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 I
 
 LADY LAUEA 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 LADY LAUEA 
 
 BY 
 
 MARY ELIZABETH CHRISTIE 
 
 L\ THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 STRAHAN A2sD COMPANY LIMITED 
 34. PATERNOSTER ROW. LONDON 
 
 Ail rigkt4 iii>!Tvni.
 
 Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Printers, London and Aylesbury.
 
 vl 
 
 TO 
 
 B. A. C 
 
 ' / too have longed for trenchant force. 
 And will like a dividing spear; 
 Have praised Vie keen, unscrupulous course, 
 Which knows no doubt, which feels no fear. 
 
 But in th€ world I learnt . . . 
 
 That will, thai energy, though ra7-e, 
 Are yet far, far less rare than love. '
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 ^M 
 
 ^^Mm 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 old 
 
 Oft expectation fails, and most oft there 
 Where most it promises ; and oft it liits 
 \Yhere hope is coldest and despair most fits.' 
 
 ANY times has it been my fate 
 to make the round of the 
 
 galleries at Ai'dgwen while an 
 servant of the house told to a 
 dozen or so of visitors the story of the 
 lives and deaths of the lords and ladies 
 whose pictures hung upon the walls. 
 For Ai'dgwen was the show-place of our 
 neighbourhood, and whenever we had 
 friends staying with us we used to 
 make a point of driving them over to 
 see the castle and its grounds. You 
 
 VOL. I. 1
 
 2 LADY LAURA. 
 
 might therefore reasonably expect me to 
 preface my story of Lady Laura with 
 an historical sketch of her ancestry. 
 I ought to be able to tell you on what 
 field the first knight of Gwyn won his 
 spurs, for what services the barony of 
 Ehoos was granted to his grandson, and 
 all the reasons of state policy that led 
 to the elevation of the fourth Baron 
 Ehoos to the earldom of St. Asaph now 
 enjoyed by his descendants. All these 
 things and many more I should have 
 at my fingers' ends, had I profited 
 duly by the opportunities of my early 
 life. But I must confess that on the 
 occasion of those visits to Ardgwen 
 my mind was apt to Vv^ander away from 
 the details of a past in which I had 
 no part in order to busy itself with 
 speculations about the every-day doings 
 of the actual occupants of the castle. It 
 is true that I had not much more in
 
 LADY LAURA. 3 
 
 common with the living Gwynnes than 
 with their dead forefathers, for we did 
 not belong to ' county- society,' and I 
 never had a chance of setting foot in 
 the castle except on the days when it 
 was thrown open for a few hours to 
 all the respectable world. But I knew 
 every member of the family by sight, 
 and I had learned their names and ages 
 out of a shabby copy of Debrett's 
 Peerage that used to lie on the table 
 of the Cresford Eeading-room. And 
 though I would fain claim credit for 
 having despised the pomps and glories 
 of the world from the time my god- 
 fathers and godmothers renounced them 
 in my name, truth compels me to say 
 that in those days the thing I desired 
 beyond all else in life was that some 
 happy accident should bring about an 
 intimacy between myself and the mag- 
 nates of my world, and that I never
 
 4 LADY LAURA. 
 
 started on one of our expeditions to 
 the castle without a secret persuasion 
 that this time I must come in for the 
 romantic meeting that was to lead to 
 such glorious results. And so I went 
 from room to room, paying no attention 
 to the guide's narrative, and glancing 
 very hurriedly at the curious and costly 
 treasures of the house in which other 
 visitors seemed to find inexhaustible 
 sources of interest. All my interest 
 was on the watch for signs of present 
 habitation : an open book left upon a 
 table was a signal to me to prepare 
 for a meeting in the next room, the 
 commonest piece of needlework with a 
 needle sticking in it was more curious 
 to me than the most exquisite Gobelin 
 tapestry, an unfinished water-colour 
 drawing with the paint still wet upon 
 the paper fascinated me more than all 
 the Vandykes and reputed Holbeins
 
 LADY LAURA. 5 
 
 in tlie collection — thi'illing me vdtli 
 a sense of living, working presences, 
 tantalizingly near, and yet invisible and 
 apparently inaccessible as the very dead 
 themselves. The miich-desii-ed meeting 
 was never granted me, and time after 
 time as I came avay fi'om the castle 
 all that I earned home vras a weary 
 sense of disappointment, and a suspicion 
 that the reproachful note which made 
 itself felt in the old servant's voice as 
 he delivered sentence after sentence cf 
 precious information was dii'ected with 
 special comminatory meaning at in- 
 attentive me. 
 
 Xo, that was not quite all. There was 
 one room in the castle — the last of the 
 long suite of apartments to which sight- 
 seers were admitted — oi which every 
 detail impressed itself minutely on my 
 memorv. And vet I saw that room 
 more rarely than any other, because it
 
 6 LADY LAURA. 
 
 was in constant use as a sitting-room, 
 and could only be shown when the family- 
 were away. It was separated from the 
 other rooms by about twenty yards of 
 narrow stone passage into which the 
 afternoon sunlight shone dimly through 
 stained-glass windows placed high in the 
 wall. I remember that I always felt 
 the moment of entering the last room 
 of the connected suite to be a very 
 critical one, for if the family were 
 away the door opening from it into 
 this passage would be open — if they 
 were at home, it would be closed : that 
 moment therefore decided whether or 
 not the meeting was an impossibility 
 for that day. 
 
 I might certainly have satisfied myself 
 on this point by listening to the commu- 
 nications that the servants at the door 
 were ready enough to make to all comers ; 
 but to do this might have robbed the
 
 LADY LAURA. 7 
 
 visit of all its excitement, whereas the 
 other course had the advantage of offer- 
 ing consolation at the very moment that 
 disappointment was made certain. For 
 next to the pleasm-e I promised myself 
 in meeting in the flesh some of the 
 people of the house, was my delight in 
 looking at the portraits which hung on 
 the walls of this favourite room. Very 
 much more interesting to me were those 
 fresh, bright-coloured likenesses of living- 
 people than the dim memorials of the 
 manners and costumes of bygone days 
 which covered the walls of the other 
 rooms. And when tlieir story was told, 
 I listened with breathless attention while 
 names and birth- dates already famiHar 
 to me were detailed with reverential 
 accuracy. 
 
 Let me describe those pictures. There 
 was Lord St. Asaph as a very young 
 man with large, dreamy forehead, kind-
 
 8 LADY LAURA. 
 
 liDg eyes, and delicately cut month 
 rich in subtle lines of feeling — a beau- 
 tiful face full of fire and tenderness, in 
 which people said it was no wonder 
 that the world should once have read 
 the promise of poetic power and pro- 
 phesied great things of the young 
 nobleman. No wonder either that he 
 himself should have believed the pro- 
 phecies, and not much wonder, added 
 some made wise by the event, that hope 
 was disappointed — seeing how the weak- 
 ness of the head contradicted the promise 
 of the countenance. 
 
 I am repeating the remarks of other 
 sight-seers. To me Lord St. Asaph's 
 literary career was the least interest- 
 ing thing about him, and the failure 
 of his poetry made no deduction from 
 the admiration with which I regarded 
 his portrait. But, young as I was, I 
 could not fail to be struck by the per-
 
 LADY LAURA. 9 
 
 verse contrast between it and the com- 
 panion picture of the majestic woman in 
 dark-green riding habit and slouched felt 
 hat, which represented Lady St. Asaph 
 in the year of her marriage. As you 
 looked from one to the other, it was 
 impossible to escape the thought that 
 husband and wife should have exchanged 
 sexes, for the strong repose expressed in 
 every line of Lady St. Asaph's face and 
 figure produced an effect that was almost 
 masculine by the side of the restless 
 sensibility and extreme dehcacy of or- 
 ganization that characterized the other. 
 Between these two pictures was a 
 crayon head of the eldest son of the 
 house, Lord Ehoos, a rather plain boy, 
 unlike both father and mother. Then, 
 opposite to Lady St. Asaph, another 
 crayon drawing represented three young 
 daughters, all very hke their mother, 
 and so near to one another in height
 
 lo LADY LAURA. 
 
 that it was easy to tell at a glance that 
 they had followed one another into the 
 world in annual succession. I knew 
 their names, Mary, Eachel, Sarah, and 
 it was my dehght to forestall official 
 information hy communicating them in 
 eager whispers to any friend whose private 
 ear I could command. Separated from 
 this group hy an old-fashioned mirror was 
 another, done by the same hand and 
 bearing the same date, in which were 
 represented a much younger boy and girl 
 — the pets of the household, in whose 
 favour all the laws of discipline made 
 for the benefit of the elders were said to 
 be dangerously relaxed. There was a 
 difference of about two years between 
 these children — the girl being the 
 younger. In the boy the fine propor- 
 tions and brilliant colouring of the 
 mother were again reproduced, but the 
 girl was of a different type: she had
 
 LADY LAURA. ii 
 
 darker liaii', smaller limbs, less colour, 
 less fulness of outline than the elder 
 sisters — evidently she did not inherit 
 from the mother. You ^vere tempted to 
 find her Hke the father, and indeed a 
 good case might be made for the re- 
 semblance by matching feature with 
 feature and explaining away differences 
 of expression as due to the counteracting 
 tendencies of the maternal stock. In- 
 genious people, fond of analysis, would 
 often amuse themselves with thus break- 
 ing up the little Lady Laura into her 
 constituent parts, and pointing out just 
 how much was derived from the father 
 and how much from the mother, until 
 their neat theories were rudely upset 
 by a glance at another pictui'e, which, 
 though not a modern one, was yet 
 allowed to hang side by side with the 
 portraits of the living. It was a pictui-e 
 of a very young girl, unformed and yet
 
 12 LADY LAURA. 
 
 not ungainly— thanks to the slim height 
 of the figure which asserted itself grace- 
 fully in spite of the clumsy black drapery 
 and preternaturally long-waisted bodice 
 in which the fashion of the time en- 
 veloped it. She wore a ruff of moderate 
 size, which opened in front so as to 
 reveal a very small round throat, on 
 which the head rested with easy sim- 
 plicity. There were no jewels in her hair, 
 which was simply knotted on the top 
 of her head, nor on her hands, which 
 were of a nervous, sensitive type, too 
 thin for beauty but full of character 
 and expression that made them more 
 interesting than many beautiful hands. 
 Everything about her was expressive of 
 that kind of refined purity which touches 
 asceticism without catching its asperity. 
 The features were delicately aquiline, 
 the complexion clear but colourless, and 
 the eyes — but how shall I describe those
 
 LADY LAURA. 13 
 
 eyes so as to convey to you any idea of 
 the hannting sadness of their gaze ? I 
 cannot say whether they were grey or 
 brown, hut I know that they were large 
 and dark, and veiled by long soft lashes, 
 and that they seemed to follow me all 
 over the room with looks that now pierced 
 and penetrated, and now held me fast in 
 tender contemplation, as if, having dis- 
 covered my secret soal, she were pausing 
 to weigh it in a loving balance before pass- 
 ing sentence on its vanity. 
 
 There was a mysterious fascination for 
 me in everything connected with this 
 picture — above all, in the strange like- 
 ness that linked it with the little girl 
 in the modern portrait; for unmis- 
 takably the true ancestress of the little 
 Laura in the white frock and coral 
 necklace was this dark-eyed kinswoman 
 who claimed her, across the generations, 
 by a likeness traceable, not so much in
 
 14 LADY LAURA. 
 
 line of feature and curve of limb, as in 
 the spiritual meanings of their meeting 
 looks. The resemblance was so strong, 
 that sometimes as I looked from one 
 picture to the other the fancy would 
 come to me that the elder spirit had 
 been born anew in the child of to-day, 
 and that the life that was just dawning 
 was but a continuation of that which 
 had set more than two centuries ago. 
 That the two were namesakes was an 
 accident so much in sympathy with my 
 superstition, that I was tempted to find 
 it a con'oborating fact. 
 
 There was a sad story attaching to 
 this Lady Laura of old days. She was 
 the daughter of the narrow-browed earl 
 and the high-cheeked countess of Eliza- 
 bethan times whose pictures hung in the 
 gallery divided by an uncovered panel. 
 In this blank space it was said that their 
 daughter's picture had been originally
 
 LADY LAURA. 15 
 
 hung. But the poor girl had sinned 
 against the family orthodoxies, lapsing 
 into the faith of Rome a generation after 
 the Gwynnes had adopted Protestant 
 doctrine ; she had taken conventual 
 vows, though forbidden the life of the 
 convent, and having estranged the affec- 
 tion of her family by refusing a marriage 
 that was desired for her, she had pined 
 away in loneliness of heart stedfast to 
 the end to the convictions of her con- 
 science ; and when at last her persecuted 
 spirit found sanctuary in death, the stem 
 Puritanism of her father had taken a 
 barren vengeance by commanding her 
 portrait to be taken from the wall and 
 hidden out of sight of tlie family her 
 apostacy had disgraced. 
 
 And so for generations it had stood 
 in a lumber-room with its face towards 
 the wall, till it was discovered one day 
 by the present earl; who was struck by
 
 i6 LADY LAURA. 
 
 its artistic merits, and at once gave it 
 a place of honour in his favourite room. 
 There it hangs now, and connoisseurs 
 consider it the gem of the collection, 
 while others who are not connoisseurs 
 say it interests them because it alone 
 of all the old pictures in the house 
 strikes them as representing not a period 
 or a fashion, but a human being who 
 once lived and suffered. So does art 
 bring about revenges — extorting sym- 
 pathy from the future for those whom 
 the present will not know, and forcing 
 us to pay a toll of tears to the pictured 
 sorrow, while we pass by the living one 
 with a dry-eyed stare. 
 
 There was something very touching 
 to me about the idea of this young 
 girl, for whom her own generation had 
 no tenderness, being brought back into 
 the warm circle of family affections by 
 the appreciation of late descendants;
 
 LADY LAURA. 17 
 
 and I liked Lord and Lady St. Asaph 
 for nothing so well as for having 
 made her godmother to their youngest 
 daughter. 
 
 But sometimes the thought of the 
 relation filled me with pain by suggest- 
 ing that perhaps the little girl was 
 destined to inherit not the name and 
 mien only, but the sorrows, of her ances- 
 tress. More often, however, my imagina- 
 tion moved upon happier lines, and I 
 pleased myself with fancying that the 
 soul that had suffered three hundred 
 years ago had returned to the world to 
 try its fortunes over again under the 
 happier auspices of a kinder age. I 
 believed that all the sweet and sacred 
 things of life that sorrow and death 
 had stolen from the Laura of the past, 
 were being guarded like the treasure- 
 hoard of some old fable, to be repaid 
 with interest to the Laura of to-day. 
 
 VOL. I. ig 2
 
 i8 LADY LAURA. 
 
 Deeply, however, as this picture in- 
 terested me, the tribute of admiration 
 that I paid to it was but secondary to 
 that which I accorded to the portrait 
 of Lady St. Asaph herself. There was 
 no doubt that for me hers was the 
 picture of the house. The first time 
 I saw it I was a little disappointed 
 that she should be so plainly dressed — 
 I had expected a blaze of velvet and 
 diamonds ; but after a little I thought 
 she looked grander in the long plain 
 drapery that showed so well the fine 
 outlines of her figure, and I became 
 convinced that no ornaments could 
 have been so becoming to her aquihne 
 features and brilliant complexion, as 
 the waving rim of the felt hat that 
 shaded her forehead and the dark 
 ostrich feather that swept over her hair 
 as if to redeem with a feminine grace 
 the severity of the remainder of the
 
 LADY LAURA. 19 
 
 costume. How well I remember the 
 proud air with which the butler used 
 to pause before the picture and say, 
 * The present countess ! ' — in a tone that 
 seemed to challenge comparison with 
 all the countesses of the past. And 
 how I used to wonder as he went on to 
 say that she was the only daughter of 
 the Eeverend Theophilus Eden, rector of 
 Wetherby in Lincolnshire. I never could 
 believe that she had looked like that 
 when she was plain Miss Eden, and yet 
 the picture had been painted imme- 
 diately after her marriage. It seemed 
 to me that to have that self-contained 
 look in every line of face and figure, 
 one must be born and bred a countess. 
 
 ^ A lordly woman ! ' ejaculated one day 
 a visitor who evidently felt as I did ; ^ I 
 should have thought she must have been 
 born in the purple.' 
 
 The stranger had hit on the right
 
 20 LADY LAURA. 
 
 epithet : she was a lordly woman. Not 
 masculine, for that suggests ungraceful 
 angularity, a harsh voice, and a bluster- 
 ing manner ; and certainly none of these 
 were characteristics of Lady St. Asaph. 
 Her outlines were large and simple, with- 
 out ceasing to be round and womanly; 
 her voice was clear and strong and cer- 
 tainly a little loud for a woman, but its 
 tones were firm and equable, and as 
 incapable of the ungentle clamour of the 
 scold as of the thin shrillness in which 
 weaker femininity complains. Then her 
 manner — there was reserve and measure 
 in all that she did and said; her very 
 movement had more repose in it than 
 has the quiescence of most people. Some 
 there were who made a fault of this, 
 complaining that she was too passionless, 
 that she wanted emotional warmth and 
 colour. But to me it seemed that this 
 majestic calm was of the very essence
 
 LADY LAURA. 21 
 
 of lier rank — sphering her serenely above 
 the fluttering agitations of the ordinary 
 woman's life. 
 
 But the old servant was right in his 
 account of her origin : the lordly air had 
 come to her independently of the position 
 it fitted so well. Her childhood and 
 girlhood had been passed in a secluded 
 rectory house in the fen-country of Lin- 
 colnshu-e, where she had known little 
 society but that of farmers and farm- 
 labourers. For her mother had died 
 while she was still a child ; and her 
 father was a man of ascetic character 
 who allowed himself no relaxation from 
 his ministerial labours, save such as 
 was to be found in communion with 
 the divines, philosophers, and historians 
 whose solid tomes filled ^^ shelves of 
 his library to the exclusion of all lighter 
 literature; and after his wife's death he 
 fell into unsocial habits, so that by
 
 22 LADY LAURA. 
 
 degrees all neighbourly intercourse with 
 the clergy and squirearchy of the county 
 was dropped, and the interests of the 
 parish and the library had to be sufficient 
 to the daughter as to the father. Mr. 
 Eden would indeed have laughed to scorn 
 the notion that his child could need 
 other companionship than that of the 
 philosophers of the old world and the 
 Christian saints and Fathers with whom 
 he was careful to acquaint her early ; and 
 Eachel herself would probably have found 
 little that was congenial to the severe 
 quahty of her mind in the society of boys 
 and girls whose duties and pleasures 
 knew no wider range than that of the 
 schoolroom and the playground. Of 
 regular instruction she never had any 
 from the time when her mother taught 
 her to read and write, and to put even 
 stitches into a patchwork quilt. For all 
 education beyond these first elements
 
 LADY LAURA. 23 
 
 she was thrown upon her own mental 
 activity and the direction of chcum- 
 stances. And yet, early called to the 
 duties and responsibilities of womanhood, 
 she was never found unequal to her part. 
 Instinctively she seemed to fit herself 
 for whatever service was required of her, 
 intuitively to acquire the knowledge that 
 could help ; and as she possessed from 
 childhood the air of seK-contained power 
 which caused the visitor at Ardgwen to 
 pronounce her a ^lordly woman,' she 
 never failed to obtain that confidence 
 from the outer world which is such a 
 valuable auxiliary of the most assm^ed 
 confidence in self. 
 
 When her mother died, and the old 
 servant who had nursed her as a baby, 
 and was therefore disposed to expect that 
 she would remain a baby all her days, 
 showed an inclination to assume the 
 household government, Eachel effectually
 
 24 LADY LAURA. 
 
 dismissed the idea by saying, ^ 1 will see 
 to things; mamma wished me to keep 
 house.' And though the speaker was an 
 unformed child of fourteen, whose hair 
 was cut short like a boy's and whose 
 plain black frock was protected by a very 
 juvenile pinafore, the manner of speech 
 was so self-possessed, and the' tone of 
 voice so conclusive, that the keys were 
 given up without protest, and thence- 
 forward Kachel kept her father's house, 
 ordering dinner daily and casting-up 
 tradesmen's books with the gravity and 
 regularity of a veteran housekeeper. 
 Then, as time went on, and the rector's 
 failing sight made him dependent on 
 younger eyes for the continuance of the 
 literary occupations in which he de- 
 lighted, Eachel naturally became secre- 
 tary and reader to her father; and, as 
 she had bent her mind to mastering 
 domestic and parochial problems when
 
 LADY LAURA. 25 
 
 the duties of the household and the 
 parish were asked of her, so she gave 
 herself to the study of Greek and Latin 
 when she found that a knowledge of 
 these would make her a more efficient 
 help to her father. 
 
 This hahit of doing as a matter of 
 course whatever had to be done was a 
 very striking and essential thing in her 
 character. She was entu'ely without 
 that form of humour that finds food for 
 merriment in any and every conjuncture 
 of life that is inconsistent with conven- 
 tional expectation : a child called to a 
 woman's work, a strong man lending him- 
 self to the petty tasks that make up the 
 daily feminine existence, a great heart 
 imprisoned in narrow and cripphng cir- 
 cumstances, never stirred her smiles. All 
 the actual facts of life were confronted 
 by her in that spirit of simple seriousness 
 that calls nothing common or unclean,
 
 26 LADY LAURA. 
 
 provided it be true and useful. Of this 
 habit of mind much was doubtless due 
 to her almost exclusive association with 
 people whose lots had fallen among the 
 more obdurate and pressing facts of exist- 
 ence. Familiar contact with people 
 whose normal day was one of strife with 
 hunger and nakedness taught her many 
 lessons that are denied to those who live 
 their lives in the upper and middle worlds, 
 where privation means a diminution of 
 luxury, and ruin is a phrase for having 
 to pass from the front street to the back. 
 She knew the labourers of Wetherby as 
 men and women of varying characters 
 and circumstances, and she considered 
 their life-problems individually, as we all 
 do the life-problems of our friends and 
 acquaintances — thus escaping the temp- 
 tation, so seductive to those who merely 
 contemplate want and misery from a 
 remote luxurious platform, of learning to
 
 LADY LAURA. 27 
 
 look on the poor as an exceptional class, 
 to whom a dispensation of all work and 
 no play is certainly beneficial, and per- 
 haps even mysteriously pleasant. It 
 never occurred to her to lump their lives 
 together as the lives of the working class, 
 any more than it occurs to you and me to 
 lump together the lives of all the barristers 
 or clergymen of our acquaintance ; neither 
 did it occur to her to theorize about 
 them. To her, the differing degrees of 
 life were facts of nature, unalterable and 
 inexplicable as the various orders in the 
 animal and vegetable worlds ; and though 
 she never deluded herself into thinking 
 that all lots were equally pleasant, or that 
 there was connection of cause and effect 
 between intrinsic worth and social posi- 
 tion, she saw that her circumstances 
 fitted her to be in many ways the helper 
 and adviser of the toihng people among 
 whom she lived, and she supposed that
 
 28 LADY LAURA. 
 
 she was but discharging the responsi- 
 bilities of the position in which God had 
 seen fit to place her by helping her 
 friends to fulfil the duties of the more 
 arduous stations which the same hand 
 had appointed to them. Such was the 
 simple old-world doctrine she heard from 
 her father's pulpit and saw expressed in 
 his daily life; and having little of the 
 critical bias in her character, she accepted 
 it in all humility, and strove conscien- 
 tiously to act upon it. 
 
 Amid such influences Eachel Eden grew 
 to the age of four-and- twenty. Then 
 her father died, and the world changed 
 for her. Had it been possible for her to 
 live on in the old house, she would pro- 
 bably have chosen to do so, and would 
 very likely have spent all her life among 
 the Lincolnshire peasants whom she knew 
 and loved. But, of course, the rectory 
 had to be vacated for her father's sue-
 
 LADY LAURA. 29 
 
 cessor, and Eachel in her loneliness felt 
 helpless to shape a new way of life out 
 of the fragments of the old one. Her 
 greatness lay in her power of adapting 
 herself to given circumstances, and her 
 very excellence in this direction seemed 
 to unfit her for the more creative task 
 of shaping circumstances to fit herself. 
 At the critical moment of her life her 
 prayer was for guidance from without ; 
 and when a distant cousin of her mother's, 
 who was unknown to her except hy name, 
 wrote to offer her a home in London, she 
 accepted the offer in a spirit of super- 
 stitious submission, making no condition 
 except that her old nurse should be 
 allowed to accompany her. The cousin, 
 a handsome woman of five-and-thirty, 
 was a widow of some years' standing, who 
 after a suitable period of retirement was 
 desirous of returning to the world of 
 fashion where she had formerly held a
 
 30 LADY LAURA. 
 
 position of some distinction ; and in 
 inviting Eachel to live with her she 
 was motived quite as much by the desire 
 to secure for herself the support of com- 
 panionship as by disinterested care for 
 the orphan. She made no difficulty 
 about Eachel's stipulation, and it was 
 quietly arranged that the two women 
 should live together. 
 
 At her cousin's house Miss Eden 
 found herself in the midst of a bril- 
 liant literary circle of which she was 
 before long recognised as a conspicuous 
 ornament. She was introduced to men 
 of science and women of fashion, she 
 talked to poets and was asked to sit 
 by painters ; and before the time of 
 mourning for her father was at an end 
 she had achieved a wide reputatior 
 in London drawing-rooms. Happily she 
 was herself quite unconscious of her 
 fame ; and when at last the black gown
 
 LADY LAURA. 31 
 
 was exchanged for a coloured one, and 
 site began to accompany her cousin into 
 the world, those who knew her already 
 by the reputation of her beauty and 
 talents found nothing so captivating in 
 the beautiful Miss Eden as the almost 
 childlike simplicity with which she ig- 
 nored the admiration that surrounded her. 
 She became universally popular and 
 great marriages were predicted for her. 
 Nevertheless three seasons passed by 
 and she was still Miss Eden, and people 
 began to discover that their paragon 
 was after all not faultless. Some even 
 went so far as to find in her best points 
 nothing but the defect of opposite 
 qualities. What was once admii'ed as 
 sincerity was now condemned as blunt- 
 ness, her simplicity became a kind of 
 narrowness, her strength of character 
 mere hardness resulting from her want 
 of womanly tenderness and delicate
 
 32 LADY LAURA. 
 
 sensibility. Nay, her very beauty was 
 a thing to wonder at rather than admire, 
 so deficient was it in all the characters 
 that touch the springs of poetry and love. 
 Not that Eachel herself was much 
 changed during her three London sea- 
 sons : her qualities remained, her defects 
 were not new. But it was with her 
 as with many a conqueror who in the 
 beginning has carried all before him by 
 the boldness and novelty of his assault, 
 and yet fails in the after- work of settle- 
 ment from defect of sympathy with the 
 conquered race. After the brief excite- 
 ment of her first introduction she realised 
 sadly that she would never be other 
 than a stranger in the world of London 
 society. And in truth, though there 
 had been much of wholesome influence 
 in the circumstances of her early life, 
 it must be admitted that the training 
 she had received in the Lincolnshire
 
 LADY LAURA. 33 
 
 parsonage had not been without its 
 defects. It was unfortunately calculated 
 to develop only such tendencies as were 
 already strongest in her — exaggerating 
 the natural severity of her character, and 
 contributing nothing that could stimulate 
 imagination or awaken aesthetic sensi- 
 bility. Early experience famiharised her 
 with types of moral excellence cast in 
 moulds too rough for the niceties of 
 grace, and characters of essential worth 
 distorted into almost repulsive ugliness 
 by the hard knocks that virtue and inte- 
 grity are compelled to give and take when 
 they find themselves engaged in a hand- 
 to-hand struggle with the coarsest forms 
 of vice. She saw truth and honesty 
 turn aggressive by dint of daily protest 
 against dishonesty and lying, self-depend- 
 ence sour into moroseness from disgust 
 at surrounding servility, and chastity 
 grow hard and fierce in difficult resistance 
 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 34 LADY LAURA. 
 
 to the temptations of brutish circum- 
 stance ; and insensibly she caught the 
 tone of the people who claimed her 
 sympathy. Society was not wrong when 
 it complained that Miss Eden was de- 
 ficient in all those subtleties and refine- 
 ments of feeling that are needed to 
 chasten into a fine harmony the austerer 
 gifts of heart and intellect ; but it was 
 wrong when it went on to say that she 
 despised in others the graces that were 
 wanting in herself. 
 
 It created universal astonishment when 
 at length it was announced that Eachel 
 was engaged to be married to Lord St. 
 Asaph. She was the last woman people 
 would ever have suspected him of choos- 
 ing, and he the last man to whom they 
 would have imagined her capable of sur- 
 rendering her proud maidenhood. He, the 
 most subtly complicated of men — the poet 
 of politics, the dreamer of science, the
 
 LADY LAURA. 35 
 
 democratic nobleman, the fastidious re- 
 former : she, the beauty without senti- 
 ment, the woman without weakness, whom 
 all men admired, but whom none as yet had 
 dared to love. It was incomprehensible 
 except upon the supposition that the lady 
 had spread snares from which the chivalry 
 of the gentleman had not known how 
 to extricate itself honourably ! So said 
 society in angry mortification. For Lord 
 St. Asaph was just then its darhng 
 child, and every mother in fashionable 
 London felt that Miss Eden had robbed 
 her of the most desirable of sons-in-law. 
 Those were days when society, well- 
 recovered from the shock of the French 
 Eevolution, was beginning to feel itself 
 once more settled on the firm basis of 
 time-honoured orthodoxies, social and 
 political. Jacobinism had receded into 
 safe historical distance, and the general 
 subsidence of minds into propriety which
 
 36 LADY LAURA. 
 
 had been at first welcome as a reaction 
 against anarchy, was beginning to be felt 
 as just a little dull. It was time to 
 relax one's conservatism and hold out 
 an encouraging hand to new ideas which 
 after late severe lessons might doubtless 
 be trusted to behave themselves decently 
 and to understand that the condition of 
 their admission to polite society was 
 their willingness to remain ideal. Fine 
 ladies found a safe vent for philanthro- 
 pic humours in coquetting with Utopian 
 theories about the future of the working 
 classes, and fine gentlemen whose minds 
 were not devoutly bent made an easy 
 title to philosophic dignity out of a 
 graceful scepticism lightly poised in the 
 region of intuitive theism. This was 
 the state of thought and feeling in that 
 section of society in which Miss Eden 
 lived. She had little sympathy with it. 
 Nevertheless she shared the general
 
 LADY LAURA. 37 
 
 admiration of the young nobleman who 
 was looked upon as its prophet and 
 apostle. Personally handsome and full 
 of charm, Lord St. Asaph would pro- 
 bably have won the hearts of the 
 women of his world even without the 
 intellectual gifts which secured him recog- 
 nition from the men, and which, balanced 
 as they were by correlative defects, made 
 him a most fit leader for a clique that 
 wanted graceful expression for its ideas 
 at the same time that it deprecated any 
 translation of them into immediate action. 
 He had an abundance of the enthusiasm 
 that makes speech eloquent, but none of 
 the more fatal kind that vents itself in 
 deeds ; and though he prided himself be- 
 fore all things on his political aptitudes, 
 his friends knew well that if he ever in- 
 fluenced the destinies of mankind at all 
 it would be as a writer rather than as a 
 statesman.
 
 38 LAD V LAURA. 
 
 It was at the moment of his highest 
 popularity, when all London was devour- 
 ing his first volume of poetry and re- 
 viewers were hailing him as the prophet 
 of a new literary revelation, that he pro- 
 posed to Eachel Eden and w^as accepted 
 by her in much the same spirit as that 
 in which five years ago she had accepted 
 her cousin's invitation to come and hve 
 in London. She was not in love with 
 Lord St. Asaph, but she respected and 
 admired him, and in the life he invited 
 her to share she saw a prospect of 
 greater usefulness than in that she was 
 leading at present. For she sympathized 
 with the social views he had expressed 
 in his poetry, and she never doubted that 
 as his wife it would be in her power to 
 translate them into the prose of practice. 
 She did not feign any romantic attach- 
 ment, but she told him simply that she 
 knew no man to whom she could more
 
 LADY LAURA. 39 
 
 contentedly confide the guardianship of 
 her life. 
 
 Oh, reader, do you need to be told that 
 she was disappointed ? That first volume 
 of poetry, in spite of its many beauties, 
 did not succeed in materially modifying 
 the opinions of men. And what was 
 more surprising to the public though not 
 to the author, it had no successor. The 
 talents that bid so fair in their first 
 blossoming withered before the time of 
 fruit, and within a few years of her mar- 
 riage Eachel saw her husband dethroned 
 and forgotten. She could have borne 
 the neglect of the world, if her own judg- 
 ment had not told her it was just. 
 She would have grieved little over the 
 loss of literary fame and social ascen- 
 dency, had she been allowed to realise 
 her di'eams of practical usefulness. But 
 this might not be. Lord St. Asaph's 
 vanity could not put up with a lower
 
 40 LADY LAURA. 
 
 place in society than that to which he 
 had first been bidden ; and disgusted 
 with a world that would not be reformed 
 by one volume of his poetry, he made 
 up his mind that he and his ideas could 
 not live in England. 
 
 Accordingly Ardgwen was shut up, the 
 London house was let, and Lord and 
 Lady St. Asaph with their four young 
 children went to live at Pau, which was 
 then just coming into fashion as a place 
 of refuge for impaired tempers, healths, 
 and fortunes. 
 
 But though the villa at Pau had been 
 specially chosen because its retirement 
 would favour the pursuit of poetry (for 
 since the success of Poems for the 
 People, politics had been definitively 
 renounced in favour of literature). Lord 
 St. Asaph soon discovered that the 
 stimulus of social friction was necessary 
 to literary production; and as his wife
 
 LADY LAURA. 41 
 
 was reluctant to face the inconveniences 
 of another move, he started alone to 
 make the tour of the Eui^opean capitals 
 while she and the childi'en remained 
 at Pau. 
 
 The traveller's life with its constant 
 changes of scene and society proved so 
 congenial to him that when at the end 
 of a year he returned to his wife and 
 children it was mth a mind hent on 
 settling, if one may be allowed the para- 
 dox, into a life of wanderings. Lady 
 St. Asaph protested in vain : the demon 
 of restlessness which possessed her 
 husband could not be exorcised, and 
 the only choice lay between letting him 
 go alone, and resigning herself to the 
 disagreeables of incessantly dragging 
 from place to place an establishment of 
 children, nurses, and governesses. She 
 chose the latter alternative, and the next 
 twelve years of her life were spent in
 
 42 LADY LAURA. 
 
 roaming from one foreign town to another, 
 residing a few months in this place and 
 a few weeks in that, making acquaint- 
 ances all over the world and friends 
 nowhere, and glad in spite of herself 
 when once a severe illness of her hus- 
 band's made a year's continuous resi- 
 dence at Florence an absolute necessity. 
 She had hoped at the outset, that as 
 the children grew older, reasons for 
 returning to a settled life would be 
 found in their educational needs. But, 
 according to Lord St. Asaph, these could 
 be fully met by allowing the girls to 
 have lessons from the best masters in 
 whatever place they happened to find 
 themselves, and by sending the boy 
 to Eton and letting him join them 
 abroad in the holidays. 
 
 That quiet year of nursing at Florence, 
 and one too-short spell of summer-time 
 spent most unexpectedly at Ardgwen in
 
 LADY LAURA. 43 
 
 consequence of some family business 
 that made Lord St. Asaph's presence 
 at home imperatively necessary, were 
 the bright spots in Lady St. Asaph's 
 disappointed life — especially the visit 
 to England in the com^se of which 
 Laura was born. Through all her after- 
 wanderings the sad woman carried about 
 with her a fond remembrance of the 
 beauty of that summer-time, of its rich- 
 ness and its peace, its blazing flower-beds 
 and cool green shade, its overloaded rose- 
 bushes and meadows bright with flower- 
 ing grasses, and cornfields just begin- 
 ning to yellow in the sun. In spite of 
 her long home-sickness she had started 
 for England with a heavy heart, for 
 Lord St. Asaph, determined that the 
 visit should not be prolonged further 
 than was absolutely necessary, had 
 decreed that the children should be 
 left behind, and the mother had parted
 
 44 LADY LAURA. 
 
 from them with a painful foreboding of 
 new trouble. But consolation had come 
 with the baby that was born among 
 the home-surroundings, and Laura was 
 welcomed as the dawn of a better day. 
 Both parents clung with especial tender- 
 ness to the child that had first seen 
 light in the old family-house, and for 
 a time Lady St. Asaph hoped that she 
 might now succeed in persuading her 
 husband to remain in his own country. 
 But in vain. After two months spent 
 at Ardgwen, he declared himself worse 
 in health and spirits than he had ever 
 been before, and Lady St. Asaph once 
 more resigned herself to seeing all her 
 life go by without the achievement of 
 any of the purposes she cherished. 
 
 She had long despaired of a term being 
 ever put to their wanderings, when a 
 proposal to return to England came un- 
 solicited from her husband himself. For
 
 LADY LAURA. 45 
 
 some years his health had been failing 
 seriously, and Lady St. Asaph had begun 
 to read in the growing restlessness of 
 his disposition the symptoms of nervous 
 disease and to look with terror to its 
 possible development in the future. An 
 uneasy melancholy, which had been all 
 his life an intermittent foe, became con- 
 stant with him after the illness at 
 Florence ; and though for some time he 
 continued to court society with his 
 former devotion, he no longer seemed to 
 derive any pleasure from it. All places 
 now were dull to him, all people bored 
 him. Variety no longer brought novelty; 
 and at last, having as it were exhausted 
 the changes of change, he resolved to re- 
 turn to Ardgwen and settle down into the 
 quiet monotony of English country life. 
 
 And so they came home at last in 
 a bright spring-time when the woods 
 were gay with budding green, and swift
 
 46 LADY LAURA. 
 
 showers were playing hide-and-seek with 
 the sunshine among the worn battle- 
 ments of the grey old castle. It was 
 spring-time with the world, and to the 
 sons and daughters the place seemed 
 full of joyous welcomes, and their hearts 
 turned with affection towards their 
 home. But to the mother it felt hke 
 autumn as she stood once more in the 
 library and measured the flight of years. 
 She looked long and sadly at the pictures 
 on the wall ; then turned away from 
 them and said, ^ We must have hke- 
 nesses of our children here, for our own 
 have become like ghosts.' 
 
 Lady Laura was then a child six 
 years old, but the elder sisters were 
 blossoming into womanhood, and for their 
 sakes Lady St. Asaph spent three suc- 
 cessive seasons in London. She had 
 reason to be proud of her daughters : 
 they were all beautiful, and were more-
 
 LADY LAURA. 47 
 
 over distinguished by unusual talent and 
 originality. Mary was learned, Eachel 
 was witty, and Sarah was universally 
 declared to be charming. It was not 
 long before suitable marriages were 
 arranged for them. At the end of their 
 second season Eachel and Sarah were 
 both engaged to be married, the former 
 to Lord Walworth, a man some twenty 
 years her senior and remarkable chiefly 
 for good temper and sound sense; the 
 latter to Mr. Edward Tremadoc, a country 
 gentleman of quiet tastes who owned a 
 large property on the other side of the 
 Welsh border. 
 
 They were both married on one summer 
 day in the little church at Nant-y-Gwyn, 
 and the Gresford Chronicle was eloquent 
 in describing the ceremony. Mary was 
 married a year later to Captain Ernest 
 Vane of the Eifle Brigade, and her 
 wedding took place at St. George's,
 
 48 LADY LAURA. 
 
 Hanover Square — a mistake, according 
 to Nant-y-Grwyn opinion, which, assumed 
 an ominous colour when rumours got 
 abroad that the marriage was a less 
 happy one than the other two had 
 proved. Strange stories were circulated 
 concerning the bride and bridegroom 
 almost before the honeymoon was over. 
 Some said that he was wild, some that 
 she was severe. But it was not easy to 
 get at the truth. Certain it is, however, 
 that before they had been married seven 
 months Lady Mary came back to her 
 father's house without her husband, and 
 stayed there so long that people began 
 to talk of a separation. And before the 
 anniversary of the wedding-day came 
 round, the talkers learned with awe that 
 a separation had indeed been effected — 
 but by other means than those they 
 thought of, for Captain Vane was killed 
 by a fall from his horse, and Lady
 
 LADY LAURA. 49 
 
 Mary was free from the uncongenial 
 bond. 
 
 You see, reader, that I have wandered 
 fi'om the pictures to their originals, and 
 have drawn on other sources of informa- 
 tion than were afforded by those sight- 
 seeing visits to Ardgwen. It is so. 
 Those visits happened long ago, and 
 though the wished-for meeting in the 
 galleries was never vouchsafed me, I 
 have in other ways, which I need not 
 trouble you by detailing, come to know 
 far more about the St. Asaph family 
 than my wildest dreams ever promised. 
 And what I know I shall be glad to tell 
 you if you have curiosity to hear. Only 
 I must warn you that my narrative will 
 be barren of romantic incidents such as 
 abound in the earHer history of the 
 house. All I have to tell is a quiet 
 story of modern days, in which is no 
 mystery but such as is revealed in 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 50 LADY LAURA, 
 
 every imfolding of human character ; no 
 horror but that which attends the pas- 
 sage of pure spirits from dreamland into 
 life ; no dramatic movement but the play 
 of passion and principle among the 
 shifting motives of the heart ; no out- 
 come but the time-worn passage through 
 error and repentance into the open spaces 
 of forgiveness and atonement. 
 
 If you will listen to me on these terms, 
 we will leap together over an interval of 
 twelve years, taking care to choose for 
 our next visit to Ardgwen a day when 
 the family are at home.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ' How far dare I praise him ? ' 
 
 T is an autumn day twenty 
 years ago, when life is going 
 on after its usual quiet course 
 both in the valley and on the heights. 
 The village ah-eady Hes in shadow, for 
 the short October afternoon is almost 
 spent and the sun is sinking behind 
 the pine-wood that crowns the western 
 bank of the valley of the Gwen, while 
 from the stream that winds along the 
 bottom a chill mist is rising through 
 which lights look red and large as they 
 are kindled one by one in cottage win- 

 
 52 LADY LAURA. 
 
 dows. Lights are kindling too in the 
 windows of the castle ; for though it 
 stands midway up the slope of the 
 eastern hill, where the daylight lingers 
 latest and the evening glory seems most 
 unwilling to part from the beech-woods, 
 darkness is rapidly gaining ground with- 
 in. For the windows of the castle are 
 narrow and deep set in the walls, and 
 they let in the sunlight grudgingly, 
 giving it later admission and earlier ex- 
 clusion than it finds in houses of more 
 modern construction. It is so dark in 
 the gallery upstairs, that two children 
 who have been playing at battledore 
 there the greater part of the afternoon, 
 are compelled to stop their game, and 
 console themselves with an animated 
 dispute as to whose fault it is that the 
 shuttlecock has fallen so soon, it being 
 more satisfying to their combative in- 
 stincts to fasten the blame on one
 
 LADY LAURA. 53 
 
 another than upon such an impersonal 
 chcumstance as the darkness. A door 
 opens, and a lady comes along the pas- 
 sage : the children cease disputing, and 
 run up to her to tell her how many times 
 they have kept the shuttlecock going. 
 
 ^ Forty-nine times, mamma, and then 
 it only fell because Kachel would hit 
 too high.' 
 
 ^ You sent it too low,' retorts Kachel 
 indignantly. 
 
 * I don't see how you could expect to 
 keep it up any longer in the dark,' their 
 mother says in a clear strong voice 
 that admits of no question. ^ Come 
 down with me to the library now ; it is 
 just five, and Aunt Laura will be coming 
 in and will make you some more paper- 
 houses, I daresay. But you must be 
 very quiet, mind, because grandpapa 
 is not well to-day, and he does not Hke 
 a noise.'
 
 54 LADY LAURA. 
 
 The children take each a hand and trip 
 along beside their mother, and, as they 
 go, their voices sound pleasantly among 
 the echoes of the old house — so pleasantly 
 that I think we cannot do better than 
 follow them. To the end of the gallery, 
 down the stone staircase, across the hall, 
 and through an arched doorway into the 
 vaulted dining-room — out again through 
 a small door at the other end, along a 
 dozen yards or so of thickly carpeted 
 passage at the end of which a heavy 
 curtain hangs — that is the way the 
 voices lead us. But at the curtain the 
 voices are hushed, for before pushing it 
 aside and opening the door behind it, 
 the lady holds up her finger and says in 
 the same clear tone in which we heard 
 her speak in the gallery, — 
 
 * Now remember, children, no noise, or 
 you go straight up to the nursery.' 
 
 Then, without waiting for a reply, she
 
 LADY LAURA. 55 
 
 opens the door and passes into tlie oak- 
 panelled sitting-room, the children follow- 
 ing on tiptoe and in silence. 
 
 Even in the dim twilight, which looks 
 dimmer here than on the staircase and 
 in the passage, you want no guide to tell 
 you that the stately figure standing by 
 the window is the original of the portrait 
 of the lady in the green riding-habit. 
 Indeed, I am not sure that the evening 
 dimness is not rather favourable than 
 otherwise to identification ; for it is 
 more than thirty years since the picture 
 was painted, and in a stronger light you 
 would see that those years have wrought 
 their changes, turning the brown hair 
 white and chastening the brilliancy of 
 the complexion and writing lines of care 
 upon the brow. But these are just such 
 changes as escape observation in the 
 merciful dimness of the twilight hour, 
 while the characteristic outlines of form
 
 56 LADY LAURA. 
 
 and figure show like a finely cut marble 
 against the dull crimson of the sky. 
 Her form is still erect, and though the 
 curves of her figure are perceptibly fuller 
 than in the days of her marriage, they 
 have gained majesty rather than lost 
 grace, and Lady St. Asaph is a lordly 
 woman still. 
 
 It were a less easy task to discover in 
 the dim face and nerveless form of the 
 invalid, who is lying on the sofa, any 
 fulfilment of the promise that we read 
 in the portrait of her husband. Light 
 and fire must have been long quenched 
 in those lustreless eyes, and the once 
 beautiful lines about the mouth have 
 been in some strange way distorted and 
 exaggerated till the old expression of 
 tenderness and refined sensibility is lost 
 in suggestions of an irritable temper and a 
 captious taste. The sofa is littered with 
 manuscript papers, and a small table be-
 
 LADY LAURA. 57 
 
 side it is heaped with books and writing 
 materials ; for the ruling passion per- 
 sists, and after thirty years of barren 
 effort Lord St. Asaph believes as firmly 
 as in the days when he was the lion of 
 drawing-rooms and the pet of critics 
 that the poet's gift is his. That is his 
 manuscript that Lady St. Asaph holds in 
 her hand, and tries to decipher by the 
 fading light; for not a line may stand 
 without her approving judgment, and she 
 often finds it a difficult task to satisfy 
 at once her husband's exacting vanity 
 and her own rigorous notions of truth- 
 fulness. It is fortunate for her, she 
 sometimes thinks, that she never pre- 
 tended to much poetical insight, and is 
 therefore able to make a safe retreat 
 under the cover of admitted incom- 
 petence from the effects of a depre- 
 ciatory word. But this afternoon she 
 has not been happy either in her first
 
 58 LADY LAURA. 
 
 remarks or in lier after-thoughts of 
 qualification, and it is with a sense of 
 rehef that she sees her daughter and 
 grandchildren come into the room. 
 Their entrance is a signal to clear away 
 the papers and ring for lights. 
 
 ' Is that Laura ? ' asks Lord St. Asaph, 
 raising himself from his uneasy attitude 
 and looking towards the door. As he 
 speaks, something like a reflection of 
 the bright glance of the picture seems 
 to play upon his face ; but on seeing that 
 it is not Laura, he sinks back again upon 
 his cushions with an aggrieved look, and 
 asks where Laura is. 
 
 * She has gone to Cresford in the pony- 
 carriage with Cassandra,' answers the 
 lady of the clear voice, whom it is time 
 I should present formally to the reader as 
 Lady Sarah Tremadoc. ^ I should think 
 she would be in soon, for it is a raw 
 evening, not likely to tempt any one to
 
 LADY LAURA. 59 
 
 stay out late. Do you want anything 
 that I can do ? ' 
 
 ^ No — no — I want Laura. I have lost 
 some papers, and I think she may be 
 able to find them.' 
 
 Lady Sarah knew better than to ofier 
 her services again. Only two persons 
 were ever allowed to help Lord St. Asaph 
 in his literary labours — his wife, who, 
 having set herself meekly to karn the 
 lessons of life, had acquired a good deal 
 more tact and tenderness than she once 
 seemed capable of, and his youngest 
 daughter, in whose gentle nature tact 
 and tenderness were indigenous growths. 
 
 It was no ordinary tenderness of 
 handling that Lord St. Asaph's vale- 
 tudinarian muse required. He was as 
 quick to detect insincerity in praise, as 
 to resent unfavourable criticism. And 
 his elder daughters were wojnen of 
 decided opinions, which they had a
 
 6o LADY LAURA. 
 
 habit of expressing frankly. Besides, 
 they were all married, and belonged there- 
 fore to the unsympathetic outside world, 
 and were likely to hear with its ears 
 and judge with its judgment. Whereas 
 Laura had not yet been introduced to 
 society and had heard little intellectual 
 conversation except her father's, so that 
 her literary opinions, if she had any, 
 might fairly be expected to be a re- 
 flection of his own. 
 
 Lady Sarah understood all this, and 
 felt as little disposition to resent the 
 refusal of her help as to combat it. She 
 subsided into a chair by the fireside, and 
 contented herself with humbly trying to 
 imitate the absent Laura's paper-houses 
 for the amusement of her children, who 
 were as melancholy over their aunt's 
 tarrying as their grandfather himself 
 could be. He, meanwhile, returned 
 gloomily to the task— which had been
 
 LADY LAURA. 6i 
 
 canied on at intei-vals all the after - 
 noon — of questioning his wife as to 
 the possible whereabouts of the missing 
 sheets. Lady St. Asaph had already- 
 adduced many and strong reasons why 
 they could not be in any paper-basket 
 in the house, and she had more than 
 once staked her faith in human trust- 
 worthiness on the impossibility of any 
 one of her housemaids having taken 
 them to light a fire with; but till 
 Laura should come in, or some other 
 interest turn up to create a diversion, 
 there seemed little chance of her argu- 
 ments proving cogent. Nevertheless she 
 went through them again patiently, with- 
 out temper and apparently without 
 weariness. 
 
 Meanwhile a pony-camage drawn by a 
 stout Welsh pony is coming at a brisk 
 trot along the Cresford road; the little 
 boy who sits behind has the air of
 
 62 LADY LAURA 
 
 chastened self-complacency that belongs 
 to the servants of the biggest people 
 in a place, and labourers trudging home 
 from their work look up and touch 
 their caps to the two ladies in the 
 front seat as they whisk past in the 
 twilight. Suddenly the carriage stops 
 on the brow of the hill just where the 
 road breaks into a fork, and its occupants 
 seem to be hesitating as to which way 
 they shall go — whether they shall take 
 the by-way that dips into the glen or 
 keep along the main road that leads 
 to the castle. While they are debating 
 let us go nearer and get a better view 
 of them. 
 
 There is evidently the intimacy of 
 blood-relationship between them, but 
 they do not look like sisters. Indeed, 
 at a first glance one is inclined to say 
 that it would be impossible to find two 
 women, both young, both handsome.
 
 LADY LAURA, 63 
 
 both tall and dark, and both gifted with 
 that mysterious well-born air which is 
 independent of virtue, beauty, training, 
 — may one not say sometimes even of 
 birth itself? — who offer a more com- 
 plete contrast than these two. And 
 yet people who know them well often 
 see likenesses between them — in the 
 shape of the brow, in casual movements, 
 in the inflexions and modulations of the 
 voice. The difference lies chiefly in 
 general tone and expression. One is all 
 movement, brightness, animation : the 
 other is very quiet, and speaks without 
 gesture in a low voice. Though I have 
 said that they are both young, there is 
 a perceptible difference of age between 
 them, one having the self-possessed 
 manner and general air of being at 
 home in the world that comes to few 
 women much before thirty, and the other 
 the shy, half-startled outlook that seldom
 
 64 LADY LAURA. 
 
 lingers after twenty. The younger seems 
 to be mistress of the pony-carriage, for 
 she holds the reins, and the burden of 
 decision as to which way they shall take 
 evidently lies with her. She is, in fact, 
 the much-desired Laura, and her com- 
 panion is her cousin, Cassandra Gwynne. 
 Cassandra is trying to persuade her to 
 take the road down into the valley, 
 and she seems unwilling to do so, and 
 yet reluctant to refuse. She has a 
 sensitive mouth that suggests that, 
 through life, to say *No' vnll be a 
 difficult task to her, though there are 
 indications also of a power of saying it 
 even at some cost when absolutely 
 necessary. This, however, is not a 
 critical moment in life, and the ques- 
 tion to be decided is only whether she 
 shall go straight home and then send 
 the carriage back to the rectory with 
 her cousin, or take her cousin home
 
 LADY LAURA. 65 
 
 first and go in for a cup of tea and 
 a chat with her aunt. It is the 
 latter course that her cousin is urging 
 upon her with a copiousness of argu- 
 ment and eagerness of tone that seem 
 rather out of proportion to the oc- 
 casion. But Miss Gwynne is always 
 ready with reasons, and has the advo- 
 cate's faculty of warming to any cause 
 she chooses to take up. 
 
 ^Yes, come in, or I shall be really 
 hurt. It is a long time since you have 
 been to see mamma, and you know she 
 prays for your visits. You cannot be 
 wanted so imperatively now that Sarah 
 is at home. I declare, this notion that 
 you are indispensable amounts to con- 
 ceit.' 
 
 This is a hit especially likely to tell, 
 for Laura is the last person in the 
 world to wish to seem more important 
 than others. She wonders whether she 
 
 VOL. I. 5
 
 66 LADY LAURA. 
 
 is conceited, and answers in a very meek 
 tone, — 
 
 * I will come to-morrow.' 
 
 ^ But to-morrow will not be the same. 
 I have set my heart on to-day. To-morrow 
 may rain, to-morrow may never come, 
 to-morrow you will have to make atone- 
 ment for being late to-day ; for you 
 know you are too late now to be in time. 
 — Come.' 
 
 ^ I really think, if you did not mind 
 coming round, I would rather go straight 
 home.' 
 
 ' As for that, you may be quite sure I 
 shall not let myself be driven up to the 
 castle. If you won't come in with me, 
 I shall get out and walk — so good-bye.' 
 
 And Cassandra leapt lightly from the 
 carriage, and stood holding out her hand 
 to her cousin. 
 
 ' I don't like to let you walk down 
 alone : it seems so ungracious.'
 
 LADY LAURA. 67 
 
 'You know the alternative. Am I to 
 get in again ? ' 
 
 ^ Yes, I suppose you must have your 
 way as usual.' 
 
 So Cassandra got in again with a 
 triumphant smile, and they turned into 
 the by-road. 
 
 As her cousin had said, Cassandra 
 generally got her own way — ^at least in 
 the smaller things of life, which is per- 
 haps as much as can be said for most 
 women who are called successful, the 
 larger things lying for the most part in 
 regions where individual wills count for 
 little. She prided herself on being able 
 to persuade her friends and acquaint- 
 ances to see with her eyes while she 
 was with them, and she could count 
 pretty confidently on getting the lead 
 in any undertaking of a practical kind 
 that she chose to throw herself into. 
 But she had long ceased to flatter
 
 68 LADY LAURA. 
 
 herself that she could materially modify 
 her own hfe and character — much less 
 those of her neighbours. Nevertheless 
 she strove earnestly after her passing 
 triumphs, and got a good deal of en- 
 joyment out of the general recogni- 
 tion of her ascendency, as a reasonable 
 child goes on thinking gas-lamps pretty 
 for some time after it has learned that 
 they are not moons. 
 
 To-day's success was, however, incom- 
 plete as yet. To persuade her cousin to 
 drive her home and come in to tea was 
 only a preliminary step towards asking a 
 more important favour. And as soon as 
 the carriage was in motion again, and the 
 sound of the wheels made their voices 
 inaudible to the boy behind, she began 
 to explain the motive that lay behind her 
 earnestness. 
 
 ^I believe you are thinking me very 
 absurd and unreasonable to have made
 
 LADY LAURA. 69 
 
 such a fuss about taking you home with 
 me. And indeed I should not have gone 
 on persuading you if I had not had a 
 very special reason for wishing you to 
 come in to the rectory to-night. The 
 fact is, I want you to tell mamma about 
 Egmont and Maurice Heme.' 
 
 ^ But why should you not tell her 
 yom'self ? ' asked Laura, in very natural 
 surprise — for Egmont was her brother, 
 and Maurice Heme was Mrs. Grwynne's 
 nephew and consequently Cassandra's 
 cousin; and the news about them was 
 that Egmont, who had gone to Switzer- 
 land during the summer vacation, had 
 fallen down and sprained his ankle, 
 and that Heme, happening to be with 
 him at the time, had been kind and 
 helpful to him, that the two had become 
 great friends, and that Egmont was going 
 to bring Heme home with him in the 
 course of a few days. These facts the
 
 JO LADY LAURA. 
 
 cousins had just learned out of a letter 
 from Egmont which Laura had found 
 waiting for her at the Cresford post-office, 
 and it was greatly on account of this 
 letter that Laura had been so anxious to 
 go straight home and so slow to see the 
 merits of Cassandra's arrangement that 
 the letters should be sent up in the 
 carriage while she was having tea at the 
 rectory. She felt mystified by her 
 cousin's explanation, and wished now 
 that she had not been the one to give in. 
 ^ Why can you not tell her yourself ? ' 
 she asked. 
 
 ^ That is a very natural question,' re- 
 turned Cassandra with a smile that was 
 half-frank and half-mysterious ; * and it is 
 just what I am going to explain. The 
 truth is that Maurice Heme is rather 
 a sore subject at home, as I think you 
 cannot but know.' 
 
 *No, I did not know it,' said Laura,
 
 LADY LAURA. 7i 
 
 with a look of distress. ' I thought Aunt 
 Ellen would be glad to hear that he was 
 coming. Has he done anything wrong ? ' 
 * Oh, dear,' said Cassandra in the 
 patronizing tone with which people con- 
 sole themselves for being ten years older 
 than other people. ^I am always for- 
 getting how young you are. Of course 
 you were a mere child when it all hap- 
 pened. You must know then that years 
 and years ago, when you were quite a 
 small child and I had just come home 
 from school, my brother Gerard was sent 
 to Oxford on the understanding that he 
 was to be a good boy, and study divinity, 
 and eventually take orders, and still 
 
 more eventually have ' Cassandra 
 
 was going to say, have the living of 
 Nant-y-Gwyn; but it struck her that 
 her cousin would probably be shocked 
 to hear her speak in so light a tone 
 of an event which involved the death
 
 72 LADY LAURA. 
 
 of her own father, and she stopped 
 in time, saying adroitly, ^ Oh, dear me, 
 I have not begun far enough back 
 now; I ought to have told you that 
 in times still more remote, when you 
 were not yet born, and I was away 
 at school, the Hemes used to live at 
 Cresford, and Maurice, who was then a 
 good little boy, was being educated at the 
 Grammar School. And he really was a 
 very good little boy, and did his lessons so 
 well that he ended by getting all sorts of 
 scholarships and going up to Oxford with 
 flying colours. Well, in those days he 
 was a great favourite at the rectory. He 
 used often to come over on haK-holidays, 
 and spend the afternoon roaming about 
 the park with me ... it was at the 
 time when the castle was shut up, and 
 the grounds seemed part of the rec- 
 tory garden. Well, Maurice was a 
 great favourite with my father, and my
 
 LADY LAURA. 73 
 
 mother was very proud of him — and I 
 beheve they both had an idea ' 
 
 * What idea ? ' asked Laura, as her 
 cousin paused. 
 
 ' Perhaps, as at best it was only an 
 idea and as I have no authority for say- 
 ing it was even so much as that, it will 
 be better to say nothing at all about it ; 
 but to go on with the thread of my 
 narrative, as the historians say. Let me 
 see, where was I ? Maurice had gone up 
 to Oxford with flying colours, and Gerard 
 was still at Eton. Well, of course 
 Maurice did well at Oxford. He got a 
 fii'st class, and became a fellow of his 
 college. And he made up his mind to 
 go in for a regular college career. And 
 when Gerard's time came for going to 
 Oxford, he was specially confided to 
 Maurice, and it was understood that 
 Maurice was to make an excellent clergy- 
 man of him. But somehow everything
 
 74 LADY LAURA. 
 
 went wrong. Gerard got dissipated and 
 extravagant, and there was endless dis- 
 cussion about him at home — papa always 
 blaming Maurice, and mamma crying all 
 day and saying that the worst of it was 
 one did not know whom to blame. And 
 every now and then Maurice used to 
 write and advise that Gerard should be 
 taken away from Oxford and put into 
 some merchant's office or other practical 
 thing — at which papa used to go about 
 looking as much disgraced as if all the 
 Gwynnes had been transported for for- 
 gery. And altogether our house was as 
 miserable as if we had had a funeral 
 every other day and a wedding in be- 
 tween. At last it ended in Gerard's 
 being sent away from his college for some 
 not very creditable row he got mixed up 
 in, and then Maurice came down and 
 talked a great deal to my father. And 
 it came out that all the while that the
 
 LADY LAURA. 75 
 
 home people were expecting him to make 
 a good clergyman of Gerard, he himself 
 had drifted into atheistical opinions, on 
 accomit of which he had made up his 
 mind to resign his fellowship and his 
 work as college tutor. And then my 
 father, who was glad to blame anybody 
 rather than Gerard himself, was more 
 satisfied than ever that everything had 
 been Maurice's fault, and there was a 
 tremendous flare-up, since which Maurice 
 has never been inside the rectory-gates.' 
 
 ^ Was it then that Gerard went out 
 to Australia ? ' said Lam-a, making no 
 comment on the narrative. 
 
 ^Yes, and that was Maurice's doing, 
 and I beheve it has been the salvation 
 of Gerard.' 
 
 ^ Does Uncle Harvey think so too ? ' 
 
 ^ I really think he does. And that 
 makes me hope that perhaps this visit 
 may bring about a reconciliation. Only
 
 76 LADY LAURA. 
 
 one never knows how people will take 
 things, and I confess I have not courage 
 to stand up in the home circle and 
 mention that he is coming.' 
 
 ' But it is not in any way your doing ; 
 nobody could blame you.' 
 
 * That is true certainly, but I feel 
 that this piece of news will probably 
 be the beginning of a great deal that 
 will be disagreeable. And though I can 
 bear myself bravely in battle when once 
 I am in the thick of it, I am a coward 
 about firing the first shot.' 
 
 Cassandra's manner of speaking was 
 disagreeable to Laura, and she did not 
 answer for a few minutes. By-and-by 
 she said, — 
 
 ' After what you have told me, it 
 seems to me very natural that Uncle 
 Harvey and Aunt Ellen should dislike 
 Mr. Heme's coming to stay with us. 
 Would it not perhaps be better if he
 
 LADY LAURA. 77 
 
 did not come at all? Mamma would 
 write to Egmont and explain.' 
 
 '■ That would not be fair,' said Cas- 
 sandra decidedly. ^Because my father 
 has taken a prejudice against Maurice, 
 we ought not to pretend to interfere 
 between him and his friends. Besides, 
 I think his coming here may really do 
 good — perhaps bring about an entire 
 reconciliation, and it would be a thou- 
 sand pities to prevent such an end as 
 that.' 
 
 Laura was silent. The whole story 
 affected her painfully in many ways that 
 Cassandra did not guess. It was the 
 first hint she had received that the 
 rectory was not a very harmonious 
 home, and she was young enough to 
 be surprised as well as pained at reve- 
 lations of domestic discord. Then she 
 did not like Cassandra's manner of 
 speaking about her father and mother,
 
 78 LADY LAURA. 
 
 and that too was new to her, for Cas- 
 sandra was not wont to be flippant — at 
 least not in Ute-a-Ute with Laura; and 
 more than all it distressed her to hear 
 that this new friend of her brother's was 
 a person of atheistical opinions. Half-an- 
 hour ago she had been thinking plea- 
 santly of Mr. Heme as her brother's 
 friend, and preparing to welcome him 
 cordially to the castle. Nay, he had even 
 been a sort of hero ; for Egmont had 
 written quite enthusiastically about him, 
 saying that but for him the fall would have 
 been a very serious one — fatal perhaps — 
 and that he considered that Heme had 
 really saved his life ; at which Cassandra 
 had laughed a little, and said it was just 
 like Egmont, who was always making 
 mountains out of mole-hills. But Laura, 
 whose weak point was her youngest 
 brother, had straightway crowned his 
 benefactor with laurels and invested him
 
 LADY LAURA. 79 
 
 with every lovable quality. And now her 
 cousin said he was an atheist ! That 
 was the point that struck her most in 
 the narrative. She had always heard 
 atheists talked of as beings capable of 
 any and every crime, and she had 
 thought of them with the sort of distant 
 horror that respectable people have of 
 murderers and housebreakers. She had 
 prayed for them in church, together 
 with Jews and Turks, but as yet no 
 individual of the species had come within 
 her personal knowledge, unless I ought 
 to except Will Heasman, the consump- 
 tive cobbler who lived like an outcast 
 at the far end of the village, banned by 
 all the respectable inhabitants, and de- 
 pending for sustenance on the employ- 
 ment of those villagers whose poverty 
 made religious intolerance an impossible 
 luxury while Will charged half the price 
 of his church-going rival in the valley.
 
 8o LADY LAURA. 
 
 Will was a peaceable fellow enough for 
 the greater part of the year when he 
 lived a sort of hermit life, but he was 
 given to periodical drinking bouts which 
 lasted till all the earnings of his sober 
 days had been spent, when he returned 
 to sobriety and industry and with the 
 help of the pawnbroker gradually re- 
 covered a condition of relative respec- 
 tability. Laura had once or twice seen 
 this man, and his appearance had haunted 
 her. He looked so ill, so wretched, so 
 God-forsaken and outcast, that her heart 
 had gone out towards him compas- 
 sionately, and she had thought that if 
 she had been a man or a much older 
 woman she would have found means to 
 reach him with her sympathy. 
 
 But the pity she gave to atheism out- 
 cast and in rags could not be extended 
 to atheism that wore good clothes and 
 moved in good society, and she made up
 
 LADY LAURA. 8i 
 
 her mind that she should dishke Mr. 
 Heme very much and would do her best 
 to withdraw her brother from his in- 
 fluence. At any other time she would 
 without hesitation have told Cassandra 
 all that she was feeling, for her cousin 
 had been her confidante for years, and 
 Laura had never yet found her wanting 
 in sympathy. But Cassandra's manner 
 of telling her story had put a gulf be- 
 tween them which Laura had not 
 courage to cross. She tried to ask a 
 question, but her voice was tremulous 
 with tears, and she remained silent in 
 order not to betray herself. 
 
 They were down in the valley and had 
 just come to the point where the road 
 is crossed by the stream, and she found 
 the task of urging the pony through 
 the water a welcome help in recover- 
 ing herself; as they came out on 
 the other side she was able to com- 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 82 LADY LAURA. 
 
 mand her voice and speak without 
 tremulousness. 
 
 ^ Do you mean that Mr. Heme is really 
 an atheist now ? ' she asked, rather 
 timidly. 
 
 * Atheist is an ugly word,' said Cas- 
 sandra, ^but I don't fancy Maurice can 
 have much belief left. When once a 
 man starts in that direction, he generally 
 goes on.' 
 
 ' It seems very sad,' said Laura, with a 
 sigh ; * one realises it in quite a new way 
 when one hears it of a — a — friend of some 
 one who is very dear to one. I can't 
 help wishing Egmont had not met him.' 
 Then, remembering the cousinship with 
 the rectory people, she added apologeti- 
 cally, ^ I beg your pardon, I had forgotten 
 for a moment that he was your cousin. 
 But Egmont is so easily influenced, 
 
 and ' she hesitated, checked by the 
 
 lightness of her cousin's manner, and yet
 
 LADY LAURA. 83 
 
 urged on by her own sense of the gravity 
 of the matter. ' Don't you think, Cas- 
 sandra, that it is very sad that people 
 should be ... . atheists ? ' 
 
 Laura felt the word so ugly that she 
 had difficulty in bringing herself to say 
 it a second time. 
 
 * My dear Laura,' answered Cassandra, 
 still speaking in the artificial tone that 
 was so disagreeable to her cousin, ^ it is 
 just one of those things one has to make 
 up one's mind to as one grows older and 
 sees the world more as it really is. Un- 
 belief is so common among men — espe- 
 cially thinking men — now-a-days, that if 
 one made it a ground of excommunica- 
 tion, one would be banning with bell, 
 book, and candle every other man one 
 met in London society.' 
 
 * Do you mean that it is really so 
 common as that ? ' 
 
 ' Well^ perhaps I have exaggerated a
 
 84 LADY LAURA. 
 
 little. Bnt it is common, and becomes 
 more so every day. And it is not fair to 
 shut one's eyes to tlie fact, however much 
 one may dislike it, that some of the 
 best minds and noblest hearts of the day 
 are among the unbelievers. I am sorry 
 to give you pain, but these are matters 
 in which one ought to be honest and un- 
 compromising — that is, as far as one can.' 
 Here Cassandra hesitated a moment. 
 Then she went on. ^ There is prejudice 
 enough against Maurice Heme already, 
 and you ought not to take it into your 
 head that he is a sort of Will Heasman, 
 merely because he does not believe in 
 the things you have been brought up 
 to consider true. He is an honourable 
 man, very much in earnest, and full of 
 generous good feeling; and that is much. 
 In spite of all that has happened, I 
 have always felt thankful that Gerard 
 should have come under his influence,
 
 LADY LAURA. 85 
 
 and I can assure you that you need not 
 fear his friendship for Egmont.' 
 
 Cassandra's tone had quite changed 
 now — she spoke lower, almost \\dth a 
 tremor in her voice, and though the 
 matter of her speech was not comforting 
 to Laura, the manner was. It was with 
 pleasanter feelings that Laura waited for 
 her to speak again. 
 
 She had not to wait long, for they were 
 just at the gate, and while the boy was 
 going up the garden path to ring the 
 bell, Cassandra took the opportunity of 
 saying,— 
 
 * You see, I cannot help getting rather 
 warm on this subject. Maurice and I 
 were very good friends in the old days, 
 and I have always been suspected of a 
 little secret partisanhip. That is why I 
 want you to tell the news, and you can- 
 not think how grateful I am to you for 
 being an amiable child.'
 
 86 LADY LAURA. 
 
 To Laura's surprise, she ended her 
 speech by leaning forward and giving her 
 a sudden kiss. Then in a moment she 
 had jumped from the carriage and taken 
 the reins into one hand, while with the 
 other she helped the bewildered Laura to 
 alight. Another minute, and they were 
 in the snug rectory drawing-room, and 
 Mrs. Gwynne was stripping Laura of her 
 wraps. 
 
 You would never have taken Mrs. 
 Gwynne for Cassandra's mother. She 
 was a small, insignificant woman, with a 
 bad figure on which the richest stuffs 
 hung poorly, and thin colourless hair 
 which she trained over her wide forehead 
 with a care that deserved better success. 
 That forehead was the one remarkable 
 feature about her, the only thing that 
 saved her from utter insignificance, but 
 it could not be said to be beautiful, though 
 it gave to her countenance an expression
 
 LADY LAURA. 87 
 
 of large-hearted sympathy which atoned 
 in some eyes for the want of beauty. 
 People seeing Mrs. Gwynne for the 
 first time always said it was a pity that 
 her forehead was not smaller ; and yet 
 it was the reproduction of that forehead 
 in Cassandra that made her face so 
 much pleasanter to look upon than that 
 of her father, of which in every other 
 respect it was an excellent likeness. 
 Her great height she owed to him, as 
 also her aquihne nose and finely formed 
 mouth and richly glowing complexion. 
 But the father's forehead was narrow and 
 receding, which gave an unsympathetic 
 character to his countenance ; his smiles 
 were thin and the curves of his lips and 
 nostrils were more accustomed to express 
 contempt than kindliness. Clearly it 
 was not from him that Cassandra got the 
 genial light and the flashes of intelligent 
 sympathy that came and went in her
 
 88 LADY LAURA. 
 
 face as she spoke, and gave it a charm 
 that made its mere physical beauty seem 
 of no importance. These came from Mrs. 
 Gwynne, with the wide open forehead 
 that looked merely big and bald above 
 the mother's insignificant nose aad eyes, 
 but became a feature of chief beauty in 
 the daughter's face. 
 
 Cassandra was only speaking the truth 
 when she said that her mother would 
 rejoice in a visit from Laura. She was 
 a great pet with her aunt, and when she 
 came in for a chat Mrs. Gwynne felt 
 herself a less insignificant person than at 
 other times. For, her own daughters not 
 excepted, Laura was the only woman of 
 her husband's family of whom she was 
 not afraid. I am the first to admit that 
 it was a sign of weakness on the good 
 little lady's part, but though I am very 
 fond of her, I cannot disguise the fact 
 that, after being the Honourable Mrs.
 
 LADY LAURA. 89 
 
 HaiTey Gwynne for more than thii'ty 
 yeai-s, she still caiiied about ^ith her a 
 paralysing recollection of a time when 
 she was only Miss Eayner, daughter to 
 the Cresford banker, and belle of Cresford 
 ball-rooms— yes, belle, reader; the word 
 is wiitten advisedly though you may take 
 it for a slip of the pen. Long ago that 
 colourless hak was touched with gold, 
 and that di'ab complexion was pretty pink 
 and white ; and the Cresford dandies vied 
 with one another for Ellen Eayner's 
 favours, and the Cresford giiis wished 
 they could heap up theu' ciuis as skilfully 
 as she did. In those days the Hon- 
 ourable and Eeverend Harvey Gwynne 
 was a young man just entering upon 
 the duties of the family living, glad 
 to profit by the sort of social am- 
 phibiousness that has always belonged 
 to the ecclesiastical state, and accept 
 friendly invitations fi'om the Cresford
 
 90 LADY LAURA. 
 
 townsfolk. So he had met the pretty 
 banker's daughter, and, having inadver- 
 tently fallen in love with her, had married 
 her and lifted her into the upper regions 
 of Cheshire society, where she had ever 
 since been trying vainly to feel herself at 
 home. Perhaps if she had been tall, and 
 had had a fine figure, she might have 
 succeeded in acquiring an easy manner 
 among her new connexions. Perhaps, 
 on the other hand, the task might 
 have been less difficult had these been of 
 a less magnificent type ; and when I 
 think of the little lady's happiness in 
 the company of the gentle Laura, I 
 cannot resist a movement of indignation 
 against the splendid outlines and sound- 
 ing voices of the other women of the 
 family. Laura was as tall as any of her 
 sisters, and yet people habitually spoke 
 of her as a little woman. Her height did 
 not assert itself as theirs did — possibly
 
 LADY LAURA. 91 
 
 because she had very small hands and 
 feet, and because she did her hair very 
 simply at a time when fashion prescribed 
 a labyrinth of plaits behind and before. 
 Then her dress was always simple and 
 girlish; and her voice, though it would 
 sometimes take the trumpet-notes that be- 
 longed to the family, was more often soft 
 and low. Altogether she was a very unas- 
 suming person, of whom it would have 
 been difficult for anybody to be afraid. 
 
 So Mrs. Gwynne was thinking, as she 
 sat in the firelight with her hands folded 
 calmly before her, and her faded eyes 
 fastened in loving contemplation on the 
 bright young face that was turned towards 
 hers. 
 
 Laura was telling how people were at 
 the castle, and inquiring about healths 
 at the rectory. At another time her first 
 news would have been about Egmont, 
 but the conversation in the carriage had
 
 92 LADY LAURA, 
 
 surrounded that topic with embarrass- 
 ment, and she waited to speak of it till 
 her aunt should ask a question. The 
 question was sure to cctne before long, 
 for Mrs. Gwynne had an orderly, con- 
 scientious mind that never forgot to ask 
 after the absent or to show the right 
 attention to the present. 
 
 ^ Have you heard from your brother 
 lately ? ' 
 
 Such a simple question, and one 
 that Laura had been expecting every 
 minute ! And yet when it came, she 
 blushed violently, and felt guilty of a 
 thousand treacheries. Fortunately she 
 was sitting on a low stool with her back 
 towards the fire, and the shaded lamp at 
 the other end of the room, by which her 
 uncle was reading and her cousin Anna 
 working, did not send its light far 
 enough to betray her confusion. No 
 one saw her blush except the observant
 
 LADY LAURA. 93 
 
 Cassandra, and no one noticed anything 
 unusual in her tone as she said, — 
 
 'Yes, we found letters from him at 
 Cresford this afternoon. He is coming 
 home sooner than he intended, on account 
 of a troublesome accident.' 
 
 'Dear, dear, I am sony to hear that,' 
 said Mrs. Gwynne in a voice full of 
 solicitude. 
 
 ' Yes, it is very unfortunate ; he has 
 sprained his ankle, and been laid up 
 with it for a fortnight — all the time 
 we thought he was enjoying himself. 
 However, I suppose we ought to be 
 thankful that it is not more serious.' 
 
 ' But a sprain is serious,' said Mrs. 
 Gwynne ; ' I am sure your dear mother 
 will think so. Has he had good medical 
 attendance ? ' 
 
 ' He says he has been very lucky in 
 his doctor .... and fortunately he has 
 had a friend with him, who has taken
 
 94 LADY LAURA. 
 
 great care of him — a Mr. Heme — 
 you know him I think — at least, I 
 mean, he is your nephew. . . .' 
 
 * Maurice Heme i Is lie with your 
 brother ? ' 
 
 There was an anxious note in Mrs. 
 Gwynne's voice as she asked this ques- 
 tion, and a more than usual timidity 
 in her glance as it sought her hus- 
 band's face to ascertain whether he 
 had heard Laura's news. He was still 
 reading, and though Laura's words had 
 fallen upon his ears, they had not pene- 
 trated to his mind; but his wife's look 
 awakened his attention before the last 
 vibration had died away, and he roused 
 himself with sudden energy, laying aside 
 his book and saying dryly, ^ Heme, did 
 you say ? — what of him ? ' 
 
 ^ Laura is telling us that Egmont has 
 fallen in with him in Switzerland, and 
 that he has been very kind to him.'
 
 LADY LAURA, 95 
 
 * Who has been kind to whom ? ' 
 inquired the Eector. 'Youi' pronouns 
 are rather confused, my dear.' Mr. 
 Gwynne said ^ my dear ' in a key that 
 was argumentative rather than affec- 
 tionate. But Mrs. Gwynne answered 
 in the same tone of impartial narrative 
 in which she had first spoken, — 
 
 * Maurice Heme has been kind to 
 Egmont.' 
 
 ' Oh, has he ? well I'm glad to hear 
 some good of him. Where did you say 
 they met ? ' 
 
 * At Interlachen,' said Laura ; * and 
 Egmont says that Mr. Heme has been 
 so wonderfully kind to him, nursing 
 him like a woman.' 
 
 * Nursing ? — why did he want nursing ? ' 
 Laura explained. *He had an acci- 
 dent which would probably have been 
 very serious but for Mr. Heme. I can't 
 quite follow all the description, but it
 
 96 LADY LAURA. 
 
 seems that they were making some very- 
 dangerous ascent, and Egmont's foot 
 slipped, and if Mr. Heme had not 
 caught him just in time, he says he 
 must have fallen right down a precipice 
 and been dashed to pieces.' 
 
 Mr. Gwynne had already returned to 
 his book and no one volunteered another 
 remark. So Laura, who had been getting 
 more uncomfortable every minute, rose 
 from the fender stool, and said abruptly 
 that she had heard the pony-carriage 
 come back some minutes ago, and she 
 must not stay any longer. She said 
 hurried good-byes, and went out. 
 
 Cassandra went with her to the gate, 
 and congratulated her on the tact with 
 which she had told the great news. ^ You 
 did it most diplomatically,' she said. 
 
 ^ Did I ? ' answered Laura in a weary 
 tone. ^ I felt a great humbug all the 
 while. — Good-night, Cassandra.'
 
 LADY LAURA. 97 
 
 There was a sad expression in Laura's 
 face as she put it up to kiss her cousin, 
 and Cassandra felt conscience-stricken. 
 
 'Don't look at me Kke that, dear; I 
 am not doing anything wrong. It is not 
 my fault. . . .' 
 
 * No, but it makes me unhappy. I 
 feel ' 
 
 ' What ? ' 
 
 ' I don't know. Good-night.' And she 
 drove away into the darkness. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 In truth a very worthy gentleman, exceedingly 
 well-read.' 
 
 'HE news that Egmont was going 
 to bring Maurice Heme home 
 with him was very naturally 
 received with less concern at the castle 
 than at the rectory. 
 
 For Lady St. Asaph, all the interest of 
 her son's letter lay in the account of the 
 accident and the details about the 
 sprained ankle ; while Lord St. Asaph, 
 whose nervousness habitually took, among 
 countless other forms, that of a morbid un- 
 easiness about any member of his family 
 who happened at the moment to be away
 
 LADY LAURA. 
 
 99 
 
 from Ardgwen, was disposed to look upon 
 any event that brought Egmont home 
 before his term as rather a happy dis- 
 pensation, and to take a favourable view 
 of every circumstance connected with it. 
 Lady Sarah felt a prospective exhilaration 
 in the opportunities for discussion which 
 would be afforded by the presence in the 
 house of a young man of advanced 
 opinions, and Mr. Tremadoc was pas- 
 sively indifferent. He never expected to 
 like new people, but he had a talent for 
 ignoring any person who happened to be 
 distasteful to him, and was never known 
 to speak bitterly about anybody except 
 now and then some too loquacious lady 
 whom he had been condemned to take 
 in to dinner. Heme could not be forced 
 upon him in this manner, and under any 
 other circumstances he was equal to dis- 
 regarding him. 
 
 The only member of the family who
 
 loo LADY LAURA. 
 
 was at all put out by the threatened visit 
 was Lord Ehoos. He had forgotten all 
 about Heme, and on hearing that Egmont 
 was going to bring him to Ardgwen he 
 inquired who he was. 
 
 * Surely you must remember him,' 
 answered Lady Sarah; ^Aunt Ellen's 
 nephew, who used to be continually at the 
 rectory till he got into hot water with 
 them about poor Gerard's misdoings.' 
 
 ^ That fellow ! ' said Lord Ehoos in a 
 tone of exquisite disgust. ^ Oh, but 
 good heavens ! this is something dread- 
 ful ! I remember him, of course. The 
 disappointing man, who was to have done 
 great things, and didn't do them after 
 all — an earnest radical with a passion for 
 reforming the world. But what in the 
 world can Egmont mean to do with the 
 fellow? He must be twice his age to 
 begin with. It is really the most ridicu- 
 lous thing I ever heard of. I thought
 
 LADY LAURA. loi 
 
 Egmont was wholly given up to horses 
 and dogs — a true British savage.' 
 
 For Lord Ehoos, the dictionary con- 
 tained no stronger word of condemnation 
 than British. The only point in which 
 he resembled his father was in a dislike 
 to his own country ; he spent almost all 
 his time abroad, and was imbued with 
 Continental tastes and a contempt for 
 English ways of life. He divided his 
 countrymen into savages and parsons. 
 Egmont had hitherto come in the first 
 category — Heme, as a thinking man, 
 belonged to the second. Lord Ehoos 
 himself was neither a sportsman nor a 
 man of opinions, but simply a man of 
 the world who enjoyed society none the 
 less because he found every other person 
 he met in it a bore — for he went into 
 society chiefly that he might have an 
 opportunity of inveighing against its 
 tedium and its folly.
 
 102 LADY LAURA. 
 
 ^ It is without exception the most 
 ridiculous thing I have ever heard,' he 
 repeated, not wishing to let the matter 
 drop just yet. Whenever he got hold of 
 a subject he went on at it for a consider- 
 able time, turning it round and round — 
 worrying it as a dog does a bone. * The 
 most ridiculous thing. — Does anybody 
 know this Heme ? ' 
 
 ' We used all to know him,' said Lady 
 St. Asaph, ' and I think we all liked 
 him. But it is years and years since 
 he was here.' 
 
 ^ I'm glad he's coming,' said Lord St. 
 Asaph. ^ I've no sort of sympathy with 
 his political notions, but for all that, I 
 must say I think my brother Harvey 
 behaved most unreasonably to him. He 
 was no more to blame for Gerard's dis- 
 grace than I was. I'm glad he is coming ; 
 it will give him a chance of setting him- 
 self right with the rectory people.'
 
 LADY LAURA. 103 
 
 ^But what has he been doing since 
 they turned the cold shoulder on him ? 
 Has any one seen him since ? ' asked 
 Ehoos. 
 
 ^ 1 have met him occasionally in Lon- 
 don/ said Lady Sarah. ^ He is rather a 
 pet of Eachel's — he is active in some 
 philanthropic society to which she be- 
 longs.' 
 
 This piece of information was an occa- 
 sion of renewed horror to Lord Ehoos. 
 ^ An active member of a philanthropic 
 society ! Good heavens ! — this is worse 
 and worse.' Then more resignedly, * I 
 need not ask whether he's a tremendous 
 bore, because Eachel's pets invariably are.' 
 
 ' I thought him pleasant,' said Lady 
 Sarah, dauntlessly, ' and so did Edward. 
 Did you not ? ' she said, turning to her 
 husband. 
 
 Mr. Tremadoc's memory was languid, 
 and would not all at once be roused into
 
 I04 LADY LAURA. 
 
 activity. ' I am afraid my recollection 
 of him is indistinct,' he said, in a delibe- 
 rate see -saw tone that promised impar- 
 tiality if not decision. ^ One meets so 
 many heroes at Eachel's parties, that 
 unless one carries a note-book in one's 
 pocket and records their names and 
 specialities on the spot, one has no 
 chance of remembering which is which.' 
 
 ' Oh, but you cannot have forgotten 
 Mr. Heme. He is not in the least a 
 hero, and you certainly told me you liked 
 him. He was the tall, loosely made man, 
 with the pleasant, expressive eyes, who 
 talked to you half the evening last time 
 we were in Arlington Street, about the 
 social destination of poetry, or somethiug 
 of that kind.' 
 
 * The social destination of poetry,' said 
 Lord Khoos, with a slow, chuckling 
 accent on every syllable, ^ the social 
 destination of poetry. Do you mean to
 
 LADY LAURA. 105 
 
 say, Tremadoc, that you let this fellow 
 talk to you for half an evening about the 
 social destination of poetry, and then 
 came away and forgot all about him ? 
 I don't think I am particularly given 
 to making much of my merits, but I 
 declare if I had ever submitted to such 
 a mortification of the flesh as that, I 
 should have remembered it all my days 
 as a title to salvation. The social 
 destination of poetry! — what does it 
 mean I should Hke to know.' 
 
 * As likely as not to Hght the kitchen 
 fire,' said Lord St. Asaph, with a sorrow- 
 ful sneer. His mind had reverted to 
 the missing manuscript. 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Tremadoc 's memory 
 was reviving. * I begin to remember 
 him,' he said. ' But as for the social 
 destination of poetry, I don't remember 
 anybody's talking of that except Eachel 
 herself. It was her text that evening.
 
 io6 LADY LAURA. 
 
 and if I remember rightly your friend and 
 I agreed that she was talking rather 
 wilder nonsense than usual. . . . Yes, I 
 remember Heme, — a pleasant sort of 
 man, with a good deal of originality. 
 He knew all about this part of the 
 world, and had an admiration for 
 Cassandra's singing.' 
 
 ' Oh ! ' cried Ehoos, ^ if he admires 
 Cassandra, the whole thing is explained. 
 He comes here, of course, to lay siege 
 to her.' 
 
 ^ I wish he loould marry her,' said 
 Lady Sarah, warmly. ' There is no one 
 I am more eager to see married than 
 Cassandra. She is too vivid for an un- 
 married woman, and, where she is, she is 
 altogether an anomaly. But she would 
 be splendid as the mistress of a house. 
 She is a woman who really wants some- 
 thing to do, and I am in daily terror 
 lest she should throw herself into a
 
 LADY LAURA. 107 
 
 cause, which would be a thousand pities, 
 for it is not her sphere — she was made 
 for society.' 
 
 ^ There is nothing I dislike so much,' 
 said Lady St. Asaph, speaking with some 
 severity, ^ as to hear it said of a woman 
 that she is out of place at home. It is 
 the strongest condemnation you can pos- 
 sibly pronounce upon her. For my part, 
 I prefer Anna to Cassandra. She does 
 her duty quietly without giving all the 
 world to understand that she is too good 
 for it ; and that, in my opinion, is what a 
 woman should do.' 
 
 Lady St. Asaph, it must be observed, 
 was not speaking the exact truth in 
 saying that she hked Anna Grwynne 
 better than her more brilliant sister. 
 She was unconsciously guilty of the kind 
 of falsehood into which we most of us 
 fall when we speak from our theories 
 rather than from our practice. Admira-
 
 io8 LADY LAURA. 
 
 tion of Anna was consistent with lier 
 principles, but tier taste gave the pre- 
 ference to Cassandra — as all present 
 knew, though they allowed the contrary 
 statement to pass unchallenged. The 
 sphere of woman was a point on which 
 Lady St. Asaph never suffered verbal 
 contradiction. 
 
 ' Cassandra is a very remarkable 
 woman,' said her son-in-law, ^but rather 
 too 'prononcee for my taste. She takes 
 my breath away with her ardour. I liate 
 a woman with enthusiasms.' 
 
 Mr. Tremadoc spoke with a vehemence 
 that was not common with him, but an 
 enthusiastic woman was his favourite 
 aversion. 
 
 ^ H'm,' said Lord Ehoos, ^ in a general 
 way I am inclined to agree with you. 
 But Cassandra is an exception. She is 
 a woman of genius and her enthusiasms 
 are genuine. I respect Cassandra because
 
 LADV LAURA. 109 
 
 I believe her to be capable of setting her 
 own house on fire. Now most enthusiastic 
 women keep themselves out of mischief 
 and upset everybody else. But Cas- 
 sandra is different. It would never 
 surprise me to hear of her doing some- 
 thing utterly wild and disastrous.' 
 
 Lady Sarah hfted up her eyebrows in 
 amused astonishment. ^ It is refreshing 
 to hear you praising a woman. But I 
 should never have suspected you of ad- 
 miring Cassandra. Really, if I were not 
 the most loyal of women and had not 
 five minutes ago given my sympathies 
 to the radical candidate, I should wish 
 yon joy.' 
 
 * My dear Sarah, for the most sensible 
 of my sisters, — which, thanks to Tre- 
 madoc, you certainly are, — you do rush to 
 the most ridiculous conclusions ! Because 
 I admire a volcano, is it reasonable to 
 infer that I wish to build my house on
 
 ;io LADY LAURA. 
 
 one ? Cassandra and I suit one another 
 like fire and vitriol. She makes me more 
 morose than I am by nature, and I lash 
 her enthusiasms to fury. The radical is 
 the right man for her — her fervour will 
 spend itself harmlessly in a sympathetic 
 bosom. . . . But seriously, my dear 
 mother, you are not really thinking of 
 letting this man come into the house. 
 He will make our lives a burden to us.' 
 
 ^ Certainly he must come,' said Lady 
 St. Asaph. ^ He has been most kind to 
 Egmont, and it would be not only un- 
 gracious but ungrateful to put him off.' 
 
 ^ Ah, his surgical skill has infatuated 
 you all. I wonder why it is that all 
 women go mad about a man as soon 
 as he begins to dabble in something 
 outside his proper business. They all 
 do — especially if he has got some cause 
 over which they can get up a platonic 
 friendship.'
 
 LADY LAURA. in 
 
 *I am disappointed in you, Ehoos,' 
 said Lady Sarah. * I was in hopes you 
 had grown more tolerant — you were 
 really quite civil to Eaehel's Italian 
 patriots last season.' 
 
 ^ That is a different thing. No foreigner 
 is capable of being such an unmitigated 
 bore as an EngHshman is. A foreigner 
 of any nation under the sun — French, 
 Italian, PoHsh, German — yes, I declare 
 even a German — has invariably some other 
 idea of making himself agi'eeable than by 
 expounding his opinions. Either he is a 
 man of the world and has acquired tact, 
 or he is a sort of baby and can do with- 
 out it.' 
 
 ^A baby! My dear Ehoos, what do 
 you mean ? ' 
 
 * I mean that an enthusiastic foreigner 
 is as often as not an infantine creature 
 who eats sugar- plums in the intervals of 
 advocating his cause, and so gives his
 
 112 LADY LAURA. 
 
 fellow-creatures rest. But an English- 
 man, as soon as he takes up a subject, 
 becomes a sort of Methodist preacher, 
 and bores your life out of you in season 
 and out of season. I fancy it must have 
 been different fifty or sixty years ago, 
 when lions still had manes and a roar. 
 But now they are domesticated and par- 
 sonically dull. This Heme, for instance, 
 is quite tame, of course, and never says 
 anything shocking ? ' 
 
 Lady Sarah laughed. '■ I certainly 
 never heard him roar. But, as I told 
 you just now, he is not a lion.' 
 
 ^ My recollection of him,' said Lord 
 St. Asaph, ^is rather favourable than 
 otherwise. He was gentleman-like and 
 unpretending, and had a good deal of 
 culture. I used to think there was rather 
 unusual promise about him. I remember 
 some articles of his in the Beformer which 
 showed considerable ability. But I fancy
 
 LADY LAURA. 113 
 
 he will never make much mark in the 
 world, for want of money and position.' 
 
 *As far as I remember Mr. Heme,' 
 said Lady St. Asaph, ^he wanted back- 
 bone even more than money and position.' 
 
 ' That almost reconciles me to him,' 
 said Lord Khoos ; and then he subsided 
 into an easy chair and a volume of 
 Balzac, while Lord St. Asaph went on 
 with his remarks. 
 
 ^A sympathetic, poetical nature,' he 
 observed, ^is at great disadvantages in 
 a practical age like this. I feel sorry for 
 a man like Heme. He had just the gifts 
 that the world appreciates least, and they 
 have hung round his neck — hung round 
 his neck. I am sorry for him. I shall 
 be glad to see him here. When does 
 Egmont say they are coming ? ' 
 
 Lady St. Asaph gave the date from the 
 letter, and the subject was allowed to 
 drop. 
 
 VOL I. 8
 
 114 LADY LAURA. 
 
 That Lord St. Asaph should wish 
 to see Heme at Ardgwen was felt to 
 settle the question of his reception. For 
 the people he was glad to see were 
 so few that his family were always 
 eager to welcome to the house any 
 one on whose coming he looked with 
 favour. 
 
 Meanwhile Laura was driving sadly 
 home. She had been very near to tears 
 when she wished Cassandra good-night at 
 the gate of the rectory garden, and I am 
 afraid that the pink rims that Lady St. 
 Asaph noticed round her eyes at dinner- 
 time were not wholly due to the fog, on 
 which she laid the blame. She felt 
 thoroughly miserable, and yet she could 
 not have said exactly what it was that 
 made her unhappy. In truth, the causes 
 of her depression were much mixed, and 
 she was rather vaguely disturbed than 
 definitely grieved. It seemed to her that
 
 LADY LAURA. 115 
 
 all the pleasant surroundings of her life 
 were suddenly overshadowed. Her cousin 
 Cassandra, who had been hitherto her 
 friend and idol, — confessor, counsellor, 
 sympathizer, and oracle, — the being she 
 most admired in the world, had suddenly 
 revealed herself in a light that was not 
 pleasant. For though she tried hard to do 
 so, Laura could not hide from herself the 
 fact that Cassandra's manner had jarred 
 upon her this evening; she had spoken 
 lightly, almost jestingly, of things the 
 most solemn, she had been flippant at 
 the expense of her parents, and she had 
 trapped Laura herself into participation 
 in a kind of conspiracy. Certainly there 
 was nothing wicked in her going into the 
 rectory and telling her aunt the news from 
 Egmont, and it might all have happened 
 quite naturally without pre-arrangement. 
 But with pre-arrangement the visit to 
 the rectory had become an uncomfort-
 
 ii6 LADY LAURA. 
 
 able fact in her consciousness. Another 
 uncomfortable fact was her awakening 
 to a sense of the difficulties in Cassandra's 
 home. And yet more uncomfortable was 
 the thought of this stranger who was the 
 beginning of all the trouble. What but 
 discomfort could he bring with him — a 
 man who had already made unhappiness 
 at the rectory, whose very name seemed 
 to act as a talisman of evil on those who 
 mentioned it ? * He will come between 
 Egmont and me/ thought Laura, ^ and 
 all our pleasant times together will be at 
 an end.' 
 
 Yes, that was the thought of crown- 
 ing sadness. Her brother's affection 
 would be stolen away from her, and the 
 phrase, ^ Egmont and Laura,' would no 
 longer be an expression for the happiest 
 of partnerships in brotherly and sisterly 
 confidences. And they had always been 
 such friends. The long gap between
 
 LADY LAURA. 117 
 
 these two and the elder son and daughters 
 had made them, in a manner, a separate 
 family. They had heen in the nm'sery 
 together when the others had passed into 
 the schoolroom : they had heen ' the chil-. 
 dren ' when the others were grown or 
 growing up. Nay, they were ^ the chil- 
 dren ' still in everybody's estimation but 
 their own and each other's. Before 
 Egmont could speak plainly he had had 
 fine airs of protection and patronage for 
 Laura, and Laura in all her life to come 
 would perhaps never again be so proud 
 as she had been in knowing herself the 
 confidante of Egmont's boyish scrapes. 
 The two had had so many secrets together 
 — elaborate harmless secrets of childhood, 
 that elders could not guess because they 
 had so little in them — mysterious plot- 
 tings that never came to apparent issue, 
 stealthy conspiracies to do what no law 
 forbade. Their very quarrels had been
 
 ii8 LADY LAURA. 
 
 of the nature of confidences, for when 
 one was angry with the other, the 
 grievance was never confided to a third 
 person, but borne in secret till mutual 
 dependence somehow brought about a 
 reconciliation; but if either had ground 
 of discontent with any other member 
 of the family, then the two would enter 
 into a strict alliance of resentment. The 
 simple relations of childish days had 
 gradually shifted their ground as they 
 grew towards womanhood and manhood, 
 but the two loved one another as fondly 
 now as ever, and still considered that 
 they were brother and sister in a sense 
 special to themselves. When Egmont 
 was away, it was for Laura that he 
 picked up knick-knacks, confident of 
 pleasing her taste; and when he made 
 a new friend, it was to Laura that he 
 always said, 'I am sure you will like 
 him.' And now he had made a friend
 
 LADY LAURA. 119 
 
 whom she was sure she would not like, 
 and she felt that a new and sadder chap- 
 ter of her life was beginning. 
 No wonder her heart was heavy.
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 Would you console her? — Then tell her she's 
 much needed.' 
 
 HEEE is nothing so pleasant as 
 to find oneself impatiently looked 
 for when one comes in on a raw 
 evening with dismal thoughts in one's 
 mind — nothing so magical as the instan- 
 taneous passage from depression to exulta- 
 tion as one stands in the warm fire-glow 
 and hears in the affectionate reproach of 
 the home-voices how much one has heen 
 wanted ! 
 
 Neither warm flre-glow nor chiding 
 welcome was wanting to dispel the vague 
 melancholy that, like the ghost of a
 
 LADY LAURA. 121 
 
 troubled past, had accompanied Laura on 
 her homeward drive. The door was 
 already open when she drove up to it, 
 and the ruddy light of the wood-fire 
 that burned in the hall streamed out 
 upon the road. For the sound of her 
 wheels had heralded her, and a watchful 
 servant was waiting on the doorstep with 
 a message from her father, bidding her 
 go to his room immediately. 
 
 * It was about some papers,' the man 
 explained, — ' some sheets of manuscript 
 that could not be found.' 
 
 ' Oh dear, had they been missed ? ' 
 Laura had them herself in course of copy- 
 ing, and she hurried across the hall to- 
 wards her father's room. The children 
 were looking over the banisters, and 
 called to her as she passed, — 
 
 * Oh, Aunt Laura, ^hat a shame of you 
 to stay out so late ! Mamma had to 
 make paper-houses for us — such things,
 
 122 LADY LAURA. 
 
 not in the least like yours. And you 
 know you promised to make some more 
 this afternoon.' 
 
 She looks up and promises to be more 
 faithful to-morrow, and hurries on to set 
 her father's mind at rest. 
 
 Then a few minutes later, when the 
 papers have been restored and she is 
 going to her own room to dress for 
 dinner. Lady St. Asaph looks out from 
 her dressing-room, and calls her to her, 
 just for one minute, to talk about 
 Egmont's accident. She has discussed 
 it minutely with Lady Sarah, who is 
 scientific, and has been able to explain 
 exactly what tendon has suffered and 
 which bone has narrowly escaped dislo- 
 cation. But this instructive form of sym- 
 pathy, though entirely after the pattern 
 of Lady St. Asaph'§ principles, is not all 
 that she wants; for, in spite of her 
 severe common-sense, she is at heart
 
 LADY LAURA. 123 
 
 rather incolierent in lier affection for lier 
 children, and at this moment she is as 
 glad that Egmont is coming home as 
 she is sorry that he has hurt himself — 
 at the same time that she is disposed to 
 think a sprained ankle a veiy serious 
 affair. Lam'a quite agrees T\ith her; and, 
 as she kneels before the fire, asking un- 
 scientific questions and wondering which 
 room will be most convenient to lay 
 the invalid up in and how long it will 
 be before he is about again, — hardly a 
 word being said the while about the 
 stranger who is coming with him, — Lady 
 St. Asaph feels herself comforted, and 
 Laura begins to think that Mr. Heme 
 is after all an element of very small 
 consequence in the news of th after- 
 noon, and that she has been distressing 
 herself needlessly about him. He will 
 stay a few days at the castle, and then 
 go his way, and probably never be seen
 
 124 LADV LAURA. 
 
 again, as has happened with so many 
 visitors whom chance circnmstances have 
 driven to the house, hut who, the first 
 visit over, have never heen hidden for a 
 second. And if anything was still want- 
 ing to restore her spirits, it was supplied 
 hy a suggestion from Khoos, who met 
 her on the landing as she came from 
 her mother's room. 
 
 * Oh, you have come in,' he said ; ' have 
 you seen my father ? He is in a terrible 
 way about some sheets of precious manu- 
 script that have been burned or stolen 
 by some malicious person, and altogether 
 we are in shocking spirits, for Egmont has 
 been spraining his ankle and letting him- 
 self be picked up by an earnest radical 
 who is coming here to improve us. Have 
 you heard about it ? ' 
 
 ^ Yes, I had a letter from Egmont too,' 
 said Laura, and then, prompted by the 
 habitual instinct of sympathy with her
 
 LADY LAURA. I25 
 
 favourite brother, she added, * Cassandra 
 says that Mr. Heme is very nice.' 
 
 * Does she ? ' returned Khoos. '• Then 
 it is all right, for we have just settled that 
 he is coming on purpose to marry her.' 
 
 Coming on purpose to marry Cas- 
 sandra ! Here was a new light for Laura, 
 and in every way a comforting one. It 
 explained and justified all that had per- 
 plexed her in her cousin's manner, and 
 it helped to reconcile her to the new- 
 comer — not only because appreciation 
 of Cassandra was a good point in him, 
 but because the new theory brought 
 him at once within the circle of her 
 home affections. It also provided an 
 explanation for what had hitherto been 
 the insoluble problem of the whole 
 neighbourhood, namely Cassandra's pro- 
 tracted spinsterhood. She was un- 
 doubtedly the most beautiful and popular 
 woman of surrounding society, and yet
 
 126 LADY LAURA. 
 
 she was thirty and unmarried. It was 
 impossible to suppose that she had not 
 had many opportunities of changing her 
 condition, and almost as impossible to 
 conceive that a woman of so warm a 
 temperament should deliberately prefer 
 to live and die unmarried. But all 
 mystery was removed the moment one 
 supposed a faithful and thwarted attach- 
 ment to subsist between her and her 
 cousin. The supposition was as probable 
 as romantic, and thus recommended itself 
 doubly to Laura. And though she was 
 not scientific like Lady Sarah, her mind 
 found satisfaction in a good explanation, 
 even though it might not remove all 
 distressing elements. Nothing had been 
 said to clear Heme from the imputation 
 of heterodoxy, nothing to assure her that 
 Egmont was proof against his influence. 
 Nevertheless, by the time she was dressed 
 for dinner she found herself looking for-
 
 LADY LAURA. 127 
 
 ward to his visit with a feeling of pleasant 
 curiosity ; and as she sat by her father's 
 couch later in the evening, chatting to 
 him about her drive to Cresford, and all 
 that she had seen and done and bought 
 in the town — details that would have 
 wearied him from any other lips than 
 Laura's — she looked as serene as usual, 
 and no one could have guessed what a 
 troubled look her countenance bore a few 
 hours earher.
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 ' The remarkable law of nature in cases of poisoning is 
 that it is always the person who takes the dose who is 
 poisoned, and not the person who gives it. It is a very 
 strange law, but it is a law. Nature merely sees to the 
 carrying out of the normal operation of arsenic. She 
 never troubles herself to ask who gave it.' 
 
 T was a pity Cassandra could 
 not know how quickly the look 
 of trouhle passed from Laura's 
 face ; for it haunted her reproachfully 
 as she went back into the house after 
 watching the pony-carriage disappear in 
 the darkness — haunted her with the 
 exaggeration that belonged to all Cas- 
 sandra's moods and made her life an 
 uneasy alternation of impulsive action
 
 LADY LAURA. 129 
 
 and impotent repentance. She was al- 
 ways saying things and wishing them 
 unsaid, doing and trying to undo ; for 
 nature had dowered her with an ardent 
 passionate temperament, ever leaping 
 upward towards heights of ideal virtue, 
 and too often failing in the ABC 
 of daily duty. And somehow it never 
 seemed to help her much that, between 
 her impetuous moods, came intervals 
 of dispassionate reflection, in which her 
 unwise words and deeds found them- 
 selves arraigned before the tribunal 
 of a most clear and logical judgment. 
 She might condemn herself and repent, 
 and then, even while vows of improve- 
 ment were hot in her heart, find herself 
 entangled in the consequences of some 
 new indiscretion, and know that once 
 more her judgment had been submerged 
 by her emotions, like a too-low harbour 
 light that gives clear warning the greater 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 I.30 LADY LAURA. 
 
 part of the year, but is quenched by the 
 flood-tide in the hour that needs it most. 
 Such a character is generally a dis- 
 tui'bing element in a family, especially 
 when the current of its sympathies flows 
 in a contrary direction to the main 
 stream of the household life. And this 
 was eminently the case with Cassandra : 
 she was an odd one at home, a stranger 
 in the family circle, and I think not 
 wholly through her own fault. Like 
 most impetuous people, she had been 
 difficult to manage in childhood, and her 
 passionate outbreaks had been the occa- 
 sion of much worry and discomfort at 
 home. Her mother was too weak to 
 control her, and her father too impatient ; 
 for, as usual, it was with the parent from 
 whom the faults of her character were in- 
 herited that they met with the least for- 
 bearance. Mrs. Gwynne would sometimes 
 expostulate feebly for hours, while Cassan-
 
 LADY LAURA. 131 
 
 dra screamed only more and more lustily, 
 till her father came in and put a summary 
 end to the un edifying scene by shutting 
 her up in an attic for the remainder of 
 the day. For Mr. Gwynne tolerated no 
 unruly temper in the house except his 
 own, and permitted no one but himself 
 to make his wife unhappy. Naturally 
 enough Cassandra did not improve much 
 under this regime of conflicting weak- 
 ness and severity, and at last it was 
 decided that the only hope of salvation 
 for her lay in sending her away to school. 
 The decision w^as of course her father's — 
 her mother would have preferred to keep 
 her at home, even at the cost of a weekly 
 headache. But Mr. Gwynne always in- 
 clined to the solving of problems in the 
 manner practised by Alexander on the 
 famous knot, and Mrs. Gwynne never 
 strove long against her husband's wishes. 
 The school chosen was one that had been
 
 132 LADY LAURA. 
 
 lately opened at Asnieres by a French 
 lady, who had been governess for a time 
 to Lady St. Asaph's daughters. Lady 
 St. Asaph had a high opinion of Madame 
 Bandoiiin, and it was by her advice 
 and in reliance on her patronage, that 
 the school was started. She lent money 
 to forward the enterprise and was ener- 
 getic in recommending her friends and 
 acquaintance to entrust their daughters 
 to the care of her protegee ; and as 
 soon as she was informed by her sister- 
 in-law of the determination to send the 
 impracticable Cassandra to school, she 
 urged upon her the advisability of 
 placing her with Madame Baudouin, 
 whom she described as a woman of in- 
 finite patience and calm manner that 
 won an almost unconscious obedience 
 and respect from those about her. Mrs. 
 Gwynne was always glad to escape 
 responsibility by acting on the advice
 
 LADY LAURA. 133 
 
 of others, and in this case she felt that 
 she was really doing wisely in doing as 
 she was bid. She had boundless confi- 
 dence in Lady St. Asaph's judgment, and 
 thanked Providence for having created a 
 person so suitable as Madame Baudouin 
 for the task of educating her child. 
 And so at ten years old Cassandi-a was 
 taken by her father to Asnieres, and left 
 to grow up among foreign influences.. 
 
 Among these influences was one upon 
 which Lady St. Asaph had not calculated 
 when she spoke so confidently of Madame 
 Baudouin's school as the safest place 
 imaginable for her passionate little niece 
 — an influence far more congenial to 
 the child's character than that of the 
 somewhat cold-natured head- mistress, 
 and to which she gave herself up in- 
 voluntarily and unreservedly as soon as 
 she was old enough to come within its 
 sphere.
 
 134 LADY LAURA. 
 
 This influence was embodied in the 
 person of Mademoiselle Azvedo, the lady 
 who taught singing in the school. She 
 was a woman of mixed French and Spanish 
 extraction, who combined many of the 
 most attractive characteristics of both 
 nations. She was clever, versatile, viva- 
 cious, and had a Frenchwoman's tact 
 and charm of manner, while her beauty 
 was of the richly glowing type that be- 
 longs to the South. She had large lus- 
 trous eyes, and voluptuous outlines that 
 would have become a Cleopatra, and a 
 voice that might have driven an arch- 
 angel to despair. To Cassandra she 
 seemed the incarnation of womanly per- 
 fection — she came to her as that most 
 inspiring of all revelations in which the 
 mind first recognises the ideal towards 
 which its own genius tends. Hitherto 
 all the passion of the girl's nature had 
 found its only vent in wild outbreaks
 
 LADY LAURA. 135 
 
 of temper, all the strength of her indi- 
 viduality had availed only to nourish her 
 insubordination ; for the conception of 
 training that prevailed in her home was 
 of that stultifying kind that excludes all 
 influences calculated to enlist passion 
 and character on the side of right, but, 
 regarding them solely as dangerous 
 auxiliaries of wrong, strives to crush 
 them down by a system of which all the 
 strength lies in its prohibitions and 
 restraints. Eight was presented to her 
 as a mysterious something of arbitrary 
 value to be painfully attained by the 
 renunciation of many things essentially 
 fair and pleasant. Wrong was somehow 
 identified with almost everything towards 
 which her inchnation leaned. That right 
 was lovely and wrong hideous, was a 
 truth that no one had ever tried to set 
 before her till she heard it travestied 
 on Mademoiselle Azvedo's lips, and
 
 136 LADY LAURA. 
 
 then it came to her as a very pleasant 
 gospel. 
 
 The singing-mistress recked little 
 enough of restraints — they were disagree- 
 able to herself and troublesome to impose 
 on others. She never put herself to the 
 pain of rebuking ; if a pupil was lazy, 
 she let her lag ; if naughty, she shrugged 
 her shoulders and said, ' Tauvre enfant^ 
 we must not be hard on her — the way of 
 duty is triste, and le hon Dieu has given 
 her a nature that loves enjoyment — we 
 must let her enjoy.' And what she pre- 
 scribed for her pupils she practised her- 
 self, for to her, too, le hon Dieu had 
 given a nature that loved enjoyment, and 
 she did her best to enjoy. 
 
 The good and the beautiful were inter- 
 changeable terms with her, and her only 
 criterion for either was her own taste, 
 which found them to lie in splendid 
 dresses and jewels, in amorous poetry
 
 LADY LAURA. \yj 
 
 and passionate music, and above all in 
 gratified vanity and sensuous enjoyment. 
 She sang at the concert-rooms of the 
 little town, and once or twice Cassandra 
 went with the other girls to hear her sing. 
 Those were occasions of strange and 
 almost terrible experience to Cassandra. 
 Music was to her as the natm^al element 
 of her soul, and under its influence it 
 always seemed to her that the world 
 widened round her, and pains and joys, 
 otherwise untasted, crowded upon her 
 quickened senses and made her, for the 
 space of a few mad minutes, free of 
 the whole universe of human emotion. 
 While Mademoiselle Azvedo sang, she was 
 no longer a child but a passionate woman — 
 in turn triumphant and despauing, in- 
 toxic atingly happy and wretched past all 
 consolation. She loved, enjoyed, knew 
 jealousy, and thu'sted for revenge. Then 
 the last notes of the singer's voice died
 
 138 LADY LAURA. 
 
 away, tlie dream-world became dim, the 
 walls of the concert-room closed her in, 
 her schoolfellows were chattering round 
 her, her heart recovered its calm beat, — 
 and she was again only one of Madame 
 'BdiM(iovim' ^pensionnaires. But the moment 
 of unmixed sweetness came at the end 
 of the concert, when the singing-mistress 
 stopd forth as the heroine of the evening, 
 for whom bouquets fell in showers, and 
 hands and voices raised an uproar of 
 applause ; and Cassandra knew that to- 
 morrow the goddess would come and 
 talk with caressing familiarity to her, 
 the little, unnoticed school-girl. 
 
 The admirations of impressionable 
 people are the moulds in which they 
 cast their own characters, and by degrees 
 Cassandra felt herself growing like her 
 singing-mistress ; she heard the echo of 
 her tones in her own voice, and found 
 herself making use of her idioms and
 
 LADY LAURA, 139 
 
 emphasizing lier speech with gestures 
 first seen on the platform of the concert- 
 room. It was natural that she should 
 rejoice at the discovery, and not very 
 unnatural that when her schooKellows 
 taxed her mth imitation she should in- 
 dignantly repudiate the charge. Not in- 
 sincere either, for of conscious imitation 
 she was innocent — she but reflected the 
 woman she admired as a miiTor reflects 
 the face that bends above it. But though 
 she repelled her schoolfellows' taunts in- 
 dignantly, they were not without sweet- 
 ness for her, inasmuch as they made her 
 in a degree a martyr in her idol's cause. 
 But for them she might have sickened of 
 the sweet monotony of flattery and car- 
 esses with which Mademoiselle Azvedo 
 repaid her adoration. 
 
 I am fully aware that the influence 
 of this woman was by no means the 
 most wholesome that could have been
 
 I40 LADY LAURA. 
 
 desired for a girl of Cassandra's tempera- 
 ment, and yet I say advisedly that so 
 far I think it did her good rather than 
 harm. Like many an older worshipper, 
 Cassandra believed that her goddess must 
 necessarily be as pure and good as she 
 was brilliant and beautiful. And though 
 it certainly is not prudent to tell little 
 girls that they are prodigies of beauty and 
 talent, it must not on the other hand be 
 forgotten that people who have great gifts 
 are pretty sure to make the discovery of 
 them before long, and that, perhaps, by 
 means even more dangerous than the 
 praises of one whose own gifts seem im- 
 measurably greater than those she con- 
 descends to praise. And though there 
 was much sad nonsense in Mademoiselle 
 Azvedo's rhapsodies about the religion of 
 enjoyment and the intentions of le hon 
 Dieiij her doctrine had yet a side of truth 
 that came home to her pupil with stimu-
 
 LADY LAURA. 141 
 
 lating power. Cassandra would probably 
 have enjoyed life whether or not she had 
 been told that to do so was her first duty, 
 but it is doubtful whether she would have 
 pressed on to the utmost development of 
 her gifts if she had not been led in some 
 way to believe that in that direction lay 
 the satisfaction of her religious feehngs 
 as well as of her tastes. She was better 
 than her teacher by the possession of a 
 conscience ; and the problem of enjoy- 
 ment was consequently complicated for 
 her by a good many considerations of 
 a nature likely to retard its solution, 
 and to keep her in the meantime humble 
 and even at times unhappy. 
 
 When Cassandra came home once a 
 year for a month's holiday, she never 
 talked about Mademoiselle Azvedo further 
 than just mentioning her as the lady who 
 taught her to sing, for she felt instinc- 
 tively that this was a point on vvhich she
 
 142 LADY LAURA. 
 
 would get no sympatliy from her own 
 people ; and so her family knew nothing 
 of the dominant influence of her life, 
 except in its good results of increased in- 
 dustry in study and rapid development of 
 talents which they were beginning to re- 
 cognise as something out of the common. 
 Those holiday months used to pass so 
 much more smoothly than did the times 
 when Cassandra was permanently at home, 
 that everybody was satisfied with the 
 plan of foreign education. Mr. Gwynne 
 took much credit to himself for the idea 
 of sending his child away from home ; 
 and Lady St. Asaph was proud that her 
 jproUgee had justified her recommendation, 
 and bestirred herself to send more pupils 
 to the good Madame Baudouin ; while 
 Mrs. Gwynne was passively thankful that 
 things should go on so quietly and the 
 great powers be so well satisfied. Cas- 
 sandra herself, like all true worshippers,
 
 LADY LAURA. 143 
 
 found happiness even in the remote con- 
 templation of her divinity, and, without 
 V7ell knowing why, was contented and 
 peaceable during her short visits to her 
 home. So far, I say again, Mademoiselle 
 Azvedo's influence had done her more 
 good than harm. 
 
 But the evil of false religions lies in 
 their being false ; the moment of danger 
 is when their falseness is laid bare, and 
 all the love and faith to which they 
 have given birth are left to starve and 
 wither like the leaves of a fallen tree 
 whose uptorn roots can no longer suck 
 the nourishment of life from the strong 
 bosom of the earth. Such a moment of 
 uprooting came for the admiration which 
 had been the religion of Cassandra's 
 girlhood. She was seventeen and had 
 grown to woman's height, the rich emo- 
 tional life within her had risen to its 
 first and purest flood-tide, the manifold
 
 144 LADY LAURA, 
 
 world without seemed very good to her, 
 and her heart went out in spontaneous 
 trust and sympathy towards all her fellow- 
 heings, when in the bright morning of her 
 womanhood the revelation came which 
 darkened all her outlook and made her 
 recoil in startled horror as though where 
 she had looked to find the gates of heaven, 
 hell's mouth had gaped instead. 
 
 It was about the middle of the last 
 term of her school-life that the event 
 happened which took all the rose-colour 
 out of her world. One day when the 
 singing-class was assembled Mademoiselle 
 Azvedo did not come. The girls waited 
 five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an 
 hour ; it was a favourite lesson, and they 
 were reluctant to believe that it was to be 
 missed altogether. At last the senior girl 
 decided that Madame Baudouin should 
 be informed. The class was dispersed, 
 and the day passed without Mademoiselle
 
 LADY LAURA. 145 
 
 Azvedo's coming. Next day there was 
 much mysterious whispering among the 
 authorities ; and in the evening, after 
 prayers, when all the girls were assembled, 
 it was solemnly announced to them that 
 Mademoiselle Azvedo had been obliged 
 to leave Asnieres suddenly and that they 
 would have no more lessons from her. 
 The girls received the intelligence in 
 silence, and filed out of the room one by 
 one. All but Cassandra, who stayed be- 
 hind and, when the room was empty of 
 all but herself and the teacher in charge, 
 walked up to the desk, and asked in a 
 tone of authority where Mademoiselle 
 Azvedo was gone, and why? 
 
 ^I have orders not to tell you,' an- 
 swered the teacher, put off her guard by 
 the commanding manner of the girl, to 
 whom she would otherwise have feigned 
 ignorance. 
 
 ' Then I will ask Madame,' said Cas- 
 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 146 LADY LAURA. 
 
 Sandra; and she sought out the head 
 mistress and asked her. Madame Bau- 
 douin had more presence of mind than 
 the teacher, and she answered very 
 quietly that, Mademoiselle Azvedo having 
 left Asnieres without leaving her address 
 with anyhody, it must be supposed that 
 she did not wish to correspond with her 
 old friends, and that therefore the best 
 thing they could do was to forget 
 her. 
 
 But then Cassandra's self-command 
 deserted her, and, with sobs in her voice 
 and a theatrical gesture that reminded 
 Madame Baudouin disagreeably of the 
 absconded singing-mistress, she declared 
 that she should never forget her, and 
 that she would search up and down the 
 world till she had found her, for she 
 could not rest without knowing whither 
 she had gone and whether or not it was 
 well with her.
 
 LADY LAURA, 147 
 
 ' Oh, Madame ! ' she ended, clasping 
 her hands in passionate appeal, ^ you do 
 not know how I loved her.' 
 
 Madame Baudouin, alarmed by the girl's 
 excitement, reasoned gently with her, 
 and tried without entering into detail to 
 make her understand that Mademoiselle 
 Azvedo had not gone away altogether 
 creditably, and that it would not be for 
 her happiness to know her any more. 
 The schoolmistress spoke in a sooth- 
 ing tone and stroked Cassandi'a's hand 
 caressingly, but Cassandra was not of 
 a nature to be quieted by tones when 
 she wanted definite facts, and to all 
 Madame 's well-meant words she only 
 answered, — 
 
 'I want and will have her address. I 
 love her better than anybody in the world 
 — I cannot live without her, and I do 
 not believe that she is wicked. It is 
 you, Madame, who are wicked — you were
 
 148 LADY LAURA. 
 
 jealous of lier, and you have driven her 
 away ! ' 
 
 There was just enough of truth in 
 the charge of jealousy to make Madame 
 Baudouin wince and to procure for Cas- 
 sandra a severer rebuke than her defiance 
 would otherwise have met with. Cas- 
 sandra received her rebuke in silence. 
 Madame Baudouin demanded an apology. 
 Cassandra drew herself up proudly and 
 went out of the room, saying she should 
 not apologize until Madame had answered 
 her questions. And from that time till 
 the end of the term — her last term at 
 Asnieres — there was tacit war between 
 her and the schoolmistress. 
 
 Cassandra had not much difficulty in 
 getting the information she wanted, nor 
 much satisfaction in it when she got it ; 
 for the news was all over the town that 
 the beautiful Mademoiselle Azvedo had 
 disappeared with the husband of the
 
 LADY LAURA. 149 
 
 delicate-looking little English, lady with 
 the white sad face who used to be seen 
 every day drawn along the invalids' drive 
 in a bath chair: the servants at the 
 school got bold of the scandal, and the 
 school-girls bought it of them with pre- 
 sents of chocolate and bonbons. 
 
 That was the end of the first romantic 
 attachment into which Cassandra threw 
 all ber heart and soul, her powers of 
 faith, of admiration, of love. You smile 
 perhaps, reader, and think that to be 
 disappointed in. one's singing-mistress is 
 no great matter. To those whose temple is 
 a crowded Pantheon, it may not be much 
 when this or that divinity is knocked 
 from a pedestal and shattered into frag- 
 ments, but it is no slight pain that the 
 worshipper of an only god experiences 
 when one day he discovers that his god 
 is after all but common clay, and that 
 the shrine of all bis prayers is desolate.
 
 150 LADY LAURA. 
 
 Well for him if it be only pain he feels, 
 and not such despauing bitterness as 
 drives him to denial of all excellence, 
 human and divine ! 
 
 Cassandra did not quickly recover from 
 the pain of that experience — for it is not 
 true that people are quick to forget in 
 proportion as they are quick to feel : not 
 truer than that the sea is shallow because 
 its wide bosom reflects in turn every 
 change in the overhanging sky, or that 
 the roadside pool is deep because its 
 surface is monotonously grey. Dive 
 down into the sea, and you will find 
 that it holds secrets of life and death ; 
 but stir the pool, and it will yield at best 
 a pebble that will serve to pelt a bird. 
 
 Cassandra did not forget, but she gave 
 no outward sign of remembering. Not 
 to Madame Baudouin, whom she had 
 defied in the first shock of her disappoint- 
 ment ; not to her schooKellows, who had
 
 LADY LAURA. 151 
 
 always laughed at her attachment to the 
 singing-mistress, and were now not dis- 
 inclined to triumph in its discomfiture 
 — not to these would she betray the 
 wretchedness she suffered. She drew 
 courage from her pride, and bore her 
 pain in secret. She worked on at her 
 various studies with unabated industry, 
 she sang with as much enthusiasm as 
 ever, she made no verbal vow never to 
 love or trust again. But, unconsciously 
 to herself, a decree was made that hence- 
 forth reserve and suspicion should ever 
 dog her love and reverence. 
 
 Saddest of all in the sad awakening 
 from her di-eam of worship was the 
 gradual realisation that Mademoiselle 
 Azvedo's shameful elopement was no 
 isolated act of wrong marring a career 
 otherwise blameless, but a most consis- 
 tent issue of a life which Cassandra now 
 understood to have been impure through-
 
 152 LADY LAURA. 
 
 out. A strong imagination is no con- 
 temptible instrument of logical detective 
 — once set upon the right track, it will 
 scent out the whole way with the keen- 
 ness of an animal instinct. Cassandra 
 saw more plainly every day that she 
 had been from the beginning the victim 
 of a most flagrant imposture : words 
 that had fallen without meaning on her 
 child-ears now started up pregnant with 
 painful suggestion, and she discovered 
 that in her intercourse with Mademoiselle 
 Azvedo she had been involuntarily ini- 
 tiated into many of the least fair secrets 
 that are written in the book of the 
 world's knowledge. She had tasted the 
 fatal fruit that closes the gates of Eden, 
 and compels the saddened soul to wander 
 forth into regions of little comfort where 
 flowers fade and only thistles thrive. She 
 could not help it, and yet she felt her 
 purity contaminated by the evil that had
 
 LADY LAURA. 153 
 
 been revealed to her. She could not help 
 it either that her own imagination did 
 the part of the flaming sword, and by 
 its clear illumination made a return 
 to ignorance impossible. It was not 
 the least disservice that Mademoiselle 
 Azvedo had done her pupil, that she 
 had taught her to be very keen in scent- 
 ing out iniquity — nay, even to conjure up 
 its phantom, and take fright at it when 
 the reality was not there. 
 
 Thus, by the light of her disappointed 
 worship, Cassandra made the perilous 
 descent from the ideal to the real, which 
 we are all destined to make, either alone 
 or in company, at some period of our Hves. 
 And a very precipitous road she found it, 
 very startling and revolting to her were 
 many things she met upon her way. 
 
 It was a moment when the influence 
 of home affections, could such have found 
 their way to her, would have been invalu-
 
 154 LADY LAURA. 
 
 able — wlien her mother's sympathy might 
 have saved her from the abyss of moral 
 scepticism into which she was falling. But 
 the years she had spent at Asnieres had 
 put a gulf of separate experience between 
 her and all home associations, which she 
 was impotent to cross. She had been 
 sent among strangers at the age when 
 children attach themselves insensibly to 
 those about them — learning to love, with- 
 out thought of worthiness or congeniality 
 in the beings loved. The ground had 
 been rudely broken when the first seeds 
 were sprouting, and the season was too 
 far gone for the mischief to be repaired 
 by a second sowing. All her growth 
 had been from, not towards, her own 
 people; her ideals were opposed to theirs, 
 her aims were such as they could not 
 sympathize with. And when she came 
 home after that sad term, she found 
 herself even more apart from the rest
 
 LADY LAURA. 155 
 
 of her family than she had suspected 
 when she was only with them for a few 
 weeks in every year. She could not help 
 being conscious of the points of difference 
 between herself and them, nor could she 
 refrain from silent criticism upon them. 
 Her father's selfish tyranny, her mother's 
 submissive weakness, her sister's unsym- 
 pathetic righteousness, exasperated her in 
 turn ; and she wearied continually of the 
 narrow limits of the whole family life. 
 The least selfish aspiration of her father's 
 mind was that the Chm-ch should be 
 strengthened against the forces of Dis- 
 sent, and Cassandra could not but observe 
 with a bitter smile that his zeal in this 
 cause owed its fervour much more to 
 hatred of Dissenters than to any love 
 for the Church itself. Neither was it 
 possible not to feel some shght contempt, 
 though of a gentler kind, for the pliant 
 amiabihty of the character of her mother,
 
 156 LADY LAURA. 
 
 whose virtues, hidden under bushels of 
 impotence, gave no hght to those around 
 her, but rather suggested that goodness 
 was nothing better than a last resource 
 of chained weakness. Nor yet could she 
 find aught to admire in Anna's dreary 
 round of punctually accomplished duties, 
 of which the only visible result was her 
 own consciousness of superiority to the 
 remainder of the household. To Cassan- 
 dra it all seemed very ugly and very 
 useless — the whole household might have 
 been swallowed up by an earthquake, and 
 the world would have been never the 
 worse. She tried hard to be just towards 
 ways and views so different from her own, 
 but she could not succeed in being sym- 
 pathetic towards them, and she soon gave 
 up the attempt, and fell into a way of 
 regarding her life at Nant-y-Gwyn as 
 a mere journeying through a desert, in 
 which her soul needed but a shifting
 
 LADY LAURA. 157 
 
 tabernacle — the building of a permanent 
 temple being a thing to be deferred till 
 she should reach the better country pro- 
 mised by her imagination. For darkly in 
 the beginning, but with growing clear- 
 ness as the years went on that changed 
 her from child to woman, she had been 
 feeling her way towards a conception of 
 life that should exclude no side of human 
 nature, but, blending into one full chord 
 the various voices of our complex being, 
 should satisfy at once her judgment, her 
 conscience, and her affections. Of such 
 a grandly harmonized existence she had 
 accepted Mademoiselle Azvedo as the 
 incarnate type, but the conception itself 
 was the inevitable outcome of her own 
 character, and as such it remained with 
 her in spite of her disappointment of its 
 present realisation. It might be true, as 
 her own experience suggested and all 
 about her were loud to assert, that this
 
 158 LADY LAURA, 
 
 • 
 
 many-sided ideal was not to be lived on 
 earth : nevertheless she could not cast 
 it out, and the scepticism of others only 
 served to strengthen her conviction that 
 this was the goal towards which her own 
 inner life should tend, and the hope 
 never quite forsook her that somehow 
 and somewhere she would find means 
 to give it outward effect. Meanwhile 
 she would do without sympathy, living 
 upon hope and faith. 
 
 In course of time her vague aspirations 
 after human perfectibility were once more 
 concentrated in a warm interest in a 
 concrete human being. Those were the 
 days when Maurice Heme was a frequent 
 guest at the rectory. He was a year 
 younger than Cassandra, and when first 
 she came home he was only a clever boy, 
 who was expected to distinguish himself 
 by-and-by. Cassandra and he became 
 friends at once ; she interested herself in
 
 LADY LAURA. 159 
 
 his work, and sympathized with his bud- 
 ding ambitions; and he was proud to 
 help her in such branches of learning as 
 are less insisted on in girls' than in boys' 
 schools. They read and rode and walked 
 together when he was at the rectory, and 
 kept up an active correspondence when 
 he was away. Altogether it was a most 
 pleasant, frank, cousinly friendship, and 
 a very healthful influence on both their 
 lives, and one which deepened and 
 strengthened as the years went on. It 
 would be hard to say to which the inter- 
 course of those days was the most 
 precious — to Heme, who found in Cas- 
 sandra's large sympathies and pure ideals 
 the complement of his eager mental ac- 
 tivity, or to Cassandra, who looked to 
 see realised in him her ideal of a free 
 being, who chooses the difficult right way 
 in life, not because all others are made 
 dangerous by di^agons of penalty and
 
 i6o LADY LAURA. 
 
 prejudice, but because the light of 
 knowledge shows it the most fair. That 
 Maurice Heme was a good man, and yet 
 no fool, was a thought in which her mind 
 found inexhaustible satisfaction and under 
 the influence of which she almost re- 
 covered the exuberant happiness of her 
 school- days. 
 
 Such a friendship as I have described 
 could of course not go on much longer 
 without developing into love on one side, 
 if not on both. And but for the quarrel 
 about Gerard, and the banishment of 
 Heme from the rectory, he would in all 
 probability have proposed to Cassandra 
 as soon as he was in a position to marry. 
 But no words of love ever passed between 
 them; and when Maurice was banished 
 from the rectory, Cassandra believed that 
 she regretted him only as a friend. Cer- 
 tainly the house did seem very dull now 
 that he never came, and she found the
 
 LADY LAURA. i6i 
 
 task of living mthout sympathy grow 
 harder rather than easier every day. It 
 must not, however, be supposed that her 
 life was without consolations. Far from 
 it. She possessed a temperament so na- 
 turally joyous, that every day seemed to 
 bring her a tribute of gladness. She 
 rejoiced in the beauty of nature, in the 
 splendour of her own youth and talents, 
 in the daily intercom'se with neighbours. 
 She was universally popular, for there was 
 about her a bright charm of communi- 
 cativeness that made all her gifts a sort 
 of common property. And in this popu- 
 larity she rejoiced also. It was sweet to 
 her to be loved and admired, and to know 
 herself welcome in every neighbouring 
 house — so sweet, that sometimes she al- 
 most flattered herself that she wanted 
 nothing more, and could live always 
 as a god, giving and receiving nothing 
 back. Almost, but not quite. There was 
 
 VOL. I. 11
 
 i62 LADY LAURA. 
 
 a yearning in her heart for some return 
 of sympathy which could not be quenched, 
 and which drove her again and again 
 into rash impulsive friendships, partaking 
 of the nature of that first attachment, 
 and ending, as it had ended, in a sudden 
 rebound at the discovery of some unsus- 
 pected flaw. And each new disappoint- 
 ment left her a sadder if not a wiser 
 woman ; and each year as it went by 
 developed the germs of bitterness that 
 the first hard lesson had planted in her 
 heart. She felt herself growing cynical, 
 and battled with the tendency ; but never- 
 theless it betrayed itself in her manner, 
 and by degrees she acquired a reputation 
 for saying satirical things, which made 
 her to be dreaded in circles where she had 
 formerly been treated with confidence. 
 And continually she found herself revert- 
 ing in thought to the pleasant days when 
 she enjoyed her cousin's friendship, and
 
 LADY LAURA. 163 
 
 wondering that she had let it go from 
 her so lightly. For she had known well 
 enough that it was something more than 
 friendship that Maurice felt for her, and 
 that if he made her no tender of his love 
 it was her own manner that kept him 
 silent — that light mocking manner with 
 which she had so often before and since 
 checked words of affection on lips from 
 which it would have been sweet to her to 
 hear them, and repulsed confidences she 
 had laboured hard to win. She knew that 
 she niight have married her cousin then, 
 and she had often wished since that the 
 might-have-been had been reahsed, but at 
 the time the marriage had seemed impos- 
 sible to her. Maurice was a year younger 
 than herself; his career was uncertain, 
 his talents were unproved ; and Cassandra 
 was ambitious in her conceptions of mar- 
 riage. She knew that her own gifts were 
 unusual, and she feared the absurdity of
 
 i64 LADY LAURA. 
 
 a union with a man who might not be 
 her eaual. She desired a husband to 
 whom she might look up, of whom she 
 might be proud in her own heart and 
 before the world. And then, though she 
 was very fond of Maurice, it seemed to 
 her that her affection for him was of too 
 tame a sort to base a marriage on ; and 
 she had prevented him from behaving 
 as a lover by systematically treating him 
 as a boy. 
 
 And now, after an absence of seven 
 years, he was coming back, unmarried 
 still, and therefore possibly unchanged in 
 his feeling towards her, and the happi- 
 ness she had once let slip might be again 
 within her grasp. If only nothing would 
 happen to scare it away a second time. 
 
 Her mind was in a strange commotion 
 as she drove home from Cresford that 
 afternoon, and it was not so much from 
 any deliberately conceived plan, as under
 
 LADY LAURA. 165 
 
 the impulse of a thousand conflicting feel- 
 ings, that she made her half-revelations to 
 Laura, and brought her in to tell the 
 news to the rectory cuxle. 
 
 She was very fond of Laura and wanted 
 to fortify herseK with her sympathy ; and 
 though she shrank from taking her wholly 
 into her confidence, she wished her to 
 understand the state of her feelings to- 
 wards the expected guest. And also, 
 very naturally, she wished that Heme's 
 return might be accomplished without a 
 disagreeble scene at home, and this she 
 thought would be more Hkely secured 
 if Laura told the news than if it were 
 first heard from herself. She had not 
 meant to speak flippantly, and had only 
 been driven to do so by the fear of 
 betraying too much feeling. But now 
 that she saw how she had pained Laura, 
 she heartily wished that she had been 
 silent altogether, not only on Laura's
 
 i66 LADY LAURA. 
 
 account, but on her own. It seemed a 
 bad omen for Heme's visit, that the first 
 intelligence of it should bring misunder- 
 standing between her and Laura. 
 
 She went back into the house very 
 sadly when Laura had driven away, and 
 instead of returning to the drawing- 
 room, where she knew that a discussion 
 about Heme would be going on, went 
 up to her own room, and began walking 
 impatiently up and down, trying to 
 reason into quietness the hopes and 
 fears that had been so long gathering 
 in her heart, and now thrilled every 
 nerve of her body with uncontrollable 
 excitement. She was still occupied 
 in this way and not any nearer to 
 composure when the dinner-bell rang. 
 ' I cannot go down,' was her instant 
 decision, and without a moment's 
 hesitation she took a cloak and hat 
 from a peg on her door, and dress-
 
 LADY LAURA. 167 
 
 ing herself in them, hurried to her 
 sister's room. Anna was not quite 
 ready for dinner, and her first exclama- 
 tion on seeing Cassandra was one of 
 annoyance at being further hindered ; 
 her next was of surprise at the cloak 
 and hat. 
 
 ^ Where in the world are you going 
 to now ? ' she asked in a tone that 
 suggested, ^What new folly are you 
 affcer ? ' 
 
 ^ I am going to the night-school,' 
 Cassandra answered; ^I have not been 
 for a long time, and I want to go. I 
 can have some supper when I come in; 
 and will you explain, please, Anna?' 
 
 ' Explain what ? ' 
 
 ^That I am not coming in to dinner, 
 that is all.' 
 
 ' Why don't you tell papa yourself ? 
 you have plenty of time. It is not fair 
 always to throw things upon me. If
 
 i68 LADY LAURA. 
 
 you choose to do what is disliked, you 
 ought to bear the brunt of it.' 
 
 ' This will be the last time,' Cassandra 
 answered humbly. * You know I have 
 practically given it up. But there are 
 some accounts I promised to settle, and, 
 in short — I want to go to-night. Do 
 not try to prevent me.' 
 
 The night-school was one of many 
 battle-grounds between Cassandra and 
 her father. It was not a Church institu- 
 tion, and therefore not to be supported 
 by help from the rectory. But Cas- 
 sandra had steadily refused, ever since 
 she came home, to recognise distinctions 
 of Church or Dissent in meting out 
 her sympathies, and had thrown herself 
 impartially into every useful undertaking 
 that came in her way. She had, how- 
 ever, for some time tacitly rehnquished 
 this one, as the disagreements it gave 
 rise to were so serious as to outweigh, in
 
 LADY LAURA. 169 
 
 her estimation, the services she could 
 give. In going to-night she was only 
 flying from a dreaded discussion, and 
 she did not try to conceal from Anna 
 that it was so. 
 
 ' It is not I who want to prevent your 
 going,' Anna said: * you can do as you 
 like, of course, as far as I am concerned ; 
 hut if you go, you must tell papa your- 
 seH.' 
 
 * I want not to see my father,' Cassan- 
 dra answered. ^ Anna, you might do this 
 for me. I think you know why I want to 
 
 go. You might — you might ' She 
 
 wanted to say you might have a Httle 
 sympathy for me, but it seemed absurd 
 to talk of sympathy to Anna, and she 
 stopped. 
 
 Anna said coldly, ' Of course I know 
 why you are going, and I wonder you 
 have not more self-respect than to betray 
 yourself so completely.'
 
 I70 LADY LAURA. 
 
 Cassandra winced. * You may be sure 
 I would not betray myself to you if I 
 could help it — if I bad any one else to 
 go to ... .' 
 
 She bad begun bitterly, but she broke 
 off, and ended in a tone of sad appeal : 
 
 ' Oh, Anna, it is not often I ask you 
 to help me. Will you not be kind this 
 once ? ' 
 
 Anna was surprised, and answered in 
 a gentler tone than was usual with her, 
 ' I will say what I can to make it right, 
 but I can't help wondering at you, Cas- 
 sandra,' 
 
 'Never mind,' said Cassandra. 'I 
 wonder at myself. Good-bye.' And she 
 hurried away before her sister could re- 
 consider her promise. 
 
 Anna told her father and mother that 
 Cassandra had gone to the night-school 
 for the last time, just to settle some 
 accounts and finish up things, and then
 
 LADY LAURA. 171 
 
 tliey went in to dinner ; and during 
 dinner Maurice Heme was much dis- 
 cussed, and many things were said which 
 it was certainly well for the peace of 
 the family that Cassandra did not hear.
 
 ^^^s 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^mB^^£i 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 ' Sag 'ihm, aber sag's bescheiden 
 Seine Nahe sei mein Leben.' 
 
 H, Egmont, you dear boy, I 
 heard you in the passage while 
 Dawkins was doing my hair, 
 and I was just running out to see you 
 when I remembered your tiresome friend, 
 and hid myself. Put down that great 
 kicking boy and come and tell me how 
 you are.' 
 
 The speaker was Lady Laura, who was 
 coming down the broad staircase dressed 
 for dinner: the person addressed was a 
 sort of monster, dimly discernible in the 
 fire-glow as a tall man's figure, regular
 
 LADY LAURA. 
 
 173 
 
 and shapely enough up to the shoulders, 
 but there, where the head should have 
 been, rushmg into vagaries of fat legs 
 and arms and clustering flaxen curls. 
 As Laura finished speaking, a merry cack- 
 ling laugh broke from the region of the 
 flaxen curls, the big figure turned round 
 showing a bearded face between the kick- 
 ing legs, and a voice, apparently not 
 coming fi'om the same source as the 
 laughter, said humbly, 
 
 ^I am really very sorry, but ' 
 
 ' Oh dear,' said Laura, stopping at 
 the foot of the stairs in pretty em- 
 barrassment — all blushes and fluttering 
 shimmer of foolish white di-apery that 
 had got unsettled in the eager descent, 
 *I took you for Egmont; the firelight 
 makes things dim, and you looked about 
 his height.' 
 
 She did not know what more to say, so 
 she stood still and waited for the stranger
 
 174 LADY LAURA. 
 
 to finish his apology. She looked qnite 
 serene now, for her blushes had died 
 away and the white skirts had fallen back 
 into their proper folds. As Heme looked 
 at her, she seemed to him like some fair 
 Alpine peak that has given one responsive 
 throb in the sunset glow and then sunk 
 into white purity again before one man 
 can cry to another to look. So still and 
 white and unapproachable she looked, that 
 he thought her embarrassment at the dis- 
 covery of her mistake must have been an 
 illusion of his own sight. But she had 
 not recovered so completely as he thought. 
 She was in truth very much confused and 
 not a little annoyed. 
 
 Her brother and Heme had arrived 
 while she was dressing for dinner, and as 
 soon as she could escape from the hands 
 of her maid, she had hurried down in the 
 hope of getting a little Ute-a-Ute with 
 Egmont before the family assembled,
 
 LADY LAURA. 175 
 
 and, in her eagerness, had rushed awk- 
 wardly into a meeting with the person 
 she most wished to avoid. And now she 
 did not know what might be expected of 
 her : whether to go on her way to 
 Egmont's room with just a formal bow 
 to the interrupting stranger or to go 
 forward and give him friendly greeting. 
 Being a very timid person of small 
 social resource, she did neither, but 
 stood still and left the responsibility of 
 the sequel to the other. 
 
 The boy came to the rescue. * Mr. 
 Heme is not exactly the same height as 
 Uncle Egmont, Aunt Laura. He is jusfc 
 a Utile taller, because when I stand on 
 Im shoulders I can" touch the stag's nose, 
 and I can only verij nearly do it on Uncle 
 Egmont's.' Then addressing himself to 
 Heme, * Let me do it again, I want her 
 to see. Look, Aunt Laura, isn't he jolly 
 to stand on ? '
 
 176 LADY LAURA. 
 
 ^ I think you are making Mr. Heme 
 very uncomfortable/ said Laura, — which 
 was most unjust, seeing that it was she 
 who had done that, and that Eustace 
 alone of the three was doing something 
 to set the others at ease. 
 
 ' Mr. Heme says he likes it,' was 
 Eustace's defence. 
 
 ' That is very kind of him ; ' and Laura 
 looked up to see the performance. As 
 she looked up, her eyes met Heme's and 
 they smiled at one another. Heme 
 smiled first, — a pleasant, frank smile, half- 
 amused, half-apologetic ; and Laura sent 
 him back a reflection of his own smile 
 with the addition of as little original 
 meaning as possible. 
 
 Eustace touched the stag's nose and 
 was set down on the floor, and then 
 Egmont came limping on the scene and 
 had to be greeted and pitied. And Laura 
 revenged herself on the stranger by for-
 
 LADY LAURA. 177 
 
 getting all about him till she was recalled 
 to a sense of his presence by Eustace, 
 who was eager to tell his uncle about her 
 mistake. When he had told his story, 
 Laura said, ^ I am afraid I was very rude,' 
 and she supplemented the words with 
 another smile, in which, unconsciously em- 
 boldened by her brother's presence, she 
 allowed all manner of shy graciousnesses 
 to find momentary expression. 
 
 Then they went into the drawing-room 
 where the rest of the family were assem- 
 bled; and while Heme was being pre- 
 sented to Lady St. Asaph and thanked 
 by her for his goodness to her son, the 
 party from the rectory arrived. It was 
 a family custom that they should dine 
 once a week at the castle, and Lady St. 
 Asaph had not thought it desirable to 
 put them off because Maurice Heme's 
 coming happened on their day. She had 
 merely mentioned the fact incidentally to 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 178 LADY LAURA. 
 
 her brother-in-law, leaving it to him to 
 take the initiative if he wished to keep up 
 the feud. It had been a satisfaction to 
 her that he had made no difficulty about 
 coming. 
 
 Laura had speculated a good deal on 
 the manner in which the meeting would 
 take place between Cassandra's lover — 
 for in that character she had now accus- 
 tomed herself to think of Heme — and 
 his offended relations ; but in the last 
 few minutes, all that had been said and 
 wondered about him before he came, had 
 gone suddenly out of her head, and it 
 was with a mental start that she re- 
 membered now that he loas Cassandra's 
 lover — the man of dangerous opinions 
 — to whose visit she had looked for- 
 ward with such uncomfortable feelings. 
 She watched the meeting, and it seemed 
 to her that everybody was as oblivious 
 as herself. Mrs. Gwynne greeted him
 
 LADY LAURA. 179 
 
 affectionately, giving him both, hands 
 and smiling her kindest smile. Mr. 
 Gwynne gave him a patronising shake of 
 the hand that promised toleration, which 
 was the nearest approach to sympathy 
 he ever gave to any one ; and Cassandra 
 held out her hand with her usual cor- 
 diahty and welcomed him with easy 
 gladness. The only one who was at all 
 stiff was Anna, and with her stiffness 
 was habitual; she went through the 
 world hke one who has been sent to 
 rebuke a perverse generation, and ad- 
 dressed all her fellow- creatures in a 
 manner that seemed designed to express 
 a disclaimer of brotherhood. 
 
 In a few minutes more they were all 
 seated at dinner, and Laura was taking 
 observations of the stranger from the 
 opposite corner of the table. Certainly 
 he was a very different person from what 
 she had expected ; and, like most people
 
 i8o LADY LAURA. 
 
 who have prejudged and found their 
 judgment erroneous, she was inclined to 
 make a grievance of the difference. His 
 very personal appearance was all wrong. 
 She had made up her mind that he would 
 be a grave sombre man, old-looking for 
 his years, lean and sallow, with a thunder- 
 cloud on his brow — such an appearance 
 being obviously the only legitimate one 
 for a man of revolutionary principles. He 
 was to look sad and haggard — haunted 
 like a Byronic hero with dark thoughts 
 that make him ill at ease in the daily 
 business of un-Byronic life. She had 
 meant to be very sorry for him as an 
 unhappy person entangled in honest error, 
 and she had resolved to do her best to 
 like him for Egmont's sake and Cas- 
 sandra's ; but she had expected to feel a 
 certain awe of him and to have to over- 
 come much instinctive dislike. But the 
 actual man had nothing awe-inspiring
 
 LADY LAURA. i8i 
 
 about him at all — neither did he seem 
 a fit object for compassion. He seemed 
 perfectly happy and as much at home in 
 the every- day world as man could wish 
 to be. He was talking to Lady Sarah 
 about people they both knew in 
 London, comparing notes with Lord 
 Khoos about foreign hotels, and cutting 
 down Egmont's exaggerated accounts of 
 Alpine adventure — all quite easily and 
 with evident interest in the topics. 
 Beally one could never have imagined 
 that he was a person of dangerous 
 opinions, still less that he was on doubt- 
 ful terms with any one present — least of 
 all that separated from him by only the 
 breadth of two chairs was the object of a 
 thwarted attachment, first seen to-night 
 after an interval of seven years. Laura 
 was provoked into saying to herself that 
 such levity was unbecoming and that his 
 ease bordered on impertinence.
 
 i82 LADY LAURA. 
 
 She herself hardly joined in the con- 
 versation at all : she seldom talked 
 much except in tete-a-tete — there were 
 talkers enough in the family without her, 
 and the listener's part fitted her well, for 
 she had the rare gift of inoffensive 
 silence, so that you never knew how httle 
 she had spoken till you tried to remember 
 what she had said and found that her 
 part had been almost entirely to smile 
 and look intelligent. I doubt whether 
 she was conscious of how much her face 
 talked while her lips were still, or whether 
 she would have been always willing to 
 endorse the silent speeches that were 
 imputed to her, for in all young faces 
 the hidden meanings of the future are 
 fitfully revealed, and a young girl's smile 
 is not seldom a riddle of which she her- 
 self will not know the meaning for many 
 years. And so to-night, though Laura 
 talked even less than usual, nobody noticed
 
 LADY LAURA. 183 
 
 that she was silent ; and Heme, catching 
 her eye resting more than once upon 
 him, certainly never suspected that he 
 was being judged unfavourably. 
 
 Laura was not the only observer at the 
 table. Cassandra was watching too ; and 
 though she took her part freely in general 
 conversation and even fought a lively 
 Httle duel with Heme across Mr. Tre- 
 madoc and Mrs. Gwynne, who were seated 
 between them, she contrived to see some 
 things that Laura missed. She noticed 
 for instance that more than once Heme 
 tried to draw Laura into conversation, 
 appealing to her opinion either by a direct 
 question or an inquiring glance ; and she 
 noticed that word or glance, whenever it 
 went that way, differed indescribably from 
 words or looks addressed to the other 
 women present — differed from the formal 
 deference with which he addressed Lady 
 St. Asaph — differed from the tone of
 
 i84 LADY LAURA. 
 
 frank equality as of man- of- the- world to 
 woman-of-the-world in which he talked 
 to Lady Sarah — differed by a whole world 
 of mystery and poetry from his confident 
 manner towards herself. Trying to define 
 to herseK wherein the difference lay, she 
 found herself thinking of the chastened 
 radiance by which the commonest objects 
 are sanctified in the light of a summer 
 sunrise. 
 
 As by fascination, her own eyes fol- 
 lowed his every time they strayed towards 
 Laura or rested on her face, and, seeing 
 in the light of another's vision, she began 
 to make discoveries. Suddenly it flashed 
 upon her mind that Laura was no longer 
 a child, but a very beautiful woman. 
 Little Laura, who had hitherto sat at 
 her feet and listened to her as to an 
 oracle, was in a moment transfigured. 
 Everybody else at the table might still 
 regard her as a child, but to the new-
 
 LADY LAURA. 185 
 
 comer she was a woman — and the woman. 
 The fact confronted Cassandra with 
 scorching vividness — with ominous, pain- 
 ful significance. For a moment her 
 self-possession deserted her. Lord St. 
 Asaph was speaking to her and she 
 forgot to answer; her eyes were riveted 
 on her cousin's face — it had hecome the 
 face of a rival. With a sudden pang 
 she realised that the demon of jealousy 
 had broken into the sanctuary of her 
 gentlest affection. 
 
 * Cassandra, you are looking ominous,' 
 said Lady Sarah gaily. * What evil is 
 hanging over us ? ' 
 
 Cassandra started hke one whose secret 
 vision is laid bare. Lord St. Asaph re- 
 peated his question. She answered at 
 random, and then plunged into bantering 
 conversation with Ehoos and took care 
 not to be caught dreaming again while 
 dinner lasted.
 
 i86 LADY LAURA. 
 
 But the vision was not dispelled. It 
 followed her into the drawing-room when 
 dinner was over, and drove her away 
 from the fire, where the other women 
 were chatting together, into a far win- 
 dow from which she could look out upon 
 the moonlit hills. 
 
 Laura followed her. She had been 
 conscious of the pain in Cassandra's 
 face while she watched her at dinner, 
 and had made an innocent little guess 
 at its meaning. ^ Cassie sees that I don't 
 like Mr. Heme, and she is hurt.' Upon 
 which she had smiled penitence across 
 the table, and resolved in a moment 
 to forgive Heme's levity as well as his 
 heterodoxy and to be as gracious to him 
 as Cassandra could wish. But now, see- 
 ing Cassandra still dreaming and unlike 
 herself, she feared that her mute promise 
 of atonement had not been understood, 
 and she wanted to make it over again.
 
 LADY LAURA. 187 
 
 She laid her hand on Cassandra's shoulder 
 and said gently, 
 
 ' What, dreaming still, Cassandra ? ' 
 ^ Yes — dreaming in the moonlight.' 
 ' Tell me your dreams,' said Laura. 
 ' I -was thinking of an old myth I have 
 read somewhere, in which man first wakes 
 to life in the early dawn when the world 
 lies grey and dim, and only the eastern 
 sky is faintly tinged with crimson by 
 the coming day. He turns towards 
 the beauty with love and admiration, 
 and, while he gazes, the sun rises in 
 splendour ; his love and admiration are 
 changed to awe, and he falls down and 
 worships. Then the sun speaks, bidding 
 him go forth and labour till evening, and 
 promising to be with him in cheering 
 light and warmth and colour. And he 
 goes forth and labours till the sun is 
 high in the heavens, when he shrinks 
 from its scorching, not recognising it as
 
 i88 LADY LAURA. 
 
 the fair light of the morning. But when 
 evening comes, he sees the sun again low 
 on the horizon and once more bows 
 down to it, stretching out his arms to 
 woo it like a lover. But the sun shoots 
 bhnding arrows at him and sinks out of 
 sight. In a moment the glory is gone 
 from the earth. Then he curses the 
 sun for unfaithfulness and lies down 
 despairing. But he sleeps, being weary 
 with labour ; and while he sleeps moon- 
 hght steals gently upon him, and, without 
 waking, he opens his arms and receives 
 it as a bride in his bosom ; and rest and 
 peace come with its gentle kiss.' 
 
 ^ It is a pretty fairy-tale,' said Laura ; 
 'misty and dim as the moonhght itself. 
 What does it mean ? ' 
 
 'A hundred thousand things,' Cassandra 
 answered. ' But, as you say, it is like the 
 moonlight, and moonlight meanings are 
 too dim for words, — they can only be felt.'
 
 LADY LAURA. 189 
 
 She was not looking at the moonlight 
 now, but at Laura, who was standing a 
 few paces from her, leaning against the 
 pier of the window. The moonlight fell 
 fall upon her, clothing her from head to 
 foot — she seemed the embodied essence 
 of its meanings. 
 
 * Laura, how beautiful you are to-night ! ' 
 Cassandra exclaimed suddenly. * No — 
 don't move. Stand where you are a 
 minute longer and let me get a picture 
 of you in my mind that I can never 
 forget. I wish I could have you painted 
 just so. You look like a spirit that has 
 put on only enough body to keep it^on 
 earth and prevent its vanishing on a 
 moonbeam. But how strange it seems, 
 when only yesterday you were a little 
 child in a white muslin frock and a coral 
 necklace ! ' 
 
 ^ Nonsense,' said Laura. ^ I have out- 
 grown my own picture years ago, and
 
 I90 LADV LAURA. 
 
 now everybody thinks the old Lady 
 Laura is meant for me because I am 
 so tall — taller than you, Cassie, though 
 you pretend not to know it.' And she 
 raised herself on tiptoe, stretching her 
 neck till she towered almost a head 
 above her cousin. As she spoke, a ripple 
 of childish laughter ran through her 
 words and broke across the melancholy 
 of Cassandra's mood like a burst of elfin 
 merriment. ^ Oh dear, yes, I have been 
 a great girl for a long time, and I am 
 not half so beautiful as you are.' 
 
 * But you are a thousand times more 
 beautiful, though somehow it never struck 
 me till to-night. And now I really think 
 you are the loveliest woman I have ever 
 seen.' 
 
 ^Nonsense,' said Laura again; 'it is 
 the moonlight, and my new gown, and 
 your exaggerating imagination. Come 
 back to the fire and talk sense.'
 
 LADV LAURA. 191 
 
 'No, I want to stay here till I have 
 found out the meaning of the moonhght^' 
 
 * And I want to go and ask Dawkins 
 if she can make me a gown of it. It 
 would be so nice to be always lovely. 
 Come back to the fire — it is chilly 
 here.' 
 
 Laura's laugh bubbled over again. 
 
 ^I wish you would not laugh,' said 
 Cassandra impatiently. * Mirth jars upon 
 me to-night. "Why will you not be still 
 again as you were just now ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, because — and because — and be- 
 cause ! Partly because it was only yester- 
 day you know that I was a httle cliild 
 with a coral necklace, and partly be- 
 cause I have had a great shock and I 
 am only just recovering from it. For 
 you must know that, as I came down to 
 dinner, I rushed upon Mr. Heme and took 
 him for Egmont, and talked all sorts of 
 nonsense before I found out my mistake.
 
 192 LADY LAURA. 
 
 And I have been shy and frightened ever 
 since till now when a reaction has begun. 
 So yon must let me laugh till I recover 
 my balance. But you — why are you so 
 grave ? ' 
 
 * Because — and because — and because/ 
 answered Cassandra, making a vain effort 
 to catch the playful tone of the other. 
 
 And Laura said, — 
 
 'I will be grave too if you like — 
 grave and sad like the old Lady Laura. 
 Do you know, I have been feeling very 
 like her lately ? And this evening it came 
 into my head that I could not do better 
 than go into a convent as she wanted to 
 do. That was when I had blundered 
 about Mr. Heme and did not know what 
 to say next. Is that why people go into 
 convents, Cassie, because they have got 
 into a mess and don't know how to get 
 out of it ? ' 
 
 A spirit of mischief seemed to possess
 
 LADY LAURA. 193 
 
 Laura to-night. But at every fresh 
 sally Cassandra only looked more 
 dispirited. 
 
 ^ Yes, yes/ she answered bitterly, 
 'people renounce the world when their 
 own folly has made it unbearable.' 
 
 'Don't be cynical, Cassandra.' Laura 
 held up her finger and put on an air of 
 mock authority. 
 
 ' I want to know what it is that makes 
 people like the moonlight better than 
 the sunHght,' said Cassandi'a, following 
 out her own thoughts without regard to 
 Laura's. 
 
 'It is only the mystery,' Laura said. 
 ' The sunHght shows everything plainly, 
 but the moonhght gives hints which we 
 can interpret as we will. There is a fine 
 explanation for you ! ' 
 
 ' Yes, I suppose that is it. All charm 
 is in the unknown. Knowledge is the 
 gi'eat disenchant er, and the world is a 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 LADY LAURA. 
 
 Bluebeard's closet to whoever holds the 
 key.' 
 
 'Cassandra/ cried Laura, 'the moon- 
 light is making you unbearably melan- 
 choly. I wish you would come back to 
 the fire.' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'Then I shall go.' 
 
 But Laura did not go. She stood on 
 in the window, spinning phantasies out 
 of the suggestions of Cassandra's words. 
 Suddenly she said, — 
 
 ' I think allegory is tiresome. It fits 
 one meaning as well as another, and may 
 be twisted and turned till it contradicts 
 itself. For instance the moon would be 
 just as disappointing in the morning as 
 the sun was in the evening, and moonless 
 nights would come. And then, though 
 the sun is eclipsed by the moon, the 
 moon itself is eclipsed by ' 
 
 ' By the earth,' said Cassandra in a
 
 LADY LAURA. 195 
 
 tone of triumpli that startled herself. 
 ^ Wliat an irony of revenge for the 
 sun ! ' 
 
 The gentlemen were coming in from 
 the dining-room, and Laura went across 
 the room to arrange a screen for her 
 father. Cassandra moved from the win- 
 dow and sat down on an ottoman that 
 stood at a little distance from it. Heme 
 saw her and made his way towards her. 
 
 She had meant this to happen ; hut 
 yet, as he came near, she almost wished 
 him away. But she sat still, greeting 
 him only with a very quiet smile from 
 which all significance was banished, not 
 so much by a determination to be 
 inscrutable as by the divided state of 
 her mind. When they met two hours 
 ago, she had quite simply taken up again 
 the tone of affectionate friendship that 
 belonged to their earlier relations, but 
 what she had seen during dinner and
 
 196 LADY LAURA, 
 
 what she had been feeling since, made 
 it impossible for her to maintain the 
 same manner now. But she had not 
 yet had time to think what the new 
 footing should be. She only knew that 
 a blank curtain seemed suddenly to have 
 dropped over her future, blotting out 
 hopes that had been none the less 
 sweet that they were vague and un- 
 spoken — she could only scorn herself for 
 the miserable envy with which she was 
 conscious that the beauty of Laura's 
 dawning womanhood had this evening 
 filled her, and resolve desperately that at 
 least she would not betray her vileness 
 and expose herself to the scorn of others. 
 If anything more were needed to con- 
 vince her that her empire over Heme 
 was gone, she thought she had proof 
 of it in the perfect composure of his 
 manner as he seated himself beside her 
 and said in a quiet undertone, —
 
 LADY LAURA. 197 
 
 ^ You see I have lost no time in 
 coming to you for instructions.' 
 
 '- 1 ought to feel very much flattered, 
 but on what subject am I to instruct 
 you ? I thought you had come here to 
 instruct us.' 
 
 She was conscious that she was 
 speaking with bitterness, but she could 
 not help it. Two voices were crying in 
 her heart, one tender and sweet, the 
 voice of the old affection that had grown 
 to love : the other harsh and grating, 
 the voice of bitterness that might grow 
 to hatred. The one must be silenced 
 at any cost — the other she had not yet 
 learned to discipline, and it rung tune- 
 lessly through her speech. 
 
 It jarred upon Heme, and made him 
 shrug his shoulders and answer in a 
 tone that was undeniably flippant. 
 
 ^ Suppose you begin by telhng me 
 how I am to behave to yom- father and
 
 198 LADY LAURA. 
 
 mother. I wish to do right, hut, reraem- 
 hering the past, I am afraid lest the hest- 
 meant steps should give offence. Am I 
 forgiven ? Am I expected to call ? ' 
 
 *I know no more than yourself,' an- 
 swered Cassandra, ^ but from their manner 
 of greeting you to-night I should say 
 you might consider yourself forgiven.' 
 ' And at liberty to call ? ' 
 ' And at liberty to call.' 
 * And you have no idea of what I owe 
 my forgiveness to ? ' 
 
 Did he want her to say that it was to 
 her intercession ? Did he want her to 
 say that she was glad to see him among 
 them again ? She was on the point of 
 saying something in a kinder tone, but 
 at that moment Laura passed near the 
 sofa and, as she flitted by, Heme looked 
 up at her. The vision was there again, 
 and under its influence she said, — 
 
 ^ Probably your being here is taken as
 
 LADY LAURA. 199 
 
 a pledge of better conduct. It naturally 
 suggests a radical change in your religious 
 and political views.' 
 
 ' I should hardly have said so/ replied 
 Heme. ^ Surely difference of political 
 and religious opinion need not exclude 
 friendship.' 
 
 ^ Not in theory I admit, but in practice 
 it generally does, except in very special 
 cases, such as when two persons have 
 known and cared for one another before 
 either of them became the mouthpiece 
 of any set of opinions, or when they 
 happen to agree in some one enthusi- 
 asm that is important enough to out- 
 weigh the points of difference.' 
 
 ' Then you entirely exclude the possi- 
 bility of a man's being large-natured 
 enough to recognise and be attracted by 
 sympathetic human quahties in the midst 
 of opinions with which he does not 
 agree ? '
 
 200 LADV LAURA. 
 
 ^ No, not entirely ; I only say that 
 when he has reached that point I think 
 his own opinions are generally tottering. 
 Perfect tolerance is so rare a jewel that 
 when people tell me they have found 
 it, I generally think their eyesight is 
 failing and that they are heing taken 
 in.' 
 
 ^Is not this rather new doctrine for 
 you ? ' asked Heme impatiently. * I 
 thought you used to preach a sort of 
 wide Humanitarianism that was to 
 swallow up all sects and teach the Hon 
 to lie down with the lamb.' 
 
 * So I do still sometimes, but that is 
 no reason why I should not occasionally 
 state the other side of the question, — 
 which has the advantage of being every- 
 day fact instead of far-off ideal. And 
 if I am inconsistent, may I not have 
 my inconsistencies as well as other 
 people ? '
 
 LABV LAURA. 201 
 
 Heme said dryly, * And all this means 
 of course that I have no business here.' 
 
 ' Certainly you have no business here. 
 You ought to be in the thick of life, your 
 hands overflowing with work, with friends 
 of your own way of thinking and feeling 
 crowding round you, and all the needs of 
 the time pressing upon you and com- 
 pelling you to act. Then you would have 
 no time for dilettante researches after 
 sympathetic human qu ah ties in feudal 
 castles. ' She stopped and tried to 
 recover the hghter tone in which she 
 had begun the conversation, for she 
 was conscious that her last words had 
 been spoken with the earnestness of 
 mortified affection. She ended in an 
 easier tone, — ' I shall expect you to tell 
 me next that you are making a collec- 
 tion of old china or devoting yom'self 
 to the study of heraldry.' 
 
 ' And if I am . . . . ? '
 
 202 LADV LAURA. 
 
 * Only that you are another spirit lost. 
 But tell me now, what have yon been 
 doing all these years ? ' 
 
 ' Earning my living as honestly as 
 most of my fellows.' 
 
 ^ That is to say, doing clerk's work at 
 your office for four or five hours a day, 
 and lounging away the rest of your time 
 at clubs or in drawing-rooms. Maurice, 
 you were meant for better things ! I 
 declare if I had been at your elbow 
 you should never have gone into that 
 office — you should have turned shoe- 
 black sooner. Why did you give up 
 the idea of the Bar? ' 
 
 ^Does the Bar seem to you an ideal 
 vocation then? It never struck me in 
 that light.' 
 
 ^ Perhaps it is not altogether ideal. 
 Few things are. But it would have been 
 a thousand times better than this office 
 routine. Any profession, any art, any
 
 LADY LAURA. 203 
 
 handicraft seems to me a channel into 
 which a man may turn all his energies, so 
 that head and hand and heart work to- 
 gether and grow together, and he becomes 
 more of a man every day. But you can 
 never throw your soul into your office 
 work. And you are too — too indolent to 
 do anything great as an aside. Can you 
 deny it?' 
 
 ' Perhaps not.' 
 
 ' Why did you give up the Bar ? ' 
 
 ^ Since you insist upon an answer, for 
 the simple reason that having resigned 
 my fellowship I could not afford it, and 
 that, the world in general not sharing 
 your prejudice in favour of shoeblacks, 
 I could not have carried on that pro- 
 fession while I was waiting for briefs 
 without damaging my prospects.' 
 
 ^I beg your pardon, I had forgotten,' 
 said Cassandra humbly. She remem- 
 bered how she had heard of that
 
 204 LADY LAURA. 
 
 resignation with a thrill of sympathy and 
 admiration, haiHng it as a first step in the 
 career of uncompromising honesty that 
 Maurice had purposed and she encouraged 
 in those days of pleasant friendship 
 which she was now just realising were 
 past for ever. She felt rebuked by being 
 reminded that he had made some sacri- 
 fices for conscience' sake, while she, the 
 rebuker, had made no sacrifice at all; 
 and at the same time she felt exasperated 
 that the first step in the direction of 
 clear duty should seem to have crippled 
 the steps that came after. ^ No,' she 
 said, ^I suppose you were not to blame 
 
 for accepting Lord C 's nomination. 
 
 But, all the same, it is annoying.' 
 
 ^ There,' said Maurice, * I cannot agree 
 with you. The office gives me a certain 
 income, leaves me a fair amount of leisure 
 every day, besides giving me a good spell 
 of holiday in the course of the year.'
 
 LADY LAURA. 205 
 
 Cassandi-a struck in impatiently, ^ And 
 all these things are demoralising you 
 .... are they not ? ' 
 
 Heme shrugged his shoulders and 
 said, — 
 
 * It is not for me to contradict you.' 
 
 * How is the Society ? ' asked Cassan- 
 dra, making a sudden effort to bring 
 about a better understanding. 
 
 The ' Society ' was an old scheme of 
 Maurice's in the elaboration of which 
 she had herself largely participated ; an 
 association purposing to bridge over 
 by an organized system of help the 
 interval that must elapse between 
 the practical recognition of the perils 
 attendant upon state-relief of pauperism 
 and the dawning of that happier day 
 when social sympathy — no longer content 
 with merely breaking down old barriers 
 between man and man — shall so fence 
 about individual lives with shelter and
 
 2o6 LADY LAURA. 
 
 support that charity shall be once more 
 practically as well as literally identified 
 with love, and human help, grown too 
 sacred to be abused, shall flow freely from 
 the strong, the wise, and the happy to the 
 weak, the ignorant, and the miserable. 
 The scheme was in its infancy in the days 
 when Maurice was often at the rectory, 
 and great things were hoped for it by the 
 little knot of philanthropists who were en- 
 gaged in working it, — greater things by 
 none than by Cassandra herself, who saw 
 in this society of men and women, banded 
 together to help all who needed help, 
 something like a revival of the religious 
 fraternities of the Middle Ages. And 
 while she aided the scheme with many 
 suggestions of practical usefulness, she 
 did more than any one to invest it with 
 ideal beauty by insisting ever on the 
 supreme importance of never allowing it 
 to degenerate into a mere machine for
 
 LADV LAURA. 207 
 
 the distribution of alms : it was to 
 remain always humanly warm and living 
 from the centre to the extremities — its 
 cardinal law being that material help was 
 to be in all cases followed up by such 
 friendly guidance and protection as 
 should make a relapse into indigence 
 almost impossible. By asking after it 
 now, she meant to put a truce to the jar- 
 ring dialogue of which she was weary, 
 and to lead conversation into more sym- 
 pathetic channels. 
 
 But unfortunately the Society had not 
 prospered according to the hopes that 
 had surrounded its cradle. Like most 
 societies, it had steadily lost in charm as 
 it passed from theory to practice. Or- 
 ganisation had progressed, but humanisa- 
 tion had not kept pace with it; and, 
 though it was an undeniably useful in- 
 stitution, it had fallen so far below its 
 original intention that Heme was con-
 
 2o8 LADY LAURA. 
 
 scious that Cassandra would consider it 
 a complete failure it he detailed to her 
 its present condition. He was conse- 
 quently not disposed to talk of it ; and 
 when she said, ^ How is the Society ? ' 
 he answered shortly, — 
 
 * The Society is no exception to the 
 rule of universal failure.' 
 
 ^Are you talking about your Society, 
 Mr. Heme ? I want you to tell me all 
 about it,' said Lady Sarah, coming up 
 to them and catching the word without 
 the context. She had said to Ehoos 
 that Heme and Cassandra had been 
 left to themselves long enough and 
 must now be called back to general 
 sociability, and she had come across the 
 room on purpose to put an end to their 
 Ute-d'Ute. She sat down on the sofa, 
 and as Heme did not answer at once, 
 she said, — 
 
 ^I am really very much interested in
 
 LADY LAURA. 209 
 
 this Society, for from what I have heard 
 of it, it seems to me to be one of the 
 very few really practical schemes afloat 
 for regenerating the world.' 
 
 'I used to think so myself/ answered 
 Heme ; ' but I confess that I am begin- 
 ning to lose faith in it.' 
 
 *Why? What is yom- difficulty?— 
 want of money or want of workers ? Or 
 are you beginning to doubt the need 
 of help ? ' 
 
 Lady Sarah asked her questions plea- 
 santly, and as if she meant to be 
 answered. She had a talent for making 
 people tell her their troubles — a talent 
 that lay chiefly in a frank belief in 
 whatever was told her. She was easily 
 taken in by the disingenuous, but she 
 seldom misunderstood the ingenuous. 
 That everybody had difficulties was 
 matter-of-course with her and therefore 
 not to be ignored by any false delicacy 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 2IO LADY LAURA. 
 
 that miglit kinder her from helping. 
 And this view of life made her a com- 
 fortable person to confide in, for you 
 could tell her that you had made a mis- 
 take without fear of awakening surprise, 
 that stern forbidder of confidence. Heme 
 felt much more disposed to be com- 
 municative to her than to Cassandra. Be- 
 sides, her categorical questions could not 
 well be avoided. He answered frankly,^ — 
 
 *• Our difficulties arise partly from a 
 want of workers, but much more from 
 a failure on the part of those we have 
 to grasp the real purpose of the thing. 
 We are hardening into a machine, and 
 to protest against machinery was the 
 object of our coming into existence.' 
 
 ' Very likely ; but you had no right to 
 expect any other result. Every enter- 
 prise of this kind tends to become more 
 and more mechanical as it goes on. It 
 must do so, or be entirely dissipated.'
 
 LADY LAURA. 211 
 
 * Is not that equal to saying that 
 every enterprise of the kind mu&t 
 fail?' 
 
 ' Not in the least ; only that it will 
 fall short of its intention. But is it not 
 rather chilly here? Let us go back to 
 the fire and discuss the Society more 
 comfortably.' 
 
 They went back to the fire, where 
 Laura was busy among cups and saucers. 
 Heme approached her table and asked 
 leave to make himself useful. She smiled 
 permission, and the Society was forgotten 
 for a few minutes. But Lady Sarah 
 wanted to hear more about it. So by 
 way of bringing back conversation to 
 the subject, she said, — 
 
 *Mr. Heme and Cassandra were very 
 busy in the window talking about re- 
 forming the world. I have brought 
 them here to tell us how it is to be 
 done.'
 
 212 LADY LAURA. 
 
 'I am afraid,' said Heme, ^we ended 
 by agreeing that the world was too bad 
 to be reformed.' 
 
 * Poor world ! ' said Laura. ' But then 
 Cassandra is in a very hopeless mood 
 to-night — she has been looking at the 
 moon and it has made her melancholy.' 
 
 'But I am hopeless too, and I have 
 not been looking at the moon.' 
 
 *You have been trying to grasp it, 
 which is the most hopeless task of all,' 
 said Lady Sarah. ' I wish I could bring 
 people to see that to accomplish a third 
 part of what one attempts is matter for 
 thankfulness rather than despair. You 
 attempted the impossible and have ac- 
 complished the possible, and everybody 
 recognises your usefulness. It is most 
 ungrateful of you to be discontented.' 
 
 'I don't agree with you at all,' said 
 Cassandra sadly. 'The bitterest thing 
 in life is to be congratulated on success
 
 LADY LAURA. 213 
 
 when one is conscious of having failed. 
 And from all I hear, it seems to me 
 that this Society has failed — failed as 
 completely as a picture might be said 
 to have failed if it had been designed 
 for the decoration of a church and then 
 found worthy of no better use than that 
 of signboard to a roadside inn. And I 
 see why it has failed. I half saw the 
 danger at the very beginning.' 
 
 ^You never told us your doubts,' said 
 Maurice. ' It is rather cruel to say now 
 that you foresaw failure.' 
 
 ^ I only half doubted, but I see now 
 that my half- doubts were right. Your 
 weak point is that you represent no body 
 of opinion — that you have no common 
 animating principle. You merely offer 
 to be hands to aU who need help. You 
 are like a character without individuahty, 
 that may spend a Hfetime in doing kind, 
 unselfish things and yet never be really
 
 214 LADY LAURA. 
 
 cared for, simply because it cannot make 
 itself recognised as a whole. You may be 
 valued for the odd jobs you do, but you 
 can have no influence as you are, — ^you 
 will never become a power/ 
 
 *You are of the opinion of Taper in 
 " Coningsby," that there can be no suc- 
 cess without a religious cry,' said Ehoos, 
 who had been listening to the discussion 
 without taking part in it. 
 
 * Yes, I am. I beHeve that no society 
 is likely to prosper in practical work by 
 pursuing that chiefly and directly. It 
 seems to me that the only associations 
 that ever achieve anything in the way 
 of world-reform are religious bodies who 
 devote themselves, not to the remedying 
 of any particular abuse, but to the setting 
 before people some higher ideal of life. 
 Once let people feel that they belong 
 to such a body, they will try to adapt 
 their lives to its standard. Look at
 
 LADY LAURA, 215 
 
 the Methodists. Wherever you find 
 Methodism taking a hold, you see those 
 who adopt it becoming respectable, seK- 
 respecting members of society/ 
 
 'Methodism,' said Heme, 'is an instru- 
 ment which I am unfortunately debarred 
 from making use oV 
 
 ' We know that,' said Cassandra ; ' but 
 Methodism is not the only form in which 
 religious feeling may embody itself.' 
 
 Everybody looked uncomfortable, and 
 Ehoos said, — 
 
 *I cannot bring myself to share Cas- 
 sandra's admiration for Methodism, but 
 I agree with her so far that I do not 
 wonder at the failure of any cause that 
 depends solely on committees. I have a 
 constitutional horror of committees, which 
 was aggravated years ago by my ex- 
 perience of committees of the House of 
 Commons. The recollection of them 
 makes me ill.'
 
 2i6 LADY LAURA. 
 
 *I doubt/ said Lady Sarah, ^whether 
 a committee is much improved by be- 
 coming sectarian.' 
 
 ' But surely it is possible to be religious 
 without being sectarian. I thought there 
 was such a thing as human religion, — the 
 religion of the future.' 
 
 Cassandra spoke warmly and without 
 premeditation. In a moment she reaHsed 
 that she had been indiscreet, and she 
 looked for sympathy to Maurice, who 
 must surely know what she meant, how- 
 ever the others might misunderstand her. 
 But Maurice was looking at Laura and 
 seemed not to have heard her. She sank 
 back wearily in her chair and let the 
 discussion go on without her: she felt 
 that she had been deliberately shut out 
 from it. 
 
 They talked on. Heme giving detailed 
 accounts of cases of distress that the 
 Society had tried to relieve. Lady Sarah
 
 LADY LAURA. 217 
 
 taking persistently cheerful views, and 
 Laura sitting by and listening with 
 evident sympathy, while Lord Ehoos 
 threw in an occasional sarcasm which 
 gave fresh zest to the conversation. 
 Lord St. Asaph had gone to sleep, Mr. 
 Tremadoc was deep in a Quarterly Beview, 
 and the rest of the party were absorbed 
 in whist. 
 
 Cassandra sat silent, with a terrible 
 sense of loneliness at her heart. The 
 return she had longed for was accom- 
 phshed, the moment to which she had 
 called across the long seven years had 
 come, and she reahsed that it was the 
 moment of her despair. 
 
 Khoos came up to her and said, ^ Are 
 you not going to sing to us to-night ? ' 
 
 ^Everybody is too busy to Hsten,' she 
 answered, looking round the room at the 
 various groups all apparently content and 
 absorbed.
 
 2i8 LADY LAURA, 
 
 * I am not busy/ said Ehoos. 
 
 *I will sing if you wish it.' And she 
 rose and went to the piano. 
 
 Heme was talking eagerly at the 
 moment and was not conscious of Cas- 
 sandra's movement. But very soon he 
 broke off in the middle of a sentence, 
 though Laura was listening with her 
 brightest smile. The song had found 
 him out. Mendelssohn's music, Heine's 
 words, Cassandra's voice — ^the combina- 
 tion was irresistible, and all the room was 
 listening. 
 
 * Auf Fliigeln des Gesanges 
 Herzliebchen trag ich dich fort, 
 Fort nach den Fluren des Ganges ; 
 Dort weiss ich den schonsten Ort. 
 
 * Da liegt ein roth-bliihender Garten 
 Im stillen Mondenschein ; 
 
 Die Lotos-blumen erwarten 
 Ihr trautes Schwesterlein.' 
 
 Heme left his place by Laura and 
 approached the piano noiselessly.
 
 LADY LAURA, 219 
 
 Cassandra had triumphed, hut she was 
 unconscious of her triumph. He might 
 have talked on, she would not now have 
 cared. * Wings of song ' had carried her 
 away. She had not noticed his approach ; 
 she did not feel that his eye was resting 
 on her with the same expression — only 
 infinitely heightened — with which it had 
 rested a moment ago on Laura. She 
 only felt that music was beautiful and 
 that it was glorious to be able to sing. 
 
 Glorious indeed to sing like that ! 
 
 She had a magnificent voice, clear, rich, 
 and mellow; and she had profited well 
 by Mademoiselle Azvedo's teaching, per- 
 fecting nature by careful obedience to 
 art. She sang like an artist, and an 
 artist who has never been tempted to 
 truckle to a taste inferior to her own. 
 But the magic of her singing lay not so 
 much in the quaHty or compass of her 
 voice, or in the perfect art that guided
 
 220 LADY LAURA. 
 
 it, as in the passion and pathos of which 
 these were the instrument. All the 
 strength, the warmth, the tenderness of 
 her soul, which at other times she took 
 perverse pleasure in repressing, found vent 
 in music : when she sang she dared to 
 be herself. Her sense of separateness 
 forsook her, wrong and weakness were 
 blotted from her horizon, — she had 
 passed into the poet's dreamland where 
 all was rest and sympathy. She saw the 
 violets kiss and look up at the skies, she 
 heard the roses whisper their fragrant 
 fairy-tales, she drank the cooHng waters 
 of the rivers of the blest. 
 
 * Dort wollen wir niedersinken 
 Unter den Palmenbaum, 
 Und Lieb und Ruhe trinken, 
 Und traumen seligen Traum.' 
 
 The song ended, and Cassandra sat on 
 at the piano with pale cheeks and moist 
 eyes, seeming not to hear the praises
 
 LADY LAURA. 221 
 
 that broke from all the circle. Praises 
 of her music were the only compliments 
 that neither flattered her vanity nor roused 
 her sarcasm : they did not elate her, and 
 she never troubled herself to disclaim 
 them, accepting them simply in an imper- 
 sonal spirit as belonging not to herself 
 but to her art. Only now and then — very 
 seldom — when some one said a word that 
 was not conventional, but showed that the 
 music had carried to the hearer the same 
 sense that it had for herself, a strange and 
 very lovely glow would come into her face 
 like a chastened reflection of the passion 
 that had played there while she sang ; 
 and she was never more beautiful than 
 at such moments. 
 
 She had not seen Heme while she was 
 singing, but now as she leant back in 
 her chair, she perceived him close beside 
 her. The tenderness was still in his face, 
 the gentle look had not passed from hers.
 
 222 LADY LAURA, 
 
 when their eyes met. He bent over her 
 and said, — 
 
 ' I never realised till this moment how 
 much truth there is in the old conception 
 of heaven as a place of perpetual song.' 
 
 * Ah ! ' said Cassandra, ^ did I make 
 you feel that ? It is true : one of those 
 strange old truths in the midst of un- 
 truth that make one wonder whether it 
 is all true after all. But I thought 
 you did not care for music' 
 
 ^ I always liked your music. But to- 
 night you were more wonderful than ever. 
 I know it sounds like an impertinence to 
 say to people that they have improved, 
 and yet surely you have made marvellous 
 progress, — ^your singing this evening was 
 a miracle.' 
 
 * One has more to sing as one lives 
 longer and suffers more.' 
 
 * That is a sad way of putting it, — as if 
 all beauty were the outcome of pain.'
 
 LADY LAURA, 223 
 
 'Turn tlie proposition round, and it 
 becomes consoling. All pain may be 
 transmuted into beauty. That is my faith 
 — and it is true.' 
 
 * Will you sing again, or is it painful 
 to you ? ' He was not quite sure that 
 he understood her. 
 
 * Painful ? ' she repeated with a won- 
 dering smile ; ' music is my heaven, my 
 place of sympathy, my revenge; I am 
 never so happy as when I am singing, — 
 never really happy, I believe, excepting 
 then.' 
 
 ' In that case,' he said, ' one need 
 have no scruple in asking you to sing 
 again and again.' 
 
 * Take care that you do not have to 
 ask me to stop.' 
 
 And yet she seemed in no hurry to 
 return to her heaven. Was she not in 
 heaven already while Maurice stood by 
 her, talking without bitterness, praising
 
 224 LADY LAURA. 
 
 her, understanding her ? . . . . Her fingers 
 strayed idly over the key-board, waking 
 here and there a tender chord or a 
 fragment of melody. And then, all at 
 once, the desire to explain away the 
 misunderstanding of the early part of the 
 evening mastered her, and she spoke in 
 low musical tones that seemed to Heme 
 to come from some mysterious region 
 midway between singing and saying. 
 
 * Listen a moment,' she said; ^ I want 
 to tell you why I am so disappointed in 
 your career. I used to think — I think 
 still — that there is about you a kind of un- 
 worldHness that is not common in modern 
 men. You believe in purity of purpose, 
 in disinterestedness — you are religious 
 though you reject the faith of the ortho- 
 dox. And if you had undertaken any 
 work that was worthy of you, you might 
 have made a poem of your life. But you 
 will never do it now, for this office
 
 LADY LAURA. 225 
 
 drudgery is jnst the most hopeless thing 
 you could have fallen upon ; it robs you 
 cf time and energy without interesting 
 you, and you try to atone to yourself by 
 half-hearted philanthropies. I do not 
 believe in having one work for one's right 
 hand and another for one's left. The 
 attempt must fail. You cannot deny 
 that it has failed with you, that your 
 office bores you, and your Society is dying 
 for want of concentrated devotion.' 
 
 ^ I do not attempt to deny it,' said 
 Heme, speaking very quietly and without 
 resentment ; ^ but is there not another 
 explanation than the one you suggest ? 
 How if a man has not the power to 
 make a poem of his life, — if the inspiration 
 of the morning fails him in the afternoon, 
 and he discovers 'that he is a very un- 
 heroic person, fit only to do hod- work in 
 the world?' 
 
 * That of course is very sad. But it 
 
 VOL. I. 15
 
 226 LADY LAURA. 
 
 is not your case. You have the power ; 
 but you want — forgive me for saying 
 it — the courage to make use of it.' 
 
 ^ You are too much in the right to 
 need forgiveness,' said Heme; hut almost 
 before he had spoken she was singing 
 again. And she remained at the piano, 
 singing one thing after another, till the 
 carriage was annoimced to take the 
 rectory party home.
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 How green you are, and fresh, in this old world ! ' 
 
 ^l^^O say that Mamice Heme did 
 not feel his return to Nant- 
 y-Gwyn quite as intensely as 
 it was felt by Cassandra is but to say 
 that he was a man and she a woman; 
 and that while she had brooded over the 
 past, nursing its half- conscious dreams 
 into full and vivid life, he had drifted 
 into new interests in which the old ones 
 were absorbed, and developed new needs 
 that called for new satisfactions. It is 
 by no means to assert that he was in- 
 sensible to the memories that his visit
 
 228 LADY LAURA. 
 
 revived ; still less tliat he tried to 
 harden himself against them. 
 
 In returning to the place where he had 
 spent the happiest hours of his boyhood 
 and much of that early period of man- 
 hood when all the future is lived through 
 in imaginative forecast, he was meeting 
 his own past again and realising with 
 present vividness the hopes and purposes 
 with which he had started in life : 
 achievement was confronted with inten- 
 tion, fulfilment with promise, and the 
 result was that the work of the inter- 
 vening years seemed to wither into 
 nothing before the all-embracing vision 
 of his youth. The past had meant so 
 much that the present seemed all failure, 
 and Cassandra's words came home to 
 him with more poignant rebuke than 
 she suspected. 
 
 * You might have made a poem of your 
 life ; you will never do it now,' she had
 
 LADY LAURA. 229 
 
 said. But in her own mind the ^ never ' 
 had been qualified, for though she felt 
 that the last seven years had told irre- 
 vocably upon herself — crystallising ten- 
 dencies into habits and numbing the 
 youthful vitality that makes new begin- 
 nings possible — she saw no outward 
 change in Mamice save in the direction 
 of increased manliness and vigour. She 
 had grown rigid and felt old ; but he was 
 young still, and for him all that was 
 possible seven years ago was possible 
 now, if he would but rouse himself and 
 act. But to Heme himself the posi- 
 tion looked differently. The barren years 
 behind him seemed as a spell that he had 
 woven for his own destruction, and Cas- 
 sandra's words sounded like a sentence 
 binding it upon the whole of his life. 
 
 ^ You might have made a poem of your 
 life.' 
 
 Yes, that was what he had asphed
 
 230 LADY LAURA. 
 
 to do, — to be consistently pure and 
 honourable, conforming never to the 
 world's standard in belief or action, seek- 
 ing the truth with unremitting labour, 
 speaking it and living it. He had meant 
 purely, he had purposed highly ; and yet 
 now that forecast was changed to retro- 
 spect, it was undeniable that he had 
 accomplished next to nothing. Trying 
 to sum up the achievement of his thirty 
 years of life, he recognised with disgust 
 that it was comprised in the part-founding 
 of a society for the relief of destitution 
 and the writing of a score or so of ultra- 
 radical articles for the Reformer, And 
 what was more galling even than the 
 littleness of these results was the sense 
 that he was beginning to doubt the 
 usefulness of the Society and to much 
 more than doubt the wisdom of the 
 articles. Sad foolishness they seemed to 
 him now, and he found himself growing
 
 LADY LAURA. 231 
 
 liot with shame at the absurdity of 
 passages that came back upon his 
 memory — opinions caught at eagerly by 
 his sympathies and flung out hot and 
 crude before they had been tested by 
 experience, — wild, unpractical cant of 
 democracy, pregnant with mischief at 
 least as deadly as the abuses against 
 which it was hurled. So he judged one 
 moment, condemning himself with that 
 utmost severity which we reserve espe- 
 cially for the follies of our cast-off selves. 
 And the next moment he found himself 
 growing enthusiastic again in the re- 
 membrance of the moods in which those 
 articles were written. The old demo- 
 cratic creed might not have been very 
 logical ; and perhaps, to have got beyond 
 it, was an advance on which he ought 
 to congratulate himself. But he had 
 believed in it with all his soul; and in 
 the days when he wrote for the Ueformer,
 
 232 LADY LAURA. 
 
 he had been, he knew it, more of a man 
 than he was now ; and he had fought his 
 way through the difficulties that beset 
 his start in hfe with an energy that failed 
 him in the perplexities of to-day. 
 
 It was characteristic of much that was 
 best in him as well as a source of much 
 that was weakest in his career, that in 
 forecasting his hfe he had never occu- 
 pied himself much with the outward 
 details of its course, content on the 
 whole that these should be shaped by 
 circumstances so long as he held fast by 
 his inward convictions. When his col- 
 lege career was accomplished he was in 
 no hurry to choose a profession; his 
 fellowship gave him enough to live on, 
 and there was work to be done in the 
 literary world and further self-education 
 to be carried on. Then came the religious 
 scruples resulting in the impetuous renun- 
 ciation of his fellowship ; and the literary
 
 LADY LAURA. 233 
 
 work became a means of subsistence. 
 Friends urged the adoption of a profession ; 
 but every profession seemed closed by- 
 some fastidious scruple, moral or intellec- 
 tual, and literary work coming abundantly, 
 lie continually put off the choice till 
 further delay was made impossible by 
 the pressure of family events. About 
 two years after the resignation of his 
 fellowship, his father died, and he found 
 himself face to face with unlooked-for re- 
 sponsibilities. The father had OTMied a 
 very small property on the outsknts of 
 Cresford, and had lived on a scale which, 
 without being sumptuous, had consider- 
 ably exceeded his means — with the result 
 that by the time the property descended to 
 Maurice it w^as little more than a nominal 
 possession, being burdened with a mort- 
 gage besides considerable debts. By no 
 means nominal, however, was the duty it 
 brought with it, of entirely supporting his
 
 234 LABV LAURA. 
 
 mother. Heme had been but little at 
 Cresford for some years and had been 
 ignorant of the increasing difficulties of 
 the home-life. He had regarded the 
 eagerness his father had lately shown in 
 snatching at any and every opportunity of 
 getting remunerative employment as one 
 of the many forms of monomania that 
 show themselves with advancing years, 
 and he was now painfully startled to find 
 that the much-reduced expenses of the 
 household had for some time past been 
 met almost wholly by the proceeds of the 
 various engagements into which the old 
 man had entered lately, rather to the 
 disgust of his acquaintance, who regarded 
 many of them as beneath his social posi- 
 tion. Heme frankly accepted the situation 
 and reaHsed at once that the choice of 
 some less precarious means of livelihood 
 than his present literary one had become 
 an imperative and urgent duty. It was
 
 LADY LAURA. 235 
 
 at this moment that the offer of a place 
 in a Government office came to him 
 through the interest of a college friend 
 who knew of the difficulty in which he 
 was placed. The pay was small to begin 
 with and the prospects in the fatui^e were 
 not brilliant ; but it was a certainty, and 
 would enable him to make a home for his 
 mother. Opportune accident facilitated 
 the sale of the property at Cresford for 
 a sum considerably above its real value, 
 so that the mortgage and part of the 
 other debts could be paid off at once. 
 But the whole burden could only be lifted 
 by years of persevering work and thrift. 
 
 Life was very real in those days. He 
 lived frugally and worked hard, devoting 
 all the leisure his office work allowed 
 him to writing, not for the Beformer 
 only, but for any newspaper or periodical 
 that would give a place to his ardent 
 Kadicalisms. And often he found his
 
 236 LADY LAURA. 
 
 conscience hard pressed between the 
 need of money and the inward necessity 
 to be honest. But he struggled on, and 
 in time the debts were all paid, and life 
 was again comparatively smooth and 
 easy. But the day when the burden 
 was lifted from his shoulders, though he 
 had hailed it at the time as a day of 
 emancipation, seemed in retrospect to 
 have been the beginning of his failure. 
 The spur removed, his energy relaxed ; 
 and the old tendencies to inaction 
 dominated him again. Before long too, 
 he found himself solitary in the world. 
 By one of those strange strokes of irony 
 in which Fate seems to delight, his 
 mother had died within the year that 
 had put an end to her anxieties and 
 promised her a calm and assured future. 
 No one leaned upon him any longer, and 
 incentives to action must come hence- 
 forth from within. But he was wanting
 
 LADY LAURA. 237 
 
 in ambition and his enthusiasms were 
 dying out. 
 
 From that time forward his life was 
 one of ever-lessening activity. Like all 
 people of excessive moral fastidiousness, 
 he was more afraid of doing harm than 
 eager to do good; he dechned work 
 on the plea of unfitness, and left it to 
 be done by others who were obviously 
 much more unfit ; he renounced opinions 
 at the first shadow of doubt ; and hesitated 
 long before committing himself to new 
 ones. 
 
 And while he stood still, the fiiends 
 of his earlier manhood drifted gradu- 
 ally away from him, getting engi'ossed 
 in professional work, maiTying and find- 
 ing a channel for their sympathies in 
 domestic life, or spending on personal 
 ambition the energies once dedicated 
 to pubhc ends. In short the time had 
 come for him when a man sees, not
 
 238 LADY LAURA. 
 
 only that realisation of a tenth, part of 
 his early dreams will cost him far more 
 personal devotion than he once thought 
 would buy the whole, but that this poor 
 fragment of success must be sought by 
 other paths than those he started on, and 
 that these paths must be trodden alone 
 — when he begins to question whether 
 it were not better to give up visions and 
 enjoy life with the rest. 
 
 It was a strange accident that, just 
 at this critical period of his life, a chance 
 meeting with Egmont Gwynne should 
 have brought him back to the spot where 
 he had first found sympathy and inspira- 
 tion. He had accepted the invitation to 
 Ardgwen under the influence of a feeling 
 not unhke the yearning of the physically 
 languishing after the air of their native 
 place. And now that he was back 
 among the old scenes, the intervening 
 years seemed to him like one of those
 
 LADY LAURA. 239 
 
 tantalising dreams in which one journeys 
 on and on to find oneself always at the 
 starting-point. 
 
 In the first meeting with Cassandra 
 he had felt estranged from her — first hy 
 her strained manner, and afterwards hy 
 the discovery that she had undergone no 
 change corresponding to that which had 
 heen working in himself. But before the 
 end of the evening, he had begun to find 
 refreshment in her constancy and to feel 
 better for her influence. And he resolved 
 to take up again the thread of their 
 interrupted fiiendship. 
 
 Accordingly he went next morning 
 through pom^ing rain to call at the 
 rectory, and was rewarded for his trouble 
 by a chilling reception from Mr. Gwynne 
 and Anna, the only members of the 
 family who were visible. Mrs. Gwynne 
 was in bed with a bad headache, 
 and Cassandra had started, in spite
 
 240 LADY LAURA. 
 
 of the weather, on a three-mile walk 
 across the hills. Heme felt aggrieved. 
 He said to himself that Cassandra 
 must have expected him to come this 
 morning, and that it would only have 
 been commonly kind to stay at home for 
 him or at least leave a message to ex- 
 plain her absence. As no message was 
 given him, he concluded that she had 
 gone purposely to avoid him. He made 
 his visit as short as courtesy would allow, 
 and came back to the castle rather out 
 of temper. He went to the library, which 
 he had been told was the common sitting- 
 room of the family. But it was deserted. 
 The men had gone out shooting and the 
 ladies were dispersed about the house. 
 Laura was with her father and Lady 
 Sarah was in the nursery. Lady St. 
 Asaph always spent the morning in writ- 
 ing letters in her own room. 
 
 He looked at the books on the shelves,
 
 LADY LAURA, 241 
 
 but none of them seemed to suit his 
 taste for the moment ; he took up a 
 newspaper that was lying on a table, and 
 flung it down impatiently on discovering 
 that it was yesterday's, which he had read 
 and re-read on the journey down. He 
 was beginning to agree with Cassandra 
 that Ardgwen was behind the world, and 
 that he was out of place as a visitor 
 there. He walked to the window and 
 looked out. The hills were shrouded by 
 -the rain, the trees were swaying back- 
 wards and forwards in the wind, sod- 
 den leaves were being beaten into the 
 ground ; altogether the prospect was 
 dreary and not likely to mend his mood. 
 He fell into a vague reverie of discontent 
 with himseK and all things, from which 
 he was roused by-and-by by the entrance 
 of Lady Sarah — bright and animated and, 
 as usual, ready for conversation. Heme 
 would rather not have talked ; but there 
 
 VOL. I. 16
 
 242 LADV LAURA. 
 
 was no resisting lier vivacity, and lie 
 found himself drawn into argument in 
 spite of himself. They discussed a thou- 
 sand things. Politics, rehgion, philosophy 
 were in turn their hattle-ground ; they 
 disestablished the Church and established 
 it again; they exchanged the Monarchy 
 for a Kepublic and then elected an 
 Oligarchy; they confiscated estates and 
 distributed property equally among all 
 citizens ; they educated everybody and did 
 away with laws — inaugurating the reign 
 of pure reason. And on all subjects Lady 
 Sarah took a benevolently despotic part, 
 while Heme — partly because he was a 
 little out of temper and partly from a 
 tendency of his character to take the 
 other side on all occasions — advocated 
 the most extreme measures of destruction, 
 and mercilessly turned upside-down all 
 her well-meant but rather retrogressive 
 theories of reform. Laura came in now
 
 LADY LAURA. 243 
 
 and then and remained for a few minutes 
 in the room ; but she took no part in the 
 conversation beyond listening and pass- 
 ing silent unfavourable judgments upon 
 Heme. He seemed to her to be saying 
 a great many disagreeable things in a 
 very disagreeable way, and she wondered 
 to herself how Cassandra could be fond 
 of him. She wished it would leave off 
 raining, so that he might go out and see 
 his old haunts, as he had said last night 
 he should like to do : he was an 
 uncomfortable person to have hanging 
 about the house. But it rained all day, 
 and there was no dehverance. And the 
 next day was wet again, and they were 
 obliged to give up a riding party they had 
 planned, at which everybody was dis- 
 appointed and inclined to be cross. The 
 weather, however, was not bad enough to 
 hinder the gentlemen from shooting again, 
 and this time, to Laura's great satisfaction,
 
 244 LADY LAURA, 
 
 Heme was of the party. It was a relief 
 to have him out during the morning and 
 not to see him at luncheon. But in the 
 evening, of course, he was there again 
 and as argumentative as ever. Before 
 bedtime, Laura had lost all patience and 
 told Egmont that she thought this new 
 friend of his was quite unbearable. 
 
 It is always satisfactory when the 
 peace-breaker of one scene appears as 
 peace-maker in the next. And so I am 
 sure that everybody will be glad to hear 
 that the weather which, by its sullenness 
 during the first two days of Heme's visit 
 had spoiled his temper and put him in 
 Laura's bad books, brought about a recon- 
 ciliation on the third morning. On that 
 day the sun rose in yellow glory and 
 streamed into Laura's bedroom, waking 
 her early and persuading her to get up 
 and have a walk before breakfast. It was 
 a lovely morning — crisp, warm, and bright
 
 LADY LAURA. 245 
 
 as only October mornings can be, when 
 the sunshine is caught in all directions 
 by red and yellow patches in the woods, 
 and reflected by the plentiful dewdrops 
 that have narrowly escaped being turned 
 to hoar-frost. Laura had a long ramble 
 in the park and was just returning to 
 the house thinking it must be nearly 
 breakfast time, when she came upon 
 Heme, who Hke herself had been lured 
 out by the sunshine. They exchanged 
 good-mornings, and then he said, — 
 
 ^I have been discovering that my 
 memory is worse than I thought it. I 
 have been looking everywhere for an in- 
 scription that I remember used to be on 
 the castle, and I cannot find it. Surely 
 it was over the big doorway. It cannot 
 have been worn away by weather since I 
 was here last.' 
 
 ' You mean our motto,' said Laura. 
 ^ It is over the old doorway that is
 
 246 LADY LAURA. 
 
 blocked np, on the north side of the 
 castle, where the cedars grow. I will 
 take yon ronnd there if yon like. I think 
 we have time before breakfast.' 
 
 Heme remembered now, and wondered 
 how he had made the mistake. He said 
 he shonld be delighted to renew his 
 acquaintance with the spot, and they 
 started together — Laura showing the way, 
 that he knew already, through a grove 
 of Spanish chestnuts, and he helping her 
 every now and then to climb over the 
 trunk of a felled tree or to squeeze 
 through a thicket. A little farther on 
 the trees, became more sparse, and then a 
 sudden bend of their path brought them 
 out of the wood upon the bit of ground 
 where the old cedars grew — a darker, 
 chillier spot, to which the sun hardly pene- 
 trated even at noon, and where the grass 
 had perished, robbed of its nourishment 
 by the spreading roots of the trees.
 
 LADY LAURA. 247 
 
 ' This is a favourite retreat of mine in 
 summer,' said Laura; *butl seldom come 
 here at any other time. It is so chilly 
 and dark, and everything is so old that 
 it is like going back a thousand years. 
 So it is almost. This part of the castle 
 is said to be more than eight himdred 
 years old. There is the doorway with the 
 inscription you were looking for. That 
 was the original entrance ; there are traces 
 about of a road that used to lead up to it.' 
 
 ^I don't think I ever heard the stoiy 
 of its being closed,' said Heme. ' When 
 was it done and why ? ' 
 
 * It was early in the fourteenth century. 
 There is a sad story about it ' 
 
 Laura stopped, and a sudden reserve 
 came over her manner. 
 
 * Will you not tell it me ? ' said Heme. 
 
 * Gladly, if you would like to hear it ; 
 but I thought you did not care for such 
 things.'
 
 248 LADY LAURA. 
 
 ' For what things ? ' 
 
 * Old family stories and traditions.' 
 
 ^ Why should you think I do not care 
 about them ? ' 
 
 ^ Because you seem to like nothing but 
 what is new and modern — and to look 
 upon all that is old as ' 
 
 ' As what ? ' 
 
 *Well, as mischievous and false and 
 untrue.' 
 
 ^ Indeed it is not so, Lady Laura. 
 "What can have made you think this ? 
 Somebody must have been mahgning 
 me.' 
 
 'No,' answered Laura; 'I judged for 
 myself from things I heard you say. But 
 if I have done you injustice, I beg your 
 pardon.' 
 
 She spoke coldly, and as if she wished 
 the conversation to end there. 
 
 Heme was distressed at the sudden 
 change in her manner and quite unable
 
 LADY LAURA. 249 
 
 to account for it. He had never sus- 
 pected during the two days he had been 
 at the castle that she disliked him or 
 that she was treating him in any way 
 differently from any other acquaintance of 
 equally short standing; for in trying 
 to be cold and stiff to him she had 
 failed hitherto, as people generally do 
 fail when they attempt a part that lies 
 outside the range of their character. 
 What she meant for coldness he read 
 as sh}mess ; and when she fancied she 
 was making herself especially disagree- 
 able by her silence, he thought he had 
 seldom seen anything much prettier than 
 her quiet abstraction. The unexpected 
 meeting this morning had broken down 
 her reserve ; and in the pleasant exhilara- 
 tion induced by her walk in the morning 
 air, she had suddenly forgotten that any 
 peculiar bearing was due to him, and 
 had talked to him frankly and without
 
 250 LADV LAURA. 
 
 effort. But now she remembered her 
 objections to him, and she shrank back 
 into a reserve so marked that, though 
 he could not trace all the turns of 
 thought she had gone through on his 
 account, he could not any longer fail to 
 see that she had some unfriendly feeling 
 towards him. Her brightness had been 
 so pleasant to him that he could not 
 acquiesce in its eclipse. There was 
 genuine pain in his voice as he said, — 
 * I am afraid many things that I have 
 said lately must have sounded rather 
 brutal to you. But in arguing one is 
 often carried away to say things even 
 beyond one's convictions ; and besides, 
 I have known so few people who were 
 heartily in earnest in their belief in the 
 old orthodoxies that I have come to think 
 that all the earnestness is on the other 
 side. Will you forgive me if I have said 
 anything that has hurt you, and try to
 
 LADY LAURA. 251 
 
 believe tliat I am not quite so bad as I 
 may seem ? ' 
 
 * I have no right to be hm^t by anything 
 you have said,' answered Laura ; ' it is 
 your duty to say what you think. ' 
 
 Again she spoke coldly, and again he 
 felt pained. 
 
 They stood in silence for a few 
 seconds, during which Laura passed 
 again through all the emotions that 
 had been first awakened by Cassandra's 
 account of Heme. Suddenly she said, 
 ^ I daresay you think me very silly, but 
 I cannot help being made unhappy by 
 the things you say — I am very foolish, 
 I know. Because if the things are not 
 true — and I am sure they are not — 
 your saying them can't make them so. 
 But it hurts me to hear them said — it 
 hurts me that you should think them. 
 You seem to me to want to sweep away 
 all that makes life beautiful or even bear-
 
 252 LADY LAURA. 
 
 able to most people. . . . Yon talk some- 
 times as if we, who are rich and have the 
 means to enjoy all the best of life, were 
 heartless about the sufferings of those 
 who are poor and miserable. But it is 
 not just. We care as much as you do, 
 and we do what we can to help. But 
 it is not our fault that all are not equally 
 rich, and you yourself say that mere 
 giving is worse than useless. And then 
 you, who say you feel so much for the 
 miserable people, are trying to take away 
 from them all their belief in a better 
 
 world I think if I thought as 
 
 you do, that there is no God to help 
 the wretched, I should hold my tongue 
 all my life rather than spread such sad 
 
 news abroad. But you ' 
 
 It was the first time Laura had ever 
 spoken to any one, except Cassandra, on 
 any subject touching her religious belief. 
 Her inner life was a sacred place, girt
 
 LADY LAURA, 253 
 
 about with happy family affections and 
 over-arched by the blue heaven itself; 
 her faith was the simple acceptance of 
 the good news that there is a God above 
 who loves all equally and cares for His 
 world with ever-present wisdom, — a simple 
 faith that no bitter experience had yet 
 tested and which found better expression 
 in the dutifulness of her daily hfe than 
 in any forms or words. She started to 
 find that she had inadvertently opened 
 her sanctuary to a stranger ; and she 
 broke off, blushing painfully. To hide 
 her embarrassment she stooped down 
 and busied herself with picking a few 
 late blossoms of wild cyclamen that lin- 
 gered under the shadow of the cedars. 
 
 Heme was touched by the simple 
 earnestness of her words and her evident 
 distress that he should stand outside the 
 pale of her behefs. He would gladly 
 have dispelled it by an assurance that
 
 254 
 
 LADY LAURA. 
 
 he believed as she did, could he have 
 done so honestly ; but he could not meet 
 her simplicity with insincerity, and he 
 answered her gravely and sadly. 
 
 * You distress me,' he said ; ' I feel that 
 I must have talked very recklessly — I 
 cannot tell you how it shocks me that I 
 should have given you so much pain. 
 But in truth I am at a loss to know 
 what sort of things you are referring to. 
 Will you not tell me plainly, and give me 
 a chance of explaining my meaning ? ' 
 
 Laura blushed again, and looked down 
 at her cyclamens. 
 
 * I have been foolish,' she said. ^ I 
 ought not to have said what I did. 
 Please say no more about it. We should 
 not understand one another. ' 
 
 ^ Certainly not while we refuse to hear 
 one another,' said Heme, and there was 
 something in his tone this time that 
 made Laura look up and meet his eyes.
 
 LADV LAURA. 255 
 
 ^ You think me very foolisli ? ' she said. 
 
 * No indeed, I sympathise very sin- 
 cerely with what you say. I am only 
 puzzled to rememher what I can have 
 said to give you this impression of me. 
 Not that I would disclaim the opinions 
 you impute to me. But I was not aware 
 that I had expressed them here ; and, if 
 I have, I think I am to blame.' 
 
 ^ It is not so much what you have said 
 since you came, — at least I should not 
 have understood from that alone. But 
 before you came, I knew. . . .' 
 
 She stopped again, not knowing how 
 to bring the charge of atheism in plain 
 words, and wishing heartily that she had 
 not spoken at all. 
 
 * I see,' said Heme, ^ you had heard of 
 me before I came, and the report was 
 not favourable.* 
 
 * Oh but indeed,' cried Laura, getting 
 more and more distressed, ^that is not
 
 256 LADY LAURA. 
 
 what I meant. Cassandra praised yon, 
 and so did Egmont. I know you are 
 good and kind — but I am foolish. And 
 please let us not talk of these things 
 any more.' 
 
 ^ Not if it is painful to you.' 
 
 ' It is painful to me.' 
 
 * I believe you readily. And yet I 
 think that if you would let me speak a 
 little more fully, I could remove some of 
 the pain I have given you, — and I should 
 like to do that. For you see it hurts me 
 that you should think of me as you 
 do.' 
 
 ' I am very sorry,' said Laura. * I 
 ought not to have spoken.' 
 
 ^ I do not think that at all. I respect 
 you for having spoken. I liked what you 
 said.' 
 
 * But you think quite differently your- 
 self.' 
 
 ^ I will not insult you by denying it.'
 
 LADY LAURA, 257 
 
 ' You would never persuade me to 
 think as you do.' 
 
 ^ Probably not. But I might show you 
 that on many points we feel aUke, and I 
 should be glad to do that.' 
 
 ' What sort of things do you think we 
 feel alike about ? ' 
 
 ^I think we probably feel very much 
 alike about the miserable people you 
 spoke of just now.' 
 
 Laura looked doubtful, and Heme 
 went on. 
 
 ' You are thinking again that, by thi'ow- 
 ing doubts on the existence of a God and 
 another world, we take away their last 
 hope and consolation. But suppose for a 
 moment we are right — suppose their hope 
 is false.' 
 
 Laura shuddered. 
 
 '■ I only said su]);pose,' said Heme. 
 ' Suppose their hope is false and there is 
 no consolation beyond . . .' 
 
 VOL. I. 17
 
 238 LADY LAURA. 
 
 * You mean that, in that case, it is 
 better to say so honestly and try to find 
 some other consolation ? ' 
 
 ^ Precisely.' 
 
 * But then . . .' 
 
 ^ What were you going to say ? ' 
 
 * I don't think I know. Yoa are much 
 cleverer than I am, and perhaps you are 
 right. But when I hear you talking 
 about reform it always seems to me that 
 you want to upset everything that I am 
 most fond of; and that is why I can't 
 agree with you when you say we pro- 
 bably feel very much alike.' 
 
 ^ But I am sure we do,' said Heme. 
 ' Only we look at life from very different 
 points of view, and, that being so, we can- 
 not understand one another all at once. 
 You say that I am unfair to you, and I 
 feel that you are not quite just to me. 
 Your life is so happy that all the world 
 seems good to you, and any one who seeks
 
 LADY LAURA. 259 
 
 to change it appears as a spoiler. With 
 me it is different. I have lived longer 
 — I have seen much of the evil of life 
 as well as of its good; I have tried to 
 find out the causes of evil, and I have 
 seen that they often lie in the midst of 
 much that is in itself attractive and 
 lovable — for instance that the suffering 
 and degradation of one class may be the 
 price paid for the well-being of another.' . 
 
 ^ I do not quite follow you/ said Laura. 
 
 * I mean,' said Heme, ' that in society, 
 as it is now ordered, rich and poor are 
 too far apart, — the high are too high, 
 and the low too low. I do not think 
 that it is necessary, in order that people 
 should know and care for each other as 
 brothers, that they should all be equally 
 rich or equally poor; but I think there 
 is a tendency in things to bring about 
 a complete spiritual separation wherever 
 there is a great contrast of outward cir-
 
 26o LADY LAURA. 
 
 cumstances. The rich live together and 
 the poor live together, and neither know 
 the real life of the other. And I think, 
 perhaps, if it were less easy for the same 
 families to be rich generation after gene- 
 ration, there might be a freer mingling 
 of classes, and gradually the refinement 
 and culture which now belong to a few 
 would become the common possession 
 of all.' 
 
 ^I think I see what you mean,' said 
 Laura, opening her mind frankly to the 
 new light. ^ But I never thought of it 
 before in that way. It is sad to think 
 that all the really best things of life 
 come so much more easily to us who 
 have money than to those who have not.' 
 
 ^ '^ Unto him that hath is given, and from 
 him that hath not is taken away even 
 that which he seemeth to have," ' quoted 
 Heme. ' That was a proverb eighteen 
 hundred years ago, and Christianity has
 
 LADY LAURA. 261 
 
 not yet found out how to mend the fact. 
 Is it not time to try another way ? ' 
 
 * It is sad,' said Laura again : ' but oh, 
 how much more sad it must seem to you 
 who beheve in no other world than this ! ' 
 
 ^ I think that is true,' Heme answered ; 
 ^ and that is why we must be forgiven if 
 we sometimes grow bitter over the evils 
 we are trying to mend.' 
 
 They had been walking slowly on while 
 they talked; but they had now come to 
 the steepest part of the slope, and the 
 difficulty of keeping the path made further 
 conversation impossible. They walked on 
 in silence and wifch a sense of depression. 
 
 But when they got beyond the shadow 
 of the castle, and met the sunshine bear- 
 ing slant-wise across a green lawn, Laura 
 felt the recovered brightness as an irre- 
 sistible influence. 
 
 * Oh, how lovely 1 ' she cried, suddenly 
 forgetful of the sadness of the world.
 
 262 LADY LAURA. 
 
 . She had pointed to the view, but 
 Heme looked at her. He had ad- 
 mired her from the beginning, but in 
 this moment her beauty seemed to come 
 upon him as a new revelation. Her 
 hat had fallen off, and she had slung it 
 on her arm instead of putting it on again. 
 The sunlight lighted up her face and 
 brought out auburn tints in her hair like 
 threads of gold among the dark coils. 
 Her hands were clasped in front of her, 
 and her gown, which she had been 
 holding up during the walk, fell now 
 in straight folds to her feet. It was 
 made of soft Indian stuff of a deep-red 
 colour and worked all round the hem 
 and at the neck and sleeves with a run- 
 ning device in gold thread and bright 
 coloured silks, that had the effect of one 
 of those jewelled borders with which the 
 mediaeval painters decorated the robes of 
 their saints and virgins.
 
 LA BY LAURA. 263 
 
 ^Look,' she said; ^ did yon ever see 
 anything more beantifnl than that? I 
 cannot help it, bnt when I look down 
 there and see the snnlight on the slope 
 and the river rushing through the vallej^ 
 and looking so bright and glorious, I 
 must believe that the world is very good, 
 and I cannot help being happy. Is it 
 wrong ? ' 
 
 ^ Is what wrong ? ' 
 
 * To be so happy in looking at what is 
 beautiful that one forgets everything else ? ' 
 
 ^ Indeed I hope it is not wrong,' said 
 Heme ; ^ for if it is, I must be a great 
 sinner.' 
 
 ^ Then you care for the beauty too ? ' 
 
 * Very much.' 
 
 * Oh dear,' said Laura, ' I have lost my 
 cyclamens ! ' 
 
 'Here they are,' said Heme; ^you 
 dropped them while we were talking, 
 and I picked them up.'
 
 264 LADY LAURA. 
 
 ' Oh, thank you — how good of you ! I 
 should have heen very sorry to lose them. 
 They are most likely quite the last of the 
 year.' 
 
 He gave her the flowers, saying as he 
 did so, ^ May I not keep one as a reward 
 for finding them ? ' 
 
 Laura looked up hrightly, as if she 
 approved of a man who liked cyclamens. 
 * Certainly,' she said, ^if you care for 
 them. Let me see, I will give you half.' 
 And she hegan dividing the blossoms into 
 even lots, like a conscientious child shar- 
 ing with a playfeljow. There was an 
 odd one. 
 
 'You shall have it,' she said, * because 
 you found them and were not too lazy 
 to pick them up.' And she held it out 
 to him with a simplicity that was very 
 bewitching. 
 
 The sound of the gong came to them, 
 and Laura said they must hurry in to
 
 LADY LAURA. 265 
 
 breakfast. As they went, Heme began 
 asking her conventional questions about 
 her pursuits. 
 
 Did she sketch ? 
 
 ^ No, I wish I did ; but I don't draw at 
 all. My lines are always crooked when 
 they ought to be straight and straight 
 when they ought to be crooked. Cas- 
 sandra tried to teach me, but even she 
 failed. I never can learn accomplish- 
 ments.' 
 
 * I cannot believe that. You sing ? ' 
 Laura shook her head. 
 
 ' Then you play : I am sure you play.' 
 
 'No, indeed.' 
 
 ' Then I believe you write poetry ? ' 
 
 * Never a line ; ' and Laura looked up at 
 her interrogator with an amused expres- 
 sion that he had not seen on her face 
 before. He had fancied her a person 
 without humour, sweet, saintly, simple — 
 too simple to see that things were ever
 
 266 LADY LAURA. 
 
 ridicnlons ; he had even said to himself 
 that a sense of humour would spoil her, 
 and had almost gone on to say that it 
 was unbecoming in women generally. 
 But beauty justifies itself, and Laura's 
 features lit up with a mirthful smile 
 seemed for the moment even more per- 
 fect than in the repose of gravity. 
 
 * "Why do you look so much amused ? ' 
 he asked, smiling himself. 
 
 ^Because you seem so amazed at my 
 neither drawing, playing, singing, nor 
 writing poetry. I believe you think that 
 there is nothing left for a girl to do if 
 she does none of these.' 
 
 'By no means. I believe women do 
 many useful things. It was not that I 
 thought you had no other occupation to 
 fall back upon; but . . .' 
 
 ' You think it stupid not to have any 
 accomphshments ? ' 
 
 ' Eeally, Lady Laura, you seem to
 
 LADV LAURA. 267 
 
 think me capable of nothing but rude- 
 ness. What was actually in my mind 
 was that there was something about 
 you which seemed to promise art in 
 some form. I hope it is not impertinent 
 to say so.' 
 
 Laura did not know whether it was 
 impertinent or not. So she only said,— 
 
 ' Then I think I must be a great im- 
 l^ostor.' 
 
 ' I should rather have said a mystery.' 
 
 ' That is charming ! I dehght in mys- 
 tery, but I never dreamed that I was 
 mysterious myself It is like being a 
 witch.' 
 
 And she ran into the house, laughing 
 gaily.
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 Is all our fire of shipwreck wood?' 
 
 'HEY found the rest of the party 
 already assembled at breakfast 
 and engaged in discussing the 
 chances of the fine weather holding out 
 so as to allow them to carry out their 
 plan of riding to Brynllwyd. 
 
 A note from Cassandra was waiting 
 for Laura. She looked very blank on 
 reading its contents. Cassandra had 
 promised to be of the riding-party; but 
 she wrote now to say that she had 
 remembered an engagement which she 
 could not well break, and so if the ride 
 was to take place to-day she must give it
 
 LADY LAURA. 269 
 
 lip. She was very sorry, but it could not 
 be helped ; and she consoled herself with 
 the knowledge that she could be very 
 well spared as they would be a goodly 
 party without her. 
 
 'It is all very well for her to say 
 that,' said Laura, much disappointed. 
 * But it is not the case at all. It will 
 be nothing without Cassandra. I have 
 a gi'eat mind to go down to the rectory 
 directly after breakfast and make her 
 come. You don't want me this morning, 
 do you, mamma ? ' 
 
 'Not particularly,' said Lady St. 
 Asaph. ' But if you are going to ride 
 to BrynUwyd I had rather you did not 
 walk any more this morning. You had 
 better rest till it is time to start. And 
 you would only tire yourself uselessly, for 
 Cassandra is not easily persuaded out of 
 her decisions. Besides, if she has an 
 engagement she ought to keep it.'
 
 270 LADY LAURA. 
 
 ^ But perhaps it might be put off — or 
 the ride might be put off,' suggested 
 Laura. ^ I want her to be with us.' 
 
 But Lady Sarah said, ' It will hardly 
 be wise to put off the expedition. The 
 weather is very uncertain, and I think 
 I understood Mr. Heme to say that he 
 must return to London on Saturday. 
 That leaves us only to-morrow, and it is 
 more than probable that to-morrow will 
 be wet. We should be very foolish not 
 to profit by this glorious sunshine.' 
 
 'Will Lady Laura trust to my ad- 
 vocacy with Cassandra ? ' said Heme, 
 prompted quite as much by the desire 
 to please Laura as that of securing 
 Cassandra's presence. ' I owe a second 
 visit to the rectory, and I might pay it 
 this morning. I will do my best to 
 persuade her.' 
 
 Laura looked up with a bright smile 
 of thanks. ' Will you really ? — it is
 
 LADY LAURA. 271 
 
 very kind of you. I will go and write 
 a note at once. I do so want Cassandra 
 to be with us. She enjoys things so 
 much that everybody is happier when 
 she is by.' 
 
 Heme's mission was however unsuc- 
 cessful. When he got to the rectory, 
 he learned that Cassandra had already 
 gone out and was not expected home 
 till the afternoon. So the expedition 
 was made without her. 
 
 Brynllwyd was a hill about eight miles 
 distant from Ardgwen on the Welsh 
 side of the country, and on the top of it 
 stood the ruin of an old tower, which 
 tradition said had been the earliest home 
 of the Gwynne family. The road to it 
 wound gradually upwards along hill-sides, 
 beautiful with the ruddy tints of the 
 dying heather and overlooking the course 
 of the Dee, which flowed through the 
 valley — now tearing tumultuously over
 
 272 LADV LAURA. 
 
 rocks that the convulsions of past ages 
 had tumbled into its bed, now gliding 
 languidly through red oak-woods and 
 copses overgrown with a network of wild 
 clematis. 
 
 The weather continued fine ; and the 
 party from the castle set out in excellent 
 spirits, laughing and chatting gaily as 
 they rode along in the sunshine. The 
 narrowness of the paths, and the frequent 
 changes in the character of the road, 
 tended to break up their number into 
 continually varying groups, so that there 
 was little opportunity for any prolonged 
 Ute-a-Ute, Lady Sarah did indeed try 
 to get up one or two arguments with 
 Heme about the rights and wrongs of 
 property. But they were too much in- 
 terrupted to have a chance of becoming 
 very earnest, and only contributed to 
 the general merriment by giving rise to a 
 good deal of friendly banter all round. Mr.
 
 LADY LAURA. 273 
 
 Tremadoo was calmly happy, talking 
 little to anybody, but moving, continually 
 from group to group, and replying to all 
 remarks with a sort of inarticulate ^ H'm, 
 h'm ' that made a pleasant accompani- 
 ment to conversation, like the purr of a 
 cat or the singing of a kettle. Egmont 
 was in high spirits, and Lord Khoos 
 abused the English character with es- 
 pecial good-temper. In short every one 
 was happy; but no one so happy as 
 Laura, who, besides sharing in the 
 general enjoyment of the fine day and 
 beautiful scenery, had a little private 
 well of gladness in her sense of release 
 from the unsympathetic attitude towards 
 Heme into which her mind had lately 
 been cramped. He and she were per- 
 fectly good friends now, and life was 
 again simple and effortless with her. She 
 had got over her disappointment at Cas- 
 sandra's not coming ; the melancholy 
 VOL. I. 18
 
 274 LADY LAURA. 
 
 thoughts that the morning's conversation 
 had awakened were laid aside for a while, 
 and the old inspired word was in her 
 heart, that the world was very good. 
 Her manner was hright and animated, 
 and she talked more than was her wont, 
 joining readily in the war of sally and 
 repartee. 
 
 The last hit of the way was steep and 
 rugged enough to make it advisable to 
 leave the horses at an inn halfway up 
 the hill and climb to the tower on foot. 
 As they stopped on the crown of the hill 
 and looked back over the way they had 
 come, a cry of admiration broke at once 
 from all the party. For beautiful as was 
 every step of the way, the view from 
 the tower itself, when one reached it at 
 last, was always a surprise. 
 
 Immediately before them were wooded 
 slopes stretching down to the green 
 Llangollen valley, beyond which the
 
 LADY LAURA. 275 
 
 ground rose again, but to a height in- 
 ferior to that on which they stood, so 
 that their sight could range unbroken 
 across the undulating Denbighshire 
 country, and some of the party fancied 
 that they could distinguish the sea-line 
 in the distance. To their right, stretched 
 the plain lands of Cheshire and Lan- 
 cashire ; behind them the higher summits 
 of the Plinlimmon range were visible. 
 The scene was at once grand and lovely, 
 bold in its general features and charming 
 in minute details which the strong sun- 
 light vividly revealed. Tiny waterfalls 
 leapt from the rocks and tumbled down 
 to the lakes that slept in the valleys, 
 leaving a green track behind them 
 marked by a richer growth of fern 
 and grass. And here and there the 
 eye was caught by a picturesque ham- 
 let nestling at the foot of a crag or 
 a snug homestead perched on the hill-
 
 276 LADY LAURA. 
 
 side, — a cottage-farm, perhaps, with 
 some few acres of green meadow that 
 sparkled like an emerald amid the pre- 
 vailing golds. 
 
 After they had all enjoyed the beauty 
 in silence for a few minutes, Lady Sarah 
 turned to Heme and said, * Now try for 
 a moment to realise that all this beautiful 
 scene that lies before you has belonged 
 to you and your fathers for generations, 
 and tell me if the thought would not 
 inspire you to develop to the utmost all 
 its resources of beauty and usefulness ? 
 
 ' " He looked to the north and he looked to the south, 
 From the west to the east looked he ; 
 And he said, 111 ride out and harry the land. 
 For it all belongs to me," ' 
 
 quoted Heme. 
 
 ^ That is very clever, but it is not an 
 answer,' said Lady Sarah. 
 
 *I admit that it is no answer. A 
 better answer would be to oint to all
 
 LADY LAURA. 277 
 
 the big places that are shut up all the 
 year round or open only for a few 
 weeks, while their owners enjoy the 
 shooting and hunting of the country.' 
 
 ^And the answer to that,' said Lord 
 Ehoos, *is to point to all the church 
 spii'es in the country and ask whether 
 the thought of boredom that their idea 
 calls up is not enough to drive every 
 man of spiiit across the seas. If anybody 
 knows the answer to that, I shall be glad 
 to hear it — if not let us have luncheon, 
 for I am hungry and so I suspect is 
 everybody else.' 
 
 The provision baskets were opened and 
 the party picnicked under the gateway 
 of the old tower. After luncheon they 
 rambled about, examining the ruins and 
 seeking rare ferns, until it occurred to 
 Mr. Tremadoc's prudent mind that it 
 would be well to start homeward, as the 
 day would close in early and the road
 
 278 LADV LAURA. 
 
 was too rough to be pleasant for ladies 
 after dark. However, in spite of this 
 forethought, twilight overtook them be- 
 fore they were halfway home. At the 
 ''beginning of the way Laura and Heme 
 and Egmont rode together somewhat 
 behind the rest of the party, talking in 
 a merry intimate manner that made 
 Laura feel that they were a little friendly 
 clique who knew one another better than 
 the others did. Her brother's friend was 
 proving to be no divider after all, but 
 rather another bond of sympathy between 
 her and him. Then by-and-by Egmont, 
 suddenly possessed by the recollection of 
 another anecdote he must tell Sarah, rode 
 on and left Heme and Laura tete-d-Ute, 
 They had been going for some time at 
 a foot-pace and had not noticed how 
 dim the road was growing. Now, how- 
 ever, when Heme asked if Laura would 
 like to canter on and catch up the others,
 
 LADY LAURA. i-j^ 
 
 she realised the darkness, and not being 
 a very bold horsewoman, preferred to 
 keep on at a walk. She began to grow 
 nervous, though she would not confess 
 it in answer to Heme's inquiries, only 
 growing more and more silent as the 
 difficulty of seeing the road increased. 
 At last they came to a place where the 
 path, which had for some way been 
 sunk between two ridges, emerged sud- 
 denly upon the side of a steep bluff, along 
 which it formed a ledge. The rock rose 
 almost perpendicularly on one side of it ; 
 on the other the ground fell hardly less 
 precipitously. The ledge was not wide 
 enough to allow more than one horse 
 to pass at a time ; and Laura, feeling 
 that it would be quite impossible to 
 pretend courage any longer, was pre- 
 paring to pull up her horse and say 
 she could not venture upon this bit of 
 the way, when Heme anticipated her
 
 28o LADY LAURA. 
 
 confession by himself stopping and 
 saying,— 
 
 ^I am wondering what we had better 
 do here. If there were anything like a 
 tree within reach, I might easily tie up 
 my horse and lead yours across and then 
 come back for it. But I can't make 
 out any tree. And the only other plan 
 I can think of is to wait till the men 
 come up and leave my horse with them, 
 unless you would rather ride back and 
 meet them.' 
 
 ^ I am quite content to wait,' said 
 Laura, infinitely relieved and very grate- 
 ful to him for taking it for granted that 
 she could not do without help. 
 
 In a minute they heard the grooms' 
 voices in the distance. Heme shouted 
 to them to come up, and they joined them 
 quickly. 
 
 The awkward bit of road was safely 
 passed ; and Laura found riding in the
 
 LADY LAURA. 281 
 
 dark so much more pleasant when Heme 
 led her horse, that she managed to hint 
 to him that she should Hke the arrange- 
 ment to continue. He was quite of 
 her mind; and so, consigning his horse 
 to the groom, he prepared to walk the 
 rest of the way by her side so as to be 
 ready to take her bridle at critical 
 moments. Laura, being relieved of her 
 terror, became talkative again, and they 
 had a very pleasant time. Somehow 
 Heme got round again to the charge of 
 the morning, that Laura must be mistress 
 of some means or other of artistic expres- 
 sion. Laura repudiated the imputation 
 almost indignantly. 
 
 ^But surely, though you may do 
 nothing yourself in the way of art, you 
 care for what others have done ? ' said 
 Heme. 
 
 *You mean that I like music and 
 pictures and poetry? Yes, in an ignorant
 
 282 LADY LAURA. 
 
 sort of way. But I believe I like nature 
 better.' 
 
 ' Why should you talk as if there were 
 any necessary opposition between nature 
 and art ? Art is only the best of nature — 
 the beautiful, the great, the significant 
 brought out and dwelt upon, while the 
 meaningless and little are rejected.' 
 
 ^ Ah,' said Laura with a little sigh, ^ it 
 is clear you care for art in a learned way. 
 I think that sort of art is beyond me.' 
 
 ^ It is probably the sort of art you 
 really care for.' 
 
 Laura laughed. ^It amuses me that 
 you will insist on knowing my tastes 
 better than I do myself.' 
 
 ' I beg your pardon for being so imper- 
 tinent. Will you tell me what sort of 
 art you do care for? and then I shall 
 not be left any more to my misleading 
 intuitions.' 
 
 ^ I will tell you,' said Laura ; ^but you
 
 LADY LAURA. 283 
 
 will only despise me. I like pictui^es of 
 beautiful people and beautiful places, 
 and poems in which wonderful heroes 
 carry off lovely brides, and ' 
 
 ^ And in music ? ' 
 
 '■ Ah, I don't know. I like what I 
 like, when I like ; but I don't know what 
 or when that is. — There, I like that ' 
 
 She drew in her horse and stopped 
 suddenly. They were just passing one of 
 the small farms that are scattered here 
 and there among the hills — a tumble-down 
 place with a crazy roof and broken win- 
 dows that had been rudely patched with 
 stuff and paper, ugly enough as seen by 
 daylight, but cheerful to come upon in 
 the dark, thanks to the warm fireUght 
 that glowed from the windows and fell 
 pleasantly upon the path. It was not 
 the friendly firelight, however, that made 
 Laura stop and hold her breath in 
 dohofhted admhation. It was a sound
 
 284 LADY LAURA. 
 
 in strange contrast with the barrenness 
 and poverty of the spot, — a voice rich, 
 tender, powerful, pouring out the melody 
 of *The Ash Grove.' 
 
 ^ That is surely Cassandra's voice,' said 
 Heme after they had both listened in 
 silence for a few moments. * But what 
 can she be doing here, so late ? ' 
 
 ' What she is always doing — good,' 
 said Laura warmly. This is where old 
 Nanny Morgan lives, — a poor rheumatic 
 old creature who has seen better days 
 and is always grumbling over her present 
 circumstances. Cassandra is a good 
 angel to her.' 
 
 ^ Shall we knock at the door and per- 
 suade her to come home with us ? ' 
 
 ' How surprised she will be ! I shall get 
 down and go in stealthily and puzzle her. 
 But we will wait till the song is over.' 
 
 The song ended, and Heme helped 
 Laura from her horse and fastened its
 
 LADV LAURA. 285 
 
 bridle to the gate-post. Laura led the 
 way Tip the garden path, lifted the latch, 
 and pushed the door ajar. Then she 
 stood back to let Heme look in. 
 
 The room was a good-sized one, but it 
 had a desolate appearance, being almost 
 bare of furniture, and carpetless but for 
 a tattered rug that was spread before the 
 fireplace A rush-candle set in an old 
 lantern, of which the broken glass was 
 protected by an iron grating, only added 
 to the general cheerlessness of effect by 
 throwing so many shadows on the walls 
 and ceiling, that it seemed to give dark- 
 ness rather than light ; and its deficiencies 
 were not much helped by the fire which, 
 though it looked pleasantly red from with- 
 out, was in truth a very poor one. On 
 the side of the hearth that faced the 
 door an old shrivelled woman was sitting 
 upright in a wooden chair. A woollen 
 petticoat in course of knitting was lying
 
 286 LADY LAURA, 
 
 on her lap ; but she was not working 
 at it — the needles had fallen from her 
 hands and the slow nodding of her head 
 showed that she was asleep. She had 
 grumbled all day till she was tired out, 
 and when Cassandra had tried, by singing 
 to her, to divert her mind from her 
 grievances, the poor old body had found 
 the effort to listen as a last straw to 
 her feeble intelligence and had fallen 
 into a peaceful sleep. Her thin hands 
 were spread out on her lap, and her 
 worn and wrinkled features wore a look 
 of rest that was in striking contrast with 
 the expression of Cassandra's face and 
 figure as they showed to Heme and 
 Laura in clear silhouette against the fire- 
 light. She was sitting on the opposite 
 side of the fireplace with her back 
 towards the door; her hands were clasped 
 together, not lightly in her lap as with 
 one who is pleasantly dreaming in an
 
 ADV LAURA. 287 
 
 idle hour, but with a tense action that 
 seemed the expression of some mental 
 struggle ; and her body swayed backwards 
 and forwards like a tree that is rocked 
 by storms. She was not immediately 
 aware of the entrance of Heme and 
 Laura, but soon the draught fi'om the 
 open door came to her, and she tm-ned and 
 saw them. She rose without speaking 
 and came towards them, making a sign 
 to them not to waken the old woman. 
 
 ' How did you know I was here ? ' she 
 asked as they came out mto the garden. 
 
 ^ Your voice betrayed you. Have you 
 been here all day ? ' 
 
 ^ Well, yes. I came in the morning 
 to have a chat with the poor old thing, 
 and I found her in such very bad sphits 
 that I promised not to leave her till her 
 grand-daughter should come in.' 
 
 ' When will that be ? ' 
 
 * She ought to be in now ; but she
 
 288 LADV LAURA. 
 
 is suspected of having a young man at 
 Cresford who tempts her to linger. And 
 that is old Nanny's grand grievance. 
 The poor old woman looks on Jenny as 
 her property, and cannot resign herself 
 to the prospect of being abandoned for 
 a lover. I have been fighting his battle 
 all day.' 
 
 Cassandra spoke wearily as if the 
 battle had exhausted her. 
 
 * Poor Cassie, you are tired ! Don't 
 you think you might come home now 
 with us ? I will explain to Nanny that 
 she must remember ' 
 
 'No, thank you ; I must wait till 
 Jenny comes in. I want to have a talk 
 with her. She ought not to neglect her 
 grandmother because she is happy.' 
 
 'But surely,' said Heme, now first 
 joining in the conversation, ' you are not 
 thinking of walking home by yourself in 
 the dark. '
 
 LADY LAURA. 289 
 
 ^ I am afraid I am. I hope you are 
 not shocked.' 
 
 ^ I don't like the idea of it. Could 
 we not wait till the young woman comes 
 in, and all go home together ? ' 
 
 Laura was quite willing ; but Cassan- 
 dra would not hear of it. She was ac- 
 customed to walking alone at all hom-s, 
 and had no fear. But they would not be 
 satisfied, and at last she found herself 
 consenting to wait till they could get 
 home and send the pony-carriage to fetch 
 her. 
 
 Then they rode off, and she stood dream- 
 ing in the garden while their repeated 
 good-byes died away in the distance. 
 
 Cassandra was weary, — weary of plead- 
 ing the cause of the happy whose joy is 
 building itself on the disappointed hopes 
 of others ; weary of bidding old Nanny 
 forget her loneliness in sympathy with 
 har grand- daughter's happiness ; weary of 
 
 VOL. I. 19
 
 290 LADY LAURA. 
 
 preaching to another the lesson of which 
 the iron was entering into her own soul. 
 
 She was weary and tormented. For 
 what did it mean, she asked herself, that 
 these two should come upon her just at 
 this moment as if to test the sincerity 
 of all that she had been saying about 
 the sweetness of self-renunciation and 
 generous gladness in the joy of others ? 
 
 Where feeling and imagination are 
 active, a strong reason does not always 
 prove a safeguard against superstition; 
 and Cassandra could not resist a disposi- 
 tion to see a fateful significance in this 
 chance meeting. She had been avoiding 
 Heme ever since the first evening 
 they had met at the castle, for she 
 had gone home then conscious of having 
 betrayed herself, and she had resolved 
 to risk no second scene of a like nature. 
 She was determined to keep out of his 
 way as much as possible, and if they were
 
 LADV LAURA. 291 
 
 inevitably thrown together to abstain at 
 ny rate from singing in his presence. 
 It seemed to her that all her force of 
 attraction for him lay in her voice ; and 
 with her habit of regarding her mnsical 
 talent as something apart from herself, she 
 shrank from winning him through that, 
 as she might have shrunk from winning 
 him by magic arts, or as a high-hearted 
 heiress shrinks from being courted for 
 her wealth. Mere admiration coming 
 from him was a mockery to her : what 
 she yearned for was such tender loving 
 as she had seen often lavished on women 
 with nothing to recommend them but 
 their power of loving back. Such love 
 she saw that he w^as disposed to give 
 to Laura ; and, moved at once by pride 
 and generosity, she swore to herself that 
 she would make no effort to steal it from 
 her. So she had kept away, and left 
 them to one another.
 
 292 LADY LAURA. 
 
 But it was useless ; they pursued her. 
 She had not sung since that first evening 
 till now, and while she sang they had 
 come to tantalise her with the vision from 
 which she was flying. She said to herself 
 that her best gift was turned to a curse, 
 and she envied old Nanny who slept so 
 tranquilly in her chair and would soon 
 sleep for ever in her grave. And by- 
 and-by when Jenny came in, radiant 
 and elated from her day at Cresford, 
 and Cassandra pleaded with her for 
 gentleness and forbearance towards the 
 aged woman whose days were joyless, 
 she seemed to be pleading not so much 
 with her as with the two who had ridden 
 away in the darkness — not so much for 
 Nanny as for herself. 
 
 END OF VOL I. 
 
 Hazell, Watson, and Viiiey^ Printers, London and Aylesbury.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 3 0112 041678084 
 
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