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 YOUNG MUSGRAVE.
 
 " Touching sacrifice : of thy worldly possessions give all, 
 even to the spoiling of thy goods ; for thus teaches our Lord 
 Christ, and our blessed master San Francesco. If a poor person, 
 more poor than thou, would have thy habit, which it is not 
 permitted by the rule of the order to give, let him take it 
 from thee : so wilt thou do no wrong ; but thy life, which 
 is not thine, give not : it is but given to thee for God's service ; 
 thou canst not take it up, neither canst thou lay it down. 
 This rule obey if thou wouldest be free from presumption. 
 For our Lord Christ alone, whose life was His own, hath 
 power and privilege to give it away." — Sermons, BB. Frati 
 Ginepro e Lauscleo, dei Frati Minori.
 
 YOUNG MUSGRAYE. 
 
 MES. OLIPHANT. 
 
 Author of *' The Curate in Charge,'' dx 
 
 " No man can redeem his brother." — Ps. xlix. 7. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 MAC MILL AX AND CO. 
 
 1877. 
 
 [Th€ Fdght of Translation and Rej/rodudion is Reserved.]
 
 LONDON: 
 
 R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL, E.G.
 
 H3 
 
 n 
 
 V 
 
 >- 
 
 CO 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CO 
 
 in 
 
 CO 
 
 > 
 o 
 
 •I 
 
 I 
 
 4 
 
 I 
 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE FAillLY 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 MART 18 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE NEW-COMERS 37 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AFTER THE SILENCE OF TEARS 56 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WJKING UP TO
 
 vi CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 AT THE VICARAGE 
 
 88 ^ 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE CHILDREN AT THE CASTLE 106 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 LADY STANTON 126 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 AT ELFDALE 147 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE OTHER SIDE 165 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 AN afternoon's WORK 182 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 visitors 200
 
 CONTENTS. Vll 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FAMILY CARES 223 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 AN UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR 236 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 RANDOLPH , . 256
 
 YOUNG MUSGEAVE 
 
 PAET I. 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 THE FAMILY. 
 
 It would be difficult to say how Penningliame 
 Castle had got that imposing name. It was 
 C an old house standing almost on the roadside, 
 at least at the termination of a rough country 
 road leading from the village, which widened 
 into a square space at the side of the house. 
 The village road was lined with trees, and it 
 pleased the Musgraves to believe that it had 
 been in happier days the avenue to their 
 ancient dwelling, while the rough square at 
 the end had been the courtyard. The place 
 itself consisted of a small mansion not import- 
 ant enough to be very distinctive in archi- 
 tecture, built on to the end of an old hall, the 
 
 VOL. I. B 
 
 \
 
 2 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 only remaining portion of a much older and 
 greater lionse. This hall was entered directly 
 by a great door of heavy oak, from which a 
 slope of ancient causeway descended into the 
 road below — an entrance which was the only 
 thing like a castle in the whole ensemble, 
 though it ought to have led to an ancient 
 gateway and portcullis rather than to the great 
 door generally wide open, through which, ac- 
 cording to the story, a horseman once entered 
 to scare the guests at their feast and defy the 
 master at the head of the table. The hall was 
 not used for such festive purposes now, nor 
 threatened by such warlike intruders. It had 
 known evil fortune in its day and had been 
 degraded into a barn, its windows blocked up, 
 its decorations destroyed — but had come to 
 life again for the last fifty years and had come 
 back to human use, though no longer as of old. 
 Eound the corner was the front of the old 
 mansion, built in that pallid grey stone, which 
 adds a sentiment of age, like the ashy paleness 
 of very old people, to the robust antiquity of 
 mason-work more lasting than any that is done 
 now. Successive squires had nibbled at this 
 old front, making windows there and doorways 
 here : windows which cut through the string- 
 courses above, and a prim Georgian front door,
 
 THE FAMILY. 3 
 
 not even in the centre of the old arched en- 
 trance which had been filled up, which gave a 
 certain air of disreputable irregularity to the 
 pale and stern old dwelling-jDlace. Ivy and 
 other clinging growths fortunately hid a great 
 deal of this, and added importance to the four 
 great stacks of chimneys, which, mantled in its 
 short, large leaves and perpetual greenness, 
 looked like turrets, and dignified the house. A 
 lake behind somewhat coldly blue, and a great 
 hill in front somewhat coldly green, showed all 
 the features of that north country which was 
 not far enouo-h north for the wild vio;our and 
 vivifying tints of brown bracken and heather. 
 The lake came closely up in a little bay behind 
 the older part of the house where there was a 
 rocky harbour for the boats of the family ; and 
 between this little bay and the grey walls was 
 the flower-garden, old-fashioned and bright, 
 though turned to the unkindly east. Beyond 
 this was a kind of broken park with some fine 
 trees and a great deal of rough underwood, 
 which stretched along the further shore of the 
 lake and gave an air of dignity to the dwelling 
 on that side. This was still called "the 
 Chase " as the house was called the Castle, 
 in memory it might be supposed of better 
 days. The Musgraves had been Cavaliers, and 
 
 B 2
 
 4 YOUNG MUSGHAVE. 
 
 had wasted their substance in favour of the 
 Charleses, and their lands had been ravaged, 
 their park broken up into fields, their avenue 
 made a common road, half by hostile neigh- 
 bours, half by vulgar intrusion, in the days 
 when the Eevolutionists had the upper hand. 
 So they said, at least, and pleas of this kind 
 are respected generally, save by the very 
 cynical. Certainly the present occupants of 
 the house believed it fervently, and so did the 
 village ; and if it was nothing more it was a 
 great comfort and support to the family, and 
 made them regard the rude approach to *' the 
 Castle " with forbearance. The public right of 
 way had been established in those stormy 
 times. It was a sign even of the old greatness 
 of the house. It was better than trim lawns 
 and smiling gardens, which would have required 
 a great deal of keeping up. It was, however, 
 a family understanding that the first Musgrave 
 who made a rich marriage, or who in any other 
 way became a favourite of fortune, should by 
 some vague means — an act of parliament or 
 otherwise — reclaim the old courtyard and 
 avenue, and plant a pair of magnificent gates 
 between the castle and the village : also buy 
 back all the old property ; also revive the title 
 of Baron of Penninghame, which had been in
 
 THE FAMILY. 5 
 
 abeyance for the last two hundred years ; and 
 do many other things to glorify and elevate 
 the family to its pristine position ; and no 
 Musgrave doubted that this deliverer would 
 come sooner or later, which took the bittemes.^ 
 out of their patience in the meantime and gave 
 them courage to wait. 
 
 Another encouraging circumstance in their 
 lot was that they were fully acknowledged as 
 the oldest family in the county. Other and 
 richer persons pushed in before them to its 
 dignities, and they were no doubt very much 
 left out of its gaieties and pleasures ; but no 
 one doubted that they had a right to take the 
 lead, if ever they were rich enough. This, how- 
 ever, did not seem likely, for the moment at 
 least. The family at Penninghame had, what is 
 much to be avoided by families which would 
 be happy, a history, and a very recent one. 
 There were two sons, but neither of them 
 had been seen at the Castle for nearly fifteen 
 years, and with the name of the elder of these 
 there was connected a dark and painful story, 
 not much known to the new generation, but 
 very well remembered by all the middle-aged 
 people in the county. Young Musgrave had 
 been for a year or two the most popular young 
 squire in the north country, but his brightness
 
 6 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 had ended in dismal clouds of misfortune and 
 
 trouble and bloodshedding, with perhaps crime 
 
 involved, and certainly many of the penalties 
 
 of crime. He had not been seen in the north 
 
 country since the crisis which made all the 
 
 world acquainted with his unfortunate name ; 
 
 and his younger brother had reappeared but 
 
 once in their father's house, which was thus left 
 
 desolate, except for the one daughter, who had 
 
 been its delight before and was now its only 
 
 stay. So far as the county knew, young 
 
 Musgrave still lived, though he was never 
 
 mentioned, for there had been no signs of 
 
 mourning in the house, such as must have 
 
 intimated to the neighbours the fact of John's 
 
 death — which also of course would have made 
 
 Eandolph the heir. And save that once, not 
 
 even Eandolph had ever come to break the 
 
 monotony of life in his father's house. Squire 
 
 Musgrave and his daughter lived there alone 
 
 now. They had been alone these fifteen 
 
 years. They had little society, and did not 
 
 keep up a large establishment. He was old, 
 
 and she was no longer young enough to care 
 
 for the gaieties of the rural neighbourhood. 
 
 Thus they had fallen out of the current of 
 
 affairs. The family was '' much respected," 
 
 but comparatively little heard of after the
 
 THE FAMILY. 7 
 
 undesired and undesirable notoriety it had 
 once gained. 
 
 Thus abandoned by its sons, and denuded 
 of the strongest elements of life, it may well 
 be supposed that the castle at Penninghame 
 was a melancholy house. What more easy 
 than to conjure up the saddest picture of such 
 a dwelling 1 The old man, seated in his 
 desolate home, brooding over perhaps the sins 
 of his sons, perhaps his own — some injudicious 
 indulgence, or untimely severity which had 
 driven them from him ; while the sister, worn 
 out by the monotony of her soHtary life, shut 
 herself out from all society, and spent her life 
 in longing for the absent, and pleading for 
 them — a sad, solitary woman, with no pleasure 
 in her lot, except that of the past. The 
 picture would have been as appropriate as 
 touching, but it would not have been true. 
 Old Mr. MusoTave was not the erring: father 
 of romance. He was a well preserved and 
 spare little man, over seventy, vrith. cheeks of 
 streaky red like winter apples, and white 
 hair, which he wore rather long, falling on the 
 velvet collar of his old-fashioned coat. He 
 had been an outdoor man in his day, and had 
 farmed, and shot, and hunted, like others of 
 his kind, so far as his straitened means and
 
 8 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 limited stables permitted ; but when years and 
 circumstances had impaired his activity he had 
 been strong enough to retire, of his own free 
 will, while graceful abdication was still in his 
 power. He spent most of his time now in his 
 library, with only a constitutional walk, or 
 easy ramble upon his steady old cob, to vary 
 his life, except when quarter sessions called 
 him forth, or any other duty of the magistracy, 
 to which he still paid the most conscientious 
 attention. The Musgraves were not people 
 whom it was easy to crush, and Fate had a 
 hard bargain in the old squire, who found him- 
 self one occupation when deprived of another 
 with a spirit not often existing in old age. 
 He had committed plenty of mistakes in his 
 day, and some which had been followed by 
 tragical consequences, a practical demonstra- 
 tion of evil which fortunately does not attend 
 all the errors of life ; but he did not brood 
 over them in his old library, nor indulge 
 unavailing compunctions, nor consider himself 
 under any doom ; but on the contrary studied 
 his favourite problems in genealogy and 
 heraldry, and county history, and corre- 
 sponded with Notes and Queries, and was in 
 his way very comfortable. He it was who 
 first pointed out that doubtful blazoning of
 
 THE PAMILY. 9 
 
 Marmion's shield, " colour upon colour," wliich 
 raised so lively a discussion ; and in questions 
 of this kind he was an authority, and 
 thoroughly enjoyed the little tilts and con- 
 troversies involved, many of ^^^hich were as 
 warm as their subjects were insignificant. 
 His family was dropping, or rather had 
 dropped, into decay ; his eldest son was 
 virtually lost to his family and to society ; 
 his youngest son alienated and a stranger ; 
 and some of this at least was the father's fault. 
 But neither the decay of the house, nor the 
 reflection that he was at least partially to 
 blame, made any great difi'erence to the 
 squire. There had no doubt been moments, 
 and even hours, when he had felt it bitterly ; 
 but these moments, though perhaps they count 
 for more than years in a man^s life, do not 
 certainly last so long, and age has a way of 
 counterfeiting virtue, which is generally very 
 successful, even to its personal consciousness. 
 Mr. Musgrave was generally respected, and he 
 felt himself to be entirely respectable. He sat 
 in his library and worked away among his 
 county histories, without either compunction 
 or regret — who could throw a stone at him ? 
 He had been rather unfortunate in his family, 
 that was all that could be said.
 
 10 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 And Mary Musgrave, liis daugliter, was just 
 as little disposed to brood upon the past. She 
 had shed many tears in her day, and suffered 
 many things. Perhaps it was in consequence 
 of the family troubles which had come upon 
 her just at the turning-point in her life that 
 she had never married ; for she had been one 
 of the beauties of the district — courted and 
 admired by everybody, and wooed by many : 
 by some who indeed still found her beautiful, 
 and by some who had learned to laugh at the 
 old unhappiness of which she was the cause. 
 Miss Musgrave did not like these last, which 
 w^as perhaps natural ; and even now there 
 would be a tone of satire in her voice when 
 she noted the late marriage of one or another 
 of her old adorers. Women do not like men 
 whose hearts they have broken, to get quite 
 healed, and console themselves ; this is perhaps 
 a poor feeling, but it is instinctive, and though 
 it may be stoutly struggled against in some 
 cases, and chidden into silence in many, it still 
 maintains an untolerated yet obstinate life. 
 But neither the failure of the adorations she 
 once inspired nor the family misfortunes had 
 crushed her spirit. She lived a not unhappy 
 life, notwithstanding all that had happened. 
 It was she who did everything that was done
 
 THE FAMILY. 11 
 
 at Penningliame. The reins which her father 
 had dropped almost unawares she had taken 
 up. She managed the estate ; kept the bailiff 
 in order ; did all business that was necessary 
 with the lawyer ; and what was a greater feat 
 still, kept her father unaware of the almost 
 absolute authority which she exercised in. his 
 affairs. It had to be done, and she had not 
 hesitated to do it ; and on the whole, she, too, 
 though she had suffered many heartaches in 
 her day, was not unhappy now, but lived a 
 life full of activity and occupation. She was 
 forty, and her hair began to be touched by 
 grey — she who had been one of the fairest 
 flowers of the north country. A woman 
 always has to come down from that eminence 
 somehow; whether she does it by becoming 
 some one's wife, or by merely falling back into 
 the silence of the past and lea^dng the place 
 free for others, does not much matter. Perhaps, 
 indeed, it is the old maid who has the best of 
 it. A little romance continues to encircle her 
 in the eyes of most of those who have wor- 
 shipped her youth. She has not married ; 
 why she has not married — that once admired 
 of all admirers ? Has it been that she, too, 
 sharing the lot which she inflicted on so many, 
 was not loved where she loved ? or was it
 
 12 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 perhaps that she had made a mistake — sent 
 away some one, perhaps, who knows, the very 
 man who thought of her thus kindly and 
 regretfully — whom she was afterwards sorry to 
 have sent away ? Nobody said this in words, 
 but Mary Musgrave at forty was more tenderly 
 thought of than Lady Stanton, who had been 
 the rival queen of the county. Lady Stanton 
 was stout nowadays ; in men's minds, when 
 they met her sailing into a ball-room, pre- 
 maturely indued with the duties of chaperon 
 to her husband's grown-up daughters, there 
 would arise a half-amused wonder how they 
 could have worshipped at her feet as they once 
 did. " Can this muckle wife be my true love 
 Jean ? " they said to themselves. But Miss 
 Musgrave, who was slim as a girl in her un- 
 wedded obscurity, and whose eyes some people 
 thought as bright as ever, though her hair was 
 grey, gave rise to no such irreverent thoughts. 
 There were men scattered through the world 
 who had a romantic regard, a profound 
 respect still, for this woman whom they had 
 loved, and who had preserved the distinction 
 of loving no one in return. Nobody had 
 died for love of her, though some had 
 threatened it ; but this visionary atmosphere 
 of past adoration supplied a delicate homage.
 
 THE FAMILY. 13 
 
 such as is agreeable even to an old maiden's 
 heart. 
 
 And Miss Musgrave's life ^Yas spent chiefly 
 in the old hall as her father's was spent in his 
 library. She had been full of gay activity in 
 her youth, a bold and graceful horsewoman, 
 ready for anything that was going ; but, with 
 the same sense of fitness that led the squire to 
 his retirement, she too had retired. She had 
 put aside her riding-habits along with her 
 muslins, and wore nothing but rich neutral- 
 tinted silk gowns. Her only extravagance was 
 a pair of ponies, which she drove into the 
 county town when she had business to do, or 
 to pay an occasional visit to her friends ; but 
 by far the greater part of her life was spent 
 in the old hall, where all her favourites and 
 allies came, and all her poor people from the 
 village, who found her seated like a scri23tural 
 potentate in the gate, ready to settle all quarrels 
 and administer impartial justice. The hall 
 was connected with the house by a short 
 passage and two doors, which shut out all 
 interchange of sound. There was nothing 
 above it but the high-pitched roof, the turret 
 chimneys, and the ivy, nor was any interposi- 
 tion of servants necessary to usher in visitors 
 by that ever-open way. This was a thiug
 
 14 YOUNG MUSGKAVE. 
 
 which deeply affected the spirits and feelings 
 of Eastwood, the only male functionary in the 
 house — the most irreproachable of butlers. A 
 door which opened straight into the lady's 
 favourite sitting-room was felt by him to be 
 an insult to the family ; it was more like a 
 farmhouse than a castle ; and as for Miss 
 Musgrave, she was just as bad — too affable, a 
 deal too affable, talking to any one that came 
 to her, the tramps on the road as well as the 
 ladies and gentlemen whose unwilling steeds 
 pranced and curveted on the old slope of 
 causeway. This was a standing grievance to 
 the butler, whose complaint was that the 
 " presteedge '' of the family was in hourly 
 jeopardy ; and his persistent complaint had 
 thrown a shade of dissatisfaction over the 
 household. This, however, did not move the 
 lady of the house. Eastwood and the rest did 
 not know, though some other people did, that 
 it was the proudest woman in the county 
 whom they accused of being too affable, and 
 who received all the world in the old hall 
 without the assistance of any gentleman usher. 
 There were no windows in the side of the hall 
 which fronted the road, but only this huge 
 oaken door, all studded with bars and elaborate 
 hinges of iron. On the other side there was
 
 THE FAMILY. 15 
 
 a recess, with a large square window and 
 cushioned seats, "restored" by village work- 
 men in a not very perfect way, but still pre- 
 serving the ample and noble lines of its 
 original design. This windowed recess was 
 higher than the rest of the hall, the walls of 
 which were low, though the roof was lofty. 
 But towards the front the only light was from 
 the doorway, which looked due west, and 
 beheld aU the sunsets, flooding the ancient 
 place with afternoon light and glories of 
 evening colour. The slanting light seemed to 
 sweep in like an actual visitor in all its sheen 
 of crimson and purple, when the rest of the 
 house was in the still and hush of the grey 
 evenino;. This was where Miss Musgrave held 
 her throne. 
 
 Thus Penninghame Castle stood at the 
 moment this story begins. The lake gleaming 
 cold towards the north, rippling against the 
 pebbles in the little inlet which held the two 
 boats ; the broken gTound and ancient trees of 
 the Chase, lying eastward, getting the early 
 lights of the morning, as did the flower- 
 garden, which lay bright under the old walls. 
 A little genial hum of the kindly north- 
 country women-servants, who had been there 
 for a lifetime, or who were the daughters
 
 16 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 and cousins of those who had been there for 
 a lifetime, with Eastwood strutting impor- 
 tant among them — the one big cock among 
 this barndoor company — made itself audible 
 now and then, a respectful subdued human 
 accompaniment to the ripple of the lake and 
 the whispering of the wind among the trees : 
 and now and then a cheerful cackle of poultry, 
 the sound of the ponies in the stable, or the 
 squire's respectable cob : the heavy steps of 
 the gardener walking slowly along the gravel 
 paths. But for these tranquil sounds, which 
 made the stillness more still, there was 
 nothing but quiet in and about the old 
 house. There had been a time when much 
 had happened there, when there had been 
 angry dissensions, family convulsions, storms 
 of mutual reproach and reproof, outbursts of 
 tears and crying. But all that was over. 
 Nothing had happened -at Penninghame for 
 fifteen years. The old squire in his library 
 and Mary in her favourite old chamber lived 
 as though there were no breaks in life, no 
 anguishes, no convulsions, as quietly as their 
 trees, as steadily as their old walls, as if 
 existence could neither change nor end. Thus 
 they went on from day to day and from year 
 to year, in a routine which occupied and
 
 THE FAMILY. 17 
 
 satisfied, and kept the sense of living in their 
 minds, but in a lull and hush of all adventure, 
 of all commotion, of all excitement. Time 
 passed over them and left no trace, save those 
 touches imperceptible at the moment which 
 sorrow or passion could surpass in effect in one 
 day, yet which tell as surely at the end. 
 This was how things were at Penninghame 
 when this story begins. 
 
 VOL. 1.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 MAEY. 
 
 It was not one of Mary Musgrave's fancies to 
 furnish lier liall like a drawing-room. She 
 had collected round her a few things for use, 
 but she was not rich enough to make her 
 favourite place into a toy, as so many people 
 do, nor had she the opportunity of '' picking 
 up " rarities to ornament it, as she might have 
 liked to do had she been in the way of them. 
 The room had been a barn fifty years before. 
 Then it became a family storeroom, was fitted 
 uj) at one end with closets and cupboards, and 
 held the household linen, and sometimes the 
 winter supply of fruit. It was Mary who had 
 rescued it back again to gentler use ; but she 
 had not been able to re-decorate or renew it 
 with such careful pretence at antiquity as is 
 common nowadays. All that she could do for 
 it was to collect her own doings there, and all 
 the implements for her work. The windowed
 
 MARY. 19 
 
 recess whicli got the morning sun. was her 
 business-room. There stood an old secretaire, 
 chosen not because of its age or suitability, 
 but because it was the only thing she had 
 available, a necessity which often confers as 
 much grace as the hap^Diest choice. Opposite 
 the doorway was an old bufifet, rough, yet not 
 uncharacteristic, which had been scrubbed 
 clean by a generous housemaid when Miss 
 Musgrave first took to the hall. And much 
 it had wanted that cleansing ; but the soap 
 and the water and the scrubbing-brush had 
 not agreed very well, it must be allowed, with 
 the carved mahogany, which ought to have 
 been oak. Between the open door and this 
 big piece of furniture was a square of old 
 Turkey carpet, very much faded, yet still 
 agreeable to the eye, and a spindle-legged 
 table of Queen Anne's days, with drawers, 
 which held Miss MusoTave's knittino- and a 
 book, and sometimes homelier matters, mend- 
 ings which she chose to do herself, calcu- 
 lations which were not meant for the common 
 eye. 
 
 She was seated here, on an afternoon of 
 October, warm with the shining of that second 
 summer which comes even in the north. The 
 sunshine came so far into the room that it 
 
 c 2
 
 20 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 caught the edges of the carpet, and made a 
 false show of gold upon the faded wool ; and 
 it was so warm that Miss Musgrave had 
 drawn her chair farther into the room than 
 usual, and sat in the shade to escape the 
 unusual warmth. At this moment she was 
 not doing anything. She was sitting quite 
 silent, the book she had been reading laid 
 open upon her knee, enjoying the sun, as 
 people enjoy it to whom it suddenly reveals 
 itself after date when it is past expectation. 
 In the end of October in the north country, 
 people have ceased to think of warmth out of 
 doors, or any blaze of kindly light from the 
 skies — and the morning had been grey though 
 very mild. The sudden glow had caught 
 Mary as she sat, a little chilly, close to her 
 opened door, thinking of a shawl, and had 
 transfigured the landscape and the heavens 
 and her own sentiments all at once. She was 
 sitting with her hands in her lap, and the 
 open book on her knee, thinking of it, sur- 
 prised by the sweetness of it, feeling it 
 penetrate into her very heart, though she had 
 drawn her chair back out of the sun. No, 
 not thinking — people do not think of the sun- 
 shine ; but it went into her heart, bringing 
 back a confused sweetness of recollection and
 
 MARY. 21 
 
 of anticipation — or rather of the anticipations 
 which were recollections — which had ceased to 
 exist expej)t in memory. Just so does youth 
 expect some sudden sweetness to invade its 
 life ; and sometimes the memory of that 
 expectation, even when unfulfilled, brings a 
 half sad, haK sweet amusement to the solitary. 
 It was so with this lady seated alone in her old 
 hall. She was Mary again, the young daughter 
 of the house ; and at the same time she was 
 old Miss MusoTave smilinf^r at herself 
 
 But as she did so a footstep sounded on the 
 rough pavement of the ascent. No one could 
 come unheard to her retreat, which was a 
 safeguard. She gave a little shake to her 
 head, and took up the open book, which was 
 no old favourite to be dreamed over, but a 
 modem book ; and 23repared herself for a 
 visitor with that smoothing of the brow and 
 closing up of mental windows which fits us 
 to meet strange eyes. "It is only I," said the 
 familiar voice of some one who knew and 
 understood this slioht movement : and then 
 she dropped the book again, and let the smile 
 come back into her eyes. 
 
 " Only you ! then I may look as I please. 
 I need not put on my company garb," she 
 said, with a smile.
 
 22 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 "I should hope not," said the new-comer, 
 reaching the door with that slight quickening 
 of the breath which showed that even the 
 half-dozen steps of ascent was a slight tax 
 upon him. He did not even shake hands 
 with her — probably they had met before that 
 day — but took otf his hat as he crossed the 
 threshold, as if he had been going into a 
 church. He was a clergyman, slim and 
 slight, of middle size, or less than middle size, 
 in somewhat rusty grey, with a mildness of 
 aspect which did not promise much strength, 
 bodily or mental. The Vicarage of Penning- 
 hame was a poor one, too poor to be worth 
 reserving for a son of the family, and it had 
 been given to the tutor of Mr. Musgrave's 
 sons twenty years ago. What had happened 
 was natural enough, and might be seen in his 
 eyes still, notwithstanding lapse of time and 
 change of circumstances. Mr. Pennithorne 
 had fallen in love, always hopelessly and 
 mildly, as became his character, with the 
 Squire's daughter. He had always said it did 
 not matter. He had no more hope of per- 
 suading her to love him than of getting the 
 moon to come out of heaven, and circum- 
 stances having set marriage before him, he 
 had married, and was happy enough as
 
 MAEY. 23 
 
 liajDpmess goes. And lie was the friend, and 
 in a measure tlie confidant, of this lady whom 
 lie had loved in the superlative poetical way — 
 knew all about her, shared her life in a 
 manner, was acquainted with many of her 
 thoughts and her troubles. A difi'erent light 
 came into his eyes when he saw her, but he 
 was not at all unhappy. He had a good wife 
 and three nice children, and the kind of life 
 he liked. At fifty, who is there who continues 
 to revel in the unspeakable blisses of youth ? 
 Mr. Pennithorne was very well content : but 
 still when he saw Mary IMusgrave — and he 
 saw her daily — there came a different kind of 
 light into his eyes. 
 
 "I was in mental desJmhiUe," she said, 
 *' and did not care to be caught ; though after 
 all it is not everybody who can see when one 
 is not clothed and in one's right mind." 
 
 " I never knew you out of your right 
 mind. Miss Mary. What was it ? — no new 
 trouble ? " 
 
 " You are always a flatterer, Mr. Pen. You 
 have seen me in all kinds of conditions. No, 
 we don't have any troubles now. Is that a 
 rash speech? But really I mean it. My 
 father is in very good health and enjoys 
 himself, and I enjoy myself — in reason."
 
 24 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 "You enjoy yourself! Yes, in the way of 
 being good to other people." 
 
 " Hush ! " she said, putting up her hand to 
 stop him in his little speech, sincere as it was. 
 " Shall I tell you what it was that put me out 
 of order for any one's eyes but an old friend's ? 
 Nothing more than this sunshine, Mr. Pen. 
 Don't you recollect when we were young how 
 a sudden thought of something that was 
 coming would seize upon you, and flood you 
 with delight— as the sun did just now '? " 
 
 " I recollect,'' he said, fixing his mild eyes 
 upon her, and shaking his head, with a sigh : 
 " but it never came." 
 
 " That may be true enough ; but the 
 thought came, and 'life is but thought,' you 
 know ; the thing might not follow. However, 
 we are all quite happy all the same." 
 
 He looked at her, still shaking his head. 
 
 " I suppose so," he said ; " I suppose so ; 
 quite happy ! but not as we meant to be ; that 
 was what you were thinking." 
 
 "I did not go so far. I was not thinking 
 at all. I think that I think very seldom. It 
 only caught me as the old thought used to do, 
 and brought so many things back." 
 
 She smiled, but he sighed. 
 
 "Yes, everything is very different. Your-
 
 MAKY. 25 
 
 self — to see you here, offering up your life for 
 otliers — making a sacrifice " 
 
 " I have made no sacrifice," she said, some- 
 what proudly, then laughed. '' Is that because 
 I am unmarried, Mr. Pen ? You wedded 
 people, you are so sure of being better off than 
 we are. You are too complacent. But / am 
 not so sure of that." 
 
 He did not join in her laugh, but looked at 
 her with melting eyes — eyes in which there 
 was some suspicion of tears. It was perhaps 
 a trifle unkind of her to call him complacent 
 in his conjugality. There were a hundred un- 
 speakable things in his look — pity, reverence, 
 devotion, not the old love perhaps, but some- 
 thinor hio-her : somethinor that was never to 
 
 O O ' o 
 
 end. 
 
 "On the whole, we are taking it too 
 seriously," she said, after a pause. " It is 
 over now, and the sun is going down. And 
 you came to talk to me ? — perhaps of some- 
 thing in the parish that wants looking to ? " 
 
 "No — I came in only to look at you, and 
 make sure that you were well. The children 
 you were visiting the other day have the 
 scarlet fever; and besides, I have had a 
 feeling in my mind about you — a presenti- 
 ment. I should not have been surprised to
 
 26 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 hear that there had been — letters — or some 
 kind of advances made " 
 
 '' From whom ? " 
 
 *' AVell/' he said, after a slight pause ; *'they 
 are both brothers — both sons — but they are 
 not the same to me, Miss Mary. From John ; 
 he has been so much in my mind these two 
 or three days, I have got to dreaming about 
 him. Yes, yes, I know that is not worth 
 thinking of; but w^e w^ere always in such 
 sympathy, he and I. Don't you believe in 
 some communication between minds that were 
 closely allied ? I do. It is a superstition if 
 you like. Nothing could happen to any of 
 you but, if I were at ever so great a distance, 
 I should know." 
 
 " Don't be too sure of that, Mr. Pen. 
 Sometimes the dearest to us perish, and we 
 know nothing of it ; but I prefer your view. 
 You dreamt of poor John ? What did you 
 see ? Alas ! dreams are the only ways of 
 divining anything about him now ! " 
 
 " And your father is as determined as 
 ever '? " 
 
 "We never speak on the subject. It has 
 disappeared like so many other things. Why 
 continue a fruitless discussion which only 
 embittered him and wore me out ? If any
 
 MARY. 27 
 
 critical moment sliould come, if — one must 
 say it plainly — my father should be like to 
 die — then I should speak, you need not fear." 
 
 " I never feared that you would do every- 
 thing the best sister, the bravest friend, could 
 do." 
 
 ''Do not praise me too much. I tell you 
 I am doiug nothing, and have done nothing 
 for years ; and sometimes it strikes me with 
 terror. If anything should happen suddenly ! 
 My father is an old man ; but talking to him 
 now is of no use ; we must risk it. What 
 did you see in your dream ? " 
 
 '' Oh, you will laugh at me," he said with 
 a nervous flutter ; " nothing — except that he 
 was here. I dreamt of him before, that time 
 that he came home — after " 
 
 " Don't speak of it," said Miss Musgrave, 
 with a corresponding shiver. " To think that 
 such things should happen, and be forgotten, 
 and we should all go on so comfortably — 
 quite comfortably ! I have nothing particular 
 to make me happy, and yet I am- as happy 
 as most people — notwithstanding all that I 
 have come through, as the poor women say." 
 
 "That is because you arc so imselfish — 
 so " 
 
 " Insensible — more like. I am the same as
 
 28 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 other people. What the poor folk in the 
 village come through, Mr. Pen ! — loss of hus- 
 bands, loss of children, one after another, 
 grinding poverty, and want, and anxiety, and 
 separation from all they care for. Is it in- 
 sensibility ? I never can tell ; and especially 
 now when I share it myself. I am as happy 
 sometimes as when I was young. That sun- 
 shine gave me a ridiculous pleasure. What 
 right have I to feel my heart light '? — but I 
 did somehow — and I do often — notwithstand- 
 ing all that has haj)pened, and all that I have 
 ' gone through.' " 
 
 Mr. Pennithorne gave a vague smile, but he 
 made no reply ; for either she was accusing 
 herself unjustly, or this was a mood of mind 
 which perhaj)s derogated a little from Mary 
 Musgrave's perfection. He had a way himself 
 of keeping on steadfastly on the one string of 
 his anxiety, whatever it might be, and worry- 
 ing everybody with it — and here he lost the 
 object of his faithful worship. It might — nay, 
 must — be right since so she felt ; but he lost 
 her here. 
 
 " And speaking of happiness," she went on 
 after a pause, " I want the children to come 
 with me to Pennington to see the archery. It 
 is pretty, and they will like it. And they like
 
 MARY. 29 
 
 to drive beliind my ponies. They are quite 
 well ? — and Emily ? " 
 
 '' Very Avell. Our cow has been ill, and she 
 has been worrying about it — not much to 
 worry about you will say, you who have so 
 much more serious anxieties/' 
 
 " Not at all. If I had a delicate child and 
 wanted the milk, I should fret very much. 
 Will you send up for some of ours '? As 
 usually happens, we, who don't consume very 
 much, have plenty." 
 
 "Thank you," he said, "but you must not 
 think that little Emmy is so delicate. She 
 has not much colour — neither has her mother, 
 you know." He was a very anxious father, 
 and looked up with an eager wistfulness into 
 her face. Little Emmy was so delicate that it 
 hurt him like a foreboding to hear her called 
 so. He could not bear Miss Musgrave, whose 
 word had authority, to give utterance to such 
 a thought. 
 
 '' I spoke hastily," she said ; '• I did not 
 think of Emmy. She is ever so much stronger 
 this year. As for paleness, I don't mind 
 paleness in the least. She has such a very fair 
 complexion, and she is twice as strong as last 
 year." 
 
 "I am so glad you think so," he said, with
 
 30 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 the colour rising to his face. '' That is true 
 comfort — for eyes at a little distance are so 
 much better than one's own." 
 
 " Yes, she is a great deal stronger," said 
 Miss Musgrave, " but you must send down for 
 the milk. I was pale too, don't you remem- 
 ber, w^hen you came first ? When I was 
 fifteen." 
 
 "I remember — everything," he said ; *'even 
 to the dress you wore. I bought my little 
 Mary something like it when I was last in 
 town. It was blue — how well I remember ! 
 But Mary will never be like you, though she 
 is your godchild." 
 
 " She is a great deal better ; she is like her 
 mother," said Miss Musgrave promptly ; ^^ and 
 Johnny is like his father, the best possible 
 distribution. You are happy with your child- 
 ren, Mr. Pen. I enyy people their children, 
 it is the only thing ; though perhaps they 
 would bore me if I had them always on my 
 hands. You think not ? Yes, I am almost 
 sure they would bore me. We get a kind of 
 fierce independence living alone. To be ham- 
 pered by a little thing always wanting some- 
 thing — wanting attention and care — I don't 
 think I should like it. But Emily was born 
 for such cares. How well she looks with her
 
 MARY. 31 
 
 baby in her arms — ahvays the old picture over 
 again — the Madonna and the child."' 
 
 " Poor Emily/' he said, though why he could 
 not have told, for Emily did not think herself 
 poor. Mr. Pennithorne always felt a vague 
 pity for his wife when he was with Miss 
 Musgrave, as for a j)oor woman who had many 
 excellent qualities, but was here thrown into 
 the shade. He could not say any more. He 
 got up to go away, consoled and made com- 
 fortable he could not quite tell why. She was 
 always sweet he said to himself as he went 
 home. What she had said about beinof bored 
 by children was a mere delusion, or perhaps a 
 little conscious effort of self-deception, per- 
 suading herself that to have no children and 
 to be independent was the best. What a wife 
 she would have made ! What a mother ! he 
 said this to himself quite impartially, knowing 
 well that she never could have been wife for 
 him and feeling a pang at his heart for the 
 happiness she had lost. Married life was not 
 unmixed happiness always ; it had its difficul- 
 ties, he knew. But if she had married it was 
 not possible that she could have been otherwise 
 than happy. With her there could have been 
 no drawbacks. ]\Ir. Pennithorne looked upon the 
 question from a husband's point of view alone.
 
 32 YOUNG MUSGEAVE. 
 
 When lie was gone, Miss Musgrave sat still 
 without changing her place, at first with a 
 smile, which gradually faded away from her 
 face, like the last suffusion of the sunshine, 
 which was going too. She smiled at her 
 fast friend, to whom she knew, notwith- 
 standing his legitimate affection for his 
 Emily, she herself stood first of created beings. 
 It was a folly, but it did not hurt him, 
 she reflected with a faint amusement ; and 
 Emily and the children, notwithstanding this 
 sentiment, were first and foremost really in his 
 heart. Poor Mr. Pen ! he had always been 
 like this, mildly sentimental, offering up an 
 uninterrupted gentle incense. But he was not 
 in the least unhappy, though perhaps he liked 
 by times to think that he was. Few people 
 were really unhappy. By moments life was 
 hard ; but the struggle itself made a kind of 
 happiness, a strain of living which it was good 
 to feel by times. This was her theory. Most 
 people when they come to forty have some 
 theory or another, some settled way of getting 
 through their existence, and adapting them- 
 selves for it. Hers was this : that evil was 
 very much less than good in every way, and 
 that people suffered a great deal less than they 
 gave themselves credit for. Life had its
 
 MAPwY. 33 
 
 compensations, daily and hourly, she thought. 
 Her own existence had no exciting source of 
 joy in it, but how far it was from being un- 
 happy ! Had she been unhappy she would 
 have scoffed at herself. What! so many 
 things to enjoy, so many good and pleasant 
 circumstances around, and not happy ! Would 
 not that have been a disgrace to any woman ? 
 So she was apt to think Mr. Pennithorne ex- 
 tracted a certain cunning enjo}Tiient from that 
 vain love for herself which had been so vision- 
 ary at all times, and which he persuaded 
 himself had saddened his life. She thought it 
 had been a harmless delusion ; a secret ad- 
 vantage rather ; something to fall back upon ; 
 a soft and visionary grievance of which he 
 never wearied. And perhaps she was right. 
 She sat looking after him with a smile on her 
 face. 
 
 The sun had crept away from her open 
 doorway as they had talked. It was stealing 
 further and further off, withdrawing from the 
 line of the road, from the village roofs, from 
 the gleam of the lake — and like the sun her 
 smile stole away, from her eyes first, and then 
 from the lingering curves about her mouth. 
 Why was it that he could think he felt some 
 action upon him of Johns mind in the far 
 
 VOL. L D
 
 34 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 distance, while she felt none ? No kind of 
 presentiment or premonition had come to her. 
 It must be foolishness she was sure — super- 
 stition ; for if sympathy could thus communi- 
 cate even a vague thrill of warning from one 
 to another through the atmosphere of the mind, 
 surely she was a more likely object to receive 
 it than Mr. Pennithorne ! John knew her, 
 — could not doubt her, surely. Therefore to 
 her, if to any one, this secret communication 
 must have come. The smile disappeared al- 
 together from her mouth as she entered upon 
 this subject, and her whole face and eyes 
 became grave and grey, like the dull coldness 
 of the east, half -resentful of the sunset which 
 still went on upon the other edge of the 
 horizon, dispersing all those vain reflections to 
 every quarter except that from which the sun 
 rose. Could it be possible after all that John 
 might trust Mr. Pennithorne with a more 
 perfect confidence, as one unconnected and 
 unconcerned with all that had passed, than he 
 could give to herself? The thought, even 
 though founded on such visionary grounds, 
 hurt her a little ; yet there was a kind of 
 reason in it. He might think that she, always 
 at her father's side, and able to influence him 
 in so many ways, might have done more for her
 
 MARY. 35 
 
 brother ; whereas with Mr. Pennithorne, who 
 could do nothing, the sentiment of trust would 
 be unbroken. She sat thus idly making it 
 out to herself, making wondering casts of 
 thought after her brother in the darkness of 
 the unknown, as inch by inch the light stole 
 out of the sky. It was not a fine sunset that 
 night. The sun was yellow and mournful; 
 long lines of cloud broke darkly upon his 
 sinking, catching only sick reflections of the 
 pale light beneath. At last he was all gone, 
 except one streaming yellow sheaf of rays that 
 seemed to strike against and barb themselves 
 into the damp green outline of the hill. 
 
 Her eyes were upon this, watching that final 
 display, which, somehow in the absorption of 
 her thoughts, kept her from observing an 
 object near at hand, an old hackney-coach from 
 Pennington town — where there was a railway 
 station — which came along the road, a black, 
 slow, lumbering vehicle, making a dull roll of 
 sound which might have been a country cart. 
 It came nearer and nearer while Miss Musgrave 
 watched the bundle of gold arrows flash into 
 the hill- side and disappear. Her eyes were 
 dazzled by them, and chilled by their sudden 
 disappearance, which left aU the landscape 
 cold and wrapped in a greyness of sudden 
 
 D 2
 
 36 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 evening. Mary came to herself with a slight 
 shiver and shock. And at that moment the 
 dull roll of the cab ceased, and the thing stood 
 revealed to her. She rose to her feet with a 
 thrill of wonder and expectation. The hackney 
 carriage had drawn up at the foot of the slope, 
 opposite to and beneath her. What was 
 coming? Had Mr. Pennithorne been warned 
 after all, while she had been left in darkness ? 
 Her heart seemed to leap into her throat, while 
 she stood clasping her hands together to get 
 some strength from them, and w^aiting for the 
 revelation of this new thing, whatever it 
 might be.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE NEW-COMERS. 
 
 The cab was loaded with two boxes on tbe 
 roof, foreign trunks, of a different shape from 
 those used at home ; and a woman's face, in a 
 fantastic foreign head-dress, peered through the 
 window. Who could this be ? Mary stood as 
 if spell-bound, unable to make a movement. 
 The driver, who was an ordinary cab-driver 
 from Pennington, whose homely everydayness 
 of appearance intensified the strangeness of 
 the others, opened the door of the carriage, 
 and lifted out, first a small boy, with a scared 
 face and a finger in his mouth, who stared at 
 the strange place, and the figures in the door- 
 way, with a fixed gaze of panic, on the eve of 
 tears. Then out came with a bound, as if 
 pushed from behind as well as helped a little 
 roughly by the cabman, the foreign woman, at 
 whose dress the child clutched with a frightened 
 cry. Then there was a pause, during which
 
 38 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 some one inside threw out a succession of 
 wraps, small bags, and parcels ; and tlien there 
 stepped forth, with a great shawl on one arm, 
 and a basket almost as large as herself on the 
 other, clearly the leading spirit of the party, 
 a little girl who appeared to be about ten years 
 old. " You will wait a moment, man, till we 
 get the pay for you," said this little personage 
 in a high-pitched voice, with a distinctness of 
 enunciation which made it apparent that the 
 language, though spoken with very little 
 accent, was unfamiliar to her. Then she turned 
 to the woman and said a few words much more 
 rapidly, with as much aid of gesture as was 
 compatible with the burdens. Mary felt her- 
 self look on at all this like a woman in a 
 dream. What was it all — a dream or reality ? 
 She felt incapable of movement, or rather too 
 much interested in the curious scene which 
 was going on before her, to think of movement 
 or interference of any kind. When she had 
 given her directions, whatever they were, the 
 little girl turned round and faced the open 
 door and the lady who had not moved. She 
 gave these new circumstances a long, steady, 
 investigating look. They were within a dozen 
 yards of each other, but the chatelaine stood 
 still and said nothing, while the little invader
 
 THE KEW-COMERS. 39 
 
 inspected her, and prepared her assault. The 
 child, who looked the impersonation of life and 
 purpose between her helpless companion and 
 the wondering stranger whom she confronted, 
 was dark and pale, not like the fair English 
 children to whom Mary Musgrave was accus- 
 tomed. Her dark eyes seemed out of propor- 
 tion to her small, colourless face, and gave it 
 an eager look of precocious intelligence. Her 
 features were small, her dark hair falling about 
 her in half-curling masses, her bead covered 
 with a little velvet cap trimmed with fur, as 
 unlike anything children wore in England at 
 the time as the anxious meaning of her face 
 was different from ordinary baby prettiness. 
 She made a momentary pause — then put down 
 the basket on the stones, threw the shawl on 
 the top of it, and mounted the breach with 
 resolute courage. The stones were rough to 
 the little child^s feet ; there was a dilation in 
 her eyes that looked like coming tears, and as 
 she faced the alarming stranger, who stood 
 there looking at her, a burning red flush came 
 momentarily over her face. But she neither 
 sat down and cried as she would have liked to 
 do, nor ran back again to cling to the nurse's 
 skirts like her little brother. The small thing 
 had a duty to do, and did it with a courage
 
 40 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 which miglit have put heroes to shame. 
 Resolutely she toiled her way up to Miss 
 Musgrave at the open door. 
 
 "Are you — Maryl" she said; the little 
 voice was strange yet sweet, with its distinct 
 pronunciation and unfamiliar accent. ''Are 
 you — Mary ? " Her big eyes seemed to search 
 the lady all over, making a rapid comparison 
 with some description she had received. There 
 was doubt in her tone when she repeated the 
 name a second time, and the tears visibly came 
 nearer, and got with a shake and tremor into 
 her voice. 
 
 " What do you want with Mary ? " 
 said Miss Musgrave; ''who are you, little 
 girl?'' 
 
 " I do not think you can be Mary," said the 
 child. " He said your hair was like Nello's, but 
 it is more like his own. And he said you were 
 beautiful — so you are beautiful, but old — and 
 he never said you were old. Oh, if you are 
 not Mary, what shall we do ? what shall we 
 do?" 
 
 She clasped her little hands together, and 
 for a moment trembled on the edge of a 
 childish outburst, but stopped herself with a 
 sudden curb of unmistakable will. " I must 
 think what is to be done," she cried out
 
 THE NEW-COMERS. 41 
 
 sharply, putting her little hands upon her 
 trembling mouth. 
 
 " "Who are you ? who are you ? " cried Mary 
 Musgrave, trembling in her turn ; " child, who 
 was it that sent you to me ? " 
 
 The little thing kept her eyes fixed upon 
 her, with that watchfulness which is the only 
 defence of weakness, ready to fly like a little 
 wild creature at any approach of danger. She 
 opened a little bag which hung by her side 
 and took a letter from it, never taking her 
 great eyes all the time from Miss Musgrave's 
 face. " This was for you, if you were Mary," 
 she said; holding the letter jealously in both 
 hands. " But he said when I spoke to you, if 
 it was you, you would know.'' 
 
 "You strange little girl!" cried Miss Mus- 
 grave, stepping out upon the stones and 
 holding out her hands eagerly ; but the child 
 made a little move backward at the moment, 
 in desperation of fear, yet courage. 
 
 " I will not give it you ! I will not give it ! 
 it is everything we have — unless you are 
 Mary," she cried, with the burst of a suppressed 
 sob. 
 
 " Who are you then, child ? Yes, I am Mary, 
 Mary Musgrave — give me the letter. Is not 
 this the house you were told of? Give me
 
 42 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 the letter — the letter ! " said Miss Musgrave, 
 once more holding out her hands. 
 
 And once more the child made her jealous 
 mental comparison between what the lady was, 
 and what she had been told to look for. " I 
 cannot do what I please," she said, with little 
 quivering lips. " I have Nello to take care of. 
 He is only such a little, little child. Yes, it is 
 the house he told me of; but he said if you 
 were Mary — Ah ! he said you would know 
 us and take us into your arms, and be so kind, 
 so kind ! " 
 
 *' Little girl," said Miss Musgrave, the tears 
 dropping from her cheeks. *^ There is only 
 one man's child that you can be. You are 
 John's little girl, my brother John, and I am 
 his sister Mary. But I do not know your 
 name, nor anything about you. Give me 
 John's letter — and come to me, come to me, 
 my child ! " 
 
 "I am Lilias," said the little girl; but she 
 held back, still examining with curious though 
 less terrified eyes. " You will give it me back 
 if you are not Mary ? " she went on, at length 
 holding out the letter ; but she took no notice 
 of the invitation to come nearer, which Mary 
 herself forgot in the eagerness of her anxiety 
 to get the letter, the first communication from
 
 THE NEW-COMERS 43 
 
 her brother — if it was from lier brother — for 
 so many years. She took it quickly, almost 
 snatching it from the child's reluctant fingers, 
 and leaning against the doorway in her agita- 
 tion, tore it hastily open. Little Lilias was 
 agitated too, with fear and desolate strange- 
 ness, and that terrible ignorance of any 
 alternative between safety and utter destruc- 
 tion which makes danger insupportable to a 
 child. What were they to do if their claims 
 were not acknowledged ? Wander into the 
 woods and die in the darkness like the children 
 in the story ? Little Lilias had feared nothing 
 till that first doubt had come over her at the door 
 of the house, where, her father had instructed 
 her, she was to be made so happy. But if 
 they were not taken in and made happy, what 
 were she and Nello to do '? A terror of darkness, 
 and cold, and starvation came upon the little girL 
 She would wrap the big shawl about her little 
 brother, but what if w^ild beasts or robbers 
 should come in the middle of the dark ? Her 
 little bosom swelled full, the sobs rose into her 
 throat. Oh where could she go with Nello, if 
 this was not Mary ? But she restrained the 
 sobs by a last effort, like a little hero. She 
 sat down on the stone edge of the causeway, 
 and held her hands clasped tight to keep her-
 
 44 YOUNG MUSGKAVE. 
 
 self together, and fixed her eyes upon the lady 
 with the letter. The lady and the letter swam 
 and changed, through the big tears that kept 
 coming, but she never took those great dark, 
 intense eyes from Miss Musgrave's face. The 
 Italian nurse was bending over Nello, fully 
 occupied in hushing his little plaints. Nello 
 was tired, hungry, sleepy, cold. He had no 
 responsibility upon him, poor little mite, to 
 overcome the weakness of nature. He looked 
 no more than six, though he was older, a small 
 and delicate child ; and he clung to his nurse, 
 holding her desperately, afraid of he knew not 
 what. She had plenty to do to take care of 
 him without thinking of what was going on 
 above; though the woman, was indignant to be 
 kept waiting, and cast fierce looks, in the 
 intervals of petting Nello, upon the lady, the 
 cold Englishwoman who was so long of taking 
 the children to their arms. As for the cabman, 
 emblem of the general unconcern which sur- 
 rounds every individual drama, he stood 
 leaning calmly upon his horse, waiting for the 
 denoilment, whatever it might be. Miss Mus- 
 grave would see him paid one way or another, 
 and this was the only thing for which he 
 needed to care. 
 
 " Lilias," said Miss Musgrave, going hastily
 
 THE NEW-COMERS. 45 
 
 to the child, with tears running down her 
 cheeks, "I am your aunt Mary, my darling, 
 and you will soon learn to know me. Come 
 and give me a kiss, and bring me your little 
 brother. You are tired with your long journey, 
 my poor child." 
 
 " No, no — I am not tired — only Nello ; and 
 he is h -hungry. Ah ! Kiss Nello, Nello — 
 come and kiss him ; he is the baby. And are 
 you Mary — real, real Mary ? " cried the little 
 girl, bursting out into sobs ; " oh, I cannot 
 h-help it. I did not mean it ; I was 
 £r-frightened. Nello, come, come, Mary is 
 here." 
 
 "Yes, Mary is here," said Miss Musgrave, 
 taking the child into her arms, who, even 
 while she sobbed against her shoulder, put out 
 an impatient little hand and beckoned, crying, 
 " Nello ! Nello ! " But it was not so easy to 
 extract Nello from his nurse's arms. He cried 
 and clunor all the faster from hearino; his 
 sister's outburst ; their poor little hearts were 
 full ; and what chokings of vague miser}^, the 
 fatigue and discomfort infinitely deepened by 
 a dumb consciousness of loneliness, danger, 
 and strangeness behind, were in these little 
 inarticulate souls ! something more desperate 
 in its inability to understand what it feared.
 
 46 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 its dim anguisli of uncompreliension, than any- 
 tliing that can be realized and fathomed. 
 Mary signed eagerly to the nurse to bring the 
 little boy indoors into the hall, which was 
 not a reassuring place, vast and dark as it 
 was, in the dimness of the evening, to a child. 
 But she had too many difficulties on her hands 
 in this strange crisis to think of that. She 
 had the boxes brought in also, and hastily 
 sent the carriage away, with a desperate sense 
 as of burning her ships, and leaving no possible 
 way to herself of escape from the difficulty. 
 The gardener, who had appeared round the 
 corner, attracted by the sound, presented him- 
 self as much out of curiosity as of goodwill 
 to assist in carrying in the boxes, " though it 
 would be handiest to drive round to the front 
 door, and tak' them straight oop t'stair," he 
 said, innocently enough. But when Miss 
 Musgrave gave authoritative directions that 
 they were to be brought into the hall, natu- 
 rally the gardener was surprised. This was a 
 proceeding entirely unheard of, and not to be 
 understood in any way. 
 
 " It'll be a deal more trouble after," he said, 
 under his breath, which did not matter much. 
 But when he had obeyed his mistress's orders, 
 he went round to the kitchen full of the new
 
 THE NEW-COMEKS. 47 
 
 event. "There's something oop," the gardener 
 said, delighted to bring so much excitement 
 with him, and he gave a full account of the 
 two pale little children, the foreign woman 
 with skewers stuck in her hair, and finally, 
 most wonderful of all, the boxes which he had 
 deposited with his own hands on the floor of 
 the hall. '' I ken nothing about it," he said, 
 " but them as has been longer aboot t' house 
 than me could tell a deal if they pleased ; and 
 Miss Brown, it's her as is wanted," he added 
 leisurely at the end. 
 
 Miss Brown, who was Mary Musgrave's 
 maid, and had been standino* listenino: to his 
 story wdth frequent contradictions and denials, 
 in a state of general protestation, started at 
 these words. 
 
 "You great gaby," she said, "why didn't 
 you say so at first \ " and hurried out of the 
 kitchen, not indisposed to get at the bottom of 
 the matter. She had been Miss Musgrave's 
 favourite attendant for twenty years, and in 
 that time had, as may be supposed, known 
 about many things which her superiors believed 
 locked in the depths of their own bosoms. 
 She could have written the private history of 
 the family with less inaccuracy than belongs to 
 most records of secret history. And she was
 
 48 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 naturally indignant that Tom Gardener, a poor 
 talkative creature, who could keep nothing to 
 himself, should have known this new and 
 startling event sooner than she did. She hur- 
 ried through the long passage from the kitchen, 
 casting a stealthy glance in passing at the closed 
 door of the library, where the Squire sat un- 
 conscious. A subdued delight was in the 
 mind of the old servant ; certainly it is best 
 when there are no mysteries in a family, when 
 all goes well — but it is not so amusing. A 
 great event of which it was evident the squire 
 was in ignorance, which probably would have 
 to be kept from him, and as much as possible 
 from the household — well, it might be un- 
 fortunate that such things should be, but it 
 was exciting, it woke people up. 
 
 Miss Brown obeyed this summons with more 
 genuine alacrity than she had felt for years. 
 
 Very different were the feelings of her 
 mistress standing there in the dimness of the 
 old hall, her frame thrilling and her heart 
 aching with the appeal which her brother had 
 made to her, out of a silence which for more 
 than a dozen years had been unbroken as that 
 of the grave. She could scarcely believe yet 
 that she had seen his very handwriting and 
 read words which came straight from him and
 
 THE NEW-COMERS. 49 
 
 were signed by His now unfamiliar name. The 
 children, who crouched together frightened by 
 the darkness, were as phantoms to her, like a 
 dream about which she had just got into the 
 stage of doubt. Till now it had been all real 
 to her, as dreams appear at first. But now 
 she stood, closing the door in the stillness of 
 the evening, which, still as it was, was full 
 of curiosity and questioning and prying eyes, 
 and asked herself if these little figures were 
 real, or inventions of her fancy. Eeal children 
 of her living brother — was it true, was it 
 possible '? They were awestricken by the 
 gathering dusk, by the strange half-empty 
 room, by the dim circle of the unknown which 
 surrounded them on every side. The nurse 
 had put herself upon a chair on the edge of 
 the carpet, where she sat holding the little 
 boy on her knee, while little Lilias, who had 
 backed slowly towards this one famiJiar figure, 
 stood leaning against her, clutching her also 
 with one hand, though she concealed in- 
 stinctively this sign of fear. The boy with- 
 drew the wondering whiteness of his face from 
 the nurse's shoulder now and then to give a 
 frightened, fascinated look round, then buried 
 it again in a dumb trance of dismay and 
 terror, too frightened to cry. What was to 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 be done with these frightened children and 
 the strange woman to whom they clung ? 
 Mary could not keep them here to send them 
 wild with alarm. They wanted soft beds, 
 warm fires, cheerful lights, food and comfort, 
 and they had come to seek it in the only 
 house in the world which was closed by a 
 curse and a vow against them. Mary Mus- 
 grave was not the kind of woman who is 
 easily frightened by vows or curses ; there was 
 none of the romantic folly in her which could 
 believe in the reality of an unjust or uncalled- 
 for malediction. But she was persuaded of 
 the reality of a thing which involved no 
 supernatural mysteries, the obstinacy of her 
 father's mind, and his determination to hold 
 by the verdict he had given. Years move 
 and change everything, even the hills and the 
 seas— but not the narrow mind of an obstinate 
 and selfish man. She did not call him by 
 these names ; he was her father and she did 
 not judge him ; but no more did she hope in 
 him. And in this wonderful moment a whole 
 circle of possibilities ran through her mind. 
 She might take them to the village ; but there 
 were other dangers there ; or to the Parsonage, 
 but Mr. Pen was weak and poor Emily a 
 gossip. Could she dare the danger that was
 
 THE NEW-COMEES. 51 
 
 nearest, and take tliem somehow upstairs out 
 of tlie way, and conceal them there, defying 
 her father '? In whatever way it was settled 
 she would not desert them — but what was she 
 to do 1 JMiss Brown coming upon her sud- 
 denly in the dusk frightened her almost as 
 much as the children were frightened. The 
 want of light and the strangeness of the crisis 
 combined made every new figure like a ghost. 
 
 "Yes, I sent for you. I am in— difficulty, 
 Martha. These children have just come — the 
 
 children of a friend " Her first idea was 
 
 to conceal the real state of the case even from 
 her coufidential and well-informed maid. 
 
 '' Dear me," said Miss Brown, with seeming 
 innocence. *' How strange ! to bring a little 
 lady and gentleman without any warning. 
 But I'll go and give orders, ma'am ; there are 
 plenty of rooms vacant, there need not be any 
 difficulty " 
 
 Miss Musgrave caught her by the arm. 
 
 " What I want for the moment is light, and 
 some food hera. Bring me the lamp I always 
 use. No, not Eastwood ; never mind East- 
 wood. I want you to bring it, they will be 
 less afraid in the light." 
 
 " There is a fire in the dining-room, ma'am, 
 it is only a step, and Eastwood is lighting the 
 
 E 2 
 
 : U. Of ILL U^.
 
 52 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 candles ; and there you can have what you 
 like for them/' 
 
 It was confidence Miss Brown wanted — 
 nothiDg but confidence. With that she was 
 ready to do anything ; without it she was 
 Miss Musgrave's respectable maid, to whom 
 all mysteries were more or less improper. She 
 crossed her hands firmly and waited. The 
 room was growing darker and darker every 
 minute, and the foreign nurse began to lose 
 patience. She called " Madame ! madame ! " 
 in a high voice ; then poured forth into a 
 stream of words, so rapid and so loud as both 
 mistress and maid thought they had never 
 heard spoken before. Miss Musgrave was not 
 a great linguist. She knew enough to be 
 aware that it was Italian the woman was 
 speaking, but that was all. 
 
 " I do not understand you," she said in 
 distress, going up to the little group. But as 
 she approached a sudden accession of terror, 
 instantly suppressed on the part of the little 
 girl but irrepressible by the younger boy, 
 and which broke forth in a disjointed way, 
 arrested her steps. Were they afraid of her, 
 these children ? " Little Lilias," she said 
 piteously, *' be a brave child and stand by 
 me. I cannot take you out of this cold room
 
 THE NEW-COMERS. 53 
 
 yet, but lights are coming and you will be 
 taken care of. If I leave you alone for a little 
 while will you promise me to be brave and 
 not to be afraid ? " 
 
 There was a pause, broken only by little 
 flutterings of that nervous exhaustion which 
 made the children so accessible to fear. Then 
 a small voice said, dauntless, yet with a 
 falter — 
 
 " I will stay. I will not be afraid." 
 
 " Thank God," said Mary Musgrave, to her- 
 self. The child was already a help and assist- 
 ance. " Martha," she said hastily, " tell no 
 one ; they are — my brother's children — " 
 
 *' Good Lord ! " said Martha Brown, fright- 
 ened out of her primness. " And it's dark, 
 and there's two big boxes, and master don't 
 know." 
 
 " That is the worst of all," said Miss Mus- 
 grave sadly. She had never spoken to any 
 one of her father's inexorable verdict against 
 John and all belono^ino; to him. " The heir ! 
 and I must not take him into the house of his 
 fathers ! Take care of them, take care of them 
 
 while I go And, Martha, say nothing — 
 
 not a word." 
 
 " Not if they were to cut me in pieces, 
 ma'am ! " said Miss Brown fervently. She
 
 54 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 was too old a servant to work in the dark ; 
 but confidence restored all her faculties to her. 
 It was not, however, in the nature of things 
 that she should discharge her commission with- 
 out a betrayal more or less of the emergency. 
 " I want some milk, please," she said to the 
 cook, "for my lady." It was only in moments 
 of importance that she so spoke of her mis- 
 tress. And the very sound of her step told 
 a tale. 
 
 " I told ye there was somethink oop," said 
 Tom Gardener, still lingering in the kitchen. 
 
 And to see how the house brightened up, 
 and all the servants grew alert in the flutter 
 of this novelty ! Nothing had happened at 
 the castle for so long — they had a right to a 
 sensation. Cook, who had been there for a 
 long time, recounted her experience to her 
 assistants in low tones of mystery. 
 
 *^Ah, if ye'd known the place when the 
 gentlemen was at home," said cook ; " the 
 things as happened in t'auld house — such 
 goings on ! — coming in late and early — o'er 
 the watter and o'er the land — and the striv- 
 ings, that was enough to make a body flee out 
 of their skin ! " She ended with a regretful 
 sigh for the old times. " That was life, that 
 was ! " she said.
 
 THE ^:EW-C0MERS. 55 
 
 Meanwhile Mary Musgrave came in out of 
 tlie dark hall into the lighted warmth of the 
 dining-room, where the glass and the silver 
 shone red in the firelight. How cosy and 
 pleasant it was there ! how w^arm and cheer- 
 ful ! Just the place to comfort the children 
 and make them forget their miseries. The 
 children ! How easily her mind had under- 
 taken the charge of them — the fact of their 
 existence ; already they had become the chief 
 feature in her life. She paused to look at 
 herself in the mirror over the mantelpiece, to 
 smooth her hair, and put the ribbon straight 
 at her neck. The Squire was '' very par- 
 ticular," and yet she did not remember to 
 have had this anxious desire to be pleasant 
 to his eyes since that day when she had crept 
 to him to implore a reversal of his sentence. 
 She had obtained nothing from him then ; 
 would she be more fortunate now ? The 
 colour had gone out of her face, but her eyes 
 were brighter and more resolute than usual. 
 How her heart beat w^hen Mr. Musgrave said, 
 '' Come in," calmly from the midst of his 
 studies, as she knocked trembling at the 
 library door !
 
 PAET II. 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AFTER THE SILENCE OF YEARS. 
 
 " Come in/' said the Squire. He was sitting 
 among his books, working with such a genuine 
 sense of importance as was strange to see. 
 Mary did not know that she thought anything 
 in the world (except this present mission of 
 hers) so important as he thought his search 
 into the heraldic fortunes of the family. He 
 was in full cry after a certain " augmentation " 
 which had got into the Musgrave arms no one 
 well knew how. It was only the Musgraves 
 of Penninghame who bore this distinction, and 
 how did they come by it ? It appeared in the 
 thirteenth century — in the age of the Crusades. 
 "Was it in recollection of some feat of a 
 Crusader? — that was the question. He put 
 down his pen and laid one open book upon
 
 AFTER THE SILENCE OF YEARS. 57 
 
 another as she came in. He had no conscious- 
 ness in his mind to make him critical or 
 inquiring. He did not observe her paleness, 
 nor the special glitter in her eyes. " I am 
 busy," he said, *'so you must be brief. I 
 think I have got hold of that ' chief ' at last. 
 After years of search it is exciting to find the 
 first trace of it ; but perhaps it is best to wait 
 till I have verified my guesses — they are still 
 not much more than guesses. What a satis- 
 faction it will be when all is clear ! " 
 
 " I am glad you are to have this satisfaction, 
 papa." 
 
 " Yes, I know you take little interest in it 
 for itself Ladies seldom do ; though I can't 
 tell why, for heraldry ought to be an interest- 
 ing science to them and quite within their 
 reach. Nothing has happened about the dinner, 
 I hope ? I notice that is your general subject 
 when you come into my room so late. Law 
 business in the morning, dinner in the evening 
 — a very good distribution. But I want a 
 good dinner to-night, my dear, to celebrate my 
 success." 
 
 "It is not about dinner. Father, we have 
 been living a very quiet life for many years." 
 
 " Thank Heaven ! " said the old man. 
 '' Yes, a quiet life. A man of my age is
 
 58 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 entitled to it, Mary. I never shrank from 
 exertion in my time, nor do I now, as this 
 will testify." He laid his hand with a genial 
 complaisance upon the half- written paper that 
 lay before him. Then he said with a smile, 
 *' But make haste, my dear. There is still an 
 hour before dinner, and I am in the spirit of 
 my work. We need not occupy our time, you 
 and I, with general remarks." 
 
 " I did not mean it for a general remark," 
 she said with a tremble in her voice. " It 
 is that I have something important — very 
 important to speak of, and I don't know how 
 to begin." 
 
 " Important — very important I " he said, with 
 the indulgence of jocular superiority for a 
 child's undue gravity. " I know what these 
 important matters are. Some poaching rascal 
 that you don't know how to manage, or a 
 quarrel in the village ? Bring them to me : but 
 bring them to-morrow, Mary, when my mind 
 is at rest — I cannot give my attention now." 
 
 " It is neither poaching nor quarrelling," 
 she said. *' I can manage the village. There 
 are other things. Father, though we have 
 been quiet for so many years, it is not because 
 there has been nothing to think of — no seeds 
 of trouble in the past — no anxieties "
 
 AFTER THE SILE^'CE OF YEARS. 59 
 
 *' I don't know what you are thinking of," 
 lie said, pettishly. ''No anxieties? A man 
 has them as long as he is in the world. We 
 are mortal. Seeds of trouble ? I have told 
 you, Mar}^, that you may spare me general 
 remarks." 
 
 "Oh, nothing was further from my mind 
 than general remarks," she cried. ''I don't 
 know how to speak. Father — look here — read 
 it ; it will tell its own story best. This is 
 what, after the silence of years, I have re- 
 ceived to-day." 
 
 " The silence of years ! " said the Squire. 
 He had to fumble for his spectacles, which 
 he had taken off, though he carefully restrained 
 himself from betraying any special interest. 
 A red colour had mounted to his face. Perhaps 
 his mind did not go so far as to divine what 
 it was ; but still a sudden glimmering, like 
 the tremble of pale light before the dawn, had 
 come into his mind. 
 
 And this was the thunderbolt that suddenly 
 fell upon him in his quietness after the silence 
 of years : — 
 
 "My dear Sister Mary, — This will be 
 given to you by my little daughter Lilias. 
 The sight of my handwriting and of the
 
 60 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 children will be enougli to startle you, so that 
 I need not try to soften the shock which you 
 must have already received. I claim from my 
 father shelter for my children. Their mother 
 is dead ; so are the others of my family whose 
 very names will never be known to my nearest 
 relations. Never mind that now. I am a 
 man both sick and sorry, worn by the world, 
 lonely, and not much better than an adven- 
 turer. These children are the last of our race, 
 and the boy, however reluctant you may be, 
 is my father's heir. I claim for them the 
 shelter of the family roof. I have no home 
 to give them, nor can I give them the care 
 they require. Mary, you are a good woman : 
 you are blameless one way or another. I 
 charge you with my children. God do so to 
 you and more also, according as you deal with 
 them. Some time or other before I die I will 
 drag myself home. That you may be sure of, 
 unless God cuts short my life by the way, of 
 which, if He will, I shall not complain. 
 " Your brother, 
 
 "John Musgrave." 
 
 This was the letter which the Squire placed 
 upon his mouldy books, over the statement he 
 had been writing. He did not speak, but read
 
 AFTER THE SILENCE OF YEARS. 61 
 
 it steadily to the end, betraying no emotion 
 except by the glow of colour that rose over his 
 weather-beaten face. Who that has sat by, 
 anxious, watching the effect of such a letter, 
 needs to be told with what intense observation 
 Mary Musgrave noted every sign of the rigid 
 control he kept upon himself — the tight clutch 
 of one hand upon the table, the tremor of the 
 other which held the letter ? But the Squire 
 said nothing, not even when he had visibly 
 come to the end. He held it before him still 
 for some minutes ; then he began to fold it 
 elaborately — but said nothing still. The 
 shadow of his head with its falling locks of 
 white hair shook a little upon the wall. There 
 is a peculiar tremble which shows the very 
 severity of restraint, and this was of that 
 kind. 
 
 " Father ! have you nothing to say ? " 
 
 " I thought it was a subject put aside, not 
 
 to be mentioned between us," he said. "I 
 
 may be wrong — if I am wrong you can inform 
 
 me ; but I supposed this and all cognate 
 
 subjects to be closed between us " 
 
 " How can this be closed ? I have ceased 
 to importune you, but this is a new opening. 
 And there is more than the letter — the 
 children "
 
 62 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 " Ala 1 " He gave a slight cry. If lie could 
 it would have been an exclamation of scorn, 
 but this was too much for him ; the cry was 
 sharp with impatient pain. 
 
 " I could not keep them a secret from you, 
 father." 
 
 " I hate secrets/' he said ; " nevertheless 
 there are few famiUes in which they are not 
 necessary. When he had said this he pushed 
 the letter towards her, drew forward his heraldry 
 books, and took his pen in his hand. 
 
 " Will you say nothing to me ? " she cried. 
 " Will you give me no answer ? What am I 
 to do ? " 
 
 "Do I It seems to me quite an unnecessary 
 question. It is a long time since I have given 
 up exercising any control over you, Mary," he 
 said. 
 
 "But, father, have a little pity. The 
 house is not mine to do as I like with." 
 
 " That is unfortunate," he said, with a cold 
 precision which made it doubtful whether he 
 spoke satirically or in earnest. " But it is not 
 my fault. You cannot expect me to make 
 place voluntarily for another ; and even if I 
 did, as you are a woman, it would be of 
 very little use to you. You cannot be the 
 heir "
 
 AFTER THE SILENCE OF YEARS. 63 
 
 " And this boy is ! " she said, with a gesture 
 of appeal. 
 
 Mr. Musgrave said nothing. He shook his 
 head impatiently, pushed the letter to her ^Yith 
 an energy that flung it into her lap, and re- 
 sumed his writiDg. She stood by while he 
 deliberately returned to his description of the 
 '' chief," turning up a page in his heraldry 
 book, where all the uses and meanings of that 
 *' augmentation " were discussed. According 
 to all appearance his mind took up this im- 
 portant question exactly where he had left it ; 
 and he resumed his writing steadily, betraying 
 agitation only by a larger, bolder, and firmer 
 handv/riting than usual. His daughter stood 
 for a moment by his side, and watched him 
 speechless — then went out of the room without 
 another word. The Squire went on writing 
 for a full minute more. The lines he wrote 
 had not been so bold, so firm, so well-defined 
 for years. Was it because he had to put forth 
 the whole force that remained in him, soul and 
 body, to get them upon the paper at all 1 
 When all sound of her departing steps had 
 died out, he stopped suddenly, and, putting 
 down his pen, let his head drop upon the open 
 book and its figured page. An augmentation 
 of honour ! The days were over in which such
 
 64 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 gifts came from heralds and kings. And in- 
 stead, here were struggles of a very different 
 kind from those which won new blazons. But 
 the most insensible, the most self- controlled of 
 men, could not take such an interruption of 
 his studies with absolute calm. He had never 
 been in such desperate conflict with any man 
 as with this son, and here his enemy, whom 
 nature forbade to be his enemy, his antagonist, 
 had come again after the silence of years and 
 confronted him. To see such a one pass by 
 could not but excite a certain emotion ; but to 
 meet him thus as it were face to face ! The 
 passion of parental love has been often por- 
 trayed. There is no passion more fervent, 
 none perhaps even that can equal it ; but there 
 is another passion scarcely less intense — that 
 which rises involuntarily in the bosom of a 
 man between whom and his son there are no 
 ties of mutual dependence, when the younger 
 has become as the elder, knowing good and 
 evil, and all the experiences of life ; when there 
 is no longer any question of authority and 
 obedience, and natural aff'ection yields to a 
 strain of feeling which is too strong for it. 
 Many long years had passed now since young 
 Musgrave ceased to be his father's pride and 
 boyish second in everything. He had grown
 
 AFTER THE SILENCE OF YEARS. 65 
 
 a man, his equal, and had resisted and held his 
 own in the conflict half a lifetime ago. All the 
 embitterment which close relationship gives to 
 a deadly quarrel had been between them, and 
 though the father had so far got the better as 
 to drive the reljel out of his sight, he had not 
 crushed his will or removed him from his 
 standing-ground. He was the victor, though 
 the vanquished. His son had not yielded, nor 
 would ever yield. When Mr. Musgrave raised 
 his head his face was pale, and his head shook 
 with a nervous tremor ; all the broken redness 
 of his cheeks shone like pencilled lines through 
 his pallor, increasing it. " This will never do," 
 he said to himself, and rising, went to an old 
 oak cupboard in the corner, and poured himself 
 a small glass of the strongest of liqueurs. Not 
 for all that remained of the Musgrave property 
 would he have shown himself so broken, so 
 overcome. This other man who was no 
 younger, but only stronger than himself, was 
 at the same time his successor, ready to push 
 him out of his seat ; waiting for a triumph 
 that must come sooner or later. He had 
 been able to forget all about him for 
 years ; to thrust out the thought of him 
 when it recurred ; but here the man stood 
 once more confronting him. The Squire was 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 wise in his way, and knew that there was 
 nothing in the world so bad for the health, or 
 so likely to give his antagonist an advantage, 
 as the indulgence of emotion — therefore he 
 crushed it '' upon the threshold of the mind." 
 He would not give him so much help towards 
 the inevitable eventual triumph. He went 
 back to his writing-table when he had fortified 
 himself with that potent mouthful ; but, know- 
 ing himself, tried his pen upon a stray bit of 
 paper before he would resume his writing. 
 What he wrote was in the quivering lines of 
 old age. He tore it into pieces. No one 
 should see such a sign of agitation in the 
 manuscript which was to last longer than he. 
 He took up the most learned of his books, and 
 began to read with close attention. Here, at 
 all events, the adversary should not get the 
 better of him ; or, at least, if thoughts did 
 surge and rise, obliterating the old escutcheon 
 altogether and the lion on its " chief," nobody 
 should be the wiser. 
 
 Thus the old man sat, with a desperate 
 courage worthy a better object, and mastered 
 the furious excitement in his mind. But he 
 was not thinking of the children as perhaps 
 the reader of this story may suppose. He was 
 not resisting the thrill of natural interest, the
 
 AFTER THE SILENCE OF YEARS. 67 
 
 softening of heart whicli might have attended 
 that sudden arrival. He did not even realize 
 the existence of the children. His thoughts 
 were of conflicts past, and of the opponent 
 against whom he had striven so often : the 
 opponent whom he could not altogether dismiss 
 or get rid of, his rival, his heir, his successor, 
 his son. There was nothing he had wished as 
 a father, as a Musgrave, as the head of a great 
 county family, which this man had not done 
 his best to undo ; and as he had by ill-fortune 
 thirty years the advantage of his father, there 
 was no doubt that he would, some time or 
 other, undo and destroy to an extent of which 
 he was incapable now ; unless indeed he was 
 prevented in the most disgraceful way, in- 
 capacitated by public conviction of crime — 
 conviction, which was only too probable, which 
 hung over his banished head and prevented his 
 return home. What would there be but pain 
 in the thought of such a son — an opponent if 
 he were innocent, if he were guilty a disgxace 
 to the family name ? The more completely 
 the Squire could banish this thought from his 
 mind, the happier he was ; and he had banished 
 it with wonderful success for many years past. 
 He had done all he could to evade the idea 
 that he himself would one day be compelled to 
 
 F 2
 
 68 YOUNG MUSGF.AVE. 
 
 die. Many men do this wlio have no painful 
 consciousness of the heir behind who is waiting 
 to dispossess them ; and Mr. Musgrave had, to a 
 great degree, attained tranquillity on this point. 
 The habit of living seems to grow stronger with 
 men as they draw near the end of their lives. 
 It has lasted so long ; it has been so steady and 
 uninterrupted, why should it ever cease ? But 
 here was the death's-head rising at the feast ; 
 the executioner giving note of his presence 
 behind backs. John ! he had dismissed him 
 from his mind. He had exercised even a kind 
 of Christianity in forgetting him. But here 
 he was again, incapable of being forgotten. 
 What a tremor in his blood — what undue 
 working of all that machinery of the heart 
 which it was so essential to keep in calm good 
 order had this interruption caused ! he who 
 had no vital energy to spare ; who wanted it 
 all for daily comfort and that continuance 
 which with younger people is so lightly taken 
 for granted. How much of that precious re- 
 serve had been consumed by this shock ! It 
 had been done on purpose, perhaps, to try 
 what the effect of such a shock upon his nerves 
 and fibres would be. 
 
 Mr. Musgrave pushed back his chair again 
 from the table, and gave all his faculties to the
 
 AFTER THE SILENCE OF YE^VES. 69 
 
 task of calming Limself down. He would not 
 allow himself to be overcome by John. But 
 it took him a long time to accomplish this, to 
 get his pulse back to its usual rate of beating. 
 When he relaxed for a moment in his 
 watch over himself, old recollections would 
 come back, scenes of the long warfare, words 
 that were as swords and smote him over again 
 with burning; and stino^ino; wounds. He had 
 to calm it all doNvn and still memory alto- 
 gether if he would recover his ordinary com- 
 posure. It wanted about an hour of dinner 
 when he began this process. Up to that time 
 it did not so much matter, except for wearing 
 him out and diminishing his strength. But it 
 was his determination that no one should 
 know or see this agitation which he had not 
 been able to master. His daughter thought 
 she had a harder task before her when she left 
 him and hurried back to the ghostly half- 
 lighted hall where she had left the children ; 
 but wdiat was her work, or the commotion of 
 her thoughts, in comparison to that which raged 
 within the bosom of the old man in his soli- 
 tude, defying Heaven and nature, and all 
 gentler influences — whose conflict was for him- 
 self only, as it was carried on unhelped and 
 unthought of by himself alone ?
 
 CHAPTEE y. 
 
 WAKING UP. 
 
 Miss Musgeave went back to her visitors 
 with a heightened colour and assured step. Her 
 alarm had departed along with her wistful and 
 hopeful ignorance as to what her father might 
 do. Now that she knew, her courage came 
 back to her. When she opened the door which 
 led out of the little passage into the hall, the 
 scene before her was striking and strange 
 enough to arrest her like a picture. The great 
 ancient room, with its high raftered roof and 
 wide space, lay in darkness — all but one bright 
 spot in the midst where the lamp stood on the 
 table. Miss Brown had hastily arranged a 
 kind of homely meal, a basket of oatcakes, 
 some white bread in a napkin, biscuits, home- 
 made gingerbread, and a jug of fresh milk. 
 The white and brown bread, the tall white 
 jug, the cloth upon the tray, all helped to 
 increase the whiteness of that spot in the
 
 WAKING UP. 71 
 
 gloom. In the midst of this light sat the 
 Italian nurse, dark and vigorous, with the 
 silver pins in her black hair, and red ribbons 
 at her breast. The pale Httle boy sat on her 
 knee ; he had a little fair head like an angel in 
 a picture, light curling hair, and a delicate 
 complexion, white and red, which was fully 
 relieved against that dark background. The 
 child's alarm had given way a little, but still, 
 in the intervals of his meal, he would pause, 
 look round him into the gloom, and clutch with 
 speechless fright at his attendant, vv^ho held 
 him close and soothed him with aU the soft 
 words she could think of Little Lilias stood 
 by her on the further side, sufficiently re- 
 covered to eat a biscuit, but securing herself 
 also, brave as she was, by a firm grasp of the 
 nurse's arm to which she hung, tightly em- 
 bracing it with her own. Miss Brown was 
 flitting about this strange little group, talking 
 continuously, though the only one among them 
 who was disposed to talk could not understand 
 her, and the children were too worn out to pay 
 any attention to what she said. 
 
 There was a little start and thrill among the 
 three who held so closely together when the 
 lady returned. Little Lilias put down her 
 biscuit. She became the head of the party as
 
 72 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 soon as Miss Musgrave came back — the pleni- 
 potentiary witli whom to conduct all nego- 
 tiations. Nello, on the other hand, buried his 
 head in his nurse's shoulder. In the midst of 
 all her agitation and confusion it troubled Miss 
 Musgrave that the child should hide his face 
 from her. The boy who was like herself and 
 her family was the one to whom her interest 
 turned most. Lilias bore another resemblance? 
 which was no passport to Mary Musgrave's 
 heart. Yet it was hard to resist the fascination 
 of this child's sense and courage ; the boy, as 
 yet, had shown himself capable of nothing but 
 fear. 
 
 " Go, and have fires lighted at once in the 
 two west rooms — make everything ready," 
 Mary said, sending Miss Brown away peremp- 
 torily. It was not a worthy feeling perhaps, 
 but it vexed her, agitated as she was, to see 
 that her maid woke no alarm in the children, 
 while she, their nearest relation, she who, if 
 necessary, had made up her mind to sacrifice 
 everything for them, was an object of fear. 
 She thought even that the children clung 
 closer to their nurse and shrank more from 
 herself when Martha was sent away. Miss 
 Muso^rave stood at the other side of the table 
 and looked at them with many conflicting
 
 WAKIXG UP. 73 
 
 thoughts. It Avas altogether new to her, this 
 strange mixture of ignorance and wonder, and 
 almost awe, with which she felt herself con- 
 templating these unknown little creatures, 
 henceforward to be wholly dependent upon 
 her. They were afraid of her, but she was 
 scarcely less afraid of them, wondering ^vith 
 an ache in her heart whether she would be 
 able to feel towards them as she ought, to bring 
 her middle-aged thoughts into sympathy with 
 theirs, to be soft and gentle with them as their 
 helplessness demanded. Love does not always 
 come with the first claim upon it ; how was 
 she to love them, little unknown beings whose 
 very existence she had never heard of before ? 
 And Mary thought of herself with a certain 
 pity in this strange moment, remembering 
 almost with a sense of injury that the fountain 
 of mother s love had never been awakened in 
 her at all. AYas it thus to be awakened 1 She 
 was not an angelic woman, as poor Mr. Pen 
 imagined her to be. She knew this well 
 enough, though he did not know it. She had 
 been young and full of herself when the family 
 misfortunes happened, and since then what 
 had there been in her life to warm or awaken 
 the heart ? Was she capable of loving 1 she 
 asked herself ; was there not a chill atmo-
 
 74 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 sphere about her, which breathed cold upon 
 the children and drove them away 1 This 
 thought gave her a pang, as she stood and 
 looked at the two helpless creatures before her, 
 too frightened now to munch their biscuits, 
 one gazing at her with big pathetic eyes, the 
 other hiding his face. An ache of helplessness 
 and pain not less great than theirs came into 
 her mind. She was as helpless as they were, 
 looking at them across the table, as if across a 
 world of separation which she did not know 
 how to brido;e over, with not onlv them to 
 vanquish, but herself. At last she put out 
 her hands with a sense of weakness, such as 
 perhaps she had never felt before. She had 
 not been able, indeed, to influence her father, 
 but she had not felt helpless before him ; on 
 the contrary, his hardness had stirred her to 
 determination on her side, and a sense of 
 power which quickened the flowing of her 
 blood. But before these children she felt 
 helpless ; what was she to do with them, how 
 bring herself into communication with them ? 
 She put out her hands — hands strong to guard, 
 but powerless she thought to attract. " Lilias, 
 will you come to me ? " she said, with a 
 tremulous tone in her voice. 
 
 The weariness, the strangeness, the darkness
 
 WAKING UP. 75 
 
 had been almost too much for Lilias ; her 
 mouthful of biscuit and draught of milk had 
 been too quickly interrupted by the return ot 
 the strange, beautiful lady, with whom she 
 alone, she was aware, could deal. And she 
 could not respond to that appeal without quit- 
 ting hold of Martuccia, who, though powerless 
 to treat with the lady, was still a safeguard 
 against the surrounding blackness, a something 
 to cling to. But the child was brave as a 
 hero, notwithstanding the nervous suscepti- 
 bility of her nature. She disengaged her arm 
 slowly from her one stay, keeping her eyes all 
 the time fixed upon Miss IMusgrave, half 
 attracted by her, half to keep herself from 
 seeing those dark corners in which mysterious 
 dangers seemed to lurk ; and came forward, 
 repressing the sob that rose in her throat, her 
 little pale face growing crimson with the strain 
 of resolution which this effort cost her. It 
 w-as all Lilias could do to move round the 
 table quietly, not to make a rush of fright and 
 violent clutch at the hand held out to her — 
 even though it was the hand of a stranger, 
 from w^iich in itself she shrank. Mary put 
 her arm round the little tremblino- fiorure, and 
 smoothing away the dark hair from her fore- 
 head, kissed the little girl with lips that
 
 76 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 trembled too. She would do lier duty by 
 her ; never would she forsake her brother's 
 child ; and with the warmth of this resolution 
 tears of pity and tenderness came into her 
 eyes. But when Lilias felt the protection of 
 the warm soft arm about her, and the tender- 
 ness of the kiss, her little heart burst forth 
 with a strength of impulse which put all laws 
 at defiance. With a sobbing cry she threw 
 herself upon her new protector, caught at her 
 dress, clung to her waist, nestled her head into 
 her bosom, with a close pressure which was half 
 gratitude, half terror, half nervous excitement. 
 Mary was taken by storm. She did not under- 
 stand the change that came over her. A 
 sudden warmth seemed to come into her veins, 
 tingling to her very finger-points. She too, 
 mature and self-restrained as she was, began 
 to weep, a sudden flood of tears rushing to her 
 eyes against her will. *' My child, my brave 
 little girl ! '' she said almost unawares, recog- 
 nising in her heart a soft surprise of feeling 
 which was inexplicable ; was this what nature 
 did, sheer nature 1 she had never felt anything 
 like it before. She held the child in her arms 
 and cried over her, the tears falling over those 
 dark curls which had nothing to do with the 
 Musgraves, which even resembled another type
 
 WAKIXG Vl\ 77 
 
 with whicli the ^Muso-raves woukl have nothino- 
 to do! 
 
 As she stood thus overcome by the double 
 sensation of the child's nestling and clinging, 
 and by the strange, sudden development of 
 feeling in herself, Mary Musgrave felt two 
 soft touches upon her hand which were not 
 mistakable, and which made her start and 
 flush, with the decorum of an Englishwoman 
 surprised. It was Martuccia, who, moved like 
 all her race by quick impulses of emotion, had 
 risen hastily to her feet in sympathy, and 
 had kissed the lady's hand, and put forward 
 her little charge to perform the same act of 
 homage. This roused Mary from her moment- 
 ary breaking down. She took the little boy 
 by the hand whom she found at her feet, not 
 quite so frightened as at first, but still holdino- 
 fast by the nurse's skirts, and led them both 
 into the house. They were too much awed to 
 make any noise, but went with her, keepino- 
 close to her, treading in her footsteps almost, 
 closer and closer as they emerged into one 
 unknown place after another. Wonder kept 
 them still as she took them through the cheer- 
 ful lighted dining-room, and up the stairs. 
 Eastwood was busy about his table, putting it 
 in that perfect order which it was his pride to
 
 78 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 keep up {" For who is more to me nor my 
 family ? what's company ? " said Eastwood ; 
 '' it's them as pays me as I'm bound to 
 please ") ; but Eastwood was too good a ser- 
 vant to manifest any feeling. He had, of 
 course, heard all about the arrival, not only 
 from the gardener, but from every one in the 
 kitchen ; and he was aware, as nobody else 
 was, that there had been a private interview 
 between the father and daughter, to which she 
 had gone with a pale face, and come back with 
 nostrils expanded, and a glow of resolution 
 upon her. Eastwood was not an old servant, 
 but he had learned all that there was to learn 
 about the family, and a little more. His 
 interest in the Musgraves was not so warm 
 as that of cook for instance, who had been 
 born in the place, and had known them from 
 their cradles ; but he had the warm curiosity 
 which is common to his kind. He gave a 
 glance from beneath his eyebrows at the new- 
 comers, wondering what was to become of 
 them. Would they be received into the house 
 for good; and if so, would that have any effect 
 upon himself, Eastwood ? would it, by and by, 
 be an increase of trouble, a something addi- 
 tional to do 1 He was no worse than his 
 neighbours, and the thought was instinctive
 
 ^YAKING UP. 79 
 
 and natural, for no one likes to have additional 
 labour. " But lie's but a little chap ; it'll be 
 long enough before he wants valeting — if 
 ever," Mr. Eastwood said to himself. What 
 would be wanted would be a nurse, not a 
 valet ; and if that black- eyed foreigner didn't 
 stay, Eastwood knew a nice girl from the 
 village whom the place would just suit. So 
 he cast no unkindly eye upon the children as 
 he went noiselessly about in his spotless coat, 
 putting down his forks, which were quite as 
 spotless. The sight of the table with its 
 bouquet of autumn flowers excited Lilias. 
 " Who is going to dine there ? " she said, with 
 a pretty childish wile, drawing do^Ti Miss 
 Musgrave towards her to whisper in her ear. 
 
 *' I am, Lilias." 
 
 " May we come too ? " said the little girl. 
 "Nello is very good — he does not ask for 
 anything ; we know how to behave." 
 
 '' There will be some one else besides me," 
 said Mary, faltering slightly. 
 
 " Then we do not want to come," said 
 Lilias with decision. '' We are not fond of 
 strangers." 
 
 "I am a stranger, dear " 
 
 " Oh no, you are Mary ! " said the child, 
 embracing Miss Musgrave's arm with her own
 
 80 YOUNG MUSGRAVE, 
 
 two arms clasped round it, and raising her 
 face with the confidence of perfect trust. 
 These simple actions made Mary's heart swell 
 as it had not done for years — as indeed it had 
 never done in her life. Other thrills there 
 might have been in her day, but this fountain 
 had never been opened before, and the new 
 feeling was almost as strangely sweet to her 
 as is the silent ecstasy in the bosom of the 
 new mother, whose baby has just brought into 
 the world such an atmosphere of love. It 
 was like some strange new stream poured into 
 her heart, filling up all her veins. 
 
 The firelight had already begun to sparkle 
 pleasantly in the bedrooms, and Mary found 
 herself suddenly plunged into those pleasant 
 cares of a mother which make time fly so 
 swiftly. She had found so much to do for 
 them, getting them to bed and making the 
 weary little creatures comfortable, that the 
 bell rang for dinner before she was aware. 
 She left them hastily, and put herself into 
 her evening gown with a speed which was 
 anxiously seconded by Miss Brown, who for 
 her part was just as eager to get back to the 
 children as was her mistress. Miss Musgrave 
 did not know what awaited her when she went 
 down stairs, or what battles she mirfit have
 
 WAEI^'G UP. 81 
 
 to fight. She had another duty now in the 
 world beyond that claimed by her father. He 
 had no such need of her as these children, who 
 in all the wide world had no protector or 
 succour but herself. Her heart beat a little 
 louder and stronger than usual ; her bearing 
 was more dio-nified. The indifference which 
 had been in her life this morning had passed 
 away. How strange it seemed now to think 
 of that calm which nothing affected much, 
 in which she had been comparatively happy, 
 but which now appeared so mean and 
 poverty-stricken. The easy quiet had gone 
 out of her life ; — was it for ever ? — and instead 
 there had come in a commotion of anxieties, 
 hopes, and doubts and questions manifold ; 
 but yet how miserable to her in comparison 
 seemed now that long loveless tranquillity ! 
 She was another woman, a living woman, she 
 thought to herself, bearing the natural burden 
 of care, a burden sweetened by a hundred 
 budding tendernesses and consolations. It 
 is well to have good health and enough to 
 do ; these had been the bare elements of exist- 
 ence, out of which she had managed to form 
 a cold version of living ; but how different 
 was this vivid existence, new-bom yet eternal, 
 of love and care ! She was like one inspired. 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 If she had been offered the alternative, as she 
 almost expected, of leaving the house or giving 
 up the children, with what pride would she 
 have drawn her cloak round her and left her 
 father's house ! This prospect seemed near 
 enough and likely enough as she walked into 
 the dining-room, with her head high, and a 
 swell of conscious force in her bosom. What- 
 ever might be coming, she was prepared for 
 any blow. 
 
 Mr. Musgrave, too, was late. He who was 
 the soul of punctuality did not enter the room 
 for a minute or more after his daughter had 
 hastened there, knowing herself late — but 
 whereas she had hurried her toilet, his had 
 never been more careful and precise. He 
 took his seat with deliberate steadiness, and 
 insisted upon carving the mutton and part- 
 ridge which made their meal, though on ordi- 
 nary occasions he left this office to Eastwood. 
 It gratified him, however, to-day, to prove to 
 himself and to her how capable he was and 
 how steady were his nerves. And he talked 
 while he did this with unusual energy, going 
 over again all the history of the "chief." 
 
 " I hope it will interest the general reader," 
 he said. " Not many family questions do, but 
 this is really an elucidation of history. It
 
 WAKING UP. 83 
 
 tkrows light upon a great many things. You 
 scorn heraldry, Mary, I am aware." 
 
 "No, I do not think I scorn it." 
 
 "Well, at all events you are little interested; 
 the details are not of much importance, you 
 think. In short, I suspect," he added, with a 
 little laugh, " that if the truth were told, you 
 and a great many other ladies secretly look 
 upon the science as one of those play-sciences 
 that keep men from being troublesome. You 
 don't say so, but I believe you think we fuss 
 and make work for ourselves in this way 
 while you are carrying on the real work of 
 the world." 
 
 " I am not so self-important," she said ; but 
 there was a ereat deal of truth in the suo-- 
 
 o o 
 
 gestion if her mind had been free enough to 
 think of it. What was it else but a play- 
 science to keep country gentlemen too old for 
 fox-hunting out of mischief ? This is one of 
 the private opinions of the gynecseum apply- 
 ing to many grave pursuits, an opinion which 
 circulates there in strictest privacy and is not 
 spoken to the world. Mary would have smiled 
 at the Squire's discrimination had her mind 
 been free. As it was, she could do nothino- 
 but wonder at his liveliness and composure, 
 and say to herself that he must be waiting 
 
 G 2
 
 84 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 till Eastwood went away. This, no doubt, 
 was why he talked so much, and was so 
 genial. He did not wish to betray anything 
 to the man, and her heart began to beat once 
 more with renewed force as the moment came 
 for his withdrawal. No doubt the discussion 
 she feared would come, and most likely come 
 with double severity then. She had seen all 
 this process gone through before. 
 
 But when Eastwood went away the Squire 
 continued smiling and conversational. He 
 told her of a poacher who had been brought 
 to him, a bumpkin from a distant farm, to 
 whom he meant to be merciful ; and of some 
 land which was likely to be in the market, 
 .which would, if it could be got, restore an 
 old corner of the estate and rectify the ancient 
 boundary. 
 
 " I do not suppose there is any hope of 
 such a thing," he said, with a sigh. "And 
 besides, what does it matter to me that I 
 should care '? my time cannot be very 
 long." 
 
 *'The time of the family may be long 
 enough," she said, with a throb of rising 
 excitement, for surely now he would speak ; 
 " one individual is not all." 
 
 '^ That is a sound sentiment, though perhaps
 
 WAKI^^G UP. 85 
 
 it may seem a little cold-hearted when the 
 individual is your father, Mar}^." 
 
 " I did not mean it to be cold-hearted ; 
 you have always taught me to consider the 
 race." 
 
 " And so you ought," he said, " though you 
 don't care so much for the blazon as I could 
 Avish. I should like to talk to Burn and to 
 see what the lawyers would think of it. I 
 confess I should like to be Lord of the Manor 
 at Critchley again before I die." 
 
 " And so you shall, father, so you shall ! " 
 she cried. '^ We could do it with an effort : 
 if only you would — if only you could " 
 
 He interrupted her hastily. 
 
 " When Burn comes to-morrow let me see • 
 him," he said. " This is no question of what 
 I could or would. If it can be done it ought 
 to be done. That is all I have to say. Is it 
 not time you were ha^dng tea '? " 
 
 This was to send her away that he might 
 have his evening nap after dinner. Mary rose 
 at the well-known formula, but she came softly 
 round to his end of the room to see that the 
 fire was as he liked it, and lingered behind his 
 chair, not knowing whether to make another 
 appeal to him. Her presence seemed to make 
 him restless ; perhaps he divined what was
 
 86 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 floating in her mind. He got up quickly 
 before she had time to speak. 
 
 *'0n second thoughts," he said, "as I was 
 disturbed before dinner, I had better resume 
 my work at once. You can send me a cup of 
 tea to the library. It is not often that one 
 has such a satisfactory piece of work in hand ; 
 that charms away drowsiness. Be sure you 
 send me a cup of tea." 
 
 " You will not — over-fatigue yourself, 
 father ? " said Mary, faltering. " I — hope 
 you will not do too much/' 
 
 This was not what she meant to say, but 
 these were the only words that she could 
 manage to form out of her lips. 
 
 " Oh, no ; do not be uneasy. I shall not 
 overwork myself," said the Squire once more, 
 with a laugh. 
 
 And he went out of the room before her, 
 erect and steady, looking younger and stronger 
 in the force of that excitement which he was 
 so careful to conceal. Mary did not know 
 what to think. Was he postponing his sen- 
 tence to make it more telling '? or was he, 
 happier thought, moved by the new event as 
 she herself had been, warmed into forgiveness, 
 into relenting, into the happiness of old age 
 in children's children ? Could this be so ?
 
 WAKING UP. 87 
 
 She stood over the fire in her agitation holding 
 her hands out to the ruddy blaze, though she 
 was not cold. Her heart beat violently against 
 her breast. How uneasy a thing this life was, 
 how restless and full of change and commo- 
 tion! Yet so much more, so much greater than 
 the gentler stagnation which was gone.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 AT THE VICARAGE. 
 
 The vicarage was stilled in tlie quiet of the 
 evening, the children in bed, the house at rest. 
 It was not the beautiful and dignified old house 
 which in England is the ideal dwelling of the 
 gentleman parson, the ecclesiastical squire of 
 the parish. And indeed Mr. Pennithorne was 
 not of that order. Though there had been 
 many jokes when he first entered upon the 
 cure as to the resemblance between his name 
 and that of the parish, Pennithorne of Pen- 
 ninghame was a purely accidental coincidence. 
 Mr. Musgrave was the patron, but the living 
 was not wealthy enough or important enough 
 to form that appropriate provision for a second 
 son which, according to the curious subordina- 
 tion and adaptation of public wants to family 
 interests, has become the rule in England, 
 unique, as are so many others. Randolph 
 Musgrave had his rectory in one of the
 
 AT THE VICARAGE. 89 
 
 midland counties, in the district which was 
 influenced by his mother's family, where there 
 was something more worth his acceptance ; and 
 his old tutor had got the family living. Mr. 
 Pennithorne was not a distinguished scholar 
 with chances of preferment through his college, 
 and it had been considered a great thing for 
 him when, after dragging the young Musgraves 
 through a certain proportion of schooling and 
 colleging, he had subsided into this quiet 
 provision for the rest of his life. He was a 
 clergyman's son, with no prospects, and what- 
 soever glimmerings of young ambition there 
 might have been in him, there was no coming 
 down involved when he accepted the small 
 rural vicarage where his heart was. We have 
 already said that in his wildest hopes a vision 
 of the possibility of bringing Mary Musgrave 
 to the vicarag;e to share his humble circum- 
 stances with him had never entered into ^Ir. 
 Pennithome's mind ; but to be near her was 
 something, and to be her trusted and confiden- 
 tial friend seemed the best that life could give 
 him. Here he had remained ever since, being 
 of some use to her, as he hoped, from time to 
 time, and some comfort at least, if nothing- 
 more, in the con\nilsions of the family. During 
 the first years of his incumbency, Mr. Penni-
 
 90 YOUNG MUSGEAYE. 
 
 thorne's own mind had been subject to many 
 convulsions as one suitor after another came to 
 the Castle ; but as they had all ridden away 
 again with what grace they could after their 
 rejection, comfort had come back. It was a 
 curious passion, and one which we do not 
 pretend to explain. After a while, impelled 
 by friends, by conYenience, and by the soft 
 looks of Emily Coniston, the daughter of the 
 clergyman in his native place, to which he 
 had gone on a visit, he had himself found it 
 possible to marry, without any failure of his 
 allegiance to his visionary love ; but still to 
 this day, though he had been Emily's husband 
 for ten years, it troubled the good vicar when 
 any stranger came to the Castle whose society 
 seemed specially pleasant to Miss Musgrave. He 
 would hang about the place at such times like 
 an alarmed hen when something threatens the 
 brood, nor ceased to cluck and flutter his wings 
 till the danger was over. Did he not wish her 
 happiness *? Ah, yes, and would, he thought, 
 have given his life to procure it ; but was it 
 necessary that happiness should always be got 
 in that one vulgar Avay ? Marriage was well 
 enough for the vulgar, but not for Mary. It 
 would have been a descent from her maiden 
 dignity, a lowering of her position. He was
 
 AT THE VICARAGE. 91 
 
 willing that everybody should love her and 
 place her on a pedestal above all women ; but 
 it wounded his finest feelings to think that she 
 too, in her turn, might love. There was no 
 man good enough or great enough to be 
 worthy of awakening such a sentiment in 
 Mary Musgrave's breast. 
 
 As is not unusual in such cases, Mr. Penni- 
 thorne, the chief inspiration of whose life was 
 a visionary passion of the most exalted and 
 exalting kind for a woman, had married a 
 woman for whom no one could entertain any 
 very exalted or impassioned feelings. Perhaps 
 the household drudge is a natural double or 
 attendant of the goddess. They "got on" 
 very weU together, people said, and Mr. Pen 
 put up with his wife's little foolishnesses and 
 fretfulnesses, as perhaps a man could not have 
 done whose heart was fortified by no ideal 
 passion. Emily w^as a good housekeeper of the 
 narrow sort, caring very little for comfort, 
 and very proud of her economy ; and she was 
 a good mother of the troublesome kind, whose 
 children are always in the foreground, always 
 wanting something, always claiming her atten- 
 tion. Mr. Pen adored them, and yet he was 
 glad when they were got to bed, when his wife 
 could be spoken to without one child clinging
 
 92 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 to her skirts, or another breaking in upon 
 everything with plaintive appeals to mamma. 
 But he took it for granted that this was how it 
 must be, and that a more lovely course of life 
 was impracticable. One woman excepted, all 
 women, he thought, were like this ; it is thus 
 that the dogmatisms of common opinion are 
 formed and kept up ; and what could be done 
 but to shrug his shoulders at the inevitable, 
 escaping from it into his study, or with a sigh 
 into that world of the ideal where imagination 
 is never ruffled by the incidents of common 
 life. The children were in bed on this October 
 night, and everything was still. The vicarage 
 was not a handsome house, nor was it old, 
 but merely modern, badly-built, and common- 
 place, redeemed by nothing but its garden, 
 which was large, and gave a pretty surround- 
 ing to the place in summer. But the night 
 had become stormy, and the wind was raving 
 in the trees, making their close neighbourhood 
 anything but an advantage. Mrs. Pennithorne 
 thought it extravagant to use two sitting- 
 rooms, so the family ate and lived in the 
 dining-room — a dark room papered and fur- 
 nished as, in the days when Mr. Pen was 
 married, it was thought right to decorate such 
 places, with a red flock paper of a large
 
 AT THE VICARAGE. 03 
 
 pattern, which relieved the black horsehair of 
 the furniture. The room was not very large. 
 It had a black marble mantel-shelf, with a 
 clock upon it, and some vases of Bohemian 
 glass, and a red and blue table-cover upon 
 the table, about which there lingered always 
 a certain odour of food, especially in cold 
 weather, when the windows were closed. Mrs. 
 Pennithorne sat between the fire and the 
 table. She had some dressmakino: in hand, 
 which made a litter about — dark winter stuff 
 for little Mary's frock ; and as she had no 
 genius for this work, it was a lingering and 
 confusing business with her, and made her 
 less amiable than usual. The reason why her 
 husband was there at all instead of beinof in 
 his study was that the evening was cold ; but 
 it had not yet become, according to ]Mrs. Pen's 
 code, time for fires. There was one in the 
 dining-room, for she had not been well ; but to 
 light a second so early in October was against 
 all her traditions, and Mr. Pen had been driven 
 out of his study, where he had been sitting 
 in his greatcoat, and now stood with his back 
 to the fire, warming himself, poor man, in 
 preparation for another spell of work at his 
 sermon. He was thin, and felt the cold. It 
 was this, she had just been saying, that had
 
 94 YOUNG MUSGEAVE. 
 
 brought him, and not any regard for her lone- 
 liness — which indeed was quite true. 
 
 *' No, Emily," he said, meekly, " for I have 
 my work to do, you know ; but while I am 
 here, I hope you are not sorry to see me. 
 The children were rather late to-night." 
 
 "I am glad to keep them up a little for 
 company," she said. '*It is not so cheerful 
 sitting here all alone, hearing the wind roaring 
 in the trees ; and my nerves are quite gone. 
 I never used to fear anything when I was a 
 young girl, but now I start at every sound. I 
 don't mean to blame you — but it is lonely 
 sitting by one's self after being one of a large 
 family." 
 
 " No doubt — no doubt," he said, soothingly. 
 " I suppose we gain something as years go on, 
 bat we do lose something. That must be taken 
 for granted in life." 
 
 *' I don't like your philosophy, Mr. Penni- 
 thorne," said Emily ; '' the way you have of 
 always making out that things have to be ! I 
 don't see it, for my part. I think a married 
 woman should have a great deal to cheer her 
 up that a girl can't have " 
 
 " My dear," he said, " perhaps I am not 
 much — and you know the parish is my first 
 duty ; but have you not the children ? — dear
 
 AT THE VICARAGE. 95 
 
 children they are. I do not think there 
 can be any greater pleasure than one's child- 
 ren " 
 
 '* You have nothing to do but enjoy them," 
 said Mrs. Pennithorne, slightly softened ; '* but 
 if you had to work and slave like me ! There 
 is never a day that I have not something to do 
 for them ; mending, or making, or darning, or 
 something. Fathers have an easy time of it ; 
 they play with the baby now and then, take 
 out the elder ones for a walk, and that is all. 
 That is nothing but pleasure ; but to sit for 
 days and work one's fingers to the bone " 
 
 " I wish you would not, Emily. I have 
 heard you say that Miss Price in the village 
 was a very good dressmaker " 
 
 " For those who can afford her," said Mrs. 
 Pennithorne. " But," she added, with a better 
 inspiration, *' you make me look as if I were 
 complaining, and I don't want to complain. 
 Though it is dull, William, you must allow, 
 sitting all the evening by one's self " 
 
 *' But I have to do the same," he said, with 
 gentle hypocrisy. ''You know, Emily, if I 
 wrote my sermon here, we should fall to talk- 
 ing, which no doubt is far pleasanter — but it 
 is not duty, and duty must come before 
 all "
 
 96 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 " There is more than one kind of duty/' said 
 Mrs. Pennithorne, who was tearing her fingers 
 with pins putting together two sides of Mary's 
 frock. While she was bending over this, the 
 maid came into the room with a note. There 
 was something in the " Ah I " with which he 
 took it which made his wife raise her head. 
 She was not jealous of Miss Musgrave, who 
 was nearly ten years older than herself, an old 
 maid, and beneath consideration ; but she did 
 think that William thought a great deal too 
 much of the Castle. " What is it now ? " she 
 said pettishly. Perhaps once more — they had 
 done it several times already — it was an invi- 
 tation to dinner for Mr. Pennithorne alone. 
 But he was so much interested in what he was 
 reading that he did not even hear her. She 
 sat with her scissors in her hand, and looked 
 at him while he read the note, his face chang- 
 ing, his whole mind absorbed. He did not 
 look like that when their common affairs were 
 discussed, or the education of his children, 
 which ought to be more interesting to him 
 than anything else. This was other people's 
 business — and how it took him up ! Mrs. 
 Pennithorne was a good woman, and did her 
 duty to her neighbours when it was very 
 clearly indicated ; but still, of course, nothing
 
 AT THE VICAEAGE. 97 
 
 could be of such consequence as your own 
 family, and your duty to them. And to see 
 how he was taken up, smiling, looking as if he 
 might be going to cry ! Nothing about Johnny 
 or Mary ever excited him so. Mrs. Pennithorne 
 was not only vexed on her own account, but 
 felt it to be ^Tong. 
 
 " Well, life is a wonderful thing," he said 
 suddenly. " I went to the Castle this after- 
 noon " 
 
 " You are always going to the Castle," she 
 said, in a fretful voice. 
 
 '' — Expressly to tell Miss Musgrave how 
 much my mind had been occupied about her 
 brother John. You never knew him, Emily ; 
 but he was my pupil, and I was very fond of 
 him " 
 
 "You are very fond of all the family, I 
 think," she said, half- interested, half-aggrieved. 
 
 " Perhaps I w^as," he said, with a little sigh, 
 which, however, she did not notice ; '' but John 
 particularly. He was a fine fellow, though he 
 w^as so hot-headed. The other night I kept 
 dreaming of him, all night long — over and 
 over again." 
 
 '' That was what made you so restless, I 
 suppose," Mrs. Pennithorne put in, in a paren- 
 thesis. " I am sure you have plenty belonging 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 to yourself to dream of, if you want to 
 dream." 
 
 " — And I went to ask if tliey had heard 
 anything, smiling at myself — as she did for 
 being superstitious. But here is the wonderful 
 thing : T had scarcely left, when the thing I 
 had foreseen arrived. A carriage drew up 
 containing John Musgrave's children " 
 
 *' Did you know John Musgrave's children ? 
 I never knew he had any children " 
 
 " Nor did I, or any one !— that is the wonder 
 of it. I felt sure something was happening to 
 him or about him — and lo ! the children ar- 
 rived. It was no cleverness of mine," said Mr. 
 Pennithorne with gentle complacency, "but 
 still I must say it was a wonderful coincidence. 
 The very day ! " 
 
 Mrs. Pennithorne did not make any reply. 
 She was not interested in a coincidence which 
 had nothing to do with her own family. If 
 Mr. Pen had divined when Johnny was to 
 break his arm, so that they might have been 
 prepared for that accident ! but the Musgraves 
 had plenty of people to take care of them, and 
 there seemed no need for a new providential 
 agency to give them warning of unsuspected 
 arrivals. She put some more pins into little 
 Mary's frock — the two sides of the little bodice
 
 AT THE VICAEAGE. 99 
 
 never would come the same. She pulled at 
 them, measured them, repinned them, but 
 could not get them right. 
 
 "I have heard a great deal about John 
 Musgrave," she said with a pin in her mouth. 
 " What was it he did that he had to run 
 away i 
 
 " My dear Emily! don't do that, for heaven's 
 sake — you frighten me ; and besides, it is not 
 — pretty — it is not becoming " 
 
 " I think I am old enough by this time to 
 know what is becoming," said Mrs. Pennithorne 
 with some wrath, yet growing red as she took 
 out the pins. She was conscious that it was 
 not ladylike, and felt that this was the word 
 her husband meant to use. '" If you knew the 
 trouble it is to get both sides the same ! " she 
 added, forgetting her resentment in vexation. 
 
 It was a troublesome job. There are some 
 people in whose hands ever}i:hing goes wrong. 
 Mrs. Pen shed a tear or two over the refractory 
 frock. 
 
 '•'My dear! I hope it is not my innocent 
 remark " 
 
 '' Oh no, it is not any innocent remark. It 
 is so troublesome. Just when I thought I 
 had got it quite straight ! But what do you 
 know about such things ? You have nothkig 
 
 H 2
 
 100 YOUNG MUSGEAVE. 
 
 to say to Mary's frock. You never would 
 notice, I believe, if she had not one to her- 
 back, or wore the same old rag year after 
 year " 
 
 "Yes, Emily, I should notice," said Mr. PeiT' 
 with some compunction ; " and I am very 
 sorry that you should have so much trouble. 
 Send for Miss Price to-morrow, and T will pay 
 her out of my own money. You must not 
 take it off the house." 
 
 " Oh, William 1 William ! " said his wife, 
 " who is it that will suffer if your own money, 
 as you call it, runs out '? Do you think I am 
 so inconsiderate as only to think of what I 
 have for the house ! Isn't it all one purse, and 
 will it not be the children that will suffer 
 eventually whoever pays ? No, your money 
 shall not be spent to save me trouble. What 
 is the good of us but to take trouble 1 " said 
 Mrs. Pen with heroic fortitude. 
 
 Mr. Pen sighed. Perhaps he was more con- 
 scious of the litter of dressmaking than of this 
 fine sentiment. But anyhow he did not give 
 any applause to the heroine. He left indeed 
 this family subject altogether, and after a 
 momentary pause, said, half to himself, " John 
 MusOTave's children ! Who could have thous^ht 
 it ! And how strange it all is "
 
 I 
 
 AT THE VICAEAGE. 101 
 
 ''Eeallj, Mr. Pennitliorne," said his wife, 
 offended, " this is" too much, I don't believe 
 you think one half so much of your own children 
 as of those ]\Iusgraves. What did they ever 
 do for us '? " 
 
 ** They did this for us, my dear, that but 
 for them I should not have had a home to offer 
 you — nor a family at all," said the vicar with 
 a little warmth. " I might have been still 
 travelling with boys about the world " 
 
 "Oh, William, not with your talents," said 
 his wife, looking at him with admiration. 
 With all her fretfulness and insensibility to 
 those fine points of internal arrangement for 
 which he had a half-developed, half-subdued 
 taste, Emily had still a great admiration for 
 her husband. Now Mary Alusgrave, who was, 
 unknown to either, her spiritual rival, had no 
 admiration for good Mr. Pen at all. This gave 
 the partner of his life an infinite advantage. 
 His voice softened as he replied, shaking his 
 head : 
 
 "Unfortunately, my love, other people do 
 not appreciate my talents as you do." 
 
 " That is because they don't know you so 
 well," she said with flattering promptitude. 
 Mr. Pennithorne drew a chair to the fire and 
 sat down. It was but rarely that he received
 
 102 YOUNG MUSGEAVE. 
 
 this domestic adulation ; but it warmed him, 
 and did him good. 
 
 " Ah, my dear, I fear I must not lay that 
 flattering unction to my soul," he said. 
 
 " You are too modest, William ; I have 
 always said you were too modest," said Mrs. 
 Pennithorne, returning good for evil. How 
 little notice he had taken of her fine heroic 
 feeling and self-abnegation ! Women are more 
 generous ; she behaved very differently to him. 
 And the fact was, he very soon began to think 
 that old Mr. Musgrave had made use of him, 
 and given him a very poor return. The 
 vicarage was not much — and the Squire had 
 never attempted to do anything more. It is 
 sweet to be told that you are above your fate 
 — that Providence owes you something better. 
 He roused himself up, however, after a time 
 out of that unwholesome state of self-compla- 
 cency. " What a strange state of affairs it is, 
 Emily," he said. He was not in the habit of 
 making his wife his confidant on matters that 
 concerned the Musgraves, but in a moment of 
 weakness his resolution was overcome. '' What 
 a painful state of affairs ! Mr. Musgrave knows 
 of the coming of these children, but he takes 
 no notice, and whether she is to be allowed to 
 keep them or not "
 
 AT THE VICARAGE. 103 
 
 " Dear me, think of having to get permis- 
 sion from your father at her time of life," said 
 Mrs. Pennithorne, with a naive pity. '' And 
 whom did he marry, William, and what sort 
 of person was their mother ? I don't think 
 you ever told me that." 
 
 " Their mother was — John's wife ; I must 
 have told you of her. She was not the person 
 his family wished. But that often happens, 
 my dear. It is no sign that a man is a bad 
 man because he may make what you may call 
 a mistaken choice." 
 
 "My dear William," said Mrs. Pen, with 
 authority, ** there is nothing that shows a 
 man's character so much as the wife he 
 chooses ; my mother always said so. It is 
 the best test if he is a nice feeling man or 
 not," the vicar's wife said blandly, with a little 
 conscious smile upon her face. 
 
 Mr. Pennithorne made no reply. There was 
 something humorous in this innocent little 
 speech, considering who the speaker was, to 
 any one who knew. But then nobody knew ; 
 scarcely even ]\Ir. Pennithorne himself, who 
 at this moment was so soothed by his wife's 
 '• appreciation," that he felt himself the most 
 devoted of husbands. He shook his head a 
 little, deprecating the implied condemnation of
 
 104 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 his old pupil ; for the moment he did not think 
 of himself 
 
 "Now that we are sitting together, and 
 really comfortable for once in a way," said 
 Mrs. Pennithorne, dropping Mary's bodice with 
 all the pins, and drawing her chair a little 
 nearer to the fire — ** it does not happen very 
 often — tell me, William, what it is all about, 
 and what John Musgrave has done." 
 
 Again the vicar shook his head. '' It's a 
 long story," he said, reluctantly. 
 
 " You tell things so nicely, William, I sha'n't 
 think it long ; and think how strange it is, 
 knowing so much about people, and yet not 
 knowing anything. And of course I shall 
 have to see the children. Poor little things, 
 not to be sure of shelter in their grandfather's 
 house ! but they will always have a friend in 
 you." 
 
 '' They will have Mary ; what can they want 
 more if they have her ? " he said suddenly, 
 with a fervour which surprised his wife ; then 
 blushed and faltered as he caught her eye. 
 What right had he to speak of Miss Musgrave 
 so ? Mrs. Pennithorne stared a little, but the 
 slip did not otherwise trouble her, for she saw 
 no reason for the exaggerated respect with 
 which the Squire's daughter was treated. Why
 
 AT THE VICARAGE. 105 
 
 should not she be called Mary — was it not her 
 name? 
 
 *' Mary, indeed ! what does she know about 
 children ? But, William, I am waiting, and 
 this is the question — What did John Musgrave 
 do?"
 
 PART III. 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE CHILDREN AT THE CASTLE. 
 
 The arrival of the children was an era at 
 Penninghame from which afterwards every- 
 thing dated ; but the immediate result was a 
 very curious and not very comfortable one. 
 As they had been introduced into the house, so 
 they lived in it. Mr. Musgrave never men- 
 tioned them, never saw them or appeared to 
 see them, ignored their existence, in short, as 
 completely as if his faculties had been deadened 
 in respect to them. His life was in no way 
 changed indeed; the extraordinary revolution 
 which had been made to every one else in the 
 house by this change showed all the more 
 strongly from the absence of all effect upon 
 him. He read, he wrote, he studied, he took 
 his usual quiet exercise exactly as he did 
 before, and never owned by a word or look
 
 THE CHILDREN AT THE CASTLE. 107 
 
 that he was conscious of any alteration in the 
 household. For a little while the children 
 were hushed not to make a noise, and huddled 
 away into corners to keep them out of sight 
 and hearinc^: but that arrano-ement was too 
 unnatural to continue, and it very soon hap- 
 pened that their presence was forced upon him 
 by unmistakable signs, by both sight and 
 hearing. But the Squire took not the slightest 
 notice. He looked over their heads and never 
 saw them. His ear was eno-ao^ed with other 
 sounds and he did not hear them. By this 
 system of unconsciousness he deprived himself 
 indeed of some evident advantages ; for how 
 can you interfere with the proceedings of those 
 whose very existence you ignore ? He could 
 not give orders that the children should make 
 less noise, because he professed not to be aware 
 of their presence ; nor send them out of his 
 sight, when he was supposed not to see them ; 
 and in consequence this blindness and deafness 
 on his part was perhaps a greater gain to them 
 than to himself The mental commotion into 
 which he had been thro^^'n by their arrival had 
 never been known to any one but himself He 
 had a slight illness a few days after — his liver 
 out of order, the doctor said ; and so worked 
 off his excitement without disclosing it to any
 
 108 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 one. After this lie resumed his serenity, and 
 completed his heraldic study. The history of 
 the augmentation granted to the Musgraves in 
 the year 1393 in remembrance of the valour 
 of Sir Egidio, or Giles, Musgrave in the Holy 
 Land made rather a sensation among students 
 in that kind. It was a very interesting mono- 
 graph. Besides being a singularly striking 
 chapter of family history, it was, everybody 
 said, a most interesting contribution to the 
 study of heraldic honours — how and why they 
 were bestowed ; especially as concerning "aug- 
 mentations " bestowed on the field for acts of 
 valour — a rare and exceptional distinction. 
 The Squire made a little collection of the 
 notices that appeared in the newspapers of his 
 *' Monograph," pasting them into a pretty 
 little book, as is not unusual with amateur 
 authors. He enjoyed them a great deal more 
 than if he had been the author of a great 
 history, and resented criticism with correspond- 
 ing bitterness. He was very proud of Egidio, 
 or Giles, who died in the fifteenth century ; 
 and it did not occur to him that there was any 
 incongruity between this devotion to his an- 
 cestors and the fact that he persisted in ignoring 
 the little boy upstairs. 
 
 And yet day by day it grew more hard to
 
 THE CHILDREX AT THE CASTLE. 109 
 
 ignore him. Mr. Musgrave in his study, after 
 the enthusiasm of his monograph was over, 
 could not help hearing voices which it was 
 difficult to take no notice of. The enthusiasm 
 of composition did a great deal for him : it 
 carried him out of the present ; it filled him 
 with a delightful fervour and thrill of intel- 
 lectual excitement. People who are always 
 writing get used to it, and lose this sense of 
 somethinof fine and o^reat which is the inheri- 
 tance of the amateur. Even after the shock 
 of renewed intercourse with the son, who had 
 brought shame upon his name, and whom he 
 had cast ofi*, Mr. Musgrave, so long as his work 
 lasted, found himself able to forget everything 
 in the happiness it gave. When he woke in 
 the morning^ his first thouo-ht was of this 
 important occupation which awaited him, and 
 he went to bed with the fumes of his own 
 paragraphs in his head ; he was carried away 
 by it. But when all this intellectual commo- 
 tion was over, and when the ennui of ha\dng 
 nothing further to do had swallowed up the 
 satisfaction of having finished a great piece of 
 work, as it so soon does, then there came a 
 very difficult interval for the Sc[uire. He had 
 no longer anything to absorb him and keep 
 him comfortably above the circumstances of
 
 110 yOUNG MUSGEAVE. 
 
 ordinary life ; and as lie sat in his library, only 
 reading, only writing a letter, no longer ab- 
 sorbed by any special study, or by the pride 
 and delight of recording in fine language the 
 results of that study, ordinary life stole back, 
 as it has a way of doing. He began to hear 
 the knocks at the door, the ringing of bells, 
 and to wonder what they meant ; to hear steps 
 going up and down the stairs, to be aware of 
 Eastwood in the dining-room, and the rustle of 
 Mary's dress as she went about the house in 
 the morning, and in the afternoon passed with 
 a soft boom of the swinging door into her 
 favourite hall. The routine of the house came 
 back to the old man. He heard the servants 
 in the kitchen, the ticking of that measured, 
 leisurely old clock in the hall which took about 
 five minutes to spell out the hour. He was not 
 consciously paying any attention to these 
 things. On the contrary, he was secluded 
 from them, rapt in his books, knowing nothing 
 of what was going on ; yet he heard them all ; 
 and as he sat there through the long winter 
 days and the still longer winter evenings, 
 when there was rain or storm out of doors, 
 and nothing to break the long, still blank of 
 hours within, a sound would come to him now 
 and then, even before the care of the house-
 
 THE CHILDREN AT THE CASTLE. Ill 
 
 hold relaxed — the cry of a little voice, a 
 running and pattering of small feet, sometimes 
 an outburst of laughter, a small voice of weep- 
 ing, which stirred strangely in the air about 
 him and vaguely called forth old half-extinct 
 sensations, as one might run over the jarred 
 and half silent keys of an old piano in the 
 dark. This surprised him at first iu his loneli- 
 ness — then, when he had realized what it was, 
 hurt him a little, rousing old wrath and bitter- 
 ness, so that he would sometimes lay down 
 his pen or close his book and all the past 
 would come before him — the past, in which 
 John his son had disappointed, mocked, in- 
 sulted, and bafiled his father. He would not 
 allow himself to realize the presence of these 
 children in the house, but he could not avoid 
 thinking of the individual who stood between 
 him and them, who was so real while they 
 they were so visionary. Always John ! He 
 had tried to live for years without thought of 
 him and had been tranquil ; it was grievous 
 to be compelled thus to think of him again. 
 This all happened, however, in the seclusion of 
 his own mind, in the quiet of his library, and 
 no one knew anything of it ; not his daughter, 
 who thought she knew his looks by heart ; nor 
 his servant, who had spelled him out by many
 
 112 YOUNG MUSGKAVE. 
 
 guesses in the dark — as servants generally do 
 — and imagined tliat he had his master at his 
 fingers' ends. But during all this time while 
 these touches were playing upon him, bringing 
 out ghosts of old sensations, muffled sounds 
 and tones forgotten, Mr. Musgrave publicly 
 ignored the fact that there were any children 
 in the house, and contrived not to see them, 
 nor to hear them, with a force of self-govern- 
 ment and resolution which, in a nobler cause, 
 would have been beyond all praise. 
 
 The effect of the change upon Miss Mus- 
 grave was scarcely less remarkable though 
 very different. Her mental and moral educa- 
 tion had been of a very peculiar kind. The 
 tragedy which swallowed up her brother had 
 interrupted the soft flowing current of her 
 young [life. All had gone smoothly before in 
 the natural brightness of the beginning. And 
 Mary, who had little passion in her tempera- 
 ment, who was more thoughtful than intense, 
 and whose heart had never been awakened by 
 any strong attachment beyond the ties of 
 nature, had borne the interruption better than 
 most people would have borne it, and had done 
 her duty between her offending brother and 
 her enraged father with less strain and violence 
 of suffering than might have been imagined.
 
 THE CHILDREN AT THE CASTLE. 113 
 
 And she had got through the more quiet years 
 since without bitterness, with a self-adaptation 
 to the primitive monotony of existence which 
 was much helped, as most such virtues are, by 
 temperament. She had formed her ot^ti theory 
 of life, as most people do by the time they 
 reach even the earliest stages of middle age ; 
 and this theory was the philosophical one that 
 happiness, or the calm which does duty for 
 happiness in most mature lives, was in reality 
 very independent of events; that it came from 
 within, not from without ; and that life was 
 wonderfully equal, neither bringing so much 
 good, nor so much evil, as people of lively 
 imaginations gave it credit for doing. Thus 
 she had herself lived, not unhappy, except at the 
 very crisis of the family life. She had suffered 
 then. Who could hope (she said to herself) to 
 do other than suffer one time or another in 
 their life ? But since then the calm and regu- 
 larity of existence had come back, the routine 
 which charms time away and brings content. 
 There had no doubt been expectations in her 
 mind which had come to nothing — expectations 
 of more active joy, more actual well-being, 
 than had ever fallen to her lot ; but these 
 expectations had gradually glided away, and 
 no harm had been done. If she had no 
 
 VOL. L I
 
 114 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 intensity of enjoyment, neither had she any 
 wretchedness. She had enough to do ; her 
 life* was full, and she was fairly happy. So 
 she said to herself; so she had said many a 
 day to Mr. Pen, who shook his mildly melan- 
 choly head and dissented — as far as he ever 
 dissented from anything said by Miss Mary. 
 Her brother was lost — away — wandering in 
 the darkness of the great world as ill a desert. 
 But if he had been near at hand, absorbed in 
 his married life, his wife, who was not of her 
 species, and his unknown children, would not 
 he have been just as much lost to Mary ? So 
 she persuaded herself at least ; and so lived 
 tranquilly, happy enough — certainly not un- 
 happy ; — and why should an ordinary mortal, 
 3''outh being over, wish for more ? 
 
 Now, however, all at once, so great a change 
 had happened to her, that Mary could no 
 longer understand, or even believe in, this 
 state of mind which had been hers for so many 
 years. Perfectly still, tranquil, fearing nothing 
 — when her own flesh and blood were in such 
 warfare in the world ! How was it possible '? 
 Wondering pangs of self-reproach seized her; 
 mysteries of death and of birth, such as had 
 never touched her maidenly quiet, seemed to 
 surround her, and mock at her former ease.
 
 THE CHILDREN AT THE CASTLE. 11;; 
 
 All this time the gates of heaven had been 
 openicg and shutting to John. Hope some- 
 times, sometimes despair, love, anguish, Vant, 
 pain, had struggled for him, while she had 
 sat and looked on so calmly, and reasoned so 
 placidly about the general equality of life. 
 How could she have done it ? The revelation 
 was as painful as it was overwhelmiDg. Nature 
 seized upon her with a grip of iron, and 
 avenged upon her in a moment all the indiffer- 
 ences of her previous life. The appeal of these 
 frightened children, the solemn charge laid 
 upon her by her brother, awoke her with a start 
 and shiver. How had she dared to sit and look 
 through calm windows, or on the threshold by 
 her tranquil door, upon the struggles, pangs 
 and labours of the other human creatures about 
 her ? Was it excuse enough that she was 
 neither wife nor mother ? had she therefore 
 nothing to do in guarding, and continuing, and 
 handing down the nobler successions of life ? 
 Mary was startled altogether out of the state of 
 mind habitual to her. Instead of remaining the 
 calm lady of the manor, the female squire, the 
 lawgiver of the village which she had hitherto 
 been — a little above the problems that were 
 brought to her, a little wanting in considera- 
 tion of motives and meaning, perhaps now and 
 
 I 2
 
 116 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 then too decided in her judgment, seeing the 
 distinction between right and wrong too clearly, 
 and entertaining a supreme, though gentle con- 
 tempt for the trimmings and compromises, as 
 well as for the fusses and agitations of the or- 
 nary world — she felt herself to have plunged 
 all at once into the midst of those agitations 
 at a single step. She l)ecame anxious, timorous, 
 yet rash, faltering even in opinion, hesitating, 
 vacillating — she who had been so decided and 
 so calm. Her feelings were all intensified ; 
 the chords of her nature tightened, as it were, 
 vibrating to the lightest touch. And at the 
 same time, which was strange enough, while 
 thus the little circle, in which she stood, 
 became full of such intense, unthought-of 
 interest, the world widened around her as it 
 had never widened before ; into darknesses 
 and silences indeed — but still with an extended 
 horizon which expanded her heart. John was 
 there in the wide unknown, which stretched 
 round this one warm, lighted spot, wandering 
 she knew not where, a solitary man. She had 
 never realized him so before ; and not only 
 John, but thousands like him, strangers, wan- 
 derers, strugglers with fate. The sudden 
 breath of novelty, of enlightenment, expanded 
 her heart like a sob. Her composure, her
 
 THE CHILDREN AT THE CASTLE. 117 
 
 satisfaction, her tranquillity fled from her ; but 
 how much greater, more real and true, more 
 penetrating and actual, became her existence 
 and the world ! And all this was produced, 
 not by any great mental enlightenment, any 
 sudden development of character, but by the 
 simple fact that two small helpless creatures 
 had been pu. into her hands and made abso- 
 lutely dependent upon her. This was all ; but 
 the whole world could not have been more to 
 Mary. It changed her in every way. She 
 who had been so rooted in her place, so 
 absorbed in her occupations, would have re- 
 linquished all, had it been necessary, and gone 
 out solitary into the world for the children. 
 Could there be any office so important, any 
 trust so precious ? This, which sounded like 
 the vulgarest commonplace, and at the same 
 time most fictitious high-flown sentiment, on 
 the lips of Mrs. Pennithorne, became all at 
 once, in a moment, the leading principle of 
 Miss Musgrave's life. 
 
 But she had to undergo various petty in- 
 conveniences from the curiosity of her neigh- 
 bours, and their anxiety to advise her as to 
 what she should do in the ''trying circum- 
 stances." What could she know about children? 
 Mrs. Pen, for one, thought it ver}^ important to
 
 118 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 give Miss Musgrave the benefit of her advice. 
 She made a solemn visit to inspect them, and 
 tell her what she ought to do. The little boy, 
 she felt sure, was delicate, and would require 
 a great deal of care ; but the thing that 
 troubled Mrs. Pennithorne the most was that 
 Miss Musgrave could not be persuaded to put on 
 mourning for her brother's wife. Notwith- 
 standing that it was, as Mary pleaded, ^ve 
 years since she died, the vicar s wife thought 
 that crape would be a proof that all ** mis- 
 understandings " were over, and would show a 
 Christian feeling. And when she could not 
 make this apparent to the person principally 
 concerned, she did all she could to impress it 
 upon her husband, whom she implored to 
 *' speak to'' — both father and daughter — on 
 the subject. Most people would have been all 
 the more particular to put on crape, and to 
 wear it deep, because there had been " mis- 
 understandings. " ' ' Misunderstandings ! " cried 
 Mr. Pen. It was not, however, he who spoke 
 to Miss Musgrave, but she who spoke to him 
 on this important subject ; and what she said 
 somewhat bewildered the vicar, who could not 
 fathom her mind in this respect. 
 
 " Emily thinks we should put on mourn- 
 ing," she said. " And, do you know, I really
 
 THE CHILDREN AT THE CASTLE. 119 
 
 believe that is the reason that poor John is 
 so much more in my thoughts ? " 
 
 " What — the mourning ? " the vicar asked 
 faltering. 
 
 ''Her death. Hitherto the idea of one has 
 been mingled with that of the other. Now 
 he is just John ; everything else has melted 
 away; there is nothing but himself to think 
 of. He has never been only John before. Do 
 you know what I mean, JVIr. Pen ? " 
 
 The vicar shook his head. He wondered 
 if this could be a touch of feminine jealousy, 
 knowing that even Mary was not perfect ; and 
 this gave him a momentary pang. 
 
 " I don't suppose that I should feel so ; — 
 I was very fond of John — but I, of course, 
 could not be jealous — I mean of his love for 
 one unworthy " 
 
 " How do you know even that she was un- 
 worthy ? It is not that, Mr. Pen. But she 
 was nothing to us, and confused him in our 
 minds. Now he is himself— and where is 
 he ? '' said Miss Musgrave, Tvith tears in her 
 eyes. 
 
 " In God's hands — in God's hands, Liiss 
 Mary ! and God bless him wherever he is — 
 and I humbly beg your pardon," cried Mr. 
 Pen, with an excess of compunction which she
 
 120 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 scarcely understood. His feelings were almost 
 too warm Mary thought. 
 
 And as the news got spread through those 
 invisible channels which convey reports all 
 over a country, many were the visitors that 
 came to the Castle to see what the story 
 meant, though they did not announce this as 
 the object of their visit. Among these visitors 
 the most important was Lady Stanton, who 
 had been Mary's rival in beauty when the 
 days were. They had not been rivals indeed 
 to their own consciousness, but warm friends, 
 in their youth and day of triumph ; but 
 events had separated the two girls, and the 
 two women rarely met, and had outgrown 
 all acquaintance ; for Lady Stanton had been 
 involved, almost more immediately than Mary 
 Musgrave, in the tragedy which had so changed 
 life at Penninghame, and this had changed 
 their relations like everything else. This lady 
 arrived one day to the great surprise of every- 
 body, and came in with timid eagerness and 
 haste, growing red and growing pale as she 
 held out her hands to her old friend. 
 
 ''We never quarrelled," she said; "why 
 should we never see each other ? Is there 
 any reason ? " 
 
 " No reason," said Miss Musgrave, making
 
 THE CHILDREN AT THE CASTLE. 121 
 
 room upon the sofa beside her. But such an 
 unexpected appeal agitated her, and for the 
 moment she could not satisfy herself as to the 
 object of the visit. Lady Stanton, however, 
 was of a very simple mind, and could not 
 conceal what that object was. 
 
 " Oh, Mary," she said, the tears coming into 
 her eyes, " 1 heard that John's children had 
 come home. Is it true ? You know^ I always 
 
 took an interest " And here she stopped, 
 
 making a gulp of some emotion which, to a 
 superficial spectator, might have seemed out 
 of place in Sir Henry Stanton's wife. She 
 had grown stout, but that does not blunt the 
 feelings. " I should like to see them," she 
 said, with an appeal in her eyes which few 
 people could withstand. And Mary was 
 touched too, partly by this sudden renewal 
 of an old love, partly by the thought of all 
 that had happened since she last sat by her 
 old companion s side, who was a Mary too. 
 
 " I cannot bring them here," she said, " but 
 I will take you to the hall to see them. My 
 father likes them to be kept — in their own 
 part of the house." 
 
 " Oh, I hope he is kind to them ! " said 
 Lady Stanton, clasping her white dimpled 
 hands. " Ave they like your family ? I hope
 
 122 YOUNG MUSGEAVE. 
 
 they are like the Musgraves. But likenesses 
 are so strange — mine are not like me," said 
 the old beauty, plaintively. Perhaps the 
 trouble in her face was less on account of her 
 own private trials in this respect than out of 
 alarm lest John Musgrave's children should 
 bear the likeness of another face of which she 
 could not think with kindness. There was so 
 little disguise in her mind, that this sentiment 
 also found its way into words. " Oh, Mary," 
 she cried, "you and I were once the two 
 beauties, and everybody was at our feet ; but 
 that common girl was more thought of than 
 either you or me." 
 
 " Hush ! " said Mary Musgrave, putting up 
 her hand ; " she is dead." 
 
 " Is she dead ? " Lady Stanton was struck 
 with a momentary horror ; for it was a con- 
 temporary of whom they were speaking, and 
 she could not but be conscious of a little 
 shiver in her own well-developed person, to 
 think of the other who was clay. " That is 
 why they have come home ? " she said, half 
 under her breath. 
 
 " Yes ; and because he cannot carry them 
 about with him wherever he goes." 
 
 *' You have heard from him, Mary '? I hope 
 he is doing well. I hope he is not — very —
 
 THE CHILDREN AT THE CASTLE. 123 
 
 heart-broken. If you are writing you might 
 say I inquired. He might like to know that 
 he was remembered ; and you know I always 
 took — an interest " 
 
 " I know you always had the kindest 
 heart." 
 
 *' I always took an interest, notwithstanding 
 everything ; and — will he come home ? Now 
 surely he might come home. It is so long 
 ago ; and surely now" no one would interfere." 
 
 " I cannot say anything about that, for I 
 don't know," said Miss Musgrave ; " he does 
 not say. Will you come and see the children. 
 Lady Stanton ? " 
 
 ** Oh, Mary", what have I done that you 
 should call me Lady Stanton ? I have never 
 wished to stand aloof It has not been my 
 doing. Do you remember what friends we 
 were ? and I couldn't call you Miss Musgrave 
 if I tried. When I heard of the children I 
 thought this was an opening," said Lady 
 Stanton, faltering a little. She told her little 
 fib, which was an innocent one ; but she was 
 true at bottom and told it ill ; and what 
 difference did it make whether she sought 
 the children for Mary's sake, or Mary for 
 the children's ? Miss Musgrave accepted her 
 proffered embrace with kindness, yet with
 
 124 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 a smile. She was touched by the emotion 
 of her old friend, and by the remnants of 
 that *' interest'' which had survived fifteen 
 years of married life, and much increase of 
 substance. Perhaps a harsher judge might 
 have thought the emotion slightly improper. 
 But poor John had got but hard measure in 
 the world ; and a little compensating faithful- 
 ness was a salve to his sister's feelings. She 
 led her visitor down stairs and through the 
 narrow passage, in all her wealth of silk and 
 amplitude of shadow. Mary herself was still 
 as slim as when they had skimmed about 
 these passages together ; and she was Mary 
 still ; for once in a way she felt herself not 
 without some advantage over Sir Henry's 
 wife. 
 
 Nello was standing full in the light when 
 the ladies went into the hall, and he it was 
 who came forward to be caressed by the 
 pretty lady, who took to him all the more 
 warmly that she had no boys of her own. 
 Lady Stanton fairly cried over his fair head, 
 with its soft curls. " What a little Musgrave 
 he is ! " she cried ; ^^ how like his father ! I 
 cannot help being glad he is like his father." 
 But when this vision of splendour and beauty, 
 which Lilias came forward to admire, saw the
 
 THE CHILDREN AT THE CASTLE. 125 
 
 little girl, she turned from her with a slight 
 shiver. '' Ah ! " she cried, retreating, " is that 
 — the little girl 1 '' And the sight silenced 
 her, and drove her away.
 
 CHAPTEK Vm. 
 
 LADY STANTON. 
 
 Lady Stanton drove home from that visit 
 with her heart and her eyes full. She was 
 not intellectual, nor even clever, but a soft 
 creature, made up of feelings easily touched, 
 not perhaps very profound, nor likely to ob- 
 scure to her the necessary course of daily 
 living, but still true enough and faithful in 
 their way. She might have been able to make 
 sacrifices had she come in the way of them or 
 found them necessary, but no such chance of 
 moral devotion had come to her ; nor had any 
 teachings of experience or philosophy of middle 
 age, such as works upon the majority of us, 
 hardened her soft heart, or swept away the 
 little romantic impulses, the quick sensibilities 
 of youth. A nature so fresh indeed was 
 scarcely compatible with much exercise of 
 the intellectual faculties at all. Lady Stanton 
 rarely read, and never under any circumstances
 
 LADY STANTON. 127 
 
 read anything (of lier own will and impulse) 
 which rose above the most primitive and 
 familiar elements ; but on the other hand, the 
 gentle sentimentalities which she did read 
 went straight to her heart. She thought Mrs. 
 Hemans the first of poets, and cried her eyes 
 out over Mr. Dickens's "Little Nell." Any- 
 thing about an unhappy love, or about a dead 
 child, would move her more than Shakespeare ; 
 and she shed tears as ready as the morning 
 dew. Practically, it is true, she had gone 
 through a certain amount of experience like 
 other people, and her ever^^day life was more 
 or less afiected by it ; but in her heart Lady 
 Stanton was still the same Mary Eidley whose 
 gentle being had been involved in the wildest 
 of tragic stories, even though she had come 
 down to so commonplace a daily routine now. 
 That story, so long past, took the place in her 
 being of all the poetry and romance which the 
 most of us get glorified from the hands of 
 genius ; and all her associations were attached 
 to that one personal episode, which was un- 
 parallelled in life as she knew life. When she 
 read one of the novels which pleased her, she 
 would compare the . situations in it with this ; 
 when she lingered over the vague melodious 
 verses which represented poetry to her, there
 
 128 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 was always a little appropriation in her heart 
 of their soft measures to the dim long past 
 emergency. And now, here it was brought 
 back upon her by every circumstance that could 
 bring the past near. Her love — was it her 
 love that was recalled to her ? But then there 
 was no love in it properly so called. She had 
 taken an interest in John Musgrave, her friend's 
 brother — always had taken an interest in him ; 
 but she had no right to do so at any time, 
 being betrothed to young Lord Stanton, who, 
 for his part, had forgotten her for the sake of 
 that dressmaker's girl at Penninghame, to whom 
 John Musgrave too had given his heart. What 
 a complication it was ! Mary Eidley, who had 
 a pretty property close to his, had been destined 
 for Lord Stanton from the beginning of time, 
 and the boy and girl had lightly acquiesced, 
 and had been happy enough in the parental 
 arrangement. They had liked each other — 
 well enough ; they had been as gay as possible 
 in the lightheartedness of their youth, and had 
 taken this for happiness. Why should not 
 they be happy 1 they were exactly suited to 
 each other. She was the prettiest girl in 
 the county (except the other Mary), and he 
 was proud of her sweet looks, and fond of 
 her, certainly fond of her ; whereas she,
 
 LADY STAXTON. 129 
 
 unawakened, undisturbed, notwithstanding the 
 interest she had always taken in John Mus- 
 grave, would have made him the most 
 aflfectionate and charming wife in the world. 
 Thus the early story had flowed on all smooth- 
 ness and sunshine, the flowers blooming, the 
 sun shining ; until, one fatal day, young Lord 
 Stanton, riding through Penninghame village 
 on his way to the old Castle, had seen Lily, 
 Miss Price's assistant, at the window of the 
 dressmaker's parlour. Fatal day ! full of all 
 the issues of death. 
 
 It is needless to inquire what manner of 
 woman this Lily was, for whom these two men 
 lost themselves and their existence. She did 
 not know of any tragedy likely to be involved, 
 but brushed about in her homely village way 
 throuorh these webs of fate, twistino^ the threads 
 innocently enough, and throwing the weaving 
 into endless confusion. Whether Lord Stanton 
 was murdered by John Musgrave, as many 
 people thought at first, or killed accidentally 
 in a hot, sudden encounter, as most people 
 believed now, was a thing which perhaps would 
 never l)e cleared up. The guilty man (if he 
 was guilty) had paid the penalty of his deed 
 in exile, in poverty, in misery, ever since. 
 His life had been as much broken off at that 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 point as Stanton's was who died — and the two 
 families had been equally plunged into woe 
 and mourning ; though indeed it v/as the 
 Musgraves who suffered most, by reason of 
 the stigma put upon them, by the shame of 
 John's flight and of his marriage, and by the 
 fact that he was still a criminal pursued by 
 justice, though justice had long slackened her 
 pursuit. As for the Stantons, there was nobody 
 to mourn much. Aunts and uncles and cousins 
 console themselves sooner than fathers and 
 mothers, and the boy brother, who had suc- 
 ceeded to the title, had been too young to be 
 capable of sustained sorrow. Everybody at 
 that time had sympathised with the young 
 bride who had lost her future husband, and 
 her coronet, and all the joys of life in this 
 sudden and miserable way, for there was no 
 concealing what the cause of the quarrel was, 
 and that Lord Stanton had been unfaithful to 
 the beautiful Mary. Nobody knew, however, 
 the complication which gave her a double 
 pang, the knowledge that not only the man 
 who was her own property, her betrothed 
 husband, but the man in whom, innocently in 
 girlish simplicity, she had avowed herself to 
 **take an interest," had preferred to her the 
 village Lily, who was nobody and nothing,
 
 LADY STANTON. 131 
 
 who had not been blameless between them, 
 and whom everybody condemned. Everybody 
 condemned : but they loved her. Both of 
 them ! this secret and poignant addition to her 
 trial Mary Eidley never confided to any one, 
 but it still thrilled through and through her 
 at any allusion to that old long past tragedy. 
 Both of them ! — the man whose best love was 
 due to her, and the man who had cauorht her 
 own girlish shy eyes, all unaware to either, 
 somehow, innocently, unavowedly, in such a 
 visionary way as harmed no one ; both ! It 
 was hard. She wept for them both tenderly, 
 abundantly, for the one not less than the 
 other; and a little — with a cry in her heart of 
 protestation and appeal — for herself, put aside, 
 thrown over for this woman who was nothing, 
 who was nobody, yet who was better beloved 
 than she. All this had welled up in Lady 
 Stanton's heart when she saw the little girl 
 who had Lily's face. She had been unable to 
 restrain the sting of old wonder and pain ; 
 the keen piercing of the old wound which she 
 had felt to her heart. Both of them ! and 
 now a little ghost of this Lily, her shadow, 
 her representative, had come back again to look 
 her in the face. She cried as she drove back 
 that long silent way by herself to Elfdale. It 
 
 K 2
 
 132 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 wr.s seldom she had the chance of being so long 
 \lone, and there was a kind of luxury about 
 it, not nnmingled with compunction and a 
 sense of guilt. 
 
 For it still remains to he told how Mary 
 Kidley came to be Lady Stanton, although 
 Lord Stanton, who was the betrothed husband 
 of her youth, had been killed, and all that 
 apparently smooth and straightforward story 
 had ended in grief and separation. She had 
 married after some years a middle-aged cousin 
 of her dead lover, Sir Henry Stanton, who had 
 not long before come back from India where 
 he had spent most of his life. It was but a 
 poor fate for the beautiful Mary. Sir Henry 
 had left his career and a full accomplished life 
 behind him, when he first came to settle at 
 Elf dale to the passive existence of a gentleman 
 in the country, who could scarcely be called a 
 country gentleman. He had been married and 
 had children, a family of sons and daughters, 
 and had only a second chapter of less vivid 
 meaning, a sort of postscriptal life, to offer her. 
 Why she had accepted him nobody could well 
 say, — but she made him a good wife, kind, 
 smiling, always gentle, though sadly put to it 
 now and then to preserve unbroken the sweet 
 good-temper with which nature had gifted her.
 
 LADY STANTON. 133 
 
 So fair and sweet as she was, to get only the 
 remains of a man's heart after all, to be made 
 use of as their chaperon and caretaker by his 
 big, unlovely daughters ; to have her own 
 children, two dainty, lovely, fairy girls, kept 
 in the background,^ — no more than "the little 
 ones " — of no account in the house — all these 
 things were somewhat trying, and a strange 
 reversal of all that life had seemed to promise 
 her, and all that had been indicated by the 
 early worship which surrounded her youth. 
 But perhaps few women could have carried 
 this inappropriate fate so well. All those con- 
 tradictions of circumstances, all those travesties 
 of w^hat might have been, met with no gloom 
 or sourness of disappointment in her. The 
 very fact that she was Lady Stanton carried 
 w^ith it a certain aggravation, a parrot-like 
 adhesion to the letter and change of the spirit, 
 such as had been in the promises made to 
 Macbeth. Mary might have thought herself 
 the victim of a perverse fate, keeping the word 
 of promise to the ear and breaking it to the 
 heart, had she been perversely disposed — but 
 instead of that, all her thoughts at the present 
 moment w^ere occupied with the fact that she 
 had taken an unfair advantage of Laura and 
 Lydia, in not telling them where she was
 
 134 YOUNa MUSGRAVE. 
 
 going, that tliey might have come with her 
 had they been so disposed. She had stolen a 
 march upon them ; they would think it unkind. 
 But then she could not have gone to Penning- 
 hame had Laura and Lydia been with her. 
 Though they were so much less concerned than 
 she had been, they kept up the Stanton feud 
 with the Musgraves. They had no " interest " 
 in John — on the contrary, they were of the 
 few who still believed that he had "murdered" 
 Lord Stanton — and would have had him hanged 
 if he ever returned to England. They would 
 not have entered the house, or permitted any 
 kind inquiries in their presence. And there- 
 fore it was that she had stolen away without 
 letting them know, and was at present conscious 
 — in addition to all the jumble of emotions in 
 her heart — of a certain prick of guilt. 
 
 The Stan tons were a great county family as 
 well as the Musgraves, but in a very diffe- 
 rent way. When the Musgraves had been at 
 their greatest, the Stantons had been nobody. 
 They were nothing more than persistent, 
 thrifty folk at first, adding field to field, 
 building on ever a new addition to their old 
 house. Then wealth had come, and then local 
 importance ; and last of all celebrity. The 
 first who brought anything like fame to
 
 LADY STANTON. 135 
 
 the name, and introduced the race to the 
 knowledge of the world, was a soldier, a 
 general under the Duke of Marlborough, who 
 got a baronetcy and a reputation, and had a 
 handsome new coat of arms invented for him 
 — very appropriately gained indeed, on the 
 field of battle, just as the augmentation of the 
 Musgraves' blazon had been gained, but a 
 few hundred years too late unfortunately, and 
 therefore not telling for nearly so much as if 
 it had been won in the fifteenth century. The 
 next man was a lawyer, who so cultivated that 
 profession that it brought his son, in the reign 
 of the Georges, to the bench, and a peerage 
 — and since that time the family had taken 
 their place among the magnates of the north 
 country. Young "Walter Lord Stanton was a 
 much greater man than John Musgrave, though 
 not half so great a man in one sense of the 
 word. Two or three generations, however, 
 tell just as much upon the individual mind as 
 twenty, and the young peer was conscious of 
 all his advantages over the commoner, without 
 any sense of inferiority in point of race. And 
 now the other Lord Stanton, Geoffrey, who 
 had succeeded that unfortunate young man, 
 was the greatest personage of his years in the 
 district, regarded with interest by all his
 
 136 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 neighbours and with more than interest by 
 some ; for was it not in his power to make 
 one of his feminine contemporaries, however 
 humble she might be by birth, and however 
 poor in this world's goods, a great lady ? — and 
 so long as human nature remains as it is, this 
 cannot cease to be a very potent attraction^ 
 Indeed the w^onder is that young women 
 should not be altogether demoralised by the per- 
 petual recurrence of such chances of undeserved, 
 unearned elevation. Young Lord Stanton 
 could do this. He could give fine houses and 
 lands, a title, and all the good things of this 
 earth to his cousin Laura, or his cousin Lydia, 
 or any other girl in the county that pleased 
 him. Tli(nefore it cannot be wondered at if 
 his appearance fluttered the dovecotes with 
 sentiments as powerful and more pleasant than 
 those which fill the nests at the appearance of 
 predatory hawk or eagle. But any such flutter 
 of feeling was held in Elfdale to be an un- 
 warrantable impertinence on the part of the 
 other ladies of the county. Long ago, at the 
 time when at six years old he had succeeded 
 to his stepbrother, there had been a tacit 
 family understanding to the effect that one 
 of Sir Henry's daughters should be the 
 young lord's wife. Sir Henry, though old
 
 LADY STANTON. 137 
 
 enongli to have been the father of his murdered 
 cousin, would have been his heir but for Geoff 
 — and it was universally allowed to be hard 
 upon him that when such an unlikely chance 
 happened, as that young Lord Stanton should 
 die, there should be this boy coming in the way 
 forestalling his claim. Nobody had wanted 
 that child who was suddenly turned into a 
 personage of so much importance — not even his 
 father, who had married with a siugle-minded 
 idea of being comfortable in his own person, 
 and who was much annoyed by the prospect 
 of " a second family " — a prospect which was 
 happily, however, cut short by his own speedy 
 death. When therefore Walter Lord Stanton 
 was killed, it was very generally felt that Sir 
 Henry had a real grievance in the existence 
 of the little stepbrother, who was in the way 
 of everybody except his poor mother, whom 
 the old lord had married to nurse him, and 
 who had taken the unwarrantable liberty of 
 adding little Geoffrey to the family. Poor 
 little Geoff! he was bullied on all hands so 
 long as his brother lived ; and then, what a 
 chano:e came over his life and that of his 
 mother, who was as pale and shy as her boy ! 
 Great good fortune may change even com- 
 plexion, and Geoff as he grew to be a man was
 
 138 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 no longer pale. But Sir Henry never quite 
 got over the blow dealt him by this succession. 
 He had not resented Walter. Walter was so 
 to speak the natural heir — and nobody expected 
 him to die ; but when he did die, so out of all 
 calculation, to think there should be that boy ! 
 Sir Henry did not get over it for years — it 
 was a positive wrong not to be forgotten. 
 
 Accordingly, as a small compensation to his 
 injured feelings, all the family had tacitly 
 decided that Geoff should marry one of his 
 cousins. This, it is true, was but a very small 
 compensation, for Sir Henry was not the kind 
 of parent who lives in his children and is 
 indifferent to his own glory and greatness. 
 Even now, fifteen years after the event, he was 
 not an old man, and it made up very poorly 
 for his personal disappointment that Laura or 
 Lydia should share the advancement of which 
 he had been deprived. Still it was so under- 
 stood. Geoff paid many holiday visits at 
 Elf dale, though there was no particular friend- 
 ship between Sir Henry and the widowed 
 Lady Stanton, who was Geoff's guardian as 
 well as his mother, and things were going 
 smoothly enough between the young people. 
 They liked each other, and had no objection 
 to be together as much as was possible, and
 
 LADY STANTON. 139 
 
 already the sisters liad settled between them 
 ''which of us it is to be." This Lydia, who 
 was the most strong-minded, had thought 
 desirable from the moment when she had 
 become aware what was intended. " It does 
 not matter at present," she said, *' we are none 
 of us in love, and one is just as good as 
 another; but we had better draw lots, or 
 something — or toss up, as the boys do/* And 
 what the mystic ordeal had been which decided 
 this question we are unable to say, but decided 
 it was in favour of Laura, who was the 
 prettiest, and only a year younger than Geoff. 
 Lydia, as soon as the die was cast, constituted 
 herself the guardian of her sister's fortunes 
 so far as the young lord was concerned, and 
 made herself into a quaint and really pretty 
 version of a matchmaking mother on Laura's 
 behalf Thus it will be seen that it was into 
 the very heart of the opposite faction that 
 Lady Stanton drove home with those tears in 
 her soft eyes, and all that commotion of old 
 thoughts in her heart. If they could have 
 seen into it and known that it was the image 
 of John Musgrave that had roused that com- 
 motion, what would these girls have said, 
 towards whom she felt so guilty as haAdng stolen 
 a march upon them ? "The murderer!" they
 
 140 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 would have cried witli a shriek of horror. Lady 
 Stanton could not, it is clear, have taken them 
 to Penninghame with her, and surely she had 
 a right to use her own horses and carriage; 
 but still she felt guilty as she subdued, with 
 all the effort she could make, the excitement 
 in her heart. 
 
 When she went in, she retired at once up 
 stairs, and announced herself, through her 
 maid, to have a headache, and had a cup 
 of tea in her own room, to which her own 
 children, little Fanny and Annie, a pair of 
 inseparables, came noiselessly like two doves on 
 the wing. Annie and Fanny liked nothing in 
 the world so much as to get mamma to them- 
 selves like this, in the stillness of her room, 
 with everybody else shut out. One was ten 
 and the other eleven; they were about the 
 same height, had the same flowing curly locks 
 of light brown hair, the same rose-tinted faces, 
 walked in each other's . steps, or rather flew 
 about their little world of carpeted stairs and 
 passages, together, always in sudden soft flights 
 — like doves, as we have said, on the wing 
 " Is your head very bad, mamma ? '' they said ; 
 and the gentle hypocrite blushed as she re- 
 plied. No, it was not very bad ; a little quiet 
 would make it quite well. They took off" her
 
 LADY STANTON. 141 
 
 " things " for her, and brought her her soft 
 white dressing-gown, in which she looked like 
 the mother of all the doves, and let down her 
 hair, which was not much darker, and quite as 
 abundant as their own — and gave her her cup 
 of tea, thus soothing every tingling nerve; 
 and by this time Lady Stanton's head was not 
 bad at all, though now and then one of them 
 would administer eau-de-cologne or rosewater. 
 She told them of the children she had seen — 
 little orphans who had no mother — and the 
 two crept closer to her, to hear of that awful, 
 incomprehensible desolation, each clasping an 
 arm of hers with two small, eager hands. To 
 be without a mother ! Annie and Fanny held 
 their breath in reverential silence and pity ; 
 but wondered a little that it was the little boy 
 C' called Nello — what a funny name ! '') that 
 mamma spoke of, not the girl, who was ten 
 ("just the same age as me "). 
 
 But not even the sympathy of her children, 
 and the trance of interest which kept them 
 breathless, could make Lady Stanton speak of 
 the little girl. Her mother's face ! that face 
 which had taken the best of everything in 
 existence from Mary Eidley — how could Lady 
 Stanton speak of it ? She made some efforts 
 to get over the feeling, but not with much
 
 142 YOUNG MUSGEAVE. 
 
 success. But the rest restored her, and enabled 
 her to appear, her headache quite charmed 
 away, and her nerves still, at dinner. She 
 took a little more care with her toilette than 
 usual, by way of propitiation to the angry 
 gods. And though Laura and Lydia were not 
 much short of twenty years younger than their 
 stepmother, it would have been an indifferent 
 judge who had turned from her to them, even 
 in the fresh bloom of their youth. She came 
 down stairs very conciliatory, ready to make 
 the best of everything, and to make amends to 
 them for all disloyal thoughts, and for having 
 cheated them of their drive. 
 
 " 1 hope your head is better, my lady," said 
 Laura. " We have been wondering all the 
 afternoon wherever you had gone." 
 
 The girls had a certain strain of vulgarity 
 in them somehow, which could not be quite 
 eradicated from their speech. 
 
 " I went out for a drive as usual," said Lady 
 Stanton. " I thought I heard you say that 
 you meant to walk." 
 
 " Oh yes ; we wanted to walk to the village 
 to settle about the school children," said Laura; 
 and Lydia added, " But I am sure we never 
 said so," and looked suspiciously at her step- 
 mother.
 
 LADY STANTON. 143 
 
 " I went by the Langdale woods, and all the 
 way to Penninghame water/' said the culprit, 
 very explanatory. " The lake looked so cold. 
 I should not like to live near it. It chills all 
 the landscape, and I am sure puts dreary 
 thoughts into people's heads. And as I was 
 there, Henry," she added, addressing her 
 husband, "I did what you vnll think an odd 
 thing." Lady Stanton's bosom heaved a little, 
 and her breath came quick. It would have 
 been far easier to say nothing about it ; but 
 then she knew by experience that everything 
 gets found out. She made a momentary pause 
 before the confession which she tried to treat 
 so lightly. " I ran in for a moment to the old 
 Castle and saw Mary — Mary, you know. We 
 were great friends, she and I, when we were 
 young, and it was such a temptation passing 
 the old place." 
 
 " What whim took you near the old place ? " 
 said Sir Henry, grufSy. " I cannot think of 
 any place in the world that should lie less in 
 your way." 
 
 "Well, that is true," she said, breathing a 
 little more freely now that the worst was told, 
 " and the proof of it is that I have not been 
 there for years."
 
 144 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 '' I hope it will be still longer before you go 
 again," said lier liusband. 
 
 He did not say any more because of the 
 servants, and because he had too much good 
 sense to do or say anything that would lessen 
 his wife's importance; but he was not pleased, 
 and this troubled her, for she had a delicate 
 conscience. She looked at him wistfully, 
 and was imprudent enough in her anxiety 
 to pursue the subject, and make bad 
 worse. 
 
 '* It is strange to see an old friend whom 
 you have known when you were young, 
 after so many years," she said ; " though 
 Mary is not so much altered as 1 am. You 
 remember her, Henry ? She was always 
 so pretty ; handsomer than — any one I 
 know." 
 
 . It was on her lips to say " handsomer than 
 ever I was," which was the real sentiment in 
 her mind — a sentiment partly originating in 
 the semi-guilt and humility produced by the 
 consciousness of having grown stout, a kind 
 of development which troubles women. She 
 was very deeply aware of this, and it silenced 
 all the claims of vanity. She had lost her 
 figure ; whereas Mary was still slim and straight 
 as an arrow. Whatever might have been
 
 LADY STANTOX. 145 
 
 once, there was now no comparison between 
 the two. 
 
 " Do you mean Miss Musgrave ? " cried the 
 girls, one after the other. '' Miss Musgrave ! 
 that old creature — that old maid — that man\s 
 sister ? " 
 
 " She is no older than I am/' said Lady 
 Stanton, with a flush on her face ; '^ she was 
 my dear friend in the old days. She is 
 beautiful still, as much as she ever was, I 
 think, and good ; she has always been 
 good." 
 
 ''That will do," said Sir Henry, inter- 
 posing. ''We need not discuss the family; 
 but I think you will see, my dear, that 
 there could not be much pleasure in any 
 intercourse at this time of day — whatever 
 might have been the case when you were 
 young." 
 
 " Intercourse — there could, never be any in- 
 tercourse,'' cried Lydia, coming to the front. 
 " Fancy, papa ! intercourse with such people 
 — after all that has happened! That would 
 be tempting Providence ; and it would be an 
 insult to Geofi"." 
 
 " Let Geoff take care of his own affairs," 
 said Sir Henry, angrily ; and he gave a forcible 
 twist to the conversation, and threw it into 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 another channel ; but Lady Stanton was very 
 silent all the evening afterwards. She had 
 wanted to conciliate, and she had not suc- 
 ceeded ; and how indeed could she, among her 
 hostile family, keep up any intercourse with 
 her old friend ?
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 AT ELFDALE. 
 
 Nevertheless this meetinor could not be 
 got out of Lady Stanton's mind. She 
 thought of it constantly ; and in the stillness 
 of her own room, when nobody but the little 
 girls were by, she talked to them of the 
 children, especially of little Xello, who had 
 attracted her most. What a place of rest 
 and refreshment that was for her, after all 
 her trials with Laura and Lydia, and the 
 seriousness of Sir Henry, who was displeased 
 that she should have gone to Penninorhame, 
 and showed it in the way most painful to the 
 soft-hearted woman, by silence, and a gravity 
 which made her feel her indiscretion to her 
 very heart. But notwithstanding Sir Henry's 
 annoyance, she could not but relieve her mind 
 by going over the whole scene with Fanny 
 and Annie, who knew, without a word 
 said, that these private talks in which they 
 
 L 2
 
 148 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 delighted — in which their mother told them 
 all manner of stories, and took them back with 
 her into the time of her youth, and made 
 them acquainted with all her early friends — 
 were not to be repeated, but were their own 
 special privilege to be kept for themselves 
 alone. They had already heard of Mary 
 Musgrave, and knew her intimately, as child- 
 ren do know the early companions of whom 
 an indulgent mother tells them, to satisfy 
 their boundless appetite for narrative. " And 
 what are they to Mary ? " the little girls 
 asked, breathless in their interest about these 
 strange children. They had already been 
 told ; but the relationship of aunt did not 
 seem a very tender one to Annie and Fanny, 
 who knew only their father's sisters, old ladies 
 to whom the elder girls, children of the first 
 marriage, seemed the only legitimate and 
 correct Stanton s, and who looked down upon 
 these little interlopers as unnecessary intruders. 
 " Only their aunt !— is that all ? " 
 
 They were not in Lady Stanton's room this 
 time, but seated on an ottoman in the great 
 bow-window, one on either side of her. Laura 
 and Lydia were out; Sir Henry was in his 
 library ; the coast was clear ; no one was 
 likely to come in and dismiss the children
 
 AT ELFDALE. 149 
 
 with a siiarp word, sucli as — " Go away, little 
 girls — there is no saying a word to your 
 mother while you are there ! " or " The little 
 ones again ! When we were children we 
 were kept in the nursery." The children 
 were aware now that when such speeches 
 were made, it was better for them not to wait 
 for their mother's half-pained, half-beseeching 
 look, but to run away at once, not to provoke 
 any discussion. They were wise little women, 
 and were, by nature, of their mother s faction 
 in this house, where both they and she, 
 though she was the mistress of it, were more 
 or less on sufiferance. But at present every- 
 body was out of the way. They were ready 
 to fly oflf, with their pretty hair fluttering like 
 a o^leam of wino^s, should anv of their critics 
 appear^ but the girls had gone a long way, 
 and Sir Henry was very busy. It was a 
 chance such as seldom occurred. 
 
 ^' All ? when children have not a mother, 
 their aunt is next best ; sometimes she is even 
 better — much better," said Lady Stanton, 
 thinking in her heart that John s wife was 
 not likely to have been of any great service 
 to her children. " And Mary is not like any 
 one you know. She is a beautiful lady — not 
 old, like Aunt Eebecca — though Aunt Eebecca
 
 150 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 is always very kind. I hope you have not 
 forgotten those beautiful sashes she gave 
 
 you." 
 
 *' I don't think very much of an aunt," said 
 Fanny, who was the saucy one, with a shrug 
 of her little shoulders. 
 
 " It must be different," said Annie, hugging 
 her mother's arm. They were not impressed 
 by the happiness of those poor little stranger 
 children in being with Mary. '' Has the little 
 gir] got no name, mamma — don't you know 
 her name ? You say Nello ; but that is the 
 boy ; though it is more like a girl than a 
 boy." 
 
 "It is German — or something — I don't 
 remember. The little girl is called Lilias. 
 Oh yes, it is a pretty name enough, but I 
 don't like it. I once knew one whom I did 
 not approve of " 
 
 "We knew," said Fanny, nodding her head 
 at Annie, who nodded back again ; " Mamma, 
 we knew you did not like the little girl." 
 
 " I ! not like her ! Oh, children, how can 
 you think me so unjust *? I hope I am not 
 unjust," cried Lady Stanton, almost with tears. 
 " Mary is very proud of her little niece. 
 And she is very good to little Nello. Yes, 
 perhaps I like him best, but there is no harm
 
 AT ELFDALE. 151 
 
 in that. He is a delightful little boy. If 
 you could have had a little brother like 
 that " 
 
 **We have only — big brothers," said Annie, 
 regretfully ; "that is different." 
 
 " Yes, that is different. You could not 
 imagine Charley with long, fair curls, and a 
 little tunic, could you ? " This made the 
 children laus^h, and concealed a little si^h on 
 their mother's part ; for Charley was a big 
 dragoon, and Lady Stanton foresaw would 
 not have too much consideration, should they 
 ever require his help, for the little sisters 
 whom he undisguisedly felt to be in his way. 
 
 " I wonder if she wishes he was a little 
 girl." 
 
 " I wonder ! How she must want to have 
 a sister ! A little brother would be very nice, 
 too ; we used to play at having a little brother ; 
 but it would not be like Fanny and me. Does 
 she like being at the Castle, mamma 1 " 
 
 It troubled Lady Stanton that they should 
 think of nothinor but this little orirl. It was 
 Lilias that had won their interest, and she 
 could not tell them why it was that she 
 shrank from Lilias. ''They have left their 
 poor papa all alone and sad," she said, in a 
 low voice. " I used to know him too. And
 
 152 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 it must make them sad to think of him so 
 far away/' 
 
 Once more the chiklren were greatly 
 puzzled. They were not on such terms of 
 tender intimacy with their father as were 
 thus suggested, but, on the whole, were 
 rather pleased than otherwise when he was 
 absent, and did not follow him very closely 
 with their thoughts. They were slightly 
 humbled as they realized the existence of so 
 much greater susceptibility and lovingness on 
 the part of the little girl in whom they 
 were so much interested, than they them- 
 selves possessed. How she surpassed them 
 in this as well as in other things ! She talked 
 German as well as English (if it was German ; 
 their mother was not clear what language it 
 was) — think of that ! So perhaps it was not 
 wonderful that she should be so much fonder 
 of her papa. And a moment of silence ensued. 
 Lady Stanton did not remark the confused 
 pause in the minds of her children, because 
 her own mind was filled with wistful com- 
 passion for the lonely man whom she had 
 been thinking of more or less since ever she 
 left Penninghame. Where was he, all alone 
 in the world, shut out from his own house, 
 an exile from his country — even his children
 
 AT ELFDALE. 153 
 
 away from him, in Avliom perhaps he had 
 found some comfort ? 
 
 This momentary silence was interrupted 
 abruptly by the sound of a voice. *' Are 
 you there, Cousin Mary ? and what are you 
 putting your heads together about ? " 
 
 At this sound, before they found out what 
 it was, the children disengaged themselves 
 suddenly each from her separate clinging to 
 her mothers arm, and approached each other 
 as if for flight; but, falling back to their 
 places when they recognised the voice, looked 
 at each other, and said both together, with 
 tones of relief, '' Oh, it's only Geoff! " 
 
 Nothino' more sio^nificant of the inner life 
 of the family, and the position of these two 
 little intruders, could have been. 
 
 Geoff came forward with his boyish step 
 and voice in all the smiling confidence of 
 youth. " I thought I should startle you. Is 
 it a story that is being told, or are you plotting 
 something ? Fanny and Annie, leave her alone 
 for a moment. It is my turn now." 
 
 " Geoff ! it is about a little girl and a boy 
 — mamma will tell you too, if you ask her ; 
 and there's nobody in. We thought at first 
 you were papa, but he's so busy. Come and 
 sit here."
 
 154 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 Geoff came up, and kissed Lady Stanton 
 on her soft, still beautiful cheek. He was a 
 son of the house, and privileged. He sat down 
 on the stool the children had placed for him. 
 " I am glad there's nobody in,'' he said. " Of 
 course the girls will be back before I go ; but 
 I wanted to speak to you — about something." 
 
 " Shall the children go, Geoff?" 
 
 '' Fancy ! do you want them to hate me ? 
 No, go on with the story. This is what I 
 like. Isn't it pleasant, Annie and Fanny, to 
 have her all to ourselves ? Do you mind 
 me?" 
 
 " Oh, not in the least, Geoff — not in the 
 very least. You are like — what is he like, 
 Annie ? — a brother, not a big brother, like 
 Charley : but something young, something 
 nice, like what mamma was telling us of — a 
 little brother — grown up " 
 
 " Is this a sneer at my height ? " he said ; 
 '' but go on, don't let me stop the story. I 
 like stories — and most other pleasant things." 
 
 " It was no story," said Lady Stanton. " I 
 was telling them only of some children : — you 
 are very good and forgiving, Geoff— but I fear 
 you will be angry with me when you know. 
 I was— out by myself — and notwithstanding 
 all we have against them, I went to see Mary
 
 AT ELFDALE. 155 
 
 Musgrave. There ! I must tell you at once, 
 and get it over. I shall be sorry if it annoys 
 you; but Mary and I," she said, faltering, 
 " were such friends once, and I have not seen 
 her for years." 
 
 "Why should I be annoyed — why should I 
 be angry ? I am not an avenger. Poor Cousin 
 Mary ! you were out — by yourself ! — was that 
 your only reason for going ? " 
 
 " Indeed it is true enough. It is very seldom 
 I go out without the girls : and they — feel 
 strongly, you know, about that." 
 
 " What have they to do with it ? Yes, I 
 know : they are "plus royalistes que le roi. 
 But this is not the story." 
 
 '' Yes, indeed it is, my dear boy. I was 
 telling Annie and Fanny of two poor children. 
 They belong to a man who is — banished from 
 his own country. He did wrong — when he 
 was young — oh so many, so many years ago ! 
 — and he is still wandering about the world 
 without a home, and far from his friends. He 
 was young then, and now — it is so long ago ; 
 — ah, Geoff, you must not be angry with me. 
 The little children are with Mary. She did 
 not tell me much, for her heart did not soften 
 to me as mine did to her. But there they 
 are ; the mother dead who was at the bottom
 
 156 YOUXG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 of it all ; and nobody to care for them but 
 Maiy ; all through something that happened 
 before they were born." 
 
 Lady Stanton gvew red as she spoke, 
 her voice trembled, her whole aspect was 
 full of emotion. The young man shook his 
 head — 
 
 '' I suppose a great many of us suffer from 
 harm done before we were born," he said, 
 gravely. " This is no solitary instance." 
 
 ''Ah, Geoff, it is natural, quite natural, that 
 you should feel so. I forgot how deeply you 
 were affected by all that happened then." 
 
 '' I did not mean that," he said, gravely. 
 His youthful face had changed out of its 
 light-hearted calm. ''Indeed I had heard 
 something of this, and I wanted to speak to 
 you " 
 
 "Eun away, my darlings," said Lady 
 Stanton ; *' go and see what — nurse is about. 
 Make her go down with you to the village and 
 take the tea and sugar to the old women in 
 the almshouses. This is the day— don't you 
 remember ? " 
 
 " So it is," said Annie. " But we did not 
 want to remember," said Fanny; *'we liked 
 better to stay with you." 
 
 However, they went off, reluctant yet
 
 AT ELFDALE. 157 
 
 obedient. They were used to being sent 
 away. It was seldom their mother who did 
 it, willingly — but everybody else did it with 
 peremptory determination — and the little girls 
 were used to obey. They untwined them- 
 selves from her arms, to which they had been 
 clinging, and went away close together, with a 
 soft rush and sweep as of one movement. 
 
 " There go the doves," said Geoff, looking 
 after them with kind admiration like that of a 
 brother. It pleased Lady Stanton to see the 
 friendly pleasure in them which lighted the 
 young man's eyes. Whoever married him, he 
 would, always, she thought, be a brother to her 
 neglected children, who counted for so little in 
 the family. She looked after them with that 
 mother-look which, whether in joy or sorrow, 
 is close upon tears. Then she turned to him 
 with eyes softened by that unspeakable 
 tenderness : 
 
 '' Whatever you wish,'' she said. " Tell me, 
 Geoff ; I am ready to hear." 
 
 " I am as bad as the rest. You have to 
 send them away for me too." 
 
 " There is some reason in it this time. If 
 you have heard about the little Musgraves you 
 know how miserable it all is," said Lady 
 Stanton. ''The old man will have nothing to
 
 158 YOUNG MUSGEAVE. 
 
 say to them. He lets them live there, but 
 takes no notice — his son's children ! And 
 Mary has everything upon her shoulders." 
 
 " Cousin Mary, will it hurt you much to 
 tell me all about it ? " said the young man. 
 *' Forgive me, I know it must be painful ; but 
 all that is so long over, and everything is so 
 changed " 
 
 *' You mean I have married and forgotten,'* 
 she said, her lips beginning to quiver. 
 
 " I scarcely remember anything about it,'* 
 said Geoff, looking away from her that his eyes 
 might not disturb her more, '' only a confused 
 sort of excitement and wretchedness, and then 
 a strange new sense of importance. We had 
 been nobodies till then — my mother and I. 
 But I have heard a few things lately. Walter, 
 — will it pain you if I speak of him ? '' 
 
 "Poor Walter! — no. Geoff, you must un- 
 derstand that Walter loved somebody else 
 better than me." 
 
 She said this half in honest avowal of that 
 humiliation which had been one of the great 
 wonders of her life, partly in excuse of her 
 own easy forgetfulness of him. 
 
 " I have heard that too. Cousin Mary, with 
 w^onder ; but never mind. He paid dearly for 
 his folly. The other "
 
 AT ELFDALE. 159 
 
 *' GeoflP/' said Lady Stanton, with a trem- 
 bling voice, *' the other is living still, and he 
 has paid dearly for it all this time. We must 
 not be hard upon him. I do not want to ex- 
 cuse him — it would be strange if I should be 
 the one to excuse him ; but only " 
 
 " I am very sorry for him, Cousin j\lary. I 
 am glad you feel as I do. Walter may have 
 been in the ^\Tong for anything I know. I do 
 not think it was murder." 
 
 " That I am sure it was not ! John Mus- 
 grave was not the man to do a murder — oh, 
 no, no ; Geoff ! he was not that kind of man ! " 
 
 Geoff looked up surprised at her eager tone 
 and the trembling in her voice. 
 
 "You knew him — well ''i " he said, with that 
 indifferent composure with which people com- 
 ment upon the past, not knowing what depths 
 those are over which they skim so lightly. 
 Could he have seen into the agitation in Lady 
 Stanton's heart ! But he would not have un- 
 derstood nor realized the commotion that was 
 there. 
 
 "I always — took an interest in him," she 
 said, faltering; and then she felt it her duty 
 to do her best for him as an old friend. " I 
 had known him all my life, Geoff, as well as I 
 knew Walter. He was hasty and high spirited.
 
 160 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 but SO kind — lie would have gone out of his 
 way to help any one. Before he saw that 
 young woman everybody was fond of 
 John." 
 
 " Did you know her too ? " 
 
 '' No, no ; I did not know her. God forbid ! 
 She was the destruction of every one who 
 cared for her/' said Lady Stanton with a little 
 outburst. Then she made an effort to subdue 
 herself. " Perhaps I am not just to her/' she 
 said with a faint smile. "She was preferred 
 to me, you know, Geoff; and they say a 
 woman cauDot forget that — perhaps it is true.'' 
 
 '' How could he ? was he mad ? " Geoff said. 
 Geoff was himself tenderly, filially in love 
 with his cousin Mary. He thought there was 
 nobody in the world so beautiful and so kind. 
 And even now she was not understood as she 
 ought to be. Sir Henry thought her a good 
 enough wife, a faithful creature, perfectly 
 trustworthy, and so forth. It was in this light 
 that all regarded her. Something better than 
 an upper servant, a little dearer than a gover- 
 ness; something to be made use of, to do 
 everything for everybody. She who, Geoff 
 thought in his enthusiasm, was more lovely 
 and sweet than the youngest of them, and 
 ought to be held pre-eminent and sacred by
 
 AT ELFDALE. 161 
 
 everybody round her. This was not the lot 
 that had fallen to her in life. 
 
 " So I am not the best judge, you see," said 
 Lady Stanton with a little sigh. "In those 
 days one felt more strongly perhaps. It all 
 seems so vivid and clear/' she added half 
 apologetically, though without entirely realizing 
 how much light these half confessions threw 
 on her present state of less lively feeling, ** that 
 is the effect of being young " 
 
 " I think you will always be young," he said 
 tenderly ; then added after a pause, '' Was 
 
 it a quarrel about — the woman ? " He 
 
 blushed himself as he said so, feeling the 
 wrong to her — yet only half knowing the 
 wonder it was in her thoughts, the double 
 pain it brought. 
 
 '' I think so. They were both fond of her ; 
 and Walter ought not to have been fond of 
 her. John — was quite free. He was in no 
 way engaged to any one. He had a right to 
 love her if he pleased. But Walter interfered, 
 and he was richer, greater, a far better match. 
 So I suppose she wavered. This is my own 
 explanation of it. They met then when their 
 hearts were wild against each other, and there 
 was a struggle. Ah, Geoff ! Has it not cost 
 John Musgrave his life as weU as Walter ? 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 Youjsra musgrave. 
 
 Has lie ever ventured to show himself in his 
 own country since ? And now their poor little 
 children have come home to Mary; but he 
 will never be able to come home.'* 
 
 "It is hard/' said Geoff thoughtfully. "I 
 wish I knew the law. Fifteen years is it? 
 I was about six then. Could anything be 
 done? I wonder if anything could be done." 
 
 She put her hand on his shoulder with an 
 affectionate caressing touch, "Thanks for the 
 thought, my dear boy — even if nothing could 
 be done." 
 
 '*You take a great deal of interest in him, 
 Cousin Mary ? " 
 
 "Yes," she said quickly; "I told you w^e 
 were all young people together ; and his sister 
 was my dear friend. We were called the two 
 Maries in those days. We were thought — 
 pretty," she said with a vivid blush and a 
 little laugh. " You may have heard ? " 
 
 Geoff kissed the pretty hand which had 
 been laid on his shoulder, and which was 
 perhaps a little fuller and more dimply than 
 was consistent with perfection. " I have eyes," 
 he said, with a little of the shyness of his 
 years, "and I have always had a right as a 
 Stanton to be proud of my cousin Mary. 
 I wonder if Miss Musgrave is as beautiful
 
 AT ELFDALE. 163 
 
 as you are : I don't believe it for my 
 part." 
 
 "She is far prettier — she is not stout," said 
 Lady Stanton ^Yith a sigh ; and then she 
 laughed, and made her confession over again 
 with a half jest, which did not make her 
 regret less real, "and I have lost my figure. 
 I have developed, as people say. Mary is as 
 slim as ever. Ah, you may laugh, but that 
 makes a great difierence ; I feel it to the 
 bottom of my heart."' 
 
 Geoff looked at her with tender admiration 
 in his eyes. " There has never been a time 
 when I have not thought you the most beau- 
 tiful woman in all the world," he said, "and 
 that all the great beauties must have been like 
 you. You were always the dream of fair 
 women to me — now one, now the other — all 
 except Cleopatra. You never could have been 
 like that black-browed witch " 
 
 " Hush ! boy. I am too old to be flattered 
 now ; and I am stout," she said, with that faint 
 laugh of annoyance and humiliation just 
 softened by jest. Geofi"s honest praise brought 
 no blush to her soft matronly cheeks, but she 
 liked it, as it pleased her when the children 
 called her " Pretty Mamma." They loved her 
 the best, though people had not always done 
 
 M 2
 
 164 YOUNG MUSGEAVE. 
 
 SO. The fact that she had grown stout did 
 not affect their admiration. Only those who 
 have known others to be preferred to them- 
 selves can realize what this is. After a 
 moment's hesitation, she added in a low voice : 
 " I wonder — will you go and see them ? It 
 would have a great effect in the neighbourhood. 
 Oh, Geoff, forgive me if I am saying too much ; 
 perhaps it would not be possible, perhaps it 
 might be wrong in your position. You must 
 take the advice of somebody more sensible, 
 less affected by their feelings. Everybody 
 likes you, Geoff, and you deserve it, my dear ; 
 and you are Lord Stanton. It would have a 
 great effect upon the county ; it would be 
 almost like clearing him " 
 
 *' Then I will go — at once — this very day," 
 said Geoff, starting up. 
 
 '^Oh no, no, no," she said, catching him by 
 the arm; "first of all you must speak j to — 
 some one more sensible than me."
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE OTHER SIDE. 
 
 While Lady Stanton spread the news of 
 the arrival of the Musgrave children among 
 the upper classes, this information was given 
 to the lower, an equally or perhaps even more 
 important influence in their history, by an 
 authority of a very different kind, to whom, 
 indeed, it would have been bitter to think that 
 she was the channel of communication with the 
 lower orders. But such is the irony of cir- 
 cumstances that it was Mrs. Pennithorne, who 
 prided herself upon her gentility, and who 
 would have made any sacrifice rather than 
 descend to a sphere beneath her, who conveyed 
 the report, which ran through the village like 
 wildfire, and which spread over the surround- 
 ing country as rapidly and efi'ectually as if it 
 had been made known by beacons on the hill- 
 tops. The village was more interested in the 
 news than any other circle in the county could
 
 166 YOUNG MUSGEAVE. 
 
 be, partly because the reigning house in a 
 village is its standing romance, the drama 
 most near to it, and most exciting when'^there 
 is any drama at all ; and partly for still more 
 impressive personal reasons. The CastleJ^had 
 done much for the district in this way, having 
 supplied it with more exciting food in the way 
 of story and incident than any other great 
 house in the north country. There had been 
 a long interval of monotony, but now it ap- 
 peared to all concerned that the more eventful 
 circle of affairs was about to begin again. The 
 manner in which the story fully reached the 
 village was simple enough. Mrs. Pennithorne 
 had, as might have been expected, failed 
 entirely with Mary's frock. It would not 
 " come '' as she wanted it to come, let her do 
 what she would ; and when all her own efforts 
 had failed, and the stuff was effectually 
 spoiled, soiled, and crumpled, and incapable 
 of ever looking better than second-hand 
 under any circumstances, she called in the 
 doctor, as people are apt to do when they have 
 cobbled at themselves in vain. The dress 
 doctor in Penninghame and the neighbourhood, 
 the rule of fashion, the grand authority for 
 everything in the way of chiffons, was a 
 certain Miss Price, a lively little old woman.
 
 THE OTHER SIDE. 167 
 
 who had one of the best houses in the village, 
 where she let lodgiDgs on occasion, but always 
 made dresses. She had been in business for a 
 great many years, and was an authority both 
 up and down the water. It was not agreeable 
 to Miss Price to be called in at the last 
 moment as it were, to heal the ailments of 
 Mary's frock; but partly because it was the 
 clergyman's house, and partly because of the 
 gossip which was always involved, she obeyed 
 the summons, as she had done on many 
 previous occasions. And she did her best, as 
 Mrs. Pennithorne had done her worst, upon 
 the little habiliment. " Ladies know nothing 
 about such thino-s," the little dressmaker 
 said, pinniug and unpinning with energetic 
 ease and rapidity. And the Vicar's wife, who 
 looked on helpless but admiring, accepted the 
 condemnation because of the flattery involved; 
 for Mrs. Pen was elevated over Miss Price by 
 so brief an interval that this accusation was a 
 kind of acknowledgment of her gentility, and 
 did her good, though it was not meant to be 
 compliment ar}\ She liked to feel that hers 
 was that ladylike uselessness which is only 
 appropriate to high position. She simpered a 
 little, and avowed that indeed she had never 
 been brought up to know about such things ;
 
 168 YOUNG MUSGKAVE. 
 
 and while Miss Price put the spoiled work to 
 rights the Vicar's wife did her best to enter- 
 tain the beneficent fairy who was bringing the 
 chaos into order. She did not blurt out sud- 
 denly the news with which she was overbrim- 
 ming, but brought it forth cunningly in the 
 course of conversation in the most agreeable 
 way. 
 
 '' Is there any news, Miss Price ? " she 
 said ; " but I tell the Vicar that nothing 
 ever happens here. The people don't even 
 die." 
 
 " I beg your pardon, ma'am. There's two 
 within the last three months ; but to be sure 
 they were long past threescore and ten." 
 
 "That is what I say. It's so healthy at 
 Penninghame. Look at the old Squire now, 
 how hale and hearty he is — and after all he 
 has come through." 
 
 " Yes, he has come through a deal," said 
 Miss Price, putting her pins in her mouth, 
 '' and that's too true." 
 
 " Poor old man ; and still more and more to 
 put up with. Have you seen the children, 
 Miss Price? Oh dear! didn't you know? 
 Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned it ; 
 but people cannot hide up children as they 
 hide secrets. I have been living here for ten
 
 THE OTHER SIDE. 169 
 
 years, and I scarcely know the rights of the 
 story about John Musgrave yet." 
 
 ** Children ! '"' said Miss Price, with a start 
 which shook the pins out of her fingers. " To 
 be sure — that came in a coach from Pennington 
 with a play-acting sort of a woman ? But 
 what has that to do with Mr. John ? " 
 
 The dressmaker dropped Mary's frock upon 
 her knees in the excitement of her feelings. 
 There was more than curiosity involved. " To 
 be sure," she said. " To be sure ! " going on 
 with her own thoughts, "where should they 
 come but to the Castle '? and who should have 
 them but his family ? 'Lizabeth Bampffylde is 
 an honest woman, but not even me, I wouldn't 
 trust the children to her. His children ! 
 though they would be hers too " 
 
 " What do you mean. Miss Price ? " said 
 Mrs. Pen, half offended ; " are you going out 
 of your senses ? I tell you something about 
 the Squire's family, and you get into a 
 way about it as if it could be anything to 
 
 you." 
 
 Miss Price recovered her composure wnth a 
 rapid effort, but her little pale countenance 
 reddened. 
 
 "Nothing to me, ma'am," she said, with 
 what she felt to be a proper pride. *' But if
 
 170 YOUNG MUSaRAVE. 
 
 Mr. John has children, they had a mother as 
 well as a father ; and there was a time when 
 that was something to me." 
 
 *'0h!" cried the Vicars wife, "then you 
 knew Mrs. John ? tell me about her. She was 
 a low girl, that is all I know." 
 
 " She was no low girl, whoever told you," 
 cried the little dressmaker. " She was one as 
 folks were fond of, as fond as if she had been 
 a princess. She was no more low than — I am ; 
 she was " 
 
 " Oh, I did not mean to offend you, Miss 
 Price. Of course I know how respectable you 
 are — but not the equal of the Squire, you 
 know, or of " 
 
 Miss Price looked at the woman who had 
 spoiled Mary's frock. There she stood, limp, 
 and faded, and genteel, with no capacity in 
 her fingers and not much in her head, with a 
 smile of conscious superiority yet condescen- 
 sion. Miss Price was not her equal. " Good 
 Lord ! as if I would be that useless," she said 
 to herself, '' for all the money in the world ! or 
 to be as grand as the Queen ! " But though 
 she was at once exasperated and contemptuous, 
 politeness and policy at once forbade her to 
 say anything. She would not "set up her 
 face to a lady," even when so very unim-
 
 THE OTHER SIDE. 171 
 
 pressive as Mrs. Pennithorne ; and it did not 
 become the dressmaker in the village to be 
 openly scornful of the Vicar's wife. She saved 
 herself by taking up again with energy and 
 devotion the scattered pins and the miserable 
 little spoiled bodice of Mary's frock. 
 
 *' I am glad you know about this girl," said 
 Mrs. Pen, satisfied to have subdued her op- 
 ponent, "for I want so much to hear about 
 her. One cannot get much information from 
 a gentleman, Miss Price. They tell you, ' Oh 
 yes, she was a pretty creature ! ' as if that is aU 
 you cared to know." 
 
 "It's what tells most with the gentlemen, 
 ma'am," said Miss Price, recovering her com- 
 posure. " Yes, that she was. I've looked at 
 her many a time and said just the same to 
 myself. ' Well, you are a pretty creature ! ' 
 I don't wonder if their heads get turned when 
 they are as pretty as that; though it isn't 
 only the pretty ones that get their heads 
 turned. The girls that I've had through my 
 hands ! and not one in ten that went through 
 with the business and kept it up as it ought 
 to be kept up." 
 
 " Was ]\Irs. John Musgrave in the business ? 
 Was she in your hands ? I declare ! Did he 
 marry her from your house 1 "
 
 172 YOUNG MUSGEAVE. 
 
 '' She was come of wild folks," said Miss 
 Price; "there was gipsy blood in them. They 
 had a little bit of a sheep farm up among the 
 hills in their best days, and a lone house, 
 where there wasn't a stranger to be seen twice 
 in a year. 'Lizabeth Bampffylde, that's her 
 mother, comes about the village still. I can't 
 tell you what she does, she sells her eggs and 
 chickens, and maybe she does tell fortunes. I 
 won't say. She never told me mine. I took 
 a fancy to the lass, and I said, * Bring her to 
 me. I'll take her ; I'll train her a bit.' Oh, 
 how little we know! If I had but let her 
 bide on the fells !—but what a pretty one she 
 was ! Such eyes as she had ; and a skin that 
 Avasn't to say dark — it was browa, but so 
 clear ! like the water when the sun is in it." 
 
 " You seem to think a great deal of people 
 being pretty." 
 
 '' So I do, ma'am, more than I ought. A 
 woman should have more sense. I'm near as 
 easy led away as the gentlemen. But there's 
 different kinds of beauty, and that is what 
 they never see as want it most. There's pretty 
 faces that I can't abide. They seem to give 
 me a turn. Now that's where the men fails,'* 
 said the little dressmaker ; " all's one to them, 
 good or bad, they never see any difference.
 
 THE OTHER SIDE. 173 
 
 Lily was never one of the bad ones, poor dear. 
 Lily 1 yes, that was the young woman ; but 
 she's not such a young woman, not a girl now. 
 She'll be thirty-seven or eight, close upon that, 
 if she's li^dng this day." 
 
 "She is not living — she died five years ago; 
 and Miss Musgrave won't believe me that 
 she ought to go into black for her," said Mrs. 
 Pennithorne. 
 
 "Ah!" said Miss Price with a sharp cry. She 
 dropped her work at her feet with an indifference 
 to it which deeply aggrieved Mrs. Pen. The 
 announcement took her altogether by sur- 
 prise, and went to her heart. " Dead ! oh 
 my poor Lily, my poor Lily ! Was I thinking 
 iU o' thcQ? Dead! and so many left— and 
 her in her prime ! " Sudden sobs stopped the 
 good little woman's speech, with which she 
 struggled as she went on, making a brave 
 effort to recover herself as she picked up the 
 little dress. " I beg your pardon, ma'am, but 
 it was so sudden ; it took me unprepared. 
 Oh, ma'am, that's the woi"st of it when you 
 have to do ^ith girls. Few of them go 
 through with the business, though it would 
 be best for them ; they turn every one to her 
 own way ; that's scripture, but I mean it. 
 They marry, and they think themselves so
 
 174 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 grand with tlieir children, and it kills 'em. 
 Oh, if I had but left her on the fells ! or if 
 she had stuck by the business like me ! " 
 
 " 1 did not think you took so much interest 
 in her," said Mrs. Pen, feeling guilty. " If I 
 had known you cared, I would have been 
 more careful what I said. But nobody seemed 
 to think much of her. It is always the 
 Musgraves the Vicar speaks of." 
 
 " The Vicar thought of nothing but Miss 
 Mary," said Miss Price hastily ; then she cor- 
 rected herself, " I mean of womanfolk," she 
 said ; '' the Musgraves, ma'am, as you say, 
 that was all he thought of. And that's always 
 the way, as far as I can judge. The gentry 
 thinks of their own side, and we that are but 
 small folks, we think of ours ; it's natural. 
 Miss Musgrave was not much to me. I never 
 made her but one thing, and that was a cotton, 
 a common morning frock ; she was too grand 
 to have her things made by the likes of me ; 
 but Lily, she sat by my side and sewed at the 
 same seam. And she's dead ! the bonniest 
 lass on all the water, as the village folks 
 say." 
 
 " You don't talk like the village folks, Miss 
 Price." 
 
 ''No. I'm from the south, as they call it
 
 THE OTHER SIDE. 175 
 
 — except when a word creeps iu now and 
 again through being so long here. It's all 
 pinned and straight, ma am, now. It was 
 done almost before I heard the news — and Fm 
 glad of it, for my eyesight goes when I begin 
 to cry. I don't think you can go wrong 
 now," said Miss Price with a sigh, knowing 
 the powers of her patroness in that direction. 
 " It's as well as I can make it — pinned and 
 basted, and straight before your hand. No, 
 thank you kindly, nothing for me. I'm that 
 put out that the best thing I can do is to get 
 home." 
 
 '•' But dear me, i\Iiss Price — as she is not 
 even a relation ! " 
 
 " A relation, what's that ? A girl that 
 you've brought up is more than a relation," 
 cried the dressmaker, forgettins: her manners. 
 And she made up her patterns tremulously in 
 a little bundle, and hurried out with the 
 briefest leavetaking, which was not civil, ]\Irs. 
 Pennithorne said indignantly. But Miss Price, 
 in her way, was as important as the Vicar's 
 wife herself, being alone in her profession, and 
 enjoying a monopoly. It is possible to be 
 rude, when you are a monopolist, without 
 damage to your trade ; but this, to do her 
 justice, was not the motive which actuated
 
 176 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 the little dressmaker, who, in her nature, was 
 anxiously polite, and indisposed to offend any 
 one ; but the news she had heard was too 
 much for all her little decorums. She made 
 a long round out of her way to pass by the 
 Castle, though she could scarcely tell why she did 
 so — for it was not the children that were most 
 in her mind. Indeed she scarcely remembered 
 them at all, in her excitement of pain and 
 hot grief which took the shape of a kind of 
 fiery resentment against life and nature. Chil- 
 dren ! what was the good of the children — 
 helpless things that took a woman's life, and 
 made even the rest of death bitter to her, 
 wringing her heart with misery to leave them 
 after costing her her life ! She was an old 
 maid not by accident, but by nature ; and 
 what were a couple of miserable little children 
 in exchange for the life of Lily 1 But when, 
 not expecting to see them, not thinking of 
 them save in this bitter way. Miss Price saw 
 the tw^o children at the door of the hall, 
 another quick springing sensation rose sud- 
 denly in her hasty soul. She went slowly 
 past, gazing at them, trying to say to herself 
 that she hated the sight of them, Lily's slayers! 
 But her kind heart was too much for her quick 
 temper, and as soon as they were out of sight,
 
 THE OTHER SIDE. 177 
 
 the little dressmaker sat down by tlie wayside 
 and cried, sobbing like a child. Little dread- 
 ful creatures, who had worn their mother to 
 death, and killed her in her prime ! Poor 
 little forlorn orphans, without a mother ! She 
 did not know which feeling was the warmest 
 and stronofest. But she reached home so 
 shaken between the two emotions, that her 
 present assistant, who filled the place to which 
 Miss Price had hoped to train Lily, and who 
 was a good girl with no nonsense in her head, 
 fully intending to go through with the busi- 
 ness, was frightened by the appearance of her 
 principal, who stumbled into the little parlour 
 all garlanded with paper patterns, with tremu- 
 lous step and blanched cheeks, as if she had 
 seen a ghost. 
 
 '' Something's to do ! " cried the girl. 
 
 Miss Price made no immediate reply, but 
 sank into a chair to get her breath. 
 
 *' Oh, nothing ; nothing you know of," she 
 said at last, " nothing that need trouble you ; " 
 and then after a pause, '* nothing that will 
 warn you even, not one of you, silly things. 
 You'd all do just the same to-morrow, though 
 it was to cost you your lives." 
 
 " I'll run and get you a cup of tea," said 
 Sarah, which showed her to be a young woman 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 YOUNG MUSGEAVE. 
 
 of sense. Where lives the woman to whom 
 this cordial, promptly and as it were accident- 
 ally administered, does not do good '? Miss 
 Price gradually recovered herself as she sipped 
 the fragrant tea, and told her story with many 
 sighs and lamentations, yet not without a 
 certain melancholy pleasure. 
 
 " If girls would only think," she said ; " if 
 they would take a warning ; but ne'er a one 
 of you will do that. You think it's grand 
 to marry a gentleman ; but it would be far 
 better to go through with the business like 
 I've done, far better 1 though you'll never 
 think so." 
 
 Sarah was respectfully sympathetic; she 
 shook her head with a look of awe and melan- 
 choly acquiescence ; but nevertheless she did 
 not think so. She was only twenty, and 
 thirty-seven was a good age. To marry a 
 gentleman, even at the risk of dying at thirty- 
 seven like Lily, was better than living till 
 sixty like Miss Price ; but she did not say so. 
 She acquiesced, and even cried over the lost 
 Lily, whom she had never seen, with the easy 
 emotion of a girl. She herself meant sincerely 
 to go through with the business ; but anyhow 
 Sarah was as much excited by the news as 
 heart could desire. Miss Price was very de-
 
 THE OTHER SIDE. 179 
 
 termined that it should not be talked of, that 
 the story should not be spread in the village. 
 " Don't let them say again it came from us," 
 she said ; but however that might be, before 
 the next morning it had spread through the 
 parish, and beyond the parish. Such things 
 get into the atmosphere. What can conceal a 
 secret ? It is the one thing certain to be 
 found out, and which every one is bound to 
 know. There was nothing else talked about 
 in the cottages or when neighbours met, for 
 some days. The men talked of it over their 
 beer, even, in the public-houses. ** She were 
 a bonnie lass," the elder ones said ; and all the 
 girls in the district felt that they individually 
 might have been Lily, and felt sad for her. 
 The children (who could not be hid) were 
 followed by eager looks of curiosity when they 
 appeared, and the resemblance of Lilias to her 
 mother was too remarkable not to strike every 
 one who had known her ; and the entire story 
 which had excited the district so deeply in its 
 time, and which, with its mixture of all the sen- 
 timents which are most interesting to humanity, 
 was almost as exciting still as ever, was retold, 
 a hundred times over, for the benefit of the 
 younger generation. In these lower regions, 
 as was natural, the interest all centred in the 
 
 N 2
 
 180 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 beautiful girl, who, thougli " come of wild 
 folk," and not even an appropriate bride for a 
 well-to-do hopeful of the village, had *^the 
 offer of" two gentlemen, one the young lord, 
 and the other the young squire. Had such 
 fortune ever come before to a lass from the 
 fells ? How she had been courted ! not as the 
 village lovers wooed with a sense of equality, 
 at least, if not perhaps something more ; but 
 John Musgrave and young Lord Stanton had 
 thought nobody in the world like her. And 
 the young lord, poor fellow I had even broken 
 his vord for her, a sin which was but a glory 
 the more to Lily in the eyes of the village 
 critics — however bitterly it might have been 
 condemned had his forsaken bride been a 
 village maiden too. That this rivalry should 
 have gone the length of blood, all for Lily's 
 sweet looks, was a thing the middle-aged 
 narrators shook their heads over with many a 
 moral, "You see what the like of that comes 
 to, lasses," they said. But the lasses only 
 put their heads closer, and felt their hearts 
 beat higher. To be fought for, to be died for ! 
 It was terrible, no doubt, but glorious. ''Such 
 things never happen nowadays" they said to 
 themselves with a sigh. 
 
 And the news did not stop down below in
 
 THE OTHER SIDE. 181 
 
 the plain, but mounted with the ^inds and 
 the clouds, and reached lone places in the fells, 
 where it raised a wilder excitement still — at 
 least in one melancholy and solitary place.
 
 CHAPTEE XL 
 
 AN afternoon's WORK. 
 
 *' You must not cry, Nello ; for one thing 
 you are too big to cry ; or if you are not too 
 big you are too old. You are eight — past ! 
 and then the old gentleman downstairs is 
 such a funny, funny old man, that he will eat 
 us, Nello, if we make a noise." 
 
 ''I dont believe you/' said the little boy, 
 whom England had much improved in strength. 
 '' Old men do not eat children," but he drew 
 back a little, and stopped crying all the same. 
 
 "We do not know no-ting about old men 
 m England," said Lilias — the th was still a 
 difficulty to her ; and they both pronounced 
 their rs in a way which was unfamiliar to 
 English ears, thouo^h the letter exists and 
 retains its natural sound in the north country. 
 ** They are very very strange ; they sit in a 
 chair all day, like the wild beasts. I go to 
 the door and peep in. He has no cap on his
 
 A]s afternoon's work. 183 
 
 head like Don Pepe, but a bare place here, 
 where the cap should be, and white hair. 
 And he never moves nor speaks. Sometimes 
 I think he will be cut out of wood ; and then 
 all at once he rises up, — and me, I run away." 
 
 " Are you not afraid, Lilias '? I should be 
 frightened," said the little boy, looking at her 
 with large wondering eyes. 
 
 " That is because you are only eight, but 
 I am twelve, and one is never frightened after 
 twelve. I run away, and it makes me beat 
 and thump here,'' Lilias put her hand to her 
 heart to indicate the place, " and I like it." 
 
 " Yes," said the little brother, '' when you 
 run it makes that beat ; but I do not 
 like it." 
 
 " Ah, you are a baby," said Lilias. She 
 stood with her dark hair shaken back, and 
 her eyes shining, an image of visionary daring. 
 Nothing could be more unlike than these two 
 children. The boy had all the features of his 
 race, blue eyes, fair hair, with a touch of gold 
 m it, a fair complexion, browned and reddened, 
 indeed, with his long journey and the warm 
 sun he had been used to, but already changing 
 into the pink and white of English childhood. 
 But there were none of the Mus^rave features 
 in Lilias. Her dark eyes, dancing with life
 
 184 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 and energy, her warm colour, clear brown 
 with an underlying rose tint, and a downy 
 bloomy surface which softened every outline, 
 and her crisp, yet shining dark hair, all be- 
 longed, not only to a different species, but 
 to a different type of race. The Musgraves 
 were robust and strong, but their strength 
 was not of this buoyant kind. The cloud of 
 anxiety which had been about her on her first 
 appearance, that mystery of doubt with which 
 a little human creature regards the strange 
 and novel, in whatever form, not knowing if 
 harm or good may be coming, had floated 
 away, and Lilias had already taken back her 
 natural character. She was at home in the 
 house, every room of it, though she knew that 
 she was hidden and thrust into corners, on 
 account of " the old gentleman downstairs." 
 This did not depress or trouble her, but felt 
 like a joke, a mystification and masquerading 
 such as is dear to childhood. She threw 
 herself into the spirit of it with enjoyment, 
 instead of brooding over it with melancholy 
 consciousness, which was what Mary, forget- 
 ting., childhood, as all grown people do, had 
 ^ared. 
 
 The children were in the hall, which had 
 now grown so familiar to them that they
 
 AN afternoon's WORK. 185 
 
 could not understand how they had ever 
 feared it. It was one of those exceptional 
 days which occur now and then in the winter 
 before the turn of the year. The whole world 
 was full of sunshine. There was not a cloud 
 in the sky, and the great green hill in front 
 of them rose up in dazzling clearness of relief, 
 like a visible way of ascent into heaven. There 
 was not a breath stirring ; the trees, without 
 a leaf upon them, printed themselves against 
 the blue of the sky and the green of the hill, 
 in minute perfection of branch and twig, like 
 a photograph. The lake was as still and as 
 blue as the sky — everything lay in the sunshine 
 charmed and stilled, hanging motionless as it 
 were between earth and heaven. The sense 
 that it was mid-winter, the natural season of 
 storms, seemed to have got into the air, which 
 wondered over its own stillness, and into the 
 skies, which excelled themselves in lightness 
 and soft blueness, snatching this moment of 
 delight with a fearful joy. Earth took that 
 ecstasy as one who was well aware that she 
 could not answer for the morrow. The great 
 doorway of the hall stood wide open; it. wa§ 
 after mid-day, and the sun streamed in, 
 having got to the west so much earlier than 
 in summer. Lilias and her little brother,
 
 186 YOUNG MUSGEAVE. 
 
 children of the sue, were planted in the midst 
 of it, enjoying it with unconscious exhilara- 
 tion. Martuccia sat in the open doorway, 
 basking in it, knitting ; a tranquil, almost 
 motionless figure, with that faculty of repose 
 which is no doubt awarded to nurses in com- 
 pensation for the endless calls upon their 
 activity. She had put a little tartan shawl — 
 congenial garment — upon her fine shoulders, 
 and, with her silver pins and glowing black 
 hair all whitened by the sunshine, sat per- 
 fectly motionless except for the little rustle 
 of her hands and click of her knitting-needles. 
 It seemed immaterial whether it might be 
 years or moments that the robust and comely 
 watcher should hold that peaceful guardian 
 place. She was paying no attention to the 
 children, yet the lightest appeal, a querulous 
 exclamation, a longer pause than usual, any- 
 thing or nothing, would have brought her to 
 her nurselings. It was the repose of the 
 mother, who sees everything and feels every- 
 thing, even when she does not see : and the 
 additional security which her presence brought 
 to them, though she sat apart and had nothing 
 to do with their talk or their play, the strong 
 support of the background which she made, 
 it would be hard to tell in words. They had
 
 AS AFTERXOON'S WORK. 187 
 
 been playing in the spacious place, all ligiited 
 and warmed through and through with sun- 
 shine. Miss ^lusgrave had not yet made her 
 appearance ; either she had less time to spend 
 in her favourite resort, or the fact that it had 
 been appropriated to the children, as specially 
 suitable in its size and separateness for their 
 enjoyment, had made her relinquish its use. 
 The great bay window in the recess gave back 
 a reflected lis^ht from the shininor of the lake, 
 which added a colder tone to the prevailing 
 brightness ; and in the old fireplace there 
 burned a smouldering fire, half coals half 
 wood. Every feature of the place had grown 
 familiar to the two little things who were 
 once so alarmed by its dark corners — so 
 familiar that they could not understand how 
 they had ever been afraid. The kind old 
 spacious silent hall sheltered them with a 
 large passive protection not unlike that of 
 Martuccia herself. 
 
 But the afternoon languor had stolen upon 
 the boy and girl, notwithstanding the bright- 
 ness. They had come to a pause in their 
 round of amusement, and though half-tired, 
 were yet looking about with all their quick 
 senses for some new delight. A little scuffle, 
 a little quarrel and crying fit on Xello's part.
 
 188 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 which had been put a stop to by the warning 
 of Lilias already recorded, had left them free 
 for a new start, but not with the old plays, 
 which were worn out for the moment. They 
 made an unconscious pause, and looked about 
 them to find some novelty ; and both pounced 
 upon one at the same moment with a burst 
 of sudden and unlooked-for rapture. A great 
 broad sheet of something white lay stretched 
 out on Mary's table, in company with an open 
 colour-box and brushes — a sight too tempting 
 to be resisted by any child, especially after 
 the exhaustion of a long day's play. It was 
 wonderful that they had overlooked it so long. 
 They caught sight of it simultaneously now, 
 and the result was a sudden rush of eager 
 curiosity. The boy got first to the goal ; 
 perhaps he had been by a second of time the 
 first to start. He grasped one side of the 
 white sheet with his hot little hand, and 
 climbing into the chair which stood before it, 
 threw himself upon the new wonder. " It 
 is Mary's," said Lilias, making a feeble eff'ort 
 to hold him back ; but her own curiosity was 
 much stronger than her sense of duty to 
 Mary, who allowed them to see everything 
 and share everything she had. They both 
 leant over the table breathless, the mysterious
 
 AN AFTERNOOX'S WORK. 189 
 
 whiteness crackling beneath their hands. It 
 was a sheet of dazzling white vellum, orna- 
 mented with what they considered beautiful 
 pictures, a puzzling, yet a tempting sight to 
 the children. It was nothing less than a 
 genealogical tree, their own pedigree, which 
 Miss Musgrave, skilled in such works, was 
 preparing for her father, ornamented with 
 emblazoned coats of arms, some of them 
 unfinished and inviting completion with a 
 seductive force which made the children's 
 hearts beat. 
 
 " What is it '? " said Nello, in a tone 
 of awe. 
 
 *' I know," said Lilias, confidently; ''it is 
 a copy. You have had no education, you 
 don't know what a copy is : but me, I have 
 done them, though never any so pretty as 
 this. Mary is a grown-up lady, old, not like 
 us ; it must be Mary's copy. You should not 
 touch it, you are too little." 
 
 " I will try," cried Nello, with his eyes upon 
 the brushes. Already he had rubbed against 
 something not yet dry, and had smudged the 
 colour, to the horror of his sister. He had 
 both his elbows upon it and the greater part 
 of his small person. 
 
 '' Oh, what have you done, you naughty
 
 190 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 boy ! " cried Lilias ; " you cannot do it. Let 
 me!" 
 
 ''Yes, I will do it, I will do it!" cried 
 Nello, seizing the crackling vellum and dash- 
 ing at it with a brush full of colour. Lilias 
 had to stand and look on, sorest of miseries, 
 while her little brother performed badly what 
 she felt she could have done well. There was 
 a large shield in the centre, upon which the 
 cherished " augmentation," the chief ornament 
 of the Musgrave arms, was slightly drawn. 
 Gules on a shield argent, it ought to have 
 been — Nello made a blurred dash of bright 
 blue, surrounded by a sea of red. " How it 
 is pretty ! " he cried, in his half-foreign speech, 
 with a crow of triumph. Colour upon colour ! 
 and such colour ! the sight would have driven 
 Mr. Musgrave wild. 
 
 Lilias uttered a cry of horror ; but the work 
 of destruction was very captivating. Close to 
 the vellum was the original draught of the 
 genealogical tree, from which Mary had been 
 copying. Lilias took possession of this, and 
 carried it awa}^ to the table in the recess. 
 She meant only to look at it, but the tempta- 
 tion was too much for her. At the bottom 
 of the page an escutcheon void of all colour 
 gradually caught her eye, a little white space
 
 AX AFTERNOONS WORK. 191 
 
 Avhicli might be made, she thought, to re- 
 semble the others with great advantage to the 
 whole. That this came opposite to the name 
 of John Mnsgrave was nothing to the child, 
 but the sight of it TVTought her by degrees 
 into a sort of creative frenzy. She would not 
 spoil it as Nello was doing, but to complete 
 what was wanting could be no harm. Lilias 
 took a brush and filled it with fine broad 
 vermilion, a colour about which there could 
 be no mistake, and painted the vacant shield 
 a strong decided gules, safe from any accident. 
 The outline was not very firm, and there were 
 overflomngs and runs of colour outside, but 
 at all events the hue was undeniable. She 
 was standing looking at it with a satisfied yet 
 agitated mind, with the brush still in her 
 hand, when her elbow was grasped by some 
 one behind and a hand laid on her shoulder. 
 In the start she gave, the child's arm made 
 a nervous jerk of the brush over the paper, 
 and ran a tremulous line of red over some 
 half-dozen of the kindred names. " Mary ! " 
 she cried, with a sudden perception of wrong- 
 doing. But Lilias did not weep or excuse 
 herself. She got quite pale, with a red spot 
 on each cheek, and stood, not even dropping 
 the brush, looking up at her judge, with the
 
 192 YOUNG MUSGKAVE. 
 
 corners of her moutli suddenly turned down- 
 wards, and a gleam of awakened understanding 
 in her alarmed eyes. 
 
 *' Lilias I I thought I could trust you ; what 
 have you been doing?" cried Mary. '*And 
 Nello ? " she added, looking round with dis- 
 may at the more important work. Nello had 
 already been roused to that instinctive sense 
 of harm which comes with the arrival of an 
 aggrieved person. But he did not face his 
 victim as Lilias did. He threw down his 
 streaming pencil on the vellum, got down 
 from his chair in the twinkling of an eye, 
 and fled to take shelter with Martuccia, who, 
 ever ready to defend, and yet unaware who 
 was wrong, put an arm round him at once 
 and faced Miss Musgrave with prompt de- 
 fiance. 
 
 '' Oh Mary ! " cried Lilias, trembling, '' Nello 
 did not m.ean it. He is so little. Nello did 
 not know." 
 
 Mary was not so angelically sweet as to be 
 indifferent to the damage done, but she had 
 not the freedom of reproof which people 
 exercise with children familiar to them. The 
 little meddlers were still strangers. So she 
 restrained herself and said nothing. She 
 went to the parchment and began to sponge 
 
 I
 
 AN afternoon's WORK. 193 
 
 off the still wet colour. Nello kept in his 
 refuge regarding her from afar, ready to bolt 
 behind Martuceia if she made any hostile 
 advances and hide himself in his nurse's skirt. 
 But Lilias followed Miss ]\Iusgrave closely as 
 her shadow. She watched the sponging with 
 the gravest anxious attention. She kept her- 
 self close against Mary's dress, touching it, 
 and put herself in Mary's way, and interposed 
 her wistful face, now quite pale and troubled, 
 between the vellum and Mary's eyes. At last 
 her aunt said, perhaps somewhat peevishly, 
 " What do you want, child ? You have done 
 harm enough for one morning. Pray go out 
 of my way." 
 
 ** Have we done much harm ? " said Lilias, 
 with strained and anxious eyes. 
 
 " Yes ; you have spoiled my week's work, 
 you mischievous children," said Mary, melting 
 a little. ''I shall have to do it over again. 
 I did not expect this, Lilias, from you." 
 
 "It was very, very bad of me," said the 
 child, with perfect seriousness, her eyes slowly 
 filling ; " but Nello is such a little fellow — he 
 did not know ^" 
 
 " Then why did you do it, Lilias ? " 
 
 The child looked up searchingly into her 
 face. '' I think it must have been the devil," 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 194 YOUNG MUSGEAVE. 
 
 she said, with portentous gravity, drawing a 
 heavy sigh. 
 
 An impulse of laughter came to Miss Mus- 
 grave in the midst of her annoyance ; but 
 partly she restrained it for high moral reasons, 
 and partly she was still too much annoyed to 
 give way to laughter. " What do you know 
 about — the devil 1 " she said. *' I think it was 
 your own little mischievous hands, and your 
 curiosity." 
 
 *' Oh, I know a great deal about him. Mr. 
 Pennithorne told us on Sunday ; and Martuccia 
 must be of the same religion as Mr. Pen, for 
 she worships him too," said Lilias, aware of 
 the advantages of digression when things were 
 so serious as they were now. 
 
 " Worships him, Lilias ! You must not use 
 such words." 
 
 "They are always thinking of him, and they 
 say he does everything. They are very, very 
 afraid of him," said Lilias seriously, " and so 
 am I — he can do whatever he pleases ; but I 
 cannot think he is as strong as God." 
 
 "And it was he who made you spoil my 
 
 papers ? " 
 
 " Oh, Mary, not Nello — only me. Nello is 
 such a little fellow, he did not mean it — he 
 did not know what he was doing "
 
 AX afteknoon's woek. 195 
 
 "And did you?" 
 
 Lilias pressed very close against Mary's side. 
 Her heart was beating loudly in her brave little 
 bosom. Her sense of crime had not been 
 lightened by the postponement of the punish- 
 ment which must, she thought, be coming. 
 But it was not in her to fly as her brother had 
 done. She took a furtive hold of Mary's 
 gown. No hope of any forgiveness was in her 
 serious soul ; yet to whom could she cling in 
 earth and heaven but only to this inflictor of 
 stern justice? She kept her eyes fixed on Mary's 
 face, that she might see the fearful doom which 
 was coming — that would always be a help in 
 bearing it — and kept close to her, pressing 
 against her. '' Aie-tu peur de moi f cache-toi 
 dans mes hras " — this was the child's impulse 
 in her penitence and terror. 
 
 Mary forgot her vellum and its stains. She 
 put her arm round the child, whose eyes 
 opened a little wider thinking the judgment 
 was coming, but who never shrank. " You 
 will not do it again," she said. Lilias could 
 not understand that it was over. She bent 
 back a little the better to see Mary's face. 
 
 " WiU you not punish me ? " said the child. 
 Between the fear and the wonder she was 
 breathless. This was the most wonderful of all. 
 
 2
 
 196 YOUNa MUSGRAVE. 
 
 "No, dear — you will never do it again." 
 " Nor Nello ? " She put her arms round 
 Mary's arm, with that soft clinging which is 
 irresistible in a child, and leant her head 
 against her, and began to sob as if her heart 
 would break. Then Nello, seeing the worst 
 was over, came out from his shelter, venturing 
 a few steps, then a few more. Forgiveness did 
 not touch him, as punishment would have 
 done. He came slowly, ready to turn and fly 
 at any hostile demonstration. Nello had, as it 
 were, an army at his back, his shijDs to take 
 refuge in ; but still it was with great caution 
 that he made his advance. This little exhibi- 
 tion of character, however, soon melted in a 
 more agreeable sentiment. As soon as the 
 contingency was over, both the children, re- 
 stored to a tremulous ease of mind, were seized 
 with a common impulse of curiosity and in- 
 terest. They forgot their own culpability in 
 watching the obliteration of the damage they 
 had done. Fortunately the discovery had been 
 made in time, and the process of reparation, if 
 not so exciting, was almost as interesting to 
 them as the delicious frenzy of mischief in 
 which they had wrought this harm. They 
 pressed upon Mary as she worked, one at each 
 side. When the last trace had disappeared
 
 AN afternoon's WORK. 197 
 
 they gave a cry of joy. How clever Mary 
 was ! She could do everything. As for Nello, 
 he was unmoved morally by the spectacle ; it 
 had been amusing all through, all but the 
 moment of fear, which fortunately came to 
 nothing. But Lilias never forgot this scene, 
 and still less did Mary forget it, whose heart 
 seemed to be learning a hundred sweet and 
 subtle lessons, and to whom the child, even in 
 her naughtiness, was like an angel, leading her 
 to depths unsounded, nay, unthought of till 
 now. 
 
 But when they had gone away, joyous as 
 usual, to their *' tea," which was a meal much 
 scorned and wondered at by Martuccia, Mary 
 went to the other table where lay the draught 
 of the more important document upon which 
 Lilias had been employed when she came into 
 the hall. At this she smiled and shuddered, 
 with a curious mixture of feelings. The little 
 girl's mischief had taken a symbolical form. 
 The blank shield which represented her mother 
 was blurred and blood-red, and a stroke like 
 blood ran across her father's name, and that of 
 her father's father, from the little pool of red 
 in the daubed shield. Lilias knew nothing of 
 the lives from which her little life had sprung. 
 It was accident, caprice, a child's fancy for
 
 198 YOUNG MUSGKAVE. 
 
 bright colour — yet it made Mary shudder even 
 when she smiled. 
 
 Another incident, which she paid less atten- 
 tion to — indeed, did not think of at all — 
 happened this same evening. She went to the 
 door where Martuccia had been seated, her 
 own favourite place, though now in great part 
 given up to the children and their attendant, 
 to look out upon the evening before she left 
 the hall. When she had looked at the sky 
 where the early wintry sunset was just over, 
 leaving deep gorgeous tints of red and yellow 
 upon a blue which was deepened by coming 
 frost, Mary's look came back, carelessly enough, 
 by the lower level of the long brown road. 
 And it was with a momentary start that she 
 found herself almost face to face with an un- 
 thought-of spectator, who was standing at the 
 foot of the little slope, gazing intently up to 
 the hall door. Mary was puzzled to see that 
 though the woman's appearance was like that 
 of many of the older women about, she did 
 not know her ; and at the same time she was 
 equally perplexed by a consciousness that the 
 face looking up at her thus eagerly was not 
 that of a stranger. She could not associate it 
 with any name, yet she seemed acquainted 
 with the features, which were fine, and of an
 
 AN afternoon's WORK. 199 
 
 unusual cast. The stranger's look was so in- 
 tense that it struck ]Miss Musgrave like an 
 audible petition. '' Did you want an}i:hing ? " 
 she said with natural courtesy, making a step 
 towards her. The woman turned sharp round 
 on her heels with a hasty wave of her hand, 
 and went hurriedly away towards the village 
 without further reply. Who could she be ? 
 Mary asked herself lightly, and went in and 
 forgot all about her. The people are inde- 
 pendent in their ways, and not grateful for a 
 casual address, in the north.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 VISITORS. 
 
 '' My Lord Stanton, ma'am," said Eastwood, 
 with a certain expansion in the throat and 
 fulness of voice, like that swell and gurgle 
 which accompanies in a bird the fullest tide 
 of song. "Who has not heard that roll in the 
 voice of the man who mouths a title like a 
 succulent morsel ? A butler who loves his 
 family, and who has the honour of announcing 
 to them the visit of the greatest potentate 
 about, is a happy man. And this was what 
 Eastwood felt, as he uttered with a nightingale 
 trill and swell of satisfaction this honoured 
 name. 
 
 " Lord — whom ? " Mary rose to her 
 
 feet so much startled that she did not know 
 what she said. 
 
 " Lord Stanton, ma'am," the butler repeated. 
 *' He asked if you would receive him. He 
 said as he would not come in till I asked 
 would you receive him, ma'am. I said you
 
 VISITORS. 201 
 
 was at home, and not engaged — but he 
 said " 
 
 " Lord Stanton ! " The name seemed to 
 hurt her, and a kind of dull fear rose in 
 Mary's mind. She knew, of course, who it 
 was ; the young successor of the man who, 
 with intention or not, her brother had brought 
 to his death. She knew well enough about 
 Geoff. It. had not been possible to hear the 
 name at any time without interest, and in this 
 way Mary had learned as much as strangers 
 knew of the young lord. But what could he 
 want here ? A subdued panic seized her. She 
 did not know what he could do, or if he could 
 do anything ; but that he should come merely 
 as a friend did not seem probable. And how 
 then had he come '? She made a tremulous 
 pause before she said, " Let him come in, East- 
 wood." Eastwood thought Miss Musgrave was 
 very properly impressed by the name of the 
 young lord. 
 
 Geoff, for his part, waited outside, anxious 
 as to how he was to be received, and very 
 desirous in his boyish generosity to make a 
 good impression. He had driven to Penning- 
 hame, a long way, and his horses, drawn up at 
 the door, made a great show, when the children 
 passed, stealing round the corner like little
 
 202 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 intruders, but so mucli attracted by this sight, 
 tbat they almost forgot their orders never to 
 approach the hall door. Geoff himself was 
 standing at some distance from his phaeton, 
 waiting for his answer ; but even Lilias was 
 old enough to know that to address commend- 
 atory remarks and friendly overtures to a horse 
 or a dog is more easy and natural than to 
 address a man. She said, " Oh, look, Nello, 
 what lovely horses ! '' but only ventured to 
 look up shyly into the friendly face of their 
 owner, though she was not without an impres- 
 sion that he, too, was nice, and that he might 
 give his friends a drive perhaps, with the 
 lovely horses, a service which was not in the 
 power of the animals themselves. 
 
 Geoff went up to them, holding out his 
 hand. "You are the little Musgraves, I 
 suppose '? " he said. 
 
 The boy hung back, as usual, hanging by 
 Martuccia s skirts. " Yes," said Lilias, looking 
 at him intently, as she always did ; and she 
 added at once, "This is Nello," and did her 
 best to put her small brother in the foreground, 
 though he resisted, holding back and close to 
 his protector. 
 
 "Is he shy, or is he frightened ? He need 
 not be frightened of me," said Geoff, uncon-
 
 VISITORS. 203 
 
 sciously conscious of the facts between them 
 which might have caused the child's timidity 
 had he been old enough to know. " Nello is 
 an odd name for a boy." 
 
 " Because you do not know w^here he came 
 from/' said Lilias quickly. " Nello is born in 
 Florence. Here you will call him John. It is 
 not so pretty. And me, I am born in France," 
 she continued ; " but we are English children. 
 That does not make any difference." 
 
 " Don't you think so 1 " said simple Geoff. 
 The little woman of twelve who thus fixed 
 him with her great beautiful eyes, made him 
 feel a boy in comparison with her mature 
 childhood. She never relaxed in her watchful 
 look. This was a habit Lilias had got, a habit 
 born of helplessness, and of the sense of 
 responsibility for her brother w^hich was so 
 strong in her mind. That intent, half- suspi- 
 cious ^dgilance, as of one fully aware that he 
 might mean harm, and quick to note the 
 approach of danger, disconcerted Geoff, who 
 meant nothing but good. " I know two little 
 girls," he said, trying to be conciliatory, '^who 
 would like very much to know you." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Lilias, melting a little, but 
 shaking her head. " I have to take care of 
 Nello ; but if they would come here, and
 
 204 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 would not mind Nello," she added, "perhaps 
 I might play with them. I could ask — 
 Mary " 
 
 "Who is— Mary?" 
 
 " Oh ! don't you know ? If you do not 
 know Mary we should not talk to you — we 
 only ought to talk to friends — and besides, you 
 have no right to call her Mary if you do not 
 know her," said Lilias. She turned back to 
 say this after she had gone a few steps away 
 from him, following Nello, who, tired of the 
 conversation, had gone on with his guardian to 
 the Chase. 
 
 " That is quite true, and I beg your pardon," 
 said Geoff; "it must be Miss Musgrave you 
 mean." 
 
 Lilias nodded approving. She began to 
 take an interest in this big boy. He was not 
 strictly handsome, but had a bright, attractive 
 countenance, and the child scarcely ever saw 
 any male creature except Eastwood and Mr. 
 Pen. " Have you come to see her ? " she asked 
 wistfully ; " are you going to be a — friend ? '' 
 
 " Yes," said Geoff with a little emotion, " if 
 she will let me. I am waiting to know. And 
 tell me your name 1 " he added, with a slight 
 tremor in his voice, for he was young and easily 
 touched. " I will always be a friend to you."
 
 VISITORS. 205 
 
 " I am Lilias," she said shyly, giving him 
 her hand, for which he had held out his. And 
 this was how Eastwood found them when he 
 came bustling out to inform my lord that 
 Miss Musgrave would see his lordship, if he 
 would be good enough to step this way. East- 
 wood was much " struck '' to see his lordship 
 holding "little Miss's'' hand. It raised little 
 Miss in the butler's opinion. "If she had 
 been a bit older, now ! " he said to himself. 
 Geoff was half reluctant to leave this little 
 new acquaintance for the audience which he 
 had come here expressly to ask. Mary was 
 not likely to be so easily conciliated as little 
 Lilias. And being a lord did not make him 
 less shy. He waved his hand and took oif his 
 hat with a little sigh, as he followed Eastwood 
 into the house ; and Lilias, for her part, 
 followed Nello slowly, with various thoughts 
 in her small head. These it must be allowed 
 were chiefly about the little girls who wanted 
 to make friends ^'ith her — and of whom her 
 lonely imagination made ecstatic pictures — 
 and of the lovely horses who could spin her 
 away over the broad country, if that big boy 
 would let them. But Lilias did not think very 
 much about the big boy himself 
 
 Geoff went in blushinor and tremulous to
 
 206 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 Miss Musgrave's drawing-room. It was not a 
 place so suitable to Mary as her favourite hall, 
 being dark and somewhat low, not worthy 
 either of her or of Penninghame Castle. She 
 was standing, waiting to receive him, and after 
 the bow with which he greeted her, Geoff did 
 not know what to say to disclose his object. 
 His object itself was vague, and he had no 
 previous knowledge of her, as his cousin Mary 
 had, to warrant him in addressing her. She 
 offered him a chair, and she sat down opposite 
 him ; and then there began an embarrassing 
 pause which she would not, and which he did 
 not seem able to, break. At last, faltering 
 and stammering — 
 
 "I came, Miss Musgrave," he began, "to 
 say — I came to tell you — I came to ask — 
 Circumstances, '* cried Geoff, impatient of his 
 own incapacity, " seem to have made our 
 families enemies. I don't know why they 
 should have done so." 
 
 " If the story is true, Lord Stanton, it is easy 
 enough to see how they should have done so. 
 My brother was concerned, they say, in your 
 brother's death." 
 
 "No one could prove that he did it. Miss 
 Musgrave." 
 
 "He did not do it with intention, I am
 
 VISITORS. 207 
 
 STire," she said. "But so much is true. It 
 was done, and how could we be friends after ? 
 We should have been angels — you to pardon 
 the loss you had sustained, we to pardon the 
 T\Tong we had done.'' 
 
 There was a gleam of agitation and pain in 
 her eyes which might well have been taken for 
 anger. The young man was discouraged. 
 
 " May I not say anything, then ? " he said, 
 wistfully. " My cousin Mary, Lady Stanton, 
 whom you know, told me — but if you are set 
 against us too, what need to say anything ? I 
 had hoped indeed, that you " 
 
 '' What did you hope about me ? I should 
 be glad of any approach. I grieved for your 
 brother as if he had been mine. Oh more, I 
 think, more ! if it had been poor John who 
 had died " 
 
 "It would have been better,'' said the 
 young man. '' Yes, yes. Miss Musgrave, that 
 is what I feel; Walter had the best of it. 
 Your brother has been more than killed. But 
 I came to say, that so far as we are concerned, 
 there need not be any more misery. Let him 
 come home. Miss Musgrave, let him come 
 home ! We none of us can tell now how 
 Walter died." 
 
 Mary was moved beyond the power of
 
 208 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 words. She got up hastily and took his 
 hand, and pressed it between her own. 
 
 *' Thank you, I shall always thank you ! " 
 she cried, "whether he comes home or not. 
 Oh, my dear boy, who are you that come with 
 mercy on your lips ? You are not like the 
 rest of us ! " 
 
 Mary was thinking of others, more near, 
 whose wrongs were not as the Stantons', but 
 whom nothing could induce to forgive.- 
 
 "I am my mother's son,*' said Geoff, his 
 eyes brighter than usual, with a smile lighting 
 up the moisture in them. What Mary said 
 seemed a tribute to his mother, and this made 
 him glad. " She does not know, but she 
 would say so. Let him come home. I heard 
 of the children, and that your brother " 
 
 "Yes," said Miss Musgrave, "from Mary. 
 She told you. She always took an interest 
 in him. Do you know," she added in a low 
 voice of horror, "that there is a verdict 
 against him, a coroner's verdict of murder?" 
 • She shuddered at the word as she said it, 
 and so did he. 
 
 " But not a just one. No jury would say it 
 was — that : not now " 
 
 " Heaven knows what a jury would say. 
 It is all half forgotten now ; and as for the
 
 VISITORS. 209 
 
 dates, and all those trifles that tell in a trial, 
 who knows anything about them ? Even I — 
 could I swear to the hour my brother went 
 out that morning ? I could once, and did, 
 and it is all written down. But I don't seem 
 sure of anything now, not that there ever was 
 a Walter Stanton, or that I had a brother 
 John ; and I am one of the interested ; the 
 people who were not specially interested, do 
 you think they would have better memories ? 
 Ah, no ; and he fled ; God help him ! I don't 
 know why he did it. That was against him ; 
 though I don't think any one believes that 
 John Musgrave did that, now." 
 
 " I am sure they do not, and that is why 
 I came. Let him come home. Miss Musgrave. 
 He would not have been convicted had he 
 been tried. I have been reading it all up, 
 and I have taken advice. He would be 
 cleared. And if there is risk in it, we would 
 all stand by him. I would stand by him," 
 said the young man with a generous flush of 
 resolution, " so much as I am worth. I 
 want you to tell him so. Tell him to come 
 home." 
 
 Mary shook her head. How long she had 
 been calm about this terrible domestic tragedy, 
 and how it all rose upon her now ! She got 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 210 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 up, in her agitation, and walked about the 
 room. 
 
 " How could he risk it — how could he risk 
 it — with that sentence against him ? " she 
 said ; then after a while she came back to 
 her seat, and looked at Geoff piteously with 
 a heartrending look in her eyes. She was 
 past crying, which would have relieved her. 
 "That is not all," she said in a low voice. 
 '* Alas, alas ! if all was well, and he might 
 come home when he pleased, it would matter 
 less. I know nothing about him. Lord Stanton. 
 I don't know my brother any longer, nor where 
 he is, nor how he is living now." 
 
 "But his children have just come to 
 you ! " 
 
 " Yes, out of the unknown. No one knows 
 anything about him ; and suddenly they came 
 out of the darkness, as I tell you. That is 
 where he is : out in the world, in the dark, in 
 the unknown " 
 
 " There are ways of penetrating the un- 
 known," said Geoff, cheerfully. " There are 
 advertisements ; everybody sees the Times 
 now-a-days. It goes all over the world. 
 Wherever there is an Englishman he sees it 
 somehow. Let us advertise." 
 
 " He would not see it."
 
 VISITORS. 211 
 
 Then a detective — let us send some 
 
 one- 
 
 " Oh no, no, no, — not that. I could not bear 
 that. We must let him alone till he comes 
 of his own accord. Let well alone," said 
 Mary, in her panic. She scarcely knew what 
 she said. 
 
 " Well ! do you call it well. Miss Musgrave, 
 that your brother should be away from his 
 home, from everything he loves — his country 
 lost to him, his position, aU his friends ? " 
 
 " He has not been separated from every- 
 thing he loves ; he had wife and children , 
 does a man care for anything else ? What 
 was this old house to him, and — us — in com- 
 parison ? His wife is dead — that was God's 
 doing ; and his children have come home — 
 that is his own choice. I say, let weU alone. 
 Lord Stanton; when he wishes it he will — 
 come — ^back ; but not to those he loves," Mary 
 said in a low tone. 
 
 Geoff could not fathom her meaning, it 
 was beyond him. The accusation under 
 which John Musgrave lay was bad enough. 
 It was cowardly of him (he thought) to fly 
 and leave this stigma, uncontested, upon his 
 own name; but that there should be any 
 further mystery did not seem possible to the
 
 212 YOUNG MUSGKAVE. 
 
 young man. Perliaps there was something 
 wrong with the family, some incipient in- 
 sanity, monomania, eccentricity. He could 
 not understand it. But at least he had 
 shown his goodwill, if no more. 
 
 " I must not dictate to you, Miss Mus- 
 grave," he said ; " you know best," and he 
 rose to go away, but stood hesitating, re- 
 luctant to consent to the failure of his 
 generous mission. " If I can be of any use, 
 at any time," he added, blushing and falter- 
 ing ; *'not that I can do much; but if you 
 should — change your mind — if you should — 
 think " 
 
 She took his hand once more in both of 
 hers. 
 
 *^ I shall always think that you have the 
 kindest and most generous heart : and are a 
 friend — a true friend — to John, and every- 
 body in trouble." 
 
 " I hope so," said the youth, fervently ; 
 ** but that is nothing ; — to you. Miss Mus- 
 grave, if I can ever be of any use." 
 
 " I will ask you, if it ever can be," she said. 
 " I will not forget." 
 
 He kept hold of her hands when she loosed 
 them, and with a confused laugh and change 
 of tone, asked " About the children ? I met
 
 VISITORS. 213 
 
 them just now. Might I bring my little 
 cousins, Lady Stanton's children, to see them ] 
 They want to meet." 
 
 "Sir Henry would not like it, though she 
 might. Sir Henry is not like you." 
 
 ** I know ; he is plus royalist que le roi. 
 But the children would. And they don't 
 deny me anything," said Geoff, with a little 
 laugh. 
 
 He scarcely knew why this was — but it was 
 so ; nothing was denied to him ; he was the 
 enfant gate of Elf dale. Miss Musgrave was 
 not, however, quite so complacent. She gave 
 an assent which was cold and unwilling, and 
 which quenched Geoff's genial enthusiasm. 
 He went back to his phaeton quite subdued 
 and silent. "But I will see that little thing 
 again," he said to himself. 
 
 In the meantime, while this conversation 
 had been going on, Lilias had wandered forth 
 alone into the Chase. Martuccia had gone 
 before with Nello, while Lilias talked to the 
 young man ; and now the child followed 
 dreamily, as she was in the habit of doing, 
 her eyes abstracted, her whole being rapt in 
 a separate consciousness, which surrounded 
 her like an atmosphere of her own. She 
 knew vaguely that the little brother and his
 
 214 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 nurse were in front of her ; but the watchful- 
 ness of Lilias had relaxed, and she was not 
 thinking of Nello. He was safe ; here was 
 no one who could interfere with him. She 
 had taken up a branch of a tree which lay 
 in her path and had caught her childish 
 fancy, and with this she went on, using it 
 like a pilgrim's staff, and saying a kind of 
 low chant, without words, to herself, to which 
 the rough staff was made to keep time. 
 What was she thinking of 1 everything, no- 
 thing ; thought indeed was not necessary to 
 the fresh soul in that subdued elation and 
 speechless gladness. There was a vague sense 
 in her mind of the brisk air, the sunshine, 
 the blue sky, the floating clouds, all in one ; 
 but had the clouds been low upon the trees* 
 and the air all damp instead of all exhilara- 
 tion, it would have made little difference to 
 Lilias. Her spring of unconscious blessedness 
 was within herself. Her song was not music 
 nor her movements harmony in any way that 
 could be accounted for by rule ; and indeed 
 the low succession of sounds which came from 
 her lips unawares, and to which her little 
 steps and the stroke of the rough stick kept 
 time, was more inartificial than even the 
 twittering of the birds. A small, passive,
 
 VISITORS. 215 
 
 embodied happiness went roaming along the 
 rough, woodland path, with soft-glowing 
 abstracted eyes that saw everything, yet 
 nothing ; with a little abstracted soul, all 
 freshness and gladness, that took note of 
 everything, yet nothing ; a little pilgrim 
 among life's mysteries and wonders, herself 
 the greatest wonder of all, throbbing with a 
 soft consciousness, yet knowing nothing. Thus 
 she went pacing on under the bare trees, and 
 murmured her inarticulate chant, and kept 
 time to it, a poet in being, though not in 
 thought. Not far off the lake splashed softly 
 upon the stones of the beach, and that north 
 country air, which is vocal as the winds of 
 the south, sounded a whole mystery of tones 
 and semi-tones, deep through the fir-trees, 
 shrill through the beeches, low and soft over 
 the copse ; and the brook, half-hidden in the 
 overgreenness of the grass, added its tinkle ; 
 all surrounding the little figure which gave 
 the central point of conscious intelligence to 
 the landscape ; but were all quite unnecessary 
 to Lilias marchinor alonor in her dream to her 
 own music, a something higher than they, a 
 thing full of other and deeper suggestions, the 
 wonder of the world. 
 
 Lilias woke up, however, out of this other
 
 216 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 world, all in a moment, into tlie conscious 
 existence of a lively, brave, fancifully- timid 
 child, when she found herself suddenly con- 
 fronted by a stranger, who did not pass on 
 as strangers usually did, making a mere 
 momentary jar and pause in the visionary 
 atmosphere, but who made a decided pause, 
 and stopped her. A little thrill of fear sprang 
 up in the child's breast, and she would have 
 hurried on, or even run away, but for the 
 pride of honour and courage in her little 
 venturesome spirit which made it impossible 
 to fly. It was an old woman who stood in 
 her path, tall but stooping, dressed in a large 
 grey cloak, the hood of which covered her 
 white thick muslin cap. She was a woman 
 considerably over sixty, with handsome fea- 
 tures and brilliant dark eyes, and, notwith- 
 standing her stooping figure, full of vigour 
 and power. She carried a basket on her arm 
 under her cloak, and had a stick in her hand, 
 and at her neck a red handkerchief just 
 showed, which would have replaced the hood 
 on her cap had it been less cold. Just so the 
 fairy in the fairy-tales appears to the little 
 maiden in the wood, the Cinderella by the 
 kitchen-fire. Lilias was not at all sure that 
 it was not that poetical old woman who looked
 
 VISITORS. 217 
 
 at her with those shining eyes. She made 
 a brief, instantaneous resolution to draw water 
 for her, or pick up sticks, or do anything she 
 might require. 
 
 "Little Miss, you belong to the Castle, 
 don't you now ? and where may you come 
 from ? " was what the problematical fairy said, 
 with a something wet and gleaming in her 
 eyes such as never obscures the sight of 
 fairies. Lilias was overawed by the tone of 
 eager meaning, though she did not under- 
 stand it, in the questioning voice, yet might 
 not have answered but for that feeling that 
 it was unsafe, as much experience had proved, 
 to be less than obsequiously civil to old 
 women "v\dth wands in their hands who could 
 make (if you were so naughty as to give a 
 rude answer) toads and frogs drop from your 
 mouth. 
 
 " Yes," she said, with a little tremble in 
 her clear, childish voice. "We come a very, 
 very long way — over the mountains, and then 
 over the sea." 
 
 " Do you know the name of the place you 
 came from, little Miss ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, I know it very well, we were so 
 often there. It was Bagrni di Lucca. It was 
 a very, very long way. Nello "
 
 218 YOUJ!TG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 But the child paused. Why introduce Nello, 
 who was not visible, to the knowledge of this 
 uncertain person ? who, if she was a fairy, 
 might be a wicked one, or, if she was a 
 woman, might be unkind, for anything Lilias 
 knew. She stopped short nervously, and it 
 was evident that the old woman had not taken 
 any notice of the name. 
 
 " Little Miss, your mamma would be sorry 
 to send you away ? " 
 
 " It was papa," said the little girl, with 
 wondering eyes. *' Poor mamma ; — I was 
 quite little when — it was when Nello was a 
 little, little small baby. Now we have nobody 
 but papa." 
 
 The old woman staggered and almost fell, 
 but supported herself by her stick for a mo- 
 ment, while Lilias uttered a scream, of terror ; 
 then sat down with a groan upon a fallen tree. 
 *' It's nothing new, nothing new," she said to 
 herself; " I felt it long ago," and covered her 
 face with her hands, with once more a heavy 
 OToan. Little Lilias did not know what to 
 do. She had screamed when the old woman 
 staggered, not knowing what was going to 
 happen; but what was she to do now, alone 
 with this strange companion, seated there on 
 the fallen trunk and rocking herself to and fro,
 
 VISITORS. 219 
 
 with her face hidden in her hands '? It did 
 not occur to the child to associate this sudden 
 trouble with the information she had herself 
 given. What could this stranger have to do 
 with her ? And poor mamma had receded far 
 into the background of Lilias's memor}^, not 
 even now an occasion of tears. She did not, 
 however, need to go into this reasoning, but 
 simply supposed that the poor old fairy was 
 ill, or that something had happened to her, 
 and never at all connected effect and cause. 
 She stood for a little time irresolute, then, 
 overcoming her own fears, went up to the 
 sufferer and stroked her compassionately on the 
 shoulder. " Are you ill, old woman ? " she 
 said. 
 
 " Oh, call me Granny — call me Granny, my 
 pretty dear ! " 
 
 Lilias was more puzzled than ever ; but she 
 made up her mind that she would do whatever 
 was asked of her by this disguised personage, 
 who might turn into — anything, in a moment. 
 " Yes, Granny,'' she said, trembling, and still 
 stroking the old woman's shoulder. " I hope 
 you are not ill." 
 
 The answer she made to this was suddenly 
 to clasp her arms round Lilias, who could 
 scarcely suppress a cry of horror. What a
 
 220 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 strange — what a very strange old woman! 
 Fortunately Lilias, bl-ought up in a country 
 where servants are friends, had no feeling 
 of repulsion from the embrace. She was a 
 little frightened, and did not understand 
 it — that was all. The old woman's breast 
 heaved with great sobs ; there could be no 
 doubt that she was very deeply, strongly 
 moved. She was " very sorry about some- 
 thing,*' according to Lilias' simple explanation. 
 She clasped the child close, and kissed her with 
 a tearful face, which left traces of its weeping 
 upon the fresh cheeks. The little girl wiped 
 them off, wondering. How could she tell why 
 this was ? Perhaps it was only to try her if 
 she was the kind of little girl who was uncivil, 
 or not ; but she did not indeed try to account 
 for it. It was not very pleasant, but she put 
 up with it, partly in fear, partly in sympathy, 
 partly because, as we have said, she had no 
 horror of the too near approach of a poor old 
 woman, as an English-bred child might have 
 had. Poor old creature, how sorry she was 
 about something ! though Lilias could not 
 imagine what it was. 
 
 ** God bless you, honeysweet," said the old 
 woman. " You Ve got her dear face, my jewel. 
 It isn't that I didn't know it years and years
 
 VISITORS. 221 
 
 ago. I was told it in my sleep ; I read it in 
 the clouds and on the water. Oh, if you think 
 I wasn^t warned ! But you've got her bonnie 
 face. You'll be a beauty, a darling beauty, 
 like the rest of us. And look you here, little 
 Miss, my jewel. If you see me when the 
 gentry's with you you'll take no notice ; but if 
 you see me by myself you'll give me a kiss and 
 call me Granny. That's fixed between us, 
 honey, and you won't forget 1 Call me Granny 
 again, to give me a little comfort, my pretty 
 dear." 
 
 " Yes, Granny," said the child, trembling. 
 The old woman kissed her again, drying her 
 tears. 
 
 " God bless you, and God bless you ! " she 
 said. " You can't be none the worse of your 
 old Granny's blessing. And mind, if you re 
 with the gentlefolks youll take no notice. 
 Oh, my honeysweet, my darling child ! " 
 
 Lilias looked after her with wonderinof, dis- 
 turbed eyes. What a strange old woman she 
 was ! How strange that she should behave 
 so ! and yet Lilias did not attempt to inquire 
 why. Grown-up people in her experience did 
 a great many strange things. It was of no use 
 trying to fathom what they meant, and this 
 strange old person was only a little more
 
 222 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 strange than the rest, and startling to the calm 
 little being who had grown in the midst of 
 family troubles and mysteries without divining 
 ^ny of them. Strangely enough, the old 
 woman felt equally independent of any neces- 
 sity for explanation. It seemed so clear in 
 her mind that everybody must know the past 
 and understand her claims, whatever they were. 
 She had no more idea of the tranquillity of 
 innocent ignorance in Lilias's mind than the 
 little girl had of the mysteries of her expe- 
 rience. Lilias watched her going away through 
 the high columns of the trees with great won- 
 der yet respect, and it was not till she had 
 disappeared that the little girl went on after 
 Nello. Nello would have been frightened by 
 that curious apparition. He would have cried 
 perhaps, and struggled, and would not have 
 said Granny. Perhaps he would have angered 
 her. What a good thing that Nello had not 
 been here !
 
 PART ly. 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 FAMILY CARES. 
 
 LiLiAS did not say mucli about the adventure 
 in the wood ; nothing at all indeed to Mary or 
 any one in authority ; nor did it dwell in her 
 mind as a thing of much importance. The kind 
 of things that strike a child's mind as won- 
 derful are not always those which would most 
 impress an older person. There were many 
 things at Penninghame very curious and 
 strange to the little girl. The big chimneys 
 of the old house, for instance, the sun-dial in 
 the old garden, and on a lower level the way 
 in which Cook's cap kept on, which seemed to 
 Lilias miraculous, no means of securicg it being 
 visible. She pondered much on these things, 
 trying to arrive at feasible theories in respect 
 to them, but there was no theory required 
 about the other very natural incident. That
 
 224 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 an old woman sliould meet her in the woods, 
 and kiss her, and ask to be called granny, and 
 cry over her, — there was nothing wonderful in 
 that ; and indeed if, as she already suspected, 
 it was no old woman at all, but a fairy, such as 
 those in the story-books, who would probably 
 appear again and set her tasks to do, much more 
 difficult than calling her granny, and end by 
 transforming herself into a beautiful lady — this 
 would still remain quite comprehensible, not 
 by any means unparalleled in the experience 
 of one who had already mastered a great deal 
 of literature treating of such subjects. She was 
 interested but not surprised, for was it not 
 always to a child or children by themselves in 
 a wood that fairies did speak? She told 
 Nello about the meeting, who was not sur- 
 prised any more than she was : for though he 
 was not very fond of reading himself, he had 
 shared all his sister's, having had true histories 
 of fairies read to him almost ever since he 
 could recollect anything. He made some 
 cynical remarks prompted by his manhood, 
 but it was like much manly cynicism, only 
 from the lips, no deeper. " I thought fairies 
 were all dead," he said. 
 
 ^' Oh, Nello ; when you know they are 
 spirits and never die ! they are hundreds and
 
 FAMILY CARES. 22.3 
 
 hundreds of years older than we are, but they 
 never die ; and it is always children that see 
 them. I thought she would tell us to do 
 something " 
 
 *' I would not do something," said Nello ; " 1 
 would say, ' Old woman, do it yourself.' " 
 
 "And do you know what would happen 
 then?'^ said Lilias, severely; "whenever you 
 opened your mouth, a toad or a frog would 
 drop out of it." 
 
 " I should not mind ; how funny it would 
 be ! how the people would be surprised." 
 
 " They would be frightened — fancy ! every 
 word you said ! till all round there would be 
 things creeping and creeping and crawling all 
 over you ; slimy cold things that would make 
 people shiver and shriek. Oh ! " said Lilias, 
 recoiling and putting up her hands, as if to 
 put him away ; " the frogs ! squatting and 
 jumping all over the floor." 
 
 At this lively realization of his problematical 
 punishment, Nello himself grew pale, and ner- 
 vously looked about him. " I would kill her I " 
 he cried, furiously ; " what right would she 
 have to do that to me 1 " 
 
 '' Because you did not obey her, Nello." 
 
 " And why should I obey her ? " cried the 
 boy; " she is not papa, or Martuccia — or Mary." 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 "But we must always do what the fairies 
 tell us," said Lilias ; " not perhaps because 
 they have a right — for certainly it is different 
 with papa — but because they would hurt us if 
 we didn't ; and then if you are good and pick 
 up the sticks, or draw the water from the well, 
 then she gives you such beautiful presents. 
 Oh ! I will do whatever she tells me J' 
 
 " What kind of presents, Lily ? I want a 
 little horse to ride — there are a great many 
 things that I want. Do fairies give you what 
 you want, or only what they like ? " 
 
 This was a puzzling question ; and on the 
 spur of the moment Lilias did not feel able to 
 answer such a difficulty. '^ If you do it for 
 the presents, not because they ask you, they 
 will not give you anything," she said; '^that 
 would be all wrong if you did it for the 
 presents." 
 
 " But you said " 
 
 " Oh, Nello ; you are too little, you don't 
 understand," cried the elder sister, like many 
 another perplexed authority ; " when you are 
 older you will know what T mean. I can tell 
 you things, but I can't make you understand." 
 
 " What is it he cannot understand ? " said 
 Mary, coming suddenly upon their confidential 
 xalk. The two children came apart hastily,
 
 FAMILY CARES. 227 
 
 and Lilias, who liad two red spots of excite- 
 ment on her cheeks, looked up startled, with 
 lips apart. Nello laughed with a sense of 
 mischief. He was fond of his sister, but to get 
 her into trouble had a certain flavour of fun in 
 it, not disagreeable to him. 
 
 ** It is about the fairies," he cried, volubly. 
 '' She says you should do what they tell you. 
 She says they give you beautiful presents. She 
 says, she " 
 
 " Oh, about the fairies ! " said Mary, calmly, 
 with a smile, going on without any more notice. 
 Lilias was very angry with her brother, but 
 what was the use ? And she was frightened 
 lest she should be made to look ridiculous, a 
 danger which is always present to the sensitive 
 mind of a child. " I will never, never talk to 
 you again," she said to him under her breath ; 
 but Nello knew she would talk to him again 
 as soon as her mind wauted disburdening, and 
 was not afraid. 
 
 And of how many active thoughts, and 
 wonderful musings, and lively continued 
 motion of two small minds and bodies, the 
 old hall was witness in those quiet days ! 
 Mary coming and going, and the solid figure 
 of Martuccia in the sunshine, these two older 
 and more important persons were as shadows 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 in comparison with that ceaseless flow of 
 existence. The amount of living in the whole 
 house beside, was not half equal to that which 
 went on in the motherly calm of the old hall, 
 which held these two small things like specks 
 in its tranquil embrace, where so much had 
 come to pass. There was always something 
 going on there. Such lively count erf citings of 
 the older life, such deeply-laid plans, dispersed 
 in a moment by sudden changes of purpose, 
 such profound gravity upset by the merest 
 chance interruption, such perpetual busyness 
 without thought of rest. Their days went on 
 thus without hindrance or interruption, nothing 
 being required of them except to be amused 
 and healthy, and competent to occupy and 
 please themselves. Had they been dull 
 children, or subject to the precocious ennui 
 which is sometimes to be seen even in a 
 nursery, no doubt measures would have been 
 taken to bring about a better state of affairs ; 
 but as they were always busy, always gay, 
 they were left completely to their own devices, 
 protected, sheltered, and ignored, enjoying the 
 freedom of a much earlier age, a freedom from 
 all teaching and interference, such as seldom 
 overpasses the first five years of human life. 
 Mary had her whole metier to learn in respect
 
 FAMILY CARES. 229 
 
 to the children, and there were many agitating 
 circumstances which pre-occupied her mind and 
 kept her from reahzing the more simple neces- 
 sities of the matter. It had cost her so much 
 to establish them there, and the tacit victory 
 over fate, unnatural prejudice, and all the 
 bondage of family troubles, had been so great, 
 that the trembling satisfaction of having gained 
 it blunted her perceptions of further necessity. 
 It was from a humble quarter that enlighten- 
 ment first came to her. Her teacher was Miss 
 Brown, her maid, who had early melted to the 
 children, and who by this time was their 
 devoted vassal, and especially the admiring 
 slave of Nello, whom, with determined English 
 propriety, she caUed Master John. Miss Brown s 
 affection was not unalloyed by other sentiments. 
 Her love for the children indeed was intensi- 
 fied by strenuous disapproval of their other 
 guardians — Martuccia with her foreign fashions, 
 and Miss Musgrave, who was ignorant as a 
 baby herself, and knew nothing about " child- 
 ren's ways." Between these two incapable 
 persons her life became a burden to Miss 
 Brown. " I can't get my night's rest for 
 thinking of it," she said to Cook, who like 
 herself had the interest of many years' service 
 in ''the family." " I would up and speak," said
 
 230 YOUNG MUSGKAVE. 
 
 Cook. ^' Speak ! '' cried Miss Brown, '^ Tm 
 always speaking ; but wliat can a body do, 
 when folks won't understand 1 " It is the 
 lament of the superior intelligence over all the 
 world. However, Miss Brown finally made 
 up her mind to speak, and did so, pointing out 
 that Master John was eight, though he looked 
 no more than six, and that '' schooling '^ was 
 indispensable. The suggestion when once 
 made could not be disputed, and it raised a 
 great perturbation in Mary's breast. She sent 
 away the maid with some haste and impatience, 
 but she could not send away the thought. 
 
 And the more Mary thought upon this 
 matter, the more serious it grew ; she brooded 
 over it till her head ached ; and she was glad 
 beyond measure to see Mr. Pennithorne coming 
 slowly along the road. She could see him 
 almost from the moment his spare figure turned 
 the corner -from the village ; the outline and 
 movement of him was so familiar to her, as he 
 grew upon the quiet distance drawing nearer 
 and nearer. It was seldom that she anticipated 
 his approach with so much satisfaction. Not 
 that Mr. Pennithorne, good man, was likely to 
 invent an outlet out of a difficulty, but he was 
 the only person to whom she could talk with 
 absolute freedom upon this subject, and to
 
 FAMILY CARES. 231 
 
 put it forth in audible Avorcls, and set it thus in 
 order to her own ear and mind, was always an 
 advantage. How like Mr. Pen it was to come 
 on so quietly step after step, while she was 
 waiting impatient for him ! not a step quicker 
 than usual, no swing of more rapid motion in 
 the droop of his long coat. Why should he 
 quicken his steps ? She laughed to herself at 
 her own childish impatience. Ought he not 
 to have divined that she wanted him urgently 
 after all these years ? Mary had gone into the 
 hall, the children being absent on their daily 
 walk. They were so much in her thoughts 
 that she was glad to get them out of her sight 
 for the moment and thus relieve the air which 
 rustled and whispered with them. She went 
 out to meet the slowly approaching counsellor. 
 It was summer by this time, and all was green 
 and fair, if still somew^hat cold in its greenness 
 to a southern eye. The sunshine was blazing 
 over the lake, just approaching noon, and the 
 sky w^as keenly blue, so clear that the pleasure 
 of it was almost a pain, where the green 
 shoulder of the hill stood against it in high 
 relief. It was seldom that Mary was at leisure 
 so early, and very seldom that in the morning 
 when both were busy she should have a visit 
 from Mr. Pen. As she made a few steps down
 
 232 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 the slope that led from the hall door, to meet 
 him, the sunshine caught her full, streaming 
 from behind the corner of the house. It caught 
 in her hair, and shone in it, showing its unim- 
 paired gloss and brightness. Mr. Pennithorne 
 was dazzled by it as he came up, and asked 
 himself if she was superior to time as to most 
 things else, and, after all those years, was young 
 as well as lovely still ? 
 
 "I am very glad to see you," she said, 
 holding out her hand. " I just wanted you ; 
 it is some good fairy that has sent you so early 
 to-day." 
 
 His face brightened up with an answering 
 gleam ; or was it only the suil that had got hold 
 of him too, and woke reflections in his middle- 
 aged eyes ? "I am very happy to have come 
 when you wanted me," he said, his eyelids 
 growing moist with pleasure. He went in to 
 the hall, where all was comparative dusk after 
 that brilliant shining of the noon, and sat down 
 on the stool which was Martuccia's usual place. 
 " Whatever you want. Miss Mary, here I am,^' 
 her faithful servant said. 
 
 Then she unfolded to him her difficulty : 
 " Their education ! " what was she to do ? 
 what could be done? Mr. Pen sat by her 
 very sympathetically and heard everything.
 
 FAMILY CARES. 233 
 
 He was not very clever about advising, seeing 
 that it was generally from her that he took 
 advice, instead of giving it. But he listened, 
 and did not see his way out of it, which of 
 itself was a comfort to Mary. If he had been 
 clever, and had struck out a new idea at once, 
 it is doubtful whether she would have liked it 
 half so well. She went into the whole ques- 
 tion, and eased her mind at least. What was 
 she to do '? Mr. Pen shook his head. He was 
 quite ready to take Nello, and teach him all he 
 remembered, after a life spent in rural forget- 
 fulness, of Latin and Greek ; but LOias ! and 
 Lilias was the most urgent as being the eldest. 
 There was no school Anthin reach, and a 
 governess, as Mr. Pen suggested with a little 
 trembling — a governess ! where could Mary 
 put her, — what could she do with her ? It 
 seemed hopeless to think of that. 
 
 *' I don't know what you will think of what 
 I am going to say — but there is Eandolph, 
 Miss Mary; he is a family man himself. I 
 suppose — of course — he knows about the 
 children '? " 
 
 "Eandolph!" said Mary, faltering; "Mr. 
 Pen, you know what Eandolph is as well as 
 I do." 
 
 " People change," said Mr. Pen, evasively.
 
 234 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 " It is not for me to say anything ; but perhaps 
 — he ought to know/' 
 
 "He has never taken any interest in the 
 house ; he has never cared to be — one of us," 
 said Mary. *' Perhaps because he was brought 
 up away from us. You know all about it. 
 When he came back — when he was with you 
 
 and poor John You know him as well as 
 
 I do," she concluded abruptly. " I don't see 
 what help we could have from him." 
 
 "He is a family man himself," said the 
 Vicar. " When children come they bring new 
 feelings ; they open the heart. He was not 
 like you — or poor John ; but he was like a 
 great many people in this world ; he would 
 not be unkind. You write to him some- 
 times ? " 
 
 " Once or twice a year. He writes to ask 
 how my father is — I often wonder why. He 
 has only been here once since — since it all 
 happened. He would not have it known that 
 he was one of the family which was so much 
 
 talked about — that he was the brother of " 
 
 Mary stopped with a flash of indignation in 
 her eyes. " He has separated himself alto- 
 gether from us, as you know'; but he asks from 
 time to time how my father is, though I 
 scarcely know why."
 
 FAMILY CARES. 235 
 
 " And you liave told him, I suppose, about 
 the children ? '' 
 
 " No, Mr. Pen ; he turned his back upon 
 poor John from the beginning. Why should I 
 tell him? what has he to do with it? ^Ye 
 have left our subject altogether talking of 
 Kandolph, who is quite apart from it. Let us 
 go back to our sheep — our lambs in this case. 
 "What is to be done with them ? " 
 
 " I vail do what I can for them, as I did for 
 their father," said the Yicar. " I was thinking 
 that little Johnny must very soon — and Mary 
 might as well — They can come to me for an 
 hour or two every day ; that would be some- 
 thing. But I think Eandolph should be told. 
 I think Eandolph ought to know. He might 
 be thinking, he might be calculating " 
 
 " What, Mr. Pen ? " Mary confronted him 
 with head erect and flashing eyes. '' Why 
 should he think or calculate about us ? He 
 has separated himself from the family. John's 
 children are nothing to him." 
 
 It was not often that Mr. Pen was worldly 
 wise ; but he had an inspiration this time. 
 He shook his head slowly. " It is just that ; 
 John's children might make all the difi^erence 
 to him," he said.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 AN UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR. 
 
 Mr. Pennithorne went home thoughtful, 
 and Miss Musgrave remained behind, if not 
 exactly turned in a new direction, yet con- 
 fused and excited in her mental being by the 
 introduction of a new element. Randolph 
 Musgrave, though her brother, was less known 
 to Mary than he was to the tutor who had 
 travelled and lived with him in the interval 
 during which he had made his nearest approach 
 to friendship with his own family. He had 
 been brought up by an uncle on the mother's 
 side who did not love the Musgraves, and had 
 succeeded to the family living belonging to 
 that race, and lived now, as he had been 
 brought up, in an atmosphere quite different 
 from that which belonged to his nominal home 
 in the north. Except now and then, in a 
 holiday visit, Randolph had scarcely spent any 
 portion of his life at Penninghame, except the 
 short period just before, and for a little time
 
 AN UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR. 237 
 
 after, his university career, when he shared 
 with his brother John the special instructions 
 of Mr. Pennithorne. The two young men had 
 worked together then, or made believe to 
 work, and they had travelled together ; but 
 being of very different dispositions, and 
 brought up in ways curiously unlike, they had 
 not been made into cordial friends by this 
 period of semi-artificial union. Kandolph had 
 been trained to entertain but a small opinion 
 of everything at Penninghame, and when 
 Penninghame became public property, and 
 John and all his affairs and peculiarities were 
 discussed in the newspapers, the younger son 
 did something very like the Scriptural injunc- 
 tion — shaking the dust from off his feet as he 
 departed. He went away after some painful 
 scenes with his father. It was not the old 
 Squire's fault that his eldest son had become 
 in the eyes of the woxld a criminal ; but 
 Eandolph was as bitter at the ignominy 
 brought upon his name as if it had been a 
 family contrivance to annoy and distress him, 
 and had gone away vowing that never again 
 would he have anything to do with his 
 paternal home. There had been a long gap 
 in their relations after that, but at his marriage 
 there had been a kind of reconciliation, enough
 
 238 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 to give a decorous aspect to his relations with 
 his ''people." He had brought his bride to 
 his father's house, and since then he had 
 written, as Mary said, now and then, once or 
 twice in the year, to inquire after his father's 
 health. This was not much, but it saved 
 appearances, and prevented the open scandal 
 of a family quarrel. But Mary, who replied 
 punctiliously to these questions, did not see 
 the need of making a further intimation to 
 him of anything that affected the family. 
 What had he to do with John s children ? 
 She would no more have thought of informing 
 him of any private event in her own history, 
 or of looking to him for sympathy, than she 
 would have stopped a beggar on the road to 
 communicate her good or evil fortune. But 
 the very name of Eandolph suggested new 
 complications. She was glad to escape from 
 the whole matter and listen to the account of 
 the lessons when Lilias and Nello came back 
 from one of their earliest experiences of the 
 instruction given by Mr. Pennithorne. The 
 children came in breathless with the story 
 they had to tell. " Then he made me read 
 out of all the books," said Lilias, her dark eyes 
 shining ; '^ but Nello, because he was- so little, 
 one book was enough for him." 
 
 I
 
 AX UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR. 239 
 
 " But it was not a girl's book/' said Nello ; 
 * it was only for Johnnie and me." 
 
 " And I looked in it/' said his sister ; " it is 
 all mixed with Italian — such funny Italian : 
 instead of padre it was put payter — Mr. Pen 
 called it so. But it would not do for Nello, 
 when we go back, to say his Italian like that. 
 Even Martuccia would laugh, and Martuccia 
 is not educated." 
 
 " It was Latin," said Nello ; " Mr. Pen said 
 so. He said girls didn't want Latin. Girls 
 learn to dance and sing ; but I — and 
 Johnnie " 
 
 " Will Mr. Pen teach me to dance — and 
 sing, Mary ? " said Lilias, with a grave face. 
 
 *' And me, I wrote a copy," said Nello, in- 
 different to the interruption ; " look ! " and he 
 held up fiDgers covered Tv^th ink. " You 
 cannot read it yet, but you will soon be able 
 to read it, jVIr. Pen says. And then I will 
 write you a letter, Mary." 
 
 " It would be better to write letters to some 
 one far off," said Lilias, half scornful of his 
 want of information. " You can talk to 
 Mar}^, Nello. It is to far-off people that one 
 makes letters." 
 
 " We have nobody that is far off," said 
 Nello, shaking his head with the sudden
 
 240 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 consciousness of a want not hitherto reaHzed. 
 " Then I need not write copies any more." 
 
 " Your father is far off, Nello/' said Mary ; 
 " your poor papa, who never hears any news 
 of you. Some time I hope you will be able 
 to write to him, and ask him to come 
 home." 
 
 " Oh," cried Lilias, ''you need not be sorry 
 about that, Mary. He will come home. Some 
 day, in a moment when you are thinking of 
 nothing, there will be a step on the stair, and 
 Martuccia will give a shriek ; and it will be 
 as if the sun came shining out, and it will be 
 papa ! He is always like that — but you never 
 know when he will come." 
 
 Mary's eyes filled in spite of herself. What 
 long, long years it was that she had thought 
 but little of John ! and yet there suddenly 
 seemed to come before her a vision of his 
 arrival from school or from college, all smiles 
 and brightness, making the old roof ring with 
 his shout of pleasure. Was it possible that 
 this would happen over again — that he would 
 come in a moment, as his little daughter said ? 
 But Lilias did not know all the difficulties, 
 nor the one great obstacle that stood in John's 
 way, and which perhaps he might never get 
 over. She forgot herself in these thoughts,
 
 AN UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR. 241 
 
 and did not perceive that Lilias was gazino- 
 wistfully at her, endeavouring with all her 
 childish might to penetrate her mind and 
 know the occasion of these tears. Mary was 
 recalled to herself by feeling the child's arm 
 steal round her, and the soft touch of a little 
 hand and handkerchief upon her wet eyes. 
 " You are crying," said Lilias. *' Mary, is it 
 for papa 1 — why should you cry for papa ? " 
 
 ** My darling, we don't know where he is, 
 nor an}i:hing about him — " 
 
 " That does not matter," said Lilias, wink- 
 ing rapidly to throw off the sympathetic tears 
 which had gathered in her o^ti eyes ; "he is 
 always like that. We never knew where he 
 was; but just when he could, just when it 
 was possible, he came home. We never could 
 tell when it would be — it might be any day. 
 Some time when we are forgetting and not 
 
 expecting him. Ah !" cried the child, 
 
 with a ring of wonder in the sudden ex- 
 clamation. The hall-door was open as usual, 
 and on the road was a distant figure just 
 visible which drew from Lilias this sudden 
 cry. She ran to the door, clutching her 
 brother — " Come, Nello, Nello ! " and rushed 
 forth. Mary sat still, thinking her heart had 
 stopped in her breast — or was it not rather 
 
 VOL. T. R
 
 242 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 suffocating lier by the wildness of its beating ? 
 She sat immovable, watching the little pair at 
 the door. Could it be that John had come 
 home ? John ! he who would be the most 
 welcome yet the most impossible of visitors ; 
 he who had a right to everything, yet dared 
 not be seen in the old house. She sat and 
 trembled, not daring to look out, already 
 planning what she could do, what was to be 
 done. 
 
 But the children stopped short at the 
 door. Lilias, with the wind in her skirts a.nd 
 her ribbons, half- flying, stopped ; and Nello 
 stopped, who went by her impulse, not by 
 his own. They paused : they stood for a 
 moment gazing ; then they turned back sadly. 
 
 " Oh no, no ! " said Lilias. '' No, Mary I 
 no. It is a little, something like — a very 
 little ; it is the walking, and the shape of him. 
 But no, no, it is not papa ! " 
 
 " Papa ! '' said Nello, " was that why you 
 looked ? I knew better. Papa is all that 
 much more tall. Why are you crying, Lily ? 
 There is nothing that makes cry." 
 
 "I am disappointed," said the little girl, 
 who had seated herself suddenly on the floor 
 and wept. It was a sudden sharp shower, but 
 it was soon over ; she sprang up drying her
 
 AX UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR. 24o 
 
 eyes. " But it will be for to-morrow ! " slie 
 cried. 
 
 Mary sat behind and looked on. She did 
 not think again of the chance resemblance 
 Lilias had seen, but only of the children 
 themselves, with whom her heart was tuning 
 itself more and more in sympathy. ■ She had 
 become a mother late and suddenly, without 
 any gradual gro^\i:h of feeling — leaping into 
 it, as it were ; and every response her mind 
 made to the children was a new wonder to 
 her. She looked at them, or rather at Lilias, 
 who was always the leader in her rapid 
 changes of sentiment, with a half-amused 
 adoration. The crying and the smiles went 
 to her heart as nothing else had ever done ; 
 and even Nello's calm, the steadier going of 
 the slower, less developed intelligence, which 
 was so often carried along in the rush without 
 any conscious intention, and which was so 
 ready to take the part of the wise and say 
 " I knew it," moved Mary with that mixture 
 of pleased spectatorship and profound personal 
 feeling which makes the enthusiasm of parents. 
 Nello's slowness mip:ht have seemed want of 
 feeling in another child, and Lilias's impetu- 
 osity a giddy haste and heedlessness ; l^ut all 
 impartiality was driven from her mind by the 
 
 R 2
 
 244 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 sense that the children were her own. And 
 she sat in a pleased abstraction yet lively 
 readiness, following the little current of this 
 swiftly-flowing softly-babbling childhood which 
 was so fair and pleasant to her eyes. The 
 two set up an argument between themselves 
 as she sat looking on. It was about some 
 minute point in the day's work which was so 
 novel and unaccustomed ; but trivial as it was 
 Mary listened with a soft glow of light in her 
 eyes. The finest drama in the world could 
 not have taken her out of herself like the two 
 little actors, playing their sincere st and most 
 real copy of life before her. They were so 
 much in earnest, and to her it was such 
 exquisite play and delicate, delightful fool- 
 ing ! And until the light in the open door- 
 way was suddenly darkened by some one 
 appearing, a figure which made her heart 
 jump, she thought no more of the passer-by 
 on the road who had roused the children. 
 Her heart jumped, and then she followed her 
 heart by rising suddenly to her feet, while the 
 children stopped in their argument, rushed 
 together for mutual support, and stood shyly 
 with their heads together, the arrested talk 
 still hovering about their lips. Seen thus 
 against the light the visitor was undecipher-
 
 AN UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR. 245 
 
 able to Maiy. She saw him, nothing but a 
 black shadow, towards w^hich she went quietly 
 and said — 
 
 " I beg your pardon, this is a private 
 door,'^ with a polite defence of her own sanc- 
 tuary. 
 
 "I came to look for — my sister," said the 
 voice, which was one which woke agitating 
 memories in her. " I am a — stranger. I 
 came . Ah ! it is Mary after all." 
 
 " Eandolph ! '' she cried, with a gasp in her 
 throat. 
 
 A thrill of terror, almost superstitious, came 
 over her. What did it all mean '? Good 
 Mr. Pennithorne in his innocence had spoken 
 to her of John, and that very day John's 
 children had arrived ; he had sjDoken of 
 Eandolph, and Eandolph was here. Was it 
 fate, or some mysterious influence unknown ? 
 She was so startled that she forgot to go 
 through the ordinary formulas of seeming 
 welcome, and said nothing but his name. 
 
 " Yes ; I hope you are well," he said, hold- 
 ing out his hand ; '^ and that my father is 
 well. I thought I would come and see how 
 you were all getting on." 
 
 "It is a long time since you have been 
 here," she said. What could she say ? She
 
 246 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 was not glad to see liim, as a sister ought to 
 be. And then there was a pause. 
 
 The children stood staring open-mouthed 
 while these chill greetings were said. (^' I 
 wonder who it is ? " said Lilias, under her 
 breath. " It is the one who is a little, a very 
 little, like papa." '^ It is a — gentleman,^' said 
 Nello. " Oh you silly, silly little boy ! not 
 to know that at the very first ; but Mary is 
 not very glad to see him," said the little 
 girl.) 
 
 Mary did not even ask her visitor to come 
 in ; he stood still at the door, looking round 
 him. with watchful, unfriendly eyes. This was 
 not a place for any one to come who was not 
 tender of Mary, and of whosoever she might 
 shelter there. She did not want him in that 
 special place. 
 
 " Shall we go round to the house ? " she 
 said ; " my father ought to know that you are 
 here, and he never comes into the hall." 
 
 "I am very well where I am," Eandolph 
 said. **I know it was always a favourite 
 place with you. Do not change your sitting- 
 room for me. You have it in very nice order, 
 Mary. I see you share the popular passion 
 for art furnishing ; and children too ! This is 
 something more novel still. Who are the
 
 AN UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR. 247 
 
 children, may I ask ? They are visitors from 
 the neighbourhood I suppose ? " 
 
 ''No," she said, faltering still more, "they 
 
 are not visitors — they — belong to us ." 
 
 Mary could not tell how it was that her lips 
 trembled, and she hesitated to pronounce the 
 name. She made an effort at last and got 
 it out with difficulty. ''They are — John's 
 children." 
 
 " John's children ! here is a wonderful piece 
 of news," said Eandolph ; but she saw by his 
 countenance that it was no news. Howsoever 
 he had heard it, Mary perceived in a moment 
 not only that he knew, but that this was his 
 real errand here. He stood with the appro- 
 priate gesture of one struck dumb with amaze- 
 ment ; but he was not really surprised, only 
 watchful and eager. This made his sister 
 more nervous than ever. 
 
 " Children," she said, " come here — this is 
 your uncle Eandolph ; come and speak to 
 him." Mary w^as so much perplexed that she 
 could not see w^hat was best to do — whether 
 to be anxiously conciliatory and convince 
 Eandolph in spite of himself, without seeming 
 to notice his opposition, or to defy him ; the 
 former, however, was always the safest w^ay. 
 He did not make any advance, but stood with
 
 248 YOUNG MUSGRAYE. 
 
 a half-smile on liis face, while the children 
 drew near with suspicious looks. 
 
 "It is the — gentleman who is — a little — not 
 very much, just a little, like papa,'' said Lilias, 
 going forward, but slowly, and with that look 
 of standing on the defensiYe which children 
 unconsciously adopt to those they do not 
 trust. 
 
 Nello hung on to her skirts, and did as she 
 did, regarding the stranger with cloudy eyes. 
 Randolph put out his hand coldly to be 
 shaken ; his smile broadened into a half-laugh 
 of amusement and contempt. 
 
 "So they are said to be his children, are 
 they?" 
 
 " They are his children," said Mary. 
 
 Randolph shrugged his shoulders and 
 laughed. " They look like foreigners any- 
 how," he said. " My father, I suppose, is 
 delighted. It must be a new experience both 
 for him and you." 
 
 " Go away, my darlings, go to Martuccia ; 
 you see I have some business with — this gen- 
 tleman." She could not again repeat the title 
 she had given him. When the curious little 
 spectators had gone, she turned to Randolph, 
 who stood watching their exit, with an 
 anxiety she did not attempt to conceal. " For
 
 AN UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR. 249 
 
 Heaven's sake do not talk to my father about 
 them ! I ask it as a favour. He consents 
 tacitly that they should be here, but he takes 
 no notice of them. Do not call his attention 
 to them. It is the only thing I ask of 
 you.'' 
 
 He looked at her fixedly still, with that set 
 smile on his face with which he had looked at 
 the children. 
 
 '' I am scarcely the person to be called upon 
 to make things smooth with my father," he 
 said. " Come, come ; my father is old, and 
 can be made to believe anything, let us allow. 
 But what do you mean by it, Mary, what 
 do yoic mean ? You were never any friend 
 to me." 
 
 " Friend to you ! I am your sister, Kan 
 dolph, though you don't seem to remember it 
 much. And what have you to do with it ? " 
 asked Mary, with a certain amount of exaspe- 
 ration in her voice ; for of all offensive things 
 in the world there is none so oflfensive as this 
 pretence of finding you out in a transparent 
 deception. Mary grew red and hot in spite of 
 herself. 
 
 " I have a great deal to do with it. I have 
 not only my own interests to take care of, but 
 my boy's. And why you should prefer to us,
 
 250 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 about wliom there can be no doubt, these 
 little impostors, these supposed children of 
 John " 
 
 " Eandolph," said Mary, with tears in her 
 eyes, " there is no supposing about them. Oh 
 don't go against us and against truth and 
 justice ! They brought me a letter from their 
 father. There was no room to doubt, no 
 possibility. John himself is most unfortu- 
 nate " 
 
 . " Unfortunate ! that is not the word I 
 should use.'' 
 
 " But why remember it against them, poor 
 little things, who have done no harm ? Oh, 
 Randolph, I have never been otherwise than 
 your friend when I had the chance. Be mine 
 now ! There are a hundred things about 
 which I want to consult you. You have a 
 family of your own ; you have been trained to 
 it ; you know how to take care of children. 
 I wanted to ask your advice, to have your 
 help " 
 
 " Do you think me a fool then," he cried, 
 "as silly as yourself ? that you try to get me 
 to acknowledge this precious deception, and 
 give you my support against myself ? Why 
 should I back you up in a wicked contrivance 
 against my own interests ? "
 
 AX UNLOOKED-FOK VISITOR. 251 
 
 " What is it you mean ? Who has been 
 guilty of wicked contrivances ? '^ cried Mary, 
 aghast. She gazed at him with such genuine 
 surprise that he was arrested in his angry 
 vituperation, and changed his tone to one of 
 mockery, which affected her more. 
 
 " Well," he said, '' let us allow that it is 
 your first attempt, Mary, and that is why you 
 do it so clumsily. The mistakes good people 
 make when they first attempt to do badly are 
 touching. Villany, like everything else, re- 
 quires experience. But it is too funny to 
 expect me to be the one to stand up for you, 
 to persuade my father to believe you." 
 
 " Oh," she said, clasping her hands, " do 
 you think this is what I ask ? It is you who 
 mistake, Eandolph. It lias never occurred to 
 my father, or any one else, not to believe. 
 He never doubted any more than I was 
 capable of doubting. I will show you John's 
 letter." 
 
 Eandolph put up his hand, waving off the 
 suggested proof. 
 
 "It is quite unnecessary. I am not to be 
 taken in by such simple means. You forget 
 I have a stake in it — which clears the judg- 
 ment. And I warn you, Mary, that I am 
 here to look after my personal interests, not
 
 252 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 to foist any nondescript brat into the family. 
 I give you notice — it is not to help your 
 schemes, it is for my own interests I am 
 here." 
 
 " What do interests mean ? " she said, won- 
 dering. " Your own interests ! — what does 
 that mean '? I know / have none." 
 
 *'No — it cannot make much difference to 
 you whatever happens ; therefore you are free 
 to plot at your leisure. I understand that 
 fully ; but, my dear, / am here to look after 
 myself — and my boy. You forget I have an 
 heir of my own." 
 
 Mary looked at him with a dulness of 
 intelligence quite unusual to her. There are 
 things in the most limited minds which genius 
 itself could not divine. The honourable and 
 generous, and the selfish and grasping, do not 
 know what each other mean. They are as if 
 they spoke a different language. And her 
 brother was to Mary as if he veiled his 
 meaning in an unknown tongue. She gazed 
 at him with a haze of dulness in her eyes. 
 What was it he intended to let her know ? 
 Disbelief of her, a suggestion that she lied ! 
 and something more — she could not make out 
 what, as the rule of his own conduct. He 
 looked at her, on the other hand, with an air
 
 AX UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR. 253 
 
 of penetration, a clever consciousness of seeing 
 through and through her and her designs, 
 which excited Mary to exasperation. How 
 could they ever understand each other with all 
 this between ? 
 
 *' I am going to see my father," said Ean- 
 dolph ; ''that of course is the object of my 
 visit ; I suppose he will not refuse to keep me 
 for a day or two. And in the meantime why 
 should we quarrel ? I only warn you that I 
 come with my eyes open, and am not to be 
 made a dupe of. Good-bye for the present — 
 we shall meet no doubt at dinner the best of 
 friends.'' 
 
 Mar}^ stood still where he left her, and 
 watched him as he went slowly down the 
 slope and round the corner of the house. He 
 was shorter than John and stouter, with that 
 amplitude of outline which a wealthy rural 
 living and a small parish are apt to confer. A 
 comfortable man, fond of good living, fond of 
 his ease ; yet taking the trouble to come here, 
 for what ? — to baffle some supposed wicked 
 contrivances and plots agaiust himself Mary 
 remembered that Randolph had taken the 
 great family misfortune as a special wrong to 
 him. How dared the evil fates to interfere 
 \\ath his comfort or rumour to assail his name?
 
 254 YOUNG- MUSGRAVE. 
 
 He had said frankly that it could be nothing 
 to the others in comparison. And was it once 
 more the idea that he himself was touched, 
 which had roused him out of his comfortable 
 rectory to come here and assert himself ? But 
 how did the arrival of John's children affect 
 that ? Mary, in her long calm, had not entered 
 into those speculations about the future which 
 most people more or less think necessary when 
 the head of the house is old. She had not 
 asked herself what would happen when her 
 father died, except vaguely in respect to her- 
 self, knowing that she would then in ail 
 likelihood leave the old Castle. John was the 
 heir. Somehow or other, she did not know 
 how, the inheritance would be taken up for 
 him. This had been the conclusion in her 
 mind without reason given or required. And 
 Eandolph had not come into the sphere of her 
 imagination at all as having anything to do 
 with it. What should he have to do with it 
 when there was John ? And even now Mary 
 did not know and could not understand the 
 reason of his objection to John's children. She 
 stood and looked after him with a dull beating of 
 pain in her heart. And as he turned round the 
 corner of the old house towards the door, he 
 looked back and waved his hand. The gesture
 
 AX UXLOOKED-FOfl VISITOR. 255 
 
 and look, she could scarcely tell why, gave her 
 a sensation of sickening dismay and pain. She 
 turned and went in, shutting the door in the 
 sudden pang this gave her. And to shut the 
 great door of the hall was the strangest thing, 
 except in the very heart of winter. While 
 the sun was shining and the air genial, such a 
 thing had never happened before. It seemed 
 in itself a portent of harm.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 RANDOLPH. 
 
 Randolph Musgeave was a squire-parson, a 
 class which possesses the features of two 
 species without fully embodying either — which 
 may be finer than either, the two halves of 
 the joint character tempering each other — or 
 may be a travesty of both, exaggerating their 
 mutual defects. He was of the latter rather 
 than of the former development. His living 
 was small in one sense and large in another, 
 the income being large, but the people few and 
 very much given up to dissent, a fact which 
 soured his character without moving him to 
 exertion. He was not fond of exertion in any 
 case, and it was all but hopeless in this. But 
 not less was he daily and hourly irritated by 
 the little Bethels and Salems, the lively Metho- 
 dists, the pragmatical Baptists, who led his 
 people away. They made him angry, for he 
 was easily moved to anger, and they increased
 
 EAXDOLPH. 257 
 
 that tendency to listen to gossip and be 
 moved by small matters which is one of the 
 temptations of a rural life. He had become 
 accustomed to make much of petty wrongs, 
 calling them insults and crimes, and perhajjs to 
 be more disposed to petty vengeances than a 
 man who is placed in the position of an ex- 
 ample to others ought to be ; and whereas he 
 had always been disposed to consider himself 
 a sacred person, above the ordinary slights of 
 fortune, this tendency had grown and strength- 
 ened so, that every petty pin -prick was like a 
 poisoned arrow to him. By natural laws of 
 reverberation he heard more evil of himself, 
 had more mishaps in the way of gossip, of 
 receiving letters not intended for him, and 
 otherwise surprising the sentiments of his 
 neighbours, than almost any one else ever had 
 — which had made him suspicious of his 
 neighbours in the highest degree, and ready 
 to believe every small offence a premeditated 
 insult. This perhaps made him all the more 
 ready to believe that his sister had conceived 
 a villanous plan against him and his. He 
 would not have done such a thing himself; 
 but was not his life full of such attempts made 
 upon him by others ? everybody almost whom 
 he encountered having one time or other 
 VOL. I. s
 
 258 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 conspired against his hopes or happiness. But 
 he had always found out the plots in time. It 
 was true that this villany might be John's, of 
 whom he would have believed anything ; and 
 Mary herself might be the dupe : but most 
 likely it was Mary, who did not like him nor 
 his wife, andVho would no doubt be capable of 
 anything to banish him finally from Penning- 
 hame, and set up there some creature of her 
 own. This was the idea which had come into 
 his mind, when he heard, accidentally of the 
 arrival which had made so much commotion in 
 the north country. He had talked it over 
 with his wife till they both saw gunpowder 
 plots and conspiracies incalculable in it. ** You 
 had better go and see into it yourself," Mrs. 
 Randolph said. " I will,'' was the Eector's 
 energetic reply. "And believe nobody, believe 
 nothing but what you see with your own eyes." 
 "Never! I will put faith in nobody," Eandolph 
 had said. And it was in this frame of mind 
 that he had come here. He meant to believe 
 nobody save when they warned him of plots 
 against himself : to trust nothing save that all 
 the world was in a leaOTe to work him harm. 
 
 o 
 
 But for this determined pre-conclusion, he 
 might perhaps have been less certain of his 
 sister's enmity to himself, and of the baseness
 
 RAXDOLPH. 259 
 
 of the deception she was practising ; but he 
 had no doubt whatever on this matter now. 
 And he meant to expose her remorselessly. 
 Why should he mince matters ? His father 
 was an old man and might die at any moment, 
 and this villany ought to be exposed at 
 once. 
 
 With these thoughts in his mind he went 
 round to the great door. How diflferent was 
 the grey north-country house from anything 
 he was used to ! The thought of his snug 
 parsonage embosomed in gTeenery, roses climb- 
 ing to the chimney-stacks, clustering about 
 all the windows, soft velvet lawns and strict 
 inclosures keeping all sacred — made him shiver 
 at sight of the irregular building, the masses 
 of ivy fostering damp, the open approach, a 
 common road free to everybody. If it ever 
 was his, or rather when it was his — for these 
 supposititious children would soon be done 
 away with, and John, a man under the ban of 
 the law, how could he ever appear to claim his 
 inheritance ? — when it was his, he would soon 
 make a dijfference. He would bring forward 
 the boundaries of the Chase so as to inclose 
 the Castle. He would make the road into a 
 stately avenue as it once was and ought to be. 
 What did it matter who objected 1 He would 
 
 s 2
 
 260 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 do it ; let the village burst with rage. The 
 very idea of exasperating the village and 
 making it own his power, made the idea all 
 the more delightful. He would soon change 
 all this ; let it but get into his hands. In the 
 midst of these thoughts, however, Eandolph 
 met a somewhat ludicrous rebuff from East- 
 wood, who opened the door suddenly and 
 softly, as was his fashion, as if he hoped to find 
 the visitor out in something improper. "Who 
 shall I say, sir ? " said Eastwood, deferentially. 
 This gave Randolph a sense of the most ludicrous 
 discomfiture; for to be asked what name is to 
 be announced when you knock at the door of 
 your father's house is a curious sensation. It 
 was nobody's fault unless it might have been 
 Randolph's own, but the feeling was disagree- 
 able. He stood for a moment dumb, staring 
 at the questioner — then striding inside 'the 
 door, pushed Eastwood out of his way. When 
 he was within, however, somewhat conciliated 
 by the alarmed aspect of the butler, who did 
 not kDOW whether to resist or what to do, he 
 changed his mind. 
 
 " I don't want to startle my father," he said ; 
 " say Mr. Randolph Musgrave has arrived." 
 
 "I beg your pardon humbly, sir," cried 
 Eastwood.
 
 RANDOLPH. 261 
 
 "1^0, no, it was not your fault," Eandolph 
 replied. It was not the servant's fault ; but it 
 was their fault who had made his home a 
 place of disgracej and no longer a fit home 
 for him. 
 
 The Squire was seated among his books, 
 feeling the drowsy influence of the afternoon. 
 He had no Monograph to support his soul, 
 and no better occupation than to rummage 
 dully through the records of antiquity, 
 cheered up and enlivened if he found some- 
 thing to reply to in Notes and Queries, 
 but otherwise living a heavy kind of half- 
 animate life. When the critiques and the 
 letters about that Monograph had ended, what 
 a blank there was 1 and no other work was 
 at hand to make up, or to tempt him to 
 further exertions. The corner of land that 
 he desired to attain had been bought, and 
 had given him pleasure ; but after a while 
 his eyes were satisfied with the contem- 
 plation, and his mind almost satisfied with 
 the calculation, of so many additional acres 
 added to the property. The sweetness of it 
 lay in the thought that the property was 
 growing, that there was sufficient elasticity in 
 the family income to make the acquisition of 
 even a little bit of land possible. The Squire
 
 262 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 tliouglit this was the fruit of his own self- 
 denial, and it gave him that glow of conscious 
 virtue which was once supposed to be the 
 appropriate and unfailing reward of good 
 actions, till conscious virtue went out of fashion. 
 This was sweet ; and it was sweet to go and 
 look at the new fields which restored the old 
 boundary of the Penninghame estate in that 
 direction ; but such gratifications cease to be 
 sustaining to life after a time. And Mr. 
 Musgrave was dull sitting among his books ; 
 the sounds were in his ears which he was 
 always hearing now — the far-off ring of voices 
 that made him sensible of those inmates in his 
 house whom he never noticed, who were to 
 him as if they did not exist. When the mind 
 is not very closely occupied, sounds thus heard 
 in the house come strangely across the quiescent 
 spirit of the solitary. Voices beloved are as 
 music, are as sunshine, conveying a sense of 
 happiness and soft exhilaration. Hearing them 
 far off, though beyond the reach of hearing, so 
 to speak, does not the very distant sound, the 
 tone of love in them, make work sweet and the 
 air warm, softening everything roun4 the re- 
 cluse ? But these were not voices beloved. 
 The old man listened to them — or rather, not 
 permitting himself to listen, heard them
 
 RANDOLPH. 263 
 
 acutely through the mist of a separation which 
 he did not choose to overcome. They were 
 like something from another world, voices in 
 the air, inarticulate, mysterious, knowTi yet 
 unknown. He turned the leaves idly when 
 these strange suggestions came to him in his 
 solitude ; he had nothing to do with them, and 
 yet so much. This was ho^v he w^as sitting, 
 dully wistful, in that stillness of age w^hich 
 when it is not glad must be sad, and hearing 
 almost, as if he were already a ghost out of his 
 grave, the strange yet familiar stir in the un- 
 seen stairs and passages, the movements of the 
 
 kindly house . 
 
 " Mr. Randolph Musgrave ! '' The Squire 
 was very much startled by the name. He rose 
 hastily, and stood leaning upon his w^riting- 
 table to see w^ho it was that followed Eastw^ood 
 into the room after a minute's interval. It 
 seemed scarcely possible to him that it could 
 be his son. " Randolph ! '' he said. The 
 children's voices had made him think, in spite 
 of himself, of the time — was it centuries ago ? 
 — when there were tw^o small things running 
 about those old passages continually, and a 
 beautiful young mother smiling upon them — and 
 him. This had softened his heart, though by 
 means which he would not have acknowledged.
 
 264 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 He looked out eagerly with a sensation of plea- 
 sure and relief for his son. He would (perhaps) 
 take Eandolph's advice, perhaps get some en- 
 lightenment from him. But the shock set his 
 nerves off, and made him tremulous, though it 
 was a shock of pleasure ; and it hurt his pride 
 so to be seen trembling, that he held himself 
 up strained and rigid against his table. 
 "Randolph! you are a stranger indeed," he 
 said, and his countenance lighted up with a 
 cloudy and tremulous smile. 
 
 (" Strange that he was never seen here be- 
 fore in my time," said Eastwood as he withdrew. 
 *' I've seen a many queer things in families, but 
 never nothing more queer than this — two sons 
 as never have been seen in the house, and 
 children as the Squire won't give in he owns 
 them. I thought he'd have walked right 
 straight over little master Saturday last as if 
 no one was there. But I don't like the looks 
 of 'im. When he's master here I march, 
 and that I can tell you — pretty fast, Missis 
 Cook." 
 
 " Mr. Randolph ? He'll never be master 
 here, thank God for it," said Cook with pious 
 fervour, " or more than you will go.") 
 
 " Yes," said Randolph, walking in, " I have 
 been a stranger, but how can we help that ! It
 
 RANDOLPH. 265 
 
 is life that separates us. We must all run our 
 own course. I hope you are well, sir. You 
 look well — for your time of life." 
 
 It is not a pleasant thing to be told that you 
 look well for your time of life — unless indeed 
 you are ninety, and the time of life is itself a 
 matter of pride. The Squire knew he was old, 
 and that soon he must resign his place to 
 others ; but he did not care for such a distinct 
 intimation that others thought so too. 
 
 " I am very well," he said, curtly. " You 
 are so completely a stranger, Eanclolph, that I 
 cannot make the usual remarks on your per- 
 sonal appearance. You deny me the oppor- 
 tunity of judging if you look ill or well." 
 
 "Ah," said Eandolph, "that is just what I 
 said. We must all run our own course. Lly 
 duties are at the other end of England, and I 
 cannot be always running back and forward ; 
 but I hope to stay a few days now if you will 
 have me. Eelations should see each other now 
 and then. I have just had a glimpse of Mary 
 in the old hall as usual. She did not know 
 me at first, nor, I daresay, if I had not seen 
 her there, should I have known her " — 
 
 "Mary is little changed," said the Squire. 
 
 " So you think, sir, seeing her every day ; 
 but there is a great change from what she was
 
 266 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 ten years ago. She was still a young woman 
 then, and handsome. I am afraid even family 
 partiality cannot call her anything but an old 
 maid now." 
 
 Mr. Musgrave did not make any reply. He 
 was not a particularly affectionate father, but 
 Mary was part of himself, and it did not please 
 him to hear her spoken of so. 
 
 '' And, by the bye," said Eandolph, *' how 
 did such a thing happen I wonder '? for she 
 was handsome ; — handsome and well-born, and 
 with a little money. It is very odd she never 
 has married. Was there anything to account 
 for it ? or is it mere ill-luck ? " 
 
 " Ill-luck to whom ? " said the Squire. " Do 
 you think perhaps your sister never had the 
 chance, as people say ? You may dismiss that 
 idea from your mind. She has had enough of 
 chances. I don't know any reason ; but there 
 must have been one, I suppose. Either that 
 nobody came whom she cared for, or — I really 
 cannot form any other idea," he concluded, 
 sharply. It was certain that he would not 
 have Mary discussed. 
 
 " I meant no harm," said Eandolph. '^ She 
 has got the old hall very nicely done up. It 
 is not a place I would myself care to keep up, 
 if the Castle were in my hands ; but she has
 
 EAXDOLPH. 267 
 
 made it very nice. I found her there with-^ — 
 among her favourite studies," he added, after a 
 momentary pause. It was too early to begin 
 direct upon the chapter of the children, he 
 felt. The Squire did not show any sign of 
 special understanding. He nodded his head 
 in assent. 
 
 " She was always fond of the hall," he said. 
 " I used to think she suited it. And now that 
 she is — past her youth, as you say " 
 
 " Well into middle age I say, sir, like other 
 people ; which is a more serious affair for a 
 woman than for a man ; but I suppose all 
 hopes are over now. She is not likely to marry 
 at her time of life.'' This was the second 
 time he had mentioned the time of life. And 
 the Squire did not like it ; he answered 
 curtly — 
 
 " No, I don't think it likely that Mary will 
 marry. But yourself, Eandolph, how are things 
 going with you ? You have not come so far 
 merely to calculate your sister's chances. Your 
 wife is well, I hope ; and your boy ? '^ 
 
 " Quite well. You are right in thinking, 
 sir, that I did not come without an object. We 
 are all getting on in life. I thought it only 
 proper that there should be some understanding 
 among us as to family affairs — something
 
 268 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 decided in case of any emergency. We are all 
 mortal " 
 
 " And I the most mortal of all, you will say, 
 at my ' time of life/ Eandolph," said the Sauire. 
 with a smile, which was far from genial. " I 
 daresay you are quite right, perfectly right. 
 I am an old man, and nobody can tell what 
 an hour may bring forth." 
 
 " That is true at every age/' said Eandolph, 
 with professional seriousness. " The idea 
 ought to be familiar to the youngest among 
 us. In the midst of life we are in death. I 
 recommend everybody over whom I have the 
 least influence to settle their affairs, so that 
 they may not leave a nest of domestic conten- 
 tions behind them. It is only less important 
 than needful spiritual preparation, which of 
 course should be our first care." 
 
 " Just so," said Mr. Musgrave. " I presume 
 you don't mean to bring me to book on that 
 point ? " 
 
 " Certainly not, sir — unless- there is any 
 special point upon which I could be of use ; 
 but you are as well able to judge as I am, and 
 have access to all the authorities," said 
 Eandolph with dignity. "Besides, there is 
 your own clergyman at hand, who is no 
 doubt quite equal to the duties of his position.
 
 RANDOLPH. 269 
 
 It is old Pennitliorne, is it not ? " he added, 
 with a momentaiy lapse into a more familiar 
 tone. '* But there is no question of that. In 
 such matters a man of your experience, sir, 
 ought to be able to instruct the best of us.'' 
 
 " The bench of bishops even," said the 
 Squire, " sometimes I think I could — at my 
 time of life. But that is not the question, as 
 you say." 
 
 " No, indeed — not to say that my best ad- 
 vice in every way is at your service, sir ; but 
 I thought very likely it would be an ease to 
 your mind to see me, to give me any instruc- 
 tions or directions — in short, to feel that your 
 nearest representative understood your wishes, 
 whatever might happen." 
 
 Now Randolph was evidently his father's 
 representative, John being out of the question ; 
 and that John was absolutely out of the ques- 
 tioD, not only from external circumstances, but 
 from the strong prejudice and prepossession 
 against him in his father's mind, was certain. 
 Yet the Squire resented this assumption as 
 much as if John had been his dearly-beloved 
 son and apparent heir. 
 
 " Thanks," he said, " I feel 3'our care for my 
 comfort — ^but after all, you are not my dii*ect 
 representative."
 
 270 YOUNG MUSGEAVE. 
 
 " Sir ! '' cried Randolpli, reddening, " need I 
 remind you of the disabilities, the privation 
 of all natural rights " 
 
 '' You need not remind me of anything," 
 said Mr. Musgrave, getting up hurriedly. '' I 
 don't care to discuss that question— or any- 
 thing else of the kind. Suppose we go and 
 join Mary, who must be in the drawing-room, 
 I suppose ? It is she, after all, who is really 
 my representative, knowing everything about 
 my affairs." 
 
 " She — is a woman,'' said Randolph, with a 
 • tone of contempt. 
 
 " That is undeniable — but women are not 
 considered exactly as they used to be in such 
 matters." 
 
 " I hope, sir," said the clergyman, with 
 dignity, "that neither my sister nor you add 
 your influence to the foolish movement about 
 women's rights." 
 
 " Do you mean that Mary does not want a 
 vote ? " said the Squire. " No, I don't sup- 
 pose it has occurred to her. We add our 
 influence to very few public movements, 
 Randolph, bad or good. The Musgraves are 
 not what they once were in the county ; the 
 leading part we once took is taken by others 
 who are richer than we are. Progress is not
 
 RANDOLPH. 271 
 
 the thing for old families, for progress means 
 money." 
 
 " There are other reasons why the Musgraves 
 do not take their proper place. I have hopes, 
 sir," said Randolph, " that under more favour- 
 able circumstances — if we, perhaps, were to 
 draw more together " 
 
 " "What do you mean, sir ? " said the Squire ; 
 ''it was you who separated yourself from us, 
 not us from you. You were too good, being a 
 clergyman, as you said, to encounter the odium 
 of our position. That's enough, Eandolph. It 
 is not an agreeable subject. Let us dismiss it 
 as it has been dismissed these fifteen years ; 
 and come — to Mar}^'s part of the house." 
 
 " Then, am I to understand," said Eandolph, 
 sharply, rising, yet holding back, '' that your 
 mind is changing as old age gains upon you, 
 that you are going to accept the disgrace of 
 the family 1 and that it is with your sanction 
 that Mary is receiving — adopting " 
 
 He stopped, overawed in spite of himself, by 
 the old man^s look, who stood with his face 
 fixed looking towards him, restraining with all 
 his force the tremor of his nerves. The Squire 
 had been subject all his life to sudden fits of 
 passion, and had got the habit of subduing, by 
 ignoring them, as all his familv well knew.
 
 272 YOUNG MUSGEAVE. 
 
 He made no reply, but the restrained fire in 
 his eyes impressed even the dull imagination 
 of his son, who was pertinacious rather than 
 daring, and had no force in him to stand 
 against passion. Mr. Musgrave turned round 
 quickly, and took up his book, which lay on a 
 table near. 
 
 " Mary sent you a copy of the Monograph ? " 
 he said ; " but I don't remember that you gave 
 me your opinion of it. It has had a very 
 flattering reception generally. I could not 
 have expected so much interest in the public 
 mind on a question of such exclusive family 
 interest. But so it has been. I have kept all 
 the notices, and the letters I have received on 
 the subject. You shall see them by and by ; 
 and I think you will agree with me, that a 
 more flattering reception could scarcely have 
 been. All sorts )f people have written to me. 
 It appears," said the Squire, with modest pride, 
 ''that I have really been able to throw some 
 light upon a difiiculty. After dinner, Ean- 
 dolph, if you are interested, you shall see my 
 collection.'' 
 
 *' My time is short," said Eandolph, " and 
 with so many more serious matters to 
 discuss " 
 
 " I know few things more serious than the
 
 RANDOLPH. 273 
 
 history of the family honours," said the Squire, 
 "especially as you have a boy to inherit the 
 old blazon ; but we'll go into all that this 
 evening, as your stay is to be short. Better 
 come and see Mary before dinner. She will 
 want to know all about your home-concerns, 
 and your wife. The house is unchanged, you 
 vriR perceive,'' the Squire continued, talking 
 cheerfully as he led the way ; and the sound 
 of his voice, somewhat high-pitched and shrill 
 with age, travelled far through the old pas- 
 sages. "I hope no sacrilegious hands will 
 ever change the house. My heirs may add to 
 it if they please, but it is a monument of 
 antiquity, which ought never to be touched — 
 except to mend it delicately as Mary mends 
 her old lace. This way, Kandolph ; I believe 
 you have forgotten the way." 
 
 They were standing in an rngle of the fine 
 oak staircase, where the Squire waited till his 
 son came up to him. At this moment a rush 
 of small footsteps, and a whispering voice — 
 " Eun, Nello, Nello ! he is coming," was 
 audible above. Eandolph looked up quickly, 
 with a look of intelligence, into the old man's 
 face. But the Squire did not move a muscle. 
 His countenance was blank as that of a deaf 
 man. If he had heard, he allowed no sign of 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 YOUNG MUSGRAVE. 
 
 hearing to be visible. " Come along," he said, 
 '*it seems to me that my wind is better tha 
 yours even at my time of life," with a half- 
 sarcastic smile. Was he hard of hearing ? a 
 hypothesis rather agreeable to think of; or 
 what was the meaning of it ? Were these 
 obnoxious children the pets of the house ? but 
 why should they run because he was coming ? 
 The hostile visitor was perplexed, and could 
 not make it out. He followed into the 
 drawing-room without a word, while the small 
 footsteps were still audible. Mary was seated 
 at a low table on which there was work, but 
 she ■ was not working. She rose to receive 
 them with a certain formality ; for except after 
 dinner, when the Squire would sometimes come 
 for a cup of tea, or when there were visitors in 
 the house, she was generally alone in the low 
 quaint drawing-room, which transported even 
 the unimaginative Eandolph back to childhood. 
 The panelled walls, the spindle-legged fur- 
 niture, the inlaid cabinets and tables, were all 
 exactly as he remembered them. This touched 
 him a little, though he had all the robustness 
 against impression which fortifies a slow in- 
 telligence. " It seems like yesterday that I 
 was here," he said. 
 
 This, in her turn, touched JMary, whose
 
 RANDOLPH. 275 
 
 excitement made her subject to the lightest 
 flutter of emotion. She smiled at him with 
 greater kindness than she had yet felt. "Yes," 
 she said. " I feel so, sometimes, too, when I 
 look round ; but it tells less upon us who are 
 here always. And so much has happened 
 since then." 
 
 '' Ah, I suppose so : though you seem to 
 vegetate pretty much in the old ways. Those 
 children though, for instance," said Eandolph, 
 with a laugh, " scurrying off in such haste as 
 we came within hearing, that is not hke the 
 old ways. Are you ashamed of them, or afraid 
 to have them here ? I should not wonder, for 
 my part." 
 
 The tears sprang to Mary's eyes. She did 
 not say an}^hing in the sudden shock, but 
 looked at Eandolph piteously with a silent 
 reproach. It was the first time since the day 
 of their arrival that any public mention had 
 been made of the children in her father's 
 presence. And there was a pause which 
 seemed to her full of fate. 
 
 " You must not look at me so," said her 
 brother. " I gave you fair warning. My 
 father is not to be given up to your plots 
 without a remonstrance at least. I believe it 
 is a conspiracy, sir, from beginning to end.
 
 276 YOUNG MUSGRAA^E. 
 
 Do you intend our old family, with all tlie 
 honours you are so proud of, to drop into 
 disgrace ? With the shadow of crime on it," 
 cried Kandolph, warming into excitement; 
 then, with a dull perception of something still 
 more telling, his father's weak point, " and the 
 bar sinister of vice ? " he said. 
 
 END OF VOL. 1. 
 
 LONDON : R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOn, PRINTERS.
 
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