considerable height. Upon this object the 
 eyes of lady and servant were bent. 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 3 
 
 " Then there is no road leading near 
 it ? " she asked. 
 
 " Nothing nearer than where we are 
 now, my lady." 
 
 "Then drive home," she said after a 
 moment. And the carriage rolled on its way. 
 
 A few days later, the same lady, in the 
 same carriage, passed that spot again. Her 
 eyes, as before, turned to the distant 
 tower. 
 
 "Nobbs," she said to the coachman, 
 " could you find your way home through 
 that field, so as to get near the outskirts 
 of the plantation where the column is ? " 
 
 The coachman regarded the field. " Well, 
 my lady," he observed, " in dry weather we 
 might drive in there by inching and pinch- 
 ing, and so get across by Five-and-Twenty 
 Acres, all being well. But the ground 
 is so heavy after these rains that — perhaps 
 it would hardly be safe to try it now." 
 b 2 
 
4 TWO ON A TO WEE. 
 
 " Perhaps not," she assented indiffer- 
 ently. " Remember it, will you, at a drier 
 time ? " 
 
 And again the carriage sped along the 
 road, the lady's eyes resting on the seg- 
 mental hill, the blue trees that muffled it, 
 and the column that formed its apex, till 
 they were out of sight. 
 
 A long time elapsed before that lady 
 drove over the hill again. It was Feb- 
 ruary ; the soil was now unquestionably 
 dry, the weather and scene being in other 
 respects much as they had been before. 
 The familiar shape of the column seemed 
 to remind her that at last an opportunity 
 for a close inspection had arrived. Giving 
 her directions, she saw the gate opened, 
 and after a little manoeuvring the car- 
 riage swayed slowly into the uneven field. 
 
 Although the pillar stood upon the here- 
 ditary estate of her husband, the lady had 
 
. TWO ON A TOWER. O 
 
 never visited it, owing to its insulation by 
 this well-nigh impracticable ground. The 
 drive to the base of the hill was tedious 
 and jerk j, and on reaching it she alighted, 
 directing that the carriage should be driven 
 back empty over the clods, to wait for her 
 on the nearest edge of the field. She then 
 ascended beneath the trees on foot. 
 
 The column now showed itself as a 
 much more important erection than it had 
 appeared from the road, or the park, or 
 the windows of Welland House, her resi- 
 dence hard by, wheuce she had surveyed it 
 hundreds of times without ever feeling a 
 sufficient interest in its details to investi- 
 gate them. The column had been erected 
 in the last century, as a substantial memo- 
 rial of her husband's great-grandfather, a 
 respectable officer who had fallen in the 
 American war, and the reason of her lack 
 of interest was partly owing to her rela- 
 
6 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 tions with this husband, of which more 
 anon. It was little beyond the sheer desire 
 for something to do — the chronic desire of 
 her curiously lonely life — that had brought 
 her here now. She was in a mood to 
 welcome anything that would in some 
 measure disperse an almost killing ennui. 
 She would have welcomed even a misfor- 
 tune. She had heard that from the sum- 
 mit of the pillar four counties could be 
 seen. Whatever pleasurable effect was to be 
 derived from looking into four counties at 
 the same time she resolved to enjoy to-day. 
 The fir-shrouded hill-top turned out to 
 be (as some antiquaries said) an old Roman 
 camp, — if it were not (as some insisted) 
 an old British castle, or (as others swore) 
 an old Saxon field of Witenagemote, — with 
 remains of an outer and an inner vallum, 
 a winding path leading up between their 
 overlapping ends by an easy ascent. The 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. / 
 
 spikelets from the trees formed a soft 
 carpet over the route, and occasionally a 
 brake of brambles barred the interspaces 
 of the trunks. Soon she' stood imme- 
 diately at the foot of the column. 
 
 It had been built in the Tuscan order of 
 classic architecture, and was really a tower, 
 being hollow, with steps inside. The gloom 
 and solitude which prevailed round the 
 base were remarkable. The sob of the en- 
 vironing trees was here expressively mani- 
 fest ; and moved by the light breeze, their 
 thin straight stems rocked in seconds, like 
 inverted pendulums ; while some boughs 
 and twigs rubbed the pillar's sides, or occa- 
 sionallv clicked in catching each other. 
 Below the level of their summits the 
 masonry was lichen-stained and mildewed., 
 for the sun never pierced that moaning 
 cloud of blue-black vegetation. Pads of 
 moss grew in the joints of the stone-work, 
 
8 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 and here and there shade-loving insects 
 had engraved on the mortar patterns of 
 no hnman style or meaning ; but curious 
 and suggestive. Above the trees the case 
 was different : the pillar rose into the sky 
 a bright and cheerful thing, unimpeded, 
 clean, and flushed with the sunlight. 
 
 The spot was seldom visited by a pedes- 
 trian, except perhaps in the shooting season. 
 The rarity of human intrusion was evi- 
 denced by the mazes of rabbit-runs, the 
 feathers of shy birds, the exuviae of reptiles; 
 as also by the fresh and uninterrupted paths 
 of squirrels down the sides of trunks, and 
 thence horizontally away. The circum- 
 stance of the plantation being an island in 
 the midst of an arable plain sufficiently 
 accounted for this lack of visitors. Few 
 unaccustomed to such places can be aware 
 of the insulating effect of ploughed ground, 
 when no necessity compels people to 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 9 
 
 traverse it. This rotund hill of trees and 
 brambles, standing in the centre of a 
 ploughed field of some ninety or a hundred 
 acres, was probably visited less frequently 
 than a rock w r ould have been visited in a 
 lake of equal extent. 
 
 She walked round the column to the other 
 side, where she found the door through 
 which the interior was reached. The paint, 
 if it had ever had any, was all washed from 
 its face, and down the decaying surface of 
 the boards liquid rust from the nails and 
 hinges had run in red stains. Over the 
 door was a stone tablet, bearing, apparently, 
 letters or words ; but the inscription, 
 whatever it was, had been smoothed over 
 with a plaster of lichen. 
 
 Here stood this aspiring piece of masonry, 
 erected as the most conspicuous and 
 ineffaceable reminder of a man that could 
 be thought of; and yet the whole aspect 
 
10 TWO ON A TO WEE. 
 
 of the memorial betokened forge tfulness. 
 Probably not a dozen people within the 
 district knew the name of the person com- 
 memorated, while perhaps not a soul 
 remembered whether the column were 
 hollow or solid, whether with or without a 
 tablet explaining its date and purpose. She 
 herself had lived within a mile of it for the 
 last five years, and had never come near it 
 till now. 
 
 She had no intention of ascending, but 
 finding that the door was not fastened she 
 pushed it open with her foot, and entered. 
 A scrap of writing-paper lay within, and 
 arrested her attention by its freshness. 
 Some human being, then, knew the spot, 
 despite her surmises. But as the paper 
 had nothing on it, no clue was afforded; 
 yet, feeling herself the proprietor of the 
 column and of all around it, her self- 
 assertiveness was sufficient to lead her on. 
 
TWO ON A TO WEE. 11 
 
 The staircase was lighted by slits in the 
 wall, and there was no difficulty in reach- 
 ing the top, the steps being quite unworn. 
 The trap door leading on to the roof was 
 open, and on looking through it an interest- 
 ing spectacle met her eye. 
 
 A youth was sitting on a stool in the 
 centre of the lead flat whith formed the 
 summit of the column, his eye being applied 
 to the end of a large telescope that stood 
 before him on a tripod. This sort of 
 presence was unexpected, and the lady 
 started back into the shade of the opening. 
 The only effect produced upon him by her 
 footfall was an impatient wave of the hand, 
 without removing his eye from the instru- 
 ment, as if to forbid her or anybody to 
 interrupt him. 
 
 Pausing where she stood, the lady 
 examined the aspect of the individual who 
 thus made himself so completely at home 
 
12 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 on a building which she deemed her 
 unquestioned property. He was a youth 
 who might properly have been charac- 
 terized by a word the judicious chronicler 
 would not readily use in such a connexion, 
 preferring to reserve it for raising images 
 of the opposite sex. Whether because no 
 deep felicity is likely to arise from the cir- 
 cumstance, or from any other reason, to 
 say in these days that a youth is beautiful 
 is not to award him that amount of credit 
 which the expression would have carried 
 with it if he had lived in the times of 
 the Classical Dictionary. So much, indeed, 
 is the reverse the case that the assertion 
 creates an awkwardness in saying anything 
 more about him. The beautiful youth 
 usually verges so perilously on the incipient 
 coxcomb, who is about to become the 
 Lothario or Juan among the neighbouring 
 maidens, that, for the due understanding 
 
TWO OX A TOWER. 13 
 
 of our present young man, his sublime 
 innocence of any thought concerning his 
 own material aspect, or that of others, is 
 most fervently asserted, and must be as 
 fervently believed. 
 
 Such as he was, there the lad stood. The 
 sun shone full in his face, and on his head 
 he wore a black velvet skull-cap, leaving to 
 view below it a curly margin of very light, 
 shining hair, which accorded well with 
 the flush upon his cheek. 
 
 He had such a complexion as that 
 with which Baffaelle enriches the coun- 
 tenance of the vouthful son of Zacha- 
 «/ 
 
 rias, — a complexion which, though clear, 
 is far enough removed from virgin delicacy, 
 and suggests plenty of sun and wind as 
 its accompaniment. His features were 
 sufficiently straight in the contours to 
 correct the beholder's first impression that 
 the head was the head of a girl. Beside 
 
14 TWO ON A TOWEE. 
 
 him stood a little oak table, and in front 
 was the telescope. 
 
 His visitor had ample time to make these 
 observations ; and she may have done so 
 all the more keenly through being herself 
 of a totally opposite type. Her hair was 
 black as midnight, her eyes had no less 
 deep a shade, and her complexion showed 
 the richness demanded as a support to 
 these decided features. As she continued 
 to look at the pretty fellow before her, 
 apparently so far abstracted into some 
 speculative world as scarcely to know a 
 real one, a warmer wave of her warm 
 temperament glowed visibly through her, 
 and a qualified observer might from this 
 have hazarded a guess that there was 
 Eomance blood in her veins. 
 
 But even the interest attaching to the 
 youth could not arrest her attention for 
 ever, and as he made no further signs of 
 
TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 moving his eye from the instrument she 
 broke the silence with. — 
 
 " What do you see ? — something happen- 
 ing somewhere ? " 
 
 " Yes, quite a catastrophe ! " he automati- 
 cally murmured, without moving round. 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " A cyclone in the sun." 
 
 The lady paused, as if to consider the 
 doubtful weight of that event in the scale 
 of terrene life. 
 
 " Will it make any difference to us 
 here ? " she asked. 
 
 The young man by this time seemed to 
 be awakened to the consciousness that 
 somebody unusual was talking to him ; he 
 turned, and started. 
 
 "I beg your pardon,'' he said. "I 
 thought it was my relative come to look 
 after me ! She often comes about this 
 time." 
 
16 TWO OX A TOWEB. 
 
 He continued to look at her and forget 
 the sun, just sucli a reciprocity of influence 
 as might have been expected between a 
 dark lady and a flaxen-haired youth making 
 itself apparent in the faces of each. 
 
 " Don't let me interrupt your obser- 
 vations," said she. 
 
 " Ah, no," said he, again applj-ing his 
 eye ; whereupon his face lost the animation 
 which her presence had lent it, and became 
 immutable as that of a bust, though super- 
 adding to the serenity of repose the sensi- 
 tiveness of life. The expression that 
 settled on him was one of awe. Not 
 unaptly might it have been said that he 
 was worshipping the sun. Among the 
 various intensities of that worship which 
 have prevailed since the first intelligent 
 being saw the luminary decline westward, 
 as the young man now beheld it doing, his 
 was not the weakest. He was engaged in 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 17 
 
 what may be called a very chastened or 
 schooled form of that first and most natural 
 of adorations. 
 
 "But would you like to see it?" he 
 recommenced. "It is an event that is 
 witnessed only about once in two or three 
 years, though it may occur often 
 enough." 
 
 She assented, and looked through the 
 shaded eye-piece, and saw a whirling mass, 
 in the centre of which the blazing globe 
 seemed to be laid bare to its core. It was 
 a peep into a maelstrom of fire, taking 
 place where nobody had ever been or ever 
 would be. 
 
 "It is the strangest thing I ever beheld," 
 she said. Then he looked again ; till, 
 wondering who her companion could be, 
 she asked, " Are you often here ? " 
 
 " Every night when it is not cloudy, and 
 often in the day." 
 
 vol. i. 
 
18 TWO OX A TOWEE. 
 
 " All, night, of course. The heavens 
 must be beautiful from this point.' ' 
 
 M They are rather more than that." 
 
 " Indeed ! Have you entirely taken pos- 
 session of this column ? " 
 
 « Entirely." 
 
 " But it is my column," she said, with 
 smiling asperity. 
 
 " Then are you Lady Constantine, wife 
 of the absent Sir Blount Constantine ? " 
 
 " I am Lady Constantine." 
 
 u Ah, then I agree that it is your lady- 
 ship's. But will you allow me to rent it of 
 you for a time, Lady Constantine ? " 
 
 " You have taken it, whether I allow it 
 or not. However, in the interests of 
 science it is advisable that you continue 
 your tenancy. Xobody knows you are 
 here, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Hardly anybody." 
 
 He then took her down a few steps into 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 19 
 
 t 
 
 the interior, and showed her some inge- 
 nious contrivances for stowing articles 
 away. 
 
 " Nobody ever comes near the column, — 
 or, as it's called here Rings-Hill Speer," he 
 continued ; " and when I first came up it 
 nobody had been here for thirty or forty 
 years. The staircase was choked with 
 daws' nests and feathers, but I cleared 
 them out." 
 
 " I understood the column was always 
 kept locked?" 
 
 "Yes, it has been so. When it was 
 built, in 1782, the key was given to my 
 great-grandfather, to keep by him in case 
 visitors should happen to want it. He 
 lived just down there where I live now." 
 
 He denoted by a nod a little dell lying 
 immediately beyond the ploughed land 
 which environed them. 
 
 " He kept it in his bureau, and as the 
 c 2 
 
20 TWO ON A TOWEIi. 
 
 bureau descended to my grandfather, my 
 mother, and myself, the key descended 
 with it. After the first thirty or forty 
 years, nobody ever asked for it. One day 
 I saw it, lying rusty in its niche, and, find- 
 ing that it belonged to this column, I took 
 it and came up. I stayed here till it was 
 dark, and the stars came out, and that 
 night I resolved to be an astronomer. I 
 came back here from school several months 
 ago, and I mean to be an astronomer 
 still." 
 
 He lowered his voice and added : 
 
 " I aim at nothing less than the dignity 
 and office of Astronomer Royal, if I live. 
 Perhaps I shall not live." 
 
 " I don't see why you should suppose 
 that," said she. " How long are you going 
 to make this your observatory ? " 
 
 " About a year longer — till I have ob- 
 tained a practical familiarity with the 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 21 
 
 heavens. Ah, if I only had a good equa- 
 torial ! " 
 
 " What is that ? " 
 
 " A proper instrument for my pursuit. 
 But time is short, and science is infinite, 
 — how infinite only those who study as- 
 tronomy fully realize, — and perhaps I 
 shall be worn out before I make my 
 mark." 
 
 She seemed to be greatly struck with the 
 odd mixture in him of scientific earnestness 
 and melancholy mistrust of all things 
 human. Perhaps it was owing to the 
 nature of his studies. 
 
 " You are often on this tower alone at 
 night?" she said. 
 
 " Yes ; at this time of the year particu- 
 larly, and while there is no moon. I 
 observe from seven or eight till about two 
 in the morning, with a view to my great 
 work on variable stars. But with such a 
 
22 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 telescope as this — well, I must put up 
 with it ! " 
 
 " Can you see Saturn's ring and Jupiter's 
 moons? " 
 
 He said drily that he could manage to do 
 that, not without some contempt for the 
 state of her knowledge. 
 
 " I have never seen any planet or star 
 through a telescope." 
 
 " If you will come the first clear night, 
 Lady Constantine, I will show you any 
 number. I mean, at your express wish ; 
 not otherwise." 
 
 " I should like to come, and possibly may 
 at some time. These stars that vary so 
 much — sometimes evening stars, sometimes 
 morning stars, sometimes in the east, and 
 sometimes in the west — have always in- 
 terested me." 
 
 "Ah — now there is a reason for your 
 not coming. Your ignorance of the reali- 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 23 
 
 ties of astronomy is so satisfactory that I 
 will not disturb it except at your serious 
 request." 
 
 " But I wish to be enlightened." 
 " Let me caution you against it." 
 " Is enlightenment on the subject, then, 
 so terrible ? " 
 " Yes, indeed." 
 
 She laughingly declared that nothing 
 could have so piqued her curiosity as his 
 statement, and turned to descend. He 
 helped her down the stairs and through the 
 briers. He would have gone further, and 
 crossed the open corn-land with her, bat 
 she preferred to go alone. He then re- 
 traced his way to the top of the column, 
 but, instead of looking longer at the sun, 
 watched her diminishing towards the dis- 
 tant fence, behind which waited the 
 carriage. "When in the midst of the field, 
 a dark spot on an area of brown, there 
 
24 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 crossed her path a moving figure, whom it 
 was as difficult to distinguish from the 
 earth he trod as the caterpillar from its 
 leaf, by reason of the excellent match be- 
 tween his clothes and the clods. He was 
 one of a dying-out generation who retained 
 the principle, nearly unlearnt now, that a 
 man's habiliments should be in harmony 
 with his environment. Lady Constantine 
 and this figure halted beside each other for 
 some minutes ; then they went on their 
 several ways. 
 
 The brown person was a labouring man 
 known to the world of Welland as Haymoss 
 (the encrustod form of the word Amos, to 
 adopt the phrase of philologists). The 
 reason of the halt had been some inquiries 
 addressed to him by Lady Constantine. 
 
 "Who is that— Amos Fry, I think?" 
 she had asked. 
 
 " Yes, my lady," said Haymoss; "a 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 25 
 
 homely barley driller, born under the very 
 eavesdroppings of your ladyship's smallest 
 out-buildings, in a manner of speaking, — 
 though your ladyship was neither born nor 
 'tempted at that time." 
 
 " Who lives in the old house behind the 
 plantation ?" 
 
 " Old Gammer Martin, my lady, and her 
 grandson." 
 
 " He has neither father nor mother, 
 then?" 
 
 " Not a single one, my lady." 
 
 " Where was he educated ? " 
 
 " At Warborne, — a place where they 
 draw up young gam'sters' brains like rhu- 
 barb under a ninepenny pan, my lady, 
 excusing my common way. They hit so 
 much laming into en that 'a could talk like 
 the day of Pentecost ; which is a wonderful 
 thing for a simple boy, and his mother only 
 the plainest ciphering woman in the world. 
 
26 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 Warborne Grammar School — that's where 
 'tw r as 'a went to. His father, the reverent 
 Pa'son St. Cleeve, made a terrible bruckle 
 hit in 's marrying, in the sight of the high. 
 He were the curate here, my lady, for a 
 length o* time." 
 
 " Oh, curate," said Lady Constantine. 
 It was before I knew the village." 
 
 " Ay, long and merry ago ! And he 
 married Farmer Martin's daughter — Giles 
 Martin, a limberish man, who used to go 
 rather bad upon his lags, if you can mind. 
 I knowed the man well enough ; who should 
 know en better ! The maid was a poor 
 windling thing, and, though a play ward 
 piece o' flesh when he married her, 'a socked 
 and sighed, and went out like a snoff ! 
 Yes, my lady ; well, when Pa'son St. Cleeve 
 married this homespun woman the topper- 
 most folk wouldn't speak to his wife. Then 
 he dropped a cuss or two, and said he'd no 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 27 
 
 longer get his living by curing their two- 
 penny souls o* such damn nonsense as that 
 (excusing my common way), and he took 
 to farming straightway, and then 'a dropped 
 down dead in a nor- west thunderstorm ; it 
 being said — hee-hee ! — that Master God 
 was in tantrums wi' en for leaving his 
 service, — hee-hee ! I give the story as I 
 heard it, my lady, but be dazed if I believe 
 in such trumpery behaviour of thefokes in 
 the sky, nor anything else that's said about 
 'em, good or bad. Well, Swithin, the boy, 
 was sent to the grammar school, as I say 
 for ; but what with having tw r o stations of 
 life in his blood, he's good for nothing, my 
 lady. He mopes about — sometimes here, 
 and sometimes there ; nobody troubles 
 about en." 
 
 Lady Constantine thanked her in- 
 formant, and proceeded onward. To her, 
 as a woman, the most curious feature in 
 
28 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 the afternoon's incident was that this lad, 
 of striking beauty, scientific attainments, 
 and. cultivated bearing, should be linked, 
 on the maternal side, with a local agri- 
 cultural family through his father's 
 matrimonial eccentricity. A more attrac- 
 tive feature in the case was that the same 
 youth, so capable of being ruined by 
 flattery, blandishment, pleasure, even 
 gross prosperity, should be at present 
 living on in a primitive Eden of un- 
 consciousness, with aims towards whose 
 accomplishment a Caliban shape would 
 have been as effective as his own. 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 29 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 S withix St. Cleeve lingered on at his 
 post, until the more sanguine birds of the 
 plantation, already recovering from their 
 midwinter anxieties, piped a short evening 
 hymn to the vanishing sun. 
 
 The landscape was gently concave; 
 with the exception of tower and hill, there 
 were no points on which late rays might 
 linger; and hence the dish-shaped ninety 
 acres of tilled land assumed a uniform hue 
 of shade quite suddenly. The one or two 
 stars that appeared were quickly clouded 
 over, and it was soon obvious that there 
 would be no sweeping the heavens that 
 
30 TWO ON A TO WEE. 
 
 night. After tying a piece of tarpaulin, 
 which had once seen service on his 
 maternal grandfather's farm, over all the 
 apparatus around him, he went clown the 
 stairs in the dark, and locked the 
 door. 
 
 With the key in his pocket, he 
 descended through the underwood on the 
 side of the slope opposite to that trodden 
 by Lady Constantine, and crossed the 
 field in a line mathematically straight, and 
 in a manner that left no traces, by keeping 
 in the same furrow all the way on tiptoe. 
 In a few minutes he reached a little dell, 
 which occurred quite unexpectedly on the 
 other side of the field-fence, and descended 
 to a venerable thatched house, whose 
 enormous roof, broken up by dormers as 
 big as haycocks, could be seen even in the 
 twilight. Over the white w r alls, built of 
 chalk in the lump, outlines of creepers 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 31 
 
 formed dark patterns, as if drawn in 
 charcoal. 
 
 Inside the house his maternal grand- 
 mother was sitting by a wood fire. 
 Before it stood a pipkin, in which some- 
 thing was evidently kept warm. An 
 eioiit-leofaed oak table in the middle of 
 the room was laid for a meal. This 
 woman of eighty, in a large mob cap, 
 under which she wore a little cap to keep 
 the other clean, retained faculties but 
 little blunted. She was gazing into the 
 flames, with her hands upon her knees, 
 quietly re-enacting in her brain certain of 
 the long chain of episodes, pathetic, 
 tragical, and humorous, which had consti- 
 tuted the parish history for the last sixty 
 years. On S within' s entry she looked up 
 at him in a sideway direction. 
 
 " You should not have waited for "me, 
 granny," he said. 
 
32 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 " Tis of no account, my child. I've 
 had a nap while sitting here. Yes, I've 
 had a nap, and went straight np into my 
 old country again, as usual. The place 
 was as natural as when I left it, — e'en 
 just threescore years ago ! All the folks 
 and my old aunt were there, as when I 
 was a child, — ' and when I awoke, behold 
 it was a dream ! ' I suppose if I were 
 really to set out and go there, hardly a 
 soul would be left alive to say to me, dog 
 how art ! But tell Hannah to stir her 
 stumps and serve supper — though I'd fain 
 do it myself, the poor old soul is getting 
 so unhandy ! " 
 
 Hannah revealed herself to be much 
 nimbler and several years younger than 
 granny, though of this the latter seemed 
 to be oblivious. When the meal was 
 nearly over Mrs. Martin produced the 
 contents of the mysterious vessel by the 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 33 
 
 fire, saying that she had caused it to be 
 brought in from the back kitchen, be- 
 cause Hannah was hardly to be trusted 
 with such things, she was becoming so 
 childish. 
 
 "What is it, then?" said Swithin. 
 " Oh, one of your special puddings." At 
 sight of it, however, he added reproach- 
 fully, " Now, granny ! " 
 
 Instead of being round, it was in shape 
 an irregular boulder that had been ex- 
 posed to the weather for centuries — a 
 little scrap pared off here, and a little 
 piece broken away there ; the general aim 
 being, nevertheless, to avoid destroying the 
 symmetry of the pudding, while taking 
 as much as possible of its substance. 
 
 "The fact is," added Swithin, "the 
 pudding is half gone ! " 
 
 "I've only sliced off the merest paring 
 once or twice, to taste if it was well 
 
 VOL. I. d 
 
34 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 done ! " pleaded granny Martin, with 
 wounded feelings. " I said to Hannah, 
 when she took it up, ' Put it here to keep 
 it warm, as there's a better fire than in 
 the back kitchen." 
 
 " Well, I am not going to eat any of 
 it ! " said S within decisively, as he rose 
 from the table, pushed away his chair, 
 and went up -stairs ; the " other station of 
 life that was in his blood," and which had 
 been brought out by the grammar school, 
 probably stimulating him. 
 
 " Ah, the world is an ungrateful city ! 
 'Twas a pity I didn't take my poor name 
 off this earthly calendar and creep under 
 ground sixty long years ago, instead of 
 leaving my own county to come here ! " 
 mourned old Mrs. Martin. "But I told 
 his mother how 'twould be — marrying so 
 many notches above her. The child was 
 sure to chaw high, like his father ! " 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 35 
 
 When S within had been np-stairs a 
 minute or two, however, he altered his 
 mind, and, coming down again, ate all the 
 pudding, with the aspect of a person 
 undertaking a deed of great magnanimity. 
 The relish with which he did so restored 
 the unison that knew no more serious 
 interruptions than such as this. 
 
 "Mr. Torkingham has been here this 
 afternoon," said his grandmother ; " and 
 he wants me to let him meet some of the 
 choir here to-night for practice. They 
 who live at this end of the parish won't 
 go to his house to try over the tunes, 
 because 'tis so far, they say; and so 'tis, 
 poor men. So he's going to see what 
 coming to them will do. He asks if you 
 would like to join." 
 
 " I would if I had not so much to do." 
 
 " But it is cloudy to-night." 
 
 " Yes ; but I have calculations without 
 d 2 
 
36 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 end, granny. Now, don't you tell him 
 I'm in the house, will you ? and then he'll 
 not ask for me." 
 
 " But if he should, must I then tell a 
 lie, Lord forgive me ? " 
 
 66 No, you can say I'm up-stairs ; he 
 must think what he likes. Not a word 
 about the astronomy to any of them, 
 whatever you do. I should be called a 
 visionary, and all sorts." 
 
 " So thou beest, child. Why can't ye 
 do something that's of use " — 
 
 At the sound of footsteps Swithin beat 
 a hasty retreat up-stairs, where he struck 
 a light, and revealed a table covered with 
 books and papers, while round the walls 
 hung star-maps, and other diagrams illus- 
 trative of celestial phenomena. In a 
 corner stood a huge pasteboard tube, 
 which a close inspection would have 
 shown to be intended for a telescope. 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 37 
 
 S within hung a thick cloth over the 
 window, in addition to the curtains, and 
 sat down to his papers. On the ceiling 
 was a black stain of smoke, and under this 
 he placed his lamp, evidencing that the 
 midnight oil was consumed on that precise 
 spot very often. 
 
 Meanwhile, there had entered to the 
 room below a personage who, to judge 
 from her voice and the quick pit-pat of 
 her feet, was a female young and blithe. 
 Mrs. Martin welcomed her by the title of 
 Miss Tabitha Lark, and inquired what 
 wind had brought her that way ; to which 
 the visitor replied that she had come for 
 the singing. 
 
 " Sit ye down, then," said granny. 
 " And do you still go to the House to read 
 to my lady ? " 
 
 " Yes, I go and read, Mrs. Martin ; but 
 as to getting my lady to hearken, that's 
 
38 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 more than a team of six horses could force 
 her to do." 
 
 The girl had a remarkably smart and 
 fluent utterance, which was probably a 
 cause, or a consequence, of her vocation. 
 
 "'Tis the same story, then?" said 
 grandmother Martin. 
 
 "Yes. Eaten out with listlessness. 
 She's neither sick nor sorry, but how dull 
 and dreary she is, only herself can tell. 
 When I get there in the morning, there 
 she is sitting up in bed, for my lady don't 
 care to get up ; and then she makes me 
 bring this book and that book, till the bed 
 is heaped up with immense volumes that 
 half bury her, making her look, as she 
 leans upon her elbow, like the stoning of 
 Stephen in the church window. She 
 yawns; then she looks towards the tall 
 glass ; then she looks out at the weather, 
 mooning her great black eyes, and fixing 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 39 
 
 them on the sky as if they stuck there, 
 while my tongue goes flick-flack along, a 
 hundred and fifty words a minute; then 
 she looks at the clock ; then she asks me 
 what I've been reading." 
 
 " Ah, poor soul ! " said granny. " No 
 doubt she says in the morning, 'Would 
 God it were evening,' and in the evening, 
 6 Would God it were morning,' like the 
 disobedient woman in Deuteronomy." 
 
 S within, in the room overhead, had sus- 
 pended his calculations, for the dialogue 
 interested him. There now crunched 
 heavier steps outside the door, and his 
 grandmother could be heard greeting sun- 
 dry representatives of the bass and tenor 
 voice, who lent a cheerful and well-known 
 personality to the names Sammy Blore, 
 Nat Chapman, Hezekiah Biles, and Hay- 
 moss Fry (the latter being one with whom 
 the reader has already a distant acquain- 
 
40 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 tance) ; besides these came small producers 
 of treble, who bad not yet developed into 
 such distinctive units of society as to re- 
 quire particularizing. 
 
 " Is the good man come ? " asked Nat 
 Chapman. " No, — I see we be here afore 
 him. And how is it with aged women to- 
 night, Mrs. Martin ? " 
 
 " Tedious traipsing enough with this 
 one, Nat. Sit ye down. Well, little 
 Freddy, you don't wish in the morning 
 that 'twere evening, and at evening that 
 'twere morning again, do you, Freddy, 
 trust ye for it ? " 
 
 " Now, who might wish such a thing as 
 that, Mrs. Martin ? — nobody in this 
 parish ? " asked Sammy Blore curiously. 
 
 "My lady is always wishing it," spoke 
 up Miss Tabitha Lark. 
 
 " Oh, she ! Nobody can be answerable 
 for the wishes of that onnatural tribe of 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 41 
 
 mankind. Not but that the woman's 
 heart-strings is tried in many aggravating 
 w r ays." 
 
 " Ah, poor woman ! " said granny. 
 " The state she finds herself in — neither 
 maid, wife, nor widow, as you may say — is 
 not the primest form of life for keeping in 
 good spirits. How long is it since she has 
 heard from Sir Blount, Tabitha ? " 
 
 " Two years and more," said the young 
 woman. " He went into one side of 
 Africa, as it might be, three St. Martin's 
 days back. I can mind it, because 'twas 
 my birthday. And he meant to come out 
 the other side. But he didn't. He has 
 never come out at all." 
 
 " For all the world like losing a rat in a 
 barley-mow," said Hezekiah, glancing 
 round for corroboration. " He's lost, 
 though you know where he is." 
 
 His comrades nodded. 
 
42 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 "Ay, my lady is a walking weariness, 
 that's plain. I seed her yawn just at the 
 very moment when the fox was halloaed 
 away by Harton Copse, and the hounds 
 runned en all but past her carriage w r heels. 
 If I w^ere she I'd see a little life ; though 
 there's no fair, club-walking, nor feast, to 
 speak of, till Easter week, — that's true." 
 
 " She dares not. She's under solemn 
 oath and testament to do no such 
 thing." 
 
 " Be cust if I would keep any such oath 
 and testament ! But here's the pa' son, if 
 my ears don't deceive me." 
 
 There w^as a noise of horse's hoofs with- 
 out, a stumbling against the door-scraper, 
 a tethering to the window -shutter, a creak- 
 ing of the door on its hinges, and a voice 
 which Swithin recognized as Mr. Torking- 
 ham's. He greeted each of the previous 
 arrivals by name, and stated that he was 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 43 
 
 glad to see them all so punctually as- 
 sembled. 
 
 "Ay, sir," said Haymoss Fry. " 'Tis 
 only my jints that have kept me from 
 assembling myself long ago. I'd assemble 
 upon the top of Welland Steeple, if 
 'tweren't for my jints. I assure ye, Pa'son 
 Tarkenham, that in the clitch o' my knees, 
 where the rain used to come through when 
 I was cutting clots for the new lawn, in 
 old my lady's time, 'tis as if rats wez 
 gnawing, every now and then. When a 
 feller's young he's too small in the brain to 
 see how soon a constitution can be squan- 
 dered, worse luck I " 
 
 " True," said Biles, to fill the time while 
 the parson was engaged in finding the 
 Psalms. " A man's a fool till he's forty. 
 Often have I thought, when hay -pitching, 
 and the small of my back seeming no 
 stouter than a harnet's, ' The devil send 
 
44 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 that I had but the making of labouring 
 men for a twelvemonth [ ' I'd gie every 
 man jack two good backbones, even if the 
 alteration was as wrong as forgery." 
 
 " Four, — four backbones, " said Hay- 
 moss, decisively. 
 
 "Yes, four," threw in Sammy Blore, 
 with additional weight of experience. 
 "For you want one in front for breast- 
 ploughing and such like, one at the right 
 side for ground-dressing, and one at the 
 left side for turning mixens." 
 
 " Well, four. Then next I'd move every 
 man's wyndpipe a good span away from his 
 glutchpipe, so that at harvest time he 
 could fetch breath in 's drinking, with- 
 out being choked and strangled as he is 
 now. Thinks I, when I feel the victuals 
 
 goino' 
 
 
 " Now we'll begin," interrupted Mr. 
 Torkingham, his mind returning to this 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 45 
 
 world again on concluding his search for 
 a hymn. 
 
 Thereupon the racket of chair-legs on 
 the floor signified that they were settling 
 into their seats, — a disturbance which 
 Swithin took advantage of by going on 
 tiptoe across the floor above, and putting 
 sheets of paper over knot-holes in the 
 boarding at points where carpet was 
 lacking, that his lamp-light might not 
 shine down. The absence of a ceiling 
 beneath rendered his position virtually that 
 of one suspended in the same apartment. 
 
 The parson announced the tune, and his 
 voice burst forth with " Onward, Christian 
 soldiers ! " in notes of rigid cheerfulness. 
 
 In this start however, he was joined only 
 by the girls and boys, the men furnishing 
 but an accompaniment of ahas and hems. 
 Mr. Torkingham stopped, and Sammy 
 Blore spoke, — 
 
46 TWO OX A TOWEE. 
 
 " Beg your pardon, sir, — if you'll deal 
 mild with us a moment. What with the 
 wind and walking, my throat's as rough as 
 a grater ; and not knowing you were going 
 to hit up that minute, I hadn't hawked, 
 and I don't think Hezzy and Nat had, 
 either, — had ye, souls ? " 
 
 " I hadn't done it thoroughly, that's 
 true," said Hezekiah. 
 
 " Quite right of you, then, to speak," said 
 Mr. Torkingham. " Don't mind explain- 
 ing ; we are here for practice. Now clear 
 your throats, then, and at it again." 
 
 There w r as a noise as of atmospheric 
 hoes and scrapers, and the bass contingent 
 at last got under way with a time of its own: 
 
 " Honwerd, Christen sojers ! " 
 
 " Ah, that's where we are so defective — 
 the pronunciation," interrupted the parson. 
 " Now repeat after me : ' On- ward, 
 Christ-ian, sol-diers." 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 47 
 
 The choir repeated like an exaggerative 
 echo : " On-wed, Chris-ting, sol-jaws ! " 
 
 " Better ! " said the parson, in the 
 strenuously sanguine tones of a man who 
 got his living by discovering a bright side 
 in things where it was not very perceptible 
 to other people. " But it should not be 
 given with quite so extreme an accent ; or 
 we may be called affected by other parishes. 
 And, Nathaniel Chapman, there's a jaunti- 
 ness in your manner of singing which is 
 not quite becoming. Why don't you sing 
 more earnestly ? " 
 
 " My conscience won't let me, sir. They 
 say every man for himself; but, thank 
 God, I'm not so mean as to lessen old 
 f okes' chances by singing earnest, and they 
 so much nearer the need o't." 
 
 " It's bad reasoning, Nat, I fear. Now, 
 perhaps we had better sol-fa the tune. Eyes 
 on your books, please. Sol-sol ! fa-fa ! mi" — 
 
48 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 " 1 can't sing like that, not I ! " said 
 Sammy Blore, with condemnatory astonish- 
 ment. " I can sing genuine music, like F 
 and Gr ; but not anything so much out of 
 the order of nater as that." 
 
 " Perhaps you've brought the wrong 
 book, sir?" chimed in Haymoss, kindly. 
 " I've knowed music early in life, and 
 late, — in short, eyer since Luke Sneap 
 broke his new fiddle-bow in the wedding 
 psalm, w r hen Pa'son Wilton brought home 
 his bride (you can mind the time, Sammy ? 
 — at ' His wife, like a fair fertile vine, her 
 lovely fruit shall bring,' when the young 
 woman turned as red as a rose, not know- 
 ing 'twas coming). I've knowed music 
 ever since then, I say, sir, and never heard 
 the like o' that. Every martel note had 
 his name of A, B, C, at that time." 
 
 " Yes, yes, men ; but this is a more 
 recent system ! " 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 49 
 
 " Still, you can't alter a old-established 
 note that's A or B by nater," rejoined 
 Haymoss, with yet deeper conviction that 
 Mr. Torkingham was getting off his head. 
 " Now sound A, neighbour Sammy, and 
 let's have a slap at Christen sojers again, 
 and show the Pa'son the true way ! " 
 
 Sammy produced a private tuning-fork, 
 black and grimy, which, being about seventy 
 years of age, and wrought before piano- 
 forte builders had sent up the pitch to make 
 their instruments brilliant, was nearly a 
 note flatter than the parson's. While an 
 argument as to the true pitch was 
 in progress, there came a knocking 
 without. 
 
 66 Somebody's at the door ! " said a little 
 treble girl. 
 
 " Thought I heard a knock before ! " 
 said the relieved choir. 
 
 The latch was lifted, and a man asked 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
50 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 from the darkness, " Is Mr. Torkingham 
 here?" 
 
 " Yes, Mills. What do you want ? " 
 
 It was the parson's man. 
 
 " Oh, if you please," says Mills, showing 
 an advanced margin of himself round the 
 door, " Lady Constantine wants to see you 
 very particular, sir, and could you call on 
 her after dinner, if you ben't engaged 
 with poor fokes ? She's just had a letter, — 
 so they say, — and it's about that, I 
 believe." 
 
 Finding, on looking at his watch, that it 
 was necessary to start at once if he meant 
 to see her that night, the parson cut short 
 the practising, and, naming another night 
 for meeting, he withdrew. All the singers 
 assisted him on to his cob, and w^atched 
 him till he disappeared over the edge of 
 the glen. 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 51 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Me. Torkingham trotted briskly onward to 
 his house, a distance of about a mile, each 
 cottage, as it revealed its half -buried posi- 
 tion by its single light, appearing like a 
 one-eyed night creature watching him from 
 an ambush. Leaving his horse at the 
 parsonage, he performed the remainder of 
 the journey on foot, crossing the park to- 
 wards Welland House by a stile and path, 
 till he struck into the drive near the north 
 door of the mansion. 
 
 This drive, it may be remarked, was also 
 the common highway to the lower village, 
 and hence Lacly Constantine's residence 
 e 2 
 
52 TWO ON A TOWEE. 
 
 and park, as is occasionally the case with 
 old-fashioned manors, possessed none of 
 the exclnsiveness fonnd in some aristocratic 
 settlements. The parishioners looked npon 
 the park avenue as their natural thorough- 
 fare, particularly for christenings, wed- 
 dings, and funerals, which passed the 
 squire's mansion with due considerations 
 as to the scenic effect of the same from 
 the manor windows. Hence the house of 
 Constantine, when going out from its 
 breakfast, had been continually crossed on 
 the doorstep for the last two hundred 
 years by the houses of Hodge and Giles 
 in full cry to dinner. At present these 
 collisions were but too infrequent, for 
 though the villagers passed the north front 
 door as regularly as ever, they seldom met 
 a Constantine. Only one was there to be 
 met, and she had no zest for outings before 
 noon. 
 
TWO ON A TOWEE. 5^ 
 
 The long, low front of the Great House, 
 as it was called by the parish, stretching 
 from end to end of the terrace, was in 
 darkness as the vicar slackened his pace 
 before it, and only the distant fall of water 
 disturbed the stillness of the manorial 
 precincts. 
 
 On gaining admittance, lie found Lady 
 Constantine waiting to receive him. She 
 wore a heavy dress of velvet and lace, and 
 being the only person in the spacious apart- 
 ment, she looked small and isolated. In 
 her left hand she held a letter and a couple 
 of at-home cards. The soft dark eyes 
 which she raised to him as he entered — 
 large, and melancholy by circumstance far 
 more than by quality — were the natural 
 indices of a warm and affectionate, perhaps 
 slightly voluptuous temperament, languish- 
 ing for want of something to do, cherish, 
 or suffer for. 
 
54 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 Mr. Torkinghani seated himself. His 
 boots, which had seemed elegant in the 
 farm-house, appeared rather clumsy here, 
 and his coat, that was a model of tailoring 
 when he stood amid the choir, now exhibited 
 decidedly strained relations with his limbs. 
 Three years had passed since his induction 
 to the living of AYelland, but he had never 
 as yet found means to establish that rela- 
 tionship with Lady Constantine wmich 
 usually grows up, in the course of time, 
 between parsonage and manor-house, — 
 unless, indeed, either side should surprise 
 the other by showing respectively a weak- 
 ness for. awkward modern ideas on land- 
 ownership, or on church formulas, which 
 had not been the case here. The present 
 meeting, however, seemed likely to initiate 
 such a relationship. 
 
 There was an appearance of confidence 
 on Lady Constantine' s face ; she said she 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 55 
 
 was so ver y glad that lie had come ; and, 
 looking down at the letter in her hand, 
 was on the point of pulling it from 
 its envelope ; but she did not. After a 
 moment she went on more quickly : " I 
 wanted your advice, or rather your opinion, 
 on a serious matter, — on a point of con- 
 science." Saying which, she laid down 
 the letter and looked at the cards. 
 
 It might have been apparent to a more 
 penetrating eye than the vicar's that Lady 
 Constantine, either from timidity, misgiv- 
 ing, or reconviction, had swerved from 
 her intended communication, or perhaps 
 decided to begin at the other end. 
 
 The parson, who had been expecting a 
 question on some local business or in- 
 telligence, at the tenor of her words altered 
 his face to the higher branch of his pro- 
 fession. 
 
 " I hope I may find myself of service, 
 
56 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 on that or any other question,' ' he said 
 gently. 
 
 " I hope so. You may possibly be aware, 
 Mr. Torkingham, that my husband, Sir 
 Blount Constantine, was, not to mince 
 matters, a mistaken — somewhat jealous 
 man. Yet you may hardly have discerned 
 it in the short time you knew him." 
 
 " I had some little knowledge of Sir 
 Blount's character in that respect.' ' 
 
 " Well, on this account my married life 
 with him was not of the most comfortable 
 kind." (Lady Constantine' s voice dropped 
 to a more pathetic note.) " I am sure I 
 gave him no cause for suspicion ; though 
 had I known his disposition sooner I should 
 hardly have dared to marry him. But his 
 jealousy and doubt of me were not so strong 
 as to divert him from a purpose of his, — a 
 mania for African lion-hunting, w r hich he 
 dignified by calling it a scheme of geo- 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 57 
 
 graphical discovery ; for lie was inordinately 
 anxious to make a name for himself in that 
 field. It was the one passion that was 
 stronger than his mistrust of me. Before 
 going away he sat down with me in this 
 room, and read me a lecture, which resulted 
 in a very rash offer on my part. When I 
 tell it to you, you will find that it provides 
 a key to all that is unusual in my life here. 
 He bade me consider what my position 
 would be when he was gone ; hoped that I 
 should remember what was due to him, — 
 that I would not so behave towards other 
 men as to bring the name of Constantine 
 into suspicion ; and charged me to avoid 
 levity of conduct in attending any ball, 
 rout, or dinner to which I might be invited. 
 I, in some indignation at his low opinion 
 of me, responded perhaps too spiritedly. I 
 volunteered, there and then, to live like a 
 cloistered nun during his absence ; to go 
 
58 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 into no society whatever, — not even to a 
 neighbour's dinner-party ; and demanded 
 bitterly if that would satisfy him. He 
 said yes, instantly held me to my word, and 
 gave me no loophole for retracting it. The 
 inevitable fruits of precipitancy have 
 resulted to me : my life has become a 
 burden. I get such invitations as these," 
 (holding up the cards), " but I so invariably 
 refuse them that they are getting very 
 rare. ... I ask you, can I honestly break 
 that promise to my husband ? " 
 
 Mr. Torkingham seemed embarrassed. 
 " If you promised Sir Blount Constantine 
 to live in solitude till he comes back, you 
 are, it seems to me, bound by that promise. 
 I fear that the wish to be released from 
 your engagement is to some extent a reason 
 why it should be kept. But your own 
 conscience would surely be the best guide, 
 Lady Constantine ? " 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 59 
 
 " My conscience is quite bewildered with 
 its responsibilities," she continued, with a 
 sigh. " Yet it certainly does sometimes 
 say to me that — that I ought to keep my 
 word. Very well ; I must go on as I am 
 going, I suppose." 
 
 " If you respect a vow, I think you 
 must respect your own," said the parson, 
 acquiring some further firmness. " Had it 
 been wrung from you by compulsion, moral 
 or physical, it would have been open to 
 yon to break it. But as you proposed a 
 vow when your husband only required a 
 good intention, I think you ought to adhere 
 to it ; or what is the pride worth that led 
 you to offer it?" 
 
 " Very well," she said, with resignation. 
 " But it was quite a work of supererogation 
 on my part." 
 
 " That you proposed it in a supereroga- 
 tory spirit does not lessen your obligation, 
 
60 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 having once put yourself under that obliga- 
 tion. St. Paul, in his Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, says, c An oath for confirmation 
 is an end of all strife.' And you will readily 
 recall the words of Ecclesiastes, ' Pay 
 that which thou hast vowed. Better is it 
 that thou shouldest not vow than that thou 
 shouldest vow and not pay.' Why not write 
 to Sir Blount, tell him the inconvenience of 
 such a bond, and ask him to release you ? " 
 
 "No; never will I. The expression of 
 such a desire would, in his mind, be a 
 sufficient reason for disallowing it. I'll 
 keep my word." 
 
 Mr. Torkingham rose to leave. After 
 she had held out her hand to him, when 
 he had crossed the room, and was within 
 two steps of the door, she said, " Mr. 
 Torkingham." He stopped. " What I 
 have told you is only the least part of 
 what I sent for you to tell you." 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 61 
 
 Mr. Torkingham walked back to her 
 side. " "What is it, then ? " he asked, with 
 grave surprise. 
 
 " It is a true revelation, as far as it goes ; 
 but there is something more. I have 
 received this letter, and I wanted to say — 
 something." 
 
 " Then say ifc now, my dear lady." 
 
 "No," she answered, with a look of 
 utter inability. " I cannot speak of it 
 now ! Some other time. Don't stay. 
 Please consider this conversation as private. 
 Good-night." 
 
62 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 It was a bright starlight night, a week or 
 ten days later. There had been several 
 such nights since the occasion of Lady 
 Constantine's promise to S within St. Cleeve 
 to come and study astronomical phenomena 
 on the Rings-Hill column ; but she had 
 not gone there. This evening she sat at a 
 window, the blind of which had not been 
 drawn down. Her elbow rested on a little 
 table, and her cheek on her hand. Her 
 eyes were attracted by the brightness of 
 the planet Jupiter, as he rode in the ecliptic 
 opposite, beaming down upon her as if 
 desirous of notice. 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 63 
 
 Beneath the planet could be still dis- 
 cerned the dark edges of the park landscape 
 against the sky. As one of its features, 
 though nearly screened by the trees which 
 had been planted to shut out the fallow 
 tracts of the estate, rose the upper part of 
 the column. It was hardly visible now, 
 even if visible at all ; yet Lady Constantine 
 knew from daytime experience its exact 
 bearing from the window at which she 
 leaned. The knowledge that there it still 
 was, despite its rapid envelopment by the 
 shades, led her lonely mind to her late meet- 
 ing on its summit w r ith the young astrono- 
 mer, and to her promise to honour him with 
 a visit for learning some secrets about the 
 scintillating bodies overhead. The curious 
 juxtaposition of youthful ardour and old 
 despair that she had found in the lad would 
 have made him interesting to a woman of 
 perception, apart from his fair hair and 
 
64 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 early- Christian face. But such is the 
 heightening touch of memory that his 
 beauty was probably richer in her imagina- 
 tion than in the real. It was a moot point 
 to consider whether the temptations that 
 would be brought to bear upon him in his 
 course would exceed the staying power of 
 his nature. Had he been a rich youth, he 
 would have seemed one to tremble for. In 
 spite of his attractive ambitions and gentle- 
 manly bearing, she thought it would 
 possibly be better for him if he never 
 became known outside his lonely tower, — 
 forgetting that he had received such intel- 
 lectual enlargement as would probably 
 make his continuance in Welland seem, in 
 his own eye, a slight upon his father's 
 branch of his family, whose social standing 
 had been, only a few years earlier, but little 
 removed from her own. 
 
 Suddenly she flung a cloak about her 
 
TWO ON A TOWEE. 65 
 
 and went ont on the terrace. An altogether 
 new idea plainly possesse d her. She passed 
 down the steps to the lower lawn, through 
 the door to the open park, and there stood 
 still. The tower was now discernible. As 
 the words in which a thought is expressed 
 develop a further thought, so did the fact 
 of her having got so far influence her to 
 go further. A person who had casually 
 observed her gait would have thought it 
 irregular ; and the lessenings and increas- 
 ings of speed with which she proceeded in 
 the direction of the pillar could be accounted 
 for only by a motive much more disturbing 
 than an intention to look through a 
 telescope. Thus she went on, till, leaving 
 the park, she crossed the turnpike-road, 
 and entered the large field, in the middle 
 of which the fir-clad hill stood stood like 
 Mont St. Michel in its bay. 
 
 The stars were so bright as distinctly to 
 
 VOL. I. F 
 
66 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 show her the place, and now she could see 
 a faint light at the top of the column, 
 which rose like a shadowy finger pointing 
 to the upper constellations. There was no 
 wind, in a human sense ; but a steady 
 stertorous breathing from the fir-trees 
 showed that, now as always, there was 
 movement in apparent stagnation. Nothing 
 but an absolute vacuum could paralyze 
 their utterance. 
 
 The door of the tower was shut. It was 
 something more than the freakishness which 
 is engendered by a sickening monotony 
 that had led Lady Oonstantine thus far, 
 and hence she made no ado about admit- 
 ting herself. Three years ago, when her 
 every action was a thing of propriety, she 
 had known of no possible purpose which 
 could have led her abroad in a manner such 
 as this. 
 
 She ascended the tower noiselessly. On 
 
TWO ON A TOWEE. 67 
 
 raising her head above the hatchway she 
 beheld Swithin bending over a scroll of 
 paper which lay on the little table beside 
 him. The small lantern that illuminated 
 it showed also that he was warmly wrapped 
 up in a coat and thick cap, behind him 
 standing the telescope on its frame. 
 
 What was he doing ? She looked over 
 his shoulder upon the paper, and saw 
 figures and signs. "When he had jotted 
 down something, he went to the telescope 
 again. 
 
 "What are you doing to-night?" she 
 said in a low voice. 
 
 Swithin started, and turned. The faint 
 lamp-light was sufficient to reveal her face 
 to him. 
 
 " Tedious work, Lady Constantine," he 
 answered, without betraying much surprise. 
 " Doing my best to watch phenomenal 
 stars, as I may call them." 
 f 2 
 
68 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 " You said you would show me the 
 heavens, if I could come on a starlight 
 night. I have come." 
 
 S within, as a preliminary, swept round 
 the telescope to Jupiter, and exhibited to 
 her the glory of that orb. Then he directed 
 the instrument to the less bright shape of 
 Saturn. 
 
 " Here," he said, warming up to the 
 subject, " we see a world which is to my 
 mind by far the most wonderful in the 
 solar system. Think of streams of satel- 
 lites or meteors racing round and round 
 the planet like a fly-wheel, so close 
 together as to seem solid matter ! " He 
 entered further and further into the sub- 
 ject, his ideas gathering momentum as 
 he went on, like his pet heavenly bodies. 
 
 When he paused for breath, she said, in 
 tones very different from his own, " I 
 ought now to tell you that, though I am 
 
TWO ON A TOWEE. 69 
 
 interested in the stars, they were not what 
 I came to see you about. They were only 
 an excuse for coming. I first thought of 
 disclosing the matter to Mr. Torkingham ; 
 but I altered my mind, and decided on 
 
 you." 
 
 She spoke in so low a voice that he 
 might not have heard her. At all events, 
 abstracted by his grand theme, he did not 
 heed her. He continued, — 
 
 "Well, we will get outside the solar 
 system altogether, — leave the whole group 
 of sun, primary and secondary planets 
 quite behind us in our flight, as a bird 
 might leave its bush and sweep into the 
 whole forest. Now what do you see, Lady 
 Constantine ? " He levelled the achromatic 
 at Sirius. 
 
 She said that she saw a bright star, 
 though it only seemed a point of light now 
 as before. 
 
70 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 " That's because it is so distant that no 
 magnifying will bring its size up to zero. 
 Though called a fixed star, it is, like all 
 fixed stars, moving with inconceivable 
 velocity ; but no magnifying will show that 
 velocity as anything but rest." 
 
 And thus they talked on about Sirius, 
 and then about other stars 
 
 . . . in the scrowl 
 Of all those beasts, and fish, and fowl, 
 With which, like Indian plantations, 
 The learned stock the constellations, 
 
 till he asked her how many stars she 
 thought were visible to them at that 
 moment. 
 
 She looked around over the magnificent 
 stretch of sky that their high position 
 unfolded. " Oh, thousands, — hundreds of 
 thousands," she said absently. 
 
 "No. There are only about three 
 thousand. Now, how many do you think 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 71 
 
 are brought within sight by the help of a 
 powerful telescope ? " 
 
 " I won't guess." 
 
 " Twenty millions. So that, whatever 
 the stars were made for, they were not 
 made to please our eyes. It is just the 
 same in everything; nothing is made for 
 man." 
 
 " Is it that notion which makes you so 
 sad for your age ? " she asked, with almost 
 maternal solicitude. " I think astronomy 
 is a bad study for you. It makes you feel 
 human insignificance too plainly." 
 
 " Perhaps it does. However," he added 
 more cheerfully, " though I feel the study 
 to be one almost tragic in its quality, I 
 hope to be the new Copernicus. What he 
 was to the solar system I aim to be to the 
 systems beyond." 
 
 Then, by means of the instrument at 
 hand, they travelled together from the 
 
72 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 earth to Uranus and the mysterious out- 
 skirts of the solar system ; from the solar 
 system to a star in the Swan, the nearest 
 fixed star in the northern sky ; from the 
 star in the Swan to remoter stars ; thence 
 to the remotest visible ; till the ghastly 
 chasm which they had bridged by a fragile 
 line of sight was realized by Lady Con- 
 stantine. 
 
 " We are now traversing distances be- 
 side which the immense line stretching 
 from the earth to the sun is but an in- 
 visible point," said the youth. " When, 
 just now, w r e had reached a planet whose 
 remoteness is a hundred times the remote- 
 ness of the sun from the earth, we were 
 only a two thousandth part of the journey 
 to the spot at which we have optically 
 arrived now." 
 
 " Oh, pray don't; it overpowers me ! " 
 she replied, not without seriousness. " It 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 73 
 
 makes me feel that it is not worth while to 
 live ; it quite annihilates me." 
 
 " If it annihilates your ladyship to roam 
 over these yawning spaces just once, think 
 how it must annihilate me to be, as it were, 
 in constant suspension amid them night 
 after nio'ht." 
 
 " Yes. It was not really this subject 
 that I came to see you upon, Mr. St. 
 Cleeve," she began a second time. " It 
 was a personal matter." 
 
 " I am listening, Lady Constantine." 
 
 " I will tell it you. Yet no, — not this 
 moment. Let us finish this grand subject 
 first; it dwarfs mine." 
 
 It would have been difficult to judge 
 from her accents whether she were afraid 
 to broach her own matter, or really in- 
 terested in his. Or a certain youthful 
 pride that he evidenced at being the eluci- 
 dator of such a large theme, and at having 
 
74 TWO OX A TO WEE. 
 
 drawn her there to hear and observe it, 
 may have inclined her to indulge him for 
 kindness' sake. 
 
 Thereupon he took exception to her use 
 of the word " grand " as descriptive of the 
 actual universe : 
 
 " The imaginary picture of the sky as the 
 concavity of a dome whose base extends 
 from horizon to horizon of our earth is 
 grand, simply grand, and I wish I had 
 never got beyond looking at it in that way. 
 But the actual sky is a horror." 
 
 " A new view of our old friends, the 
 stars," she said, smiling up at them. 
 
 " But such an obviously true one ! " said 
 the young man. " You w r ould hardly 
 think, at first, that horrid monsters lie up 
 there waiting to be discovered by any 
 moderately penetrating mind, — monsters 
 to which those of the oceans bear no sort 
 of comparison." 
 
TWO OX A TOWER. 75 
 
 " "What monsters may they be ? " 
 " Impersonal monsters, namely, Immen- 
 sities. Until a person has thought out the 
 stars and their interspaces, he has hardly 
 learnt that there are things much more 
 terrible than monsters of shape, namely, 
 monsters of magnitude without known 
 shape. Such monsters are the voids and 
 waste places of the sky. Look, for instance, 
 at those pieces of darkness in the Milky 
 Way," he went on, pointing with his finger 
 to where the galaxy stretched across over 
 their heads with the luminousness of a 
 frosted web. " You see that dark opening 
 in it near the Swan ? There is a still more 
 remarkable one south of the equator, 
 called the Coal Sack, as a sort of nickname 
 that has a farcical force from its very in- 
 adequacy. In these our sight plunges 
 quite beyond any tw inkier we have yet 
 visited. Those are deep wells for the 
 
76 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 human mind to let itself down into, leave 
 alone the human body ! and think of the 
 side caverns and secondary abysses to right 
 and left as you pass on ! " 
 
 Lady Constantine was heedful and 
 silent. 
 
 He tried to give her yet another idea of 
 the size of the universe ; never was there a 
 more ardent endeavour to brings down the 
 immeasurable to human comprehension ! 
 By figures of speech and apt comparisons 
 he took her mind into leading-strings, com- 
 pelling her to follow him into wildernesses 
 of which she had never in her life even 
 realized the existence. 
 
 " There is a size at which dignity begins," 
 he exclaimed ; " further on there is a size 
 at which grandeur begins ; further on there 
 is a size at which solemnity begins ; further 
 on, a size at which aw^f ulness begins ; 
 further on, a size at which ghastliness 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 77 
 
 begins. That size faintly approaches the 
 size of the stellar universe. So am I not 
 right in saying that those minds who exert 
 their imaginative powers to bury them- 
 selves in the depths of that universe merely 
 strain their faculties to gain a new 
 horror?" 
 
 Standing, as she stood, in the presence 
 of the stellar universe, under the very eyes 
 of the constellations, Lady Constantine 
 apprehended something of the earnest 
 youth's argument. 
 
 " And to add a new weirdness to what 
 the sky possesses in its size and formless- 
 ness, there is involved the quality of decay. 
 For all the wonder of these everlasting 
 stars, eternal spheres, and what not, they 
 are not everlasting, they are not eternal ; 
 they burn out like candles. You see that 
 dying one in the body of the Greater Bear ? 
 Two centuries ago it was as bright as the 
 
78 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 others. The senses may become terrified 
 by plunging among them as they are, but 
 there is a pitifulness even in their glory. 
 Imagine them all extinguished, and your 
 mind feeling its way through a heaven of 
 total darkness, occasionally striking against 
 the black, invisible cinders of those stars. 
 .... If you are cheerful, and wish to 
 remain so, leave the study of astronomy 
 alone. Of all the sciences, it alone deserves 
 the character of the terrible." 
 " I am not altogether cheerful." 
 " Then if, on the other hand, you are 
 restless and anxious about the future, study 
 astronomy at once. Your troubles wall be 
 reduced amazingly. But your study will 
 reduce them in a singular way, by reducing 
 the importance of everything. So that the 
 science is still terrible, even as a panacea. 
 It is quite impossible to think at all ade- 
 quately of the sky — of what the sky sub- 
 
TWO OX A TOWER. 79 
 
 stantially is, without feeling it as a 
 juxtaposed nightmare. It is better — far 
 better — for men to forget the universe 
 than to bear it clearly in mind ! . . . But 
 you say the universe was not really what 
 you came to see me about. What w^as it, 
 may I ask, Lady Constantine ? " 
 
 She mused, and sighed, and turned 
 to him with something pathetic in 
 her. 
 
 (i The immensity of the subject you have 
 engaged me on has completely crushed my 
 subject out of me! Yours is celestial; 
 mine lamentably human ! And the less 
 must give way to the greater." 
 
 " But is it, in a human sense, and apart 
 from macrocosmic magnitudes, impor- 
 tant ? " he inquired, at last attracted by 
 her manner ; for he began to perceive, in 
 spite of his prepossession, that she had 
 really something on her mind. 
 
80 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 " It is as important as personal troubles 
 usually are." 
 
 Notwithstanding her preconceived notion 
 of coming to Swithin as employer to de- 
 pendent, as chatelaine to page, she was 
 falling into confidential intercourse with 
 him. His vast and romantic endeavours 
 lent him a personal force and charm w r hich 
 she could not but apprehend. In the pre- 
 sence of the immensities that his young 
 mind had, as it were, brought down from 
 above to hers, they became unconsciously 
 equal. There was, moreover, an inborn 
 liking in Lady Constantine to dwell less on 
 her permanent position as a county lady 
 than on her passing emotions as a 
 woman. 
 
 " I will postpone the matter I came to 
 charge you with," she resumed, smiling. 
 CC I must reconsider it. Now I will 
 return." 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 81 
 
 " Allow me to show you out through the 
 trees and across the fields ? " 
 
 She said neither a distinct yes nor no ; 
 and, descending the tower, they threaded 
 the firs and crossed the ploughed field. By 
 an odd coincidence he remarked, when they 
 drew near the Great House, — 
 
 " You may possibly be interested in 
 knowing, Lady Constantine, that that 
 medium-sized star you see over there, low 
 down in the south, is precisely over Sir 
 Blount Constantine's head in the middle of 
 Africa." 
 
 " How very strange that you should have 
 said so!" she answered. "You have 
 broached for me the very subject I had 
 come to speak of." 
 
 " On a domestic matter?" he said, with 
 surprise. 
 
 " Yes. What a small matter it seems 
 now, after our astronomical stupendous- 
 
 VOL. i. G 
 
82 TWO ON A TOWEE. 
 
 ness ! and yet on my way to you it so far 
 transcended the ordinary matters of my 
 life as the subject you have led me up to 
 transcends this. But," with a little laugh, 
 " I will endeavour to sink down to such 
 ephemeral trivialities as human tragedy, 
 and explain, since I have come. The point 
 is, I want a helper : no woman ever wanted 
 one more. For days I have wanted a 
 trusty friend who could go on a secret 
 errand for me. It is necessary that my 
 messenger should be educated, should be 
 intelligent, should be silent as the grave. 
 Do you give me your solemn promise as to 
 the last point, if I confide in you ? " 
 
 "Most emphatically, Lady Constan- 
 tine/' 
 
 "Your right hand upon the compact.'' 
 He gave his hand, and raised hers to his 
 lips. In addition to his respect for her as 
 the lady of the manor,, there was the ad- 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 83 
 
 miration of twenty years for twenty-eight 
 or nine in such relations. 
 
 " I trust you,' ' she said. " Now, beyond 
 the above conditions, it was specially 
 necessary that my agent should have known 
 Sir Blount Constantine well by sight when 
 he was at home. For the errand is con- 
 cerning my husband ; I am much disturbed 
 at what I have heard about him." 
 " I am indeed sorry to know it." 
 " There are only two people in the 
 parish who fulfil all the conditions, — Mr. 
 Torkingham, and yourself. I sent for Mr. 
 Torkingham, and he came. I could not 
 tell him. I felt at the last moment that 
 he wouldn't do. I have come to you be- 
 cause I think you will do. This is it : my 
 husband has led me and all the world to 
 believe that he is in Africa, hunting lions. 
 I have had a mysterious letter informing 
 me that he has been seen in London, in 
 g 2 
 
84 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 very peculiar circumstances. The truth of 
 this I want ascertained. Will you go on 
 the journey ? " 
 
 " Personally, I would go to the end of 
 the world for you, Lady Constantine ; 
 but "— 
 
 "Nobuts!" 
 
 " How can I leave ? " 
 
 " Why not?" 
 
 " I am preparing a work on variable 
 stars. There is one of these which I have 
 exceptionally observed for several months, 
 and on this my great theory is mainly 
 based. It has been hitherto called irregu- 
 lar ; but I have detected a periodicity in its 
 so-called irregularities which, if proved, 
 would add some very valuable facts to 
 those known on this subject, one of the 
 most interesting, perplexing, and sugges- 
 tive in the whole field of astronomy. Now, 
 to clinch my theory, there should be a 
 
TWO ON A TOWEE. 85 
 
 sudden variation this week, — or at latest 
 next week, — and I have to watch every 
 night not to let it pass. You see my reason 
 for declining, Lady Constantine." 
 
 " Young men are always so selfish ! " 
 she said. 
 
 " It might ruin the whole of my year's 
 labour if I leave now ! " returned the 
 youth, greatly hurt. " Could you not 
 wait a fortnight longer ? " 
 
 " No, — no. Don't think that I have 
 asked you, pray. I have no wish to incon- 
 venience yon." 
 
 " Lady Constantine, don't be angry with 
 me! Will you do this, — watch the star 
 for me while I am gone ? If you are pre- 
 pared to do it effectually, I will go." 
 
 " Will it be much trouble ? " 
 
 " It will be some trouble. You would 
 have to come here every clear evening 
 about nine. If the sky were not clear, 
 
86 TWO ON A TOWEE. 
 
 then you would have to come at four in 
 the morning, should the clouds have dis- 
 persed." 
 
 " Could not the telescope be brought to 
 my house ? " 
 
 Swithin shook his head. 
 
 "Perhaps you did not observe its real 
 size, — that it was fixed to a frame-work ? 
 I could not afford to buy an equatorial, and 
 I have been obliged to rig up an apparatus 
 of my own devising, so as to make it in 
 some measure answer the purpose of an 
 equatorial. It could be moved, but I 
 would rather not touch it." 
 
 " Well, I'll go to the telescope," she 
 went on, with an emphasis that was not 
 wholly playful. " You are the most un- 
 gallant youth I ever met with; but I 
 suppose I must set that down to science. 
 Yes, I'll go to the tower at nine every 
 night." 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 87 
 
 " And alone ? I should prefer to keep 
 my pursuits there unknown." 
 
 " And alone," she answered, quite over- 
 borne by his inflexibility. 
 
 " You will not miss the morning obser- 
 vation, if it should be necessary ? " 
 
 " I have given my word." 
 
 " And I give mine. I suppose I ought 
 not to have been so exacting ! " He spoke 
 with that sudden emotional consciousness 
 of his own transitoriness which made 
 these alternations of mood possible. " I 
 wall go anywhere — do anything for you — 
 this moment — to-morrow or at any time. 
 But you must return with me to the 
 tower, and let me show you the observing 
 process." 
 
 They retraced their steps, the tender 
 hoar-frost taking the imprint of their feet, 
 and two stars in the Twins looking down 
 upon their two persons through the trees, 
 
88 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 as if those two persons could bear some 
 sort of comparison with them. On the 
 tower the instructions were given. When 
 all was over, and he was again conducting 
 her to the Great House, she said, — 
 
 " When can you start ? " 
 
 "Now," said Swithin. 
 
 " So much the better. You shall go up 
 by the night mail." 
 
TWO OX A TOWER. 89 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 On the third morning after the young 
 man's departure Lady Constantine opened 
 the post-bag anxiously. Though she had 
 risen before four o'clock, and crossed to 
 the tower through the gray half-light, 
 when every blade and twig was furred with 
 rime, she felt no languor. Expectation 
 could banish at cock-crow the eye-heavi- 
 ness which apathy had been unable to dis- 
 perse all the day long. 
 
 There was, as she had hoped, a letter 
 from Swithin St. Cleeve. 
 
 " Dear Lady Constantine, — I have quite 
 
90 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 succeeded in my mission, and sliall return 
 to-morrow at ten p.m. I hope you have not 
 failed in the observations. Watching the 
 star through an opera-glass Sunday night, 
 I fancied some change had taken place, but 
 I could not make myself sure. Your 
 memoranda for that night I await with 
 impatience. Please don't neglect to write 
 down, at the moment, all remarkable ap- 
 pearances both as to colour and intensity ; 
 and be very exact as to time, which correct 
 in the way I showed you. 
 
 " I am, dear Lady Constantine, 
 61 Yours most faithfully, 
 
 " Swithin St. Cleeve." 
 
 Not another word in the letter about his 
 errand ; his mind ran on nothing but this 
 astronomical subject. He had succeeded 
 in his mission, and yet he did not even say 
 yes or no to the great question,— whether 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 91 
 
 or not her husband was masquerading in 
 London at the address she had given. 
 
 " Was ever anything so provoking ! " 
 she cried. 
 
 However, the time was not long to wait. 
 His way homeward would lie within a 
 stone' s-throw of the manor-house, and 
 though for certain reasons she had for- 
 bidden him to call at the late hour of his 
 arrival, she could easily intercept him in 
 the avenue. At twenty minutes past ten 
 she went out into the drive, and stood in 
 the dark. Seven minutes later she heard 
 his footstep, and saw his outline in the slit 
 of light between the avenue-trees. He had 
 a valise in one hand, a great-coat on his 
 arm, and under his arm a parcel which 
 seemed to be very precious, from the 
 manner in which he held it. 
 
 " Lady Constantine ? " he asked softly. 
 
 "Yes," she said, in her excitement hold- 
 
92 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 ing* out both her hands, though he had 
 plainly not expected her to offer one. 
 
 " Did you watch the star ? " 
 
 " I'll tell you everything in detail; but, 
 pray, your errand first ! " 
 
 "Yes, it's all right. Did you watch 
 every night, — not missing one ? " 
 
 " I forgot to go — twice," she murmured 
 contritely. 
 
 " Oh, Lady Constantine ! " he cried in 
 dismay. " How could you serve me so ! 
 what shall I do ? " 
 
 " Please forgive me ! Indeed, I could 
 not help it. I had w r atched and watched, 
 and nothing happened ; and somehow my 
 vigilance relaxed when I found nothing 
 was likely to take place in the star." 
 
 " But the very circumstance of it not 
 having happened, made it all the more 
 likely every day." 
 
 " Have you — seen — " she began im- 
 ploringly. 
 
TWO ON" A TOWER. 93 
 
 S within sighed, lowered his thoughts to 
 sublunary things, and told briefly the story 
 of his journey. Sir Blount Constantino 
 was not in London at the address which 
 had been anonymously sent her. It was a 
 mistake of identity. The person who had 
 been seen there S within had sought out. 
 He resembled Sir Blount strongly ; but he 
 was a stranger. 
 
 "How can I reward you!" she ex- 
 claimed, when he had done. 
 
 " In no way but by giving me your 
 good wishes in what I am going to tell 
 you on my own account." He spoke in 
 tones of mysterious exultation. "This 
 parcel is going to make my fame ! " 
 
 " What is it ? " 
 
 " A huge object-glass for the great tele- 
 scope I am so busy about ! Such a mag- 
 nificent aid to science has never entered 
 this county before, you may depend." 
 
 He produced from under his arm the 
 
94 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 carefully cuddled-up package, which was 
 in shape a round flat disk, like a dinner- 
 plate, tied in paper. 
 
 Proceeding to explain his plans to her 
 more fully, he walked with her towards 
 the door by which she had emerged. It 
 was a little side wicket through a wall 
 dividing the open park from the garden 
 terraces. Here for a moment he placed 
 his valise and parcel on the coping of the 
 stone balustrade, till he had bidden her 
 farewell. Then he turned, and in laying 
 hold of his bag by the dim light pushed 
 the parcel over the parapet. It fell smash 
 upon the paved walk ten or a dozen feet 
 beneath. 
 
 " Oh, good heavens ! " he cried in an- 
 guish. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " My object-glass broken ! " 
 
 " Is it of much value ? " 
 
TWO OX A TOWER. 95 
 
 " It cost all I possess ! " 
 
 He ran round by the steps to the lower 
 lawn, Lady Constantine following, as he 
 continued, "It is a magnificent eight-inch 
 first quality object lens ! I took advantage 
 of my journey to London to get it ! I 
 have been six weeks making the tube of 
 milled board ; and as I had not enough 
 money by twelve pounds for the lens, I 
 borrowed it of my grandmother out of her 
 last annuity payment. What can be, can 
 be done ! " 
 
 " Perhaps it is not broken." 
 
 He felt on the ground, found the parcel, 
 and shook it. A clicking noise issued 
 from inside. S within smote his forehead 
 with his hand, and walked up and down 
 like a mad fellow. 
 
 "My telescope! I have waited nine 
 months for this lens. Now the possibility 
 of setting up a really powerful instrument 
 
96 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 is over ! It is too cruel — bow could it 
 happen ! . . . Lady Constantine, I am 
 ashamed of myself, — before you. Oh, but, 
 Lady Constantine, if you only knew what 
 it is to a person engaged in science to have 
 the means of clinching a theory snatched 
 away at the last moment ! It is I against 
 the world ; and when the world has acci- 
 dents on its side in addition to its natural 
 strength, what chance for me ! " 
 
 The young astronomer leant against the 
 wall, and was silent. His misery was of 
 an intensity and kind with that of Palissy, 
 in these struggles with an adverse fate. 
 
 " Don't mind it, — pray don't!" said 
 Lady Constantine, with deep feeling. " It 
 is dreadfully unfortunate ! You have my 
 whole sympathy. Can it be mended ? " 
 
 " Mended, — no, no ! " 
 
 " Cannot you do with your present one 
 a little longer?" 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 97 
 
 "It is altogether inferior, cheap, and 
 bad ! " 
 
 " I'll get you another, — yes, indeed, I 
 wall ! Allow me to get you another as 
 soon as possible. I'll do anything to assist 
 you out of your trouble ; for I am most 
 anxious to see you famous. I know you 
 will be a great astronomer, in spite of this 
 mishap ! Come, say I may get a new 
 one." 
 
 Swithin took her hand. He could not 
 trust himself to speak. 
 
 Some days later a little box of peculiar 
 kind came to the Great House. It was 
 addressed to Lady Constant ine, " with 
 great care." She had it partly opened 
 and taken to her own little writing-room ; 
 and after lunch, when she had dressed for 
 walking, she took from the box a paper 
 parcel like the one which had met with the 
 
 VOL. I II 
 
98 TWO ON A TO WEE. 
 
 accident. This she hid under her mantle, 
 as if she had stolen it ; and, going out 
 slowly across the lawn, passed through the 
 little door before spoken of, and was soon 
 hastening in the direction of the Rings-Hill 
 column. 
 
 There was a bright sun overhead on that 
 afternoon of early spring, and its rays shed 
 an unusual warmth on south-west aspects, 
 though shady places still retained the look 
 and feel of winter. Rooks were already 
 beginning to build new nests or to mend 
 up old ones, and clamorously called in 
 neighbours to give opinions on difficulties 
 in their architecture. Lady Constantine 
 swerved once from her path, as if she had 
 decided to go to the homestead where 
 S within lived; but on second thoughts she 
 bent her steps to the column. 
 
 Drawing near it, she looked up ; but on 
 account of the height of the parapet, no- 
 
TWO OX A TOWER. 99 
 
 body could be seen thereon who did not 
 stand on tiptoe. She thought, however, 
 that her young friend might possibly see 
 her, if he were there, and come down ; and 
 that he was there she soon ascertained by 
 finding the door unlocked, and the key 
 inside. ~No movement, however, reached 
 her ears from above, and she began to 
 ascend. 
 
 Meanwhile affairs at the top of the 
 column had progressed as follows. The 
 afternoon being exceptionally fine, S within 
 had ascended about two o'clock, and, 
 seating himself at the little table which he 
 had constructed on the spot, he began 
 reading over his notes and examining some 
 astronomical journals that had reached him 
 in the morning. The sun blazed into the 
 hollow roof-space as into a tub, and the 
 sides kept out every breeze. Though the 
 month was February below, it was May in 
 h 2 
 
100 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 the abacus of the column. This state of 
 the atmosphere, and the fact that on the 
 previous night he had pursued his obser- 
 vations till past two o'clock, produced in 
 him at the end of half an hour an over- 
 powering inclination to sleep. Spreading 
 on the lead-work a thick rug, which he 
 kept up there, he flung himself down 
 against the parapet, and was soon in a 
 state of unconsciousness. 
 
 It was about ten minutes afterwards 
 that a soft rustle of silken clothes came up 
 the spiral staircase, and, hesitating onwards, 
 reached the orifice, where appeared the 
 form of Lady Constantine. She did not at 
 first perceive that he was present, and stood 
 still to reconnoitre. Her eye glanced over 
 his telescope, now wrapped up, his table 
 and papers, his ob serving-chair, and his 
 contrivances for making the best of a defi- 
 ciency of instruments. All w r as warm, sunny, 
 
TWO ON" A TOWER. 101 
 
 and silent, except that a solitary bee, which 
 had somehow got within the hollow of 
 the abacus, was singing round inquiringly, 
 unable to discern that ascent was the only 
 mode of escape. In another moment she 
 beheld the astronomer, lying in the sun 
 like a sailor in the main-top. 
 
 Lady Constantine coughed slightly ; he 
 did not awake. She then entered, and, 
 drawing the parcel from beneath her cloak, 
 placed it on the table. After this she 
 waited, looking for a long time at his sleep- 
 ing face, which had a very interesting ap- 
 pearance. She seemed reluctant to leave, 
 yet wanted resolution to wake him ; and, 
 pencilling his name on the parcel, she 
 withdrew to the staircase, where the 
 brushing of her dress decreased to silence 
 as she receded round and round on her 
 way to the base. 
 
 S within still slept on, and presently the 
 
102 TWO ON A TOWEK. 
 
 rustle began again in the far-down interior 
 of the column. The door could be heard 
 closing, and the rustle came nearer, show- 
 ing that she had shut herself in, — no doubt 
 to lessen the risk of an accidental surprise 
 by any roaming villager. When Lady 
 Constantine reappeared at the top, and saw 
 the parcel still untouched, and Swithin 
 asleep as before, she exhibited some dis- 
 appointment ; but she did not retreat. 
 
 Looking again at him, her eyes became 
 so sentimentally fixed on his face that it 
 seemed as if she could not withdraw them. 
 There lay, in the shape of an Antinous, no 
 amoroso, no gallant, but a guileless philo- 
 sopher. His parted lips were lips which 
 spoke, not of love, but of millions of 
 miles; those were eyes which habitually 
 gazed, not into the depths of other eyes, 
 but into other worlds. Within his temples 
 dwelt thoughts, not of woman's looks, but 
 
TWO OX A TOWEtt. 103 
 
 of stellar aspects and the configuration of 
 constellations. 
 
 Thus, to his physical attractiveness was 
 added the attractiveness of mental inac- 
 cessibility. The ennobling influence of 
 scientific pursuits was demonstrated by 
 the speculative purity which expressed 
 itself in his eyes whenever he looked 
 at her in speaking, and in the childlike 
 faults of manner which arose from his 
 obtuseness to their difference of sex. He 
 had never, since becoming a man, looked 
 even so low as to the level of a Lady Con- 
 stantine. His heaven at present was truly 
 in the skies, and not in that only other 
 place where they say it can be found, in the 
 eyes of some daughter of Eve. Would 
 any Circe or Calypso — and if so, what one ? 
 — ever check this pale-haired scientist's 
 nocturnal sailings into the interminable 
 spaces overhead, and hurl all his mighty 
 
104 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 calculations on cosmic force and stellar fire 
 into Limbo? Oh, the pity of it, if such 
 should be the case ! 
 
 She became much absorbed in these very 
 womanly reflections ; and at last Lady 
 Constantine sighed, perhaps she herself did 
 not exactly know w r hy. Then a very soft 
 expression lighted on her lips and eyes, 
 and she looked at one jump seven years 
 more youthful than before — quite a girl in 
 aspect, younger than he. On the table lay 
 his implements ; among them a pair of 
 scissors, which, to judge from the shreds 
 around, had been used in cutting curves in 
 thick paper, for some calculating process. 
 
 What whim, agitation, or attraction 
 prompted the impulse, nobody knows ; but 
 she took the scissors, and, bending over the 
 sleeping youth, cut off one of the curls, or 
 rather crooks, — for they hardly reached a 
 curl, — into which each lock of his hair 
 
TWO ON A TOWER, J 05 
 
 chose to twist itself in the last inch of its 
 length. The hair fell upon the rug. She 
 picked it up quickly, returned the scissors 
 to the table, and, as if her dignity had 
 suddenly become ashamed of her fantasies, 
 hastened through the door, and descended 
 the staircase. 
 
 
306 TWO OX A TO WEE, 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 When his nap had naturally exhausted 
 itself, Swithin awoke. He awoke without 
 any surprise, for he not unfrequently gave 
 to sleep in the day-time what he had 
 stolen from it in the night watches. The 
 first object that met his eyes was the parcel 
 on the table, and, seeing his name inscribed 
 thereon, he made no scruple to open it. 
 
 The sun flashed upon a lens of surpris- 
 ing magnitude, polished to such a smooth- 
 ness that the eye could scarcely meet its 
 reflections. Here w r as a crystal, in whose 
 depths were to be seen more wonders than 
 had been revealed by the crystals of all 
 the Cagliostros. 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 107 
 
 Swithin, hot with joyousness, took this 
 treasure to his telescope manufactory at 
 the homestead ; then he started off for the 
 Great House. 
 
 On gaining its precincts he felt shy of 
 calling, never having received any hint or 
 permission to do so ; while Lady Constan- 
 tine's mysterious manner of leaving the 
 parcel seemed to demand a like mysterious- 
 ness in his approaches to her. All the 
 afternoon he lingered about uncertainly, in 
 the hope of intercepting her on her return 
 from a drive, occasionally walking with an 
 indifferent lounge across glades commanded 
 by the windows, that if she were in-doors 
 she might know he was near. But she did 
 not show herself during, the daylight. 
 Still impressed by her playful secrecy, he 
 carried on the same idea after dark, by 
 returning to the house, and passing through 
 the garden door on to the lawn front, where 
 
10S TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 he sat on the parapet that breasted the 
 terrace. 
 
 Now she frequently came out here for a 
 melancholy saunter after dinner, and to- 
 night was such an occasion. Swithin went 
 forward, and met her at nearly the spot 
 where he had dropped the lens some nights 
 earlier. 
 
 " I have come to see you, Lady Con- 
 stantine. How did the glass get on my 
 table?" 
 
 She laughed as lightly as a girl ; that he 
 had come to her in this way was plainly no 
 offence thus far. 
 
 " Perhaps it was dropped from the clouds 
 by a bird," she said. 
 
 "Why should you be so good to me?" 
 he cried. 
 
 " One good turn deserves another," 
 answered she. 
 
 " Dear Lady Constantine ! Whatever 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 109 
 
 discoveries result from this shall be ascribed 
 to you as much as to me. Where should I 
 have been without your gift ? " 
 
 " You would possibly have accomplished 
 your purpose just the same, and have been 
 so much the nobler for your struggle 
 against ill-luck. I hope that now you will 
 be able to proceed with your large telescope 
 as if nothing had happened." 
 
 " Oh yes, I will, certainly. I am afraid 
 I showed too much feeling, the reverse of 
 stoical, when the accident occurred. That 
 w^as not very noble of me." 
 
 " There is nothing unuatural in such 
 feeling at your age. When you are older 
 you will smile at such moods, and at the 
 mishaps that gave rise to them." 
 
 " Ah, I perceive you think me weak in 
 the extreme," he said, with just a shade of 
 pique. " But you will never realize that 
 an incident which filled but a decree in the 
 
110 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 circle of your thoughts covered the whole 
 circumference of mine. No person can see 
 exactly what and where another's horizon 
 is." 
 
 They soon parted, and she re-entered 
 the house, where she sat reflecting for 
 some time, till she seemed to fear that she 
 had wounded his feelings. She awoke in 
 the night, and thought and thought on the 
 same thing, till she had worked herself into 
 a feverish fret about it. "When it was morn - 
 ing she looked across at the tower, and 
 sitting down, impulsively wrote the follow- 
 ing note : — 
 
 " Dear Mr. St. Oleeve, — I cannot allow 
 you to remain under the impression that 
 I despised your scientific endeavours in 
 speaking as I did last night. I think you 
 were too sensitive to my remark. But 
 perhaps you were agitated with the labours 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. Ill 
 
 of the day, and I fear that watching so 
 late at night must make you very weary. 
 If I can help you again, please let me 
 know. I never realized the grandeur of 
 astronomy till you showed me how to do so. 
 Also let me know about the new telescope. 
 Come and see me at any time. After your 
 great kindness in being my messenger I 
 can never do enough for you. I wish you 
 had a mother or sister, and pity your lone- 
 liness ! I am lonely too. 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 " YlVIETTE COJSTSTANTINE." 
 
 She was so anxious that he should get 
 this letter the same day that she ran across 
 to the column with it during the morning, 
 preferring to be her own emissary in so 
 curious a case. The door, as she had 
 expected, was locked; and, slipping the 
 letter under it, she went home again. 
 
112 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 During lunch her ardour in the cause of 
 S within* s hurt feelings cooled down, till 
 she exclaimed to herself, as she sat at her 
 lonely table, "What could have possessed 
 me to write in that way ! ' ' 
 
 After lunch she went faster to the tower 
 than she had gone in the early morning, 
 and peeped eagerly into the chink under 
 the door. She could discern no letter, 
 and, on trying the latch, found that the 
 door would open. The letter was gone, 
 Swithin having obviously arrived in the 
 interval. 
 
 She blushed a blush which seemed to 
 say, " I am getting foolishly interested in 
 this young man." She had, in short, in 
 her own opinion, somewhat overstepped 
 the bounds of dignity. Her instincts did 
 not square well with the formalities of 
 her existence, and she walked home de- 
 spondently. 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 113 
 
 Had a concert, bazaar, lecture, or 
 Dorcas meeting required the patronage 
 and support of Lady Constantine at this 
 juncture, the circumstance would probably 
 have been sufficient to divert her mind 
 from S within St. Cleevo and astronomy 
 for some little time. But as none of 
 these incidents were within the range of 
 expectation — Welland House and parish 
 lying far from towns and watering-places 
 — the void in her outer life continued, 
 and with it the void in her life within. 
 
 The youth had not answered her letter ; 
 neither had he called upon her, in response 
 to the invitation she had regretted, with 
 the rest of the epistle, as being somewhat 
 too warmly informal for black and white. 
 To speak tenderly to him was one thing, 
 to w r rite another — that was her feeling 
 immediately after the event; but his 
 counter-move of silence and avoidance, 
 
 VOL. 1. I 
 
114 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 though probably the result of pure un- 
 consciousness on his part, completely 
 dispersed such self-considerations now. 
 Her eyes never fell upon the Rings-Hill 
 column without a solicitous wonder arising 
 as to what he was doing. A true woman, 
 she would assume the remotest possibility 
 to be the most likely contingency, if the 
 possibility had the recommendation of 
 being tragical; and she now feared that 
 something was wrong with Swithin St. 
 Cleeve. Yet there was not the least 
 doubt that he had become so immersed in 
 the business of the new telescope as to 
 forget everything else. 
 
 On Sunday, between the services, she 
 walked to Little "Welland, chiefly for the 
 sake of giving a run to a house-dog, a 
 large St. Bernard, of whom she was fond. 
 The distance was but short ; and she 
 returned along a narrow lane, divided 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 115 
 
 from the river by a hedge, through whose 
 leafless twigs the ripples flashed silver 
 lights into her eyes. Here she discovered 
 Swithin, leaning over a gate, his eyes bent 
 upon the stream. 
 
 The dog first attracted his attention; 
 then he heard, her, and turned round. 
 She had never seen him looking so de- 
 spondent. 
 
 " You have never called, though I in- 
 vited you," said Lady Constantine. 
 
 " My great telescope won't work ! " he 
 replied lugubriously. 
 
 "lam sorry for that. So it has made 
 you quite forget me ? " 
 
 "Ah, yes; you wrote me a very kind 
 letter, which I ought to have answered. 
 Well, I did forget, Lady Constantine. My 
 new telescope won't work; and I don't 
 know what to do about it at all ! " 
 
 " Can I assist you any further ? " 
 
 r O 
 
 1 ^ 
 
116 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 " No, I fear not. Besides, you have 
 assisted me already." 
 
 " What would really help you out of 
 all your difficulties ? Something would, 
 surely ? " 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " There must be some solution to 
 them?" 
 
 " Oh, yes," he replied, with a hypo- 
 thetical gaze into the stream ; " some 
 solution of course — an equatorial, for 
 instance." 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 " Briefly, an impossibility. It is a 
 splendid instrument, with an object lens 
 of, say, eight or nine inches aperture, 
 mounted with its axis parallel to the 
 earth's axis, and fitted up with graduated 
 circles for denoting right ascensions and 
 declinations; besides having special eye- 
 pieces, a finder, and all sorts of appliances, 
 
TWO OiNT A TOWEK. 117 
 
 clock-work to make the telescope follow 
 the motion in right ascension — I cannot 
 tell you half the conveniences. Ah, an 
 equatorial is a thing indeed ! " 
 
 " An equatorial is the one instrument 
 required to make you quite happy?" 
 
 " Well, yes." 
 
 " I'll see what I can do." 
 
 " But, Lady Constantine," cried the 
 amazed astronomer, " an equatorial such 
 as I describe costs as much as two grand 
 pianos ! " 
 
 She was rather staggered at this news ; 
 but she rallied gallantly, and said, " Never 
 mind. I'll make inquiries." 
 
 " But it could not be put on the tower 
 without people seeing it ! It would have 
 to be fixed to the masonry. And there 
 must be a dome of some kind to keep off 
 the rain. A tarpaulin might do." 
 
 Lady Constantine reflected. " It would 
 
118 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 be a great business, I see," she said. 
 " Though as far as the fixing and roofing 
 go, I would of course consent to your 
 doing what you liked with the old column. 
 My workmen could fix it, could they 
 not ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. But what would Sir Blount 
 say, if he came home and saw the goings 
 on?" 
 
 Lady Constantine turned aside to hide 
 a sudden displacement of blood from her 
 cheek. " Ah — my husband ! " she whis- 
 pered .... " I am just now going to 
 church," she added in a repressed and 
 hurried tone. " I will think of this matter." 
 
 In church it was with Lady Constantine 
 as with the Lord Angelo of Vienna, in a 
 similar situation — Heaven had her empty 
 words only, and her invention heard not 
 her tongue. She soon recovered from the 
 momentary consternation into which she 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 110 
 
 had fallen at S within' s abrupt query. 
 The possibility of that young astronomer 
 becoming a renowned scientist by her aid 
 was a thought which gave her secret 
 pleasure. The course of rendering him 
 instant material help began to have a 
 great fascination for her; it was a new 
 and unexpected channel for her cribbed 
 and confined emotions. With experiences 
 so much wider than his, Lady Constantine 
 saw that the chances were perhaps a 
 million to one against S within St. Cleeve 
 ever being Astronomer Royal, or Astrono- 
 mer Extraordinary of any sort ; yet the 
 remaining chance in his favour was one of 
 those possibilities which, to a woman of 
 bounding intellect and venturesome fancy, 
 are pleasanter to dwell on than likely 
 issues that have no savour of high specula- 
 tion in them. The equatorial question 
 was a great one ; and she had caught such 
 
120 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 a large spark from his enthusiasm that she 
 could think of nothing so piquant as how 
 to obtain the important instrument. 
 
 "When Tabitha Lark arrived at the 
 Great House, next day, instead of finding 
 Lady Constantine in bed, as formerly, she 
 discovered her in the library, poring over 
 what astronomical -works she had been 
 able to unearth from the worm-eaten 
 shelves. As these publications were, for 
 a science of such rapid development, some- 
 what venerable, there was not much help 
 of a practical kind to be gained from them. 
 Nevertheless, the equatorial retained a 
 hold upon her fancy, till she became as 
 eager to see one on the Rings-Hill column 
 as S within himself. 
 
 The upshot of it was that Lady Con- 
 stantine sent a messenger that evening to 
 Welland Bottom, where the homestead of 
 S within' s grandmother was situated, re- 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 121 
 
 questing the young man's presence at the 
 house at twelve o'clock next day. 
 
 He hurriedly returned an obedient reply, 
 and the circumstance was enough to lend 
 great freshness to her manner next morn- 
 ing, instead of the leaden air w T hich was 
 too frequent with her before the sun 
 reached the meridian, and sometimes after. 
 The mental room taken up by an idea de- 
 pends as largely on the available space for 
 it as on its essential magnitude : in Lady 
 Const antine's life of infestivity, in her 
 domestic voids, and in her social discou- 
 ragements, there was nothing to oust the 
 lightest fancy. S within had, in fact, arisen 
 as an attractive little interpolation between 
 herself and despair. 
 
122 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A fog defaced all the trees of the park 
 that morning; the white atmosphere 
 adhered to the ground like a fungoid 
 growth from it, and made the turfed undu- 
 lations look slimy and raw. But Lady 
 Constantine settled down in her chair to 
 await the coming of the late curate's son, 
 with a serenity which the vast blanks out- 
 side could neither baffle nor destroy. 
 
 At two minutes to twelve the door-bell 
 rang, and a look overspread the lady's face 
 that was neither maternal, sisterly, nor 
 amorous ; but partook in an indescrib- 
 able manner of all three. The door was 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 123 
 
 flung open and the young man was ushered 
 in, the fog still clinging to his hair, in which 
 she could discern a little notch where she 
 had nipped off the curl. 
 
 A speechlessness that socially was a de- 
 fect in him, was to her view a piquant 
 attribute just now. He looked somewhat 
 alarmed. " Lady Constantine, have I done 
 anything, that you have sent," — he began 
 breathlessly, as he gazed in her face, with 
 parted lips. 
 
 " Oh, no, of course not ! I have decided 
 to do something, — nothing more," she 
 smilingly said, holding out her hand, which 
 he rather gingerly touched. " Don't look 
 so concerned. Who makes equatorial s ? " 
 
 This remark was like the drawing of a 
 weir-hatch, and she was speedily inundated 
 with all she wished to know concerning 
 astronomical opticians. When he had im- 
 parted the particulars, he waited, manifestly 
 
12i TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 burning to know whither these inquiries 
 tended. 
 
 "lam not going to buy you one," she 
 said gently. 
 
 He looked as if he would faint. 
 
 " Certainly not. I do not wish it. I — 
 could not have accepted it," faltered the 
 young man. 
 
 " But I am going to buy one for myself. 
 Hack a hobby, and I shall choose astro- 
 nomy. I shall fix my equatorial on the 
 column." 
 
 S within brightened up. 
 
 " And I shall let you have the use of it 
 whenever you choose. In brief, Swithin 
 St. Cleeve shall be Lady Constantine's 
 Astronomer Eoyal ; and she — and she — ' ' 
 
 " Shall be his Queen." The words 
 came not much the worse for beinsr uttered 
 only in the tone of one anxious to complete 
 a tardy sentence. 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 125 
 
 u "Well, that's what I have decided to 
 do," resumed Lady Constantine. " I will 
 w r rite to these opticians at once." 
 
 There seemed to be no more for him to 
 do than to thank her for the privilege, 
 whenever it should be available, which he 
 promptly did, and then made as if to go. 
 But Lady Constantine detained him with, 
 " Have you ever seen my library ? " 
 
 " No; never." 
 
 " You don't say you would like to see 
 it." 
 
 "But I should." 
 
 " It is the third door on the right. You 
 can find your way in, and you can stay 
 there as long as you like." 
 
 S within then left the morning-room for 
 the apartment designated, and amused 
 himself in that " soul of the house," as 
 Cicero defined it, till he heard the lunch- 
 bell sounding from the turret, when he 
 
126 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 came down from the library steps, and 
 thought it time to go home. But at that 
 moment a servant entered to inquire 
 whether he would or would not prefer to 
 have his lunch brought in to him there; 
 upon his replying in the affirmative, a large 
 tray arrived on the stomach of a footman, 
 and Swithin was greatly surprised to see a 
 whole pheasant placed at his disposal. 
 
 Having breakfasted at eight that morn- 
 ing, and having been much in the open air 
 afterwards, the Adonis astronomer's appe- 
 tite assumed grand proportions. How 
 much of that pheasant he might consist- 
 ently eat without hurting his dear patroness 
 Lady Constantme's feelings, when he could 
 readily eat it all, w r as a problem in which 
 the reasonableness of a larger and larger 
 quantity argued itself inversely as a smaller 
 and smaller quantity remained. When, at 
 length, he had finally decided on a terminal 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 127 
 
 point in the body of the bird, the door was 
 gently opened. 
 
 " Oh, you have not finished ? " came to 
 him over his shoulder, in a considerate 
 voice. 
 
 66 Oh, yes, thank you, Lady Constantine," 
 he said, jumping up. 
 
 " Why did you prefer to lunch in this 
 awkward, dusty place ? " 
 
 "I thought — it would be better," said 
 S within simply. 
 
 " There is fruit in the other room, if you 
 like to come. But perhaps you would 
 rather not ? ' ' 
 
 " Oh, yes, I should much like to," said 
 S within, walking over his napkin, and fol- 
 lowing her as she led the way to the adjoin- 
 ing apartment. 
 
 Here, while she asked him what he had 
 been reading, he modestly ventured on an 
 apple, in whose flavour he recognized the 
 
128 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 familiar taste of old friends robbed from 
 her husband's orchards in his childhood, 
 long before Lady Constantine's advent on 
 the scene. (Is there anything more de- 
 lightful in the world than to discover on 
 the palate fruit of some long-lost vener- 
 able variety, that was the favourite of 
 boyhood !) She supposed he had confined 
 his search to his own sublime subject, 
 astronomy ? 
 
 Swithin suddenly became older to the 
 eye, as his thoughts reverted to the topic 
 thus reintroduced. "Yes," he informed 
 her. " I seldom read any other subject. 
 In these days the secret of productive 
 studv is to avoid well." 
 
 " Did you find any good treatises ? " 
 
 " Xone. The theories in your books 
 
 are almost as obsolete as the Ptolemaic 
 
 System. Only fancy, that magnificent 
 
 Cyclopaedia, leather-bound, and stamped, 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 129 
 
 and gilt, and wide margined, and bearing 
 the blazon of your house in magnificent 
 colours, says that the twinkling of the stars 
 is probably caused by heavenly bodies 
 passing in front of them in their revolu- 
 tions." 
 
 " And is it not so ? That was what I 
 learned when I was a girl." 
 
 The modern Eudoxus now rose above 
 the embarrassing horizon of Lady Con- 
 stantine's great house, magnificent fur- 
 niture, and awe-inspiring footman. He 
 became quite natural, all his self-conscious- 
 ness fled, and his eye spoke into hers no 
 less than his lips to her ears, as he said, 
 " How such a theory can have lingered on 
 to this day beats conjecture ! Francois 
 Arago, as long as forty or fifty years ago, 
 conclusively established the fact that scin- 
 tillation is the simplest thing in the world, 
 — merely a matter of atmosphere. But I 
 
 VOL. I. K 
 
130 TWO ON A TO WEE. 
 
 won't speak of this to you now. The com- 
 parative absence of scintillation in warm 
 countries was noticed by Humboldt. Then, 
 again, the scintillations vary. No star 
 flaps his wings like Sirius when he lies 
 low ! He flashes out emeralds and rubies, 
 amethystine flames and sapphirine colours, 
 in a manner quite marvellous to behold, and 
 this is only one star ! So, too, do Arcturus, 
 and Capella, and lesser luminaries. . . . 
 But I tire you with this subject ? " 
 
 " On the contrary, you speak so beauti- 
 fully that I could listen all day." 
 
 The astronomer threw a searching glance 
 upon her for a moment ; but there was no 
 satire in the warm, soft eyes which met 
 his own with a luxurious contemplative 
 interest. 
 
 " Say some more of it to me," she con- 
 tinued, in a voice not far removed from 
 coaxing. 
 
TWO ON A TOWEE. 131 
 
 After some hesitation the subject re- 
 turned again to his lips, and he said some 
 more — indeed, much more ; Lady Constan- 
 tine often throwing in an appreciative 
 remark or question, often meditatively re- 
 garding him, in pursuance of ideas not 
 exactly based on his words, and letting 
 him go on as he would. 
 
 Before he left the house the new r astrono- 
 mical project was set in train. The top 
 of the column was to be roofed in, to 
 form a proper observatory; and on the 
 ground that he knew better than any one 
 else how this was to be carried out, she 
 requested him to give precise directions 
 on the point, and to superintend the whole. 
 A wooden cabin was to be erected at the 
 foot of the tower, to provide better ac- 
 commodation for casual visitors to the 
 observatory than the spiral staircase and 
 lead-flat a 'forded. As this cabin would 
 K 2 
 
132 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 be completely buried in the dense fir 
 foliage which enveloped the lower part of 
 the column and its pedestal, it would be 
 no disfigurement to the general appear- 
 ance. Finally, a path was to be made 
 across the surrounding fallow, by which 
 she might easily approach the scene of her 
 new study. 
 
 When he was gone she wrote to the 
 firm of opticians concerning the equatorial 
 for whose reception all this was designed. 
 
 The undertaking was soon in full pro- 
 gress ; and by degrees it became the talk 
 of the hamlets round that Lady Constan- 
 tino had given up melancholy for astro- 
 nomy, to the great advantage of all who 
 came in contact with her. One morning, 
 when Tabitha Lark had come as usual to 
 read, Lady Constantine chanced to be in 
 a quarter of the house to which she seldom 
 wandered; and while here she heard her 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 133 
 
 maid talking confidentially to Tabitha in 
 the adjoining room on the curious and 
 sudden interest which Lady Constantine 
 had acquired in the moon and stars. 
 
 " They do say all sorts of trumpery, 5 ' 
 observed the handmaid. " They say — 
 though 'tis little better than mischief, to 
 be sure — that it isn't the moon, and it 
 isn't the stars, and it isn't the plannards, 
 that my lady cares for, but for the pretty 
 lad who draws 'em down from the sky to 
 please her ; and being a married example, 
 and what with sin and shame knocking at 
 every poor maid's door afore you can say, 
 6 Hands off, my dear,' to the ci vilest young 
 man, she ought to set a better pattern." 
 
 Lady Constantine' s face flamed up 
 vividly. 
 
 " If Sir Blount were to come back all 
 of a sudden — oh, my ! " 
 
 Lady Constantine grew cold as ice. 
 
134 TWO ON A TOWEE. 
 
 " There's nothing in it," said Tabitha 
 scornfully. " I could prove it any day." 
 
 " Well, I wish I had half her chance ! " 
 sighed the lady's maid. And no more was 
 said on the subject then. 
 
 Tabitha' s remark showed that the sus- 
 picion was quite in embryo as yet. Never- 
 theless, saying nothing to reveal what she 
 had overheard, immediately after the 
 reading Lady Constantine flew like a 
 bird to where she knew that S within 
 might be found. 
 
 He was in the plantation, sticking up 
 little sticks to mark where the wooden 
 cabin was to stand. She called him to 
 a remote place under the funereal trees. 
 
 "I have altered my mind," she said. 
 " I can have nothing to do with this 
 matter." 
 
 " Indeed?" said Swithin, surprised. 
 
 " Astronomy is not my hobby any 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 135 
 
 longer. And you are not my Astronomer 
 Royal." 
 
 " Ob, Lady Constantine ! " cried the 
 youth, aghast. " Why, the work is 
 begun ! I thought the equatorial was 
 ordered." 
 
 She dropped her voice, though a Jericho 
 shout would not have been overheard : 
 " of course astronomy is my hobby pri- 
 vately, and you are to be my Astronomer 
 Royal, and I still furnish the observatory ; 
 but not to the outer world. There is a 
 reason against my indulgence in such 
 scientific fancies openly; and the project 
 must be arranged in this wise. The whole 
 enterprise is yours : you rent the tower of 
 me : you build the cabin : you get the 
 equatorial. I simply give permission, 
 since you desire it. The path that was 
 to be made from the hill to the park is 
 not to be thought of. There is to be no 
 
136 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 communication between the house and the 
 column. The equatorial will arrive ad- 
 dressed to you, and its cost I will pay 
 through you. My name must not appear, 
 and I vanish entirely from the under- 
 taking. . . . This blind is necessary," she 
 added, sighing. " Good-bye ! " 
 
 " But you do take as much interest 
 as before, and it will be yours just the 
 same ? " he said, walking after her. He 
 scarcely comprehended the subterfuge, 
 and was absolutely blind as to its reason. 
 
 "Can you doubt it? But I dare not 
 do it openly." 
 
 "With this she went away ; and in due 
 time there circulated through the parish 
 an assertion that it was a mistake to 
 suppose Lady Constantine had anything 
 to do with S within St. Cleeve or his star- 
 gazing schemes. She had merely allowed 
 him to rent the tower of her for use as 
 
TWO ON A TO WEE. 137 
 
 his observatory, and to put some tem- 
 porary fixtures on it for that purpose. 
 
 After this Lady Constantine lapsed 
 into her former life of loneliness ; and by 
 these prompt measures the ghost of a 
 rumour which had barely started into 
 existence was speedily laid to " rest. It 
 had probably originated in her own house, 
 and had gone but little further. Yet, 
 despite her self-control, a certain north 
 window of the Great House, that com- 
 manded an uninterrupted view of the upper 
 ten feet of the column, revealed her as 
 somewhat frequently gazing from it at a 
 rotundity which had begun to appear on 
 the summit. To those with whom she 
 came in contact she sometimes addressed 
 such remarks as, " Is young Mr. St. 
 Cleeve getting on with his observatory ? 
 I hope he will fix his instruments without 
 damaging the column, which is so inte- 
 
138 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 resting to us as being in memory of my 
 dear husband's great-grandfatlier — a truly 
 brave man." 
 
 On one occasion her building-steward 
 ventured to surest to her that, Sir Blount 
 having deputed to her the power to grant 
 short leases in his absence, she should 
 have a distinctive agreement with Swithin, 
 as between landlord and tenant, with a 
 stringent clause against his driving nails 
 into the stonework of such an historical 
 memorial. She replied that she did not 
 wish to be severe on the last representative 
 of such old and respected parishioners as 
 St. Cleeve's mother's family had been, and 
 of such a well-descended family as his 
 father's ; so that it would only be neces- 
 sary for the steward to keep an eye on 
 Mr. St. Cleeve's doings. 
 
 Further, when a letter arrived at the 
 Great House from Hilton and Pimm's, 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 139 
 
 the opticians, with information that the 
 equatorial was ready and packed, and 
 that a man would be sent with it to fix 
 it, she replied to that firm to the effect 
 that their letter should have been ad- 
 dressed to Mr. St. Cleeve, the local 
 astronomer, on whose behalf she had made 
 the inquiries ; that she had nothing more 
 to do with the matter ; that he would re- 
 ceive the instrument and pay the bill, — 
 her guarantee being given for the latter 
 performance. 
 
140 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Lady Coxstantlne then had the pleasure 
 of beholding a waggon, laden with packing- 
 cases, in the act of crossing the field to- 
 wards the pillar ; and not many days later 
 S within, who had never come to the Great 
 House since the luncheon, met her in a 
 path which he knew to be one of her 
 promenades. 
 
 " The equatorial is fixed, and the man 
 gone," he said, half in doubt as to his 
 speech, for her commands to him not to 
 recognize her agency or patronage still 
 puzzled him. "I respectfully wish — you 
 could come and see it, Lady Constantine." 
 
TWO ON A TOWEE. 141 
 
 " I would rather not; I cannot." 
 
 " Saturn is lovely ; Jupiter is simply 
 sublime ; I can see double stars in the Lion 
 and in the Virgin, where I had seen only 
 a single one before. It is all I required to 
 set me going ! " 
 
 " Is it so ? I'll come. But — you need 
 say nothing about my visit. I cannot 
 come to-night, but I will some time this 
 week. Yet only this once, to try the 
 instrument. Afterwards you must be con- 
 tent to pursue your studies alone." 
 
 S within seemed but little affected at this 
 announcement. " Hilton and Pimm's man 
 handed me the bill," he continued. 
 
 " How much is it ? " 
 
 He told her. " And the man who has 
 built the hut and dome, and done the other 
 fixing, has sent in his." He named this 
 amount also. 
 
 " Very well. They shall be settled with. 
 
142 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 My debts must be paid with my money, 
 which you shall have at once, — in cash, 
 since a cheque would hardly do. Come to 
 the house for it this evening. But no, 
 no ! — you must not come openly ; such is 
 the world. Come to the window — the 
 window that is exactly in a line with the 
 loug snowdrop bed, in the south front — at 
 eight to-night, and I will give you what is 
 necessary." 
 
 " Certainly, Lady Constantine," said the 
 young man respectf ally. 
 
 At eight that evening, accordingly, 
 Swithin entered like a spectre upon the 
 terrace to seek out the spot she had desig- 
 nated. The equatorial had so entirely 
 absorbed his thoughts that he did not 
 trouble himself seriously to conjecture the 
 why and wherefore of her secrecy. If he 
 casually thought of it, he set it down in a 
 general way to an intensely generous wish 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 143 
 
 on her part not to lessen his influence 
 among the sparse inhabitants bj making 
 him appear the object of patronage. 
 
 While he stood by the long snowdrop 
 bed, which. looked up at him like a nether 
 Milky Way, the French casement of the 
 window opposite softly opened, and a hand 
 bordered by a glimmer of lace was stretched 
 forth, from which he received a crisp little 
 parcel, — bank-notes, apparently. He knew 
 the hand, and held it long enough to press 
 it to his lips, the only form which had ever 
 occurred to him of expressing his gratitude 
 to her without the incumbrance of clumsy 
 words, — a vehicle at the best of times but 
 rudely suited for such delicate merchan- 
 dise. The hand was hastily withdrawn, as 
 if the treatment had been unexpected. 
 Then seemingly moved by second thoughts, 
 she bent forward and said, " Is the night 
 good for observations ? " 
 
144 TWO ON A TO WEE. 
 
 " Perfect." 
 
 She paused. " Then I'll come to-night," 
 she at last said. " It makes no difference 
 to me, after all. Wait just one moment." 
 
 He waited, and she presently emerged, 
 muffled up like a nun; whereupon they 
 left the terrace and struck across the park 
 together. 
 
 Yery little was said by either till they 
 were crossing the fallow, when he asked if 
 his arm would help her. She did not take 
 the offered support just then; but when 
 they were ascending the prehistoric earth- 
 work, under the heavy gloom of the fir- 
 trees, she seized it, as if rather influenced 
 by the oppressive solitude than by fatigue. 
 
 Thus they reached the foot of the column, 
 ten thousand spirits in prison seeming to 
 gasp their griefs from the funereal boughs 
 overhead, and a few twigs scratching the 
 pillar with the drag of impish claws as 
 
TWO ON A TOWEE. 145 
 
 tenacious as those figuring in St. Anthony's 
 temptation. 
 
 " How intensely dark it is just here ! " 
 she whispered. " I wonder you can keep 
 in the path. Many ancient Britons lie 
 buried there doubtless." 
 
 He led her round to the other side, 
 where, feeling his way with his hands, he 
 suddenly left her, appearing a moment 
 after with a light. 
 
 " What place is this ? " she exclaimed. 
 
 " This is the new wood cabin," said 
 he. 
 
 She could just discern the outline of a 
 little house, not unlike a large bathing- 
 machine without wheels. 
 
 " I have kept lights ready here," he went 
 on, " as I thought you might come any 
 evening, and possibly bring company." 
 
 " Don't quarrel with me for coming 
 alone ! " she exclaimed, with sensitive 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
146 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 promptness. " There are social reasons 
 for what I do of which you know 
 nothing." 
 
 " Perhaps it is much to my discredit 
 that I don't know." 
 
 " Not at all. You are all the better for 
 it. G-od forbid that I should enlighten 
 you. Well, I see this is the hut. But I 
 am more curious to go to the top of the 
 tower, and make discoveries." 
 
 He brought a little lantern from the 
 cabin, and lighted her up the winding 
 staircase to the temple of that sublime 
 mystery on whose threshold he stood as 
 priest. 
 
 The top of the column was quite changed. 
 The tub-shaped space within the parapet, 
 formerly open to the air and sun, was now 
 arched oyer by a light dome of lath-work 
 covered with felt. But this dome was not 
 fixed. At the line where its base descended 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 147 
 
 to the parapet there were half a dozen iron 
 balls, precisely like cannon-shot, standing 
 loosely in a groove, and on these the dome 
 rested its whole weight. In the side of 
 the dome was a slit, through which the 
 wind blew and the North Star beamed, 
 and towards it the end of the great tele- 
 scope was directed. This latter magnifi- 
 cent object, with its circles, axes, and 
 handles complete, was securely fixed in the 
 middle of the floor. 
 
 " But you can only see one part of the 
 sky through that slit," said she. 
 
 The astronomer stretched out his arm, 
 and the whole dome turned horizontally 
 round, running on the balls with a rumble 
 like that of nearing thunder. Instead of the 
 star Polaris, which had first been peeping 
 in upon them through the slit, there now 
 appeared the countenances of Castor and 
 Pollux. S within then manipulated the 
 l 2 
 
148 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 equatorial, and put it through its capabili- 
 ties in like manner. 
 
 She was enchanted ; being rather ex- 
 citable, she even clapped her hands just 
 once. She turned to him : " Now are you 
 happy?" 
 
 " But it is all yours, Lady Constantine." 
 
 " At this moment. But that's a defect 
 which can soon be remedied. When is 
 your birthday ? " 
 
 " Next month, — the seventh." 
 
 " Then it shall all be yours, — a birthday 
 present." 
 
 The young man protested; it was too 
 much. 
 
 " No, you must accept it all, — equatorial, 
 dome, stand, hut, and everything that has 
 been put here for this astronomical pur- 
 pose. The possession of these apparatus 
 would only compromise me. Already they 
 are reputed to be yours, and they must bo 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 149 
 
 made yours. There is no help for it. If 
 ever" (here her voice lost some firmness), — 
 " if ever you go away from me, — from this 
 place, I mean, — and marry, and settle in a 
 new home elsewhere for good, and forget 
 me, you must take these things, equatorial 
 and all, and never tell your wife or any- 
 body how they came to be yours." 
 
 " I wish I could do something more for 
 you ! " exclaimed the much-moved astro- 
 nomer. " If you could but share my 
 fame, — supposing I get any, which I may 
 die before doing, — it would be a little com- 
 pensation. As to my going away and 
 marrying, I certainly shall not. I may go 
 away, but I shall never marry." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " A beloved science is enough wife for 
 me, — combined, perhaps, with a little warm 
 friendship with one of kindred pursuits. 
 
 " Who is the friend ? " 
 
150 TWO ON A TOWEE. 
 
 66 Yourself I should like it to be." 
 
 " You would have to become a woman 
 before I could be that, publicly ; or I a 
 man," she replied, wuth dry melancholy. 
 
 " Why I a woman, or you a man, dear 
 Lady Constantine ? " 
 
 " I cannot explain. No ; you must keep 
 your fame and your science all to yourself, 
 and I must keep my — troubles." 
 
 S within, to divert her from melancholy 
 — not knowing that in the expression of her 
 melancholy thus and now she found much 
 pleasure, — changed the subject by asking 
 if they should take some observations. 
 
 " Yes ; the scenery is well hung to- 
 night," she said, looking out upon the 
 heavens. 
 
 Then they proceeded to scan the sky, 
 roving from planet to star, from single 
 stars to double stars, from double to 
 coloured stars, in the cursory manner of 
 
TWO ON A TOWEE. 151 
 
 the merely curious. They plunged clown 
 to that at other times invisible stellar 
 multitude in the back rows of the celestial 
 theatre : remote layers of constellations 
 whose shapes were new and singular; 
 pretty twinklers which for infinite ages had 
 spent their beams without calling forth 
 from a single earthly poet a single line, or 
 being able to bestow a ray of comfort on a 
 single benighted traveller. 
 
 "And to think," said Lady Constan- 
 tine, "that the whole race of shepherds, 
 since the beginning of the world, — even 
 those immortal shepherds who watched 
 near Bethlehem, — should have gone into 
 their graves without knowing that for one 
 star that lighted them in their labours, 
 there were a hundred as good behind trying 
 to do so ! ... I have a feeling for this 
 instrument not unlike the awe I should 
 feel in the presence of a great magician in 
 
152 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 whom I really believed. Its powers are so 
 enormous, and weird, and fantastical, that 
 I should have a personal fear in being w r ith 
 it alone. Music drew an angel down, said 
 the poet; but what is that to drawing 
 down worlds ! " 
 
 " I often experience a kind of fear of the 
 sky after sitting in the observing-chair a 
 long time," he answered. " And when I 
 walk home afterwards I also fear it, for 
 what I know is there, but cannot see, as 
 one naturally fears the presence of a vast 
 formless something that only reveals a 
 very little of itself. That's partly what I 
 meant by saying that magnitude, which up 
 to a certain point has grandeur, has beyond 
 it ghastliness." 
 
 Thus the interest of their sidereal ob- 
 servations led them on, till the knowledge 
 that scarce any other human vision was 
 travelling within a hundred million miles 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 153 
 
 of their own gave them such a sense of the 
 isolation of that faculty as almost to be a 
 sense of isolation in respect of their whole 
 personality, causing a shudder at its abso- 
 luteness. At night, when human discords 
 and harmonies are hushed, in a general 
 sense, for the greater part of twelve hours, 
 there is nothing to moderate the blow with 
 which the infinitely great, the stellar 
 universe, strikes down upon the infinitely 
 little, the mind of the beholder ; and this 
 was the case now. Having got closer to 
 immensity than their fellow- creatures, they 
 saw at once its beauty and its f rightfulness. 
 They more and more felt the contrast 
 between their own tiny magnitudes and 
 those among which they had recklessly 
 plunged, till they were oppressed with the 
 presence of a vastness they could not cope 
 with even as an idea, and which hung 
 about them like a nightmare. 
 
154 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 He stood by her while she observed ; 
 she by him when they changed places. 
 Once that S within' s emancipation from a 
 trammelling body had been effected by the 
 telescope, and he was well away in space, 
 she felt her influence over him diminishing 
 to nothing. He was quite unconscious of 
 his terrestrial neighbourings, and of herself 
 as one of them. It still further reduced 
 her towards unvarnished simplicity in her 
 manner to him. 
 
 The silence was broken only by the 
 ticking of the clock-work which gave 
 diurnal motion to the instrument. The 
 stars moved on, the end of the telescope 
 followed, but their tongues stood still. To 
 expect that he was ever voluntarily going 
 to end the pause by speech was apparently 
 futile. She laid her hand upon his arm. 
 
 He started, withdrew his eye from the 
 telescope, and brought himself back to the 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 155 
 
 earth by a visible — almost painful — 
 effort. 
 
 " Do come out of it," she coaxed, with 
 a softness in her voice which any man but 
 unpractised S within would have felt to be 
 exquisite. " I feel that I have been so 
 foolish as to put in your hands an instru- 
 ment to effect my own annihilation. Not 
 a word have you spoken for the last ten 
 minutes. 5 ' 
 
 " I have been mentally getting on with 
 my great theory. I hope soon to be able 
 to publish it to the world. What, are you 
 going ? I will walk with you, Lady Con- 
 stantine. When will you come again ? " 
 
 " When your great theory is published 
 to the world." 
 
156 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Lady Coxstaxtixe, if narrowly observed at 
 this time, would have seemed to be deeply ■ 
 troubled in conscience, and particularly 
 after the interview above described. Ash- 
 Wednesday occurred in the calendar a few 
 days later, and she went to morning service 
 with a look of genuine contrition on her 
 emotional and yearning countenance. 
 
 Besides herself the congregation con- 
 sisted only of the parson, clerk, school- 
 children, and three old people living on 
 alms, who sat under the reading-desk ; and 
 thus, w T hen Mr. Torkingham blazed forth 
 the denunciatory sentences of the Commi- 
 
TWO ON A TOWEK. 157 
 
 nation, nearly the whole force of tliem 
 seemed to descend upon her own shoulders. 
 Looking across the empty pews, she saw 
 through the one or two clear panes of the 
 window opposite a youthful figure in the 
 churchyard, and the very feeling against 
 which she had tried to pray returned again 
 irresistibly. 
 
 When she came out and had crossed into 
 the private walk, Swithin came forward to 
 speak to her. This was a most unusual 
 circumstance, and argued a matter of 
 importance. 
 
 " I have made an amazing discovery in 
 connexion with the variable stars I " he 
 exclaimed. "It will excite the whole 
 astronomical world, and the world outside 
 but little less. I had long suspected the 
 true secret of their variability ; but it was 
 by the merest chance on earth that I hit 
 upon a proof of my guess. Your equatorial 
 
158 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 has done it, my good, kind Lady Con- 
 stantine, and our fame is established for 
 ever ! " 
 
 He sprang into the air, and waved his 
 hat in his triumph. 
 
 " Oh, I am so glad — so rejoiced ! " she 
 cried. " What is it ? But don't stop to 
 tell me. Publish it at once in some paper ; 
 nail your name to it, or somebody will 
 seize the idea and appropriate it, — forestall 
 you in some way. It will be Adams and 
 Leverrier over again." 
 
 " If I may walk with you I will explain 
 the nature of the discovery. It accounts 
 for the occasional green tint of Castor, and 
 every difficulty. I said I would be the 
 Copernicus of the stellar system, and I 
 have begun to be. Yet who knows ? " 
 
 46 Now don't be so up and down ! I 
 shall not understand your explanation, and 
 I would rather not know it. I shall reveal 
 
TWO ON A TOWEE. 159 
 
 it if it is very grand. Women, yon know, 
 are not safe depositaries of such valuable 
 secrets. You may walk with me a little 
 way, with great pleasure. Then go and 
 write your account, so as to insure your 
 ownership of the discovery. . . . But how 
 you have watched ! " she cried, in a sudden 
 accession of anxiety, as she turned to look 
 more closely at him. " The orbits of your 
 eyes are leaden, and your eyelids are red 
 and heavy. Don't do it, — pray don't! 
 You will be ill, and break down." 
 
 " I have, it is true, been up a little late 
 this last week," he said cheerfully. " In 
 fact, I couldn't tear myself away from the 
 equatorial ; it is such a wonderful posses- 
 sion that it keeps me there till daylight. 
 But what does that matter, now I have 
 made the discovery? " 
 
 " Ah, it does matter ! Now, promise me 
 — I insist — that you will not commit such 
 
160 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 imprudences again ; for what should I do 
 if my Astronomer Royal were to die ? " 
 
 She laughed, but far too apprehensively 
 to be effective as a display of levity. 
 
 They parted, and he went home to write 
 out his paper. He promised to call as 
 soon as his discovery was in print. Then 
 they waited for the result. 
 
 It is impossible to describe the tremu- 
 lous state of Lady Constantine during the 
 interval. The warm interest she took in 
 Swithin St. Cleeve — many would have said 
 dangerously warm interest — made his 
 hopes her hopes ; and though she some- 
 times admitted to herself that great allow- 
 ance was requisite for the overweening 
 confidence of youth in the future, she per- 
 mitted herself to be blinded to probabilities 
 for the pleasure of sharing his dreams. It 
 seemed not unreasonable to suppose the 
 present hour to be the beginning of reali- 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 1C1 
 
 zation to her darling wish that this young 
 man should become famous. He had 
 worked hard, and why should he not be 
 famous early? His very simplicity in 
 mundane affairs afforded a strong presump- 
 tion that in things celestial he might be 
 wise. To obtain support for this hypo- 
 thesis she had only to think over the lives 
 of many eminent astronomers. 
 
 She waited feverishly for the flourish 
 of trumpets from afar, by which she 
 expected the announcement of his dis- 
 covery to be greeted. Knowing that im- 
 mediate intelligence of the outburst would 
 be brought to her by himself, she watched 
 from the windows of the Great House each 
 morning for a sight of his figure hastening 
 down the glade. 
 
 But he did not come. 
 
 A long array of wet days passed their 
 dreary shapes before her, and made the 
 
 VOL. I. M 
 
162 TWO ON A TO WEE. 
 
 waiting still more tedious. On one of 
 these occasions she ran across to the 
 tower, at the risk of a severe cold. The 
 door was locked. 
 
 Two days after she went again. The 
 door was locked still. But this was only 
 to be expected in such weather. Yet she 
 would have gone on to his house, had there 
 not been one reason too many against such 
 precipitancy. As astronomer and astrono- 
 mer there was no harm in their meetings ; 
 but as woman and man she feared them,— 
 for herself, at any rate. 
 
 Ten days passed without a sight of him; 
 ten blurred and dreary days, during which 
 the whole landscape dripped like a mop ; 
 the park trees swabbed the gravel from 
 the drive, while the sky was a zinc- 
 coloured archivault of immovable cloud. 
 It seemed as if the whole science of astro- 
 nomy had never been real, and that the 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 163 
 
 heavenly bodies, with their motions, were 
 as theoretical as the lines and circles of a 
 bygone mathematical problem. 
 
 She could content herself no longer with 
 fruitless visits to the column, and when the 
 rain had a little abated she walked to the 
 nearest hamlet, and in a conversation with 
 the first old woman she met contrived to 
 lead up to the subject of S within St. 
 Cleeve, by talking about his grandmother. 
 
 "Ah, poor old heart; 'tis a bad 
 time for her, my lady ! " exclaimed the 
 dame. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Her grandson is dying ; and such a 
 gentleman through ! " 
 
 " What ! . . . Oh, it has something to 
 do with that dreadful discovery ! " 
 
 " Discovery, my lady ? " 
 
 She left the old woman with an evasive 
 answer, and with a breaking heart crept 
 m 2 
 
164 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 along the road. Tears brimmed into her 
 eyes as she walked, and by the time that 
 she was out, of sight sobs burst forth 
 tumultuously. 
 
 " I am too fond of him ! " she moaned ; 
 K but I can't help it ; and I don't care if 
 it's wrong, — I don't care! " 
 
 Without further considerations as to 
 who beheld her doings, she instinctively 
 went straight towards Mrs. Martin's. 
 Seeing a man coming, she calmed her- 
 self sufficiently to ask him through her 
 dropped veil how poor Mr. St. Cleeve 
 was that day. But she only got the 
 same reply : " They say he is dying, my 
 lady." 
 
 When S within had parted from Lady 
 Constantine, on the previous Ash- Wednes- 
 day, he had gone straight to the home- 
 stead and prepared his account of " A New 
 Astronomical Discovery." It was written 
 
TWO OX A TO WEE. 165 
 
 perhaps in too glowing a rhetoric for the 
 true scientific tone of mind ; but there was 
 no doubt that his assertion met with a 
 most startling aptness all the difficulties 
 which had accompanied the received 
 theories on the phenomena attending those 
 changeable suns of marvellous systems so 
 far away. It accounted for the nebulous 
 mist that surrounds some of them at their 
 weakest time ; in short, took up a position 
 of probability which has never yet been 
 successfully assailed. 
 
 The papers were written in triplicate, 
 and carefully sealed up w T ith blue wax. 
 One copy was directed to Greenwich, 
 another to the Royal Society, another to a 
 prominent astronomer. A brief statement 
 of the essence of the discovery was also 
 prepared for the leading daily paper. 
 
 He considered these documents, em- 
 bodying as they did two years of his 
 
1C6 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 constant thought, reading, and observa- 
 tion, too important to be entrusted for 
 posting to the hands of a messenger ; too 
 important to be sent to the sub-post-office 
 at hand. Though the day was wet, drip- 
 ping wet, he went on foot with them to a 
 chief office, five miles off, and registered 
 them. Quite exhausted by the walk, after 
 his long night-work, wet through, yet sus- 
 tained by the sense of a great achieve- 
 ment, he called at a bookseller's for the 
 astronomical periodicals to which he sub- 
 scribed ; then, resting for a short time at 
 an inn, he plodded his way homewards, 
 reading his papers as he went, and plan- 
 ning how to enjoy a repose, on his laurels, 
 of a week or more. 
 
 On he strolled through the rain, holding 
 the umbrella vertically over the exposed 
 page to keep it dry while he read. Sud- 
 denly his eye was struck by an article. It 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 167 
 
 was the review of a pamphlet by an 
 American astronomer, in which the author 
 announced a conclusive discovery with 
 regard to variable stars. 
 
 The discovery was precisely the dis- 
 covery of S within St. Cleeve. Another man 
 had forestalled his fame by a period of 
 about six weeks. 
 
 Then the youth found that the goddess 
 Philosophy, to whom he had vowed to 
 dedicate his whole life, would not in return 
 support him through a single hour of 
 despair. In truth, the impishness of 
 circumstance was newer to him than it 
 would have been to a philosopher of 
 threescore-and-ten. In a wild wish for 
 annihilation he flung himself down on 
 a patch of heather that lay a little 
 removed from the road, and in this 
 humid bed remained motionless, while 
 time passed by unheeded. 
 
1G8 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 At last, from sheer misery and weariness, 
 lie fell asleep. 
 
 The March rain pelted him mercilessly, 
 the beaded moisture, from the heavily 
 charged locks of heath, penetrated him 
 through back and sides, and clotted his 
 hair to unsightly tags and tufts. When 
 he awoke it was dark. He thought 
 of his grandmother, and of her possible 
 alarm at missing him. On attempting 
 to rise, he found that he could hardly 
 bend his joints, and that his clothes 
 were as heavy as lead from saturation. 
 His teeth chattering and his knees 
 trembling he pursued his way home, 
 where his appearance excited great con- 
 cern. He was obliged at once to retire to 
 bed, and the next day he was delirious 
 from the chill. 
 
 It was about ten clays after this unhappy 
 occurrence that Lady Constantine learnt 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 169 
 
 the news, as above described, and hastened 
 alone to the homestead in that state of 
 anguish in which the heart is no longer 
 nnder the control of the judgment, and 
 self-abandonment, even to error, verges on 
 heroism. 
 
 On reaching the house in Welland 
 Bottom, the door was opened to her by 
 old Hannah, who wore an assiduously 
 sorrowful look ; and Lady Constantine was 
 shown into the large room, — so wide that 
 the beams bent in the middle, — where she 
 took her seat in one of a methodic range of 
 chairs, beneath a portrait of the Reverend 
 Mr. St. Cleeve, her astronomer's erratic 
 father. 
 
 The eight unwatered dying plants, in the 
 row of eight flower-pots, denoted that there 
 was something wrong in the house. Mrs. 
 Martin came dowmstairs, fretting, her 
 wonder at beholding Lady Constantine 
 
170 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 not altogether displacing the previous 
 mood of grief. 
 
 " Here's a pretty kettle of fish, my 
 lady ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 Lady Constantine said, " Hush ! " and 
 pointed inquiringly upward. 
 
 " He is not overhead, my lady," replied 
 S within' s grandmother. " His bedroom is 
 at the back of the house.' ' 
 
 " How is he now ? " 
 
 " He is better, just at this moment; and 
 we are more hopeful. But he changes 
 so." 
 
 " May I go up ? I know he would like to 
 see me." 
 
 Her presence having been made known 
 to the sufferer, she w^as conducted upstairs 
 to Swithin's room. The way thither was 
 through the large chamber he had used as 
 a study and for the manufacture of optical 
 instruments. There lay the large paste- 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 171 
 
 board telescope, that bad been just such a 
 failure as Crusoe's large boat ; there were 
 his diagrams, maps, globes, and celestial 
 apparatus of various sorts. The absence 
 of the worker through illness or death is 
 sufficient to touch the prosiest workshop 
 and tools with the hues of pathos, and it 
 w r as with a swelling bosom that Lady Con- 
 stantine passed through this arena of his 
 youthful activities to the little chamber 
 where he lay. 
 
 Old Mrs. Martin sat down by the win- 
 dow, and Lady Constantine bent over 
 S within. 
 
 " Don't speak to me ! " she whispered. 
 " It will weaken you ; it will excite you. If 
 you do speak, it must be very softly." 
 
 She took his hand, and one irrepressible 
 tear fell upon it. 
 
 " Nothing will excite me now, Lady Con- 
 stantine," he said ; " not even your goodness 
 
172 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 in coming. My last excitement was when 
 I lost the battle. ... Do you know that 
 my discovery has been forestalled ? It is 
 that that's killing me." 
 
 " But you are going to recover ; you are 
 better, they say. Is it so ? " 
 
 " I think I am, to-day. But who can be 
 sure ? " 
 
 " The poor boy was so upset at finding 
 that his labour had been thrown away," 
 said his grandmother, "that he lay down 
 in the rain, and chilled his life out." 
 
 "How could you do it?" Lady Con- 
 stantine whispered. " Oh, how could you 
 think so much of renown, and so little 
 of me ? Why, for every discovery made 
 there are ten behind that await making. 
 To commit suicide like this, as if there 
 were nobody in the world to care for 
 
 you ! " 
 
 " It was clone in my haste, and I am 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 173 
 
 very, very sorry for it ! I beg both you 
 and all my few friends never, never to 
 forgive me ! It would kill me with self- 
 reproach if you were to pardon my rash- 
 ness ! " 
 
 At this moment the doctor was an- 
 nounced, and Mrs. Martin went downstairs 
 to receive him. Lady Constantine thought 
 she would remain to hear his report, and 
 for this purpose withdrew, and sat down 
 in a nook of the adjoining work-room of 
 Swithin, the doctor meeting her as he 
 passed through it into the sick chamber. 
 
 He was there a torturingly long time ; 
 but at length he came out to the room she 
 ■waited in, and crossed it on his way down- 
 stairs. She rose and followed him to the 
 stairhead. 
 
 " How is he ? " she anxiously asked. 
 "Will he get over it?" 
 
 The doctor, not knowing the depth of 
 
174 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 her interest in the patient, spoke with the 
 blunt candour natural towards a compara- 
 tively indifferent inquirer. 
 
 "No, Lady Constantine," he replied; 
 " there's a change for the worse." And he 
 retired down the stairs. 
 
 Scarcely knowing what she did, Lady 
 Constantine ran back to Swithin's side, 
 flung herself upon the bed, and in a 
 paroxysm of sorrow kissed him. 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 17 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The placid inhabitants of the parish of 
 Welland, including warbling waggoners, 
 lone shepherds, ploughmen, the blacksmith, 
 the carpenter, the gardener at the Great 
 House, the steward and agent, the parson, 
 clerk, and so on, were hourly expecting 
 the announcement of St. Cleeve's death. 
 The sexton had been going to see his 
 brother-in-law, nine miles distant, but 
 promptly postponed the visit for a few 
 days, that there might be the regular pro- 
 fessional hand present to toll the bell in a 
 note of due fulness and solemnity; an 
 attempt by a deputy, on a previous occa- 
 
176 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 sion of his absence, having degenerated 
 into a miserable stammering clang that 
 was a disgrace to the parish. 
 
 But S within St. Cleeve did not decease, 
 a fact of which, indeed, the habituated 
 reader will have been well aware ever 
 since the rain came down upon the young 
 man in a certain paragraph of the ninth 
 chapter, and led to his alarming illness. 
 Too many maimed histories (such as his 
 would have read, in those circumstances) 
 are hourly enacting themselves in this 
 dun-coloured world to justify the gratui- 
 tous infliction of yet other mournful details 
 concerning those 
 
 " Who lay great bases for eternity 
 Which prove more short than waste or ruining." 
 
 How it arose that he did not die was in 
 this wise ; and his example affords another 
 instance of that reflex rule of the vassal 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 177 
 
 soul over the sovereign body, which, 
 operating so wonderfully in elastic natures, 
 and more or less in all, originally gave 
 rise to the legend that the supremacy lay 
 on the other side. 
 
 The evening of the day after the tender, 
 despairing, farewell kiss of Lady Oonstan- 
 tine, when he was a little less weak than 
 during her visit, he lay with his face to 
 the window. He lay alone, quiet and re- 
 signed. He had been thinking, sometimes 
 of her and other friends, but chiefly of his 
 lost discovery. Although nearly uncon- 
 scious at the time, he had yet been aware 
 of that kiss, as the delicate flush which 
 followed it upon his cheek would have 
 told; but he had attached little impor- 
 tance to it as between woman and man. 
 Had he been dying of love instead of wet 
 weather, perhaps the impulsive act of that 
 handsome lady would have been seized on 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
178 TWO OX A TO WEE. 
 
 as a proof that his love was returned. 
 As it was, her kiss seemed but the evi- 
 dence of a naturally demonstrative kind- 
 liness, felt towards him chiefly because 
 he was believed to be leaving her for 
 ever. 
 
 The reds of sunset passed, and dusk 
 drew on. Old Hannah came up-stairs to 
 pull down the blinds, and as she advanced 
 to the window he said to her, in a faint 
 voice, " Well, Hannah, what news to- 
 day?" 
 
 " Oh, nothing, sir," Hannah replied, 
 looking out of the window with sad 
 apathy, " only that there's a comet, they 
 
 say." 
 
 " A what ? " said the dying astronomer, 
 starting up on his elbow. 
 
 " A comet — that's all 5 Master Swithin," 
 repeated Hannah, in a lower voice, fearing 
 she had done harm in some way. 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 179 
 
 " Well, tell me, tell me!" cried Swithin. 
 "Is it Gambart's ? Is it Charles the 
 Fifth's, or Halley's, or Faye's, or 
 whose ? " 
 
 " Hush ! " said she, thinking St. Cleeve 
 slightly delirious again. " 'Tis God 
 A'mighty's, of course. I haven't seed en 
 myself; but they say he's getting bigger 
 every night, and that he'll be the biggest 
 one known for fifty years when he's full 
 growed. There, you must not talk any 
 more now, or I'll go away." 
 
 Here was an amazing event, little noise 
 as it had made in the happening. Of all 
 phenomena that he had longed to witness 
 during his short astronomical career, those 
 appertaining to comets had excited him 
 most. That the magnificent comet of 
 1811 would not return again for thirty 
 centuries had been quite a permanent 
 regret with him. And now, when the 
 n 2 
 
180 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 bottomless abyss of death, seemed yawning 
 beneath his feet, one of these much- 
 desired apparitions, as large, apparently, 
 as any of its tribe, had chosen to show 
 itself. 
 
 " Oh, if I could but live to see that 
 comet through my equatorial ! " he cried. 
 
 Compared with comets, variable stars, 
 which he had hitherto made his study, 
 were, from their remoteness, uninterest- 
 ing. They were to the former as the 
 celebrities of Ujiji or Unyamwesi to the 
 celebrities of his own country. Attached 
 to the solar system, these dazzling and 
 perplexing rangers, the fascination of all 
 astronomers, rendered themselves still 
 more fascinating by the sinister suspicion 
 attaching to them of being possibly the 
 ultimate destroyers of the human race. 
 In his physical prostration St. Cleeve 
 wept bitterly at not being hale and strong 
 
TWO OX A- TO WEE. 181 
 
 enough to welcome with proper honour 
 the present specimen of these desirable 
 visitors. 
 
 The strenuous wish to live and behold 
 the new phenomenon, supplanting the 
 utter weariness of existence that he had 
 heretofore experienced, lent him a new 
 vitality. The crisis passed; there was a 
 turn for the better; and after that he 
 rapidly mended. The comet had in all 
 probability saved his life. The limitless 
 and complex wonders of the sky resumed 
 their old power over his imagination ; the 
 possibilities of that unfathomable blue 
 ocean were endless. Finer feats than ever 
 he w^ould perform were to be achieved in 
 its investigation. What Lady Constan- 
 tine had said, that for one discovery made 
 ten awaited making, was strikingly veri- 
 fied by the sudden appearance of this 
 splendid marvel. 
 
182 TWO ON A TOWEB. 
 
 The windows of St. Cleeve's bedroom 
 faced the west, and nothing would satisfy 
 him but that his bed should be so pulled 
 round as to give him a view of the low 
 sky, in which the as yet minute tadpole of 
 fire was recognizable. The mere sight of 
 it seemed to lend him sufficient resolution 
 to complete his own cure forthwith. 
 His onlv fear now was lest, from 
 some unexpected cause or other, the 
 comet would vanish before he could 
 get to the observatory on Rings-Hill 
 Speer. 
 
 In his fervour to begin observing, he 
 directed that an old telescope, which he 
 had used in his first celestial attempts, 
 should be tied at one end to the bed-post, 
 and at the other fixed near his eye as he 
 reclined. Equipped only with this rough 
 improvisation, he began to take notes. 
 Lady Constantine was forgotten, till one 
 
TWO ON A TO WEE. 183 
 
 day, suddenly, wondering if she knew of 
 the important phenomenon, he revolved 
 in his mind whether, as a fellow- student 
 and sincere friend of his, she ought not to 
 be sent for, and instructed in the use of 
 the equatorial. 
 
 But though the image of Lady Oonstan- 
 tine, in spite of her kindness and unmis- 
 takably warm heart, had been obscured in 
 his mind by the heavenly body, she had 
 not so readily forgotten him. Too shy to 
 repeat her visit after so nearly betraying 
 her secret, she yet, every day, by the most 
 ingenious and subtle means that could be 
 devised by a woman who feared for herself, 
 but could not refrain from tampering with 
 danger, ascertained the state of her young 
 friend's health. On hearing of the turn in 
 his condition, she rejoiced on his account, 
 and became yet more despondent on her 
 own. If he had died, she might have 
 
184 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 mused on him as her dear departed saint 
 without much sin : but his return to life 
 was a delight that bewildered and dis- 
 mayed. 
 
 One evening, a little later on, he was 
 sitting at his bedroom window as usual, 
 waiting for a sufficient decline of light to 
 reveal the comet's form, when he beheld, 
 crossing the field contiguous to the house, 
 a figure which he knew to be hers. He 
 thought she must be coming to see him on 
 the great comet question, to discuss which 
 with so delightful and kind a comrade was 
 an expectation full of pleasure. Hence he 
 keenly observed her approach, till some- 
 thing happened that surprised him. 
 
 When, at the descent of the hill, she had 
 reached the stile that admitted to Mrs. 
 Martin's garden, Lady Constantine stood 
 quite still for a minute or more, her gaze 
 bent on the Ground. Instead of coming* 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 185 
 
 on to the house she went heavily and 
 slowly back, almost as if in pain ; and 
 then at length, quickening her pace, she 
 was soon out of sight. She appeared in 
 the path no more that day. 
 
186 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Why had Lady Constantine stopped and 
 turned ? 
 
 A misgiving had taken sudden posses- 
 sion of her. Her true sentiment towards 
 St. Cleeve was too recognizable by herself 
 to be tolerated. 
 
 That she had a legitimate interest in 
 him as a young astronomer was true ; that 
 her sympathy on account of his severe ill- 
 ness had been natural and commendable 
 was also true. But the superfluous feel- 
 iug was what filled her with trepida- 
 tion. 
 
 Superfluities have been defined as things 
 
TWO OX A TOWER. 187 
 
 you cannot do without, and this particular 
 emotion, that came not within her rightful 
 measure, was in danger of becoming just 
 such a superfluity with her. In short, she 
 felt there and then that to see St. Cleeve 
 again would be an impropriety ; and by a 
 violent effort she retreated from his pre- 
 cincts, as he had observed. 
 
 She resolved to ennoble her conduct 
 from that moment of her life onwards. 
 She would exercise kind patronage towards 
 S within without once indulging herself 
 with his company. Inexpressibly dear to 
 her deserted heart he was becoming, but 
 for the future he should at least be hidden 
 from her eyes. To speak plainly, it was 
 growing a serious question whether, if he 
 were not hidden from her eyes, she would 
 not soon be plunging across the ragged 
 boundary which divides the permissible 
 from the forbidden. 
 
138 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 By the time she had drawn near home the 
 sun was going down. The heavy many- 
 chevroned church, now subdued by violet 
 shadow, except where its upper courses 
 caught the western stroke of flame-colour, 
 stood close to her grounds, though the 
 village of which it formerly was the 
 nucleus had become quite depopulated, its 
 cottages having been demolished to enlarge 
 the park, leaving the old building to stand 
 there alone, like a standard without an 
 army. 
 
 It was Friday night, and she heard the 
 organist practising voluntaries within. 
 The hour, the notes, the even-song of the 
 birds, and her own previous emotions, 
 combined to influence her devotionally. 
 She entered, turning to the ristfit and 
 passing under the chancel arch, where she 
 sat down and viewed the whole empty 
 length, east and west. The semi-Norman 
 
TWO ON A TOWEE. 189 
 
 arches of the nave, with their multitu- 
 dinous notchings, were still visible by the 
 light from the tower window, but the 
 lower portion of the building was in ob- 
 scurity, except where the feeble glimmer 
 from the candle of the organist spread a 
 glow-worm radiance around. The player, 
 who was Miss Tabitha Lark, continued 
 without intermission to produce her wan- 
 dering sounds, unconscious of any one's 
 presence except that of the youthful blower 
 at her side. 
 
 The rays from the organist's candle illu- 
 minated but one small fragment of the 
 chancel outside the precincts of the instru- 
 ment, and that was the portion of the 
 eastern wall whereon the ten command- 
 ments were inscribed. The gilt letters shone 
 sternly into Lady Constantine's eyes ; and 
 she, being as impressionable as a turtle-dove, 
 watched a certain one of those command- 
 
190 TWO OX A TO WEE. 
 
 ments on the second table, till its thunder 
 broke her spirit with blank contrition. 
 
 She knelt down, and did her utmost to 
 eradicate those impulses towards St. Cleeve 
 which were inconsistent with her position 
 as the wife of an absent man, though not 
 unnatural in her as his victim. 
 
 She knelt till she seemed scarcely to 
 belong to the time she lived in, which lost 
 the magnitude that the nearness of its 
 perspective lent it on ordinary occasions, 
 and took its actual rank in the long line of 
 other centuries. Having once got out of 
 herself, seen herself from afar off, she was 
 calmer, and went on to register a magna- 
 nimous vow. She would look about for 
 some maiden fit and likely to make St. 
 Cleeve happy ; and this girl she would 
 endow with what money she could afford, 
 that the natural result of their apposition 
 should do him no worldly harm. The 
 
TWO ON A TOWEE. 19 L 
 
 interest of her, Lady Constantine's, life 
 should be in watching the development of 
 love between S within and the ideal maiden. 
 
 The very painfnlness of the scheme to 
 her susceptible heart made it pleasing to 
 her conscience; and she wondered that 
 she had not before this time thought of a 
 stratagem which united the possibility of 
 benefiting the astronomer with the ad- 
 vantage of guarding against peril to both 
 Swithin and herself. By providing for 
 him a suitable helpmate she would pre- 
 clude the dangerous awakening in him of 
 sentiments reciprocating her own. 
 
 Arrived at a point of exquisite misery 
 through this heroic intention, Lady Con- 
 stantine's tears moistened the books upon 
 which her forehead was bowed. And as 
 she heard her feverish heart throb against 
 the desk, she firmly believed the wearing 
 impulses of that heart would put an end 
 
192 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 to her sad life, and momentarily recalled 
 the banished image of St. Cleeve to apos- 
 trophize him in thoughts that paraphrased 
 the quaint lines of IdeV Liebchen : — 
 
 " Dear my love, press thy hand to my breast, and tell 
 If thou tracest the knocks in that narrow cell ; 
 A carpenter dwells there ; cunning is he, 
 And slyly he's shaping a coffin for me ! " 
 
 Lady Constantine w^as disturbed by a 
 break in the organist's meandering prac- 
 tice, and raising her head she saw a person 
 standing by the player. It was Mr. Tork- 
 ingham, and what he said was distinctly 
 audible. He was inquiring for herself. 
 
 " I thought I saw Lady Constantine 
 walk this way," he rejoined to Tabitka's 
 negative. "I am very anxious indeed to 
 meet with her." 
 
 She went forward. " I am here," she 
 said. " Don't stop playing, Miss Lark. 
 What is it, Mr. Torkingham ? " 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 193 
 
 Tabitha thereupon resumed her playing, 
 and Mr. Torkingliam joined Lady Con- 
 stantine. 
 
 " I have some very serious intelligence 
 to break to your ladyship," he said. " But 
 — I will not interrupt you here." (He had 
 seen her rise from her knees to come to 
 him.) " I will call at the House the first 
 moment you can receive me, after reaching 
 home." 
 
 " No, tell me here," she said, seating 
 herself. 
 
 He came close, and placed his hand on 
 the poppy-head of the seat. 
 
 " I have received a telegram," he resumed 
 haltingly, "in which I am requested to 
 prepare you for the contents of a letter 
 that you will receive to-morrow morn- 
 
 ing." 
 
 " I am quite ready." 
 
 " The subject is briefly this, Lady Con- 
 
 VOL. I. O 
 
194 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 stantine : that you have been a widow for 
 more than eighteen months." 
 
 " Dead ! " 
 
 "Yes. Sir Blount w r as attacked by 
 dysentery and malarious fever, on the banks 
 of the Zouga in South Africa, so long ago 
 as last October twelvemonths, and it carried 
 him off. Of the three men who were with 
 him, two succumbed to the same illness, a 
 hundred miles further on; while the third, 
 retracing his steps into a healthier district, 
 remained there with a native tribe, and 
 took no pains to make the circumstances 
 knowm. It seems to be only by the mere 
 accident of his having told some third party 
 that we know of the matter now. This is 
 all I can tell you at present." 
 
 She was greatly agitated for a few 
 moments; and the Table of the Law 
 opposite which now seemed to appertain to 
 another dispensation, glistened indistinctly 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 195 
 
 upon a vision still obscured by the old 
 tears. 
 
 "Shall I conduct you home?" asked 
 the parson. 
 
 "No, thank you," said Lady Oonstan- 
 tine. " I would rather go alone." 
 
 o 2 
 
196 TWO ON A TOWEK. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Ox the afternoon of the next day Mr. 
 Torkinghara, who occasionally dropped in 
 to see St. Cleeve, called again as usual ; 
 after duly remarking on the state of the 
 weather, congratulating him on his sure 
 though slow improvement, and answering 
 his inquiries about the comet, he said, " You 
 have heard, I suppose, of what has happened 
 to Lady Constantine ? " 
 
 " No ! Nothing serious ? " 
 
 "Yes, it is serious." The parson 
 informed him of the death of Sir Blount, 
 and of the accidents which had hindered 
 all knowledge of the same, — accidents 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 197 
 
 favoured by the estrangement of the pair 
 and the cessation of correspondence be- 
 tween them for some time. 
 
 His listener received the news with the 
 coDcern of a friend, Lady Constantine's 
 aspect in his eyes depending but little on 
 her condition matrimonially. 
 
 "There was no attempt to bring him 
 home when he died ? " 
 
 u Oh, no. The climate necessitates 
 instant burial. We shall have more par- 
 ticulars in a day or two, doubtless." 
 
 " Poor Lady Constantine, — so good and 
 so sensitive as she is ! I suppose she is 
 quite prostrated by the bad news." 
 
 " Well, she is rather serious, — not 
 prostrated. The household is going into 
 mourning." 
 
 " Ah, no, she would not be quite pros- 
 trated," murmured S within, recollecting 
 himself. " He was unkind to her in many 
 
198 TWO OX A TOWEB. 
 
 ways. Do you tliink she will go away from 
 Wellancl?" 
 
 That the vicar could not tell. But he 
 feared that Sir Blount's affairs had been in 
 a seriously involved condition, which might 
 necessitate many and unexpected changes. 
 
 Time showed that Mr. Torkingham's 
 surmises were correct. 
 
 During the long weeks of early summer, 
 through which the young man still lay 
 imprisoned, if not within his own chamber, 
 within the limits of the house and garden, 
 news reached him that Sir Blount's mis- 
 management and eccentric behaviour were 
 resulting in serious consequences to Lady 
 Constantine; nothing less, indeed, than 
 her almost complete impoverishment. His 
 personalty was swallowed up in paying his 
 debts, and the Welland estate was so heavily 
 charged with annuities to his distant 
 relatives that only a mere pittance was left 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 199 
 
 for her. She w r as reducing the establish- 
 ment to the narrowest compass compatible 
 w T ith decent gentility. The horses were 
 sold one by one ; the carriages also ; the 
 greater part of the house was shut up, and 
 she resided in the smallest rooms. All 
 that was allowed to remain of her former 
 contingent of male servants were an odd 
 man and a boy. Instead of using a carriage, 
 she now drove about in a donkey-chair, the 
 said boy walking in front to clear the way 
 and keep the animal in motion ; while she 
 wore, so his informants reported, not an 
 ordinary widow's cap or bonnet, but some- 
 thing even plainer, the black material being 
 drawn tightly round her face, giving her 
 features a small, demure, devout cast, very 
 pleasing to the eye. 
 
 " Now, what's the most curious thing in 
 this, Mr. San Cleeve," said Sammy Blore, 
 who, in calling to inquire after S within' s 
 
200 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 health, had imparted some of the above 
 particulars, " is that my lady seems not to 
 mind being a pore woman half so much as 
 we do at seeing her so. 'Tis a wonderful gift, 
 Mr. San Cleeve, wonderful, to be able to 
 guide yerself, and not let loose yer soul in 
 blasting at such a misfortune. I should go 
 and drink neat regular, as soon as I had 
 swallered my breakfast, if it had hap- 
 pened to me; but my lady's plan is best. 
 Though I only know such hobbles by hear- 
 say, to be sure, for I never had nothing to 
 lose." 
 
 Meanwhile, the observatory was not 
 forgotten; nor that visitant of singular 
 shape and habits, which had appeared in 
 the sky from no one knew whither, trailing 
 its luminous streamer, and proceeding on 
 its way in the face of a wondering world, 
 till it should choose to vanish as suddenly 
 as it had come. 
 
 "When, about a month after the above 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 201 
 
 dialogue took place, S within w^as allowed 
 to go about as usual, his first pilgrimage 
 was to the Bings-Hill Speer. Here he 
 studied at leisure what he had come to see. 
 On his return to the homestead, just 
 after sunset, he found his grandmother and 
 Hannah in a state of great concern. The 
 former was looking out for him against the 
 evening light, her face showing itself worn 
 and rutted, like an old highway, by the 
 passing of many days. Her information 
 was that in his absence Lady Constantine 
 had called in her driving-chair, to inquire 
 for him. Her ladyship had wished to 
 observe the comet through, the great tele- 
 scope, but had found the door locked when 
 she applied at the tower. Would he kindly 
 leave the door unfastened to-morrow^, she 
 had asked, that she might be able to go to 
 the column on the following evening, for 
 the same purpose ? She did not require 
 him to attend. 
 
202 TWO ON A TO WEE. 
 
 During the next clay he sent Hannah 
 with the key to Welland House, not caring 
 to leave the tower open. As evening 
 advanced and the comet grew distinct, he 
 doubted if Lady Constantine could handle 
 the telescope alone with any pleasure or 
 profit to herself. Unable, as a devotee 
 to science, to rest under this misgiving, he 
 crossed the field in the furrow^ that he had 
 used ever since the corn was sown, and en- 
 tered the plantation. His unpractised mind 
 never once guessed that her stipulations 
 against his coming might have existed along 
 with a perverse hope that he would come. 
 
 On ascending he found her already there. 
 She sat in the observing-chair : the warm 
 light from the west, which flowed in through 
 the opening of the dome, brightened her 
 face, and her face only, her robes of sable 
 lawn rendering the remainder of her figure 
 almost invisible. 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 203 
 
 " You have come ! " she said with shy 
 pleasure. " I did not require you. But 
 never mind." She extended her hand cor- 
 dially to him. 
 
 Before speaking he looked at her with 
 a great new interest in his eye. It was the 
 first time that he had seen her thus, and she 
 was altered in more than dress A soberly- 
 sweet expression sat on her face. It was 
 of a rare and peculiar shade — something 
 that he had never, seen before in woman. 
 
 " Have you nothing to say ? " she con- 
 tinued. " Your footsteps were audible to 
 me from the very bottom, and I knew 
 they were yours. You look almost re- 
 stored." 
 
 " I am almost restored," he replied, re- 
 spectfully pressing her hand. " A reason 
 for living arose, and I lived." 
 
 " What reason ? " she inquired, with a 
 rapid blush. 
 
204 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 He pointed to the rocket-like object in 
 the western sky. 
 
 " You mean the comet ? Well, you 
 will never make a courtier ! You know r , 
 of course, what has happened to me ; 
 that I have no longer a husband — 
 have had none for a year and a half. 
 Have you also heard that I am now 
 quite a poor woman ? Tell me what you 
 think of it." 
 
 " I have thought very little of it, since 
 I heard that you seemed to mind poverty 
 but little. There is even this good in it, 
 that I may now be able to show you some 
 little kindness for all those you have done 
 me, my dear lady." 
 
 (i Unless for economy's sake, I go and 
 live abroad, — at Dinan, Versailles, or 
 Boulogne." 
 
 S within, who had never thought of such 
 a contingency, was earnest in his regrets ; 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 205 
 
 without, however, showing more than a 
 sincere friend's disappointment. 
 
 11 1 did not say it was absolutely neces- 
 sary," she continued. " I have, in fact, 
 grown so homely and home-loving, I am so 
 interested in the place and the people here, 
 that, in spite of advice, I have almost de- 
 termined not to let the house ; but to con- 
 tinue the less business-like but pleasanter 
 alternative of living humbly in a part of it, 
 and shutting up the rest." 
 
 " Your love of astronomy is getting as 
 strong as mine ! " he said ardently. " You 
 could not tear yourself away from the 
 observatory ! " 
 
 " You might have supposed me capable 
 of a little human feeling as well as scien- 
 tific, in connexion with the observatory." 
 
 " Dear Lady Constantine, by admitting 
 that your astronomer has also a part of 
 your interest — " 
 
206 TWO ON A TOWEB. 
 
 "Ah, you did not find it out without 
 my telling ! " she said, with a playfulness 
 which was scarcely playful, a new accession 
 of pinkness being visible in her face. " I 
 diminish myself in your esteem by remind- 
 ing you." 
 
 " You might do anything in this world 
 without diminishing yourself in my esteem, 
 after the goodness you have shown. And 
 more than that, no misrepresentation, no 
 rumour, no damning appearance whatever, 
 would ever shake my loyalty to you." 
 
 " But you put a very matter-of-fact con- 
 struction on my motives sometimes. You 
 see me in such a hard light that I have to 
 drop hints in quite a manoeuvring manner 
 to let you know I am as sympathetic as 
 other people. I sometimes think you 
 w r ould rather have me die than have your 
 equatorial stolen. Confess that your ad- 
 miration for me was based on my house 
 
TWO ON A '10WEU. 207 
 
 and position in the county ! Now I am 
 shorn of all that glory, such as it was, and 
 am a widow, and am poorer than my ten- 
 ants, and can no longer buy telescopes, and 
 am unable, from the narrowness of my cir- 
 cumstances, to mix in circles that people 
 formerly said I adorned, I fear I have lost 
 the little hold I once had over you." 
 
 " You are as unjust now as you have been 
 generous hitherto," said St. Cleeve, with 
 tears in his eyes at the gentle banter of 
 the lady, which he, poor innocent, read 
 as her real opinions. Seizing her hand, 
 he continued, in tones between reproach 
 and anger, " I swear to you that I have 
 but two devotions, two thoughts, two hopes, 
 and two blessings in this world, and that 
 one of them is yourself ! " 
 
 "And the other?" 
 
 " The pursuit of astronomy." 
 
 " And astronomy stands first." 
 
203 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 " I have never ordinatecl two such dis- 
 similar ideas. And why should you deplore 
 your altered circumstances, my dear lady ? 
 Your widowhood, if I may take the liberty 
 to speak on such a subject, is, though I 
 suppose a sadness, not perhaps an unmixed 
 evil. For though your pecuniary troubles 
 have been discovered to the world and 
 yourself by it, your happiness in marriage 
 w r as, as you have generously confided 
 to me, not great ; and you are now 
 left free as a bird to follow your owui 
 hobbies." 
 
 " I wonder you recognize that." 
 
 " But perhaps," he added, with a sigh 
 of regret, " you will again fall a prey to 
 some man, some uninteresting country 
 squire or other, and be lost to the scien- 
 tific world, after all." 
 
 " If I fall a prey to any man, it w T ill not 
 be to a country squire. But don't go on 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 209 
 
 with this, for heaven's sake ! You may 
 think what you like in silence." 
 
 " We are forgetting the comet," said St. 
 Cleeve. He turned, and set the instrument 
 in order for observation, and wheeled round 
 the dome. 
 
 While they were looking at the nucleus 
 of the fiery plume, that now filled so large 
 a space of the sky as completely to domi- 
 nate it, Swithin dropped his gaze upon the 
 field, and beheld in the dying light a num- 
 ber of labourers crossing directly towards 
 the column. 
 
 " What do you see ? " Lady Constantine 
 asked, without ceasing to observe the comet. 
 
 " Some of the work-folk are coming this 
 way. I know what they are coming for, 
 — I promised to let them look at the comet 
 through the glass." 
 
 " They must not come up here," she 
 said decisively. 
 
 vol. i. p 
 
210 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 " They shall await your time." 
 
 " I have a special reason for wishing 
 them not to see me here. If yon ask why, 
 I can tell yon. They mistakenly suspect 
 my interest to be less in astronomy than in 
 the astronomer, and they must have no 
 showing for such a wild notion. What can 
 you do to keep them out ? " 
 
 " I'll lock the door," said Swithin. " They 
 will then think I am away. 5 ' He ran down 
 the staircase, and she could hear him hastily 
 turning the key. Lady Constantine sighed. 
 
 " What weakness, what weakness ! " she 
 said to herself. '"That envied power of 
 self-control, where is it ? That power of 
 concealment which a woman should have, 
 — where ? To run such risks, to come 
 here alone, — oh, if it were known ! But I 
 was always so, — always ! " 
 
 She jumped up, and followed him down- 
 stairs. 
 
TWO ON A TOWER, 211 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 He was standing immediately inside 
 the door at the bottom, though it 
 was so dark she could hardly see him. 
 The villagers were audibly talking just 
 without. 
 
 "He's sure to come, rathe or late," 
 resounded up the spiral in the note of 
 Hezzy Biles. <c He wouldn't let such a 
 fine show as the comet makes to-night go 
 by without peeping at it, — not Master 
 Cleeve ! Did ye bring along the flagon, 
 Haymoss ? Then we'll sit down inside 's 
 boarden house here and wait. He'll come 
 afore bed-time. Why, his spy-glass will 
 p 2 
 
212 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 stretch out that there comet as loog as 
 Welland Lane ! " 
 
 " I'd as soon miss the great peep-show 
 that comes every year to Greenhill Fair 
 as a sight of such a immortal spectacle as 
 this ! " said Amos Fry. 
 
 u < Immortal spectacle/ — where did ye 
 get that choice morsel, Haymoss ? " in- 
 quired Sammy Blore. " "Well, well, the 
 Lord save good scholars — and take jist a 
 bit o' care of them that bain't ! As 
 'tis so dark in the hut, suppose we 
 draw out the bench into the front here, 
 souls?" 
 
 The bench was accordingly brought 
 forth, and in order to have a back to lean 
 against, they placed it exactly across the 
 door into the spiral staircase. 
 
 " Now, have ye got any backy ? If ye 
 haven't, I have," continued Sammy Blore. 
 A striking of matches followed, and the 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 213 
 
 speaker concluded comfortably, " Now 
 we shall do very well." 
 
 "And what do this comet mean?" 
 asked Haymoss. " That some great tumult 
 is going to happen, or that we shall die of 
 a famine ? " 
 
 " Famine — no ! " said Nat Chapman. 
 " That only touches such as we, and God 
 only concerns hisself with the best breeds. 
 It isn't to be supposed that a strange fiery 
 lantern like that would be lighted up for 
 folks with ten or a dozen shillings a week 
 and their gristing, and a load o' thorn 
 fagots when we can get 'em. If 'tis a 
 token that He's getting hot about the ways 
 of anybody in this parish, 'tis about my 
 Lady Constantine's, since she is the only 
 one with narves worth such a hint." 
 
 " As for her income, — that she's now 
 lost." 
 
 " Ah, well ; I don't take in all I hear." 
 
214 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 Lady Constantino drew close to St. 
 Cleeve's side, and whispered, trembling, 
 " Do you think they will wait long ? Or 
 can we get out?" 
 
 S within felt the awkwardness of the 
 situation. The men had stupidly placed 
 the bench close to the door, which, owing 
 to the stairs within, opened outwards ; so 
 that, at the first push by the pair inside 
 to release themselves, the bench must 
 have gone over, and sent the smokers 
 sprawling on their faces. He whispered 
 to her to ascend the column and wait till 
 he came. 
 
 " And have the dead man left her 
 nothing ? Hey ? And have he carried 
 his inheritance into 's grave ? And will 
 his skeleton lie warm on account o't ? 
 Hee-hee ! " said Haymoss. 
 
 " 'Tis all swallered up," observed Hezzy 
 Biles. " His ^oin^s-on made her miser- 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 215 
 
 able till 'a died, and if I were the woman 
 I'd have my randys now. He ought to 
 have bequeathed to her this young gent, 
 Mr. St. Cleeve, as some sort of amends. 
 I'd up and marry him, if I were she ; since 
 her downfall has brought 'em quite near 
 together, and made him as good as she 
 in rank, as he was afore in bone and 
 breeding." 
 
 " D'ye think she will ? " asked Sammy 
 Blore. "Or is she meaning to enter 
 upon a virgin life for the rest of her 
 days?" 
 
 " I don't want to be unreverent to her 
 ladyship ; but I really don't think she is 
 meaning any such waste of a Christian 
 carcase. I say she's rather meaning to 
 commit flat matrimony with somebody or 
 other, and one young gentleman in par- 
 ticular." 
 
 " But the young man himself ? " 
 
216 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 " Planned, cut out, and finished for the 
 delight of woman ! " 
 
 " Yet he must be willing." 
 
 " That would soon come. If they get 
 up this tower ruling plannards together 
 much longer, their plannards will soon 
 rule them together, in my way of thinking. 
 If she've a disposition towards the knot, 
 she can soon teach him." 
 
 " True, true, and lawfully. What be- 
 fore might ha' been a wrong desire is now 
 a holy wish ! " 
 
 The scales fell from S within St. Cleeve's 
 eyes as he heard the words of his neigh- 
 bours. How suddenly the truth dawned 
 upon him ; how it bewildered him, till he 
 scarcely knew where he was ; how he re- 
 called the full force of what he had only 
 half apprehended at earlier times, j^ar- 
 ticularly of that sweet kiss she had im- 
 pressed on his lips when she supposed him 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 217 
 
 dying, — these vivid realizations are diffi- 
 cult to tell in slow verbiage. He could 
 remain there no longer, and with an 
 electrified heart he retreated up the 
 spiral. 
 
 He found Lady Constantine half way 
 to the top, standing by a loop-hole ; and 
 when she spoke he discovered that she 
 was almost in tears. " Are they gone?" 
 she asked. 
 
 " I fear they will not go yet," he re- 
 plied, with a nervous fluctuation of man- 
 ner that had never before appeared in his 
 bearing towards her. 
 
 " What shall I do ? " she asked. " I 
 ought not to be here; nobody knows that 
 I am out of the house. Oh, this is a 
 mistake ! I must go home somehow." 
 
 "Did you hear what they were say- 
 ing?" 
 
 " No," said she. " What is the matter ? 
 
Ol Q 
 
 IS TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 Surely you are trembling? What did 
 they say ? " 
 
 " It would be the exaggeration of 
 frankness in me to tell you." 
 
 " Is it what a woman ought not to be 
 made acquainted with ? " 
 
 " It is, in this case. It is so new and 
 so indescribable an idea to me — that " — 
 He leant against the concave wall, quite 
 tremulous with strange incipient senti- 
 ments. 
 
 " What sort of an idea ? " she asked 
 gently. 
 
 " It is — an awakening. In thinking of 
 the heaven above, I did not perceive — 
 the—" 
 
 "Earth beneath?" 
 
 " The better heaven beneath. Pray, 
 dear Lady Constantine, give me your 
 hand for a moment." 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 219 
 
 She seemed startled, and the hand was 
 not given. 
 
 "I am so anxious to get home," she 
 repeated. " I did not mean to stay here 
 more than five minutes ! " 
 
 " I fear I am much to blame for this 
 accident," he said. " I ought not to have 
 intruded here. But don't grieve ! I will 
 arrange for your escape, somehow. Be 
 good enough to follow me down." 
 
 They redescended, and, whispering to 
 Lady Constantine to remain a few. stairs 
 behind, he began to rattle and unlock the 
 door. 
 
 The men precipitately removed their 
 bench, and Swithin stepped out, the light 
 of the summer night being still enough to 
 enable them to distinguish him. 
 
 " Well, Hezekiah, and Samuel, and Nat, 
 how are you ? " he said boldly. 
 
220 TWO OX A TO WEE. 
 
 " Well, sir, 'tis much, as before with 
 me," replied Nat. " One hour a week 
 with God and the rest with the devil, as a 
 chap may say. And really, now yer poor 
 father's gone, I'd as lief that that Sunday 
 hour should pass like the rest ; for Pa'son 
 Tarkenham do tease a feller's conscience 
 that much, that church is no hollerday at 
 all to the limbs, as it was in yer reverent 
 father's time ! But we've been waiting 
 here, Mr. San Cleeve, supposing ye had 
 not come." 
 
 " I have been staying at the top, and 
 fastened the door not to be disturbed. 
 Now I am sorry to disappoint you, but 
 I have another engagement this evening, 
 so that it would be inconvenient to admit 
 you. To-morrow evening, or any evening 
 but this, I will show you the comet and 
 any stars you like." 
 
 They readily agreed to come the next 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 221 
 
 night, and prepared to depart. But what 
 with the flagon, and the pipes, and the 
 final observations, getting away was a 
 matter of time. Meanwhile a cloud, which 
 nobody had noticed, arose from the north 
 overhead, and large drops of rain began 
 to fall so rapidly that the conclave entered 
 the hut till it should be over. St. Cleeve 
 strolled off under the firs. 
 
 The next moment there was a rustling 
 through the trees at another point, and a 
 man and woman appeared. The woman 
 took shelter under a tree, and the man, 
 bearing wraps and umbrellas, came for- 
 ward. 
 
 "My lady's man and maid," said 
 Sammy. 
 
 " Ts her ladyship here ? " asked the 
 man. 
 
 " Her ladyship keeps more kissable 
 company," replied Nat Chapman. 
 
222 TWO OX A TO WEE. 
 
 " Hush ! " said Blore. 
 
 " Not here ? Well, to be sure ! We 
 can't find her anywhere in the wide 
 house ! I've been sent to look for her 
 with these overclothes and umbrella. I've 
 suffered horse-flesh traipsing up and down, 
 and can't find her nowhere. Lord, Lord, 
 w 7 here can she be, and two months' wages 
 owing to me ! " 
 
 anxious, Anthony Green, as 
 I think yer name is shaped ? You be not 
 a married man ? " said Hezzy. 
 
 "'Tis what they call me, neighbours, 
 wdiether or no." 
 
 " But surely you was a bachelor 
 chap by late, afore her ladyship got 
 rid of the regular servants and took 
 ye?" 
 
 " I w^ere ; but that's past ! " 
 
 " And how came ye to bow yer head 
 to 't, Anthony ? 'Tis what you never w r as 
 
TWO OX A TOWEE. 22^3 
 
 inclined to. You was by no means a 
 doting man in my time." 
 
 " Well, had I been left to my own 
 free choice, 'tis as like as not I should 
 ha' shunned forming such kindred, being 
 at that time a poor clay man, or weekly, 
 at my highest luck in hiring. But 'tis 
 wearing work to hold out against the 
 custom of the country, and the woman 
 wanting ye to stand by her and save her 
 from unborn shame ; so, since common 
 usage would have it, I let myself be carried 
 away by opinion, and took her. Though 
 she's never once thanked me for covering 
 her confusion, that's true ! But, 'tis the 
 way of the lost wdien safe, and I don't 
 complain. Here she is, just behind, under 
 the tree, if you'd like to see her ? — a very 
 nice homespun woman to look at, too, for 
 
 all her few weather-stains Well, 
 
 well, wmere can my lady be ? And I the 
 
224 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 trusty jineral man, — 'tis more than my place 
 is worth to lose her ! Come forward, Chris- 
 tiana, and talk nicely to the gentlemen." 
 
 Whiie the woman w^as talking, the rain 
 increased so much that they all retreated 
 further into the hut. St. Cleeve, who had 
 impatiently stood a little way off, now saw 
 his opportunity, and, putting in his head, 
 said, " The rain beats in ; you had better 
 shut the door. I must ascend and close 
 up the dome." 
 
 Slamming the door upon them without 
 ceremony, he quickly went to poor Lady 
 Constantine in the column, and telling 
 her they could now pass the villagers un- 
 seen, he gave her his arm. Thus he con- 
 ducted her across the front of the hut 
 into the shadows of the firs. 
 
 " I will run to the house and harness your 
 little carriage myself," he said tenderly. 
 " I will then take you home in it." 
 
TWO OX A TOWER. 225 
 
 " No; please don't leave me alone under 
 these dismal trees ! " Neither would she 
 hear of his getting her any wraps ; and, 
 opening her little sunshade to keep the 
 rain out of her face, she walked with him 
 across the insulating field, after which the 
 trees of the park afforded her a sufficient 
 shelter to reach home without much 
 damage. 
 
 Swithin was too greatly affected by 
 what he had overheard to speak much to 
 her on the way, and protected her as if 
 she had been a shorn lamb. After a fare- 
 well which had more meaning than sound 
 in it, he hastened back to Rings-Hill 
 Speer. The workfolk were still in the 
 hut, and, by clint of friendly converse and 
 a sip at the flagon, had so cheered Mr. 
 and Mrs. Anthony Green that they neither 
 thought nor cared what had become of 
 Lady Constantine. 
 
 vol. i. Q 
 
226 TWO OX A TOWEK. 
 
 St. Cleeve's sudden sense of new re- 
 lations with that sweet patroness had 
 taken away in one half-hour his natural 
 ingenuousness. Henceforth he could act 
 a part. 
 
 " I have made all secure at the top," he 
 said, putting his head into the hut. " I 
 am now going home. When the rain 
 ceases, lock this door and bring the key 
 to my house. 55 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 227 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Rueal solitude, which provides ample 
 themes for the intellect and sweet occu- 
 pations innumerable for the minor senti- 
 ments, often denies a ready object for 
 those stronger passions that enter no less 
 than the others into the human constitu- 
 tion. The suspended pathos finds its 
 remedy in settling on the first intrusive 
 shape that happens to be reasonably well 
 organized for the purpose, disregarding 
 social and other minor accessories. Where 
 the solitude is shadowed by the secret 
 melancholies of the solitary, this natural 
 law is still surer in operation. 
 Q 2 
 
228 TWO OX A TOWEE. 
 
 The laboured resistance which Lady 
 Const antine's judgment had offered to 
 her rebellious affection ere she learnt 
 that she was a widow, and which had 
 taken the form of sharp remorse, became 
 now an inward bashfulness, that rendered 
 her even more unstable of mood than she 
 had been before. However, having dis- 
 covered herself to love this handsome 
 youth of intellectual promise, she was one 
 of that mettle — fervid, cordial, and spon- 
 taneous — who would rather see all her 
 affairs going to rack and ruin than abjure 
 a tender faith in anybody to repair them. 
 But they had already gone to rack and ruin 
 by no fault of hers, and had left her such 
 a painfully narrowed existence as even lent 
 something of rationality to her attachment. 
 Thus it was that her restful and unambi- 
 tious soul found comfort in her reverses. 
 
 As for St. Cleeve, the tardiness of his 
 awakening was the natural result of his 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 229 
 
 inexperience, combined with devotion to 
 his hobby. But, like a spring bud hard 
 in bursting, the delay was compensated 
 by after speed. At once breathlessly re- 
 cognizing in this fellow- watcher of the 
 skies a handsome woman attached to him 
 in addition to the patroness and friend, 
 he truly translated the nearly forgotten 
 kiss she had given him in her moment of 
 despair. The first word of self-communing 
 about her in this aspect begot a second, 
 and the second a third, and so on to the 
 end of the chapter of development which 
 makes up the growth of a love. 
 
 Lady Constantine, in being eight or 
 nine years his senior, was an object even 
 better calculated to nourish a youth's 
 first passion than a girl of his own age, 
 superiority of experience and ripeness of 
 emotion exercising a peculiar fascination 
 over young men in their first ventures in 
 this kind. 
 
230 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 The alchemy which thus transmuted an 
 abstracted astronomer into an eager lover 
 — alas, must it be said, spoilt a promising 
 young physicist to produce a commonplace 
 inamorato ? — may be almost described as 
 working its change in one short night. 
 Next morning he was so fascinated with 
 the new sensation that he wanted to rush 
 off at once to Lady Constantine, and say, 
 " I love you true ! " in the intensest tones 
 of his mental condition, so as to register 
 his assertion in her heart before any of 
 those accidents which " creep in 'twixt 
 vows, and change decrees of kings," should 
 occur to hinder him. But his embarrass- 
 ment at standing in a new position to- 
 wards her would not allow him to present 
 himself at her door in any such hurry. 
 He waited on, as helplessly as a girl, for a 
 chance of encountering her. 
 
 But though she bad tacitly agreed to 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 231 
 
 see him on any reasonable occasion, Lady 
 Constantine did not put herself in his 
 way. She even kept herself out of his way. 
 Now that for the first time he had learnt 
 to feel a strong impatience for their meet- 
 ing, her shyness for the first time led her 
 to delay it. But given two people living 
 in one parish, who long from the depths 
 of their hearts to be in each other's com- 
 pany, what resolves of modesty, policy, 
 pride, or apprehension will keep them for 
 any length of time apart ? 
 
 One afternoon he was watching the sun 
 from his tower, half echoing the Greek 
 astronomer's wish that he might be set 
 close to that luminary for the wonder of 
 beholding it in all its glory, at the slight 
 penalty of being utterly consumed the next 
 instant. He glanced over the high-road 
 between the field and the park (which sub- 
 lunary features now too often distracted 
 
232 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 his attention from his telescope), and saw 
 her passing along that way. 
 
 She was seated in the donkey-carriage, 
 that had now taken the place of her landan, 
 the white animal looking no larger than a 
 cat at that distance. The buttoned boy, 
 who represented both coachman and foot- 
 man, walked alongside the animal's head 
 at a solemn pace ; the dog stalked at the 
 distance of a yard behind the vehicle, with- 
 out indulging in a single gambol ; and the 
 whole turn-out resembled in dignity a 
 dwarfed state procession. 
 
 Here was an excellent opportunity but 
 for two obstructions : the boy, who might 
 be curious ; and the dog, who might bark 
 and attract the attention of any labourers 
 or servants near. Yet the risk was to be 
 run, and, knowing that she would soon 
 turn up a certain shady lane at right angles 
 to the road she had followed, he ran hastily 
 
TWO OX A TOWER. ■ 233 
 
 clown the staircase, crossed the barley 
 (which now covered the field) by the path 
 not more than a foot wide, that he had 
 trodden for himself, and got into the lane at 
 the other end. By slowly walking along it 
 in the direction of the turnpike-road he 
 soon had the satisfaction of seeing her 
 coming. To his surprise, he also had the 
 additional satisfaction of perceiving that 
 neither boy nor dog was in her company. 
 
 They both blushed as they approached, 
 she from sex, he from inexperience. One 
 thing she seemed to see in a moment, that 
 in the interval of her absence St. Cleeve 
 had become a man ; and as he greeted her 
 with this new and maturer light in his 
 eyes, she could not hide her embarrass- 
 ment, or meet their fire. 
 
 " I have just sent my page across to 
 the column with your book on Cometary 
 Nuclei," she said softly; "that you might 
 
234< TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 not have to come to the house for it. I 
 did not know I should meet you here." 
 
 " Didn't you wish me to come to the 
 house for it ? " 
 
 ' ; I did not, frankly. You know why, 
 do you not ? " 
 
 " Yes, I know. Well, my longing is at 
 rest. I have met you again. But are you 
 unwell, that you drive out in this chair ? " 
 
 " No ; I walked out this morning, and 
 am a little tired." 
 
 " I have been looking for you night and 
 day. Why do you turn your face aside ? 
 You used not to be so." Her hand rested 
 on the side of the chair, and he took it. 
 " Do you know that since w^e last met, I 
 have been thinking of you — daring to think 
 of you — as I never thought of you be- 
 fore ? " 
 
 "Yes, I know it." 
 
 " How did you know ? " 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 235 
 
 " I saw it in your face when you came 
 up." 
 
 " Well, I suppose I ought not to think 
 of you so. And yet, had I not learnt to, I 
 should never fully have felt how gentle and 
 sweet you are. Only think of my loss if I 
 had lived and died without seeing more in 
 you than in astronomy ! But I shall never 
 cease to do so now. When you talk I shall 
 love your understanding; when you are 
 silent I shall love your face. But how 
 shall I know that you care to be so much 
 tome?" 
 
 Her manner was disturbed as she re- 
 cognized the impending self-surrender, 
 which she knew not how to resist, and was 
 not altogether at ease in welcoming. 
 
 " Oh, Lady Constantine," he continued, 
 bending over her, " give me some proof 
 more than mere seeming and inference, 
 which are all I have at present, that you 
 
236 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 don't think tins I tell you of presumption 
 in me ! I have been unable to do anything 
 since I last saw you for pondering un- 
 certainly on this. Some proof, or little 
 sign, that we are one in heart! " 
 
 A blush settled anew on her face ; and 
 half in effort, half in spontaneity, she put 
 her finger on her cheek. He respectfully, 
 almost devotionally, kissed the spot. 
 
 " Does that suffice ? " she asked, scarcely 
 giving her words voice. 
 
 " Yes ; I am convinced." 
 
 " Then that must be the end. Let me 
 drive on ; the boy will be back again soon." 
 She spoke hastily, and looked askance, to 
 hide the heat of her cheek. 
 
 " JSTo ; the tower door is open, and he 
 will go to the top, and waste his time in 
 looking through the telescope." 
 
 " Then you should rush back, for he will 
 do some damage." 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 237 
 
 " No ; lie may do what lie likes, tinker 
 and spoil the instrument, destroy my 
 papers, — anything, so that he will stay 
 there and leave us alone." 
 
 She glanced up with a species of pained 
 pleasure. 
 
 "You never used to feel like that! " she 
 said, and there was keen self -reproach in 
 her voice. " You were once so devoted to 
 your science, that the thought of an in- 
 truder into your temple would have driven 
 you wild. Now you don't care ; and who 
 is to blame ? Ah, not you, not you! " 
 
 The animal ambled on with her, and he, 
 leaning on the side of the little vehicle, 
 kept her company. 
 
 "Well, don't let us think of that," he 
 said. " I offer myself and all my energies, 
 frankly and entirely, to you, my dear, dear 
 lady, whose I shall be always ! But my 
 words in telling you this will only injure 
 
238 TWO OX A TOWER. 
 
 my meaning, instead of emphasize it. In 
 expressing, even to myself, my thoughts of 
 you, I find that I fall into phrases which, 
 as a critic, I should hitherto have heartilv 
 despised for their commonness. What's 
 the use of saying, for instance, as I have 
 just said, that I give myself entirely to you, 
 and shall be yours always, — that you have 
 my devotion, my highest homage ? Those 
 words have been used so frequently in a 
 flippant manner that honest use of them is 
 not distinguishable from the unreal. 5 ' He 
 turned to her, and added, smiling, " Your 
 eyes are to be my stars for the future." 
 
 " Yes, I know it, — I know it, and all you 
 would say ! I dreaded even while I hoped 
 for this, my dear young friend," she replied, 
 her eyes being full of tears. "I am in- 
 juring you; who knows that I am not 
 ruining your future, — I who ought to know^ 
 better? Nothing can come of this, — 
 
TWO OX A TOWER. 239 
 
 nothing must, — and I am only wasting 
 your time. Why have I drawn you off 
 from a grand celestial study to study poor 
 lonely me ? Say you will never despise 
 me, when you get older, for this episode in 
 our lives. But you will, — I know you 
 will! All men do, when they have been 
 attracted in their unsuspecting youth, as I 
 have attracted you. I ought to have kept 
 my resolve." 
 
 "What was that?" 
 
 " To bear anything rather than draw you 
 from your high purpose; to be like the 
 noble citizen of old Greece, who, attending 
 a sacrifice, let himself be burnt to the bone 
 by a coal that jumped into his sleeve rather 
 than disturb the sacred ceremony." 
 
 " But can I not study and love both ? " 
 
 " I hope so, — I earnestly hope so. But 
 you'll be the first if you clo, and I am the 
 responsible one if you do not." 
 
240 TWO ON A TOWBR. 
 
 " You speak as if I were quite a cliild, 
 and you immensely older. Why, how old 
 do you think I am ? I am twenty." 
 
 " You seem younger. Well, that's so 
 much the better. Twenty sounds strong 
 and firm. How old do you think I 
 am?" 
 
 "I have never thought of considering." 
 He innocently turned to scrutinize her face. 
 She winced a little. But the instinct was 
 premature. Time had taken no liberties 
 with her features as yet ; nor had trouble 
 very roughly handled her, to outward 
 view. 
 
 " I will tell you," she replied, speaking 
 almost with physical pain, yet as if deter- 
 mination should carry her through. " I 
 am eight-and-twenty — nearly — I mean a 
 little more, a few months more. Am I not 
 a fearful deal older than you ? ' ' 
 
 "At first it seems a great deal," he 
 
TWO ON A TOWEK. 241 
 
 answered, musing. " But it doesn't seem 
 much when one gets used to it." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " she exclaimed. " It is a 
 good deal." 
 
 <« Very well, then, sweetest Lady Con- 
 stantine, let it be," he said gently. 
 
 " You should not let it be ! A polite man 
 would have flatly contradicted me. . . . 
 Oh, I am ashamed of this ! " she added, 
 a moment after, with a subdued, sad 
 look upon the ground. " I am speaking 
 by the card of the outer world, which I 
 have left behind utterly ; no such lip-service 
 is known in your sphere. I care nothing 
 for those things, really ; but that which is 
 called the Eve in us will out sometimes. 
 Well, we will forget that now, as we must, 
 at no very distant date, forget all the rest 
 of this." 
 
 He walked beside her thoughtfully a- 
 while, with his eyes also bent on the road. 
 
 vol. i. R 
 
242 TWO ON A TO WEE. 
 
 " Why must we forget it all ? " lie in- 
 quired. 
 
 " It is only an interlude." 
 
 " An interlude ! It is no interlude to me. 
 Oh, how can you talk so lightly of this, 
 Lady Constantine ? And yet, if I were to 
 go away from here, I might, perhaps, soon 
 reduce it to an interlude ! Yes," he resumed 
 impulsively, " I will go away. Love dies, 
 and it is just as well to strangle it in its 
 birth ; it can only die once ! I'll go." 
 
 " No, no ! " she said, looking up apprehen- 
 sively. ' ' I misled you. It is no interlude 
 to me, — it is tragical. I only meant that 
 from a worldly point of view it is an inter- 
 lude, which we should try to forget. But 
 the world is not all. You will not go 
 away ? " 
 
 But he continued, drearily, " Yes, yes, I 
 see it all ; you have enlightened me. It 
 will be hurting your prospects even more 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 243 
 
 than mine, if I stay. Now Sir Blount is 
 dead, you are free again, — may marry 
 where you will, but for this fancy of ours. 
 I'll leave Welland, before harm comes of 
 my staying." 
 
 " Don't decide to do a thing so rash ! ' : 
 she begged, seizing his hand, and looking 
 miserable at the effect of her words. " I 
 shall have nobody left in the world to 
 care for ! And now I have given you the 
 great telescope, and lent you the column, it 
 would be ungrateful to go away ! I was 
 wrong; believe me that I did not mean 
 that it was a mere interlude to me. Oh, 
 if you only knew how very, very far it is 
 from that ! lb is my doubt of the result to 
 you that makes me speak so slightingly." 
 
 They were now approaching cross-roads, 
 
 and, casually looking up, they beheld, 
 
 thirty or forty yards beyond the crossing, 
 
 Mr. Torkingham, who was leaning over a 
 
 e 2 
 
244 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 gate, his back being towards them. As 
 yet he had not recognized their approach. 
 
 The master-passion had already sup- 
 planted St. Cleeve's natural ingenuousness 
 by subtlety. 
 
 "Would it be well for us to meet Mr. 
 Torkingham just now ? " he began. 
 
 " Certainly not," she said hastily, and 
 pulling the rein she instantly drove down 
 the right-hand road. " I cannot meet 
 anybody ! " she murmured. " Would it 
 not be better that you leave me now ? — 
 not for my pleasure, but that there may 
 arise no distressing tales about us before 
 we know — how to act in this — this" — 
 (she smiled faintly at him) " heartaching 
 extremity ! " 
 
 They were passing under a huge oak- 
 tree, whose limbs, irregular with shoulders, 
 knuckles, and elbows, stretched horizon- 
 tally over the lane in a manner recalling 
 
TWO ON A TOWER. 2^5 
 
 Absalom's death. A slight rustling was 
 perceptible amid the leafage as they drew 
 out from beneath it, and, turning up his 
 eyes, Swithin saw that very buttoned page, 
 whose advent they had dreaded, looking 
 down with interest at them from a perch 
 not much higher than a yard above their 
 heads. He had a bunch of oak-apples in 
 hand, plainly the object of his climb, and 
 was furtively watching Lady Constantine 
 with the hope that she might not see 
 him. But that she had already done, 
 though she did not reveal it, and, fearing 
 that the latter words of their conversation 
 had been overheard, they spoke not till 
 they had passed the next turning. 
 
 She stretched out her hand to his. 
 " This must not go on," she said implor- 
 ingly. " My anxiety as to what may be 
 said of such methods of meeting makes me 
 too unhappy. See what has happened ! " 
 
246 TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 She could not help smiling. " Out of the 
 frying-pan into the fire ! After meanly 
 turning to avoid the parson, we have 
 rushed into a worse publicity. It is too 
 humiliating to have to avoid people, and 
 lowers both you and me. The only remedy 
 is not to meet." 
 
 " Very well," said S within, with a sigh. 
 " So it shall be." 
 
 And with smiles that might more truly 
 have been tears they parted there and then. 
 
 END OF VOL. I 
 
LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY GILBERT AND EIVINGTON, LIMITED, 
 
 ST. JOHN'S SQUARE. 
 
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