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 c 
 
At His Gates. 
 
 fclBLIOTHEQur; 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS. OLIPHANT, 
 
 Author of "Adam Grakmk," "Thb Laird op Norlaw," 
 
 "Agnes," Etc., Etc. 
 
 tORONTO : 
 
 y^^^nrpC 
 
 HuNTiR, Rose & Compan 
 1873. 
 
 '/f/(^ 
 
SfetfvK 
 
 W 
 K ^ 
 
 .^^ffAx.) r^Ali U- 
 
 p¥>^ il 
 
 Bntered «c<ordlny to the Aet of %b» Parliament of Oaaadit In the year one thousand 
 dght hundred and Mventj-tiwo, by Hvhtir, Bon dc Co., in the office of the 
 Minister of Agriculture. 
 
 i;^. 
 
 HUNTER, BOSS, h 00. 
 PRDmRS, TORoirao. 
 
 ryo 
 
 <i. n' 
 
 ii It: r 
 
 ) M 
 
 \\ 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 K. and Mrs Bobert Dmimiiond lived in a pretty house 
 in the Kensington district ; a house the very exter- 
 nal aspect of which infortkied the passer-by who they 
 were, or at least what the husband was. The house was 
 embowered in its little garden ; and in spring, with its lilacs 
 and laburnums, looked like a ^eat bouquet of bloom— as such; 
 houses often do. But built out from the house, a^id occupying 
 a large slice of the garden at the side, waA a long room, ligjtited 
 with sky windows, and not by any means charming to look at 
 outside, though the creepers, which had not long been planted, 
 were beginning to climb upon the walls. It was connected with 
 the house by a passage which acted as a conservatory, and 
 was frdl of flowers ; and everything had been done that could 
 be done to render the new studio as beautiful in aspect as it 
 was in meaning. But it was new, and had scarcely yet begun, 
 as its proprietor said, to '* compose" with its surroundings. 
 Eobert Drummond, accordingly, was a painter, a painter pro- 
 ducing, in the meantime, pictures of the class cmed aewre; 
 but intending to be historical, and to take to the highest 
 school of art as soon as life and fame would permit. He was 
 a yery good painter ; his subjects were truly " felt "and exquis- 
 itely manipulated ; but there was no energy of emotion, no ori- 
 ginality of genius about them. A' great many people admited 
 them very much ; other painters lingered over them lovingly,^ 
 with that true professional admiration of " good work " which 
 counteracts the jealousy of trade in every honest mind. Ihey 
 were very saleable articles, indeed, and had procured a consid- 
 erable amount of prosperity for the ;gQ\mg painter. It was aU 
 
 5475 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 i 
 
 most certain tliat he would be made an Associate at the next 
 vacancy, and an Academician in time. But with all this, he 
 was well aware that he was no genius, and so was his wifa 
 
 The knowledge of this fact acted upon them in very different 
 ways ; but that its e^ect may be fully understood, the difference 
 in their characters and traimng reouires to be known. Koberi* 
 Drummond had never been anything but a pahiter ; attempts 
 had been made in his youth to fix hmi to business, his father 
 havine been the senior clerk, much respected and utterly re- 
 spectable, of a great City house ; and the attempt might have 
 been successful but that accident had thrown him among ar- 
 tists, a kind of society very captivating to a young man, espe- 
 cially when he has a certain command of a pencil He threw 
 hinuBj^into art accordingly, with all his soul. He was, the 
 sort of man who would nave thrown himself into anyt&ing 
 with all his soul ; not for success or reward, but out of an infin- 
 ite satisfaction in doing good work, and seeing beautifid things 
 g^w under his hand. He was of a very sanguine mind, a 
 mind which seldom accepted defeat, but which, with instinc- 
 tive unconscious wisdom, hesitated to dare the highest flights, 
 and to put itself in conflict with those final powers which 
 either vanquish a man or assure his triumph. Perhaps it was 
 because there was some hidden possibility of wild despair and 
 downfall in the man's mind, of which only himself was aware, 
 thftt he was thus cautious of putting his final fortune to the 
 touch. But the fact was that he pamted his pictures content- 
 edly, consdentiously, doing everytiiing well, and satisfied with 
 the perfection of his work as work, though he was not unaware 
 of the absence from it of any spark of divinity. He did not 
 say it in so many words, but the sentiment of his mind was 
 this — " It is good work, work no man need be ashamed of. I 
 am not a Raphael, alas ! and I cannot help it. What is the 
 
 §ood of being unhappy about a thing I cannot mendl I am 
 oin|; my best: it is honest work^ which I know I don't slight 
 or do carelessly: and I can give her everything she wants ex- 
 cept that^ , I|8houl4 b^, too happy myself if she were but 
 content." But she was not content, and thus his happiness 
 was brought down to the moderate pitch allowed to mortal 
 b)iss. 
 She was very different from her Eobert She had been a young 
 
AT HIS OATEg. 
 
 3 
 
 lady of very good connectioiis when she first met the rising 
 young artist. I do not say that her connections were splendid, or 
 that she made an absolute misaUiaaice, for that would be untrue. 
 Her people, however, had been rich people for several genera- 
 tions. They had begun in merchandise, and by mero^mdise 
 they had kept themselves up; but to have been rich from the 
 trme of your sreat-grandfather, with never any downfiEdl or 
 even break in we w^th, has perhaps more effect on the mind 
 than that pride which springs from family. Well-descended 
 people are aware that every family now and then gets into 
 trouble, and may even fSall into poverty without sacrificing any 
 of its pretensions. But well-off people have not that source of 
 enlightenment. When they cease to be very well-off, they lose 
 the ereat point of eminence on which they have taken their 
 stand ; and, consequently, success is more absolutely necessary to 
 them than it is to any other class in the community. Helen 
 Burton besides was very proud, very ambitious, and possessed of 
 that not unusual form of amowrpropre which claims distinctiox^ 
 as a right — though she had not anything particular in herself to 
 justify her clsdm. She had, or believed she had, an utter con- 
 tempt for that money which was the foundation of her family 
 pride ; and she was at the same time, too well endowed in mind, 
 and too generous in temper, to be able to give herself up sincerely 
 to worship of that rank, which, as their only perpetuid superior, 
 tantalizes the imagination of the plebeian rich, and thrusts i^^e?f 
 constantly before them. Helen could Have married the son < >f 
 a poor lord, and become the Honourable Mrs. Somebody, with 
 her mother's blessing, had she so willed. But as her will took 
 a totally different diction, she had defied and alienated her 
 mother, who was also a woman of high spirit, and only somo 
 seventeen years older than her only child ; the consequence was 
 that, when Mrs. Burton found herself abandoned and left alone 
 in the world, she married too, as truly out of pique as a girl some- 
 times does when deserted by her lover; and at her death left 
 ever3rthing she had to her husband and the two small babies, 
 one of them younger than Helen's little Norah, whom she left 
 behind. So that a little tragedy, of a kind not much noted by 
 the world, had woven itself around the beginning . of Her 
 married life. The mother's second marriage oaA not been a 
 success, but was Helen to blame for that % Nobody said sho 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 
 WM, no one around her; but sometimes in the silence of the 
 night, when she alone was awake, and all her household slept 
 so peacefully . Robert, good Robert was not a success ei- 
 ther, not such a man as she had hoped. She loved him sin- 
 cerely, was grateful to him for his love, and for his constant re- 
 gard to her wishes. But yet, in the depths of her heart— no, 
 not despised him, the expression is too strong — ^but felt a minute 
 shade of indignation mingle in her disappointment with him 
 for not being a great genius. Why was he not a Raphael, a 
 Titian? She had married him with the full understanding 
 that he was such ; that he would bring her sweet fame ana 
 distinction. And why had he not done it? Every time she 
 looked at his pictures, she found out the want of inspiration 
 in them. She did not say an3rthing. She was very kind, prais- 
 ing the pretty bits of detail, the wonderful perfection oJT 
 painting ; but Robert felt that he would rather have the presi- 
 dent and all the hanging committee to pass judgment on his 
 pictures than his wife. Her sense that he had somehow de- 
 frauded her by not mounting at once to the very heieht of his 
 profession, seemed to endow her with a power of judgment a 
 hundred-fold more than was justified by her knowledge of art. 
 She saw the want of any soul in them at the first glance, from 
 under her half-closed eyelids— and it seemed to Robert t^at in 
 her heart she said, " another pretty piece of mediocrity, a thing 
 to sell, not to live — with no genius, no genius in it." These 
 were the words Robert seemed to himself to hear, but they 
 were not the real words which, in her heart, Helen uttered. 
 These were rather as follow : — " It is just the same as the last. 
 It is no better, no better. And now everybody says he is at his 
 best. Oh ! when his worst begins to come, what will become 
 of us?" But she never said an uncivil word. She praised 
 what she could, and went her way languidly into the drawins- 
 room. She had come down out of her sphere to give hersdf 
 to him, and he had not repaid her as she expected. He had 
 given her love — ^but not fame. She was Mrs. Drummond only ; 
 she was not pointed out where she went as the wife of the great 
 painter . " Her husband is an artist" was all that anybody 
 ever said. 
 
 The eflTect of this upon poor Robert, however, was much 
 worse even than it was upon his wife« Some time elapsed, it 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 in 
 
 IB true, before she discoyered it. It took him eren yean to 
 make out what it was that shadowed his little household oyer 
 and diminished its briehtness. But gradually a sense of the 
 absence of that sympathetic backing-up which a man expects 
 in his own house, and without which both men and women 
 who haye work to do are so apt to pine and faint, stole oyer 
 him like a chill. When anything was said against his pictures 
 outside, a gloom on his wife's face would show him that worse 
 was thought within. He had no domestic shield from adyerse 
 criticism. It was not kept in the outer circle of his mind, but 
 was allowed to penetrate down to his heart, and enyelope him 
 in a heayy discouragement. Eyen applause did not exhilarate 
 him. " She does not think I deserye it," was what he would 
 say to himself ; and the sense of this criticism which neyer ut- 
 tered a word weighed upon the poor fellow's soul. It made 
 his hand unsteady many a day, when his work depended on a 
 firm touch — and blurred the colours before his eyes, and dulled 
 his thoughts. Two or three times he made a spasmodic effort 
 to break through his mediocrity, and then the critics (who were 
 yery well pleased on the whole with his mediocrity) shook 
 their heads, and warned him against the sensational But Helen 
 neither approved nor condemned the change. To her it was 
 all alike, always second-rate. She did her yery best to applaud, 
 but she could not brighten up into genuine admiration the 
 blank composure in her eyes. What could she do 1 There 
 was something to be said for her, as well as for him. She 
 could not affect to admire what she felt to be commonplace. 
 Nature had giyen her a good eye, and intense feeling had 
 strengthened and corrected it. She saw all the weakness, the 
 flatness with fatal certainty. What, then, could she say Y But 
 poor Robert, though he was not a great artist, was the most ten- 
 der-hearted, amiable, affectionate of men ; and this mode of cri- 
 ticism stole the yery heart out of him. There is no such want 
 in the world as that want of backing up. It is the secret of 
 weakness and failure, just as strong moral support and sympathy 
 is the yery secret of strength. He stood steady and robust to 
 the external eye, painting many pictures eyery year, getting 
 very tolerable prices, keeping his household yery comfortable, 
 a man still under forty, healthy, cheerful, and yigorous ; but 
 all the time he was sapped at the foundations. He had .lost 
 
B 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 hii oonfidence in himself, and it was impossible to predict boif 
 he woaki have borne any sudden blow. 
 
 It was about this time that Mr. Reginald Burton, a cousin of 
 Helen's who had once, it was supposed, desired to be some- 
 thing nearer to her, found out the house in Kensington, and 
 began to pay them visits. The circumstances of her marriage 
 had separated her from her own people. The elder among 
 them had thought Helen unkind to her mother ; the younger 
 ones had felt that noUiing had come of it to justify so romantic 
 a story. So that when Keginald Burton met the pair in society 
 it was the reopening of an altogether closed chapter of her lifR. 
 Mr. Burton was a man in the City in very extensive business. 
 He was chairman of ever so many boards, and his name, at the 
 head of one company or another, was never out of the newspa- 
 pers. He had married since his cousin did, and had a vteiy 
 fine place in the country, and was more well-off still than it 
 was natural for the Burtons to be. Helen, who had neve^ liked 
 hipi very much, and had not even been grateful to him for lov- 
 ing her, received his visits now without enthusiasm ; but Drum- 
 mond, who was open-hearted like his kind, and who had no 
 sort of jealousy about " Helen's friends," received him with a 
 cordiality irhich seemed to his wife much too efiiisive. She 
 would not accept the invitation which Mrs. Burton sent to pay a 
 long visit to Dura, their country place ; but she could not be 
 less than civil to her cousin when he insisted upon calling, nor 
 could she openly resist when he carried off her husband to City 
 dinners, or unfolded to him the benefits of this or that new socie- 
 ty. Drummond had done very well in his profession, notwith- 
 standing Helen's dissatisfaction with his work ; and also not- 
 withstanding her dissatisfaction, she was a good housewife, 
 doine her duty wisely. She had a hundred a year of her own, 
 which Drummond had taken care to have settled upon herself; 
 but since they had grown richer he had insisted upon letting 
 this accumulate as '* a portion for Nor^," and the two had laid 
 by something besides. For painter-folk it will be readily seen 
 they were at the very height of comfort — a pretty liouse, one 
 pretty child, a little reserve of mone^, slowly but pleasantly ac- 
 cumulating. And money, though it is an ignoble thing, has 
 so much to do with happiness ! Drummond, who had been quite 
 content to think that there was a portion saving up for Norah/ 
 
AT BtB GATES. 7 
 
 ftnd to whom it had not occurred that his little capital could be 
 made use of, and produce twenty and a hundred-fold, gradually 
 grew interested, without being aware of it, in the proceeding! 
 of Mr. Burton. He began to talk, half laughingly, half wiUi 
 intention, of the wonderful difference between the slowly-earned 
 gains of labour and those dazzling results of speculation. 
 
 " These fellows seem simply to coin money,*' he n^id, half 
 in jest and whole in earnest ; ** eTerythine ther touch seema 
 
 to become gold. It looks incredible and he wound up 
 
 with a nervous laugh in which there was some agitation. 
 Helen had all a woman's conservatism on this point. 
 
 ** It is incredible, you may be sure," she said. " How can 
 they invent money t Some one will have to pa^ for it some- 
 where ; " which was a sentence of profound wisdom, much 
 deeper than she thought. 
 
 " So one would say," said Drummond, still laughing ; but 
 nobody seems to suffer. By Jove 1 as much as — ^not to say I, 
 who am one of the rank and ffle — ^but as Welby or Hart- 
 well Home get for one of their best pictures, your cousin will^ 
 clear in five minutes, without taking the slightest trouble. 
 When one sees it, one feels hugely tempted " — ^he added, look- 
 ing at ber. He was one of those men who like to cairy their 
 people's sympathy with them. He wanted not acquiescence 
 simply, but approval ; and, notwithstanding* that he was very 
 weU used to the absence of it, sought it stilL She would not 
 — could not, perhaps — enter warmly, into the sulnect of his 
 pictures ; but nere was a new matter. He looked up at her 
 with a certain longing — ^ready, poor fellow, to plunge into any- 
 thing if she would but approve. 
 
 " I hope you won't let yourself be tempted to anything, 
 Eobert, that you don't see the end of," she said ; but so gentij 
 that her husband's heart rose. 
 
 " Trust me for that," he said joyously, ''and you shall have 
 the first fruits, my darling. I have not as fine a house for 
 you as your cousin can give to hia wife, but for all that ** 
 
 " For all that," she said, laughing, ** I would not change 
 with Mrs, Beginald Burton. I am not tempted by the fine 
 house." 
 
 " I have thought how we can make this one a great deal 
 better," he said, as he stooped to kiss her before he went out. 
 
s 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 m , 
 
 Ke looked back upon her fondly as he left the rocm, and said 
 to himself tha^ if he wished for gain it was for her sake-rr-his 
 beautiful Helen I He had painted her furtively over and over 
 again, though she never would sit to him. A certain shadow 
 of her was in all his pictures, showing with more or Jiess dis- 
 tinctness according as ne loved or did not love his temporary 
 heroine J)ut he knew that when this was pointed out to her 
 she did not like it. She was anxious that everybody should 
 knoT^ she did not sit to him. She was very indignan,t at the 
 idea that a painter's wife might serve her husband as a model. 
 " Why should a painter's profession, which ought to be one 
 of the noblest in the world, be obtruded upon the outer world 
 at every step )" she t;aid. But yet, as he was a painter, every 
 inch of him, his eye caught the^o^e of her head as she moved, f^id 
 made a mental note of it. And yet she was not, strictly spew- 
 ing, a beautiful woman. She was not the lar^e Juno, who is 
 our present type of beauty ; she was not blazing with colour 
 — ^red, and white, and golden — like the Eubens-heroines of the 
 studio ; nor was she of the low-browed, sleepy-eyed, sensuous, 
 classic type. She was rather colourless, on the contrary. Her 
 hair was olive-brown which is so harmonious with a, pale com- 
 plexion ; her eyes hazel-grey ; her colour evanescent, coming and 
 going, and rarely at any time more than a rose tint ; her very 
 lips, though beautifully formed were only rose— -not scarlet — 
 and her figure was slight and deficient in " grand curves." 
 Her great characteristic was what the French call distinciion ; 
 a quiUity to which in point of truth she had no claim — ^for 
 Helen, it must be remembered was no long descended lady. 
 She was the produce of three generations of money, and a race 
 which could be called nothing but Philistine ; and from whence 
 came her high-bred look, her fanciful pride, her unrealisable 
 ambition it would be difiicult to say. 
 
 She went over the house with a little sigh after Robert was 
 gone, professedly in the ordinary way of a housewife's duty, 
 but really with reference to his last words. Yes, the house 
 might be made a great deal better. The drawing-room was a 
 very pretty one — quite enough for all their wants— but the 
 dining-room was occupied by Drummoud as his studio, accor- 
 ding to an arrangement very common among paiuters. This, 
 it will be perceived, was before the day of the new studio. 
 
 f \ 
 
AT HIS GAT£S. 
 
 9 
 
 The dininff-room was thus occupied, and a smaller room, iticli as 
 inmost suburban housies is appropriated geuerally to the often 
 scanty books of the family^ was the eatins-room of the Brum- 
 monds. It was one of those things whi(£ made Helen's pride 
 wince — a very petty subject for pride, you will say— but, then 
 pride is not above petty things; and it wounded her to be 
 obliged to say apologetically to her cousin—*' The real dining- 
 room of the house is Mr. Drummond's studio. We content 
 ourselves with this in the meantime." ** Oh, yes ; I see ; of 
 course, he must want space and light," Beginald Burton had 
 replied with patronising complacency, and a recollection of his 
 own banqueting-hall at Dura. How Helen hated him at that 
 moment, and how much aggravated she felt with poor Robert 
 smiling opposite to her, and feeling quite comfortable on the 
 , subject ! " We painters are troublesome things," he even said, 
 as if it was a thing to smile at. Helen went and looked in 
 at the studio on this particular morning, and made a rapid 
 [calculation how it could be " made better." It would have to 
 |be improved off the face of the earth, in the first place, as a 
 studio ; and then carpeted, and tabled, mirrored, and omament- 
 ;d to suit its new destination. It would take a good deal 
 )f money to do it, but that was not the first consideration. 
 ihe thing was where was Bobert to go 1 She, for her part, 
 rould have been reconciled to it easily, could he have made up 
 lis mind to have a studio apart from the house, and come 
 lome when his work was done. That would be an advantage 
 
 every way. It would secure that in the evening, at least, 
 profession should be banished. He would have to spend 
 ^he evening as gentlemen usually do, yawning his head off if he 
 pleased, but not be professional for ever. It would no longer 
 )e possible for him to put on an old coat, and steal away into 
 *iat atmosphere of paint, and moon over his effects, as he loved 
 
 do now. He liked Helen to go with him, and she did so 
 fften, and was tried almost beyond her strength by his affection* 
 |te lingerings over the canvas which, in her soul, she felt 
 rould never be any better, and his appeals to her to suggest 
 id to approve. Nothing would teach him not to appeal to 
 ler : though he devined what she felt, though it had eaten 
 ito his very life, yet still he would try again. Perhaps this 
 ~ie she might like it better — perhaps—. 
 
10 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 f 
 
 ri 
 
 ' i 
 
 M 
 
 "If he would only have his studio out of doors," Helen re- 
 flected. She was top sure of him to be checked by the thought 
 that his heart might perhaps learn to live out of doors too as 
 well as his pictures, did she succeed in driving them out. No 
 such doubt ever crossed her mind. He loved her, and nobody 
 else, she knew. His mind had never admitted another idea but 
 hers. She was a woman who would have scorned to be jeal- 
 ous in any circumstance — ^but she had no temptation to be jeal- 
 ous. He was only a moderate painter. He would never be 
 as splendid as Titian, with a prmce to pick up his pencil — 
 which was what Helen's semi-Philistine pride would have prized. 
 But he loved her so as no man had ever surpassed. She knew 
 th^t, and was vaguely pleased by it ; yet not as she might have 
 been had there ever been any doubt about the matter. She 
 was utterly sure of him, and it did not excite her one way or 
 another. Bjut his worils had put a little gentle agitation in her 
 mind. She put down her calculation ou paper when she went 
 back to the drawing-room after her morning's occupations were 
 over, and called Norah to her music. Sideboard so much, old 
 carved oak, to please him, though for herself she thought 
 it gloomy; cur^ns,, for these luxuries he had not admitted to 
 spoU his ligLtj a much larger carpet-she made her list with 
 some pleasure while Norah played her scales. And that was 
 the day on which the painter's commercial career began. 
 
 '!l 
 
AT HIS 0AT£9. 
 
 11 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ^RUMMOND'S first speculations were very successful, as 
 is so often the case with the innocent and ignorant 
 dabbler in commercial gambling. Mr. Burton instruct- 
 ed him what to do with his little capital, and he did it. He 
 new nothing about business, and was docile to the point of 
 srvility to nis disinterested friend, who smiled at his two 
 ^ousand pounds, and regarded it with amused condescension, 
 .wo thousand pounds ! It meant comfort, ease of mind, moral 
 rength, to Drummond. It made him feel that in the contin- 
 gency of a bad year, or a long illness, or any of the perils to 
 rhich men and artists are liable, he would still be safe, and that 
 ds wife and child would not suffer ; but to the rich City man it 
 ras a bagatelle scarcely worth thinking of. When he really conr 
 3nted to employ his mind about it, he made such use of it as 
 Btonished and delighted the innocent painter. All that his 
 iple imagination had ever dreamed seemed likely to be carrie4 
 It. This was indeed money-making he felt. Trade, spelt with 
 [very big capital, and meaning something much more splendid 
 m anything he had hitherto dreamt of. But then he could 
 ^t have borne it by himself or without instruction. Burton 
 ^uld not have been more at a loss in Drummond's studio than 
 would have felt in his friend's counting-house. Mr. Burton 
 [as "a merchant/' a vague term which nevertheless satisfied the 
 iinter's mind. He was understood to be one of the partners in 
 livers's bank, but his own business was quite independent of that, 
 mey was the material he dealt in — ^his stock-in-trade. He un- 
 :;ist(>od the Funds as a doctor understands the patient whose 
 [ilse he feels every day. He could divine when they were 
 )ing to rise and when they were going to fall. And there 
 3re other ways in which his knowledge told still more wonder- 
 ply. He knew when a new invention, a new manufacture^ 
 going to be popular, by some extraordinary ms^c which 
 immond could not understand. He would catch a speculation 
 this sort at its tide and take his profit from it, and bound 
 
12 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 off Again uninjured before the current began to faSL In all 
 these matters he was knowing beyond most men; and he lent 
 to his cousin's husband all the benefit of his experience. For 
 several years Drummond went on adding to his store in a man- 
 ner so simple and delightful, that his old way of making money, 
 the mode by which months of labour went to the aoquisition of a 
 few hundred pounds, looked almost laughable to him. He con- 
 tinued it because he was fond of his art, and loved her for 
 herself alone ; but he did it with a sort of banter, smiling at 
 the folly of it, as an enlightened old lady might look at her 
 spinninff-wheeL The use of it ? Well, as for that, the new 
 ways of spinning were better and cheaper; but still not to 
 the use, but for the pleasure of it ! — So Drummond clung to 
 his prbfessioo, and worked almost as hard at it as ever. And 
 in the additional ease of his circumstances, not needing to 1^- 
 ly anything for an exhibition, or sacrifice any part of Ms design 
 for the fancy of a buyer, he certainly painted better than usual 
 and was made an Associate, to the general satisfaction of his 
 brethren. These were the happy days in which the studio was 
 built. It was connected with the house, as I have said, by a 
 conservatory, a warm, dass-covered, fragrant, balpiy place, 
 br^ht with flowers, "l^ere must always be violets, and there 
 must always be colour ! " he had said to the nurseryman who 
 supplied and kept his fainr palace in order, after the fashion 
 of London. And if ever Hnere was a flowery way contrived 
 into the thorny haunts of Art it was this. It would perhaps be 
 rash to say that this was the happy time of Drummond's mar- 
 ried life, tot they had always been happy, with only that one 
 drawback of Helen's dissatisfaction with her husband'is work. 
 They had loved each other always, and their union had been 
 most true and full. But the efiect of wealth was mollifying, 
 as it so often is. Prosperity has been railed at much, as dan- 
 gerous and deadening to the higher bein^ ; but prosperity in- 
 creases amiability and smooths down asperities as nothing else 
 can. It did not remove that one un^sclosed and untellable 
 erievance which prevented Mrs. Drummond's life {torn attain- 
 ing perfection, but it took away ever so many little points of 
 irritation which aggravated that. She got, for one thing the 
 dining-room she wanted^ — a prosaic matter, yet one which 
 Helen considered important— and she got, what she had not 
 
AT mS GATES. 
 
 Id 
 
 bargained for, that pretty conservatory, and a bunch of violets 
 cveiy day — a lover-like dft which pleased her. Things, in 
 short, went very wdl witii them at this period of their exist- 
 ence Her discontents were more lulled to sleep than they had 
 ever been before. She still saw the absence of any divine 
 meaning in her husband's pictures ; but she saw it with gentler 
 eyes. The pictures did not seem so entirely his sole standing 
 ground. If he could not grow absolutely illustrious by that 
 or an^r personal means of aoquMng fame, he might still 
 hold his own in the world by other means. Helen si^ed over 
 her Titian-dream but to a sreat extent she gave it up. Great- 
 ness was not to be, but comfort, and even luxury were probable; 
 Her old conditions of life seemed to be coming back to her. 
 It was not what she had dreamed of; but yet it was better to 
 have mediocrity with ease and modest riches, and pleasant sur- 
 rounding than mediocrity without those alleviations. To do 
 her justice, had her husband been a great unsuccessful genius, 
 in whom she had thoroughly believed, she would have borne 
 privation proudly and with a certain triumph. But that not 
 being so, she returned to her old starting-ground with a sigh 
 that was not altogether painful, saying to nerself that she must 
 lleam to be content with what she had, and not long for what 
 [she could not have. 
 
 Thus they were happier, more hopefiil, more at their ease. 
 
 |They went more into society, and received more frequent visits 
 
 rom their Mends. The new studio made many social pleasures 
 
 )ssible that had not been possible. Of itself it. implied a 
 
 certain rise in the world. It gave grace and completeness to 
 
 their little house. Nobody could say any longer that it was 
 
 lalf a house and half a workshop, as Helen, under her breath, 
 
 her impatience, had sometimes declared it to be. The 
 
 workshop phase was over and the era of self-denial gone — and 
 
 ret Robert was not driven from the art he loved, nor prevented 
 
 >om putting on his old coat and stealing 'away in the evening!^ 
 
 visit the mistress who was dearer to him than anything else 
 
 ^xcept his wife. 
 
 This was the state of affairs when the painter one day 
 bntered Helen's drawing-room in a state of considerable 
 kxcitement. He was mil of a new scheme, greater than 
 Anything he had as yet been engaged in. Bivers's bank 
 
u 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 which was half as old as London, which held as high repute as 
 the Bank of England, which was the favourite depository 
 of everybody's money, from ministers of state down to 
 dressmakers, was going to undergo a revolution. The Biverses 
 themselves had all died out, except, indeed, the head 
 of the house, who was now Lord Bivers, and had no more 
 than a nominal connection with the establishment which 
 had been the means of bringing, him to his present hi^h 
 estate. The other partners had gradually got mimersed in 
 other business. Mr. Burton, for instance, confessed frankly 
 that he had not time to attend to the affairs of the bank, 
 and the others were in a similar condition : — ^they had come 
 in as secondaries, and they found themselves principals, 
 a»nd it was too much for them. They had accordingly deci- 
 ded to make Rivers's a joint-stock bank. This was the 
 great news that Drummond brought home to his wife. '^I 
 will put everything we have into it," he said, in his enthu- 
 siasm, " unless you object, Helen. We can never have such 
 another chance. Most speculations have a doubtful element 
 in them; but this is not at all doubtful There is an 
 enormous business ready made to our hands, and all the 
 traditions of success, and the best names in the City to 
 head oiir list — for of course the old partners hold shares, 
 
 and will be made directors of the new company ^And — 
 
 you will laugh, Helen, but for you and the child I feel 
 able to brave anything — ^I am to be a director too." 
 
 " You !" cried Helen, with a surprise which had some 
 mixture of dismay. "But you don't know anything about 
 business. You can't even " 
 
 "Beckon up my own accounts," said the painter placidly 
 —"quite true; but you see it is a great deal easier to 
 calculate on a large scale than on a smaU scale. I assure you 
 I understand the banking system — at least, I shall when I 
 have given my mind to it. I shouldn't mind even," he said, 
 laughing, " making an effort to learn the multiplication table. 
 Norah might teach me. Besides, to speak serious^, it doesn't 
 matter in the least: there are clerks and a manager to do 
 all that, and other directors that know all about it, and I 
 shall learn in time." 
 
 ** But, then, why be a director at all 1'* said Helen, She ^ 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 u 
 
 said this more from a woman's natural hesitation at the 
 thought of change, than from any dislike of the idea; for 
 she belonged to the race from which directors come by 
 nature. Poor Drummond could not give any very good 
 reason why he desired this distinction ; but he looked veiy wise, 
 and set before her with gravity all the privileges involved. 
 
 "It brings something in," he said, "either in the way of 
 salary, or special profits, or something. Ask your cousin. 
 I don't pretend to know very much about it. But I assure 
 you he is very great upon the advantages involved. He 
 says it will be the making of me. It gives position and 
 influence and all that-—" 
 
 " To a painter !" said Helen : and in her heart she groaned. 
 Her dream came back like a mist, and wove itself 
 about her head. What distinction would it have given to 
 Baphael or to Titian, or even to Gainsborough or Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds, to be made directors of a bank? She 
 groaned in her heart, and then she came back to herself, 
 and caught her husband's eyes looking at her with that 
 grieved and wondering look, half aware of the disappoint- 
 ment he had caused her, humbled, sorry, suspicious, yet 
 almost indignant, the look with which he had sometimes 
 regarded her from among his pictures in the day when art' 
 reigned alone over his lue. Helen came abruptly to herself 
 when she met that glance, and said hurriedly, "It cannot 
 {change your position much, Robert, in our world." 
 
 " No," he said, with a glance of sudden brightness in his 
 
 I eyes which she did not understand; "but, my darling, our 
 
 world may expand. I shoui I like you to be something 
 
 more than a poor painter's witb, Helen — you who might be 
 
 a princess ! I should not ha^ c ventured to marry you if I 
 
 had not hoped to make you a kind of princess; but you 
 
 [don't believe I can; do you I' Here he paused, and, she 
 
 [thought, regarded her with a wistful look, asking her to 
 
 3ontradict him. But how could she contradict himi It 
 
 true. The wife of a pleasant mediocre painter, Asso- 
 
 ras 
 
 iate, or in time Academician — that was all. Not a thorough 
 
 dy of art such as — such as Such as whomi Poor 
 
 drea's Lucrezia, who ruined him. That was the only 
 )ainter*8 wife that occurred to Helen, 
 
16 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 "Dear Robert/' she said earnestly, ** never mind me: so 
 long as I have you and Norah, I care very little about 
 
 frincesses. We are very well and very bappy as we are. 
 thii^ you should be careful, and consider well before you 
 make any change." 
 
 But by this time the brightness that had been hanging 
 about hun came back again uke a gleam of shunshine. He 
 kissed her with a joyous laugh. "You are only a woman," 
 he said, ''after all You don't understand what it is to be 
 a British director. Fancy marchine into the bank with a 
 lordly stride, and remembering the days when one was 
 thankful to have a balance of five pounds to one's credit! 
 You don't see the fun of it, Helen ; and the best of the 
 whole is that an B.A. on the board of directors will; be an 
 advantage, Burton says. Why, heaven knows. I suppose 
 he thinks it will conciliate the profession. We painters, 
 you see, are known to have so much money floating about ! 
 But, any how, he thinks an RA. " 
 
 " But, Robert ! you are not an R. A." 
 
 "Not yet. I forgot to tell you," he added, lowering his 
 voice and putting on a sudden look of gravity, which was 
 half-r^al, h«df-innocently hypocritical " Old Welby died j 
 last night." 
 
 Then there was a little pause. They were not glad that old 
 Welby was dead. A serious shade came over bo3i their faces 
 for the moment — the homage, partly natural, partly conven- 
 tional, that human nature pays to death. And then they 
 clasped each other's hands in mutual congratulation. The 
 vacant place would come to Drummond in the course of 
 nature. He was known to be the first on the list of Asso- 
 ciates. Thus he had obtained the highest honours of his 
 profession, and it was this and not the bank directorship 
 which had filled him with triumph. His wife's coldni&ss, 
 however, checked his delight. His profession and the pub- 
 lic adjudged the honour to him ; but Helen had not adjudged 
 it. If the prize had been hers to bestow, she would not 
 have given it to him. This made his heart contract even 
 in the moment of his triumph. But yet he was triumphant. 
 To him it was the highest honour in the world. 
 
 " Poor old Welby 1" he said^ " He was a great painter j 
 
 > \ 
 
AV HIS Qkisa. 
 
 vt 
 
 and now that he is dead, he will be better Understood. He 
 was fifty before he entered the Academy/' the painter con- 
 tinued, with half conscious self-glorification. ''He was a 
 long time making his way." i xr<v,' , 
 
 ''And you are more than ten years younger/' said' Helen. 
 Surely that might have changed her opinion if anything 
 could. " Robert, are you to be put upon this bank because 
 you are an R.A. 1" 
 
 "And for my business talents generally/' he said, with 
 a laugh. His spirits were too high to be subdued. He 
 would not hear reason; nor, indeed, anything except the 
 confused delightful chatter about his new elevation, in which 
 the fumes of happiness got vent. He plunged into an 
 immediate revelation of what he would do in his new capacity. 
 "It will be odd if one can't make the Hanging Committee 
 a little more reasonable," he said. " I shidl set my face 
 against that hideous habit of filling up 'the line' with 
 dozens of bad pictures because the men have B.A. at their 
 names. Do you remember, Helen, that year when I was 
 hung up at the ceiling ) It nearly broke my heart. It was 
 the year before we were married." 
 
 "They were your enemies then," said Helen, with some 
 visionary remnant of the old indignation which she had 
 felt about that base outrage before she was Robert Drum- 
 mond's wife. She had not begun to criticise him then — ^to 
 weigh his pictures and find them wanting ; and she could 
 still remember her disgust and hatred of the Hanging Com- 
 mittee of that year. Now no Hanging Committee could do 
 any harm. It had changed its opinion and applauded the 
 painter, but she — had changed her opinion too. Then this 
 artist-pair did as many such people do. By way of celebra- 
 ting the occasion they went away to the country, and spent 
 the rest of the day like a pair of lovers. Little Norah, 
 who was too small to be carried off on such short notice, 
 was left at home with her governess, but the father and 
 mother went away to enjoy the bright summec day, and 
 each other, and the event which had crowned them with 
 glory. Even Helen's heart was moved with a certain thrill 
 of satisfaction when it occurred to her that some one was 
 pointing her husband out as " Drummond the painter — the 
 B 
 
it 
 
 : H 
 
 ! I 
 
 18 
 
 AT HIS GAT£S« 
 
 new R.A." He had won his blue ribbon, and won it bonestly^ 
 and nobody in England, nobody in the worid was above 
 him in his own profession. He was an good as a Duke, or 
 even superior, for a Duke (poor wretch!) cannot help him- 
 self, whereas a painter achieves his own distinction. Helen 
 let this new softness steal into her soul. She even felt 
 that when she looked at the pictures next time they would 
 have a light in them which she had not yet been able to 
 perceive. And the bank, though it was so much more im- 
 portant, sank altogether into the background, while the two 
 rowed down the river in the summer evening, with a gol- 
 den cloud of pleasure and glory around them. They had 
 gone to Richmond, where so many happy people go to 
 realise their gladness. And were the pair of lovers new 
 bethrothed, who crossed their path now and then without 
 seeing them, more blessed than the elder pairl "I wonder 
 if they will be as happy ten years hence V* Helen said, 
 smiling at them with that mingling of sweet regret and 
 superiority with which we gaze at me reflection of a hap- 
 piness we have had in our day ''Yes," said the painter, 
 " if she is as sweet to him as my wife has been to me." 
 What more could a woman want to make her gladi If 
 Helen had not been very happy in his love, it would have 
 made her heart sick to think of all her failures towards 
 him ; but she was very happy ; and happiness is indulgent not 
 only to its friends, but even to itself. 
 
 I— ,-_-... 
 
JLT BIS OATsa 
 
 19 
 
 lionesily^ 
 iras above 
 
 Duke, or 
 he^ him- 
 m. Helen 
 
 even felt 
 hey would 
 )n able to 
 I more im- 
 lle the two 
 with, a gol- 
 
 They had 
 ople go to 
 lovers new 
 en without 
 "I wonder 
 lelen said, 
 regret and 
 L of a hap- 
 the painter, 
 ^en to me. 
 r gladi If 
 would have 
 
 es towards 
 
 dulgent not 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 R. BURTON, however, was soon restored to pre-emi- 
 nence in the affairs of the Drummonds. Tne very 
 next day he dined with them, and entered on the 
 whole question. The glory which the painter had achieved 
 was his own affair, and consequently its interest was soon ex- 
 hausted to his friend, who, for his part, had a subject of his 
 own of which the interest was inexhaustible. Mr. Burton was 
 very explanatory, in his genial, mercantile way. He made it 
 clear even to Helen, who was not above the level of ordinary 
 womankind in her understanding of business. He had no 
 difficulty in convincing her that Robert Drummond, RA., 
 would be an addition to the list of directors ; but it was harder 
 to make the reasons apparent why " Bivers's " should change 
 its character. If it was so firmly established, so profitable, and 
 so popular, why should the partners desire to share their good 
 fortune with others 'i Mrs. Drummond asked. Her husband 
 laughed with the confidence of a man who knew all about it, 
 at the simplicity of such a question, but Mr. Burton, on the 
 contraiT, took the greatest pains to explain all. He pointed 
 out to ner all the advantages of " new blood." The bank was 
 doing well, and making enormous profits ; but still it might do 
 better with more energetic management. Mr. Burton de- 
 scribed and deplored pathetically his own over-burdened eru- 
 dition. Sometimes he was detained in the City while the 
 guests^ at a state dinner-party awaited him at home. His 
 carriage had waited for him for two hours together at the 
 railway, while he was busy in town, toiling over the arrears of 
 work at Rivers's. " We have a jewel of a manager," he said, 
 " or we never could get on at all. You know Golden, Drum- 
 mond! There never was such a fellow for work — and a 
 head as clear as steel ; never forgets anything ; never lets an 
 opportunity slip him. But for him, we never could have got 
 on so long in this way. But every man's strength has its limits. 
 And w© must have * new blood.'" Thus Helen gradually camQ. 
 
fi 
 
 ! 1 
 
 ^0 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 to ah understanding of the whole, or at least thoueht she did. 
 At all events, she understood about the " new blood." Her 
 own Robert was new blood of the most valuable kind. His 
 name would be important, for the business of " Rivers's " was 
 to a considerable extent a private business. And his good 
 sense and industry would be important too. 
 
 " Talk about business talent, * Mr. Burton said; ** business 
 talent means good sense and prudence. It means the capacity 
 to see what ought to be done, and the spirit to do it ; and if 
 you add to this, discretion enough not to go too far, you have 
 ever3rthing a man of business needs. Of course, all technical 
 knowledge has to be acquired, but that is easily done. " 
 
 " But is Robert so accomplished as all this ? " Helen said, 
 opening her eyes. She would not, for all England, have dis- 
 closed to her cousin that Robert, in her eyes was anything 
 less than perfect. She would not, for her l^e, have had him 
 know that her husband was not the first of painters and of 
 men; but yet an exclamation of wonder burst from her. She 
 was not herself so sure of his clear-sightedness and discretion. 
 And when Robert laughed with a mixture of vanity and amuse- 
 ment at the high character imagined for him, Helen flushed 
 also with something between anger and shame. 
 
 " Your own profession is a different thing," she said hastily. 
 " You have been trained for that. But to be an R.A. does not 
 make you a man of business — and painting is your profession, 
 Robert. More will be expected from you now, instead of 
 less." 
 
 " But we are not going to interfere with his time, my dear 
 Helen," said her cousin cheerfully. " A meeting of directors 
 once a week or so— a consultation when we meet — his advice, 
 which we can always come to ask. Bless my soul, we are not 
 going to sweep up a great painter for our smsdl concern. No, 
 no ; you may make yourself quite easy. In the meantime 
 Drummond is not to give us much more than the benefit of his 
 name." 
 
 "And all his money," Helen said to herself as she withdrew 
 to the drawing-room, where her little Norah awaited her. His 
 money had increased considerably since this new era in their 
 lives began. It was something worth having now — something 
 that would make the little girl an heiress in a humble way. And 
 
 I.. 
 
AT HIS QXtta. 
 
 n 
 
 he was going to risk it all She went into the conservatory in 
 the twihght and walked up and down and pondered — wonder- 
 ing if it were wise to do it ; wondering if some new danger were 
 about to swallow them up. Her reasonings, however, were 
 wholly founded upon matters quite distinct from the real quefr' 
 tion. She discussed it with herself, just as her husband 
 would discuss it with himself, in a way common to women, 
 and painters, and other unbusiness-like persons, on every 
 ground but the real one. First, he followed Reginald Burton's 
 advice in all his speculations, and had gained. Would it be 
 honourable for him to give up following his advice now, es- 
 pcially in a matter which he had so much at heart 1 Secondly, 
 by every means in his power, Reginald Burton took occasion 
 to throw in her face (Helen's) the glories and splendour of his 
 wife, and of the home he had given her, and all her high estate. 
 Helen herself was conscious of having refused these glories 
 and advantages. She had chosen to be Robert Drummond's 
 wife, and thrown aside the other ; but still the mention of 
 Mrs. Burton and her luxuries had a certain stinging and stim- 
 ulating effect upon her. She scorned, and yet would have been 
 pleased to emulate that splendour. The account of it put her 
 out of patience with her own humility, notwithstanding that 
 she took pride in that humility, and felt it more consistent with 
 the real dignity of her position than any splendour. And 
 then, thirdly, the thought would come in that even the 
 magic title of R.A. had not thrown any celestial light into 
 Robert's pictures. That very morning she had stood for 
 half an hour, while he was out, in front of the last, which 
 still stood on his easel, and tried to reason herself into 
 love of it. It was a picture which ought to have been 
 great. It was Francesca and Paolo, in the story, reading to- 
 gether at the crisis of their fate. The glow and ardour of 
 suppressed passion had somehow toned down in Drummond's 
 hands to a gentle light. There was a sunset warmth of colour 
 about the pair, which!stood in place of that fiercer illumination; 
 and all the maze of love and madness, all the pasblon and 
 misery and delight, all the terror of fate involved, and shadow 
 of the dark, awful world beyond, had sunk into a tender picture 
 of a pair of lovers, innocent and sweet. Helen had stood before 
 it with a mixture of discouragement and longing impossible to 
 
M i; 
 
 
 1 1 
 
 I! 
 
 ^i 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 put into words. Oh, if slie could but breathe upon it and 
 breathe in the lacking soul ! Oh, if she could but reflect into 
 Drummond' s eyes the pasnion of humiliation and impatience 
 and love which was in her own ! But she could not. As 
 Helen paced up and down the pretty ornamented space, all 
 sweet with flowers, which her husband's love had made for her, 
 this picture rose before her like a ghost He who painted it 
 was an R.A. It was exquisitely painted — a very miracle 
 of colour and manipulation. There was not a detail which 
 could be improved, nor a line which was out of drawing. He 
 would never do anything better, never, never ! Then why 
 should he go on trying, proving, over and over, how much he 
 could, and how much he could not do 1 Better, far better, to 
 throw it aside for ever, to grow rich, to make himself a n%me 
 in another way. ' 
 
 Thus Helen reasoned in the vehemence of her thoughts. She 
 was calm until she came to this point. She thought she was 
 very calm, reasonable to the highest pitch, in everything ; and 
 yet the blood began to boil and course through her veins as she 
 pursued the subject. Sometimes she walked as far as the door 
 of the studio, and pausing to look in, saw that picture glimmer- 
 ing on thk easel, and all the unframed canvases about upon the 
 WJills. Many of them were sketches of herself, made from 
 memory, for she never would sit — studies of her in her differ- 
 ent dresses, in different characters, according as her husband's 
 fond fancy represented her to himself. She could not see them 
 for the darkness, but she saw them all in her heart. Was that 
 all he could do 1 Not glorify her by his greatness, but render 
 her the feeble homage of this perpetual, ineffectual adoration. 
 
 Why was not he like the other painters ; like ^her memory 
 
 failed her for an example : of all the great painters she could 
 think of only Rubens' bacchanalian beauties, and that Lucrezia 
 would come to her mind. It was about the time of Mr. Brown- 
 ing's poem, that revelation of Andrea del Sarto, which eluci- 
 dates the man like a very ray from heaven. She was not very 
 fond of poetry, nor anything of a critic ; but the poem had 
 seized upon her, partly because of her intense feeling on the 
 subject. Sometimes she felt as if she herself was Andrea — 
 not Robert, for Robert had none of that heart-rending sense 
 of failure. Was she Lucrezia rather| t^e wife that goaded him 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 ^ 
 
 into misery 1 No, no ! she could not so condemn herself. When 
 her thoughts reached this point she forsook the studio and the 
 conservatory, and rushed back to the drawing-room, where 
 little Norah, with her head pressed close against the window 
 to take advantags of the last glimmer of light, was reading a 
 book of fairy tales. Great painters had not wives. Those 
 others — Leonardo, and Angelo, and the young Urbinese — had 
 none of them wives. Was that the reason 1 But not to be as * 
 great as Michael Angelo, not to win the highest honours of art, 
 would Robert give up his wife and his child. Therefore was 
 it not best that he should give up being a painter, and become 
 a commercial man instead, and grow rich ! Helen sat down in 
 gathering darkness and looked at the three windows glimmer- 
 ing with their mist of white curtains, and little Nondi curled 
 up on the carpet, with her white face and her brown curls re- 
 lieved against the light. Some faint sounds came in, soft as 
 summer and evening made them, through the long casement, 
 .which was open, and with it a scent of mignonette, and of the 
 fresh earth in the flower-beds, refreshed by watering and dew. 
 Sometimes the voices of her husband and cousin from the adjoin- 
 ing room would reach her ear ; but where she was all was silent, 
 nothing to disturb her thoughts. No, he would never do bet- 
 ter. He had won his crown. Helen was proud and glad that 
 he had won it ; but in her heart did not consent. He had won 
 and he had not won. His victory was because he had caught 
 the banal fancy of the public, and pleased his brethren by his 
 
 beautiful work ; but he had failed because — ^because Why 
 
 had he failed 1 Because he was not Raphael or Leonardo — 
 nor even that poor Andrea — ^but only Robert Drummond, 
 painting his pictures not out of any inspiration within him, 
 but for money and fame. He had gained these as men who 
 seek them frankly so often seem to do. But it was better, far 
 better, that he should make money now, by legitimate means, 
 without pursuing a profession in which he never could be 
 great. 
 
 These were not like a wife's reasonings ; but they were Hel- 
 en's, though she was loyal to her husband as ever woman was. 
 She would have liked so much better to worship his works 
 and himself, as most women do ; and that would have done 
 him §ood more t>hm ftnjrthin^ els© w eartJ^ or heaven, But 
 
u 
 
 AT HIS OATES. 
 
 h 
 
 h 
 
 
 she could not. It yfaa her hard fate that made her eye so keen 
 and so true. It felt like infidelity to him, to come to such a 
 conclusion in his own house, with his kind voice sounding in 
 her ear. But so it was ; and she could not make it dififerent, do 
 what she would. He was so pleased when he found she did 
 not oppose his desires, so grateful to her, so strongly convinced 
 that she was yielding her own pleasure to his, that his thanks 
 were both lavish and tender. When their visitor had left 
 them, and they were alone, he poured out his gratitude like a 
 lover. " I know that you are giving in to me," he said, " my 
 love, my self-forgetting Helen ! It is Tike you. You always have 
 given up your pleasure to mine. Am I a brute to accept it, and 
 take my own way?" 
 
 " I am not making any sacrifice, Robert. Don't thank me, 
 please. It is because I think you have judged right, and this 
 IS best. 
 
 " And you think I am so blind and stupid not to see why 
 you say that," he said in his enthusiasm. " Helen, I often woi;i- 
 der what providence was thinking of to give you only such a 
 poor fellow as I am. I wish I was something better for your 
 sake, something more like you ; but I have not a wish or a hope 
 in the world, my darling, except for you. If I want to be rich, 
 Helen, it is only for you. You know that, at least." 
 
 " And for Norah," she said, smiling. 
 
 " For Norah, but most for Norah's mother, who trusted me 
 when I was nobody, and gave me herself when I had little 
 ichance of being either rich or great," said Drummond. He 
 said it, poor fellow, with a swelling of his heart. His new dig- 
 nity had for the moment delivered him even from the chill of 
 his wife's unexpressed indiflference to his work. With a certain 
 trustful simplicity, which it would have been impossible to call 
 vanity, he accepted the verdict of his profession — even though 
 he had doubts himself as to his own eminence, they must know. 
 He had won the greatness he wanted most, he had acquired a 
 distinction which could not but vanquish his own doubts and 
 hers. And as he was now, he would not change positions with 
 any man in England. He was great, and please God, for 
 Helen's sake, he would be rich too. He put his arm round his 
 wife and drew her into the open conservatory. The moon was 
 up, and shout down upon them, lighting up with a wan aud 
 
 n 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 25 
 
 spiritual light the colourless silent flowers. It was curious to 
 see them, with all their leaves silvered, and all their identity 
 gone, yet pouring forth their sweet scents silently, no one 
 noting them. " How sweet it is here," said the painter, draw- 
 ing a long breath in his happiness. It was a moment that 
 lived in his mind, and remained with him, as moments do 
 which are specially happy, detaching themselves from the 
 common tenour of life with all the more distinctness that they 
 are so few. 
 
 " Tes, it is the place I love best," said Helen, whose 
 heart was touched too, " because you made it for me, 
 Robert. The rest is ordinary and comfortable, but this is 
 different. It is your sonnet to me, like that we were read- 
 ing of— like Raphael's sonnet and Dante's angel." This she 
 I said with a little soft enthusiasm, which perhaps went be- 
 yond the magnitude of the fact. But then she was com- 
 punctious about her sins towards him; and his fondness, 
 and the moonlight, and the breath of the flowers, moved 
 her, and the celestial fumes of Mr. Browning's book of 
 [poetry had gone to Helen's head, as the other influences 
 [went to her heart. 
 
 "My darling! it will be hard upon me if I don't give 
 |you better yet," he said. And then with a change in his 
 [voice — cheerful, yet slightly deprecating, " Come and have 
 [a look at * Francesca,' " he said. 
 
 It was taking an unfair advantage of her ; but she could 
 [not refuse him at such a moment. He went back to the 
 [drawing-room for the lamp, and returned canying it, draw- 
 ling flecks of colour round nim from all the flowers as he 
 [passed flashing ihe light on them. Helen felt her own 
 )ortrait look at her reproachfully as she went in with re- 
 luctant steps following him, wondering what she could say. 
 Tt made her heart sick to look at his pet picture, in its 
 )eauty and feebleness; but he approached it lovingly, with 
 heart full of satisfaction and content. He held up the 
 famp in his hand, though it was heavy, that the softened 
 ight might fall just where it ought, and indicated to her 
 ^he very spot where she ought to stand to have the full 
 Advantage of all its beauties. " 1 don't think there is much 
 And fault with in the composition," he said, looking at 
 
26 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 t I i 
 
 i ! 1 
 
 IS! 
 
 it fondly. " Give me your honest opinion, Helen. Do you 
 tliink it would be improved by a little heightening of those 
 lights r 
 
 Helen gazed at it with confused eyes and an aching heart. 
 It was his diploma picture, the one by which most probably 
 he would be known best to posterity, and she said to her- 
 self that he, a painter, ought to know better than she did. 
 But that reflection did not affect her feelings. Her impulse 
 was to snatch the lamp from his hand, and say, "Dear 
 Bobert, dearest husband, come and make money, come and 
 be a banker, or sweep a crossing, and let Francesca alone 
 for ever !" But she could not say that. What she did say 
 faltering was — " You must know so much better than I do, 
 Robert ; but I think the light is very sweet. It is best i|ot to 
 be too bright." 
 
 "Do you think so?" he said anxiously. "I am not quite 
 sure. I think it would be more effective with a higher tone 
 just here ; and this line of drapery is a little stiff— just a little 
 stiff. Could you hold the lamp for a moment, Helen 1 There ! 
 that is better. Now Paolo's foot is free, and the attitude more 
 distinct. Follow the line of the chalk and tell me what you 
 think. That comes better now 1" 
 
 "Yes, it is better," said Helen ; and then she paused and 
 summoned all her courage. " Don't you think," she faltered, 
 " that Francesca — is — ^almost too innocent and sweet?" 
 
 " Too innocent ! " said poor Robert, opening his honest eyes. 
 " But, dear, you forget ! She was innocent. Why, surely you 
 are not the one to go in for anjrthing sensational, Helen ! this 
 is not Francesca in the Inferno, but Francesca in the garden, 
 before any harm had come near her. I don't like your impas- 
 sioned women." He had grown a little excited, feeling per- 
 haps, more in the suggestion than its mere words; but now he 
 came to a stop, and his voice regained its easy tone. " The whole 
 thing wants a great deal of working up," he said : all this fore- 
 ground is very imperfect — it is too like an English garden. I 
 acknowledge my weakness ; my ideal always smacks of home. 
 
 Helen said no more. How could she ? He was ready laugh- 
 ingly to allow that England came gliding into his pencil and his 
 thoughts when he meant to paint Italy ; a venial, kindly error. 
 But candid mi kind s^s he was, he could not bear critivi^m on 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 27 
 
 the more vital points. She held th6 lamp for him patiently, 
 though it strained her arm, and tried to make what small sug- 
 gestions she could about the foreground; and in her heart, as 
 she stood trembling with pain and excitement, would have 
 liked to thrust the flame through that canvas in very love for 
 the painter. Perhaps some painter's wife who reads this page, 
 some author's wife, some woman jealous and hungry for excel- 
 lence ia the productions of those she loves, will understand bet- 
 ter than I can describe it how Helen felt. 
 
 When he had finished those fond scratches of chalk upon the 
 picture, and had taken the lamp from her hand to relieve her 
 Drummond was shocked to find his wife so tremulous and pale. 
 He made her sit down in his great chair, and called himself a 
 brute for tiring her. "Now let us have a comfortable talk 
 over the other matter," he said. The lamp, which he had 
 placed on a table littered with portfolios and pigments, threw a 
 dim light through the large studio. There were two ghostly 
 easels standing up tall and dim in the background, and the lay 
 figure ghostliest of all, draped with a gleaming silvery stuff, 
 pale green with lines of silver, shone eerily in the distance. 
 Drummond sat down by his wife, and took her hand in his. 
 
 "You are quite chilly," he said tenderly ; " are you ill, Helen 1 
 If it worries you like this a hundred directorships would not 
 tempt me. Tell me frankly my darling — do you dislike it so 
 much as this ' " ^ 
 
 " I don't dislike it at all," she said eagerly. " I am chilly, 
 because the night is cold. Listen how the wind is rising! 
 That sound always makes me miserable. It is like a child cry- 
 ing, or some one wailing out of doors. It affects my nerves 
 —5 don't know why." 
 
 " It is nothing but the sound of rain," he said " silly 
 
 little woman! I wonder why it is that one likes a wo- 
 
 ' man to be silly now and then ? It restores the balance between 
 
 us I suppose; for generally, alas! Helen, you are wiser than I 
 
 am, which is a dreadful confession for a man to make." 
 
 "No, no, it is not true," she said, with indescribable remorse. 
 [But he only laughed and put his arm round her, seeing that 
 [she trembled stm. 
 
 " It is quite true ; but I like you to be silly now and then — ^like 
 to, It gives one a glimmer of superiority. There ! lean upon 
 
28 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 me and feel comfortable. You are only a woman after all. 
 You want ^our husband's arm to keep you safe." 
 
 ''What 18 that?" said Helen, with a start. It was a simple 
 sound enough ; one of the many unframed, unfinished drawings 
 which covered the wall, had fallen down. Bobert rose and 
 picked it up, and brought it forward to the light. 
 
 ** It is nothing," he said ; and then with a laugh, looking at it 
 added, ^* Absit wnm ! It is my own portrait And very lucky, 
 too, that it was nothing more important. It is not hurt. Let 
 us talk about the bank." 
 
 " Oh,Ilobert, your portrait !" she said with a sudden unreason- 
 able terror, clutching at it, and gazing anxiously into the serene 
 painted face. 
 
 ** My portrait does not mind it in the least," he said laugh- 
 ing ; and it might have been yours, Helen. I must have all 
 those fastenings seen to to-morrow. Now, let us talk about 
 the bank." 
 
 " Oh, Eobert," she said, ** let us have itothing to do with it. 
 It is an omen, a warning. We are very well as we are. Give 
 up all these business things which you don't understand. How 
 can you understand them % Give it up, and let us be as we 
 are." 
 
 ** Because a nail has come out of the wall 1 " he said. *' Do 
 you suppose the nail knew, Helen, or the bit of painted can- 
 vas 1 Nonsense, dear. I defy all omens for my part." 
 . And just then the wind rose and gave a wailing cry, like a 
 spirit in pain. Helen burst into tears which she could not 
 keep back. No; it was quite true, the picture could not know, 
 the wind could not know what was to come. And yet 
 
 Drummond had never seen his wife suffer from nerves or 
 fancies, and it half-amused, half-affected him; and went to his 
 heart. He was even pleased, the simple-minded soul, and flat- 
 tered by the sense of protection and strength which he felt in 
 himself He liked nothing better than to caress and soothe her. 
 He took her back to the drawing-room and placed her on a sofa, 
 and read the new book of poetry to her which she had taken 
 such a fancy to. Dear foolishness, womankind ! He liked to 
 feel her thiis dependent upon his succour and sympathy ; and 
 smiled to think of any omen that could lie in the howling of a 
 wind, or the rising of a summer storm* 
 
JLT HIS GATES. 
 
 29 
 
 tT is neei 
 fall of 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 needless to say that Helen's superstition about the 
 ~ the picture and the sighing of the wind vanished 
 with the night, and that in the morning her nervous- 
 ness was gone, and her mind had returned to its previous 
 train of thought. Her passing weakness, however, had lefb 
 one trace behind. While he was soothing her fanciful terrors, 
 Robert had said, in a burst of candour and magnanimity. 
 "I will tell you what I will do, Helen. I will not act on 
 my own judgment. I'll ask Hiddane and Maurice for their 
 advice." ''But I do not care for their advice," she had 
 said, with a certain pathos. " Yes, to be sure," Robert had 
 had answered ; for, good as he was, he liked his own way, 
 and sometimes was perverse. " They are my oldest friends ; 
 they are the most sensible fellows I know. I will tell them 
 all the circumstances, and they will give me their advice." 
 
 This was a result which probably would have come whether 
 Helen had^ been nervous or not ; for Haldane and Maurice 
 were the two authorities whom the painter held highest after 
 his wife. But Helen had never been able to receive them 
 with her husband's faith or to agree to them as sharers of 
 her influence over him. It said much for her that she had 
 80 tolerated them and schooled herself in their presence that 
 poor Drunmiond had no idea of the rebellion which existed 
 against them in her heart. But both of them were instinct- 
 ively aware of it, and felt that they were not loved by 
 their friend's wife. He made the same announcement to 
 her next morning with cheerful confidence, and a sense 
 that he deserved nothing but applause for his prudence. 
 
 " I am going to keep my promise," he said. " You must 
 not think I say anything to please you which I don't mean to 
 carry out. I am going to speak to Haldane and Maurice. 
 Maurice is very knowing about business, dnd as for Stephen, 
 his father was in an office all his life." 
 
 ** But, Robert, I don't want you to ask their advice. I have 
 
$0 
 
 AT HIS OATSS. 
 
 no fai<ih in them. I would rather a hundred times you judged 
 for yourself." 
 
 **Yes, my darling," said Bobert; ''they are the greatest 
 helps to a man in making such a decision. I know my 
 own opinion, and I know yours; and our two good friends, 
 who have no bias, will put everything right." 
 
 And he went out with his hat brushed and a new pair 
 of eloves, cheerful and respectable as if he were already a 
 baiuc director, cleansed of the velvet coats and brigand hats 
 and all the weaknesses of his youth. And his wife sat down 
 with an impatient sigh to hear Norah play her scales, which 
 which was not exhilarating, for Norah's notions of time and 
 harmony were as yet but weakly developed. While the child 
 made direful havoc among the black notes, Helen was sound- 
 uig a great many notes quite as black in her inmost mind, 
 miat could they know about it 1 What were they to him in 
 comparison with herself? Why should he so wear his hettrt 
 upon his sleeve 1 It raised a kind of silent exasperation 
 within her, so good as he was, so kind, and tender, and loving ; 
 and yet this was a matter in which she had nothmg to do but 
 submit. 
 
 These two cherished friends of Eobert's were not men after 
 Helen's heart. The first, Stephen Haldane, was a dissenting 
 minister, a member of a class which all her prejudices were in 
 arms against. It was not that she cared for his religious opin- 
 ions or views, which differed from her own. She was not 
 theological nor ecclesiastical in her turn of mind, and, to tell 
 the truth, was not given to judging her acquaintances by an 
 inteUeetual standard, much less a doctrinal one. But she 
 shrank from his intimacy because he was a dissenter- — a 
 man belonging to a class not acknowledged in society, and of 
 whom she understood vaguely that they were very careless 
 about their h's, and were not gentlemen. The fact that Stephen 
 Haldane was a gentleman as much as good manners, and good 
 looks, and a tolerable education could make him, did not 
 change her sentiments. She was too much of an idealist 
 (without knowing it) to let proof invalidate theory. Accord- 
 ingly, she doubted his ^ood manners, mistrusted his opinions, 
 and behaved towards him with studied civility, and a protest, 
 carefully veiled but never forgotten, against his admissipu t9 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 di 
 
 >8 were in 
 
 her society. Be had no right to be there; he was an 
 intruder, an inferior. Such was her conclusion in a social 
 point of view ; and her husband's inclination to consult 
 him on most important matters in their history was very 
 galling to her. The two had come to know each other in 
 their youth, when Haldane was going through the curious 
 incoherent education which often leads a young man tem- 
 porarily to the position of dissenting minister. He had started 
 in life as a Bluecoat boy, and had shown what people call 
 "great talent," but not in the academical way. As a young 
 man he had loved modem literature better than ancient. 
 Had he been born to an estate of ten thousand a year, or 
 had he been bom in a rank which would have secured him 
 diplomatic or official work, he would have had a high char 
 racter for accomplishments and ability; but he was bom 
 only of a poor dissenting family, without a sixpence, and 
 when his school career was over he did not know what to 
 do with himself. He took to writing, as such men do, by 
 nature, and worked his way into the newspapers. Thus he 
 began to eam a little money, while vaguely playing with a variety 
 of careers. Once he thought he would be a doctor, and it was 
 while in attendance at an anatomical class that he met Drum- 
 mond. But Haldane was soon sick of doctoring. Then he be- 
 came a lecturer, getting engagements from mechanics? institutions 
 and literary societies, chiefly in the country. It was at one 
 of these lectures that he fell under the notice of a certain 
 Mr. Baldwin, a kind of lay bishop in a great dissenting 
 community. Mr. Baldwin was much "stiuclr by the young 
 lecturer. He agreed with his views, and applauded his 
 eloquence ; and when the lecture was over had himself 
 introduced to the speaker. This good man had a great many 
 peculiarities, and was rich enough to be permitted to indulge 
 them. One of these peculiarities was an inclination to find 
 out and encourage "rising talent." And he told everybody 
 he had seldom been so mu^ impressed as by the talents of this 
 young man, who was living (innocently) by his wits, and did not 
 know what to do with himself. It is not necessary to describe 
 the steps by which young Haldane reformed from a lecturer 
 npon miscellaneous subjects, literary and philosophical, into a 
 most esteemed preacher. He pursued his studi99 for a yeac or 
 

 ) ' 
 
 ii 
 
 AT HtS OATBd. 
 
 two at Mr. BaldwiD^s cost, and at the end of that time wad 
 promoted) not of cr«urse nominally, but very really, by Mr. 
 JSaldvrin's influence, to the pulpit of the flourishing and 
 wealthy congregation of which that potentate was the head. 
 This was Stephen Haldane's history ; but he was not the sort 
 of man to be produced naturally by such a training. He 
 was full of natural refinement, strangely blended with a 
 contented adherence to all the homely habits of his early life. 
 He had not attempted, had not even thought of, " bettering" 
 himself. He lived with his mother and sister, two homely 
 dissenting women, narrow as the little house they lived in, 
 who kept him, his table, and surroundings, on exactly the 
 same model as his father's house had been kept. All the 
 luxuries of the wealthy chapel-folks never tempted him to 
 imitation. He did not even claim to himself the luxury of a 
 private study in which to write his sermons, but had his writ- 
 ing-table in the common sitting-room, in order that his woman- 
 kind might preserve the cold fiction of a " best room" in which 
 to receive visitors. To be sure, he might have been able to 
 aflbrd a larger house ; but then Mrs. Haldane and Miss Jane 
 would have been out of place in a larger house. They lived 
 in Victoria Villas, one of the smaller streets whicl copy 
 and vulgarize the better ones in all London suburbs. It 
 was close to St. Mary's Boad, in which Drummond's house 
 was situated, and the one set of houses was a copy of the other 
 in little. The arrangement of rooms, the shape of the 
 garden, the outside aspect was the same, only so many 
 degrees smaller. And this, it must be allowed, was one of 
 the reasons why the Haldanes were unpalatable neighbours 
 to Mrs. Drummond. For, as a general rule, the people who 
 lived in St. Mary's Eoad did not know the inferior persons 
 who inhabited Victoria Villas. The smaller copied the 
 greater, and were despised by them in consequence. It was 
 " a different class," everybody said. And it may be supposed 
 that it was very hard upon poor Helen to have it known 
 that her husband's closest friend, the man whose opinion he 
 asked about most things, and whom he believed in entirely, 
 was one who combined in himself almost all the objectiona- 
 ble qualities possible. He was a dissenter — a di^enting 
 minister — sprung of a poor family, and adhering to all their 
 
▲T UIS GATES. 
 
 38 
 
 shabby habits, and lived in Victoria Villas. The very 
 address of itself was enough to condemn a man; no one 
 who had any respect for his friends would have retained it 
 for an hour. Yet it was this man whom Robert had gone 
 to consult at this greatest crisis of his life. 
 
 The other friend upon whom poor Drummond relied was 
 less objectionable in a social point of view. He was a phy- 
 sician, and not in very great pr&ctice, being a crotch sty man 
 given to inventions and investigations, but emphatically ''a 
 
 fentleman," according to Helen's own sense of the word, 
 'his was so far satisfactory ; but if he was less objectionable, 
 he was also much less interesting than Stephen Haldane. 
 He was a shy man, knowing little about women and caring 
 less. He Uved all by himself in a great house in one of 
 the streets near Berkeley Square, a house twice as big as 
 the Drummond's, which he inhabited in solitary state, in 
 what seemed to Helen the coldest, dreariest loneliness. She 
 was half sorry for, half contemptuous of, him in his big, 
 solemn, doubly-respectable hermitage. He was rich, and hi^ 
 nothing to do with his money. He had few friends and 
 no relations. He was as unlike the painter as could be 
 conceived; and yet in him too Robert believed. Their ac- 
 quaintance dated back to the same anatomical lectures which 
 had brought Haldane and Drummond together, but Dr. 
 Maurice was a lover of art, and had bought Robert's first 
 picture, and thus occupied a different ground with him. 
 Perhaps the irritating influence he had upon Helen was 
 greater than that exercised by Haldane, because it was an 
 irritation produced by his character, not by his circumstan- 
 ces. Holdam paid her a certain shy homage, feeling her to 
 be different from all the women that surrounded himself; 
 but Maurice treated her with formal civility and that kind 
 of conventional deference which old-fashioned people show 
 to the wishes and tastes of an inferior, that he may be set 
 at his ease among them. There were times when she all 
 but hated the doctor, with his courtesy and his silent air 
 of criticism, but the minister she could not hate. 
 
 At the same time it must be allowed that to see her 
 husband set out with his new gloves to ask the opinion of 
 these two men, after all the profound thought she had 
 
 
 »?^mmmemm 
 
8* 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 '1:1 1 
 
 benelf given to the subject, and the passionate feeling it 
 had roused within her, was hard upon Helen. To them it 
 would be nothing more than a wise or unwise investment 
 of money, but to her it was a measure affecting life and 
 honour. Perhaps she exaggerated, she was vrilling to allow, 
 but they would not fail to underrate its importance; they 
 could not — Heaven forbid they ever should ! — ^feel as she 
 did, that Robert, though an R.A., had failed in his profess- 
 ion. They would advise him to hold fast by that profession 
 and leave business alone, which was as much as condemning 
 him to a constant repetition of the despairs and discontents 
 of the past; or they would advise him to accept the new 
 opening held out to him and sever himself from Art, which 
 would be as good as a confession of failure. Thus it is 
 evident, whatever his friends might happen to advise, Helen 
 was prepared to resent. 
 
 At this moment Mrs. Drummond's character was the 
 strangest mixture of two kinds of being. She was, though 
 a mature woman, like a flower bursting out of a rough 
 husk. The old conventional nature, the habits and prejudi- 
 ces of a rich bourgeois existence to which she had been born 
 had survived all that had as yet happened to her in life. 
 The want of a dining-room, which has been already noted, 
 had been not a trivial accident but a real humiliation to 
 her. She sighed when she thought of the great dinner- 
 parties with mountains of silver on table and sideboard, 
 and many men in black or more gorgeous beings in livery 
 to wait, which she had been accustomed to in her youth ; 
 and when she was obliged to furnish a supper for a group 
 of painters who had been smoking half the night in the studio, 
 and who were not in evening dress, she felt almost disgraced. 
 Robert enjoyed that impromptu festivity more than all the din- 
 ner-parties ; but Helen felt that if any of her old friends or even 
 the higher class of her present acquaintances were to look in 
 and see her, seated at the head of the table, where half a dozen 
 bearded men in morning coats were devouring cold beef and 
 salad, she must have sunk through the floor in shame and 
 dismay. Robert was strangely, sadly without feeling in such 
 matters. It never occurred to him that they could be a crite- 
 rion of what his wife called " position ;" and he would only 
 
AT HIS QATE& 
 
 35 
 
 laugh in the most hearty way when Helen insisted upon the 
 habits proper to " people of our class." But her pride, such as 
 it was, was terribly wounded by all such irregular proceedings. 
 The middle-class custom of dining early and making a meal of 
 " tea," a custom in full and undisturbed operation round the 
 comer in Victoria Villas, affected her with a certain horror as 
 if it had been a crime. Had she yielded to it she would have 
 felt that she had ''given in," and voluntarily descended in 
 the social scale. "Late dinners" were to her as a bulwark 
 against that social downfall which in her early married life 
 had seemed always imminent. This curious raising up of de- 
 tails into the place of principles had given Helen many an un- 
 necessary prick. It had mme her put up with much really 
 inferior society in the shape of people of gentility whose minds 
 were all absorbed in the hard struggle to keep up appearances 
 and live as people live with ten times their income, while it 
 cut her from a great many to whom appearances were less 
 important, and who lived as happened to be most convenient 
 to them, without asking at what hour dukes dined or million- 
 aires. The dukes probably would have been as indifferent, 
 but not the millionaires, and it was from the latter class thai 
 Helen came. But in the midst of all these all-important de« 
 tails and the trouble they caused her, had risen up, she knew 
 not how, a passionate, obstinately ideal soul. Perhaps at first 
 her thirst for fame had been but another word for social ad- 
 vancement and distinction in the world, but that feeling had 
 changed by means of the silent anguish which had crept on her, 
 as bit by bit she understood her husband's real weakness. 
 Love in her opened, it did not blind her eyes. Her heart cried 
 out for excellence, for power, for genius in the man she loved ; 
 and with this longing there came a hundred subtle sentiments 
 which she did not understand, and which worked and fer- 
 mented in her without any will of hers. Along with the sense 
 that he was no genius, there rose an unspeakable remorse and 
 hatred of herseK who had found it out. And along with her dis- 
 content came a sense of her own weakness, a growing humility 
 which was a pain to her, and against which her pride fought 
 stoutly, keeping, up to this time, the upper hand, and a regret- 
 ful, self-repT'oacl?|ul, half-adoration of her husband and his 
 ^oodAess, prQ(jtuGed by tl^ yerf consciousness that he was not 
 
36 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 SO strong) nor so great as she had hoped. These mingled ele- 
 ments of the old and the new in Helen's mind made it hard to 
 understand her, hard to realise ana follow her motives ; yet 
 they explained the irritability which possessed her, her impati- 
 ence of any suggestion from outside, along with her longing for 
 something new, some change which might bring a new tide 
 into the life which had fallen into such dreary, stagnant, unreal 
 ways. 
 
 While she waited at home with all these thoughts whirling 
 about her, Robert went out cheerfully seeking advice. He did 
 it in the spirit which is habitual to men who consult their 
 friends on any important matter. He made up his mind 
 first. As he turned lightly round the comer, swinging his cane, 
 instead of wondering what his friend would say to him, he 
 was making up his mind what he himself would do with ftll 
 the unusual power and wealth which would come to hi\n 
 through the bank. For instance, at once there was poor 
 Chance, the sculptor, whose son he could find a place for with- 
 out more ado. Poor Chance had ten children, and was no 
 genius, but an honest, good fellow, who would have made quite 
 a superior stonemason had he underst<ft)d his own gifts. Here 
 was one immediate advantage of thau bank-directorship. He 
 went in cheerful and confident in this thought to the 
 little house in Victoria Villas. Haldane had been ill ; he had 
 spent the previous winter in Italy, and his friends had been in 
 some anxiety about his health ; but he had improved again 
 and Robert went in without any apprehension into the sitting- 
 room at the back, which looked into the little garden. He 
 had scarcely opened the door before he saw that something 
 had happened. The writing-table was deserted, and a large 
 sofa drawn near the window had become, it was easy to per- 
 ceive, the centre of the room and of all the interests of its in- 
 habitants. Mrs. Haldane, a homely old woman in a black dress 
 and a widow's cap, rose hastily as he came in, with her hand 
 extended, as if to forbid his approach. She was very pale and 
 tremulous ; the arm which she raised shook as she held it out, 
 and fell down feebly by her side when she saw who it was. 
 " Oh, come in, Mr. Drummond, he will like to see y(m," she 
 said in a whisper. Robert went forward with a pang of alarm 
 His friend was lying on the sofa with his eyes closed, with aa 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 87 
 
 ashy paleness on his face, and the features slightly, veiy slight- 
 ly distorted. He was not moved by the sound of Robert's 
 welcome nor by his mother's movements. His eyes were closed, 
 and yet he did not seem to be asleep. His chest heaved regu- 
 larly and faintly, or the terrified bystander would have thought 
 he was dead. 
 
 Robert clutched at the hand which the old lady stretched 
 out to him again. " Has he fainted V he cried in a whisper. 
 " Have you had the doctor ? Let me go for the doctor. « Do 
 you know what it is 1" 
 
 Poor Mrs. Haldane looked down silently and cried. Two 
 tears fell out of her old eyes as if they were full and had over- 
 flowed. " I thought he would notice you," she said. " He 
 always was so fond of you. Oh, Mr. Drummond, my boy's 
 had a stroke." 
 
 " A stroke ! " said Drummond, under his breath. All his 
 own visions flitted out of his mind like a shadow. His friend 
 lay before him like a fallen tower, motionless, speechless. 
 " Good God ! " he said, as men do unawares, with involuntary 
 appeal to Him who (surely) has to do with those wild contra- 
 dictions of nature. "When did it happen? Who has seen 
 him 1" he asked, growing almost as pale as was the suiferer, 
 and feeling faint and ill in the sense of his own powerlessness 
 to help. 
 
 " It was last night, late," said the mother. " Oh, Mr. Drum- 
 mond, this has been what was working on him. I knew it 
 was never the lungs. Not one of us, either his father's family or 
 mine, was ever touched in the lungs. Dr. Mixwell saw him 
 directly. He said not to disturb him, or 1 would have had 
 him in bed. I know he ought to be in bed." 
 
 " I'll go and fetch Maurice," cried Robert. " I shall be back 
 directly," and he rushed out of the room which he had entered 
 so jauntily. As he flew along the street, and jumped into the 
 first cab he could find, the bank and his directorship went as 
 completely out of his mind as if they had been a hundred years 
 off". He dashed at the great solemn door of Dr. Maurice's 
 house when he reached it and rushed in, upsetting the decorous 
 servant. He seized the doctor by the shoulder, who was seated 
 calmly at breakfast. " Come along with me directly, he said. 
 •* I have a cab at the door." 
 
S8 
 
 At m^ GATES. 
 
 '* What is the matter r said Dr. Maurice. He had no idea 
 of being disturbed so unceremoniously. "Is Mrs. Drummond 
 ill 1 Sit down and tell me what is wrong." 
 
 " I can't sit down. I want you to come with me. There is 
 a cab at the door," said Robert panting. " It is poor Haldane. 
 He has had a fit — come at once. " 
 
 " A fit ! I knew that was what it was," said Dr. Matirice 
 calmly. He waved his hand to the importunate petitioner, and 
 swallowed the rest of his breakfast in great mouthfuls. " I'm 
 coming ; hold your tongue, Drummond. I knew the lungs 
 was all nonsense — of course that is what it was." 
 
 " Come then," cried Robert. " Good heavens, come ! don't 
 l^t him lie there and die." 
 
 " He will not die. More's the pity, poor fellow ! " said the 
 doctor., "I said so from the beginning. John, my hat. Lungs, 
 nonsense ! He was as sound in the lungs as either you or L" 
 " For God's sake, come then," said the impatient painter, and he 
 rushed to the door and pushed the calm physician into his cab. 
 He had come to consult him about something. Yes, to be sure, 
 about poor Haldane. Not to consult him — ^to carry him off, to 
 compel, to drag that other back from the verge of the grave. If 
 there was anything more in his mind when he started, Drum- 
 mond had clean forgotten it. He did not remember it again 
 till two hours later when, having helped to carry poor Haldane 
 up-stairs, and rushed here and there fbr medicines and con- 
 veniences, he at last went home, weary with excitement and 
 sympathetic pain. " I have surely forgotten something," he 
 said, when he had given an account of all his doings to his 
 wife. "Good heavens ! I forgot altogether that I went to 
 ask somebody's advice." 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 • 
 
 R. BURTON called next morning to ascertain Drum- 
 mond's decision, and found that he had been sitting up 
 half the night with Stephen Haldane, and was wholly 
 occupied by his friend's illness. The merchant suffered a little 
 vexation to be visible in his smooth and gonial aspect. He was 
 a middle-aged man with a bland aspect and full development, not 
 fat but ample. He wore his whiskers long, and had an air that 
 waa always jovial and comfortable. The cleanness of the man 
 was almost aggressive. He impressed upon you the fact that he 
 not only had his bath every morning, but that his bath 
 was constructed on the newest principles, with waterpipes 
 which wandered through all the house. He wore buff waist- 
 coats and light trousers, and the easiest of overcoats. His 
 watch-chain was worthy of him, and so were the heavy gold 
 buttons at his sleeves. He looked and moved and spoke like . 
 wealth, with a roll in his voice, which is only attainable in 
 business, and wh'en business goes very well with you. Con- 
 sequently the shade of vexation which came over him was very 
 perceptible. He found the Drummonds only at breakfast, 
 though he had breakfasted two hours before, and this mingled 
 in his seriousness a certain tone of virtuous reproof. 
 
 " My dear fellow, I don't want to disturb you," he said ; 
 " but how you can make this sort of thing pay I can't tell. I 
 breakfasted at eight ; but then, to be sure, I am only a City 
 man, and can't expect my example to be much thought of at the 
 West End." 
 
 " Is this the West End," said Robert, laughing. "But if 
 you breakfasted at eight, you must want something more by 
 this tune. Sit down and have some coffee. We are late be- 
 cause we have been up half the night." And he told his new 
 visitor the story of poor Stephen and his sudden illness. Mr. 
 Burton was moderately concerned, for he had married Mr. 
 Baldwin's only daughter, and was bound to take a certain in- 
 terest in his father-in-kw's proUg^. He heard the story to an 
 
 / 
 
 '*~'*<''*i»»f'i'*mimmms»mmmmmmsxmmimm- 
 
40 
 
 AT BtS OAT£S. 
 
 end with admirable patience, and shook his head, and said, 
 " Poor fellow ! I am very sorry for him/* with due gravity. 
 But he was soon tired of Stephen's story. He took out lus 
 watch, and consulted it seriously, muttering something about 
 his appointments. 
 
 " My dear good people," he said, " it may be all very well 
 for you to spend your time and your emotions on your friends, 
 but a man of business cannot so indulge himself. I thought I 
 should have had a definite answer from you, Drummond, yes 
 or no." 
 
 " Yes," said Bobert with professional calmness. " I am 
 very sorrj'. So I intended myself ; but this business about 
 poor Haldane put eveiything else out of my head." 
 
 " Well " said Mr. Burton, rising and walking to the fire- 
 place, according to British habit, though there was no fire, 
 " you know best what you can do. I, for my part, should not 
 be able to neglect my busiress if my best friend was on his 
 death-bed. Of course you understand Rivers's is not likely to 
 go begging for partners. Such an offer is not made to every 
 one. I am certain that you should accept it for your own sake ; 
 but if you do not think it of importance, there is not another 
 word to say." 
 
 " My dear fellow," cried Robert, " of course I think it of 
 importance ; and I know I owe it to your consideration. 
 Don't think me ungrateful, Dray." 
 
 " As for gratitude, that is neither here or there," said the 
 merchant ; " there is nothing to be grateful about. But we 
 have a meeting to-day to arrange the preliminaries, and proba- 
 bly ever3rthing will be settled then. I should have liked to 
 place your name at once on the list. To leave such things over, 
 unless you mean simply to abandon them, is a great mistake." 
 
 " I am sure I don't see any particular reason why we should 
 leave it over," Robert said, faltering a little ; and then he look- 
 ed at his wife. Helen's face was clouded and very pale. She 
 was watching him with a certain furtive eagerness, but she did 
 not meet his eye. There was a tremulous pause, which seem- 
 ed like an hour to both of them, during the passing of which 
 the air seemed to wrestle and beat about Helen's ears. Her 
 husband gazed at her, eagerly questioning her : but she could 
 not raise her eyes — something prevented her, she could not tell 
 
AT BIS OATES. 
 
 •« 
 
 what ; her eyelids seemed heayy and weighed them down. It 
 was not weakness or fear or a desire to avoid the responsibili- 
 ty of immediate action, but a positive physical inability . He 
 looked at her for, perhaps, a full minute by the clock, and 
 then he said slowly, '' I see no reason to delay. I think Helen 
 and I are agreed. This matter put the other out of my head ; 
 but it is natural you should be impatient. I think I will ac- 
 cept your kind offer, Burton, without any more delay." 
 
 How easy it is to say such words ! The moment they were 
 spoken, Eobert felt them so simple, so inevitable, and knew 
 that all along he had meant to say them. But still he was 
 somewhat excited ; a curious feeling came into his mind, such 
 as a king may feel when he has crossed his neighbour's frontier 
 with an invading army. Half a dozen steps were enough to do 
 it ; but how to get back again ; and what might pass before 
 the going back ! The thought caught at his breath, and gave 
 him a tremulous motion through all his frame. 
 
 "Very well," said Burton, withdrawing his hands from 
 under his coat-tails, and drawing a slightly long breath, which 
 the other in his excitement did not observe. Mr. Burton did 
 not show any excitement, except that long breath, which, after 
 all; might have been accidental; no sign or indication of 
 feeling had been visible in him. It was a great, a very great, 
 matter to the Drummonds ; but it was a small matter to one 
 who had been for years a partner in Eivers's. " Very well. 
 I will submit your name to the directors to-day. I don't 
 think you need fear that the result will be doubtful. And I 
 am very glad you have come to such a wise decison. Helen, 
 when your husband is rich, as I trust he soon will be, I hope 
 you will fancy a little house at Dura, and be our neighbour. 
 It would be like old times. I should like it more then I can say." 
 
 " I never was fond of Dura," said Helen, with some abrupt- 
 ness. This reference to his greatness irritated her, as it always 
 did ; for whatever new-comer might take a little house at 
 Dura, he was the lord of the place, supreme in the great house, 
 and master of everything. Such an allusion always stirred up 
 what was worst in her, and gave to her natural pride a certain 
 tone of spitefulness and envy, which disgusted and wounded her- 
 self. But it did not wound her cousin, it pleased him. He 
 laughed with a suppressed enjoyment and triumph. 
 
 I «.,««8,-Sl2»S«J«ytMSB 
 
42' 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 " W^,** he said, '' Dora is my home, and a -very happy one, 
 therefore, of course, I am fond of it. And it has a great many 
 associations to<>, some of them, perhaps, not so agreeable. But 
 it is always pleasant to feel, as I do, that everything that has 
 happened to one has been for the best." 
 
 ** The conversation has taken a highly edifying tone," said 
 Robert with some surprise. He saw there was more meant 
 than met the eye, but he did not know what it was. " We 
 shall all be thanMng Providence next, as people do chiefly, I 
 observe, in celebration of the sufferings of others. Well, since 
 you think I am on the fair way to be rich, perhaps I had bet- 
 ter thank Providence by anticipation. Must I go with you 
 to^iayl" 
 
 " Not to-day. You will have full intimation when your pre- 
 sence is wanted. You forget — ^nothing is settled yet," said Mr. 
 Burton ; " the whole arrangement may come to nothing yet^ 
 for what I know. But I must be going ; remember me to 
 poor Haldane when he is able to receive good wishes. I hope 
 he'll soon be better. Some of these days I'll call and see him. 
 Gk>od morning. Good bye, Drummond. I'm glad you've made 
 up your mind, Helen. My conviction is; it will turn out the 
 best day's work you ever did in your life." 
 
 " Is he true, I wonder? " Helen said to herself as the two men 
 left the room, and stood talking in the hall It was the first 
 time the idea had crossed her mind, and now it took its origin 
 more from the malicious shaft her cousin had shot at herself 
 Ihan from any indication of double dealing she had seen in 
 him. It was against all the traditions of the Burtons to im- 
 agine that he could be anything but true. They had been 
 business people as long as they had been anything, and com- 
 mercial honour had been their god. It went against her to 
 imagine that " a relation of mine ! " could be other than per- 
 fect in this particular ; and she sighed, and dismissed t^e idea 
 from her mind, blaming herself, as she often did now, for ill- 
 temper and suspiciousness. "It was mean to make that 
 allusion to the past, but it is meaner of me to doubt him on 
 that account," she said to herself, with a painful sigh. It was 
 so hard in her to overcome nature, and subdue those rebellious 
 feelings that rose in her unawares. " Why should I care 1 " 
 she thought, ** it is my vanity. I suppose if the man had 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 a 
 
 never got over my rejection of him I should have heen pleased. 
 I should have thought hotter of him ! Such a man as that ! 
 After all, we women must he fools indeed.** This was the 
 edifying sentiment in her mind when Rohert came hack. 
 
 " W3l, Helen, the die is cast," he said, half cheerfiiUy, half 
 sadly. " However, we come to shore, the ship has set out. 
 If it were not for poor Stephen I should make to-day a holiday 
 and take you somewhere. This day ought to he distinguished 
 from the rest." 
 
 "T hope he is true. I wonder if he is true 1" Helen re- 
 peated to herself, half unconsciously, heneath her hreath. 
 
 " Whom ? Your cousin ! ! " said T?.ohert, with quite two 
 notes of admiration in his tone. " Why, Helen, what a cynic 
 you are growing. You will suspect me neact." 
 
 " Am I a cynic 1" she. said, looking up at him with asuddeti 
 tear in her eye. " It is hecause I am heginning to he so 
 wretchedly douhtful about myself" 
 
 This admission burst from her, she could not te\\ how. She 
 had no intention of making it. And she was sorry the mo- 
 ment the w^ords were said. But as for Eobert, he gazed at 
 her first in consternation, then laughed, then took her in his 
 kind arms with those laughing accusations of loVe which are 
 more sweeter than any eulogy. "Yes," he said, "you are a 
 very suspicious character altogether, you know so much hartn 
 of yourself that it is evident you must think badly of others. 
 What a terrible business for me to have such a wife ! " 
 
 Thus ended the episode in their lives which was to colour 
 them to their very end, and decide everything else. They 
 had been very solemn about it at the beginning, and had 
 made up their minds to proceed very warily, and asked every- 
 body's advice ; but, as so often happens in human affairs, the 
 decision which was intended to be aone so seriously had been 
 accomplished in a moment, without consideration, almost with- 
 out thought. And, being done, it was a weight off the minds 
 of both. They had no longer this disturbing matter betWfeen 
 them to be discussed and thought over. Bobert dismissed it 
 out of simple light-heartedness, and that delightful economy of 
 sensation which is fortunately so common among the artist 
 class : " It is done, and all the thinking in the world will not 
 make any difference. Why should I bother myself about it H " 
 
44 
 
 AT HIS OATEa 
 
 li this insopciance something does harm, heaven knows it does 
 a great deal of good sometimes, and gives the artist power to 
 work where a man who felt his anxieties more heavily would 
 fail. Helen had not this happy temper ; but she was a woman, 
 more occupied with personal feelings than with any fact, how- 
 ever important. The fact was outside,;^and never, she thought, 
 could vanquish her — her enemies were "^ within. 
 
 Time passed very quietly after this ereat decision. There 
 was a lull, durine which Stephen Haidane grew better, and 
 Mrs. Drummond Teamed to feel a certain friendliness and sym- 
 
 Eathy forxthe lonely mother and sister, who were flattered by 
 er inquiries after him. She came even to understand her hus- 
 band's jokes about Miss Jane, the grim and practical person 
 who ruled the little house in Victoria Villas — whom she some- 
 times laughed at, but whom little Norah took a violent fancy 
 for, which mollified her mother. And then, in the matter o^ 
 Rivers's bank, there began to rise a certain agreeable excite- 
 ment and importance in their life. ''Drummond among the 
 list of bank' directors ! Drummond I What does it mean 1 " 
 This question ran through all the studios, and came back in 
 amusing colours to the two who knew all about it. "His wife 
 belongs to that sort of people, and has hosts of business con- 
 nections," said one. '' The fellow is rich," said another : 
 ** don't you ^now what a favourite he is with all the dealers, 
 and has been for ever so long ?" "His wife has money," was 
 the judgment of a third, '' take my word for it, that is the 
 way to get on in this world. A rich wife keeps you going till 
 you've made a hit — if you are ever going to make a hit — and 
 helps yQU on." " It is all that cousin of hers," another would 
 say, "that fellow Burton whom one meets there. He bought 
 my last picture, so I have reason to know, and has a palace in 
 the country, like the rest of those City fellows." " What luck 
 some men have !" sighed the oldest of all. " I am older than 
 Drummond, but nonp of these good things ever came my way." 
 iAnd'this mail wa^ ^bje^terp^^ipter than Drummond, and knew 
 it, but sqi^ehpw I ^ad never caught the tide. Drummond's 
 importance rose witn ^very new report. When he secured that 
 clerkship for Bob Chance, Chance the sculptor's son, he made 
 one family happy, and roused a certain excitement in many 
 others ; for poor artists, like poor clergymen and other needy 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 4i 
 
 persons, insist upon having large families. Two or ttaee of the 
 men who were Kobert's contemporaries, who had studied with 
 him in the schools, or had guided his early labours, went 
 to see him — while others wrote — describing promising boys 
 who would soon be ready for business, and for whom they 
 would gladly secure something less precarious then the life of 
 art. Three applications were from the second class of artists, 
 the men who are never very successfol, yet who " keep on," 
 as they themselves would say, rambling from exhibition to 
 exhibition, painting as well as a man can be taught to paint 
 who has no natural impulse, or turning out in conscientious 
 marble fair limbs of nymphs that ought, as the only reason for 
 their being, to have sprung ethereal from the stone. And 
 these poor painters and sculptors were often so good, kindly, 
 and unblameable as men ; fond of their families, ready to do 
 anything to push on the sons and daughters who showed 
 " talent," or had any means offered of bettering themselves. 
 How gladly Eobert would have given awayfa dozen clerkships ! 
 how happy it would have made him to scatter upon them all 
 some share of his prosperity ! but he could not do this, and it 
 was the first disagreable accompaniment of his new position. 
 He had other applications, however of a difTerent kind. Those 
 in the profession who had some money to invest came and ask- 
 ed for his advice, feeling that they could have confidence in 
 him. ''Bivers's has a name like the Bank of England," they 
 said; and he had the privilege of some preference shares to 
 allot to them. All this advanced him in his own opinion, in 
 his wife's, in that of all the world. He was no longer a man 
 subject to utter demolition at the hands of an ill natured critic ; 
 but a man endowed with large powers in addition to his genius, 
 whom nobody coul^ demolish or eveh seriously harm. 
 
 Perhaps, however, the greatest height of Drummond's 
 triumph was reached when, the year having crept around from 
 summer to autumn, his friend Dr. Maurice came to call one 
 evening after a visit to Haldane. It was thajb moment between 
 the two lights which is dear to all busy people. The first fire 
 of the year was lit in Helen's drawing room, which of itself 
 was a little family event. Bobert had stayed in from the 
 studio in his painting coat, which he concealed by sitting in 
 the shade by the side of the chimney. The autumn eyenioga 
 
H 
 
 ▲T HIS GATES. 
 
 bad been growing wistful and eerie for some time back, tbe 
 days shortening, yet the season still too mild for fires — so that 
 the warm interior, all lit by the kindly, fitful flame, was a 
 novelty and a pleasure. The central figure in the picture was 
 Norah, in a thick white piqu^ frock, with her brown hair fall- 
 ing on her shoulders, reading by the firelight. The little 
 white figure rose from the warm carpet into the rosy firelight, 
 herself less vividly tinted, a curious little abstract thing, the 
 centre of the life around her, yet taking no note of it She 
 had shielded her cheeks with one of her hands, and was bending 
 her brows over the open book, trying to shade the light which 
 flickered and danced and made the words dance too before her. 
 The book was too big for her, filling her lap and one crimsoned 
 arm which held its least heavy side. The new-comer saw nothing 
 but Norah against the light as he came in. He stopped in 
 reality because he was fond of Norah, with a disapproving 
 word. 
 
 "At it again!" he said. "That child will ruin her eye- 
 sight and her complexion, and I don't know what besides." 
 
 "Never fear," said Drummond, with a laugh, out of the 
 corner, revealing himself, and Helen rose from the other 
 side. She had been invisible too in a shady corner. A certain 
 curious sensation came over the man who was older, richer, 
 and felt himself wiser, than the painter. All this Drummond 
 had for his share, though he had not done much to deserve 
 it, whereas in the big library near Berkeley Square there 
 was no fire, no child pushing a round shoulder out of her 
 frock, and roasting her cheeks, no gracious woman rising 
 softly out of the shadows. Of course. Dr. Maurice might 
 have been married too, and had not chosen; but never^ie- 
 less it was hard to keep from a momentary envy of the 
 painter who could come home to enjoy himself between the 
 lights, and for whom every night a new pose arranged itself 
 of that child reading before the fire. Dr. Maurice was a 
 determined old bachelor, and thought more of the child 
 than of the wife. 
 
 " Haldane is better to-day," he said, seating himself behind 
 Norah, who looked up dreamily, with hungry eyes possessed 
 by the tale, to greet him at her m^pther's bidding. 
 "^Tearly as well as he will ever be. We must am,us^ hioi 
 
AT HIS GATES. if 
 
 with hopes of restoratioD, I suppose ; but he will never 
 budge out of the house SpS long as he lives." 
 
 "But he will live 1" said Robert. 
 
 "Yes, if you can call it living. Fancy, Drummondl a 
 man about your own age, a year or two younger than I 
 am — a man fond of wandering, fond of movement, and yet 
 shut up in that dreary prison — for life." 
 
 A silence fell upon them all as he spoke. They were 
 too much awed to make any response, the solemnity being 
 beyond words. Norah woke up at the pause. Their voices 
 did not disturb her ; but the silence did. 
 
 " Who is to be in the dreary prison 1" she said, looking 
 round upon them with her big brown wondering eyes. 
 
 " Hush ! Poor Mr. Haldane, dear," said the mother, 
 under her breath. 
 
 Then Norah burst into a great cry. " Oh, who has done 
 it — who has done it ? It is a shame — ^it is a sin ! He is so 
 good !" 
 
 " My child," said the doctor, with something like a sob, 
 " It is Grod who has done it. If it had been a man, we 
 would have throttled him before he touched poor Stephen. 
 Now, heaven help us i What can we do Y I suppose it is 
 God." 
 
 "Maurice, don't speak so before the child," said Bobert 
 from a corner. 
 
 " How can I help it ?" he cried. " If it was a man's 
 doing, what could we say bad enough 1 Norah, little one, 
 you don't know what I mean. Go back to your book." 
 
 " Norah, go up-stairs and get dressed for dinner," said 
 Helen. "But you cannot, you must not be right, doctor. 
 Oh, say you are sometimes deceived? Things happen that 
 you don't reckon on. It is not for his life 1" 
 
 Dr. Maurice shook his head. He looked after Norah 
 regretfully as she went out of the room with the big 
 book clasped in her arms. 
 
 "You might have let the child stay," he said reproach- 
 fully. " There was nothing that could have disturbed her 
 in what I said. 
 
 And then for a moment or vwo the sound of the fire 
 flickering its light about, making sudden leaps and sudden 
 
 "^M^^^^SN^WSaH^W^s^^P^S® 
 
u 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 downfalls like a living thing, was the only sound heard ; 
 and it was with this pensive silence, weighted and subdued 
 by the neighbourhood of suffering, that the visitor suddenly 
 introduced a subject so different. He said abruptly — 
 
 " I have to congratulate you on becoming a great man, 
 Drummond. I don't know how you have done it. But 
 this bank, I suppose, will make your fortune. I want to 
 venture a little in it on my own account.? 
 
 " You, Maurice ? My dear fellow !" said Eobert, getting 
 up with sudden enthusiasm, and seizing his friend by both 
 his hands, " you going in for Rivers's ! I never was so 
 glad in my life !" 
 
 " You need not be so violent," said the doctor. " Have I 
 said anything very clever, Mrs. Drummond ? I am going 
 in for Rivers's, because it seems such a capital investment. 
 I can't expect, of course, to get put on the board of direc- 
 tors, or to sit at the receipt of custom, like such a great 
 man as you are. Don't shake my hands off, my good fellow. 
 What is there wonderful in this V* 
 
 " Nothing wonderful," said Robert ; " but the best joke I 
 ever heard in my life. Fancy, Helen, how I was going 
 to him humbly, hat in hand, to ask his advice, thinking 
 perhaps he would put his veto on it, and prevent me from 
 making my fortune. And now he is a shareholder like the 
 rest. You may not see it; but it is the best joke. You 
 must stay to dinner, old fellow, and we will talk business 
 all the evening. Helen, we cannot let him go to-night." 
 
 And Helen smiled too as she repeated her husband's 
 invitation. Robert had been wiser than his friends, though 
 he had asked nobody's advice but hers. It was a salve 
 to her often-wounded pride. The doctor did not like 
 it half so much. His friend had stolen a march upon him, 
 reversed their usual positions, gone first, and left the other 
 to follow. But he stayed to dinner, however, all the same, and 
 pared apples for Norah, and talked over Rivers's afterwards over 
 his wine. But when he left the door to go home, he shrugged 
 his shoulders with a half-.satisfied prophecy. " He will never 
 paint another good picture," Maurice said, with a certain 
 tone of friendly vengeance. " When wealth comes in, good-bye 
 to art," 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 40 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 .T was on an October day, mellow and bright, when 
 Robert Drummond, with a smile on his face, and a heavy 
 heart in his breast, reached the house in Victoria 
 Villas, to superintend poor Stephen's return to the sittings 
 room, as he had superintended his removal to his bed. The 
 sitting-room was larger, airier and less isolated, than the 
 mournful chamber up-stairs, in which he had spent half the 
 summer. It was a heartrending office, and yet it was 
 one from which his friend could not shrink. Before he 
 went up-stairs the painter paused, and took hold of Miss 
 Jane's hand, and wept, as people say, " like a child ;" but a 
 child's hot thunder shower of easily-dried tears are little 
 like those few heavy drops that come to the eyes of older 
 people, concentrating in themselves so much that words 
 could not express. Miss Jane, for her part, did not weep. 
 Her gray countenance, which was grayer than ever, was for 
 a moment convulsed, and then she pushed her brother's 
 friend away. " Don't you see I daren't cry 1" she said, 
 almost angrily, with one hard sob. Her brother Stephen 
 was the one object of her life. All the romance of which 
 she was capable, and a devotion deeper than that of twenty 
 lovers, was in her worship of him. And this was what it 
 was coming to ! She hurried into the room which she had 
 been preparing for him, which was henceforward to be his 
 dwelling day and night, and shut the door upon the too 
 sympathetic face. As for Robert, he went into his friend's 
 little chamber with cheery salutations : " Well, old fellow, so 
 you are coming back to the world," he said ! Poor Haldane was 
 seated in his dressing-gown in an easy chair. To look at 
 him, no chance spectator would have known that he was as 
 incapable of moving out of it as if he had been bound with 
 iron, and everybody about him had been loud in their 
 congratulations on the progress he was making. They thought 
 they deceived him, as people so often think who flatter thQ 
 9 
 
 ^^^raffllflSfWiPP! 
 
50 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 incurable with hopes of recovery. He smiled as Robert 
 spoke, and shook his head. 
 
 " I am changing my prison/' he said ; ** nothing more. 
 I know that as well as the wisest of you, Drummond. You 
 kind, dear souls, do you think those cheery looks you have 
 made such work to keep up, deceive me ]" 
 
 " What cheery looks ? I am as sulky as a bear," said 
 Robert. "And as for your prison, Maurice doesn't think so. 
 You heard what he said 1" 
 
 " Maurice doesn't say so," said poor Haldane. " But never 
 mind, it can't last for ever ; and we need not be doleful for 
 that." 
 
 The painter groaned within himself as they moved the help- 
 less man down-stairs. " It will last for ever," he thought. He 
 was so full of life and consolation himself that he could not 
 realize the end which his friend was thinking of— the "for 
 ever" which would release him and every prisoner. When 
 they carried the invalid into the room below he gave a wistful 
 look round him. For life — that was what he was thinking. 
 He looked at the poor walls aad commonplace surroundings, 
 and a sigh burst from his lips. But he said immediately, to 
 obliterate the impression of the sigh : " What a cheerful room 
 it is, and the sun shining ! I could not have had a more hope- 
 ful day for my first coming down-stairs." 
 
 And then they all looked at each other, heart-struck by what 
 seemed to them the success of their deception. Old Mrs. Hal- 
 dane fell into a sudden outburst of weeping : " Oh, my poor 
 boy, my poor boy !" she said ; and again a quick convulsion 
 passed over Miss Jane's face. Even Dr. Maurice, the arch-de- 
 ceiver, felt his voice choked in his throat. They did not know 
 that their patient was smiling at them and their transparent 
 devices, in the sadness and patience of his heart. The room 
 had been altered in many particulars for his reception, and 
 fitted with contrivances, every one oi which contradicted the 
 promises of restoration which were held out to him. He 
 had known it was so, but yet the sight of all the provis- 
 ions made for his captivity gave him a new pang; He 
 could have cried out, too, to earth and heaven. But what 
 would have been the good 1 At the end all must submit. 
 
 " Now that you are comfortable, Stephen," said his sister, 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 51 
 
 witH a harsh rattle in her voice, which made her appear 
 less amiable than ever, and in reality came out of the deep 
 anguish of her heartr " there is some one waiting to . see 
 you. The chapel pej^le have been very kind. Besides the 
 deputation that came with the purse for you, there are 
 always private members asking how you are, and if they 
 can see you, and how they miss you, till you are able to 
 go back." 
 
 " That will be never, Jane." 
 
 " How do you know 1 How can any one tell ? It is im- 
 pious to limit God's mercies," cried Miss Jane, harshly ; 
 then, suddenly calming down, ''It is Mr. Baldwin's son-in- 
 law who has called to-day. They are m the country, and 
 this Mr. Burton has come to carry them news of you. May 
 he come in f 
 
 " That is your cousin — your director 1" said the invalid 
 with some eagerness. ''I should like to see him. I want 
 you to invest my money for me, Drummond. There is not 
 much; but you must have it, and make something of it, 
 in your new bank." 
 
 Mr. Burton came in before Drummond could answei. 
 He came in on tiptoe, with an amount of caution which 
 exasperated all the bystanders, who loved Stephen. He 
 looked stronger, richer, more prosperous than ever as he 
 sat down, sympathetically, close to Stephen's chair. There 
 he sat and tsdked, as it were, smoothing the sick man 
 down. "We must have patience," he said soothingly. 
 "After such an illness it will take so long to get up your 
 strength. The sea-side would have been the best thing, 
 but, unfortunately, it is a little late. I am so glad to hear 
 your people are showing you how much they prize such a 
 man as you among them; and I hope, with one thing and 
 another — ^the pension, and so forth — you will be very com- 
 fortable. I would not venture to ask such a question, if it 
 were not for Mr. Baldwin. He takes so much interest iu 
 all your concerns." 
 
 "I am very glad you have spoken of it," said Haldane, 
 "for I want to invest what little money I have in this 
 bank I hear so much of — ^yours and Drummond's. I feel so 
 much like a dying man." 
 
52 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 It 
 
 No, no," said, Mr. Burton, in a deprecating tone, "nothing 
 half so bad. Providence, you may be sure, has something 
 different in store for you. We must not think of th^t." 
 
 "At all events, I want to make the best of the money, 
 for my mother and sister," said Stephen. And then he 
 entered into business, telling them what he had, and how 
 it was invested. His mind had been veiy full of this sub- 
 ject for some time past. The money was not much, but if 
 he died, it would be all his mother and sister would have 
 to depend upon, and the purse which his congregation had 
 collected for him would increase his little, very little capital. Dr. 
 Maurice had gone away, and the two women, though they 
 heard everything, were withdrawn together into a comer. 
 Mrs. Haldane had attempted several times to interrupt 
 the conversation. " What do we care for money !" she had 
 said^ with tears in her eyes. "Let him alone, mother, it 
 will make him happier," Miss Jane had said, in the voice 
 that was so harsh with restrained emotion. And Stephen, 
 with his two visitors beside him, and a flush upon his wan 
 face, expounded all his affairs, and put his fortune into their 
 hands. " Between you, you will keep my poor little nest egg 
 warm," he said, smiling upon them. His illness had re- 
 fined his face, and gave him a certain pathetic dignity, and 
 there was something that affected both in this appeal. 
 
 "I will sit on it myself sooner than let it cool," Drum- 
 mond had said with a laugh, yet with the tears in his 
 eyes, with an attempt to lighten the seriousness of the 
 moment. " Dear old fellow, don't be afraid. Your sacred 
 money will bring a blessing on the rest." 
 
 "That is all very pretty and poetical," said Mr. Burton, 
 with a curious shade passing over his face ; " but if Haldane 
 has the slightest doubt on the subject, he should not make 
 the venture. Of course we are all prepared in the way of 
 business to win ct to lose. If we lose, we must bear it as 
 well as we can. Of course, I think the investment as safe 
 as the Bank of England, but at the same time, Drummond, 
 it would be a very different thing to you or me from what 
 it would be to him." 
 
 "Vexy different," said Drummond; but the mere sugges- 
 tion of loss had made him pale. "These are uneomfort' 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 53 
 
 ble words," he went on with a momentary laugh. " For 
 my part, I go in to win, without allowing the possibility of 
 loss. Loss ! Why I have been doing a great deal in ways 
 less sure than Bivers's and I have not lost a penny yet, 
 thanks to you." 
 
 " I am not infallible," said Burton. " Of course, in every- 
 thing there is a risk. I cannot make myself responsible. 
 If Haldane has the least doubt or hesitation " 
 
 "If I had, your caution would have reassured me," said 
 the invalid. "People who feel their responsibility so much 
 don't throw away their neighbour's money. It is all my 
 mother has, and all I have. When you are tempted to 
 speculate, think what a helpless set of people are involved — 
 and no doubt there will be many more just as he^less. I 
 think perhaps it would exercise a good influence on mer- 
 cantile men," he added, with perhaps a reminiscence of his 
 profession, " ;f ^'^ey knew something personally of the peo- 
 ple whose lives : ; > to speak, in their hands." 
 
 " Haldane," tu: I Mr. Burton hastily, "I don't think we 
 ought to take your money. It is too great a risk. Trade 
 has no heart and no bowels. We can't work in this way, 
 you know, it would paralyse any man. Money is money, 
 and has to be dealt with on business principles. God bless 
 me ! If I were to reflect about the people whose lives, 
 &c., I could never do anything. We can't afford to take 
 anything but the market into account." 
 
 "I don't see that," said the painter, who knew as much 
 about business as Mr. Burton's umbrella. "I agree with 
 Haldane. We should be less ready to gamble and run fool- 
 ish risks, if we remembered always what trusts we have in 
 our hands ; the honour of honest men, and the happiness of 
 families." 
 
 He was still a little pale, and spoke with a certain emotion, 
 having suddenly realised, with a mixture of nervous 
 boldness and terror, the other side of the question. Mr. 
 Burton turned away with a shrug of his shoulders. 
 
 " It suits you two to talk sentiment instead of business," 
 he said, "but that is not in my line. So long as my own 
 credit is concerned, I find that a much greater stimulant 
 than anybody else's. Self-interest is the root of everything 
 
 «»,»*»i((fcsi;'-^;»! 
 
54 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 ■^in business; and if you succeed for yourself, which of 
 course is your first motive, you succeed for your neighbours m 
 well. I don't take credit for any fine sentiments. That is 
 my commercial creed. Number one includes all the other 
 numbers, and the best a man can do for his friends is to take 
 care of himself." 
 
 He got up with a slight show of impatience as he spoke. 
 His face was overcast, and he had the half-contemptuous air 
 which a practical man naturally assumes when he listens to 
 an3rthing high-flown. He, for his part, professed to be nothing 
 but a man of business, and had confidence enough in his 
 friends' knowledge of him to be able to express the most 
 truculent sentiments. So, at least, Haldane thought, who smiled 
 at this transparent cynicism. "I suppose, then, we are 
 justified in thinking anything that is bad of you, and ought 
 not to trust you with an3rthing," he said. 
 
 " If you trust anything to me personally, of course I shall 
 take care of it " answered the merchant. " But what we were 
 talking of was Rivers's — ^business, not personal friendship. 
 And business cannot afibrd such risks. You must examine into 
 it, and judge of its claims for yourself. Come, let us dismiss 
 the subject. I will tell Mr. Baldwin I found you looking a 
 great deal better than I hoped." 
 
 " But I don't want to dismiss the subject," said Haldane. 
 '' I am satisfied. I am anxious " 
 
 " Think it over once more, at least,'' said the other hastily ; 
 and he went away with but scant leave-taking. Mrs. 
 Haldane, who was a wise woman, and, without knowing it, 
 a physiognomist, shook her head. 
 
 " That man means what he says," she said with some em- 
 phasis. " He is telling you his real principles. If I were 
 you, Stephen, I would take him at his word." 
 
 " My dear mother, he is one of the men who take pleasure 
 in putting the worst face on human nature, and attributing 
 ever3rthing to selfish motives," said the sick man. ^* 1 very 
 seldom believe those who they put such sentiments so boldly 
 forth." 
 
 " But I do," said his mother, shaking her head with that 
 obstinate conviction which takes up its position at once and 
 defies all reason. Her son made no answw. He leaned back 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 m 
 
 in his chair and closed his eyes. The momentary eiEcitement 
 was over, the friends gone, and the new and terrible life set- 
 tled down upon him. He did not say a word to indicate what 
 was passing through his mind, but he thought of the ship 
 which drifi^ between the sun-set and the mariner, and the night- 
 mare Life-in-Death casting her dice with the less appamng 
 skeleton. It was she who had won. 
 
 In the meantime the two directors of Kivers's bank walked 
 out together ; one of them recovering all his self-confidence the 
 moment he left the house, the other possessed by a certain 
 tremulous excitement. The idea of risk was new to the painter. 
 He felt a certain half-delightful, half-alarming agitation when 
 he made his first ventures, but that had soon yielded to 'his 
 absolute confidence in the man who now, with his own lips, had 
 named the fatal word. Robert's imagination, the temperament 
 of the artist, which is so often fantastically moved by trifles, 
 while strong to resist the presence of fact and certainty, had 
 sustained a shock. He did not say anything while they walked 
 up the road under the faded autumnal leaves which kept 
 dropping through the still air upon their heads. In this inter- 
 val he had gone over within himself all the solid guarantees, ajfi 
 the prestige, all the infallibility (for had it not attained that 
 point 1) of Bivers's. Sure as the Bank of England ! Sucl^ 
 were the words that rose continually to everybody's lips on 
 hearing of it. Bobert propped himself up as he went along 
 with one support and another, till he felt ashamed that he could 
 be capable of entertaining a shadow of doubt. But the impres- 
 sion made upon his nerves was not to be overcome by simple 
 self-argument. Time was wanted to calm it down. He felt a 
 certain thrill and jar communicated through all the lines of 
 life. The sensation ran to his very finger-points, and gave 
 a sharp electric shock about the roots of his hair. And 
 it set his heart and his pulse beating, more likely organs 
 to be affected. Loss ! That was to say Helen and the child 
 deprived of the surroundings that made their life so fair ; 
 driven back to the poor little lodgings, perhaps, in which his 
 career began or to something poorer stUL Perhaps to want, per- 
 haps to "What a fool I am !" he said to himself. 
 
 " Do you reaUy object to Haldane as one of our share- 
 holders }" he said, with a certain hesitation, at last. 
 
56 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 " Object — ^the idiot !" said Mr. Burton. " I beg your pardon, 
 Drummondy I know he's a great friend of yours j but all that 
 nonsense exasperates me. Why, God bless me, his body is 
 sick, but his mind is as clear as yours or mine. Why can't he 
 judge for himself 1 I am quite ready to give hinder you, or 
 any one that interests me, the benefit of my expenence;' but 
 to take you on my shoulders, Drummond, you know, would fee 
 simply absurd. I can't foresee what may happen. I am ready 
 to run the risk myself. That's the best guarantee I can give 
 don't you think ? but I won't run any sentimental risks. You 
 may, if you like ; they are out of myjine." 
 
 " I don't know what you mean by sentimental risks." 
 
 ** Oh, as for that, it is easy to explain. The man is veiy ill : 
 he will never be of any use in liie again, and loss would be 
 destructidn to him. Therefore I won't take the responsibility. 
 Why, there may be a revolution in England next year for any- 
 thing I can teE There may be an invasion. Our funds may 
 be down to zero, and our business paralyzed. How can I tell ) 
 All these things are within the bounds of possibility, and if they 
 happened, and we went to smash, as we should infallibly, 
 Ti^at would Haldane do?" 
 
 " If there is nothing to alarm us closer at hand than a revo- 
 lution or ah invasion " said Drummond with a smile. 
 
 "How can we tell ? If I were asked to insure England, I 
 should only do it on a very heavy premium, I can tell ^ou. 
 And look here, Drummond, take my advice, always let a man 
 judge for himself, never take the responsibility. If you do, 
 youll be sorry after. I never knew a good man of business 
 yet who went in, as I said, for sentimental risks." 
 
 " I fear I shall never be a good man of business," said the 
 painter, with a certain sickness at his heart. " But tell me 
 now, suppose you were guardian to orphans, what should you 
 do with their money t 1 suppose that is what you would call 
 a very sentimental risk." 
 
 "Not so bad as Haldane," said Burton. "They would be 
 young and able to make their way if the worst came to the 
 worst. If they were entirely in my own hands I should invest 
 the money as I thought best ; but if there were other guardians 
 or relations, to make a fuss, I should put it in the Three per 
 Cents," 
 
AT HIS OATB& 
 
 91 
 
 " I really — don't — quite see what — difference that would 
 
 make " Bobert commenced, but his companion stopped hun' 
 
 almost roughly. 
 
 " The question won't bear discussing, Drummond. If I go 
 in with you, will your wife give me some lunch % I have lost 
 my whole morning to please my father-in-kw. Don't you 
 bother yourself about Haldane. He is a oleaivheaded /ellow, 
 and • perfectly able to iudee for Mm*--' * " 
 
 Then no more was said. If • pa<w % cloud hadco : ^ver 
 the rich man it fled at sight of the taole spreiid for luiu^neon, 
 and the sherry, upon which poor Robert (knowing almost as 
 little about that as he did about business) pridecl. himself vastly. 
 Mr. Burton applauded the sherry. He was more conversation- 
 al even than usual, and very anxious that Drumm ond should look 
 at a country-house in his neighbourhood. " If you can't afford 
 it now you very soon will," he said, and witliout referring to 
 Rivers's kept up such a continued strain of allusions to the 
 good fortune which was about to pour upon the house, that 
 Robert's nerves were comforted, he could scaixely have told 
 how. , But he went and worked all the afternoon in the studio 
 when the City man went off to his business. He laboured 
 hard at Francesca, fixing his whole mind upon Yaet, not even 
 whistling in his profound preoccupation. He had been absent 
 from the studio for some time, and the/ee/ of the old beloved 
 tools was delightful to him. But when the eai ly twilight came 
 and interrupted his work, he went out and took a l(mg walk 
 by himself, endeavouring to shake off the tremor which still 
 lingered about him. It was in his veins aiid in his nerves, 
 tingling all over him. He reasoned with hrnself, shook him- 
 self up roughly, took himself to task, but yet did not get over 
 it. " Bah ! it is simple sensation !" he said at last, and with a 
 violent effort turned his thoughts in another direction. But 
 the shock had left a tremor about him which was not quite dis- 
 sipated for days after ; for a man who is mado of fanciral artist- 
 stuffy iB not like a business inan with neryee of steel 
 
0a 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OTHING happened, however, to justify Drummond'a 
 fears. The success of Bivers's in its new form was as 
 great and as steady to all appearance as that of its an- 
 cient phase. People vied with each other in rushing into it, 
 in crowding its coffers and its shan) lists. Stephen Haldane, 
 " left to himself," according to Mr. Burton's instructions, had 
 long since deposited all he had in its hands ; and almost all of 
 ^berts's professional friends who had any money to invest, 
 mvesteduit in the bank which had an RA upon the roll of 
 directors. People came to him to ask his advice who in other 
 times would have given him theirs freely, with no such respect 
 for his judgment. But though this was the case, and though 
 ignorant persons in society sometimes wondered how he could 
 make the two occupations compatible, and cary on business 
 and art together, yet the fact was that businc and Eobert 
 had very little to do with each other. He weuv to the meet- 
 ings of the directors now and then. He was blandly pesent 
 sometimes at an auditing of accounjbs. He listened at times to 
 the explanations given by Mr. Golden, the manager, and 
 found them everyuung that was reasonable and wise. But 
 beyond that he cannot be said to have taken much part in the 
 management. For this mild part he was abundantly rewarded 
 — so abundantly that he sometimes felt half ashamed, reflect- 
 ing that the clerks in the offices actually contributed more to 
 the success of the place than he did, though they did not profit 
 half so much. He felt himself justified in taking a nice house 
 in the country, though not at Dura, at the end of the first sea- 
 son, and he gave his wife a pretty little carriage with two 
 ponies on her birthday, in which she drove about with a plea- 
 sure perhaps more real than that which any other circumstance 
 of their prosperity gave her. They dtd not leave their house 
 in St. Mary's Road, for it was dear to them in many ways, and 
 still satisfied all their wants ; and Robert could not tolerate 
 the idea of another painter using the studio he had built, or 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 i9 
 
 another woman enjoying the conservatoiy which had been 
 made for Helen. " However rich we may grow — even if we 
 should even be able to a£ford that house in Park Lane-— we 
 must keep this/' he said ; '' no profane foot must come in, no 
 stranger intrude upon our household gods ; and Norah must 
 have it after us, the house she was bom in." Thus they 
 planned their gentle romance, though they had been a dozen 
 years married and more, an^ bought the house they loved with 
 their first disposable money. And Robert still loved his woric 
 and kept to it, though he did not need now to trouble about 
 the exhibitions and push on his pictures, working from the early 
 morning down to twilight to get it ready. He got a little lazy 
 about finished pictures, to tell the truth. Eveii Fraiicesca, 
 though he loved her, had been put aside on the spare easel, 
 and never completed. '* I will get up early and set to work 
 in earnest to-morrow," he always said ; but to-morrow generally 
 found him like the day before, making a study of something — 
 sketching in now one subject, now another — ^tormenting his 
 wife with questions as to which was best. She had a good 
 deal to put up with in this period ; but she kept up under it 
 and bore it all smilingly. Aud Robert, like so many more, 
 made his sketches much better than his pictures, and put ideas 
 upon his cauvass which, if he could but have carried Uiem out 
 might have been great. 
 
 Thus two years passed over the pair ; and there were times 
 when Helen thought, with a leap of her heart, that ea«e and 
 leisure had done what care and toil could not do — ^had roused 
 a spark of divine genius in her husband's breast. Now and 
 then he drew something that went right to her heart, and it 
 was she who had always been his harshest critic. When she 
 said to him one day suddenly, without purpose or meaning, 
 " I like that, Robert," he turning round upon her all flushed 
 and glowing, more radiant than when he was made an B.A. 
 It was not that he had supreme confidence in her knowledge 
 of art, but that her backing of him, the support which he had 
 longed for all these years, was more than the highest applause, 
 and invigorated his very soul. But he was so pleased to have 
 pleased her, that he set up his sketch upon a bigger canvass, 
 and worked at it and improved it till he had improved the soul 
 out of it, and Helen applauded no more. He was mudimorti- 
 
 i^'sr^xmsmmummie, 
 
eo 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 \ 
 
 fied and disappointed at this failure ; but then in his humility 
 he said to himself, " What does it matter now 1 I am an R A., 
 which is the best I could be in my profession, so far as the 
 world is concerned, and we have something else to stand upon 
 besides the pictures." Thus he consoled himself, and so did 
 she. 
 
 And, in the meantime, Norah kept growing, and Ldcame a 
 more distinct feature in the hogfsehold. She was a feature 
 more than an agent still ; though she was nearly twelve not 
 much was heard of her except the scales, which she still rattled 
 over dutifully every morning, and the snatches of songs she 
 • would sing in the lightness of her heart as she went or came. 
 On most ordinary occasions she simply composed such a fore- 
 ground to the family picture as Maurice had seen that October 
 night. She sat on a stool on on the floor somewhere, with a 
 book clasped in her arms, reading ; in summer she and her 
 book together crouched themselves against the window in the 
 room, getting the last gleam of daylight, and in winter she read 
 by the firelight which crimsoned her all over with a ruddy glow, 
 and scorched her cheeks. Perhaps it was because she was kept 
 conscientiously at work all day that Norah thus devoured iH 
 the books she could lay hands on in the evening. She sat in 
 her corner and read, and heard what was going on all the same, 
 and took no notice. She read everything from Grimm's Tales 
 and the Arabian Nights to Shakspere, and from Shakspere to 
 Tennyson, with an undiscriminating, aU-^levouring appetite ; 
 and as she sat in a dream, lost in one volume after another, 
 ihe current of life Howed past and she was aware of it, and 
 heard a hundred things she was unconscious of hearing, yet 
 remembered years after. She heard discussions between her 
 father and mother which she was supposed to pay no attention 
 to. And she did not pay any attention to them : but only 
 innocently — an unconscious eavesdropper — ^heard everything, 
 and received it into her mind. This was the child's position 
 in the house ; she was the centre of the picture — everything 
 somehow bore a reference to her ; she alone was silent in the 
 midst. The other two — who loved her, tallced of her, planned 
 for her, contrived that everything that was pretty and pleasant 
 and sweet should surround her waking and sleeping — had yet 
 no ijaunediate need of Norah. They were each other's com^ 
 
AT BIS GATES. 
 
 61 
 
 panionH, and she was the third — the one left out But she 
 waB too young to feel any jealousy, or to struggle for a place 
 hetween thetn» She had her natural place, alinays in the fore- 
 ground, a silent creature, unconsciously obseiTing, laying up 
 provision for her life. 
 
 ** Are you not afraid to talk of everything before your daugh- 
 ter 1 " Mr. Golden said one day when she nad left the room. 
 " You know the old proverb, ' Little pitchers have long ears." 
 
 "Afraid of"— Norah?" said Bobert. The idea was so ex- 
 traordinary that he laughed first, though the rioment after he 
 felt disposed to be angry. " My child understands what honour 
 is, though she is so young," he said with paternal pride, and 
 then laughed, and added, " That is high-flown of course, but 
 you don't understand her. Golden ; how should you 1 She is 
 a thousand times too dieply occupied to care for what we are 
 saying. Pardon me, but the suggestion, to one who knows her, 
 is so very absurd." 
 
 "Ah, you never know where simplicity ends and sense 
 begins," said the bank manager. He had b< come a frequent 
 guest at St. Mary's Road. He was a man of ^'r. Burton's typef 
 but younger, slightly bald, perfectly brusheC;, clean, and per- 
 fumed and decorous. He was a little too heavy for the rdle 
 of a young, man in society ; and yet he danced and flirted with 
 the best when an opportunity offered. He nover spoke of the 
 City when he could help it : but he spoke a g,Teat deal about 
 Lady So-and-so's party, and the fine people ha knew. It was 
 difficult to make out how he knew them ; bit yet he visited, 
 or professed to visit at a great many of what are called " good 
 houses." As manager of the bank he had 3very man's good 
 opinion — he was at once so enterprising and so prudent, with 
 the most wonderful head for business. There was no one like 
 him for interpreting the " movements" on tho Stock Exchange^ 
 or the fluctuations of the Funds. He explaine d business matters 
 so lucidly that even Drummond understood them, or at least 
 thought he did. But there were a good maay people who did 
 not like Mr. Golden. Helen for one had a natural antipathy 
 to the man. She allowed that she had no reason for it ; that 
 he was very civil, sometimes amusing, and t ad never donie any- 
 thing she could find fault with. But she disliked him all the 
 Dame. Norah was more decided in her sentiments^ and had i^ 
 
 tl 
 
 
AT BIS GATISS. 
 
 olearar foundation for them. He had insisted on disturbing 
 her from her book one afternoon to shake hands with her ; 
 on another he had offered to kiss her, as a child, and she nearly 
 twelve 1 " But then you are so little of your age, Miss Norah. 
 I dare say the gentleman took you for nine," said her maid — 
 an explanation which did not render Norah more favourably 
 inclined towards the manager. And now he was tiying to 
 libel her, to traduce her to her father ! Even Bobert himself 
 was moved by this enormity ; it shook his opinion of his coun- 
 sellor. " That is all he knows," Drummond said to himself ; 
 and he resumed his conversation more distinctly than ever 
 when Norah came back. 
 
 In the meantime the Haldanes had thriven too, in their 
 way. Stephen was as helpless, a^ far from any hope of moving 
 as ever ; but he was well off, which alleviates much suffering. 
 The walls of his room were hung with Drummond's sketches, 
 half a dozen of them, among which were two pictures of Norah. 
 He lived in an arm-chair elaborately fitted with every possible 
 contrivance, with a reading-desk attached to its arm, and a table 
 close by, which could be raised to any height ; and his helpless 
 limbs were, covered with a silken quilt of Mrs. Haldane's own 
 working. There he passed the day and night without change : 
 but thaaks to Miss Jane and her mother, no strange eye had 
 looked upon the helpless man's humiliation ; they moved him 
 from his chair to his bed, and did every thing for him. The 
 bed was closed up by day, so that no stranger might suspect 
 its existence ; and the room was kept airy and bright by the 
 same unwearied watchers. Here he lived, making no com- 
 plaint. Whatever ^ feelings might be, whatever the repin- 
 ing, in his mind, he said nothing of them to i^ortal ear. A 
 shade of weariness the more upon his face, a deeper line than 
 usual between his eyes, were the only tokens that How and 
 ihen the deep waters overflowed his soul. And as for the 
 mother and sister, who were his slaves and attendants, they 
 had forgotten that there was anything unusual in his condition 
 — they had become accustomed to it. It seemed to them in 
 some sort the course of luiture. And God knows whether un- 
 consciously a feeling that it was " for the best" might not 
 sometimes steal into their minds. He was theirs for ever ; no 
 one could step in between them, or draw his h«art from Uieir 
 
AT HIS OATCfl. 
 
 6i 
 
 love. Had it been suggested to Mim Jano that nioh a seBti* 
 ment was poBsible, she would have rejectee!, it with hoiror ; and 
 yet in the depths of her heart it was there^ out of her own sifffat. 
 And he had an occupation in his seclusion which was a buss- 
 ing to him. He had become the editor of a little magazine, 
 which belonged to his " denomination," before he fell ill, and he 
 had been allowed to retain the post. This was the refuge of 
 his mind in his trouble, ^oor Stephen, he pleased himself 
 with the idea of still influencing somebod}', of preserving his 
 intercourse with the outer world. It had been a very homely 
 little publication when it came into hi» hands — a record of 
 what the " denomination " was doing ; the new chapels it was 
 building; the prayer-meetings gathered here and there, v lich 
 might grow into congregations ; and tlie tea-parties, which 
 furnished at once intellectual and social enjoyment for the peo- 
 ple. But Stephen had changed that ; he had put his mind iato 
 it, and worked it into a sort of literary organ. There were 
 reviews in it, and essays, and a great deal of discussions of the 
 questions of the day. These were approached firom the stand- 
 ing-ground of the denomination, it is true, but the discussions 
 were often far from being denominational. Up to this time, 
 however, the community ^ve no signs of disapproval. Mr. 
 Baldwin favoured the magazine, and the ^vriter of it was still 
 popular, and not yet forgotten. They gave him some fifty 
 pounds a year for this hard though blessed work which kept 
 his mind alive ; and his late congregation gave him fifty 
 pounds ; and the money in Rivers's bank had last quarter paid 
 ten per cent of profit. He was well off, he was indeed rich 
 for his wants, though he was not rolling in wealth like Drum- 
 mond. Money makes no man happy, but how much good it 
 does ! I^othing could make this poor man happy, rooi^. i thua 
 in his lmmov£U)le calm; but his ten per cent, kept him in 
 comfort, it gave him worship in the e}'^(!S of his people, who 
 were not fond of poverty ; it procured to him his only consola- 
 tion. He had no need to be indebted to any one ;4he could 
 even help the poor people of his former flock, and feel himself 
 independent. He could buy books, and give such quiet com- 
 forts and pleasures as they could enjoy to the w<»nen who 
 were so good to him. All these were great alleviations of the 
 sick man's lot. But for Rivers's how different would his posi- 
 
 i 
 
64 
 
 At HtS OAt£fit. 
 
 tion have been I He would have been subject to tbe constant 
 inspection of deacons and brethren ; he would have been inter- 
 fered with in respect to his magazine. All the comfort and 
 freedom which remained to him were the result of the little 
 more which made him independent and put him above criti- 
 cism. What a poor thinff money is^ which cannot buy either 
 health or happiness ! and yet what a great thing 1 only the 
 poor know how great. ^ 
 
 This time of prosperity had lasted for two years, when Mr. 
 Burton withdrew from the direction of the bank. He had 
 enlarged h|s business greatly in another way, and had no longer 
 time to bestow upon this ; and, indeed, he had professed all 
 along his desire to be free. This had been the object of the 
 old company in taking in " new blood," and now the new 
 company was able .to proceed alone upon their triumphant way. 
 
 " It is ycur turn to get into harness, Drummond," he said, 
 with a glance in which there was some contempt. Bobert didi 
 not see the scorn, but he laughed with perhaps a little gentle 
 confidence in his own power to be of use if he should choose to 
 exert himself. 
 
 ** I must put myself into training first,*' he said. 
 
 " Grolden will do that for you. Golden is the best coach 
 for business I have ever came across," said Mr. Burton^ '* He 
 will put you uf) to everything, good and bad — ^the dddges as 
 wen as the le^timate line. Golden is not a' common man of 
 business — ^he is a great artist in trade." 
 
 There was a ciBrtain elation in his air and words. Was he 
 ^lad to have shaken off the bonds of Rivers's, though they 
 were golden bonds ? This was the question which Helen asked 
 herself with a little surprise. The two men were dining at St. 
 Mary's Road on the night after Burton's withdrawal, and she 
 was still at table, though they had begun to talk of business. 
 As usual, she who took no part was the one most instructed by 
 tbe conversation. But she was bewildered,- not instructed, by 
 this. Sh9 could not midce out what it meaiit. She knew by 
 the best of all proofs that the bank was profitable and flour- 
 ishing. Why, then, did her «>usiii show such high, spirits 1 
 What was his elation about I Lon^ aftev, she reniembered 
 that she had noted this, and tnen n^ adIc to divine the mystery. 
 But now it only vurpiiised her vagudy, like a foreign phrase m 
 the midst of the language she knew, 
 
AT HIS aATBS. 
 
 65 
 
 " The dodges axe amuBing/' said Mr. Gblden. ** The legiti- 
 mate drama is more dignified and imposing, but I rather tMnk 
 there is more fun in the work when you are living on the very 
 edge of ruin. The hairbreadth escapes one has — ^the Sense 
 that it is one's own cleverness that carries one through — ^the 
 delight of escaping from the destruction that seemed down 
 upon you 1 There is nothing like that/' he said with a laugh, 
 " in the steady plsbifcudes of ordinary trade." 
 
 And Mr. Burton iwghed too, and a glance passed between 
 them, such as mignt have passed between two old soldiers 
 who had gone many a campaign together. There was a 
 twinkle in their eyes, and the " Do you remember ?" seemed 
 to be on their very lips. But then they stopped short, and 
 went no further. Helen, still vaguely surprised, had to get up 
 and go away to the drawing-room ; and what more experiences 
 these two might exchange, or whether her husband would be 
 any the wiser for them, she was no longer able to see. Norah 
 waited her in the other room. She had just come to the end 
 of a book, and, putting it down with a sigh, came and sat by 
 her mother's side. They were alike in general features and 
 complexion, though not in the character of their faces. 
 Norah's hair was brighter, and her expression less stately and 
 graceful than Helen's — she had not so much distindioiif but she 
 had more life. Such a woman as her mother she was never 
 likely to be, but her attractions would be great in her own 
 way. 
 
 "How nice your velvet gown is, mamma !" said Norah, who 
 was given to long monologues when she spoke at all. "I like 
 to put my cheek upon it. When I am grown up, I will always 
 wear black velvet in winter, and white muslin in summer. 
 They are the nicest of all I do not think that you are too 
 old for white. I like you in white, with red ribbons. When 
 I am a little bigger I should like to dress the same as you, as 
 if we were two sisters. Mayn't we 1 Every body says you 
 look so young. But, mamma, ain't you glad to get away from 
 those men, and come in here to me f " 
 
 "You vain child!" said Helen. "I can see you whenever 
 I like, so it is no novelty to me y while papa's friends " 
 
 " Do you think they are papa's friends. I suppose there are 
 no villains nowadays, like whab there are in bookal" mii 
 s 
 
 I 
 
66 
 
 AT HIS OATES, 
 
 Norah. ^* The world is rather different from books somehow. 
 There you can always see how everything happens ; and there 
 is always somebody clever enough to find out the villains. 
 Villains themselves are not very clever, they always let them- 
 selves be found out." 
 
 ** But, my dear, we are not talking of villains/' said Helen. 
 
 " No mamma, only of that Mr. Golden. I hate him ! If you and 
 I were awfully clever, and could see into him what he means — " 
 
 "You silly Ifttlegirl ! You have readtoo many novels," said 
 Helen. " In the world people are often selfish, and think of 
 their own advantage first ; but they don't try to ruin others 
 out of pure malice, as they do in stories. Even Norah Drum- 
 mond sometimes thinks of herself first. I don't knoiv if she is 
 aware of it, but still it happens ; and though it is not always 
 a sin to do that, still it is the way that most sins come about." 
 
 This purely maternal and moral turn of the conversation did 
 not amuse Norah. She put her arm round her mother's waist, 
 and laid her cheek against the warm velvet of Helen's gown. 
 
 " Mamma, it is not fair to preach when no one is expecting 
 it," she said in an injured tone; "and just when I have you 
 all to myself! I don't often have you to myself. Papa thinks 
 you belong to him most. Often and often I want to come and 
 talk, but papa is so greedy ; you ought to think you belong 
 to me too." 
 
 "But, my darling, you have always a book," said Helen, not 
 insensible to the sweet flattery. 
 
 " When I can't have you, what else am I to do 1" said crafty 
 Norah ; and when the gentlemen came into the drawing-room^ 
 the two were still sitting together, talking of a hundred things. 
 Mr. Golden came up, and tried very hard to be admitted into 
 the conversation, but Norah walked away altogether, and went 
 into her favourite comer, and Mrs. Drummond did not en- 
 courage his talk. She looked at him with a certain flutter of 
 Excited curosity, wondering if there was anything under that 
 smooth exterior which was dangerous and meant harm ; and 
 smiled at herself and said, *'No, no ; enemies and vil ains exist 
 only in books. The worst of this man would be that he would 
 pursue his own ends, let them suffer who might ; and his own 
 ends could not harm Drummond " — or so at least Helen 
 bought. 
 
47 HI3 QATHSi. 
 
 67. 
 
 Iff 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 (&£. 
 
 ,T was in the summer of the third year of his bank director^ 
 ship that Robert made his first personal entry into business. 
 The occasion of it was this. One of his early friends who 
 had been at school with him, and with whom he had kept up a 
 private and often interrupted intercourse, came to himi one 
 morning with an anxious face. He was in business himself, 
 with a little office in one of the dreary lanes in the City, a 
 single clerk, and very limited occupation. He had married 
 young, and had a large family ; and Drummond was already 
 aware that, while the lines had fallen to himself in pleasant, 
 places, poor Markham's lot had been hard and full of thorns. 
 He was now at the very criF'B of his troubles. He gave a 
 glance round the painter's handsome studio when he entered^, 
 at the pictures on the walls and the costly things about, and 
 the air of evident luxury that pervaded every thing, and sighed. 
 His own surroundings were poor and scant enough. And yet 
 he could and did remember that Drummond had started injife 
 a poorer man, with less hopeful prospects than himself. Such 
 a contrast is not lively or inspiriting, and it requires a generous 
 mind to take it kindly, and refrain from a passing grudge at 
 the old companion who has done so much better for himself.. 
 Poor Markham had come with a petition, on which, he said,, 
 all his future life depended. He had made a speculation which 
 would pay him largely could he only hold out for three 
 months ; but without help from his friends this was impossible. 
 It was a large sum that he wanted — ^more than any private 
 friend would be likely to sive him — something between two 
 and three thousand pounds. The welfare of his family, his 
 very existence in a business point of view, and the hopes of 
 his children depended on his ability to tide those three monthsi 
 over. For old friendship's sake, for all the associations of theic 
 youth, would Drummond help himi Robert listened with bia 
 kindly heart full of sympathy. Long before the story was 
 4one, he be^an to calculate what he had at his dispoMJ^ kQifj 
 
 ! 
 
es 
 
 imms i3^*nas. 
 
 much he could give ; but the sum startled him. He could 
 not produce at a moment's notice a sum of nearly three thou- 
 sand pounds. With a troubled heart he shook his head and 
 said it was impossible — ^he had not so much money at his dis- 
 posal — ^he could not do it. Then MarkMam eagerly explained. 
 It was not from his friend's own purse that he had hoped for 
 it; but the bank! On Drummond's introduction, the bank 
 would do it. Biyers'tt could save him. JSo such request had 
 never been made to Robert before. Very few of his Mends 
 were business men. Their needs were private needs, and not 
 the spasmodic wants of trade. There were people who had 
 borrowed from himself personally, and some who had been 
 helped by him in other ways ; but this was the first appeal 
 made to his influence in the bank. He was startled by it in 
 his innocence of business ways. It seemed to him as if it was 
 like asking a private favour, turning over his own petitioner to 
 a third person. '* He is my friend, give him three thousand 
 pounds. It seemed to him the strangest way of being service- 
 able to his neighbour. But poor Markham had all the 
 eloquence of a partially ruined man. He made it clear to 
 Itobert, not only that such things were, but that they hap- 
 pened continually, and were in the most ordinary course of 
 nature. Th0 end was that they went out together, and had 
 an interview with Mr. Golden at the bank. And then Robert 
 found that his acquaintance had not exaggerated, that the 
 matter was even easier than he had represented it, and that 
 there would not be the slightest difficulty in ''accommodating" 
 the man who was Mr. Drummond's friend. Markham and he 
 parted at the door of the bank, the one with tears of gratitude 
 in his eyes, blessing God and Robert for saving him, and the 
 other with a bewildered sense of power which he had not real- 
 ised. He had not known before how much he could do, nor 
 what privileges his directorship put in his hands, and he was 
 confused by the discovery. It bewildered him, as a man 
 might be bewildered to know that he could bestow fertility or 
 barrenness on his fields by a glance — ^how strange the power 
 was, how sweet in this instance, how,--^angerous ! Yes, that 
 WBS the word. He felt afraid of himself as he went home. If 
 suoh plaints came to him often, it would be so difficult to resist 
 ^tMkf and tihen^ A kind of horiible dread oam^ ov^ hi» mind. 
 
AT SIS GATES. 
 
 e9 
 
 Would the money ever be paid back tbat he had got bo easily t 
 The thought made his hand shake when he went back to tiie 
 peaceable work at which no such bewildering risks were run. 
 
 When the three months were over, Markham's money was 
 not paid ; on the contrary, he had fled to Australia, he and all 
 his ^ildren, leaving nothing but some Wwuched old fiiirniture 
 behind him. Poor Drummond was nearly beside himself. He 
 rushed to the bank when he heard the news, and protested 
 that the loss must be his. It was his fault, and of course 
 he must repay it. Mr. Golden smiled at him with a gen- 
 uine admiration of his simplicity. He told him» in a fatherly 
 way, of a speculation which had been very successful which had 
 cleared nearly the same sum of money. ** Putting the one to 
 the other, we are none the worse," he said ; ** every commercial 
 concern must make some bad debts." 
 
 Drummond went away with more bewilderment still, with 
 many new thoughts buzzing in his head, thoughts which 
 troubled the composure of his life. He himself being but an 
 artist, and not a merchant, was afraid of money. He touched 
 it warily, trafficked in it with a certain awe. He knew how 
 much labour it required to earn it, and how hard it was to be 
 without it. He could not understand the levity with which 
 Burton and Golden treated that potent thing. To them it was 
 like common merchandise, sugar or salt. A heap of it, as 
 much as would make a poor man's fortune, melted away in a 
 moment, and the bland manager thought nothing of it — ^it was 
 a bad debt. All this was so strange to him, that he did not 
 know what to make of it. He himself was guilty, he felt, of 
 having thrown away so much which belonged to other peopla 
 And eve^y other director on the board had the same power 
 which he had with a painful pleasure discovered himself to 
 have. And they knew better about it than he did ; and what 
 check could there be upon them t If every other man among 
 them had been art and part in losing three thousand pounds, 
 what could Robert say t It would not be for him to throw 
 the first stone. He felt like Christian in the story, when, upon 
 the calm hillside, he suddenly saw a door through which there 
 was, open and visible, the mouth of hell. It occurred to Robert 
 to go down, to the next meeting of directors, to tell them his 
 own story, and beg that the money lost through his mean9|shou7d 
 
to 
 
 At ms OAtBS. 
 
 be subtracted from his priyate share of the capital, and to beg 
 all of them to do so likewise. He quite made up his mind to 
 this in the first tumult of his thoughts. But before the time for 
 that meeting came, a sense of painful ridicule, that bugbear of 
 the Englishman, had daunted him. They would call him a 
 fool, they would think he was " canting," or taking an oppor- 
 tunity to display his own disinterestedness. And accordingly 
 he accepted the misfortune, and was content to permit it to be 
 called a bad debt. But the enlightenment which it threw on 
 the business altogether gave Robert a shock which he did not 
 easily recover. It seemed to show him a possible chasm open- 
 ing at his very feet, and not at his only, but at the feet of all 
 the ignorant simple people, the poor painters, the poor women, 
 the sick men like Haldane, who had placed their little seed-corn 
 of money in Rivers's bank. 
 
 These thoughts were hot in his heart at the time of this mis- 
 adventure with Markham ; and then there came a lull, and he 
 partially forgot them. When no harm is visible, when the tran- 
 quil, ordinary course of affairs seems to close over a wrong or a 
 blunder, it is so difficult to imagine that everything will not go 
 well. He said as little as possible to Heleii on the subject, 
 and she did not take fright fortunately, having many things to 
 occupy her nowadays. There was her own enlarged and fuller 
 household ; the duties of society ; her charities, for she was 
 very good to the poor people near Southlees, then* house in the 
 country, and kept watch over them even from St. Mary's Road. 
 And she had now many friends who came and occupied her 
 time, and carried her off from her husband ; so that he had not 
 that resource of talking about it which so often lightens our 
 anxiety, and so often deepens it. In this instance, perhaps it 
 was as well that he could not awaken her fears to increase and 
 stimulate his own. 
 
 And thus everything fell into its usual quietness. Life was 
 so pleasant for them. They had so much real happiness to 
 cushion the angles of the world, and make them believe that 
 all would be always well Those who have been experienced in 
 pain are apt to tremble and doubt the continuance of happi- 
 ness when they attain it; but to those who have had no real 
 sorrows it seems eternal. Why should it ever C3me to an end? 
 This the Drummonds felt with an instinctive confidence. It 
 
AT HIS OATESi. 
 
 71 
 
 9118 our 
 
 was easier to believe in any miracle of good than in the least 
 prognostic of eviL The sun was shining upon them ; summer 
 was sweet and winter pleasant. Th(>y had love, they had ease, 
 they had wealth, as much as they desired, and they believed 
 in it. The passing cloud rolled away from Robert's mind. He 
 reflected that if there was daneer there, there was danger in 
 everything ; every day, he said to himself, every man may be 
 in some deadly peril without knoiying it. We pass beneath 
 the arch that falls next moment ; we touch against some one's 
 shoulder unaware whose touch of infection might be death ; we 
 walk over the mined earth and brettthe air which might breed a 
 pestilence, and yet nothing happens to us. Human nature 
 is agiEiinst everything violent. Somehow she holds a balance, 
 which no one breaks down, though it is possible to be broken 
 down at any moment. The directors might ruin the bank in a 
 week, but they would not, any more than the elements, which 
 are ever ready for mischief, would clash together and produce 
 an earthquake. Such things might be; but never-— or so sel- 
 dom as to be next to never — ^are. 
 
 In the early autumn of that year, however, another shock 
 came upon the ignorant painter. His wife and Norah were at 
 Southlees, where he himself had been. Business had brought 
 him up against his will, busines;^ of the gentler kind, concern- 
 ing art and the Academy, not the bank. He was alone at St. 
 Mary's Boad, chafing over his solitude, and longing for home 
 and the pleasant fields. London, the London he knew and 
 cared for, had gone out of town. August was blazing upon the 
 parks and streets ; the grass Tvas the colour of mud, and the 
 trees like untanned leather. The great people were all away 
 in their great houses ; and among his own profession those, who 
 could afibrd it had started for Switzerland or some other holiday 
 region, and those who could not had gone for their annual whiff 
 of sea-air. Robert was seated by himself at breakfast, mourn- 
 fully considering how another day had to be got over, before 
 he could go home, when a hansom dashed up to the door, and 
 Mr. Golden, bland and clean t^ ever, but yet with a certain agi- 
 tation in his face, came in. He explained eagerly that he had 
 come to Drummond only because the other directors were out 
 of town. '' The fact is," ho t^aid, "I want you to come with 
 me, not to give you much trouble or detain you long, but to 
 
72 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 stand by me, if you will, in a crisis. We have had some losses. 
 Those people in Calcutta who chose to stop pa3rment, like 
 fools, and the Sullivans' house at Liverpool. — It is only tempor- 
 ary. — But the Bank of England has made itself disagreeable 
 about an advance, and I want you to come with me and see the 
 governor." 
 
 '' An advance ! Is Kivers's in difficulties 1 is there anything 
 wrong I You take away my breath." 
 
 " There is no occasion for taking away your breath," said 
 Mr. Golden ; '4t is only for the moment. But it is an awk- 
 ward time of the year, for everybody is out of town. I should 
 not have troubled you, knowing you were not a business man, 
 but of course the presence of a director gives authority. Don't 
 be alarmed, I beg. I will tell you idl about it as we drive 
 along." 
 
 But what Mr. Golden told was very inarticulate to Robert, 
 what with the wild confusion produced in his own mind, and the 
 noise and dust of the sultry streets. It was the most tempor- 
 ary difficulty ; it was not worth speaking of ; it was a simple 
 misunderstanding on the part of the authorities of the Bank of 
 England. " Why, we are worth twenty times the money, and 
 everybody knows it," said Mr. Golden. His words, instead of 
 making Kobert confident, made him sick. His sin in that mat- 
 ter of Markham came darkly before him and, worse even than 
 that, the manager's words recaUed Markham's to him. In his 
 case, too it was to have been merely a temporary difficulty. 
 Drummond's imaginative mind rushed at once to the final catas- 
 trophe. He saw ruin staring him in the face — and not only 
 him. 
 
 The interview with the authorities of the Bank of England 
 did not make things much clearer to the amateur. They talk- 
 ed of previous advances ; of their regret that the sacred name 
 of " Rivers's " should be falling into mist and darkness ; of their 
 desire to have better securities, and a guarantee which would 
 be more satisfactory : to all of which Robert listened with con- 
 sternation in his soul. But at last the object was attained. 
 Mr. Golden wiped the moisture from his forehead as they left 
 the place. " That has been a tough battle," he said, " but, 
 thank Heaven ! it is done, and we are tided over, I knew 
 they would not be such fools as to refuse," 
 
 over. 
 
AT HIS OATia 
 
 79 
 
 if'.'i 
 
 ''But, good God!" said Robert, ''what have you beten do- 
 ing 1 Wjbat is the meaning of it 1 Why do you require to go 
 hat in hand to any governor ) Is Bivers's losing its position 1 
 What has happened ) Why don't you call the shareholders 
 together and tell them if anything is wrong 1 " 
 
 " My dear Mr. Drummond ! " said Mr. Golden. He could 
 scarcely do more than smile and say the words. 
 
 ** Don't smile at me," said Drummond in the ardour of his 
 heart. Do you consider that you have the very lives of hun- 
 dreds of people in your hands ? Call them together, and let 
 them know what remains, for God's sake I I'll make good what 
 was lost through me." 
 
 " You are mad," said Golden, when he saw that his gantle sneer 
 had failed; such a step would be ruin. Call together the 
 shareholders ! Why the shareholders ? — Mr Drummond, for 
 heaven's sake, let people manage it who know what they are 
 about." 
 
 " For heaven's sake ! for hell's sake, you mean," said Robert 
 in his despair. And the words reverberated in his ears, rang 
 out of all the echo js, sounded through the very streets " It 
 would be ruin ! " Ruin i that was the word. It deafened 
 him, muttering and ringing in his ears. 
 
 And yet even after this outburst he was calmed down. Mr. 
 Golden ei^lained it to him. It was business ; it was the com- 
 mon course of affairs, and only his own entire inexperience 
 made it so terrible to him. To the others it was not in the 
 least terrible, and yet he had no right to conclude that his col- 
 leagueb were indifferent either to their own danger, or to the 
 danger of the shareholders of whom he thought so much. 
 " The shareholders of course know the risks of business as well 
 as we do," Mr. Golden said. " We must act for the best, both 
 for them and for ourselves." And the painter was silenced if 
 not convinced. This was in the autumn, and during the en- 
 tire winter which followed the bank went on like a ship in a 
 troubled sea. After a while such a crisis as the one which had 
 so infinitely alarmed him became the commonest of incidents 
 even to Drummond. Now that his eyes had been once en- 
 lightened, it was vain to attempt any further concealment. 
 One desperate struggle he did indeed make, when in the very 
 midst of all this anxiety a larger dividend than usual wws d«« 
 
 l jU4.^.it.,l. J.-,^ 
 
H 
 
 AT HIS OATEa 
 
 dared. The innocent man fought wildly against this practical 
 lie, but his resistance was treated as utter folly by the business 
 board, who were, as they said, " fighting the ship." '* Do you 
 want to create a panic and a run upon us ? " they asked him. 
 He had to be silent, overpowered by the judgment of men who 
 knew better than himself. And then something of the excite- 
 ment involved in that process of " fighting the ship " stole in- 
 to his veins. Somehow by degrees, nobody had been quite 
 aware how, the old partners of Kivers's had eone out of the con- 
 cern. It was true there been but three or (out to start with ; 
 now there was but one left — Lord Bivers, th^ !^ead of the house, 
 who never took any share in the business, und was as ignorant 
 as the smallest shareholder. The new directors, the fighting 
 directors, were men of a very different class, As the winter 
 went on the ship laboured more and more. Sometimes it 
 seemed ' to go down altogether, and then rose again with a 
 buoyancy which seemed almost tio justify hope. **T<mt pent se 
 ritabliry*' they said to each other. " After all we shall tide it 
 over." And even Robert began to feel that thrill of delight 
 and relief when a danger was " tided over," that admiration, 
 not of his own cleverness, but of the cleverness of others, which 
 Golden had once described. Golden came out now in his true 
 colours ; his resources were infinite, his pluck extraordinary. 
 But he enjoyed the struggle in the midst of his excitement and 
 exertion, and Drummond did not enjoy it, which made an im- 
 mense difference between them. 
 
 Things became worse and worse as spring came on. By that 
 time, so far as Drummond was concerned, all hope was over. 
 He felt himself sucked into the terrible whirlpool whence no- 
 thing but destruction could come. With a heart unmanned by 
 anxiety, and a hand shaken with suppressed excitement, how 
 could he go into his peaceable studio and work at that calmest 
 work, of art ? That phase of his existence seemed to have been 
 over for years. When he went into the room he loved it look- 
 ed to him like some place he had known in his youth — ^it 
 was fifty years off or more, though the colour was scarcely 
 dry on the picture which stood idly on the easel. When 
 he was called to Academy meetings, to consultations over 
 an old master, or a new rule, a kind of dull amazement 
 mied liis soul. Did people still care for such things — was 
 
At HIS OATES. 
 
 75 
 
 it still possible that beauty and pleasantness remained in 
 life 1 There were people in these days who felt even that the 
 painter had fallen into bad ways. Tbey saw his eyes blood< 
 shot and his hands trembling. He was never seen with his 
 wife now when she drove her ponies through the park — even 
 in society Helen went sometimes out alone. And they had 
 been so united, so happy a pair. " Drummond will have no- 
 thing ready in April, the painters said to each other — "even 
 his diploma picture has never been firished — prosperity has not 
 agreed with himy When he was visible at all, his vacant air, 
 his tremulous look, the deep lines under his eyes, friglitened all 
 his friends. Dr. Maurice had spoken to him very seriously, 
 begging that he would be candid and tell his ailments. " You 
 cannot go on like this," he said. *' You are killing yourself, 
 Drummond." " How much can a man go through without be- 
 ing killed, I wonder f " poor Robert asked, with an unsteady 
 smile, and even his friend stopped short in dismay and per- 
 plexity. Was it dissipation ) Waf it some concealed misery 1 
 Could his wife have anything to do with it ? These sug^s- 
 tions flitted vaguely through the doctor's mind without bnng- 
 ing any certainty with them. Once he seemed to be getting 
 a clue to the mystery, when Robert rushed in upon him one 
 day, and with a show of levity sug;;ested that Haldane's money 
 should be taken out of the bank. " I know a better invest- 
 ment, and he should have the very best that is going," said 
 Drummond. Dr. Maurice was somewhat startled, for he had 
 money in Rivers's too. 
 
 " Where is there a better invesl;ment 1 " he asked. 
 
 " In the Three per Cents.," said Robert, with a hoarse laugh. 
 
 Was he mad ? Was he drunk 1 The doctor took a day 
 to consider it, to think whether there could be anything in it. 
 But he looked at the dividend papers, showing that Rivera's 
 that year had paid ten per cent. And he called upon Dr. Brad- 
 cliffe, and asked him to go with lim privately, accidentally j one 
 of these days, to see a friend wlnse brain was going, he feared. 
 The two physicians shook their heads, and said to each other 
 mournfully how common that mtia becoming. But Fate moved 
 faster than Dr. Maurice, and the accidental call was never 
 made. 
 
 ■■^wisfcWijfflSiinas 
 
 msm 
 
r« 
 
 A't HIS 0ATB8. 
 
 ■'irj..r»rs'«'.n;rr 
 
 ■ill 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 J HE life which Helen Drummond lived during this winter 
 would be very hard to describe. Something wrong had 
 happened, she saw, on that rapid visit to town which 
 Robert haa made on Academical busmess in October, leaving 
 her at Southlees. No anxiety about business matters connected 
 with the bank had ever been suggested to her mind. She had 
 long ago accepted, as a matter m course, the fact that wealth 
 was to come from that source, with an ease and regularitv 
 very different from the toilsome and slow bread- winning whicn 
 was done by means of art She was not surprised by it as 
 Robert was ; and enough of the bourgeois breeding was left in 
 her to make her pleased that her husband should see the differ- 
 ence between the possibilities of his profession and of the com- 
 merce which she had been wont to near lauded in her youth. 
 She was almost proud that Trade had done so much for him. 
 Trade came from her side, it was she who had the hereditary 
 connection with it ; and the innate idealism of her mind was 
 able to cling to the old-fashioned fanciful conception of benefi- 
 cent commerce, such as we have all heard of in our educational 
 days. But her pride was not sensitive on this point. What 
 really touched her was the praise or the blame which fell upon 
 him as a painter, and the dread that instantly sprang into her 
 mind was that he had met with something painful to him in 
 this respect — that his opinion had not been received as of weight 
 in the deliberations of the Academy, or his works had been spo- 
 ken of with less respect than they ought to have secured. This 
 was the foolish fancy that took hold of her mind. She ques- 
 tioned him about the Academy meeting till poor Robert — his 
 thoughts occupied about things so very different — ^grew sick of 
 the subject. Yet he was almost glad of some subject on which 
 to vent a little of his excitement. Yes, they were a set of old 
 foffies, he said with audacious freedom. They pottered about 
 thmgs they did not understand. They puzzled and hesitated 
 over that Rembrandt, which any one with half an eye could 
 

 AY HIB OATIB. 
 
 7? 
 
 6<3 httd been worked at by some inferior hand. They threw oold 
 water upon that lovehest Franoia which nobody oonld see with- 
 out recoenising. They did what they ought not to do, and 
 neglected what was their duty. ''We all do that every day of 
 our lives," said Helen ; " but what was there that specially 
 vexed you, Robert f " Nothing," he said, looking up at her 
 with eyes full of astonishment ; but there was more than astonish- 
 ment in them. There was pain, dread, anxiety — a wistfiil, 
 restless look of suffering. " He will not tell me : he will keep 
 it to himself and suffer by himself, not to vex me," Helen said 
 in her own thoughts. And though the autumn was lovely, 
 Robert could not be happy at {^uthlees that year. He had 
 been very happy the two previous summers. The house was 
 situated on the Thames, beyond Teddington. It was rustic 
 and old, with various additions built to it ; a red-brick house, 
 grown over with all manner of lichens, irregular in form and 
 harmonious with its position, a house which had grown — which 
 had not been artificially made. The family had lived on the 
 lawn^ or on the river in those halcyon days that were past. 
 There was a fringe of trees at every side except that, shutting 
 in the painter's retirement ; but on the river side nothing but a 
 few bright flower-beds, and the green velvet lawn, sloping to- 
 wards the softly flowing water. One long* leaved willow drooped 
 over the stone steps at which the bo&t was lying. It was a 
 place where a pair of lovers might have spent their honey- 
 moon, or where the weary and sick might have come to get 
 healing. It was not out of character either with the joy or 
 the grief. Nature was so sweet, so silent, so meditative and 
 calm. The river ran softly, brooding over its own low lic^uid 
 gurgle. The stately swans sailed up and down. The httle 
 fishes darted about in the clear water, and miriads of flying 
 atoms, nameless insect exisicences, fluttered above. Boating 
 parties going down the stream would pause, with a sigh of gen- 
 tle envy, to look at the group upon the lawn ; the table with 
 books and work on it, with sometimes a small easel beside it 
 or big drawing pad supportiod on a stand ; a low chair with 
 Helen's red shawl thrown over it, and Norah, with her red 
 ribbons, nestled on the sunn}! tur£ They sat there, and worked, 
 and talked, or were silent, with an expansion of their hearts 
 towards everything that breathed and moved ; or they spent 
 
w 
 
 AH WIB &AT|ia 
 
 ]fmg days on the river, catoMng the mcmiing HghtAupon those 
 nooks whieh ere ouly known to dwellers on the 8tr<»am ; or 
 pursuing water-lilies through all the golden afternoon in the 
 hack-waters which these retired flowers love. The river was 
 their life, and rjxned them along, day after day. Such a 
 scene could not but be sweet to every lover of nature ; but it 
 is doubly sweet when the dumb poetic imagination Jias by its 
 side that eye of art which, sees everything. The painter is a 
 better companion even than the poet — just as seeing is better 
 than spying that you see. JElobert was not a genius in art : 
 but he kid the artist's animated, all>perceiving eye. Nothing 
 escaped him — he saw a hundred beautiful things which would 
 have been imperceptible to ordinary men — u dew-drop on a 
 blade of grass at hit? feet chanued him as much as a rainbow — 
 his " Lo'>k, Helen ! " was more than volumes of descriptive 
 poetry. They were out and about at all times, " watching the 
 lights," as he said in his ple^isant professional jargon : in the 
 early mornings, when all was silvery softness and clearness, 
 and the birds were tr}ring over their choicest trills before men 
 woke to hear ; in the evening when twilight came gently on, 
 insinuating her filmy impenetrable veil between them and the 
 sunset ; and even at full noon, when day is languid at the 
 height of perfection, knowing that perfectness is brother to 
 decadence. The painter and his wife lived in the middle of all 
 these changes, and took them in, every one to the firmament in 
 their hearts. jim jiu^v , ; 
 
 Why do we stop in this record of trouble to babble about 
 sunset skies ^Aud ru]^ng waters ) Is it not natural ) The 
 '* sound as of a hidden brook in the leafy month of June" 
 comes in,: by right, among all weird, mysterious harmonies of 
 every tragical lute. *^ The oaten pipe and pastoral reed " have 
 their share even in the hurly-burly of cities and noisy discord 
 of modem existence. Robert Drummond had his good things 
 as well as his evil things. For these two summers never man 
 had been more happy — ^and it is but few who can say as much. 
 His wih was happy with him, her old ghosts exorcised, and a 
 new light suffusing her life. It seemed a new life altogether, 
 a life without discontents, full of happiness, and tranquillity, 
 and hope. , 
 
 $^t this auti^mn Robert was not happy at Bouthlees. He 
 
AT kiS GATES. 
 
 79 
 
 coald not stay there peaceably, as he had done before. He 
 had to go to town *'on business/' he said, sometimes twice a 
 week. He took no pleasure in his old delights. Though he 
 could not help seeing still, his ** Look, Helen ! " was no longer 
 said in a tone of enthusiasm ; and when he had uttered the 
 familiar exclamation he would turn away and sigh. S0111&- 
 times she found him with his face hidden in his hands, andpressr 
 ed against the warm greensward. It was as if he were Imock- 
 ing for admission at the gates of the grave, Helen thought, in 
 that fancifulness which comes of fear as much as of hope. 
 When she questioned him he would deny everything, and work 
 with pretended gaiety. Every time he went to town it seemed 
 to her that five years additional of line and cloud had been 
 added to the lines on his forehead. His hair began to get 
 grey ; perhape that was no wonder, for he was forty, a pilgrim 
 already in the sober paths of middle age ; but Helen was near- 
 ly ten years younger, and this sign of advancing years seemed 
 unnatural to her. Besides, he was a young man in his hearty 
 a man who would be always young; yet he was growing old 
 before his time. But notwithstanding his want of enjoyment 
 in it he was reluctant that his wife should leave Southless soon* 
 er than usual. He would go into town himself, he declared. 
 He would do well enough-^what did it matter for a few 
 weeks ) " For the sake of business it is better that I should 
 go — but the winter is long enough if you come in the end of 
 the month. No, Helen, take the good of it as long as you can 
 — this year." 
 
 " What good shall I get of it alone, and how can I let you 
 live for weeks by yourself? " said Helen. " You may think it 
 is fine : be independent ; but you could not get on without 
 Nonih and me." 
 
 "No," he said, with a shudder. "God knows life would be 
 a poor thikig without Norah and you ! but when it is a ques- 
 tion of three weeks — I'll go and see my friends ; I'll live a 
 jovial bachelor life " 
 
 " Did you see the Haldanes," she asked, " when you were 
 in town last V 
 
 It was the most innocent, unmeaning question ; but it made 
 him grow pale to the very lips. Did he tremble 1 Helen was 
 so startled that sue did not even irealise how it was he looked* 
 
 m^^mmmH' is-.i.. 
 
M 
 
 AT HIS OATEa 
 
 ** H<»r ooM the wind blows/' he said with a shiver. '^ I 
 must have caught oold, I suppose, last night. The Haldanes t 
 No j I had no time." 
 
 " Robert, something worries you," she said earnestly. "Tell 
 me what it is. Whatever it is, it will not be so heavy when 
 you have told me. You have always said so— since ever we 
 have been together." 
 
 "And truly, my darling," he said. He took her hand and 
 held it tenderly, but he did not look at her. " I cannot tell 
 you of worries that don't exist, can I V he added, with an ex- 
 aggerated cheerfulness. '' I have to pay a little attention to 
 business now the other men are out of town And business 
 bores me. I f'on't understand it. I am not e^ver at it. But 
 it is not worth while to call it a worry. By-and-l^ they will 
 come back, and I shall be free." 
 
 When he said this he really believed it, not being then fully 
 aware of the tormenting power of the destruction which was 
 about to overwhelm him. He thought the other directors 
 would come back from their holidays, and that he himself would 
 be able to plunge back into that abyss of ignorance which was 
 bliss. But Helen did not believe it : not from any ivne per- 
 ception of the state of affairs, but because she could not believe 
 it was business at all that troubled him. Was Eobert the kind 
 of man to be disturbed about business 1 He who cared no- 
 thing for it but as a means, who liked money's worth, not 
 money, whose mind was diametrically opposite to all the habits 
 and traditions of trade 1 She would as soon have believed 
 that her cousin Reginald Burton would be disturbed by a criti- 
 cism or troubled to get a true balance of light and shade. 
 No, it was not that. It was some real trouble which she did 
 not ^ now of, something that struck deeper than business, and 
 was more important than anything that belonged to bank or 
 market. Such were Helen's thoughts — they are the thoughts 
 that come most natural to a woman — that he had been betray- 
 ed into some wrong-doing or inadvertant vice — that he had 
 been tempted, and somehow gone astray. This, because it was 
 80 much more terrible than anything about business, was the 
 bugbear that haunted her. It was to save her pain, as he 
 thought, that poor Robert kept his secret from her. He did 
 m 80 many men do, thinking it kindness; and thus left her 
 
▲T HIS GATES. 
 
 81 
 
 with a host of horrible surmises to fight against, any one of 
 which was (to her) harder than the truth. There is no way in 
 which men, in their ignorance, inflict more harm upon women 
 than this way. Helen watched in her fear and ignorance with 
 a zealous eagerness that never lost a word, and gave eza^erat- 
 ed importance to many an idle incident. She was doubly 
 roused by her fear of the something coming, against which her de- 
 fences would not stand, and by her absolute uncertainty what this 
 something was. The three weeks her husband was in town by 
 himself were like three years to her. Not that a shade of j ealousy 
 or doubt of his love to herself ever crossed her mind. She was 
 too pure-minded, too proud, to be jealous. But something had 
 come on him, some old trouble out of the past — some sudden 
 horrible temptation ; something, in short, which he feared to 
 tell her. Tha4i money could be the cause of it never crossed 
 her thoughts. 
 
 And when she ^^ent home things were no better ; the house 
 looked bare to her-— die could not teU why. It was more than 
 a month before she iwLiA out that the Perugino was gone, 
 which was the light of her husband's eyes ; and that little 
 Madonna of the Umbrian school, which he delighted to think 
 Baphael must have had soMt^ hand in, in his youth. This dis- 
 covery startled her much ; but worse had come before she 
 made sure of that. The absence of the pictures was bewilder- 
 ing, but still more so was the change in her husband's habits. 
 He would get up early, breakfast hurriedly before sho had come 
 down, and go out, leaving a message with the st^rvant.^. Some- 
 times he went without breakfast. He avoide«i be •, avoided 
 the long evening talks they had loved, and eveit avoided her 
 eye, lest she should read more in his face than he meant htvr to 
 see. All this was terrible to Helen. The iej*rs that ever- 
 whelmed her were ridiculous, no doubt ; but amid the darkness 
 and tragic gloom which surrounded her, what was she to think ? 
 Things she had read in books haunted her ; iictitious visi:>r<3 
 which at this touch of personal alarm began to look real. S^ : 
 thought he might have to bribe some one who knew some early 
 secret in his ]£fe, or some secret that was not his — somethir^ 
 that belonged to his friends. Oh, if he would but tell her ! 
 She could bear anything — she could forgive the past, whatciyf'j 
 it might be. She had no bitterness in her feelingis towards b«r 
 
82 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 husband. She used to sit for hours togisthor in his deserted 
 studio, imagining scenes in which she found oUt^ or he was 
 driven to confide to her this myatery ; scenes of anguish, yet' 
 consolation. The studio became her favourite haunt. Was it ^ 
 possible that she had once entered it with languid interest, and 
 been sensible of nothing but disappointment when she saw him 
 working with his heart in his work ? She would go all rou.nd 
 it now, making her little comment upon every picture. She 
 would have given everything she had in the world to see him 
 back there, painting those pictures with which she had been 
 so dissatisfied — the Francesca, which still stood on its easel un- 
 finished ; the sketches of herself which she had once been so 
 impatient of The Francesca still stood there behind backs ; 
 but most of the others had been cleared away, and stood in 
 little stacks against the walls. The floor was so orderly that it 
 wentto herhearttosee it;nothinghad been done, nothing disturb- 
 ed for weeks, perhaps months ; the housemaid was free to go and 
 come as if it had been a common parlour. All this was terri- 
 bly sad to the painter's wife. The spring was coming on be- 
 fore she found the two sketches which afterwards she held so 
 dearly. They bewildered her still more, and filled her with a 
 thousand fears. One represented a pilgrim on a hilly road, in 
 the twilight of a spring evening. Everything was soft in tbia 
 picture, clear sky and twinkling stars above ; a quiet rural path 
 over the grass ; but just in front of the pilgrim, and revealing 
 his uplifted hands and horror stricken countc nance, the open- 
 ing of a glowing horrible cavern — the mouth of Hell. The 
 other was more mysterious still. It was a face full of anguish 
 and love, with two clasped hands looking up from the depths 
 of a cave or well, to one blue spot of sky, one star that shone 
 far above. Helen did not know what these sketches meant; 
 but they made her shiver with wonder and apprehension. 
 They were all that he had done this year. 
 
 And then something else of a different kind, came in to 
 bewilder her. Eobert, who avoided her, who of evenings no 
 longer talked over his affairs with her, and who probably had 
 forgotten all her wants, let the quarter-day pass without sup- 
 plying her, as he was in the habit of doing. So great a host <S>f 
 fears and doubts were between the two, that Helen did not 
 remind kim of his negligence. It {lainedL her, but in &, deg|L«& 
 
AT HIS OAXm 
 
 83 
 
 so different. Wliat did thftt r ' '»rr , Bat time went on, md 
 it began to matter. , She took jwq little dividends, and . 
 
 kept silence ; making what u them she could to fill up the 
 larger wants. She was as timid of speaking to him on this 
 subject as if she had been a young giiL He had never obliged 
 her to do so. She had been the general treasurer of the house- 
 hold in the old days ; and even in recent times, he, who was 
 so proiid of his wife, had taken care to keep her always sup- 
 plied with what she wanted. She never hsA needed to go to 
 him to ask money, and she did not know how to begin. Thus 
 they both went their different way ; suffeiing perhaps, about 
 equally. His time seemed to himself to be spent in a feverish 
 round of interviews with people who could supply money, or 
 wildly signing his name to papers which he scarcely understood ; 
 to bills which he could never dream of paying; they would 
 be paid somehow when the time came, or they could be re- 
 newed, or something would be done, he was told. He had 
 carried everything he could make money by away before 
 this time; the title-deeds of his house, his pictures, even, 
 and — this was done with a very heavy heart — his policies 
 of life insurance. Everything was gone. Events went faster 
 as the crisis approached, and Drummond became conscious 
 of little more than his wife's pale face wondering at him, with 
 questioning eyes more pathetic than words, and Golden 's face 
 encouraging, or trying to encourage. Between the two was a 
 wild abyss of work, of despair, of tiding over. Every escape 
 moie hairbreadth than the last ! The wild whirl growing 
 wilder ! the awful end, ruin and fell destxuction, coming nearer 
 and more near 1 
 
 It happened at length that Helen one day, in desperation, 
 broke the silence. She came before him when he was on his 
 way out, and asked him to wait, in a hollow voice. 
 
 " I don't want to trouble you," she said, "since you will not 
 trust me, Robert. I have been trying not to harass you more; 
 but — I have no money left — I am getting into debt — the ser- 
 vants want their wages. Kobert — I thought you had for- 
 gotten — perhaps " 
 
 He stood and looked at her for a moment, with his hat in 
 his hand, ready to go out. How pale he was ! How the lines 
 had contracted in his face ! He looked at her, trying to be 
 
84 
 
 AT HtS OATlEa 
 
 calm. And then, as he stood, suddenly burst, without waming, 
 into momentary terrible tears, of a passion she could not 
 understand. 
 
 ** Robert 1 oh, what is the matter T she cried, throwing 
 her arms around him. He put his head down on her shoulder, 
 and held her fast, and regained control over himself, holding 
 her to him as if she was something healine. In her gi^at 
 wonder and pity she raised his head with her hands, and gazed 
 wistfully into his face through her tears. "Is it money r she 
 cried, with a great load taken off her heart *' Oh, Robert^ 
 tell me! Istbat alU" "^'^ 
 
 "All ! " he mid : " my God!" and then kissed her passion* 
 ately, and put ]u^v away from him. ** To-morrow," ne SB.vi 
 hoarsely, "peili )s — I hope— I will tell you everything 
 to-morro'.v. ' He lid not venture to look at her again. He 
 went out rrvaight ivithout turning to the right or left. "The 
 end must be m^^r now," he said to himself audibly, as he went 
 out like a blind mj*n. "To-morrow I Would »<o-morrow ever 
 come) The end must be near now." 
 
 The end was nearer than he thought. When he reached the 
 bank he found everything in disorder. Mr. Golden was not 
 there, nor any one who could give information to the panic- 
 stricken inquirers who were pouring in. It was said the 
 manager had absconded. Bivers's was at an end. For the 
 first ten minutes after Drummond heard the news that awaited 
 him, it was almost a relief to know that the worst had come. 
 
 m> 
 
4T IPB QATWB, 
 
 8ft 
 
 vO^ 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ^T was a relief for ton minuteSi aa every catastrophe is ; the 
 terrible suspense is cut short — ^the worst at least is known. 
 But after those tsn minutes are over, when the reality 
 suddenly seizes upon the sufferer — when all the vague speech 
 less terrors which he had pushed ofi' from him, with the hope 
 that they might never come, arrive in a flood, and place thenl' 
 selves in one frightful circle round him, like furies, only not 
 merciful enough to hjive a Medusa among them to freeze him 
 into stone ; when every shadowy gloomy prevision of evil which 
 ever flashed across his mind, to be put away with a shudder, 
 returns with the right of fact, to remain ; when not only that 
 thing has happened which has been his dread by day and the 
 horror of his dreams, but a host of other things, circumstances 
 which penetrate to every detail of his life, and affect every 
 creature and everything he loves, have followed in its train-^r 
 when all this rushes upon a man after the first tranquilHsing 
 stupor of despair, wko or what is there that can console him 1 
 Poor Drummond w;i8 helpless in the midst of this ereat crash 
 of ruin ; he was so helpless that the thunder-stricKen share- 
 holders and excited clerks who had fallen upon him at first as 
 the only authority to be found, let him slip from among them, 
 hopeless of any help from him. They had driven him wild 
 with questions and appeals — him, a poor fellow who could 
 explain nothing, v ho had never been of much use except to 
 denude himself of everything he possessed, and pledge his 
 humble name, and be swept into ruin ; but they soon saw the 
 uselessness of the tppeal. Ah loon as he could disengage him- 
 self he stole away, drawing his hat nvnr his eves, f»uUngas if he 
 were a criminal, ^nih. the sensatlun as of a hot fire burning in 
 his heart, and bu ;zing and crackling in his ears. Was he a 
 criminal 1 was it Ids uouig I lie was stunned by this terrible 
 calamity ; and y it, now that it had come, he felt that he had 
 known it was coi aing, and everything about it. all his life. 
 His whole existence had tended to this point since he was a 
 
86 
 
 A9 Ylfls iAAtIM. 
 
 boy ; he knew it, he felt it, he even seemecl to remember pre- 
 monitions of it, which had come to him in his dreams from 
 his earliest days. He went out into the streets in that dumb 
 quiescent state which is so often the first consequence of a great 
 calamity. He offered no remonstrance against his fate. He 
 did not even say to himself that it was hard. He said nothing 
 to himselfy indeed, except to crooii over, like a thorns, one 
 endless refrain, " I knew this was how it would be ! " 
 
 He wandered along, not knowing where he went, till he 
 came to the river, and paused there looking over the bridge. 
 He did not even know what made him pause, until all at once 
 the fancy jumped into his brain that it would be best to stop 
 there, and cut in one moment the knotted, tangled thread 
 which it was certain no effort of his could ever unravel. He 
 stopped and the suggestion flashed across him (whether out of 
 his own mind, whether thrown at him by some mocking 
 demon, who could tell ? and then shook his head sadly. No ; 
 it was broad day, and th^re would be a commotion, and he 
 would be rescued — or if not he, at least his body, ^buld be 
 rescued and carried to Helen, giving her a last association with 
 him, which it was insupportable to think of. No, no, he said 
 to himself with a shudder, not now. Just then a hand was 
 laid upon his shoulder ; he turned round with the stai^; of a 
 man who feels that nothing is impossible, that everything that 
 is terrible has become likely. Had it been a policeman to arrest 
 him for having murdered somebody, he would scarcely have 
 been surprised. But it was not a policeman; it was Mi. 
 Burton, fresh and clean and nicely dressed, newly come up from 
 the country, in his light summer clothes, the image of pros- 
 perity and comfort, and cleanliness, and self-satisfaction. A 
 certain golden atmosphere surrounded the man of wealth, like 
 the back ground on which early painters set a saint ; but there 
 was nothing saintly about that apparition. Poor Drummond 
 fell back more than he would have done had it been an arrest 
 for murder. He gave an involuntary glance at himself, feeling, 
 in contrast with Mr. Burton, as if he must look to the exter- 
 nal eye the beggar he was as if he must be dirty, tattored, miser- 
 able, with holes in his shoes and rags at his elbows. Perh^is 
 his woebegone, excited face startled the , smooth Philistine at 
 his side as much as if those outward signs of wretchedness had 
 been there. 
 
At ns oATEa 
 
 «y 
 
 **Qood God, what have you been doing with yotuself /** he 
 cried. 
 
 " Nothing," said Drummond vaguely, and then by degrees 
 his senses returned to him. " If you had been in town 
 yesterday you might have helped us ; but it does not matter. 
 Shenken, in Liverpool, stopped payment yesterday," he went on, 
 repeating drearily the dreary legend which he had heard at 
 the bank. " And Rivers's — has stopped payment too." 
 
 " Good God ! " said Mr. Burton again. It was a shock to 
 him, as every event is when it comes. But he was not sur- 
 prised. As for Robert, it did not occur to him to consider 
 whether the other was surprised or not, or to be curious how 
 it affected him. He turned his head away and lor)ked at the 
 river again. What attraction there remained for him in thi!* 
 world seemed to lie there. 
 
 " Drummond," said the merchant, looking at him with a 
 certain alarm, " are you sure you know what you are saying 1 
 My God, Rivers's stopped payment ! If you had said there had 
 been an earthquake in London, it would scarcely be as bad 
 as that. 
 
 Robert did not make any reply. He nodded his head 
 without looking round. What interested him was something 
 black which kept appearing and disappearing in the middle of 
 the turbid muddy stream. It was like a man's head, he thought, 
 and almost felt that he might have taken the plunge without 
 knowing it, and that it might be himself. 
 
 "I have felt this was coming," said Burton. " I warned 
 Golden you were going on in the wildest way. What could 
 be expected when you fellows who know nothing about money 
 would interfere ? Good heavens ! to think what a business 
 that was ; and all ruined in three years ! Drummond ! are 
 you mad ? Can't you turn round and speak to me 1 I am 
 one of the shareholders, and I have a right to be answered 
 how it was." 
 
 "Shall you lose much 1" .said Drummond dreamily, and he 
 turned round without meaning anything and looked in his 
 companion's face. His ^.ction was simply fantastical, one of 
 those motiveless movements which the sick soul so often 
 makes ; but it was quite unexpected by the. other, who fell a 
 step back, and grew red all over, and faltered in his reply. 
 
88 
 
 AT HIS OATIU. 
 
 '' Much 1 I — ^I-— don't know — what jou call much. Good 
 heavens, Dromniond are yon mad ? Have yon been drinking f 
 Where is Golden 1 — he at least must know what he is about ! " 
 " Yes," said the painter fiercely, " Golden knows what he is 
 about — he has gone off, out of reach of questions — and you — 
 oh — hound!" He save a sudden cry and made a step for- 
 ward. A sudden lielit seemed to burst upon him. He gassed 
 with his dilated bloodshot eyes at the flushed countenance 
 which could not face him. The attitude of the two men was 
 such as the bystanders took note of it ; two or three lingered 
 and looked round holding themselves in readiness to interfere. 
 The slight figure of the painter, his ghastly pale face and 
 trembling hand, made him no antagonist for the burly well-to- 
 do merchant ; but English sentiment is always on the side of 
 the portly and respectable, and Mr. Burton had an unmistak- 
 able air of fright upon his face. " Now, Drummond ! — now 
 Drummond!'' he said, with a certain pleading tone. The 
 painter st<ood still, feeling as if a horrible illumination had 
 suddenly flashed upon the man before him, and the history of 
 their intercourse. He did in that moment of his despair 
 what he could not have done with his ordinary intelligence. 
 He made a rapid summary of the whole and saw how it was. 
 Had he been happy, be would have been too friendly, too 
 charitable, too kind in bis thougiifs to have drawn such a 
 conclusion. But at this moment he had no time for anything 
 but the terrible truth. 
 
 '^ see it all," he said. " I see it all ! It was ruined when 
 fwe it over to us. T see it in every line of your face, 
 lound ! hounds all of you ! skulking, dastardly demons, 
 kill a crowd of honest men to save yourselves — your 
 miserable selves. I see it all !" 
 
 *' Drummond ! I tell you you are mad !" " Hound ! " said 
 Robert again between his clenched teeth. He stood looking 
 at him for a moment with his hands clenched too, and a sombre 
 fire in his eyes. Whether he might have been led into 
 violence had he stood there a moment longer it would be im- 
 possible to say. But all the habits of his life were agais^st it, 
 and his very despair restrained him. When he had stood 
 there for a second, he turned round suddenly on his heel with- 
 out any warning, and almost knocking down a man who was 
 
 
▲T Mm QAVmL 
 
 keeping warily beliind him ready for any eluergmef, went 
 
 away in the opposite direction without saying a word. Burton 
 stood still gazing after him with amixtnre of consternation and 
 concern, and something very like hatred. Bat his face 
 changed when the spectators drew round him to wonder and 
 question. "Something wiong with that poor genUeman, I 
 fear, sir," said one. Mr. Burton put on a look of regret,' 
 sighed deeply, put his hand to his forehead, shook his head, 
 murmured — " Poor fellow " and walked — away. What could 
 he do ) He was not his brother's keeper, much less was he 
 responsible for his cousin's husband — the paltry painter-fellow, 
 she had preferred to him. What would Hel^i think of her 
 bargain now? Mad or drunk, it did not mat which — a 
 pleasant companion for s woman. He prefenc . to think of 
 this for the moment, rathor than of the other question, which 
 was in reality so much more important. Kivers's ! Thank 
 heaven, he was no money loser, no more than was respectable. 
 He had seen what was earning. Even to himself, this was all 
 that Mr. Burton said. He hurried on, however, to l^ym what 
 people were saying of it^ with more anxiety in his mind than 
 seemed necessary. He went to the bank itself with the air of 
 a man going to a funoral. "The place I have known so 
 long !" he said to another mournful victim who had appeared 
 on the field of the lost battle, but who was not mad like Robert 
 " And to think that Gclden should have betrayed your con* 
 fidence ! A man I havo known since he was that height — a 
 man I could have answered for with my life ! " 
 
 Meanwhile Drummond strayed on he knew not where. He went 
 back into the City, into the depths of those lanes and narrow 
 streets which he had leit so lately, losing himself in a bewil- 
 dering maze of warehouse walls and echoing traffic. Great wag- 
 gons jammed him up a/^ainst the side, loads dangled over his 
 head that would have crushed him in a moment, open cellars 
 yawred for his unsteady feet ; but he walked as safe through 
 all those perils as if he had borne a charmed life, though h9 
 neither looked nor carod where he was going. His meeting with 
 Burton was forced out of his mind in a few minutes as if it had 
 not been. For the moment it had startled him into mad est 
 citement ; but so strong was the stupor of his despair, that in 
 five minutes it was as if it had never been. For hours he ^e^pt 
 
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 (716) 872-4503 
 

 
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INI 
 
 AV Hm ft4Tm 
 
 inBdaSa^ rmmd and mud tht teeneof hkUin^ eovdngtmd gd- 
 inj^ Iti a eatltif aa if lki« feet were fiist and he could not escape. 
 Ittiadbeensioniingwhenhe left his house. It ^^aslate afternoon 
 when he gtyt back. Oh, why was it summer and the days so 
 long t If onlT that scorching sun would have set and darkness 
 fallen over the place. He stole in under cover of the lilac 
 trees, which had grown so big and leafy, and managed to glide 
 down the side way to the gaiden and get to the studio door, 
 whkh he could open with his key. He had been doing no- 
 thing but think—think — all the time ; but "novr, at least, I shall 
 have tim^to think," he said tobimself, as he threw himself down 
 on a chair dose to the door — the nearest seat — ^it ho longer mat- 
 tered where he placed himself or how. He sat huddled up 
 against the wall as sometimes a poor modd did^ waiting wist- 
 IqIIv to iknow if he was wanted — some poor wretch to whom a 
 shilling was salvation. This fancy, with a thousand othei^ 
 e({ually inappropriate, flashed across his mind as he sat there, 
 still with his hat pulled down on his brows in the sunny luxu- 
 YHnis Wiinnth <>f the afternoon. The mere atmosphere, air, 
 and sk^^-and sunshine would have been paradise to the artist 
 in the poorest time he had ever known before, but they did not 
 affect 1dm now. He sat there in his stupor for perhaps an hour, 
 not even Me to rouse himself so far as to shut the door of 
 communication into the (^nservatoiy, through which he 
 hieard now and then the softened stir of the household. He 
 inight have been restored to the sense of life and its necessities, 
 might have been brought back out of the delirium of his rUin 
 at that nioment, had any one in the house known he was there. 
 £[^len was in the drawing-room, separated from him only by 
 that bowery passage which he had made for her, to tempt her 
 t6 Visit him at his work. She was writing notes, inviting 
 JM>me half dozen people to dinner, as had. been arranged be- 
 tween them, bttt with a heavy and anxious heart, full of 
 B^sgiving. She h^ risen from her writing table three or four 
 tihi^ to eo to the window and look out for her husband, won- 
 jA^r^ff why he should be so long of coming— while ^e sat so 
 tiiMb*'her. Mrs. Drummond's heart was very heavy. She did 
 liot liniderstand what he had said to her in the moming^^could 
 ttbt' Idiagiiiie hbw H could b6. It must be a temporary cloud, a 
 ^iire of some speculation,' something unconnected with the 
 
^ma^4A!rm. 
 
 01 
 
 not a btiiuiffii maliMt tdiiM' lk>t be mos^. U if was only 
 nion^y/ l^iiy' that ira* libthing. Such was^ cotihie of her 
 thoughts. And she paused over her invitatiioni, woLlciring if 
 it was right to dve them if Rob<»rt had been losing mon^. 
 But they were old fMehds'irhoiid lElhe was inviting— onl^ hidf a 
 dozen people-^^nd it -^as for his birthday. Bhe had jUst filiisk- 
 ed her lobt note, when Korah citine dancing into the t^m, 
 claiming her mother's promise to go out with her j and afber 
 andther lon^ gaze firom her >/indow, Helen made u^ h^r mind 
 to go. It was her voice spealdng to the maid which roused 
 Bobett. "If Mr. I)rummond comes in before I return," he 
 heard her say; " tell' him I shall t^ot be long. I tan goitg with 
 Miss Norah to the Gardens for an hour, and then to ask fdt 
 Mr. Haldane ; but I shall be back by half^past six. He heard 
 the messag^h^ for whom it was intended— and rose upi^xftly 
 and went to his studid window^ and peeped stealthily out to 
 watch them as they went away. Nondi came first, with a skip 
 and a gambol, aud then Helen. His wife gave a wistful loos 
 biEick kt/fiie lidtise^ ^'^^ openjBd the little gate under the leafy 
 dusty Mci 'Wa^'it is^Q pri^tbotii^on of what she should find 
 when shci cau^e badll^ H(i hid- h&hsdf «& that he «ould not b^ 
 seen, and gazed at the two, feeliiig its if that inon!i^M WaiiMl 
 that life had yet to give hitn. Itwas his farewell look. Wa Wifb 
 and child diisappeared, and he could hear their footsteps outside 
 on the pavement going farth^ abd farther away on their harm- 
 less, unimportant 'wiuk, while he-^^He, woke up as if it had 
 been out of sleep or oiit of a trance. She would return by half- 
 past six, and it Was now approadhing five. For all he had to 
 do there was so little, so very little time. 
 
 So he ^d to himself, and yet when he said it he had no 
 clear ideia of what he was going to do. He had not only to do 
 it, whatever it was, but to make up his mind, aQ in an hour 
 and a half; and for the first five ininutes of that little interval 
 he was like a man dreaming, strietching out his hands to catcli 
 any straw, trying to believe he might yet be saved. Could he 
 leave thein^hose two who had just left the door— to struggle 
 through thk tek of M by tbemsehres 1 Helen Was ju^t over 
 thii^ty, aiiidi^W datight^r ^eiiU>ly tWelve. It was a m&ture agd 
 for i^mMb^'i bat yet for a woman who has been proi^«d aad 
 
m 
 
 j^^mwm 
 
 Mcep car^ of aQ ber life, how bitter a moment to bo left 9^^ 1 
 rfrrtbe m^omeiit when life is «;t it« IMJeit^ demancU ipopt^ IbelB 
 ipps^ wMj^j, Ap)d has as y^t given up nothing. Mtka Wi no 
 itraiping to teach her thajt hapmnesa was not her right She 
 ha4 folt it to be her ri^ty and her whole sonl rose up in rebel- 
 lion against any infringement ol that great necessity of being. 
 Sow was she to live when ftll was ti&en from JUpVt OT^n the 
 support of her husband's anni Bobert had never known 90 
 mudi of his wife's character before, but in this awful n^oment 
 it became clear to him as by an inspiration. How was she to 
 bear it I Credit, honour, mone^, living — and her husband, too, 
 who could still work for her, shield her. He went to his easel 
 and uncovered the half -finijied picture on it^ and gazed at it 
 witn something that was in reality a dumb apjpeal to the dumb 
 canvas tp help him. But it did not help mm. On the con- 
 trary, it brought suddenly up before him nis work of the past, 
 his miperfect successes, and Helen's kind, veiled, hidden, but 
 unconcealable dissatisfaction. The look of siqipressed pain in 
 her face, the subdued tone, the soft languid praise of some de- 
 tail or accessory, the very look of her figure when she turned 
 away from it, came all l>efore hiin. Her habit was, when she 
 turned away, to talk to him of other things. How clearly 
 that oft-repeated scene came before him in his despair ! She 
 was dutiful^ giving him her attention conscientiously as long as 
 was needful ; but when be fell back into the fond babble of 
 the maker, and tried to interest her in some bit of drapery, or 
 efiecti of light, or peculiarity of grouping, she would listen to 
 him swect^, and< — change the subject as soon as possible. It 
 f(U return^ to him— he remembered even the trivial little 
 words she had spoken^ the languid air of half fatigue which 
 would [copie oy^r her. That — Song with the meagrest pover- 
 iy, the ^dj^^jt I hon^ely struggles for daily bread. Could she 
 b6i^*tog9,;Di^ She would lose everythinK, the house 
 
 ai^aU thatjwi^ m,}tf everything that could becked hers, or 
 Bupposjsd j^ei^^ The only thing that could not be ta^n from 
 !|^^r would be l^er4100 a year, ner little fortune which was set- 
 tled on Ijier..^ "T^ey could live on tbat»" pQpr Brnmmond 
 .^^t on in ps jdreapy miserable thoughts, *'Tlfey could esqst, 
 j^t, is pojaciil^e, better without mk ^an wi^ w. , Would they 
 ^happior to have m^ ^jffcia(>i^i^^^ 
 
ATTtlk «Atte. 
 
 a 
 
 toknowwat 6vi6i^ing #M-6iriBr, and thttt ait l^t their i^i^ 
 twee would be thetnr, vaA their ^eaois Te8t|>eclfced 1 B\rerjrthmg 
 would be over. Nobody totAd hwe hny pttitett for anno jinjr 
 her about it. They Woidd be sorry for her— ^even they wotdd 
 be sorry for me. My polidM would 00 to make up somethmg 
 —to dear my name a little. And mey would let her alone;:; 
 She could ffo to the country. She is so simple in her real tastes.' 
 They could live on what she has, if they were only rid of me." 
 A sigh that was almost a sob interrupted him in his musi]^.' 
 He was so worn out ; and was it the grave-chill that was invad- 
 ing him already and making him shiver 1 He took the c^nvaS 
 on Uie easel and held it up to the light ** The drawir^iii 
 good enough,** he said to himself, '* it is not the drawing. She 
 always owns that It itH-something else. And how can t 
 tell after this that I could even draif 1 I could not now, tf t 
 were to try. My hand shakes like an old man's. I mightjfhli- 
 ill like podr Haldane, Ah, my Gk>d ! " The canvas fell out ^ 
 Ids hands upon the floor-^ sudden spasm contracted his heart 
 Haldane I It was the first time that day that he had thought 
 of him. His ruin would be the rtiin of his friend tob-^is 
 friend who was helpless, sick, and yet the support of oth^M, 
 " Oh, my God, my God ! " he wailed with a cty of despair. ^'^^ 
 And there ivas no one near to hear him, no one to defond 
 him from himself and from the devil, to lay hands upon Mm, 
 to bid him live and hope and w(»rk, and help them to exist whoii|^ 
 he had helped to rtiin. HiB was left all alone ih that moment of 
 his agony. G^, to whom he had appealed,was beyond the eloudS^ 
 beyond that which is more imfothomable than any cloud, the 
 serene, immeasurable, imp^etrable blue, and held out no hand^ 
 sent no voice of cdinfort The man feU down where his work 
 had faUen, prone upon the ground, realizing in a moment all tiie 
 misery of tne vears that were to come, ^d it was his doing, 
 his doing ! — though conedously he would have given hims& 
 to be etit to pieces, would have toiled his life out, to make it up 
 now to his |N>or friend,*-^how much more to his wife 1 What 
 passed in his ndnd in that awfril interval is not to be told^ li 
 was the suprettie struggle iMtween life akid de8pair,and it was des- 
 pair that iron. "When he rose up, his face was like tlte face of 
 an old maD^ haggwd and tiamwid willi dsep liniik. He sfcogd 
 
^% 
 
 AT m» QA.TE& 
 
 stUl^ for a moment, loplqiiflrrQimd him yaguely, and i]um made 
 a little pilgppiage roqiid $e roppi, Ipokiog at ey^rj^Mtig* TT^^b 
 a mptiye, without a motire, who can tell 1 his whole iacultiea 
 absorbed in the exaltation, and bewiideiing» sombre excite^ 
 ment of such a crisis as can come bat once to any man* Then 
 he sat down at his writing-table, and sought out some letter- 
 paper (there were so many scraps of drawing-paper that came 
 first to hand), and slowly wrote a few lines. He had to search 
 for a long time before he could find an envelope to enclose this, 
 and his time was getting short. At last he put it up, and, 
 after another pause, stole through the conservatory, walking 
 stealthily like a thief, and placed the white envelope on a little 
 crimson table, where it shone conspicuous to everybody who 
 should enter. He did more than that ; he went and bent over 
 the chair which Helen had pushed away when she rose from 
 it— thoichair she always sat on-r-and kissed ^t There was\^ 
 little bright-coloured handkerchief lying on the sofa, which w^ 
 Norah's. He took th^t up and kissed it too, and thrust it 
 into his breast Did he mean to carry it with him into the 
 dark; and silent country where he was going 1 (}od knows 
 what was the thought in his mind. The pretty dock on the 
 mantelpiece softly chimed the quarter as he did this, and he 
 started like a thief. Then he took an old great-coat from the 
 wall^ an old travelling hat, which hung beside it, and went back 
 to the studio. There, was no more time for thought.; He went 
 out, leaving the door unlocked, brushine stjeaTthily through 
 the lilac j» Tl:*" broad daylight played all around him, reveal* 
 ing him to every one, showing to the world how he, stole ainray 
 out of his own house. He had put up the collar of h^s coat, 
 and drawn his hat down over his brows to disguise himself in 
 case he met any one he knew^ Any one, he knew j It ^as in 
 case he met his wife, to whom he had just said farewell for 
 ever, and his child) whose little kerchief he was going to take 
 with him into this dismal ruin, into the, undiscovered world. 
 a., All this might have beeu changiBd h44 he jpii^t them .; and 
 ^yf were crossing the next street comi^ghom^ Helen growiiig 
 inore and more anxious as they approach^ thiSj^obi'., a Had he 
 been going out about some ampl<^ eyeiydjsy huepess, of iSOi^jS^ 
 thfsy would ;have, met ; hut.uojt iiow, wneii Wmigjht.hayets^y^ 
 imM^ irom. destniiitijcm aftd,.«»otheri from Afm^fL Rq M 
 
AT WJ» e^TE», 
 
 9(6 
 
 watched for a moment to make sure they were not in sight be- 
 fore he went out ; and the servants had caught a glimpse of a 
 man whom they did not recognize hiding among the bushes, 
 and were frightened ; so, it turned out afterwards, had various 
 other passers-by. But I>mmmond saw no one — no one. The 
 multitudes in the noisier streets upon which he emereed after 
 a while, were nothing to him. They pushed against nikii, but 
 he did not see them ; the only two fi^fures he could have leen 
 were henceforward to be invisible to hmi for ever. 
 
 Forever! for ever! Was it for ever 1 Would this crime 
 he was about to commit, this last act of supreme rebellion 
 against the will of that Grod to whom he seemed to have 
 appealed in vain, would it sever him from them not only in 
 this world, but in the world to come 1 Should he have to 
 gaze upward, like poor Dives, and see, in the far serene above 
 him, these two walking in glory and splendour, who were no 
 longer his 1 perhaps surrounded by angels, stately figures of 
 the blessed, without a thought to spare in the midst of that 
 glory for the poor soul who perished for love of them. Could 
 that be true 9 Was it damnation as well as death he was go- 
 ing to face 1 Was it farewell for eVer, and ever, and ever) 
 
 So the awful strain ran on, buzzing in his ears, drowning 
 for him' the voices of the crowd — for ever, for ever, for ever. 
 Dives forlorn and far away — and up, up high in the heavens, 
 blazing above him, like a star 
 
 Like i^hat star in the soft sky of the evening which came 
 out first and shone down direct upon him in his wretchedness. 
 How it shone ! How she shone ! — was it she ? — as it erew 
 darker drawing a silver line for him upon the face of the dark- 
 ening water. Was that to be the spoti But it took years to 
 get dark that night. He lived and grew old while he was wait- 
 ing thus to die. At last there was gloom enough. He got a 
 boat, and rowed it out to that white glistening line, the line 
 that looked like a silver arrow, shining where the spot w as ' 
 
 The boat drifted ashore that night as the tide felL In that 
 last aiot, at lea^t, ^aiture helped him to be honest, poor souLi ^ 
 
 
9d 
 
 A'^ltib ikkTML 
 
 j Vya Tl"-' 
 
 ^m aiffm m .trf^m'jcrfj? it 
 
 em %^Aumm 
 
 OHAPTEB XI. 
 
 HE itadib door is open, Tnamma," Mid liUle Nonh d«r- 
 dng in before her mother, through the lilae bashetf. 
 The words seemed to take a weight off Helen's 
 heirt< '-^i.^*- ' '-i 
 
 « *r^ pA|»a most have come in," she said, and ran np'the 
 steps to the aoor, whioh was opened before she could ImOok 
 by an anxious, half-frightened maid. "Mr. Dmmmond has 
 eome in t" she said, in her anxiety, hastening to pass Jone^ who 
 held &st by the door. 
 
 ■■■** Nd, ma'am, please, ma'am ; but Rebecca and me see a mf^i 
 i^bout not five minutes ago, and I can't find master^s topcMt 
 ajs wais a>hangbig in the hall — ^Rebecca says, ma'am, as she 
 tlNMi^ht she se e " 
 
 < ^ Papa has not been home after all," Helen said to her little 
 daughter; ''perhaps Mr. Drummond wore his great^soat last 
 oig^t^ Jane. Never mind just now; he will t^ us when he 
 Gomeein." 
 
 «Bttt I "see the man, and Gborge was out, as he always is 
 when he's wanted. Me and Bebecca — " said Jane. 
 »nff; Never mind just now," said Helen languidly. She went 
 into the drawing-room with the load heavier than ever on her 
 heart. What could have kept him so long % What could be 
 making him so miserable 9 Oh, how orud, cruel it was not 
 to know ! She sat down with a heart like lead on that chair 
 iHiioh poor Robert had kissed — not fifteen minutes since, and 
 he W98 scarcely out of reach now. 
 
 "Ghy mamma," cried Norah, moving about with a child's 
 eiffioaty ; " here is a letter for you on the little red table. It 
 is so fhnn^, and blurred, and uneven. I can write better 
 than tha1>~look t isn't it Irom pvpt^ f 
 
 Helen had not paid much attention to what the\child said, 
 but now she started up and stretched out her hand. The name 
 on the outside was scarcely legible, it was blurred and uneven, 
 as Noiah said ;; and it was very cLsai to see^ oould only be a 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 97 
 
 message of woe. Bur her worst fears, miserable as she felt, 
 had not approached the very skirts of the misery that now 
 awaited her. She tore the envelope open, with her heart 
 beating loud in her ears, and her whole body tingling with 
 agitation. And this was what she read : — 
 
 " My Heubn, my own Helen,— I have nothing in the 
 world to do now but to bid you good-bye. I have ruinMl you, 
 and i^ore tha^ you. If I lived I should only be a disgrace 
 and a burden, and your little money that you have will support , 
 you by yourself. Oh, my love, to think I should leave you ' 
 like this ! I who haye loved you so. But I have never been 
 good enough for you. When you are an angel in heaven, if 
 you see me among the lost, oh, bestow a little pity upon me, my 
 Helen 1 I shall never see you again, but as Dives saw Lazarus. 
 Oh, my wife, my baby, my own, you will be mine no longer: 
 but have a ]ittle pity upon me ! Give me one look, Helen, out 
 of Heaven. 
 
 *'I am not mad, dear. I am doing it knowing it will be for 
 the best God forgive me if I take it upon me to know better 
 than Him. It is not presumption, and perhaps Ho may know 
 what I mean, though even you don't know. Oh my own, my. 
 darlings, iny only ones — good-bye, good-bye ! " 
 
 There was no name signed, no stops to make the sense plain. 
 It was written as wildly as it had been conceived ; and Helen, 
 in her terrible excitement, did not make out at JBrst what it 
 could mean. What could it mean 1 were was he going 1 The 
 words about Dives and Lazarus threw no light upon it at first. 
 He had gone away. She gave a cry, and dropped her l?.«^\ia 
 upon her lap, with the letter in them, and looked round her — 
 looked at her child, to make sure to herself that she was n6t 
 dreaming. Gone away! But where, where, and why this 
 parting 1 "I don't understand it — he has gone and left us,'* 
 she said feebly, when Norah, in her curiosity, came rushing to 
 her to know what it was. "I don't know what it means. 
 God, help us ! "she said with an outburst of miserable tears. 
 She was confused to the very centre of her being. Where had 
 he gone 1 
 
 " May I read it, mamma T* little NoTsh asked, with her arms 
 round her mother's neck. ^'"""^ ^"^' '»^^- 
 
 But Heien had the feeling that it was not fit for the child. 
 Qt 
 
98 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 " Run and ask who brought it," she said, glad to be alone ; 
 and then read over again, with a mind slowly awakening to its 
 reality, that outburst of love and despair. The letter shook 
 in her hands, salt tears fell upon it as she read *' If I lived :—/ 
 am doing itj knowing" God, God, what was it he had gone to 
 do 1 Just then she heard a noise in the studio, and starting to 
 her feet rushed to the conservatory door, crying, *' Robert l 
 Robert ! " She was met by Jane and Norah, coming from it ; 
 the child was carrying her father's hat in her arms, with a. 
 strange look of wonder and dismay on her face. 
 
 " Mamma, no one brought the letter," she said in a subdued,, 
 horror-struck tone ; ** and here is papa's hat — and the picture^ 
 is lying dashed down on the floor with its face against tne car- 
 pet. It is all spoiled, mamma," sobbed little Norah — " papa's* 
 pictur«> ! and here is his hat. Oh, mamma, mamma ! " 
 
 Norah was frightened at her mother's face. She had grown 
 ghastly pale. '* Get me a cab," she said to the maid, whose 
 curiosity was profoundly excited. Then she sat down and took 
 her child in her arms. " Norah, my darling," she said, mak- 
 ing a pause between every two words, " something dreadful has 
 happened, I don't know what. I must go — and see. I must 
 go — and find him — O my God, where am I to go t *^ 
 
 " And me, too," said the child, clinging to her fast ; " me too 
 -^let us go to the City, mamma ! " 
 
 " Not you, Norah. It will soon be your bed-time. Oh, my 
 pet, go and kneel down and pray — pray for poor papa." 
 
 " 1 can pray just as well in the cab," said Norah. " God 
 hears all the same. I am nearly twelve — I am almost grown 
 up. You shall not — shall not go without me. I will never 
 move nor say a word. I will run up and get your cloak and 
 mine« We'll easily find him. He never would have the heart, 
 tp go far away from you and me." 
 
 *'tle never would have the heart," Helen murmnred the- 
 ■words over a,ft^r her. ** Surely not. Surely, surely he would 
 not h^ye the heart ! Hiis resolution would fail. How cbuld he go 
 and leave the twowhom he loved best— the two whom alone he 
 loved in, this world." * Run tUeft, dear, and get yo^r cloak," 
 she said faintly. The child seemed a kiod of anchor to her, 
 h(>lding her to something, to some grasp of solid earths They 
 dirove off itt 9» f"ew minutes^ Norak holding fsat ber mother's 
 
▲T HIS OATB& 
 
 99 
 
 hftnd. They overtook, if they had bat known it^ and paisted 
 in the cro\rd, the despairing man they sought ; and he with 
 his dim eyes saw the cab driving past, and wondered eveii who 
 was in it—- some other sufferer, in the madness of exoiteiuent 
 or despair. How was he to know it was his wife and child t 
 They drove to the City, but found no one there. They went 
 to his club, to one friend's house after another, to the picture- 
 dealers, to the railway stations. There, two or three bystand- 
 ers had seen such a man, and he had gone to Brighton, to Soot- 
 land, to Paris, they said. Ooming home, they drove over the 
 very bridge where he had been standing waiting for the dark. 
 It was dark by that time, and Helen's eye caught the line of 
 light on the water, with that intuitive wish so common to a 
 painter's wife, that Robert had seen it Ah, ^ood Lord ! he 
 bad seen and more than seen. The summer night was quite 
 dark when they got home. Those gleams of stanight were lost 
 in clouds, and all was gloom about the pretty house. Instead 
 of the usual kindly gleam from the windows, nothing was visi- 
 ble as they drew up to the door but the light of a single candle 
 which showed its solitary flame through the bare. window of 
 the dining-room. No blind was drawn, or curtain closed, and 
 like the taper of a watcher shone this little miserable light. It 
 chilled Helen in her profound discouragement and fatigue, and 
 yet it gave her a forlorn hope that perhaps he had come. 
 Norah had fallen fast asleep leaning against her. It was all 
 she could do to wake the child as they approached the 
 door; and Jane came out to open the gate with a scared 
 &ce. " No, ma'am, master's never been back," she an- 
 swered to Helen's eager question; ''but Dr. Maurice, he's 
 here." 
 
 Mrs. Drummond put Norah into the woman's arms, and 
 rushed into the house. Br. Maurice met her with a face al- 
 most as white as her own, and took her hands compassionately. 
 ** You have heard -from him f What have have you heard) 
 Where is he 1 " said poor Helen. 
 
 ** Hush, hush ! " he said, *' perhaps it is not so bad as it ap- 
 pears. I don't understand it. Rest a little, and I will show 
 you what he has written to me." 
 
 " I cannot rest," she said ; " how can I rest when Bobert 
 — -^ Let me see it. Let me see it I am sure to undw^ 
 
f 
 
 too 
 
 ▲T HIB ^JITBI. 
 
 \ 
 
 atMid whit ha meani. H« rie>v«r liad any veerats beftii^e. X^^ 
 flkow it me^^show it me ! — am wot I his wife 1 " < ' 
 
 /* Poor \#ife, poor wife ! " said the compassiotiate doctor, and 
 then he put her into an easjr-chair, and went and a»ked for 
 •ome wine^ '*I will show it you only when you have dranlc* 
 this," heMiid; <*only when you haire heard what I have toi' 
 say.: Driunmond is very impulsive, you know. He might not 
 do really as he said, A hundred thin^ would oome in to stop 
 him when he had time to think. His heart has been broken 
 by this bank business ; but when hid felt thatdt waai uhdenitood) 
 W Was not to blame— ——*' ■ I/i.f! •)/( murlv/ o^^lthii yTv/ 
 
 h^'Oive me; your letter," she said, holding' bat' her hand to 
 hinu She was capable of no more. 
 
 '<He Woiild sodn find that ouC said the doctor. << Who 
 could possibly blame Atm7 My dear Mrs. Drummond, you 
 mulst take this into acooiiiit. Ybu must not f^VB him up ai 
 once. I have set on foot all sorts of inquiries—-^" 
 i,^*;The letter, the letter I " she said hoarsely, holding out her 
 hiind* ^ ' '■■ ■'■■>• T-'uiy vii.' 'i.i !■ .*i 
 
 He was pUiged to yield to her 'at hail but not without thv 
 ooBscioustiess which comforted him that she had heard a grealb 
 deal of what he had to say. She had not listened voluntarily 'i 
 but still sh^ had not been able to keep herself from hearing. 
 This w(M not much comfort to poor Helen, but it was to him/ 
 He had made her swallow the wine too ; he had done his best* 
 for her ; and now he could but stand by mournfully while she 
 read her sentence, the words which might be death.- 
 
 ** Mftuiice, I want you to go to my wife. Before you get 
 this, or at loast before you have got to her, I shall be de«dr 
 It's a curious thing to say, but it's true. There has been a 
 great orash at the bank, and I akn. ruined and all I care for. If 
 I lived I could do no good^ only harm ; but they will be sorry 
 for her if X die. I h&ve written to her, poor darling, to teU 
 her ; but. I want you to goaiid stand by her. She'll want sotne 
 one ; and kiss the child for me;: If they pnd me, bury me afay- 
 where. I hope theyi will atever find me, thou^, £pr Helen's 
 sake. And poor.Haldane, 'Tell him I ktiew nothibg of its 
 nothing, nothing! I would have died sooner than let them 
 rfisk his nH^ney.^ . : Qq«1 ^help )iis, anid God forgiyeimn I Maurice, 
 you* are a good Mlow ^ be kind ito oaiiy poor* wife.") ' ' - 
 
AT HfiS OATUL 
 
 101 
 
 . Then was a poiitoeript ^hicli nobody read or paid any atten* 
 tioii to: that it to lay, they read it, and it died from their 
 Binds lor the moaa^nt as if it meant nothing. It waa thii, 
 irritten obliquely like an after*thonght- * 
 
 ** TKibanktuas ruined from the first ; there vhu nevtr 6 MofiM 
 for its, I found thii out only toJay» BwrUm and Oolden han/i 
 doneitaUr f " 
 
 These were the words that Helen read, with Dr. Maurlov 
 standing mournfully behind watching her eyery movement 
 She kept staring at the letter for a long time, and then fell 
 back with a hysterical sob. But without any relief in tears. 
 Dr. Maurice stood by her as his friend had asked him. He 
 soothed her, addins every possible reason he could think of 
 (none of which he himself believed in the smallest desree) to 
 show that "poor Drummond" mieht change his mind. Thia 
 was written in the first impulse of despair, but when he cane 
 to thin k Helen did not listen ; but she heard what Dr* 
 
 Maurice said vaguely, and she heard his account of what he 
 had done ; he had given information at once to the police ; he 
 had engaged people everywhere to search and watch. Newi 
 would be heard of him to-morrow certainly, if not to-night.' 
 Ilelen rose while he was speaking. She collected herself and 
 restrained herself, exerting all the strength she possessed. 
 " Will you comei with me 1 " she said. 
 
 " Where I where IMrs. Drummond, I entreat yon to believe 
 
 Ibave done everything " 
 
 : ' '' Oh, I am sure of it 1 " she said faintly ; but I must go. I 
 cannot---^annot rest. I must go somewhere— anywhere — 
 where he may have gone——" 
 
 " But Mrs. Drummond " 
 
 ■ ) j(ii II 
 
 "You are going to say I have bden everjrwhera So we 
 have, Norah and I — she fell asleep at last, poor child — she does 
 not need me--I must go — — •" - ■ 
 
 . i" It is getting late," he said ; it is just ten ; if news were to 
 come you would not like to be out of the way. Stay here and 
 rest, and I will go to-morrow; you will want all ymt 
 strength." ; j. 
 
 . .^' Iwaht it alltiow^" she said with a strange smile. ** Who 
 think* of to-morrow \ , it may never, never coma It may--^ 
 You Aue very kind-tbut. I eaiinot rest "if.' i i / 
 
102 
 
 AT HIS QJlTBB, 
 
 She was in the cab again before he could say another word. 
 But fortunately at that moment one of his messengers came m 
 hot haste to say that they thought they had found some trace 
 of " the gentleman." He had come off to bring the news, and 
 probably by this time the others were on their way bringing 
 him home. This intelligence furnished Maurice with a weapon 
 against Helen. She allowed herself to be led into the house 
 again, not believing it, feeling in her heart that her husband 
 would never be brought back, yet unable to resist the reason^ 
 able conclusion that she must stay to receive him. The short 
 summe." darkness passed over her thus ; the awful dawn came 
 and looked her in the face. One of the maids sat up, or rather 
 dozed in her chair in the kitchen, keeping a fire alight in case 
 anything might be wanted. And Helen sat and listened to 
 every sound ; sat at the window gazing out, hearing carriage 
 wheels and footsteps miles off, as it seemed to her, and now 
 and then almost deceived into hope by the sound of some one 
 returning from a dance or late party. How strange it seemed 
 to her that life should be going on in its ordinary routine, and 
 people enjoying themselves, while she sat thus frozen into des- 
 peration, listening for him who would never come again ! Her 
 mind was wandering after him through every dreadful scene ; 
 and yet it was so difficult, so impossible to associate Iiim with 
 anything terrible. He, always so reasonable, 8o tender of 
 others, so free from selfish folly. The waking of the new day 
 stole upon the watcher before she was aware ; those sounds 
 which are so awful in their power, which show how long it is 
 since last night, how life has gone on, casting aside old bur- 
 dens, taking on new ones. It was just about ten o'clock, when 
 the morning was at its busiest outside, and Helen, refusing to 
 acknowledge the needs of the new day, still sat at the window 
 watching, with eyes that were dry and hot and bloodshot, with 
 the room all in mournful disorder round her, when Dr. 
 Maurice's brougham drew up to the door He sprang out of it, 
 carrying a coat on his arm ; a rough fellow in a blue Jersey 
 and sailor's hat followed him. Maurice came in with that look 
 so different from the look of anxiety, that fatal air, subdued 
 and still and certain, which comes only from knowledge. 
 Whatever might have happened he was in doubt no more. 
 
 Helen's long vigil had worn her into that extremity of emo- 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 10.1 
 
 tion which can no longer avail itself of ordinary signs. She had 
 not even risen to meet the news. She held out her hand 
 feebly, and gave him a piteous look of inquiry, which her dry 
 lips refused to sound. She looked as if it were possible that 
 she had grown into an idiot as she sat there. He came for- 
 ward and took her hand in his. 
 
 " Dear Mrs. Drummond," he said, " you will need all your 
 courage ; you must not give way j you must think of your 
 child." 
 
 " I know," she said ; her hand dropped out of his as if by its 
 mere weight. She bowed her head as if to let this great salt 
 hitter wave go over her — bowed it down till it sank upon her 
 lap hidden in her clasped hands. There was nothing to be 
 said further, not a word was necessary. She knew. 
 
 And yet there was a story to tell. It was told to her very 
 gently, and she had to listen to it, with her face hidden in her 
 hands. She shuddered now and then as she listened. Some- 
 times a long convulsive sob escaped her, and shook her whole 
 frame ; but she was far beyond the ordinary reli«^f of weeping. 
 It was poor Robert's coat which Dr. Maurice had brought with, 
 him, making all further doubt impossible. The gentlemen 
 had thrown it off when he took that boat at Chelsea. It 
 was too warm, he said ; " and sure enough it was mortal 
 warm," the man added who had come to verify the mournful 
 story. The gentlemen had taken a skiff for a row. It was a 
 clear, beautiful night, and he had been warned to keep out of 
 the way of steamers and barges. If any harm came to him, 
 the boatman said, it was not from want of knowing how to 
 manage a boat. The little skiff had drifted in bottom up, and 
 had been found that morning a mile down stream. That was 
 all. Jane, who was the housemaid, went away crying, and 
 drew down all the blinds except that of the room where her 
 mistress was. " Surely missis will have the thought to do 
 that," she said. But poor Helen had not the thought. 
 
 And thus it all came to an end — their love, their prosperity, 
 and that mitigated human happiness which they had enjoyed 
 together — happiness not too perfect, and yet hovir sweet! 
 Norah still slept through the bright morning, neglected by ^;jer 
 usual attendant, and tired out by her unusual exertions on the 
 previous night. " She ought to know," the' maids said to each 
 
\r^ 
 
 104 
 
 At Hts Qxrtss. 
 
 other, with that eagerness to make evil tidings known which 
 is so strangely common ; hut the old nurse, who loved the child, 
 would not have her disturbed. It was only when Helen re- 
 jected all their entreaties to lie down and rest that Martin 
 consented to rouse the little girl. She came down, with her 
 bright hair all about her shoulders, wrapped in a little white 
 dressing-gown, flying with noiseless bare feet down the stair- 
 case, and, without a word of warning, threw herself upon her 
 mother. It was not to console her mother, but to seek her 
 own natural refuge in this uncom prebend ed calamity. " Oh, 
 mamma ! " said Norah ; " oh, mamma, mamma ! " She could 
 find no other words of consolation. Torrents of youthful tears 
 gushed from the child's eyes. She wept for both, while Helen 
 sat tearless. And the blinds were not down nor the shutters 
 closf»d in that room, as the servants recollected with horror, 
 and the great golden light of morn shone in. * 
 
 Thus tiiey were left undisturbed in the full day, in the swfeet 
 sunshine ; scarcely knowing, in the first stupor of misery, how 
 it was that darkness had gathered in the midst of all their world 
 of light. 
 
AT HIS OATSa 
 
 105 
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 
 nTji-TELEN had not remarlied that postscript toherhuck 
 JjJTjL band's letter, but Dr. Maurice had done so, to whom it 
 was addressed ; and while she was hiding her head and 
 bearing the first agony of her grief without thought of anything 
 remainingthat she might yet have to bear, many thingsbadbeen 
 going on in the world outside of which Helen knew nothing. 
 Dr. Maurice had been Bobert's true friend; and after that 
 mournful morning a day and night had passed in which he 
 did not know how to take comfort. He had no way of ex- 
 pressing himself as women have. He could not weep ; it even 
 seemed to him that to close out the cheerful light, as he "Was 
 tempted t^ do (for the sight of all that brightness made his 
 heart sick), would have been an ostentation of sorrow, a show 
 of sentiment he had no right to indulge in. He could not 
 weep, but there was something else he could do ; and that was 
 to sift poor Robert's accusation, if there was any truth in it ; 
 and, if there was, pursue — to he could not tell what end — the 
 murderers of his friend. It is the old savage way ; and Dr. 
 Maurice set his teeth, and found a certain relief in the thought. 
 He lay down on the sofa in his library, and ordered his servant 
 to close his doors to all the world, and tried to snatch a little 
 sleep after the watch of the previous night. But sleep would 
 not come to him. The library was a large, lofty room, well 
 furnished, and full with books. It was red curtained, and car- 
 peted, and the little bit of the wall which was not covered with 
 book-cases was red too, red which looked dark and heavy in 
 the May sunshine, but was very cosy in winter days. The one 
 spot of brightness in the room was a picture of poor Druni- 
 mond's — a young picture, one of those which he was painting 
 while he courted Helen, the work of youth and love, at a time 
 when the talent in him was called promise, and that which it 
 promised was genius. This little picture caught the doctor's 
 eye as he lay on his sofa, resting the weary frame which had 
 known no rest all night. A tear came as he looked at it — a 
 
106 
 
 AT fits QA.t^. 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 tear which flowed back again to its fountain, not being pef' 
 mitted to fall, but which did him good all the same. *' Poor 
 fellow ! he never did better than that/' Dr. Maurice said to 
 himself with a sigh ; and then he closed up his ejes tight, and 
 tried to go to sleep. Half an hour after, when he opened them 
 again, the picture was once more the first thing he saw. "Bet- 
 ter ! " he said, " he never did so well. And killed by those in- 
 fernal curs ! " The doctor took himself off his sofa after this 
 failure. It was of no use trying to sleep. He gathered his 
 boots from the comer into which he had hurled them, and drew 
 them on again. He thought he would go and have a walk. 
 And then he remarked for the first time that though he had 
 taken his coat off, the rest of his dress was the same as he had 
 put on last night to go out to dinner. When he went to his 
 room to change this, the sight of himself in the glass was a 
 wonder to him. Was that red-eyed, dishevelled man, with 
 glittering studs in his shirt, and a head heavy with watching 
 and grief — was that the trim and irreproachable Dr. Maurice 1 
 He gave a grin of horror and fierce mockery at himself, and 
 then sat down in his easy-chair, and hid his face in his hands ; 
 and thus, all contorted and doubled up, went to sleep unawares. 
 He was good for nothing that day. 
 
 The next morning, before he could go out, Mr Burton call- 
 ed upon him. He was the man whom Dr. Maurice most 
 wanted to see. Yet he felt himself jump as he was announc- 
 ed, and knew that in spite of himself his countenance had 
 changed. Mr- Burton came in undisturbed in manner or ap- 
 pearance, but. with a broad black hatband on his hat — a band 
 which his hatter had assured him was much broader than he 
 had any occasion for — "deep enough for a brother." This 
 gave him a certain air of solemnity, as it came in in front of 
 him. It was " a mark of respect," which Dr Maurice had not 
 thought of showing; and Maurice, after poor Haldane, was, as 
 it were, Robert's next friend. 
 
 " I have come to speak to you about poor Drummond," said 
 Mr. Burton, taking a chair. " What a terrible business this 
 has been ! I met with him accidentally that morning-rthe very 
 day it happened. I do not know when I have had such a 
 shock 1 " 
 
 " You met him on the day he took his life 1" 
 
AT HIS OATEa 
 
 107 
 
 " The day he — died. Dr. Maurice. I am bis relative, his 
 wife's nearest friend. Why should we speak so ? Let us not 
 be the people to judge him. He died — God k lows how. It 
 is in God's hands." 
 
 " God knows I don't judge him," said Dr. Maurice ; and there 
 was a pause. 
 
 '* I cannot hear that any one saw him later/' said Mr. Bur- 
 ton. *' I hear from the servants at St. Mary's Road that he 
 was not there. He talked very wildly poor fellow. I almost 
 thought — God forgive me ! — ^that he had been drinking. It 
 must have been temporary insanity. It is a kind of consola- 
 tion to reflect upon that now.'* 
 
 The doctor said nothing. He rustled his papers about, and 
 played impatiently with the pens and paper-cutter on his tabla 
 He bore it all until his visitor heaved a demonstrative sigh. 
 That he could not bear. 
 
 " If you thought he spoke wildly, you might have looked af- 
 ter him a little," he said. " It was enough to make any man 
 look wild ; and you who knew so well all about it " 
 
 " That is the very thing. I did not know about it. I had 
 been out of town, and had heard nothing. A concern I was 
 so much interested in — by which I am myself a lose r " 
 
 '' Do you lose much ?" said Dr. Maurice, looking him in the 
 face. It was the same question poor Robert had asked, and it 
 produced the same results. An uneasy flush came on the rich 
 man's countenance. 
 
 " We City men do not publish our losses," he said. " We 
 prefer to keep the amount of them, when we can, to ourselves. 
 You were in yourself, I believel Ah ! I warned poor Drum- 
 mond ! I told him he knew nothing of business. He should 
 have taken the advice of men who knew. How strange that 
 an ignorant, inexperienced man, quite unaware what he was 
 doing, should be able to ruin such a vast concern I " 
 
 "Rain such a vast concern ! " Dr. Maurice repeated, stupe- 
 fied. " Who 1 — Drummond 1 This is a serious moment and a 
 strangely chosen subject for a jest. I can't suppose that you 
 take me for a fool " 
 
 " We have all been fools, letting him play with edge tools," 
 said Mr. Barton, almDst sharply," " Golden tells me he would 
 never take advice. Golden says " 
 
t08 
 
 XT ms oATca 
 
 \ 
 
 r << OokleB ! irhere is he i" cried Maui^: << TbeleUo^who 
 absconded 1 By Jove, tell me but where, to lay my bandftoa 
 
 " Softly/' said Mr. Burton putting his hand otai Maurice's 
 arm, with an air of soothing him which made the "doctor's 
 blood boiL " Softly, doctor. He is to be found where he al- 
 ways was, at the office, making the best he can of< a terribly 
 bad job, looking fifteen years older, poor fellow. Where are 
 you going I Let me have my ten minutes first ! " ; jost 
 . i "1 am going to get hold of him, the swindler ! " cried Mau- 
 rice, ringing the bell furiously. " John let the brougham be 
 brought round directly. My God ! if I was not the most mod- 
 erate man in existence I should say murderer too. Golden says, 
 
 forsooth ! We shall see what he will say before a jury- -" 
 
 . " My dear Dr. Maurice-r- listen a little — take care what you 
 are doing. Golden is as honourable a man as you or I-i — -" 
 
 " Speak for yourself,'' said the doctor roughly. ** He has ab- 
 sconded — that's the word. It was in the papers yesterday 
 morning ; and it was the answer I myself received at the office. 
 Golden, indeed ! If you're a friend of Drummond's you will 
 come with me and give that fellow into custody. This is no 
 time for courtesy." ^irn ihnnu < 
 
 ')(} " How glad I ain I came ! " said Mr Burton. " You have 
 tiot seeii, then^ what is in the papers to-day? Dr. Maurice, 
 you miist listen to me ; this is simply madness. Gblden, poor 
 fellow, has been very nearly made the victim of his^ own un- 
 suspicious charactiari Don't be impatient, but listen. When 
 1 tell you he was simply absent on Tuesday on his own affairs 
 -**^gone doYfn to tiie country, as I might have been myself, if 
 Ebt^ s^as r* as I sometimes think, sent out of the way. The 
 news of Shenkenj's bankruptcy arrived that mornuig. Well, I 
 don't mean to say Drummond could have helped t^t ; but he 
 seized the opportunity. Heaven knows how sorry I am to 
 suggest such a thing ; it has nearly broken Goldenfs heart. 
 But these are the facts ; what can you make of them ) > Maurice, 
 listen to me. What did he go and do that tor t He. Was still 
 a young man ; he had his profession. If he could have faced 
 the worid, why did he do that? " ; , ; 
 
 .1 Dti Mauirice replied with an oath. I ican make^no ^quSe 
 for him. He stood on his own hearth, with his haxid clenched, 
 
AT HIS OlfTEB/ 
 
 llOOi 
 
 add bh»{^heiiied. T|iei« arei mom^nUia wfakli » nmn nHnii'lBi- 
 ther dd tbat^ or go down VLpon hi» knee^ and appeal to Goc^i 
 who nowaday^ sends no lightning from heaven to kill the slay-^. 
 er of men's souls where he stands. The doctor isaw itall as if 
 byagteamof that same lightning which he invoked in vain. 
 He saw the spider's web they had woven, the way of escape 
 for themselves which they had built over the body of the man 
 who was dead, and could uot say a word in reply. : But his 
 friend could not find a word to say. Scom^ rage, stupefaction, - 
 came upon him. It was so false, so incredible in its falsity^ 
 He could no more have defended Robert from such an accusaM 
 tioa than he would have defended himself from the charge- of 
 having murdered him. But it would be believed: the world 
 did not know any better. He could not say another word^-i^-siick 
 a horrorand disgust came over him, such a sickening sense of the 
 power of falsehood, the feebleness manifest of nnprovable truth. 
 " This is not a becoming way in which to treat such a sab* 
 ject," said Mr. Burton, rising too. "No subj ect could be iaibre 
 painful to me. I feel almost as if, indirectly^ I myself was to 
 blame. It was I who introduced him into the concern. I am 
 a busy man, and I have a great deal on my hands^ but could I 
 have foreseen what was preparing for Rivers'Sj my own inter-t 
 est should have gone to the wall. And that' he should be my 
 own relation too — my cousin's husband 1 Ah, poor Helen, what 
 a mistake she madel'' .muK) 
 
 "Have you nearly done, sirl" said the doctor fiercely., /e^^ 
 ^'1 shall have done at once, if what I say is received with in- 
 civility," said Mr. Burton, with spirit. It wa^ to,prev«it any 
 extension of the scandal that I came here." .nftjfi^fiotd yiil 
 ii^" There are some occasions upon which civility is impossibte," 
 said Maurice. " I happen to know Robert Drummond ; which 
 Ihope you don't, for ^our own sake. And, remember, a great 
 many people know hiin besides me. I mean no incivility when 
 I say that I don't believe one word of this, Mr. Burton; and 
 that is all I have to say about it Not onei word— — " H 
 
 /;»<* Ydu mean I lie!" ;; 
 
 n'*m 'h' 
 
 " I mean nothing- of the sort. I hope you are deceived. I 
 mean that this fellow Golden is an atrocioiis scoundrel, and he 
 lie&, If you will And having said that, I have not anothet' 
 word to aay," 
 
110 
 
 AT BIS GATES. 
 
 iili!^ 
 
 m 
 
 : ill! 
 
 Then they both stopped short, looking, at each other. A 
 momentary doubt was, perhaps, in Barton's mind what to say 
 next — whether to pursue the subject or to let it drop. But no 
 doubt was in Maurice's. Ho stood rigid, with his back to the 
 vacant fire place, retired withi i himself. " It is very warm," 
 he said ; " not favourable weather for walking. Oin I set you 
 down anywhere 1 I see my brougham has come round." 
 
 "Thanks," said the other shortly. And then he added, 
 "Dr. Maurice, you have taken things in a manner very different 
 from what T expected. I thought you would take an interest 
 in saving our poor friend's memory as far as we can — *' 
 
 "I take no interest in it, sir, whatever." 
 I'HVAnd the feelings of his widow," said Mr. Burton. " Well, 
 well, very well Friendship is such a wide word — sometimes 
 meaning so much, sometimes so little. I suppose I must do 
 the best I can for poor Helen by myself, and in my pwn 
 way." 
 
 "rhe obdurate doctor bowed. He held fast by his formula. 
 He had not another word to say. 
 
 . " 111 that case I need not trouble you any longer," said Mr. 
 Burton. But when he was on his way to the door he paused 
 and turned round. " She is not likely to be reading the 
 papers just now," he said, " and I hope I may depend on you 
 not to let these unfortunate particulars, or anything about it, 
 come to the ears of Mrs. Druuimond. I should like her to be 
 saved that if possible. She will have enough to be.ar." 
 
 " I shall not tell Mrs. Drummond," said the doctor. And 
 then the door opened and closed, and the visitor was gone. 
 
 The brougham stood before Dr. Maurice's window for a long 
 time that morning. The old coachman grumbled broiling on 
 the box , the horses grumbled, pawing with restless feet, and 
 switching the flies off with more and ifiore impatient swing- 
 ings of their tails. John grumbled indoors, who could not 
 "set things straight" until his master was out of the way. 
 But the doctor neglected them all Not one of all the four, 
 horses or men, would have changed places with him could they 
 have seen him poring over the newspaper, which he had not 
 cared to look at that morning, with the wrinkles drawn 
 together on his forehead. There was fury in his soul, that 
 indignation beyond words^ beyond self command, with whidi 
 
AT UIS GATES. 
 
 Ill 
 
 a man perceives the rise and growth of a wrong whieh is be- 
 yond his setting right — a lie which he can only ineffectively 
 contradict, struggle, or rage against, but cannot drive out of 
 the minds of men. They had it in their own hands to say 
 what they would. Dr. Maurice knew that during all the past 
 winter his friend had been drawn into the work of the bank. 
 He had even cautioned Robert, though in ignorance of the 
 extent of his danger. He had said, ** Don't forget that you 
 are unaccustomed to the excitements of business. They will 
 hurt you, though they don't touch the others. It is not your 
 trade." These words came back to his mind with the bitterest 
 sense of that absence of foresight which is common to man. 
 *'If I had but known ! " he said. And then he remembered, 
 with a bitter smile, his visit to Dr. firadcliffe, his request ta 
 him to see poor Drummond *' accidentally," his dread for his 
 friend's brain. This it was which had affected poor Robert^ 
 worse than disease, worse than madness ; for in madness or 
 disease there would have been no human agency to blame. 
 
 The papers, as Burton had said, were full of thie exciting * 
 story. Outside in the very streets there were groat placards 
 up with headings in immense capitals, " Great Bankruptcy in 
 the City. — Suicide of a Bank Director" The absconding of the 
 manager, which had been the news the day before, was thrown 
 into the background by this new fact, which was so much more 
 tragical and important, ^' The latest information" was given 
 by some in a Second Edition, so widespread was the commotion 
 produced by the catastrophe ; and even those of the public who 
 did not care much for Rivers's, care<i for the exciting tale, oi^ 
 for the fate of vthe unhappy professional man who had rashly 
 involved himself in business, and ruined not only himself, but 
 so many more. The story was so dramatically complete that 
 public opinion decided upon it at once. It did not eveu want 
 the grieved, indignant letter which Mr. Golden, injured man^ 
 wrote to the TimeSt begging that the report against him 
 should be contradicted. This letter was printed in large type, 
 and its tone was admiral)le. "I will not prejudge any man; 
 more especially one whose premature end has thrown a cloud 
 of horror over the untbrtunate business transactions of the bank 
 with which I have had the honour of being connected^ for 
 fifteeu years," Mr, Golden wiote, "but I canoot perout my 
 
112 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 \m 
 
 temporary, innocent and much-regretted abeenco to be con- 
 strued into an evidence that I had deserted my post With 
 the help of Providence, I will never desert it, so lon^ as I can 
 entertain the hope of saving from the wreck a shilUng of the 
 shareholders' money." It was a very good letter, very credit- 
 able to Mr. Golden ; and every body had read it and accepted 
 it M gospel* before Dr. Maurice got his hand upon it In the 
 Daily Semaphore^ which the doctor did not see, there was' already 
 an article on the subject, very eloquent and slightly discursive, 
 insisting strongly upon the wickedness and folly of men who 
 without capital, or even knowledge of business, thus ventured 
 to play Fith the very existence of thousands of people. '^ Could 
 the unfortunate man who has hidden his shame in a watery 
 grave look up this morning from that turbid bed and see the 
 many homes which he has filled with desolation, who can 
 doubt that the worst and deepest hell fabled by the great 
 Italiati poet would lose something of its intensity in cdm- 
 parison l^—the ineffectual fires would pale ; a deeper and a 
 moi% terrible doom would be that of looking on at all the 
 misery — all the ruined households and broken hearts which 
 cry out to-day over all England for justice on their destroyer." 
 Fortunately Dr. Maurice did not read this article ; but he did 
 read the Times and its editorial comments. *^ There can be 
 little doubt," that journal said, "that the accidental absence of 
 Mr. Golden, the manager, whose letter explaining all the 
 circumstances will be found in another column, determined 
 Drummond to his final movement. It left him time to secure 
 the falsified books, and remove all evidence of his guilt It is 
 not for us to oxplain by what caprice of despair, after taking 
 all this trouble, the uohappy man should have been driven to 
 self-destruction. The workings of a mind in such an unnatural 
 condition are too mysterious to be discussed here. Perhaps 
 he felt that when all was done, death was the only complete 
 exemption from those penalties which follow the evil-doer on 
 this earth. We can only record the fact; we capnot explain 
 the cause. The manager and the remaining diiectors, hastily 
 summoned to meet the emergency, have been labouring ever 
 ^ce, we understaiid, with the help da well-know accountant, 
 to make up the accounts of the company, as well as that can 
 be doee in the absence of the books which theie is every reason 
 
At His OAtlSH. 
 
 113 
 
 to 8U]^po8(9 were abstracted by Druininond before he left the 
 office. It has been suggested that the river should be dragged 
 for them as well as for the body of the unhappy man, which 
 up to this time has not been recovered. But we doubt much 
 whether, even should such a work be successful, the books 
 would be legible after an immersion even of two or three days. 
 We believe that no one. even the persons most concerned, are 
 yet able to form an estimate of the number of persons to whom 
 this lamentable occurrence will be ruin." 
 
 Dr. Maurice put down the paper with a gleam in his face of 
 that awful and heartrending rage which indignation is apt to 
 rise into when it feels itself most impotent. What could he do 
 to stop such a slander) He could contradict it ; he could say, 
 "I knew Robert Drummond ; hf* ^its utterly incapable of 
 this baseness." Alas ! who was he that the world should take 
 his word for it? He might bring a counter charge against 
 Golden ; he might accuse him of abstracting the books and 
 being the author of all the mischief; but what proof had he to 
 substantiate his accusation 1 He had no evidence — not a 
 hair's-breadth. He could not prove, though he believed, that 
 this was all a scheme suggested to the plotters, if there were 
 more than- one, or to Golden himself, if he were alone in his 
 villany, by the unlooked for chance of Drummond's suicide. 
 This was what he believed. All the more for the horrible 
 vraisemblanct of the story, could he see the steps by which it 
 had been put together. Golden had absconded, taking with 
 him every thing that was damning in the way of books. He 
 had lain hidden somewhere near at hand waiting an oppor- 
 tunity to get away. He had heard of poor Drummond's death, 
 and an opportunity of a different kind, a devilish yet brilliantly 
 successful way of escape had suddenly appeared for him. AU 
 this burst upon Dr. Maurice as by a revelation while he sat 
 with those papers before him gnawing his nails and clutching 
 the leading journal as if it had been Golden's throat. He saw 
 it all. It came out before him like a design in phosphorus, 
 twinkling and glowing through the darkness. He was sure of 
 it ; but; — what to do 1 
 
 This man had a touch in him of the antique friendship — the 
 bond for which men have encountered all odds and dared death, 
 and been happy in their sacrifice. But even disinterested- 
 
I ! 
 
 "''Ml' 
 
 ''I In 
 
 ,11:! 
 
 114 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 ne88, even devotion do not giye a man the mental power to 
 meet such foes, or to frame a plan bv which to bring them to 
 confusion. He grew himself contused with the thou^t. 
 He could not make out what to do first — how he should beffin. 
 He had forgotten how the hours went — ^what time of the day 
 it was while he pondered these subjects. The fire in his veins, 
 instead of acting as a simple stimulant, acted upon him like in* 
 tozication. His brain reeled under the pressure. " Will you 
 have lunch, sir, before you go out ? said John, with restrained 
 wrath, but a pretence of stateliness, "Lunch ! — how dare you 
 come into my room, sir, before I ring 1" cried his master, 
 waking up and looking at him with what seemed to John 
 murderous eyes. - And then he sprang up, tore the papers into 
 little pieces, crammed them into the fire-place, and, seizing his 
 hat, rushed out to the carriage. The coachman was nodding 
 softly on the box. The heat, and the stillness, and the 
 monotony had triumphed even over the propriety of a man 
 who knew all London, he was fond of saying, as well as he 
 knew his own hands. The coachman almost dropped from his 
 box when Maurice, throwing the door of the little carriage 
 open, startled him suddenly from his slumber. The horses, 
 which were half asleep too, woke also with much jarring of 
 harness and prancing of hoof and head. 
 
 " To the Times office," wns what the doctor said. He could 
 not go and clutch that villain by the throat, though that might 
 be the best way. It was another kind of lion which he was 
 about to beard in his den. 
 
 I < 1 
 
 i\\l:h.]i;:n 
 
^ ,aia ati'nfa. 
 
 m 
 
 i,y/ ahl ill' 'f'inl <>>J 
 
 CHAPTER XIH. 
 
 o? 
 
 ONE of the persons chiefly concerned in this histoiT', ^^' 
 cept himself, knew as yet whether Reginald Burton 
 was good or had. But one thing is certain, that there 
 were good intentions in his mind when he startled Dr. Maurice 
 with this extraordinary tale. He had a very husy morning, 
 driving from place to place in his hansom, giving up so many 
 hours of his day without much complaint. He had expected 
 Maurice to know what the papeis would have told him, had he 
 been less overwhelmed with the event itself of which they gave 
 so strange a version, and he had intended to have a friendly 
 consultation with him about Mrs. Drummond's' means of living 
 and what was to be done for her. Something must be done 
 for her, there was no doubt about that. She could not be al- 
 lowed to starve. She was his own cousin, once Helen Burton ; 
 and, no doubt, by this time she had found out her great mis- 
 take. It must not be supposed that this thought brought with 
 it any lingering fondness of recollection, any touch of the old 
 love with which he himself had. once looked upon her. It 
 would have been highly improper had it done anjrthing of the 
 kind. He had a Mrs. Burton of his own, who of course pos- 
 sessed his entire affections, and he was not a man to indulge 
 in any illegimate emotion. But still he had been thinking 
 much of Helen since this bewildering event occurred*' It was 
 an event which had taken him quite by surprise. He did no^ 
 understand it. He felt that he himself could never be in such 
 despair, could never take " a step so rash " — the only step a 
 man could take which left no room for repentance. It had 
 been providential, no doubt, for some things. But Helen had 
 been in his mind since ever he had time to think. There was 
 a little glitter in his eye, a little complacent curl about the 
 corners of his mouth, as he thought of her, and her destitute 
 condition, and her helplessness. What a mistake she had 
 made ! She h^ chosen ti wretchJed painter, withou* a penny, 
 instead of himself. And this was wniat it had come to. Now 
 
 i«smimsm^3gmmifimmmmmmi!^0imm 
 
 mmfjm'^ 
 
BH 
 
 116 
 
 AT m& OATiB* 
 
 
 at least she must have found out what ft fool she had heeil* 
 But yet he intended to be good to her in his way. He vowed 
 to himself, with perhaps some secret compunction in the depths 
 of his heart, that if she would let him he would be very good 
 to her. Nor was Helen the only person to whom he intended 
 to be good. He went to the Haldanes as well, with kindest 
 sympathy and offers of help. ** Perhaps you inay think I was 
 to blame in recommending such an investment of yoiir money?" 
 he said to Stephen, with that blunt honesty which charms so 
 many people. *' But my first thought, was of you when I heard 
 of the crash. I wish I had bitten my tongue out sooner than 
 recommended it The first people who came into my head 
 were my cousin Helen and you." 
 
 Dismay and trouble were in the Haldanes' little house. 
 They had not recovered from the shock. They were like three 
 ghosts — each endeavouring to hide the blackness from each other 
 which bad fallen upon their souls. Miss Jane and her mdither, 
 hovirever, had begun to get a little relief in talking over the 
 great misery which had fallen upon them. They had filled the 
 room with newspapers, in which they devoured every scrap of 
 ^ news which bore on that one subject. They sat apart in a 
 * corner and read them to each other, while Stephen closed his 
 poor sad eyes and withdrew into himself. It was the only re^ 
 tirement he had, his only way of escape from the monotonous 
 details of their family life, and the constant presence of his 
 nurses and attendants. This man had such attendants — un- 
 wearying, uncomplaining, always ready whatever he wanted, 
 giving up their lives to his service — as few men have ; and yet 
 there were moments when he would have given the world to 
 be free of them^ — now and then, for half and hour, to be able 
 to be alone. He had been sitting thus in his oratory, his place 
 of retirement, having shut his doors, and gone into his chamber by 
 tjiat single action of closing his eyes, when Mr. Burton came 
 in. The women had been reading those papers to him till he 
 had called to them to stop. They had made his heart sore, as 
 our hearts are being made sore now by tales of wrong and 
 misery which we cannot help, cannot stop, can do nothing but 
 weep for, or listen to with hearts that burn and bleed. Ste- 
 phen Haldane's heart was so-^it was sore, quivering with the 
 Stroke it has sustained, feeling as if it would burst out of his 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 117 
 
 breast People say that much invoked and described organ is 
 good only for tough physical uses, and knows no sentimAut i 
 but surely such people have never had a sore heart. 
 
 Poor Stephen's heart was sore : he could feel the great 
 wound in it through which the life-blood stole. Yesterday he 
 had been stupefied. To-day he had begun to wonder why, if a 
 sacrifice was needed, it should not have been him 'I He who 
 was good for nothing, a burden on the earth ; and not Robert, 
 
 the kindest, truest- . God bless him ! yes, God bless him 
 
 down yonder at the bottom of the river, down with Dives in a 
 deeper depth if that might be — anywhere, everywhere, even in 
 hell or purgatory, God bless him ! this is what his friend said, 
 not afraid. And the women in the comer, in the meanwhile, 
 read all the details, every one — about the dragging of the 
 river, about the missing books, about Mr. Golden, who had 
 been so wronged. Mrs. Haldane believed it everv word, hav- 
 ing a dread of human nature and a great confidence in the 
 newspapers ; but Miss Jane was tormented with an independ- 
 ent opinion, and hesitated and could not believe. It had al- 
 most distracted their attention from the fact which there could 
 be no question about, which all knew for certain — their own 
 ruin. Rivers's had stopped payment, whoever was in faulty 
 and everything this family had— their capital, their income, 
 everything was gone. It had stunned them all the first day, 
 but now they were beeinnipg to call together their forces and 
 live again ; and when Mr. Burton made the little sympathetic 
 speech above recorded it went to their hearts. 
 
 " I am sure it is very kind, very kind of you to say so," said 
 Mrs. Haldane. " We never thought of blaming— ^you." 
 
 " I don't go so far as that," said Miss Jane. ** I always 
 speak my mind. I blame everybody, mother ; one for one 
 thing, one for another. There is nobody that has taken thought 
 for Stephen, not one. Stephen ought to have been considered, 
 and that he was not able to move about and see to things for 
 himself like other men." 
 
 " It is very true, it is very true I" said Mr. Burton, sighinff. 
 He shook his head, and he made a little movement of his hand, 
 as if deprecating blame. He held up his hat with the mourn- 
 ing band upon it, and looked as if he might have wept. " When 
 you consider all that has happened," he said in a low tone of 
 
«■ 
 
 118 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 .'!• 
 
 Upolb^. ''Some who have been in fadlt liavei paid for it 
 dearly, at least — — " r 
 
 It was Stephen's voice which broke in upon this apology, in a 
 tone as different as could be imagined — high-pitehed, almost 
 harsh. When he was the popular minister of Ormond Street 
 Chapel it was one of the standing remarks made by his people 
 tb strangers, ''Has not he a beautiful voice?'* But at this 
 moment all the tunefulness and softness had gone' out of it. 
 " Mr. Burton," he said, " what do you mean to do to vindicate 
 Drummond 1 It seems to me that that comes first." 
 
 " To vindicate Drummond!" Mr. Burton looked up with a 
 sudden start, and then he added hurriedly, with an impetuosity 
 which secured the two women to his side, " Haldane, you are 
 too good for this world. Don't let us speskk of Drummond. I 
 will forgive him — if I can." 
 
 "How much have you to forgive him 1" said the preacher. 
 Onde more, how much % By this time Mn Burton felt that he 
 had a right to be angry with the question. ^ 
 
 " How much 1" he said ; "really I don't feel it necessaiy to 
 go into my own business affairs with everybody who has a 
 Curiosity to know. I am willing to allow that my losses are as 
 nothing to yours. Pray don't let us go into this question, for 
 I don't want to lose my temper. I came to offer any assistance 
 that was in my power — ^to you." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Burton, Stephen is infatuated about that miserable 
 man," said the mother; "he cannot see harm in him; and 
 ev6D now, when he has taken his own life and proved himself 
 to be " 
 
 " Stepheil has a right to stand up for his friend," said Miss 
 Jane. " If I had time I would stand up for him too ; but 
 Stephen's comfort has to be thought of first. Mr. Burtdn, the 
 best assistance you could give us would be to get me something 
 to do. I can't be a governess, and needlework does not pay ; 
 neither does teaching, for that matter, even if I could do it. I 
 am a good housekeeper, though I say it. I can keep accounts 
 with anybody. I am not a bad cook even. And I'm past 
 foi-ty, and never was pretty in my life, so that I don't see it 
 matters whether I am a woman or a man. I don^'t care what I 
 do or where I go, so long as I can earn some money. Can you 
 h^lp taie to that ) Don't groan, Stephen ; do you think I mind 
 
AT HIS QATES. 
 
 119 
 
 it 1 and don't you smile, Mr. Burton. I am in earnest for my 
 part." 
 
 Stephen had groaned in his helplessness. Mr. Burton smilod 
 in his superiority, in his amused politeness of contempt for the 
 plain woman past forty. " We can*t let you say that," he an- 
 swered jocosely, with a look at her which reminded Miss Jane 
 that she was a woman after all, and filled her with suppressed 
 fury. But what did such covert insult matter 1 It did not 
 harm her; and the man who sneered at her homeliness might 
 help her to work for her brother, which was the actual matter 
 ia hand. 
 
 " It is very difficult to know of such situations for ladies," 
 said Mr. Burton, " if anything should turn up, of course — but 
 I fear it would n«t do to depend upon that." 
 
 " Stephen has his pension from the chapel," said Miss Jane. 
 She was not delicate about these items, but stated her case 
 loudly and plainly, without even considering what Stephen's 
 feelings might be. " It was to last five years, and nearly three 
 of them are gone ; and he has fifty pounds a year for the maga- 
 zine — ^that is not much, Mr. Burton, for all the trouble ; they 
 might increase that. And mother and I are trying to let the 
 house furnished, which would always be somethmg. We could 
 remove into lodgings, and if nothing more is to be got, of course 
 we must do upon what we have." 
 
 Here Mr. Burton cast a look upon the invalid who was sur- 
 rounded by so many cootrivances of comfort. It was a compas- 
 sionate glance, but it stung poor Stephen. ^' Don't think of 
 me," he said hoarsely ; " my wants, though I look such a bur^ 
 den upon everybody, are not many after all Doh't think of 
 me." 
 
 " We could do with what we have," Miss Jane went on — she 
 was so practical, she rodo over her brother's susceptibilities and 
 ignored theoi, which perhaps was the best thing that could have 
 been done- -" if you could help us with a tenant for our house, 
 Mr. Burton, or get the magazine committee to give him a little 
 more than fifty pounds. The work it is ! what with writing 
 —and I am sure he writes half of it himself — and reading 
 those odious manuscripts which ruin his eyes, and correcting 
 proofs, and all that. It is a shame that he has only fifty 
 pounds——" 
 
 '•'*'^:'»'!=^mmmm;mmmmmmmmtimim%mmem^m$mtM»m-: 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 '^But he need not take so much trouble unless he likes, 
 Jane/' said Mrs. Haldane, shaking her head, ** I liked it as it 
 was.' 
 
 " Never mind, mother ; Stephen knows best, and it is him 
 that we have got to consider. Now, Mr. Burton, here is what 
 you can do for us — I should not have asked anything, but since 
 you have offered, I suppose you mean it— something for me to 
 do, or some one to take the house, or a little more money for 
 the magazine. Then we could do. I don't like anything that 
 is vague. I suppose you prefer that I should tell you plain 1 " 
 
 " To be sure," said Mr. Burton ; and he smiled, lookine at 
 her with that mixture of contemptuous amusement and diSike 
 with which a plain middle-aged woman so often inspires a vul- 
 gar-minded man. That the women who wanted to work are 
 always old hags, was one of the articles of his creed ; and 
 here was an illustration. Miss Jane troubled herself very little 
 about his amusement or his contempt She did not much \be« 
 lieve in his good-will. But if he did mean it, why, it was 
 best to take advantage of his offer. This was her practical 
 view of the subject Mr. Burton turned from her to Stephen, 
 who had taken no part in the talk. Necessity had taught to 
 the sick man its stern philosophy. He had to listen to such 
 discussions twenty times a day, and he had stc'eled his heart to 
 hear them, and make no sign. 
 
 "What would you say to life in the country?" he said. 
 "The little help I came to offer in these sad ciicumstances is 
 not in any of the ways Miss Jane suggests. I dcTn't know 
 anybody that wants to take just this kind of house :" and he 
 glanced round at it with a smile. He to know a possible 
 tenant for such a nutshell ! " And I don't know any situation 
 that would suit your sister, though I am sure she would be in- 
 valuable. My father-in-law is the man to speak about the mag- 
 azine business. Possibly he could manage that. But what I 
 would offer you if you like, would be a lodging in the country. 
 J have a house down at Dura, which is of no use to me. There 
 \s good air and a garden, and ^11 that You are as welcome as 
 possible if you like to come." 
 
 "A house in the country," said Mrs. Haldane. ■ <^0h my 
 boy ! Oh, Mr. Burton ! he might get well there." 
 
 Poor soul ! it was her delusion that Stephen was to get nirel}, 
 
AT HIS OATES. 
 
 121 
 
 She took up this new hope with eyes which, old as they were, 
 flashed out with brightness aud consolation. "Whit will all 
 our losses matter if Stephen gets well 1" she went on begin- 
 ning to cry. And Miss Jane rose up hastily, and went away 
 with a tremulous harshness, shutting her lips up tight, to the 
 other side of the room, to get her work, which she had been 
 neglecting. Miss Jane was like a man in this, that she could 
 not bear tears. She set her face against them, holding herself 
 in, lest she too might have been tempted to join. Of all the 
 subjects of discussion in this world, Stephen's recovery was the 
 € *ily one she could not bear ; for she loved her brother like a 
 poet, like a starved and frozen woman who has had but one love 
 in her life. 
 
 The old mother was more manageable to Mr. Burton's mind 
 than Miss Jane. Her tears and gratitude restored him to what 
 he felt was his proper place, — that of a benefactor and guardian 
 angel. He sat for half an hour longer, and told Mrs. Haldane 
 all about the favour he was willing to confer. ** It is close to 
 the gates of my own house, but you must not think that will 
 be an annoyance to us," he said. " On the contrary, I don't 
 mean to tell my father-in-law till he sees you there. It will be 
 a pleasant surprise for him. He has always taken so much in- 
 terest in Haldane. Don't say anything, I beg. I am very glad 
 you should have it, and I hope it will make you feel this diead- 
 ful calamity less. Ah yes ; it is wretched for us ; but what 
 must it be for my poor cousin ? I am going to see her now." 
 
 " I don't know her," said Mrs. Haldane. " She has called 
 at the door to ask for Stephen, very regular. That I suppose 
 
 was because of the friendship between but I have only 
 
 seen her once or twice on a formal call If all is true that I 
 hear, she w411 take it hard, being a proud woman. Oh ! pride's 
 sinful at the best of times ; but in a time like this " 
 
 " Mother 1" 
 
 " Yes, Stephen, I know ; and I am sure I would not for the 
 world say a word against friends of yours ; but " 
 
 " I must go now," said Mr. Burton, rising. " Good bye, Hal- 
 dane. I will write to you about the house, and when you can 
 come in. On second thoughts, I will not prevent you from 
 mentioning it to Mr. Baldwin, if you please. He is sure to 
 mk what you are going to do, and he will be glad to know." 
 
122 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 
 ii 
 
 II! i 
 
 He went out from Victoria Villas pleased with himself. He 
 had been very good to these people, who really were-nothingto 
 him. He was not even a Dissenter, hnt a staunch Churchman, 
 and had no sympathy for the sick minister. What was his mo- 
 tive, then 1 Lut it was his wife who made it her business to 
 investigate his motives, and we may wait for the result of her 
 examination. All this was easy enough. The kindness he had 
 offered was one which would cost him little, and he had not 
 suffered in this interview as he had done in that which pre- 
 ceded it. But now he had occasion for all his strength ; now 
 came the tug of war, the real strain. He was going to see 
 Helen. She had been but three days a widow, and no doubt 
 would be in the depth of that darkness which is the recognized 
 accompaniment of grief. Would she see him 1 Could she have 
 seen the papers, or heard any echo of their news 1 On this 
 point he was nervous. Before he went to St. Mary's Boad, 
 though it was close at hand, he went to the nearest hotel, ^d 
 had a glass of wine and a biscuit For such a visit he required 
 all his strength. 
 
 But these precautions were unnecessary. The shutters were 
 all closed in St. Mary's Eoad. The lilacs were waving their 
 plumy fragrant branches over a door which no one entered. 
 Mrs. Drummond was at home, but saw no one. Even when 
 the maid carried his message to her, the answer was that she 
 could see no one, that she was quite well, and required noth- 
 ing/ "Not even the clergyman, sir," said the maid. "He's 
 been, but she would not see him. She is as white as my apron, 
 and her poor hands you could see the light through 'em. We 
 all think as she'll die too." 
 
 " Does she read the papers V said Mr. Burton anxiously. He 
 was relieved when the woman said " No." He gave«her half-a- 
 crown, and bade her admit none to the house till he came 
 again. Bebecca promised and curtsied, and went back to the 
 kitchen to finish reading that article in the Daily Semaphore, 
 The fact that it was "master" who was there called " this un- 
 fortunate man " and "this unhappy wretch," gave the strongest 
 zest to it. " La ! to think he could have had all that on hir 
 mind," they said to each other. George was the oiily one who 
 considered it might be a " made-up story," and he was believed 
 to say so more from " contrariness," and a desire to set up for 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 128 
 
 superiot wisdom, than because he had any real doubt on the 
 gubject. " A person may say a thing, but I never heard of one 
 yet as would go for to put it in print, if it wasn't true," was 
 Rebecca's comment. " I'm sorry tor poor master, all the same," 
 said Jane the house-maid, who was tender-hearted, and who 
 had put on an old black gown of her own accord. The 8e» 
 vants were not to get mourning, which was something unheard 
 of ; and they had m received notice, and, as soon as Aurs. Drum- 
 mond was able to move, were to go away. 
 
 For that matter, Helen was able to move then — able to go 
 to the end of the earth, as she felt with a certain horror of 
 herself. It is so natural to suppose that physical weakness 
 should come in the train of grief ; but often it does not, and 
 the elastic delicate strength of Helen's frame resisted all the in- 
 fluences of her sorrow. She scarcely ate at all ; she slept little; 
 the world had grown to her one great sea of darkness and pain 
 and desolation : and yet she could not lie down and die as she 
 had thought she would, but felt such a current of feverish 
 energy in all her veins as she had never felt before. She could 
 have done anything — ^laboured, travelled, worked with her 
 hands, fought even, not like a man, but like twenty men. She 
 was conscious of this, and it grieved and horrified her. She 
 felt as a woman brought up in conventional proprieties would 
 naturally feel, that her health ought to have been affected, that 
 her strength should have failed her. But it had not done so. 
 Her grief inflamed her rather, and set her heart on fire. Even 
 now, in these early days, when custom decreed that she ought 
 to be incapable of exertion, " keeping her bed," she felt her- 
 self in possession of a very flood of energy and excited strength. 
 She was miserable, but she was not weak. She shut herself 
 up in the darkened house all day, but half the night would 
 walk about in her garden, in her despair, trying to tame down 
 the wild life which had come with calamity. Poor little Norah 
 crept about everywhere after her, and lay watching with great 
 wide-open eyes, through the silvery half-darkness of the sum- 
 mer night, till she should come to bed. But Norah was not 
 old enough to understand her mother, and was herself half 
 frightened by this extraordinary change in her, which affected 
 the child's imagination more than the simple disappearance of 
 her father did, though she wept and longed for him with a 
 
 y'*-^:^sm>imm^m^m»'rA'ksi-mtwmimmt^^M^-- 
 
124 
 
 ▲T HIS GATES. 
 
 \ 
 
 dreary sense tliat unless ho came back, life never oouldbe as of 
 old, and that he -would never, never come back. But all the 
 day long Mrs. Drummond sat in her darkened room, and "ivas 
 not able to see any one." She endured the vigil, and would 
 have done so, if she had d*ed of it. That was what was called 
 '^proper respect :" it was the conventional necessity of the mo- 
 ment Mr. Burton called again and again, but it was more than 
 a fortnight before he was admitted. And iu the meantime he 
 too had certain preparations to go through. 
 
 ; ! i 
 
▲T HIS GATES. 
 
 125 
 
 CHAPTER XrV. 
 
 EK. BUKTON was a man who was accustomed in his 
 own house to have, in a great degree, his oWn way ; 
 but this was not because his wife was disinclined to 
 hold, or incapable of forming an opinion of her own. On the 
 contrary, it was because he was rather afraid of her than other- 
 wise and thought twice before he promulgated any sentiments 
 or started any plan which was likely to be in opposition to 
 hers. But he had neither consulted her, nor, indeed, thought 
 much of what she would say in the sudden proposal he had 
 made to the Haldanes. He was not a hasty man ; but Dr. 
 Maurice's indignation had made an impression upon him, 
 and he had felt all at once that in going to the Haldanes and 
 to Helen, he must not, if he would preserve his own character, 
 go with merely empty sympathy, but must show practically his 
 pity for them. It was perhaps the only time in his life that he 
 had acted upon a hasty idea without taking time to consider ; 
 and a chill doubt, as to what Clara would say, was in his mind 
 as he turned his face homewards. Dura was about twenty miles 
 from town, in the hf^arb of one of the leafiest of English coun- 
 ties ; the station was a mile and a half from the great house, 
 half of which distance, however was avenue ; and Mr. Burton^s 
 phaeton, with tiie two greys — horses which matched to a hair, 
 and were not equalled in the stables of any potentate in the 
 county — was waiting for him when the train arrived. He 
 liked to drive home in this glorious way, rousing the village 
 folks and acting as a timepiece for them, just as he liked the 
 great dinner-bell, which the old Harcourts sounded only on 
 great occasions, to be rung every day, letting the whole neigh- 
 bourhood know that their local lord, their superior, the master 
 of the great house, was going to dinner. He liked the thought 
 that his return was an event in the place almost justifying the 
 erection of a standard, as it was erected in a royal castle not 
 very far off, when the sovereign went and came. Oar rich man 
 had not gout^ su far as yet, but he would have liked it, and felt 
 

 
 ,m 
 
 ▲T BtS aitud. 
 
 qUili^BI 
 
 1 Hi 
 
 i 
 
 1 ill 
 
 ! I ! 
 
 fSl'iii 
 
 ■ ■'!'! 
 
 
 it natural The village of Dura was like a collection of beads 
 threaded on the long white thread of road which ran from the 
 station to the house — and occupied the greater part of the space, 
 with single houses straggling at either end, and a cluster in the 
 middla The straggling houses at the end next the station were 
 white villas, built for people whose business was in town, and 
 who came home to dinner bv the same train which brought Mr. 
 Burton, though their arrivtu was less imposing ; but where the 
 dump, of dwemng-places thickened, the houses toned down into 
 old-fashioned deeply-lichened brick, with here 'and there a 
 thatched roof to deepen, or a whitewashed gable to relieve, the 
 composition. At the end nearest the great house the village 
 made a respectful pause, and turned ofif along a slanting pat^, 
 which showed the tower of the church behind over the trees. 
 The rectory, however, a prettv house buried in shrubberies, 
 fronted the high road with modest confidence ; and opposite it 
 was another dwelling-place, in front of which Mr. Burton drej^ 
 up his horses for a moment, inspecting it with a careful ^d 
 anxious eye. His heart beiat a little quicker as he looked. 
 Bin own gate was in sight, and these were the very grounds of 
 Dura House, into which the large walled garden of this one 
 : intruded Uke a sciuare wedjfe. In front there were no shrabberie,, 
 no garden, nothing to divide it from the road. A double row of 
 pollard limes — one on the edge of the foot-path, one clv>««e to the 
 houser-indieated and shaded, but did not separate it from the 
 common way. The second row of limes was level with the fence 
 of the Dura grounds, and one row of white flagstones lay 
 between them and the two white steps, the green door, the 
 shining brass. knocker, of the Gatehouse^ It was a house which 
 had been built in the reign of the firsib George, of red brick, 
 with a great many windows, three-storied, and crowned by a 
 pediment, with that curious mixture of the useful and 
 (supposed) ornamental, which by this time has com^ to look 
 almost picturesque by reason of age. It had been built for the 
 mother of one of the old Harcourts, a good woman who had 
 been bom the Eector's daughter of the place, and loved it and 
 its vicinity, and the sight of its comings and goings. This was 
 the origin of the Gatehouse; but since the days of Mrs. 
 punstable Harcourt it had rarely been inhabited by anjjr of tb^e 
 iamily, and. had been a trouble more than an advantage to theij^ , 
 
AT Bis OATES. 
 
 1 '7 
 
 It was too near the hall to be inhabited by fetrangers, m \ 
 people do not always like to establish their own poor relations 
 and dependents at their very gates. As the Harcourts dwindled 
 and money became important to them» they let it at a small 
 rate to a maiden housenold, two or three old ladies of limited 
 means and blood as blue as their own. And when Dura ceased, 
 except on county maps, to be Harcourt-Dura, and passed into 
 the hands of the rich merchant, he, too, found the Gatehouse a 
 nuisance. There had been talk of pulling it down, but that 
 would have been waste ; and there had been attempts made to 
 let it to " a suitable tenant," but no suitable tenaat had been 
 found. Genteel old ladies of blue blood had not found the 
 vicinity of the Burtons a comfort to them as they did that of 
 the Harcourts. And there it stood empty, echoing, void, a 
 
 Elace where the homeless might be sheltered. Did Mr. Burton's 
 eart glow with benevolent warmth as he paused, drawing up 
 his greys, and looked at it, with all its windows twinkling in 
 the sun ? To one of these windows a woman came forward at 
 the sound of his pause, and, putting her face close to the small 
 pane, looked out at him wondering. He gave her a nod, and 
 sighed ; and then flourished his whip, and the greys flew on. 
 In another moment they had turned into the avenue and went 
 dashing up the gentle ascent. It was a pretty avenue, though 
 the trees were not so old as most of the Dura trees. The sun- 
 set gleamed through it, slanting down nnder the lowest 
 branches, scattering the*brown mossy undergrowth with lun^ps 
 of gold. A little pleasant tricksy wind shook the branches and 
 shook little mimic showers of rain in the master's face : for it 
 had been raining in the afternoon, and the air was fresh and 
 full of a hundred nameless odours ; but Mr. Burton gave forth 
 another big sigh before he reached the house. He was a little 
 afraid of what his wife would say, and he was afraid of what 
 he had done. 
 
 He did not say anything about it, however, till dinner was 
 over. The most propitious moment seemed that gentle hour of 
 dessert, when the inner man is strengthened and comforted, and 
 there is time to dally over the poetic part of the meal — not that 
 either of the Burtons were poetical. They were alone, not even 
 the children being with them, for Mrs. Burton disapproved 
 of children coming to dessert ; but all the same, sh^ was 
 
 ■'*'•«'■ '■«^f«?***^«a»s»«iisBfti»i(ws^ 
 
m 
 
 AT HIS OATIiS. 
 
 Mill If- y 
 
 beautifully dressed ; he liked it, and so did she. She made 
 very little difference in this particular between her most 
 imposing dinner parties and those evenings she spent Ute a iete 
 with her husband. When her aunts, who had old-fashioned 
 ideas about extravagance, remonstrated with her, she defended 
 herself, saying she could afford it, and he liked to see her well 
 dressed. Mr. Burton hated to have any scrap of capi al 
 unemployed ; and the only interest you could get from your 
 
 i'ewels was the pleasure of wearing them, and seeing them worn, 
 le said. So Mrs. Burton dined with her husband in a costume 
 which a French lady of fashion would have considered appro- 
 priate to a ball or royal reception, with naked shoulders and 
 arms, and lace and ornaments, Madame la Duchesse might 
 have thought it much too fine, but Mrs. Burton did not. She 
 was a pale little woman, small and thin, but not without beauty. 
 Her hair was not very abundant, but it was exquisitely smooth 
 and neat. Her uncovered shoulders were white, and her arms 
 round and well-formed ; and she had clear blue eyes, so much 
 brighter than anybody expected, that they took the world by 
 surprise : they were cold in their expression, but they were full 
 of intelligence, and a hundred times more vivid and striking 
 than anything else about her, so that everybody observed and 
 admired Mrs. Burton's eyes. 
 
 " What has been going on to-day 1 What have you been 
 doing r she asked, when the servants went away. The 
 question sounded affectionate, and showed at least that there 
 was confidence between husband and wife. 
 
 " Very much as usual," Mr. Burton said, with colloquial ease ; 
 and then .he stopped and cleared his throat. " But fur my own 
 part I have done something rather foolish," he said, with an 
 almost imperceptible tremor in his voice. 
 
 " Indeed 1" IShe gave a quick glance up at him j but she 
 was not excited, and went on eating her strawberries. He was 
 not the kind of man of whoso foolitsh actions a wife is afraid. 
 
 " I have been to see the Haldaues to-day," he said, once 
 more clearing his throat ; " and I have been to Helen 
 Drummond's, but did not see her. The one of course, T did 
 
 out of regard for your father ; the other 1 was so distressed 
 
 by the sight of that poor fellow in his helplessness, that I acted 
 on impulse, Clara. I know it's a foolish thing to do. I said 
 
AT HIS 0ATE8. 
 
 129 
 
 :ii 
 
 to myself, here are two femilies cast out of house and home^ and 
 there is the Gatehouse " 
 
 " The Gatehouse I" 
 
 '' Yes, I was afraid you would be startled ; but reflect a 
 moment : it is of no use to us. We have got nobody to occupy 
 it, You know, indeed, how alarmed you were when your 
 aunt Louisa took a fancy to it ; and I have tried for a tenant in 
 vain. Then, on the other hand, one cannot but be sorry for 
 these poor people. Helen is my cousin ; she has no nearer 
 friend than I am. And your father is so much interested in 
 the Haldanes " 
 
 " I don't quite understand," said Mrs. Burton, with undis- 
 turbed composure ; " my father's interest in the Haldanes has 
 nothing to do with the Gatehouse. Are they to live there 1" 
 
 ** That was what I thought," said her husband, " but not, 
 of course, if you have any serious dislike to it — not if you 
 decidedly object " 
 
 " Why should I decidedly object 1" she said. " I should if 
 
 you were bringing them to live with me ; but otherwise 
 
 It is not at all suitable — they will not be happy there. It will 
 be a great nuisance to us. As it is, strangers admire it — it looks 
 old-fashioned and pleasant ;but if they made a squalid place of 
 it, dirty windows, and cooking all over the house " 
 
 " So far as my cousin is concerned, you have nothing of that 
 kind to fear," said Mr. Burton, ceasing to be apologetic. Be 
 put a slight emphasis on the word my ; perhaps upon this point 
 he would not have been sorry to provoke his wife, but Clara 
 Burton would not gratify her husband by any show of jealousy. 
 She was not jealous, she was thinking solely uf appearances, 
 and of the possible decadence of the Gatehouse. 
 
 " Besides Susan must stay," he continued, after a pause ; 
 ** she must remain in charge ; the house must be kept as it ought 
 to be. If that is your only objection, Clara- 
 
 » 
 
 it 
 
 I have made no objection at all," said Mrs. Burton ; and 
 then she broke into a dry little laugh. " What a curious 
 establishment it will be — an old broken down nurserymaid, a 
 Dissenting minister, and your cousin ! Mr. Burton, will she like 
 it t I cannot say I should feel proiid if it were offered to 
 
 me 
 
 His face flushed a little, He was not anxious himself to 
 I 
 
 "fmf 
 
 "■wpwinmitfiiw 
 
 "W*fW«^ 
 
13a 
 
 ▲T HIS QAmS^ 
 
 spwce Helen's f^^ngo. If he had found a;Q opportunityv ii^ 
 would have been agreeable to him to remind her that sheli^j 
 made a mistake; but she was his own rel^Ubion, and, ipsti^ct' 
 prompted him to protect her from his wife, r ; /,V ,^. / ., 
 
 V Helen is too poor to allow herself to tiblnk whether she^ 
 likes it or not," he said. v-u 
 
 j^is wifegav^ a sh^^ip ^^anee at him across the table, tVjiatT' 
 did he n^ean, $ JDid he , ^nt-end to be kind, or to insult the^ 
 desjolate )i7pm^p 1 ' Clara askej herself the ^vle^tio^. fMS .a 
 philosopliical question, not;becau8e f he car^d. vj J. f ^ ^ jju' j. jj ,♦ 
 
 " And is your cousin willing to accept it from you, aifer< — 
 that stpry I" she said, 
 
 " V^atB(tory ? ; Yovi mean about her.husband^ It is^not 
 my sto^, : I h^ye nothing to do with it ; and even if 1 ^adi 
 surely it is. the, m;^ that does wrong, not the man who teilslt^ 
 th|a^ should have th^ blame; ; besides, she dpes not know.*' , 
 
 *• Ah, that is the safest," said Clara. " !• think it is a viry 
 strange story^ Mr.: Burton. It may be true, but it is not Ixki^ 
 thetrutb." 
 
 f'lhave nothing iio do with it," he exclaimed. He spoke hotly 
 wjtt a swelling of the veins on his temples, "There are points, 
 of vijBw in which his death was very providential," he saii 
 
 And Once more Clara gave him a sharp glance. ,-,,. 
 
 "It was the ai^gel who watch^Js over Mr. G-otlen tliftt: 
 provided th^ boat, no doubt," she answered^ with a contraction: 
 of her lips ; then fell back into the former topic with perfect, 
 calm, "I should insist upon tht^ house being kept clean and. 
 ni^e," she said as w rose to go away,. H:., ^ r j . , ., , ,. 
 
 ,** Surely— ^urelyj^ and you may t,eil your fatter wheii. you 
 write, that poor Haldane is so far provided for." He got, up to 
 open thjB door for her, aud detaining her for a moment, stooped 
 d9wu and kisiSed her foreheads " I am so much obliged to you 
 Clara, for consenting so kindly," he saidi 
 i ^. faifft little cold smile came upon her face. She had been 
 hi^ wife for a do*en years ; but in her heart she was contempp 
 tuous of, the k^ which he gave her, as if she hacl been a child', 
 a^ a rewatd.for her a^cquiescence. it is to be supposed Uiat she 
 l^yed.hinsL aiW^, her fashion. She had marned hiin/of her owu; 
 free wili^ and had never quarreled with him once'in all'their 
 marri^ ^^«v ,?fe^t J^et Jj;^^h§ k^9^^^ 
 
 V receiv€Mi, 
 
 T 
 
▲T HIS GATES.. 
 
 lai 
 
 the sting would have penetrated even throagh the tough 
 covciring which protected Reginald Barton* a amour proj^re^ if not 
 his heart Mrs. Burton went away into the great drawing-room, 
 wh^fe her children, dressed like little princes in a comedy ,, were 
 waiting for her. The Harcpurts, in. the old days, had mide a 
 mtich smaller room their family centre ; hut the Burtons always 
 used thereat drawing-room, and lived, as it were, in state 
 from one year's end to another. Here Olara Burton dwelt — a 
 little anonymous spirit, known to none even of her nearest 
 friends. They were all puzzled by her '* ways,** and by the 
 blank many-sided suiface like a prism which she presented to 
 them, refusing to be induenced by any. She did not know any 
 more about herself thau the others did. Outside she was all, 
 glitter and splendou^ ; liobody dressed so well, nobody had 
 such jewels, or &uch carriage^, or such horses in all the county. 
 She used every day, and in her homeliest moments, things which 
 even princes reserve for their best. Mrs. Burton made it a 
 boast that she had b'ob^st tilings ; she was the same always, 
 herself — ^and not her gUests or anything apart from herself— 
 being the centreof life in her house and in all her arrangements. 
 The dinner which the husband and wife had just eaten had 
 been as varied and as dainty, as if twenty people had sat dowp, 
 to it. It was her principle throughout her life. And yet within 
 herself the woman car^d for none of these things. Another 
 woman's dress or jeweb was nothing to her. She was totally 
 indifferent to the external advantages which every body else 
 believed her to be absorbed in. Clara was very worldly, her 
 aunts said, holding up their hands aghast at her extrav^ance- 
 and costly habits ; but the fact was, that Clara made all her, 
 splendours common, not out of love for them, but contempt for 
 them : a thing which nobody suspected. It is only a oynicaX 
 soul that could feel thus, and Mrs. Burton's cynicism went very 
 deep, ^ne thought nleanly of human nature, and did not 
 believe much in eoodness ^ but she seldom disapproved, and 
 never condemned. She would smile and cast about in her mind 
 (unawares) for the motive of any doubtful action, and generally 
 ended by finding out that it was " very natural," a sentence 
 which procured her credit |qr large toleration and a most 
 amiable disposition, but , Which sprang really from the cynical 
 charact^i (if h^r iiiindl' tt didiiot seem to her worth whUe W 
 
Id2 At HIS GATES. 
 
 censtiM or to hendamze. She did not oeueye m reformaitliQ!! ; 
 and incredulity ^as in her the tmn-brother of despair; bajb not 
 a tragical despair. She took it all very calpuly, not fueling that 
 it wai i^Orth while to be disturbed by it ; t^nd went on unccn- 
 sciously tracking out the mean motives, the ppor pretensions, 
 the veiled selfishness of all around her. And she was not ^y^^rej 
 that she herself was any better, nor did she claim superiority 
 —nay, she Would even track her own impi^lses |;>,a^k to their 
 root, and smile at them, though with a certain bitterness. But 
 all this wad so properly cloaked over that nobody suspected it. 
 People gave her credit for wisdom beci^us6 she generally; 
 beliieved the worst, and was so very often right ; and they 
 though^ her tolerant because she would take pains to show how , 
 it WJEus nature that was in fault, and not the culprit. I^o one^ 
 suspected the terrible little cynic, pitiless ^d l^opeless t^t she 
 was in her heart. 
 
 And yet this woman was the mother of childr^^i* and lia<l 
 taught them their prayers, and was capal)1e at that or any other ; 
 moment of giving herself to be torn in pieces for them, as a; 
 matter of course, a thing which would not admit the possibility 
 of doubt. She had thought of that in her many thinkings, 
 had attempted to analyse her own love, and to fathom how 
 ifiudh it was capable of. " As much as a tiger or a bear would do 
 for het cubs,'^ she had said to herself with her usual smile. Thei 
 strangest woman to sit veiled by Reginald Burton's fireside^ and; 
 take the head of his table, and go to church with him in the 
 richest, daintiest garments which money and skill could get for 
 her ! She was herself to Some degree behind the scenes of her 
 own nature ; but she could not always discriminate, down 
 among the foundations of her being, which was fali^^ and whict^ 
 
 was true. ^ • M^v;ii^V' )■'■*■''''■ ^"^V' 
 
 She went into the drawing-room, where her litUe Clara and 
 
 Ned were waiting, Ned was thirteen, a year older than Norah, 
 
 Drummond. Mr. Burton had determined that he would not 
 
 be behind the cousin ^ho refused him, nor allow her to suppose 
 
 that he was pinine for her love, so that his marriage had taken 
 
 place earlier than Helen's. Ned was a big boy, very active, and 
 
 not given to book learning ; but Clara, who was a year younger, 
 
 walk a meditative creature like her mother. The boy was stand* 
 
 ing outside the open window, throwing stones at the birds in 
 
AXmt GATES. 
 
 13S 
 
 tlie dlstfint trees. Little Clara stood, witliin ifatchiDg him, and 
 makitig her colhrnynts on the spori 
 
 " Suppose you were to kill a poor little hird. Suppose one 
 of the youiig oned— one of the bahy ones — were to try and fly 
 a little bit, and you were to hit it. Suppose the poor papa 
 when he comes home-- — " ^ i 
 
 ** Oh, that's enough of your supposes/' said ihe big boy» 
 Suppose I W6re to eat j^ / Bijt,^ do^^^ra^ti ^. ^^ I ^^ 
 think you would be nice. . ri . . j , 
 
 ;^*Ned !" said a voice from behind Clara, which thrilled him 
 tiirough and through, and made the stones fall from his hands 
 as if they had beeh suddenly paralyzed, and were unable to 
 grasp anything. "I know it is natural to boys to be cruel, 
 but I had rather not have it under my own eyes." 
 
 " Cruel !" cried Ned, with some discontent. "A parcel of 
 wretched sparrows and things that can't sing a note. They 
 have no business in our trees. They ought to know what they 
 would get." 
 
 "Are boys always cruel, mammal" said little Clara, laying 
 hold upon her mother's dress. She was like a little princess 
 herself, all lace and embroidery and blue ribbons and beautiful- 
 ness. Mrs Burton made no answer, She did not even wait 
 to see that her boy took no more shots at the birds. She drew 
 a chair close to the window, and sat down ; and as she took 
 her seat she gave vent to a little fretful sigh. She was think- 
 ing of Helen, and was annoyed that she had actually no means 
 of judging what were the motives that would move her should 
 she come to Dura. It was difficult for her to understand 
 simple ignorance and unsuspiciousness, or to give them their 
 proper place among the springs of human action. Her worst 
 fault philosophically was that of ignoring these commonest 
 influences of aU. 
 
 " Mamma you are thinking of something," said little Clara. 
 " Why do you sigh, and why do you shake your head V* 
 
 '*I have been trying to put together a puzzle," said her 
 mother, ** as you do sometimes; and I can't make it out." 
 
 ** Ah, a puzzle," said Ned, coming in ; " they are not at all 
 fun, mamma. That beastly dissected map Aunt Louisa gave 
 me — by Jove ! I should like to take the little pieces and 
 shy them at the birds." 
 
if aid 
 
 I never saw you playing with toyis." , - 
 
 "I Wonder if 1 ever did 1" said Mrs. "Burton, with aU^tl^ 
 gleam df surprise. ** Do ypu remember going to London pnp^, 
 Clara, and seeing your cousin Norah Drummond 1 Should jQjf. 
 like to have her here 1 " " She was littler than rae," said Clara 
 
 Erornptly, " though she was older. Papa told n^e.' They 
 Ved ih a f untty little poky house. They had no carriages iipr 
 anything. Sho had never even tried to ride ; flpiincy, mamma 1 
 Whieh i told her I had a pony all to myself, she onl^ ^if^<^^ 
 How difierfint she would think it if s le 6ame here !** 7; •,' ^.. 
 H^r mother looked at the child with a curious Ugtxt in her 
 ^old bliie igyes. She gave a little harsh laugh. < i 
 
 '* If it were not that it is natural, and you cannot help it/' 1 
 dhould like to whip you, my dear !" ; • ; ,- 
 
 - ■•.!} Jliilv/ . ■ .'lit 
 
 ' ■ i. .(' ; ; i ; / ; ■:. !. M ■ 
 
 him pdf^- 
 
 -:u. Hu <)« vlIivifJ-M, i : 
 
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 If/tr/ii ylnil fi »>J iff)'/ '•'.^(-.' ')d« um'U)d 
 
 
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 (!^i '^iqoiia 
 
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 .j'jtj&'.i;) liiBmd ip.(\'V .i;fftni,nai ,fuii 
 

 
 t ( 
 
 185 
 
 : M t /•. 
 
 cAawM XV. 
 
 
 I , I 
 
 EXT morning the fanjily at Dura paid a visit to the 
 Gatehouse, to see all its capabilities, and arrange the 
 changes ivhich might be necessary. It was a bright 
 morning after the rain, and they walked together down 
 the deWy aveiitie, where the sunshine played through the net- 
 work of leaves, and the refreshed earth sent up sweet odour^. 
 All was pleasant to sight and sound, and made a lightsome 
 beginning to the working day. Mr. Burton was pleased with 
 himsfelf atid everything suiTounding him. His children (he 
 was very proud of his children) stroUed along with their father 
 and mother, and there was in Ned a precocious imitation of 
 his own walk and way of holding himself which at once amused 
 and fl ittered the genij,l papa. He was pleased by his bQy*8 
 appreciation of his own charins of manner and appearance; 
 and little Clara was like him, outwardly, at least, being of a 
 larger mould than her mother. His influence was physibally 
 predominant in the family, and as for profounder influences 
 these Were not much visible as yet. Mrs. Burton had a toilette 
 fraiche of the costliest simplicity. Two or three dogs attended 
 them on their walk — a handsome pointer and a wonderful 
 hairy Sky0, and the tiniest of little Maltese terriers, with a blue 
 ribbon round its neck stich as Clara had, of whose colours h^r 
 dog was a repetitii^n. When she ixiade a rush now atid th^n 
 along the road, herself like a greau white and blue butterfly, 
 the dogs ran too, throwing up their hoses in the air, till Ned, 
 marching along in his knickerbockers, with his chest sdb out, 
 aiid his head held up like his father's, whistled the bigger ones 
 to his masculine side. It was quite a pretty picture this 
 family procession ; they were so well oflf, so perfectly supplied 
 with everything that was pleasant and suitable, so happily abov© 
 the world ana its neqessities. There was a look of wealth 
 about theni that might Umost have seemed insolent to a pooi^ 
 ilian. Th^ spectator felt sure that if fricasseed bank-tiotes had 
 beciii good to ^t, they must have had a little didli b^thktfor 
 
id6 
 
 ▲T HtS GATES. 
 
 ! iPM'! 
 
 breakfast. And the crown of all was that they were going to 
 do a good action — to give shelter and heip to the homeless. 
 Many simple persons would have wept over the spectacle, had 
 they known it, out of pure delight in so much goodness — if 
 Mrs. Burton, looking on with those clear cold blue eyes of hers, 
 had not thrown upon the matter something of a clearer 
 
 The inspection was satisfactory enough, revealing space 
 Sufficient to have accommodated twice as many people. And 
 Mr. Burton found it amusing too; for Susan, who was in 
 charge. Was very suspicious of their motives, and anxious to 
 secure that she should not be put upon in any arrangement 
 that might be made. There was a large, quaint, old drawing- 
 room, with five glimmering windows — three fronting to the 
 road and two to the garden — not French sashes, cut down to 
 the ground, but old fashioned English windows with a sill to 
 them, and a solid piece of wall underneath. The chimney had 
 a high wooden mantelpiece with a little square of mirror ]**t 
 in, too high up for any purpose but that of giving a glimmer of 
 reflection. The carpet, which was very much worii, was 
 partially covered by a tightly strained white cloth, as if the 
 room had been prepared for dancing. The furniture was very 
 thin in the legs and aneular in its proportions; some of the 
 chairs weie ebony, with bands of faded gilding and covers of 
 ininute old embroidery, into which whole lives had been 
 Vorked. The curtains were old-fashioned, big- patterned chint2 
 — 4ike that we call Cretonne nowadays — ^with brown linings. 
 Everything wa? very old and worn, but clean and carefully 
 mended. The looker-on felt it possible that the entrance of a 
 stranger might so break the spell that all might crumble into 
 dust at a touch. But yet there was a quaint, old fashioned 
 elegance — not old enough to be antique, but yet, getting 
 venerable — about the suent old house. Mr. Burton was of 
 opinion that it would be better with new red curtains and some 
 plain, solid mahogany ; but if the things would do, considered 
 that it was unnecessary to incur further expense. When all 
 the necessary arrangements had been settled upon, the family 
 party went on to the railway station. This was a very frequent 
 qustom with them. Mr. Burton liked to come home in state 
 —to notify his arrival by means of the high-stepping greys 
 
and the commotion they made, to his subjects^.bnt he was 
 quite willing to leave in the morning with grhceful hiimilil^ 
 and that exhibition of family affection which brings even the 
 highest potentates to a level with common men. Wheii hd 
 arrived with his wife and his children and his dpgs at the 
 station, it was touching to see the devotion with which the 
 station-master and the porters and everybody a.bout' receiveld 
 the great man. The train seemed to have been made on pur- 
 pose for him — to have come on purpose all the way out of the 
 Midland Counties ; the railway people ran all alon^ its length 
 as soon as it arrived to find a vacant carriage for their demijod. 
 " Here* you are, sir !" cried a smiling porter. "Here you arel, 
 sir ! " echoed the station-master, rushing forward to open the 
 door. The other porter, who was compelled by duty to stand 
 at the little ^ate of exit and take the tickets, looked gloomily 
 upon the active service of his brethren, but identified himseu 
 with their devotion by words at least since nothing else was 
 left him. "What d'ye mean by being latel" he cried to thife 
 guard. "A train didn't ought to be late as takes gen tlemeu 
 to town for business. iTou're as slow, you are, as uvou waib 
 
 theladies'express.''^.,^ .; .^i^^i^ ^^^1^^ ' 'm^^^^ 
 
 Mr. Burton laughed as he passed, and gladness stoi^ iiif^ 
 the porter's soul. Oh» magical power of wealth ! when it 
 laughs, the world crows glad. To go into the grimy world of 
 business, and be rubbed against in uie streets by inen who dicl 
 him no homage, must be hard upon such a man, aft^r the ro^ra) 
 calm of the morning and all its pleasant circumstances. It was 
 after just such another morning that he went again to St. 
 Mary's Boad, and was admitted to see his cousin. Sh^ hacl 
 shut herself up for a fortnight obstinately. She would haire 
 done so for a year, in defiance of herself and of na.ture, !had it 
 been possible, that all the world might know that Robert hiad 
 " the respect" due to him. She would not have deprived hiin 
 of one day, one foid of crape, one imbecility of grief, of her owu 
 will. She would have been ill, if she could, to do him hononr|. 
 All this was quite independent of that misery of whic^ 
 the world could know nothing, which was deep as the sea in 
 her own heart. That must last let her do what she would. 
 But sh^ would iam have given to her husband the! outside |op. 
 The forthig^t, hoFoyer, was ^11 that poor Helen coiuil ji^v^l 
 
138 
 
 Ai HtS 6AT1SS. 
 
 |i .1 
 
 ^i^adf siexin ncM was comiiig in^ and tlie creditors, to wbom 
 everytmng she had belon^edT When Mr. Burton was ad- 
 IDritted, t& man had begun to make an inventory of the 
 fmrnitiire. The pretty drawing room was already dismantled, 
 ihe plants all removed from the conservatory ; the canvases 
 Were stacked against the wall in poor Robert's studio, and a 
 jpicture dealer was there valuing tliem. They were of con- 
 siderable value now — more than they would have been had it 
 jltill been possible that they should be finished. People who 
 were making collections of modern pictures, would buy them 
 readily as tlie only "Druiumonds" now to be had. Mr. Bur- 
 ton went and looked at the pictures, and pointed out one 
 that he would like to buy. His feelings were not very delicate, 
 but yet it struck a certain chill iipoi him to go into that room. 
 Poor Drummond himself was lying at the bottom of the river 
 -—she could not reproach any one, even allowing that it was not 
 all his own fault And yet — the studio was unpleasant td Mr. 
 ^lirton. It affected his nerves ; and in anticipation of his in- 
 terview with Heleti he wanted all his strength. "**'' 
 '' !But Helen received him very gently, more so than he could 
 have hoped. She had not seen the papers. The world and 
 Its interests had gone away from her. She had read nothing 
 tjlut the good books which she felt it was right to read during 
 Her seclusion. She was unaware of all that had happened^ un- 
 Buspicious, did not even care. It had never occurred to her to 
 think of dishonour as possible. All calamity was for her con- 
 centrated in the One which had happened, which' had left her 
 idptiiihg in($re't6 fear. She was seated in a very small rbopii 
 opeii^iijig on the garden, which had once been appropriated to 
 Noiriah and her playthings. She was very pale, with the white 
 rim of her cap close round her face, and her hair concealed. 
 Korah was there too, seated close te her mother, giving her wh^t 
 support she could with her instinctive faithfulness. Mr. 
 j^urtdh Was more overcome by the sight of them than he C0vdd 
 have thought it possible to be. They were worse even diah 
 the studio. He faltered, he cleared his throat, he took Helen's 
 ^i^nd and held it^then let it drop in a confused Way. He 
 wa9 overcome, she thought, with naturalvemotio^, with grief 
 ^Qd pity. Anld it made her heart soft eVeh to a than 6h^:ioV^ 
 so little. *' ThaiJ&B," she murmured, as she sank dowia upon 
 
WiSa''' 
 
 li 
 
 her chair. That ti^mor in his voicid CQyeried ^ iiiiiltiti]4e pi ainil. 
 
 « I have b^en here before," he said. 
 
 "Yes, 80 I heard : it was very kind. Don^t speak of thai, 
 please. I am not able to bear it, though it is kind, very kind 
 ofyou." 
 
 " Everybody is sorry for you, Helen," he said, " but I don't 
 want to recall your grief to your mind ** 
 
 " Recall ! " she said, with a kind of miserable smile. '* That 
 was not what I me^nt ; but— Reginald — my heart is too sore 
 to bear talking. I~~cannot speak, and— I would rather not 
 cry — not just now." ; ■ , ' ; 1 i t . 
 
 She had not called him Reginald before since they were boy 
 and girl together ; and that, and the piteous look she gave 
 him, and her ti-emulous prot<*st that she would rather not cry, 
 gave the man such a twinge through his very soul as he had 
 never felt before. He would hiaye changed places at the mo- 
 ment with one of his own porters to get out of it— to escape 
 from a position be alone w^s aware of. Norah was crying 
 without restraint. It was such a scene as a man in tho very 
 height of prosperity and comfort would hesitate to plunge into, 
 even if there had not risen before him those ghosts in the hewsr 
 papers which one day or other, if not now, Helen must find out. 
 
 " Wh^t I wanted to speiak of was your^own plans," he sai^ 
 hastily, ''^ what you think of doing, and^f you will not thitilc 
 me impertinent — ^what you have to depend upon ? 1 >m yoi|[jr 
 nearest relation, Helen, and it is right I should know.** • 
 
 " If everything has to be given up, I suppose I shaU h^^e 
 nothing," slie and faintly. *^ There was my hundred a year 
 settled upon nac. The papers came the other day. Who niust 
 I give them toi J have nothing, ^ suppose." 
 
 "If your hundred a year was settled on you, of course you 
 have that, heaven be praised," said Mr. Burton, " nobody can 
 touch that. And, Helfn, if you like to come back to the old 
 neighbourhood, I have part of a house 1 could offer ybu. It is 
 of no use to ine, 1 can't let it ; so you might be quite easy in 
 your mind about that. And it is furhi|Bhed after a sojrt ^ 4nd 
 it would be rent firee." ' , . .' ' ,\\ ,^^\ !'t>,,-'hf 
 
 i?he tears wljiph she had bee^ restraining iTjshed tolieif e^ek 
 "iiowkindyouarel" she said. " dh, I can't say aiiy thihit ^ 
 but you are very, very kind." 
 
 • 
 
140 
 
 IT HIS OJ^tSS. 
 
 !i 
 
 BH! 
 
 ''I^eyermind about that You used to speak as if you did 
 ii6 1 like the old neighbourhood— — " 
 
 *' Ah I " she said, *' that was when I cared. All neighbour- 
 hoods are alike to me now." 
 
 ** But you will get to care after a while/' he said. ** You 
 will not always be as you are now." 
 
 She shook her head with that faint little gleam of the pain- 
 fullest smile. To such a suggestion she could make no answer. 
 She did not believe her grief would ever lighten. She did not 
 wish to feel differently. She had not even that terrible experi- 
 ence which teaches some that the broken heart must h^al one 
 way or other — mend of its wound, or at least hav6 its wound 
 skinned over; for she had never been quite stricken down to 
 the ground before. •>, . 
 
 " Anyhow, you will think of it/' Mr. Burton said in a sooth-' 
 ing, tone. " N orah, you would like to come and live i^ the 
 country, where there was a nice large garden and plenty of 
 room to run about. You must persuade your mother to come. 
 I won't stay now to worry you, Helen, and besides, my time is 
 precious j but you will let me do this much for you, I hope." 
 
 She stood up in her black gown, which was so dismal and 
 heiayy, without anv reflection of light in its dull blackness, and 
 
 mich ' ' 
 
 have a h6me-*-for Norah ; and I have nowhere — ^nowhere to 
 
 "Thei iiis setiled," he said witti ea^eaf'-^tt 1^ ikin- 
 finite relief to hini. Never in his life had he been so anxious 
 to serve a:iother. Was it because he had loved her once 1 be- 
 cause he loved her still? because she was bis relation 1 His 
 wife at that v^ry moment was pondering on the matter, tduch- 
 ing it as it were with a little sharp spear, which was not ce- 
 lestial like Ithuriel's. Being bis wife, it would have been ha 
 tural enough if some little impulse of jealousy had come across 
 her, and moved her towards the theory that her husband did 
 this out of love for his cousin. But Mrs. Burton had noi 
 blood eifiough in her veins, and she had too clear an intelligence 
 in l^eii'hcAd W be jealoius... Sl^e came to such a very differ- 
 ekt cbnci'usioh, that I hesitate to re|>e^t it ; and she^ too, half 
 
AT HIS QATE8. 
 
 i 
 
 141 
 
 „', r .,Ti 
 
 geared bj the longjournej she had taken, and her yenr imper- 
 fect knowledge of the way by which she had travelled, did 
 not venture to put it into words. Bat the whisper at the bot-..(^^| 
 torn of her heart was " Kemorse ! Remorse 1 " ^rs. Barton 
 herself did not know for what, nor hoff; iS^r^ ^^ husband iiffi^^ 
 guilty towards his cousin. ' '' ;. 
 
 But it was a relief to all parties when this interview was 
 over. Mr. Burton went away drawing a long breath. And 
 Helen applied herself courageously to the work which was be- 
 fore her. She did not make any hardship to herself about those 
 men \vho were taking the inye^tory. It had to be, and what 
 was that — ^what was the loss of everything in comparisons—^ 
 The larger loss deadened her to the smaller ones, which is not,, 
 always the case. She had her own and Norah's clothes tp 
 pack, some books, a few insignificant tjrifles which she waa 
 allowed to retain, and the three unfinish<)d pictures, which in- 
 deed, had they not been given to hvr, she felt she could have 
 stolen. The little blurred sketch from the easel, a trifling sub- 
 ject, meaning little, but bearing in its smeared colours the last 
 handwriting of poor Robert's despair ; and that wistful face 
 looking up from the Jepths, up to the bit of blue sky far above , 
 and the one star. Was that the Dives he had thought of, the 
 soul in pain so wistful, so sad, yet scarcely able to despair f It 
 was like hie letter, a sacred appeal to her not on this earth only> 
 but beyond — an appeal which would outlast death and the 
 grave. " The door into hell," she did not understand, but she 
 knew it had something to do with her husband's last agony. 
 These mournful relics were all she had to take with her into 
 the changed world. 
 
 A woman cannot weep violently when she is at work. 
 Tears may come into her eyes, tears may drop among the gar- 
 ments in which her past is still existing, but her movements 
 to and fro, her occupations stem the full tide and arrest it. 
 Helen was quite calm. While Norah brought the things for her 
 out of the drawers she talked to the child as ordinary people 
 I talk whose hearts are not broken. She had fallen into a cer- , 
 tain stillness — a hush of feeling. It did her gqod to be astir. ^ 
 When the boxes weo^e full and fastened she turned to her pic^. 
 tures, enveloping them carefully protecting the edges of them 
 I with cushions of folded paper. ISforah was still very busy ia 
 
w 
 
 AT HI8 oxna. 
 
 M 
 
 finding the eord for her^ and holding the oanvMet in their 
 p^ce. , Tite child hkd tammaged out a heap of old neWspa- 
 pers, Ti^ith which the packing* wa9 being done. Suddenly i&e 
 begkti to cry as she ittobd hcSlding one in her hand.' ' ' '' ' 
 
 *'0h, mampnal" she said, looking up with big ^yes hi 
 Helen's face. Oryine was not so rare in the house as to sur- 
 prise her mother. . She said — : 
 
 ** Hush, my darling ! " and wettt oa But When she felt the 
 pilper thrust into her hatid, Helen 'stopped short in her task 
 and looked, not at it bbt at Norah. The tears Were hanging 
 oil the child'c^ cheeks, but she had st0|iped crying. She point- 
 ed to one column in th^ paper and watched her mother with 
 eyes like those of Di ves^ in the picture. Heleh gave a cry when 
 sn6 looked at it, " Ah i " as if sotne sharp blow had beeli given 
 to her. It was the natiie, nothing httt, her husband's name, 
 that had pierced her likjB a sudden dagger. Btit she read on, 
 without doubting^ with|ont thinking. It was the dHijcle writ* 
 teh two dih^s before oil the history of the paihter Drummond, 
 ** the wretched man," ^ho' had Airnishcd a. te^ct for a sermon 
 to the J)(iili/ Stmajfhore. 
 
 Norah had react onl^ a sentence at the beginning which she 
 but partially unde|[^tOod, It Was something tinkind, something 
 untrue about *' poor papa.^ ^ut she read lier mother now in- 
 stead, comprehending it by het looks. Helen Went ovet the 
 whol'e without drawmg breath. Jt brought back the blood to 
 her pale cheeks ; it ran like a wild new life into eviry irein, 
 into every nerve. She turned round in the twihkhng of an 
 eye, without a pause ibr thought, and put on the black bonnet 
 with'itr overVhelmins crape veil whidh had been brought to 
 her that morning. ShjB ha4 no^ wanted it befbre. It was the 
 fir^t time in hei* life that SfaO had i^eq\^ired td look at the 
 world through thdsie folds of crape. 
 
 ** May I cpnie too, matoma T" said Norah isofbly. She did not 
 krioW Inhere they were going' j but h^ceforWard where her 
 ntotner was there was the place for Norah, 'at home or abroad, 
 sleopitig of wakiiig. The child clUng to Heleh's hand as they 
 opened the^fainili&r dpor^ an<^ Irent out Ohce again— after a life- 
 tiibe-^ihto the otic.<) familiar; tho^ (Changed ^nd awful world. A 
 «ttihhiet^feV^nittig'''<ia.Vly jtttiei the WoJih tiiefviay off the lilacs, 
 th^ fitst:r6S^ i^OttiJtii^ dii'^et^e^s'^ihb Sti^j^^ d&yiight dazisiled 
 
 ■•J 
 
▲T HIS 01TB8. 
 
 143 
 
 them, and the sound of passing voices bnzsed and echoed, as if 
 they had been the centre of a crowd. Or rather, this was their 
 effect upon Helen. Norah, clinging to her hand, pressed close to 
 her side, watched her, and thought of nothing more. 
 
 Dr. Maurice was going to his solitary dinner. He had wash- 
 ed his hands and made himself daintii!y nice and tidy, as he 
 always was ; but he had not changed his rooming cofit. H4 
 vas standing with his back a^inst the writing table in hit 
 library, lookmg up dreamily at Drummond's picture, and wait}' 
 ing for the sound of the bell which should summon him intfO 
 the next room to his meal. tVhe^ ^he door bell sounded, hd- 
 stead impatience seized him. i^;^''"': '';,"'; 
 
 "What fool cab thai be comiiignow 1" he said to himself 
 and turned round in time to see John's scared face peeping into ' 
 the room before he introduced those two figures, those two with 
 their dark black dresses, the one treading in the very steps of 
 the other, moving with her movement He gaVe a cry of sur- ,. 
 prise. He had not seen them since bhe day after DrummoncL's 
 death. He had gone to inquire, and had left anxious, {kind 
 messages, but he^ too, had conventional ideas in his mind and 
 had tholight the widow ''would not be able "to see any one. ' 
 Yet now she had come to him 
 
 "Dr. Maurice," she said, with no other preliminary, coming 
 forward to the table with her newspaper, holding out no hano, 
 giving him no salutation, while Norah moved mth her, step for 
 step, like a shadow. **Dv. Maurice, what does this mean V* 
 
 '11! 
 
 ■ I ,' 
 
 7 OUV' 
 
 .lui'f illrfr 
 
 'i,t/?'Mfj 
 
 ■■ 'lit 9fli Til h-ilnj-: -y./f 
 
 '* 
 
 ■■>■• ;,' 
 
 
lu 
 
 Al' His OATEd. 
 
 ixjji; n'j.-io I 
 
 -■r-: 
 
 yl>i4' t)Mfi f)3i' 
 
 «i*£ 
 
 ^'C;?Aj*p:^,xvT.' 
 
 ■?ijj 
 
 I'li 
 
 WOtJliDnot like to say what despairing thought Dr. 
 Maurice might have had about his dinner in the first mo- 
 ment when he turned round and saw Helen Drummond's 
 pa^e face under her crape veil; but there were many thoughts 
 on the subject in his household, and ipuch searchings of heart. 
 John had ^^^ aghast at the arrival of visitors, and especially 
 of such visitors at such a moment ; but his feelings would not 
 permit him to carry up dinner immediately, or to sound the 
 
 beU^he note of warning. ^,f.,la,d;, :w;^vu 
 
 f* I canna do it, I canna do it — do not ask me, he said,; for 
 he was a north-country man, and whep his heart was moVed 
 feU back upon his old idiom. 
 
 ** Maybe the lady would eat a bit herself, poor soul," the 
 cook said, in insinuating tones. " Vve known folks, eat in a 
 strange house, for the strangeness of it like, when they couldn't 
 swallow a morsel in their own." 
 
 ** Pon't ask me ! " said John, and he seized a stray teapot 
 and be^an to i>oli8h it in the trouble of his heart., There was 
 silence in the kitchen for ten minutes at least, for the cook was 
 a mild woman till driven to extremities ; but to see fish grow- 
 ing into wool and potatoes to lead was more than any one 
 could be expected to bear. 
 
 *' Do you see that 1 " she said in despair, carrying the dish up 
 to him, and thrusting it under his eyes. John threw down his 
 teapot and fled. He went and sat on the stairs to be out of 
 reach of her remonstrances. But the spectre of that fish went 
 with him, and would not leave his sight ; the half-hour chimed, 
 the three-quarters — 
 
 " I canna stand this no longer !" John said in desperation, 
 and rushing up to the dining-room, sounded the dinner bell. 
 
 Its clang disturbed the Tittle party in the next room who 
 were so differently occupied. Helen was seated by the table 
 with a pile of papers before her ; her hands trembled as she 
 turned from one to another, but her attention did not swerve* 
 
▲T HIS O^TES. 
 
 She was, following through them every scrap that bore upon 
 that ope 8U' JBQt. Dr. Maurice had procured th^in all for hdri 
 He haid felt that one time or other she must know all, and 
 that then her information must be complete. He himself was 
 walking about the room with his hands in his pockets, now 
 stopping to point out or explain something, now taking up a 
 book, unsettled and unhappy, as a man generally looks when he 
 has to wait, and has nothing to do. He had sought out a book 
 for Norah, to the attractions of which the poor child, yield- 
 ed. At first she had stood close by her mother. But the con- 
 tents of those were not for Norah's eye, and Helen herself had 
 sent her awav. ' She had put herself in the window, her nat- 
 ural (lace ; the ruddy evening lieht streamed in upon her, an4 
 found out, between the black of her dress and that of her hat^ 
 a gleam of brown hair, to which it gaVu double brightness by the 
 contrast; and gradually she fnll into her old attitude, her ola 
 absorption. Dr. Maurice walked about the room, and ponder- 
 ed a hundred things. Ue would have given half he possessed 
 for that fatherless child^who sat reading in the light, and for; 
 getting he|r childish sorrow. The mother in her mature beau- 
 ty was little to him^ — but the chiM — ^a child like that I And 
 she was not his. She was Robert Drummond'a, who lay 
 drowned at the bottom of the river, and whose very name wa^ 
 drowned too in those bitter waters of calumny and shamei. 
 Strange providence that metes so unequally to one and to an- 
 other! The man did not think that he too might have had a 
 wife and children had he so chosen ; but his heart hankered 
 for this that was his neighbour's, and which no magic, not even 
 any subtle spell of love or protecting tenderness, could^^Y|^ 
 make his own. / /r ' 
 
 And Helen, almost unconscious of the presence of either, 
 read through those papers which had been preserved for her. 
 She read Golden's letter, and the comment upon it. Sh^ read 
 the letter which Dr. Maurice had wiitten, contradicting those 
 cruel assertions. She read the further comments upon thai 
 How natural it was j how praiseworthy was the vehemence of 
 friends in defence of the dead — and how entirely without proof I 
 The newspaper pointed out with a cold distinctness, which 
 looked like hatred to Helei[i, that the fact of the disappearance 
 of the books told fatally againsi ** the unhappy man. Whj 
 
 rr7rWr>l««,«J*lJ|fftl,._i'>:J^j)tttrf:i 
 
 ■■i^'i-ft^fimi^i^^'^'^^-: 
 
i4« 
 
 li'1m'0i.rta. 
 
 iiiil lie desti^^r thdse evidences which would no doubt li^to 
 cldttr^ hitn' h^ he icted fairly and hon^tlyl Day by d^y 
 ^hb ti^ed th^; cbnrlse of this controversy which had been going 
 6n while she had shut herself up in darknbss. It gleamed 
 licross her as she turned from one to another that this was 
 why her energy had bken preserved and her strength sustain- 
 ed. I^he had not bi'oken down like other women, for this cause. 
 God hftd ke|)t h^r tip for this. The discussion had gone on 
 ddwnto that very morning, when a little editorialnote, append- 
 ^ to a short letter — one ^ the many which had come from all 
 dbrtti of p>6ople in defence of the painter — had announced thieit 
 sUbh a' controversy could no longer be carried on **m thi^se 
 ^kgesl** *^^No doubt 'the friends of Mr, Drummond will take 
 further steps to j^rove the innocence of which they are so fully 
 ^^hvinced, it said, "and' it mtist l;e evident, to all paiiies that 
 the ^dlumns of a' heWspaper is not the place for a prolotjged 
 discussion on a personal subject." Helen scarcely spoke While 
 (ffie Viead all theto. ' Bhe did not hear the dinner-bell. The noise 
 olf thei dodr ^hen Dr. Maurice rushe<| to it with threatening 
 itbrd knd look, to John's confusion, scarcely moved her. **Be 
 ti[tii^t, dear," she said uncotfsciously, when the doctor's voice in 
 the hall, whei*e h6 had fallen upon bis servant, came faintly 
 ihib hei^ >bstraciion. ' *' You rascal! how dare you take such a 
 lib6lftjr '^hen ydu knew who was with me 1" was what Dr. 
 M&unce Was sayink wi th rage in his voice. - Bu t to Helen it 
 iiej^ined as if little T^orah, forgetting the cloud of misery about 
 ^er, 'hiA begnh to talk more Ujghtly than she ought. " Oh, my 
 ibhild, be ^ui^t," she repieated , " be quiet ! " Ail her soul was 
 kbisbrbl^d in this. ' She had no room for any other thought. 
 
 pr. Maurice came back with a flush of anger on his ^ce. 
 "TthcBse people wbtild think it necessary to consider their miser- 
 ;iible dishes if the laist' judgment were coming on," he said. He 
 i^i(fi a kind man, and vety sorry for his friend's widow. He 
 >r6i!^ld have ^iVen up much to help her ; but perhaps he too wis 
 Uuhgr}', and the thoujgbt of the spoilt dishes increased his 
 .^^hemehce. She looked at him, putting back her veil with a 
 blahkl look of absolute incomprehension. She had heard no 
 thiiie, kh&w nothing. ' Comfort; and dinners, and servants, and 
 M'tSe'iblat^abheriiiUia of btdin^Iife, wete a' hundred niiles 
 "^^ froiii her 'thdii^tsT '^■'^^^'&^' .■ ^ .^^)ou ^TTi:. 
 
ATrJKS^eATEH. 
 
 m 
 
 " Ypu I " , j^i^r w<ilf I ThprQ woa siomethiAg piikftoite i^. Iwr> look 
 q£ appeal l^he pij^ , fap<} ftiid gleaming eyes, the li0lplQ9«|ie9$ 
 ^nd tjhe ei^^rgy,; ^11 ^tnupkihim.i^t a/glanpe-na oombinatiASi 
 W%hilie,,<jii4;nptiWder8tw<i •■'; ".i>liil-. ■!-;; .i ■: rdwni 
 ,^ " ^es^^e I tXqu , iwiU ?fty vhat^ can J dp !; 1 cannot/MU 
 tWi?i^pi5l4iWb^t he^as^jap ypw hay© dpae. nTtew»l?8.for,1;b»;^// 
 iilie i^idyjbpldiog put her haad tpihim. **'iChQ. wifejo^nnp^ 
 spe^ forj he^ husljft^d* i w4 t caftmoti M^rite *o tlie pf^p^rst.. i i J 
 am,q)jit!E» . j^p^aplk , / if?^ jMftimfte,; t«U flW; iC ypn.lwQW:. Wh«t 
 
 ^WiJ'ilv^:^: .ii li'iiv/ Mrriji-j tj:i!j n^w hjii>'-.'»i ?jifi>;rt aiii~-Hg>D,H^ (-.iii cii 
 .JLpr glfi^mjpf, wild jftdjgnatipnpwap gonp. oI|JI had sun^il)^ 
 JTore the controversy^ the.d^^s^ipn whipH l<he ¥^iV!9pl(pei1B 
 wpuld iflp lo v^^ o^j cpiiti^ue, if popri [^hejl?t ha4i melb ( wim no 
 djBfj^nd^rs, sh/" > Id^ave felt heiiiself inspired. But hislriendu 
 had sppken^. -/ -^davKhocoi^ldi^peak. And deep deprepsipn 
 fy\\ pyer, hfjr. ; ";dh .1 ", fihe said, dft^ing her hftnds, ^* must. m9 
 hear ifc ? la thejje, npthing-^nothing I can dpi"; i >'>lq Uil 
 
 Ag{4n apd again: 1^£^4< he ^ed himself the sftme qne9tiioi|. 
 *^ Mrs. p^i^nimond," he, si^id, " ypn Q|in dp npthing ; tiry ^iumI 
 jn^ke np ypur mind, tp; it. I hoped .ypu. might, never iiHno]Dr<. 
 A lady pan dp nothing in a matter, pf business* You feel ypil|^ 
 self th^ you cannot if i*ite or speak. And what; good WoM 
 it dp eyenif you conld ?, X s^y that, a more honourable, m(^]^ 
 never existed. You cpuld say,; I know, a great deal ,mo^0 tlian 
 th|it ; but wliat , dpes it, mifvtter. without prpof ) If we cpuld 
 ^nd put about thpsp bpok^-^-TT-" ;,; 
 
 "He did, not kinow anything abput hppks" st^id, Helen ji " he 
 could not even.keep his i own, a^countS'-^at. least; it wa^i a. trpvi^ 
 hie to him. Oh, you know that ; how often have .weT?rlaughft4 
 -Oh, my Gpd, niy iQpd 1 "ii r ,ffN (mah «m«s ml . . ! i 
 
 Lajighed I Th!9; wo^d^ brou^c^t thp tpaTS ev^n to; ,to 
 Mf!,iixic^'8 eyes, ^e ,put jj^, hJ^nii on, ,her: a^n^ .and i patfeed, ^ 
 *pftly» as, iffsjip.Jiad,; b^n, ,a, chiji f * ippprjspul/l popr spj^li ! " 
 he said : the. tears had got, intpr his ,i^piceMtP!0,,janf|,jAll .h)P 
 P,rn,<ih9#gh|fl,l^eft^,o^t;i ofAy«,mi«d,iift,th§i)K«W^h,pj{i)u| ^jff^r 
 
14S 
 
 AT fill OATSfi. 
 
 pathjr* He watf k cautious man, noi dii^sed to eottthit'him- 
 Belf v but the touch of emotion overpowered all his defiances. 
 *'Look here, Mrs. Drummond," he said; "I don't know what 
 we may be able to do, but I promise you something shall be 
 done — I give you my word. The shareholders are making a 
 movement already, but so many of them are ruined^ so many 
 hesitate, as people say, to throw away good money after the 
 bad. I don't know why I should hesitate, I am sure. I have 
 neither chick nor child." He glanced at Norah as he spoke — 
 at Norah lost in her book, with the light in her hair, and her 
 outline clear against the window. But Helen did not notice, 
 did not think what he could mean, being absorbed in her c\7n 
 thoughts. She watched him, notwithstanding, with dilating 
 eyes. She saw all that at that moment she was capable of seeing 
 in his face — ^the rising resolution that came with it, the flash of 
 purpdse. ** It ought to be done," he toid, "even for justice. 
 1 will do it— for that-^and for Robert's sake." ' 
 
 < She held out both her hands to him in the enthusiasm of her 
 ignorance. '* Oh, God bless you ! God reward you ! " she said. 
 It seemed to her as if she had accomplished all she had come 
 for, and had cleared her husband's name. At least his ftiend 
 had pledged himself to do it, and it seemed to Helen so easy. 
 He had only to refute the lies which had been told^; to prove 
 how true, how honest, how tender, how good, incapable of hurt- 
 ing a fly ; even how simple and ignorant of business, more ig- 
 norant almost than she was, he had been ; a man who had 
 never kept any books, not even his own accounts ; who had a 
 profession of his own, quite 'difiereut, at which he worked; 
 who had not been five times in the City in his life be lord he be- 
 came connected with Kivers's. After she had bestowed that 
 blessing, it seemed to her almost as if she were making too 
 much of it, as if she had but to go herself and tell it all, and 
 prove his whitest innocence. To go herself — ^but she did not 
 know where. ,iudni 
 
 Dr. Maurice came down with a little tremulousness of excite- 
 ment about him from the pinnacle of that resolution, lie 
 knew bettei* what it was. Her simple notion of ;/* going and 
 telling" resolved itself, in his mind, to an action before the 
 law-c6urts, to briefs, and uritn^sses, and expendituM. But he 
 was a man without chiok or child; he waa not ruined by 
 
AT HIS-^QATSa 
 
 m 
 
 BivenV Hie sum he bad lost had been enongh toi^ive him an 
 interest in the question/not enough to injure bis powers of ope^ 
 ration. And it was a question of justice, a matter which some 
 man ougbt to take up. Nevertheless it was a great resolution 
 to take. It would revolutionize his quiet life, and waste the 
 substance wbich be applied, be knew, to many good uses. He 
 felt a little shaken when be came down. And then^^bis din* 
 ner, tbe poor friendly unfortunate man ! 
 
 " Let T^orab come and eat something with me," he said, 
 " tbe child must be tired. Come too, and you shall have a 
 chair to rest in, and we will not trouble you ; and then I will 
 see yon home." 
 
 *'Ab) " Helen gave an unconscious cry at the word. But 
 already, even in this one hour, she bad learned the first bard 
 lesson of grief, which is that it must not fatigue others with its 
 eternal presence — that they who suffer most must be content 
 often to suffer silently, and put on such smiles as are possible 
 — the ghost must not appear at life's commonest board any more 
 than at tbe banquet It seemed like a dream when five minutes 
 later she found herself seated in an easy-chair in Dr. Maurice's 
 dining-room, painfully swallowing some wine, while Norah sat 
 at tbe table by him and shared his dinner. It was like a 
 dream ; twilight had begun to fall by this time, and tbe 'lamp 
 was lighted on the table — a lamp which left whole acres of 
 darkness all round in tbe long dim room. Helen sat and looked 
 at the bright table and Norah's face, which turning to her com- 
 panion began to grow bright too, unawares. A fortnight is a 
 long age of trouble to a child. Norah's tears were still ready 
 to come, but the bitterness was out of them. She was sad for 
 sympathy now. And this change, the gleam of light, the 
 smile of her old friend — ^his fond, half-mocking talk, felt like 
 happiness come back. Her mother looked on from tbe shady 
 corner where she was sitting, and understood it all. Robert's 
 friend loved him ; but was glad now to pass to other matters, 
 to common life. And Robert's child loved him, but she was a 
 child, and she was ready to reply to the first touch of that same 
 dear life. Helen was growing wiser in her trouble. A little 
 while ago she would have denounced the changeableness, and 
 struggled against it. But now she understood and accepted 
 what was out of her power to change. 
 
 '^fW^l^^m^^iMte^t^ite^^S^^^jgj^^ _ 
 
m 
 
 Aft dUft 4Ji^rm 
 
 tin 
 
 iM^nvery kitid. Heldnhti^ ti^' Mtod^ee^ hM i^ att^^k^f 
 #lih the assault 611 her husbandV m^moi^. ShW's^kief'off^ti^i^ 
 ^itihaiialf gratitude which fiU^ the Di^ctot* With 8^i)l|[)^^^ 
 fury. He had been verykittd^^he had ofl^^ed her fc ihbubei ^ 
 ' '* I taught you^'diisliked Durd/' he Htdd With- kA ikp^tWce 
 #M6h he cbuM not restrain. 
 
 • "Add 80 i did," she absWered'dirleatnly; "ttfl Idtig aii Icbtd^ 
 
 It does not matter now." "' ' •'< '. -^ 
 
 *^Th^h you will fttill'gor ' ' :dA" 
 
 "fetiail 0h,yfe8r wh^re shbttMwe go el«e1' The^/^ 
 
 w^r!<i is the same^to u« rio'w/'^id Hel^i « Arid Notah'WiU 
 
 ^ http^i^ in the country i it is good ttii*'*' ■• ' 
 
 '*«Omid air T said Dr; Hiauride. " Goc(<l» hefcvettk,* whkt »d^ 
 
 ym h^ thinking of 1 And the child will grovK Up Witlieut any 
 
 m^ [ tij ' te»ch her, without a— friend. WhAt ie tb b* ' ddne ' fd* 
 
 her' edticatioii I What is to be done-^Mrsi DtunAihond' I- Wei^ 
 
 yd<ir|' pardon. I hope you will forgive me. I hav^ got intb a 
 
 #ay*^'^ interfering ahd ^laking myself ridiculous, bfit' I'did not 
 
 "N^y,"'i3aid HeleA gefltly, half because she felt s6i^eatyj 
 &iE^' biecanse there was a certain comfort ih thiiikihg that any 
 ottte cared, "I am ttot angry. I know you would think 61 
 What is best for Norah; But Dh Maurice^ we sh^' bcfV<«?y 
 
 Hb did not mak^ anyreply ; hewas half ashatUed '6f biri 
 vehenlence, and yet withal he was Unhappy at this lieWcbailger 
 Wa^ itnol enough that he had lost Druttinlond, his oldest 
 fihiidt but he must lose the cMM too, whiom hei had watched 
 ^^ since she Was borni H^ cast a glance rbuiid dpduthd 
 g^^at tOoin, which might have held a dozen pieople, atid iti 
 Sis ittind surveyed the echoing chambers above, of which but 
 (rtihvrki occupied. And then he glanced at Nbrah's face, still 
 birightj but slightly clouded bVer^ beside him, and thought bf 
 ihb pt«tty pictui^ she ha^ made in the library sddied- agaitist 
 «b«r<wiiidoW;i Burton, who was their ^ti^my<whbihad>b^tt'i&d 
 chief agent in bringing them b (>bt«fH}]t, ^ouM givtf 1^«i£i^^^ 
 
AT BIS OATB^ 
 
 m 
 
 hQinQ,t(^ shelter t^ieir hou^elesfi headq. And why.cquld ii^o^he, 
 who hii4 neither chick nor child, who had, a houa^.SQ ninp^ too. 
 hi^, for him, why could not he taJj^e then^ in 1 J.ust to, hty^p me 
 ehii^ io^thehovLM, to see her now and then, to hear her ypice 
 gn the stairs, or watch her running from room to room^ woul^ 
 he all he should want. They could Uve ther^ an4 harm ^o^ 
 hody, and save their little pittance This thought ran through 
 his mind» and then he stopped and confounded ^lirton.. Buj^ 
 Burton had nothing to do wi,th ^^. He ha,d better, h^ye op^-, 
 founded the world, which >ulu ^t permit him tc f^^p^v 'il^wififfi 
 to his friend's widow. He gave .« furtive glance^ 4elen in 
 th^ shadow. He (ficL not want H^len in, his, house, ^l^ fi^^i^4X 
 wife l^aclnev^r attracted him ; and thpugli.ne, would hj^vfi b^|i^ 
 the kindest of guardians to his friend's widow, still thj^ft^yr^ 
 nothing in her tnat^ touched his heart. But he coul4 not Qpei^ 
 his doors to her and say, " Come" He knew if he did sp hoiff j 
 the men would grin and the women whisper ; how imper^in^ 
 prophecies would flitahout, or slandersmuch worse than imperti- 
 nent. No, he could not do it , he could not have Norah hy, tp 
 help on her education, to have a hand in her tj^^ining, tomak|B 
 her a cl^ld of his own. He had no child. Jt wa^ Jbis lot hi 
 live alone and have no soft hand ever in his, ^'^l this wat 
 very ridiculous, for, as I have said before, Dr. Manfice waa 
 very well off; he was not old , or bad-looking^ and he migkt 
 have married like other men. But then he d^d not want U^ 
 marry. He wanted little Norah Drummond to he his .,chiid| 
 and he wanted nothing more. • w *- 
 
 Helen leaned back in her chair without any thought oJT whivfj 
 was passing through his heart. That her child should have 
 inspired a grande passion at twelve had never entered her mind, 
 and she took his words in their simplicity and pondered over 
 them. '* I can teach her myself," she said with a tremor in 
 her voice. This man was not her friend, she knew. He had 
 no partial good opinion of her, such as one likes one's friends 
 to have, but judged her on her merits, which few people are 
 vain enough to put much trust in ; and she thought that very 
 likely he would not think her worthy of such a charge. " I 
 have taught her most of what she knows," she added with a 
 little more confidence, ** And then the great thing is, we shall 
 be very poor," • 
 
 ^'i^mamt.f 
 

 ip' 
 
 Ui 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 "Forgive me!" lie widj "don't say any more. I Wa6 tnd- 
 bardonaole rash — ^impertinent — don't think oi /vhat I said.'" 7- 
 
 'And then he ordered his carriage for them and sent th^m 
 hotn^. I do not know whether perhaps it did not occur to 
 Helen as she drove hack through the summer dusk to her dis- 
 mantled house what a difference there was between their desti^- 
 tution and poverty and all the warm glow of comfort &nd ease 
 which surrounded this lonely man. But there can be no doubt 
 that Norah thought of it, who had taken in everything with 
 her bto wn eyes, though she said little. While they were driv- 
 ing along in the luxurious smoothly-rolling brougham, the 
 child crept close to her mother, clasping Helen's arm with bouh 
 her hands. "Oh, mamma," she said, "how strange it is that 
 we should have lost everything and Dr. Maurice nothing, that 
 he should have that great house and this nice carriage, and us 
 be driven away from St. Mary's Road ! What can God be 
 thinking of, mamma 1" , , ; ; " 
 
 "Oh, Norah, mv dear child; ive liave each othel'; and hefcas 
 hphody," said Helen ; and in her heart there was a frenzy of 
 tiiuihph over this mail who wa^i so much better off than she 
 ^as. The pborsp often have that consola ^n and eiometimes 
 it ii^ not much of a consolation after all. i- t; Helen felt it to 
 the bottbpa of her heart as she drew her child to her, and felt 
 the Warm, soiPt clasp of hands, the routid cheek against her own. 
 Ttiro desolate, lonely creatures in their black dresses — but two, 
 and together: whereas Dr. Maurice, in his wealth, in his 
 strength, in what the world would have called his happiness, 
 was'butone:*T.'^"^''^'*^*' 
 
 Inxil fiH .'MnnA 
 
 ).■„,, . 
 
 
 M,. 
 
 
 ■■mm[ mJUi 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 1, .i»|Vff{ iin ,fKt'/i^f»rf m j»^ fffii.f 'to >fftlfft ; 
 
 GHAPTEB XVIL 
 
 IBM 
 
 If. 1 
 
 <hrti rift 
 
 |HE pretty house in St. Mary's Koad — what a change ha4 
 come upon it ! There was a great painted hoard in front 
 describing the desirable residence, with studio attached, 
 which was to be let. The carpets were half taken up and Itdd 
 in rolls along the floor, the chairs piled together, the oos^y; 
 pretty furniture, so carefully chosen, the things which belorigied 
 to the painter's early life, and those which were the product of 
 poor Drummond's wealth, all r«^moved and jumbled together, 
 and ticketed "Lot 16," "Lot 20." *' Lot 20," was the chair 
 which had been Helen's chair for years — the one poor Robert 
 had kissed. If she had known that, she would have spent her 
 last shilling to buy it back out of the rude hands that turned 
 it over. But even Helen only knew half of the tragedy which 
 had suddenly enveloped her life. They threaded ^eir way up<> 
 stairs to their bedroom through all those gliosts. It was stul 
 early ; but what could they do down-stairs in the house whidi 
 no longe** retained a single feature of hornet Helen put her 
 child to bed, and then sat down by her, shading the poor little 
 candle. It was scarcely quite dark even' now. It is Ikever 
 dark in June/ Through the open window there came the sound 
 of voices, people walking about the streets after their work 
 was over. There are so many who have only the streets to 
 walk in, so many to whom St. Mary's lioad, with its lilacs and 
 laburnums and pretty houses, was pleasant and fresh as if it had 
 been in the depths of the Country. Helen saw them from 
 the window, coming and going, so often two, arm in arm, 
 who loitered and looked up at the lighted house, and spoke 
 softly to each other, making their cheerful comments. The 
 voices sounded mellow, the distant rattle of carriages wias soft^ 
 ened by the night, and a soft wind blew through the lilacs, and 
 some stars looked wistfully out of the pale sky. Why are they 
 80 sad in summer, those lustrous starsi Helen looked out ait 
 theih, and big tears fell softly out of her eyes. Oh^ face bf 
 Dives looking upl Oh^ true and kind and just and gtotle 
 
154 
 
 ▲T HIB QMTEB, 
 
 soul I Must she not even think of him as in heayen, as hidden 
 in God with the dead who depart in faith and peace, but gone 
 elsewhere, banished for ever! The thought crossed her like 
 an awful shadow, but did not sting. There are some depths 
 of misery to which heiQthy niUiuiie ^efbses to descend, and this 
 was one. Had she felt as many good people feel on this sub- 
 fwi, andiiasi she herself believed theoretically ^hatBhe felt^ I 
 ]Bno# whii- Helen would have done. She would have gone 
 down to that river I and joined him in his own way,, wherever 
 lie Wias^ choosinjg it so. No doubtv she Would have been wrong. 
 Bi^tr «h* did not descend into that abysA. She kept by her 
 faith in Gbd < instinetivellr^ not by any doctrine. Did not God 
 hMitof But' even the edge of it^ the i^l^ow of the thought 
 was enough t6 chill her &>m head to foot. She stole in from 
 the wind)ow^ and tat down atthe foot of the bed where Norah 
 layV' akid tried to thinks She had thought there could ibe no 
 Ibtbre change^ n6 difference one way or other ; but since this 
 Veiy morning whJEtt changes there were !-^her last confidence 
 •hBtteredy^her liist comfort thrust from her. Robert's good 
 Bpimei! She^ tat quite sileilt for hours^ thinking it overi while 
 f^orah slept. Sometimes for a moment it Went nigh to make 
 Hermad;! Of all frantic things ih the World, there is< nothing 
 lUde tbat'SeniB^ uf impoteoce-n-to feel the wrbng and to be un- 
 abtoi to ' move Against it. It woke a feverish irritation in her, a 
 tourd resentment, a rage which she could not overcome, nor 
 satisfy by any exertion^ What could she do, a feeble woman, 
 igainst the men who had cast this stigtaia on her husband) 
 ^e did not even knoW who they were^ except Golden. It 
 iwas he who was the origin of it all, and whose profit it was to 
 ^Mrdve himself innocent % the fable of Robert's guilt ! Robert's 
 l^iit ! li was the ihbst . horriUe farce, a fiuroe which was a 
 jferagedy, which every dne who knew him miist laugh at wildly 
 smong their* tears. But then the world did not know him ; atid 
 ihi world likes to think the Worsts to beliete in guilt as the 
 ^h& tiling'- always possible. That there were people who knew 
 li«ttca^ had been proved to herrr-peoi^e who had ventured to 
 caU^ouiindignantly, and say, '*This is not true/' without wait> 
 ingito be^kJBd. Oh, God bless Uiem ! God bless them ! But 
 Kdifflp/Wei^otrthfe world! 
 &I^WJiebitiie:'niilii>>waftidaiB{^ wiilkeis 6ttt«ide had 
 
A^ &# ^Afri^ 
 
 1M 
 
 gone, wtien sll wis qliii;!^^ ^^te^^ tttf#> Midtilren tiis trftM«^ sfM 
 of a late pasBCf^^f, Heleni^iit td thle windo^^otictt'^dfe^ MM 
 looked dnt tipoh that t^diM.' Wh^t a littte tit of a wdrld it'-ii 
 tfa^t awoinaii cati see fboM her vntuddw i-^a ftMr silent' rdoliv 
 and closed wihdows, oMe or tvr6 figures going and coming, not 
 a soul whom she khew or oould inlfluence; but all thoie tiii>i 
 known people, when they he^d -her husband^b name, if it wei^ 
 years and yiears hettee, would remembeli^ the sknder that' had 
 staii^ed it, and would never know hh innocence, his inoapaoity 
 even for sueb guilt. Thib is what gives force to a llo, thit lA 
 what gives bitterness, beydnd telling, to the hearts of thosid 
 who are impotent, whose contradiotioti counts fbr nothii^g, whd 
 have no proof, but only' c^Miiinty. What a night it wait !— 'liktt 
 Paradise ^veti in Lonaoh. The angek might have been istrky- 
 ingthicrgh those bhied^ths of air, through the celelstiiu 
 warmth atid coolness, without any derogation from thteir hfigk 
 estate. It was not mOoiillight, nor stiarlight^ nor dawti,' but 
 some heavenly combination df ftll thr^e which breathed' over 
 the blue arch above, so serette, a^ d^ep, sb unfkthomAbl^ ; and 
 down below the peopled eaHh li&y like a c^ild,' defbnoeleda and 
 trustfulin the arms of its Mtiker. " Dear (x'od, this very city seeniii 
 asleep ! '* But here was one pair of eyes that no slee^ visited^ 
 which dared not look up t6 heaVen too closely lest her dead 
 should not be there ; which dared not take any comfort iti the 
 pity of earth j knowing that it condemned while it pitied: God 
 help the solitary, the helpless, the wronged, those who can see 
 no compensation for their sufferings, no possible alchemy thdt 
 dm bring godd dut of them ! Heleii crept to bed at lltot, and 
 slept. It was the Only thiUg in Which where remained atiy con- 
 solation ; to be unconscious, to sliut bUt life ahd- lij^ht and all 
 that accompanies thed ; to be for ad hour, for ft t&oment, ft^ 
 good a^ dead. There are mikny pebple always j to Whom tfaiil' is 
 the best blessing remaining ill the World: "^' *>« t>J ^ ' '^ 
 
 The morning brought a letter from Mr; Burtott, aUnonneiii^ 
 that the house at Dura was ready to receive his cousin. Helen 
 Would have been thankful t^ go but fbr the discovery she had 
 made on the previous day. Alter that it seemed to hei^ that to 
 be Oil the s^oi, to be where she could maintaiii poor lt6bert/6 
 ciiuse, or hear of others mftihtaining it, was all she wttiited ]M># 
 in the wblrld But thifil Wilis a M^.fH^cy> sUiih fttf the<|fboii<Slll^ 
 
 "»^aw«.«*i«B>W4'''« 
 
■ 
 
 
 wH^'r 
 
 
 W|; 
 
 Mi'' 
 
 if*'' 
 
 Wli '' 
 
 1; 
 
 mm/ 
 
 
 156 
 
 AT HIS OATIB. 
 
 not inclulffe in* She arnrnged everything to go to her new 
 home on Uie next day. It was time at least that she should 
 leave this place in which her own room was with difficulty pre. 
 served to her for another night All the morning the mother 
 and daughter shut themselves up there, hearing the sounds of 
 the commotion below — the furniture rolled about here and 
 there, the heavy feet moving about the uncarpeted etairs and 
 rooms that already sounded hollow and vacant. Bills of the 
 sale were in all the windows ; the very studio, the place which 
 now would have been sacred if they had been rich enough to 
 indulge in fancies. But why linger upon such a scene 1 The 
 homeliest imagination can form some idea of circumstances 
 which in themselves are common enough. 
 
 In the afternoon the two went out — to escape from the house 
 more than anything else. " We will go and see the Haldanes," 
 Helen saitl to her child ; and Norah wondered, but acquiesced 
 gladly. Mrs. Drummond had never taken kindly to the fact 
 uiat her husband's chief friend lived in Victoria Villas, and 
 was a Dissenting minister with a mother and sister who could 
 not be called gentlewomen. But all that belonged to the day 
 of her prosperity, and now her heart yearned for some one who 
 loved Kobert — some one who would believe in him — ^to whom 
 no vindication, even in thought, would be necessary. And the 
 Haldanes had been ruined by Rivers's. This was another bond 
 of union. She had called but once upon them before, and then 
 under protest ; but now she went nimbly, almost eagerly, down 
 the road, past the line of white houses with their railings. 
 There had been much thought and many discussions over Mr. 
 Burton's proposal within Uiose walls. They had heard of it 
 nearly a fortnight since, but they had not yet made any fonnal 
 decision ; that is to say, Mrs. Haldane was eager to go ; Miss 
 Jane had made a great many calcuUtions, and decided that the 
 offer ought to be accepted as a master of duty ; t>ut Stephen's 
 extreme reluctance still kept them from settling. Something, 
 however, had occurred that morning which had added a sting 
 to Stephen's discouragement, and taken away the little strength 
 with which he had faintly maintained his own, way. In the 
 warmth and ifervour of his hearty he had used his little mags- 
 nne to vindicate his friend. A nuniber of it had been just go* 
 iog to the press when the papeirs had published Prummond'i 
 
At His QAtB6. 
 
 157 
 
 cotiddmnfttton, and Haldatie, who knew htm so wfll--a]l hik 
 weftknesi and bis strength — had dashed into the field and pro* 
 claimed, in the only way that was possible to him, the inno- 
 cence and excellence of his friend. All his heart had been in 
 it ; he had made such a sketch of the painter, of his genius 
 (poor Stephen thought he had genius), of his simplicity and 
 goodness and unimpeachable honour, as would have filled the 
 whole denomination with delight, had the subject of the sketch 
 been one of its potentates or even a member of Mr. Haldane's 
 chapeL But Robert was not even a Dissenter at all, he had 
 nothing to do with the denomination ; and, to tell the truth, his 
 iloge was out of place. Perhaps Stephen himself felt it was 
 so after he had obeyed the first impulse which pror pted it. 
 But at least be was not left long in doubt. A letter had 
 reached him from the magazine committee that morning. They 
 had told him that they could not permit their organ to be mad' 
 the vehicle of private feeling ; they had suggested an apology 
 in the next number ; and they had threatened to take it alto- 
 gether out of his hands. Remonstrances had already reach :^ 
 them, they said, from every quarter as to the too secular eh ir- 
 acter of the contents ; and they ventured to remind Mr. Hal- 
 dane that this was not a mere literary journal, but the organ 
 of the body, and intended to promote its highest^ its spiritual 
 interests. Poor Stephen! he was grieved, and he writhed 
 under the pinch of this interference. And then the magazine 
 not only brought him in the half of his income, but was the 
 work of his life— he had hoped to ** do some good " that way. 
 He had aimed at improving it, cutting short the gossip and 
 scraps of local news, and putting in something of a higher 
 character. In this way he had been able to per&. »de himself 
 through all his helplessness, that he still possessed H>me power 
 of infiuence'ovtsr the world. He had been so completely sub- 
 dued by the attack, that he had given in about Mr. Burton's 
 house, and that very day the proposal had been accepted ; but 
 he had not yet got the adsault itself out of his head. All the 
 morning he had been sitting with the manuscript and proofs 
 before him which were to make up his new number, comment- 
 ing upon them in the bitterness of bis heart. 
 
 " I suppose I must put this in now, whether I like it or not/' 
 he said. ** I never suspected before how many pangs ruin 
 
 <^':'Tmm-3twmmtmiy!smt^imiifiC'm'^i'Mmmm;^i 
 
W3 
 
 ,4iih-mfi?M'm' 
 
 .Wne^W t^ing. rl n^ipftld V^i^it ui\ th^ fire, i^ , I 4^6^, »p4, jfir^e 
 ^e world of ^p^much iiUi'temper^ fpHy ; ^^^ iBi^tepu^. ifr^ot^ 
 Xt« aq4 I;4ai;Q no^ Fanjcy,,! (iar^ no^! If I !ba4 W^ W^ 
 pi^dept^ I ^J^Quld have oo^e as^d A^icl W ni^aziQe— ftll 
 
 , 'MQh $^heii,my dear I but what ^o^ il; matter w^t joii 
 |)i),ViiQj4f thfy like it 1; YQuace always writing, writiijig, ^ear- 
 }ng yQurp^if5Piii.t. Wty shioulda'i %!U^^)^y,^ ^pgie .^jj^jblji^ 
 
 •^OUj^|p.t; , :X01il. oughtn't to mip(i,rrrTrTT"., '.,![,^ ,t'i-.Y c.l> ul^uuhoil 
 
 ft ; v^* Butj X dPi windi," hft p?^d, with, a feeWe smUe. ** It js |kU I 
 lave t9 d<^» "^^P^ik*®?* & W» to me. vbat I am to ypiijyfiu 
 wrpuld hot like to see we neglected,, led iipon i iinski^i li;l^e jtlne 
 larpdigaJL'!, ,;::., ,: . . 
 
 ' .*? Oir, Sjt^phen dear, how qm yov^ t»i^f^Jh^JP^ MghfMy* 
 #a4dhiBn^>ther.with teStT^ in her pyes^l^^^^^^ ; 1^ .. nj 
 
 rrif* '^S'fll* that, is what I feel, i^othi^r. I shall f|ay;e ^,feedm; 
 |}1mj14. vith, hiasks-rtea^mep^ings iEtpd repoijta pf; this f^n^ that 
 d^apeV and how much they ,giye. They i^ere afraiji; o^ xa^ 
 qj^pe ; they daf ttd not grumble when X rejpcted , iM^d: cU(t Qut^; 
 j^Utrrritjis I whpfdi^re not now." ; 
 
 ; M^, X^aldarve wisely made no reply. In her heart she, bad 
 UHp^ themagazifne better whpn it wa^, i^l abpujl^ the tearmeet: 
 ings audi the, progress of the good oausp. She; )iked tb^ bit^ 
 ^ I se^rif^n gog^^p, and, to know how much l^he difeiient phapeli 
 sttb^ciibiod, If hioh congregation had gi v^n its minister a ^lyer 
 ii^pptj^nd Wihich, had given him hift viispij^psj^. JJl tbi? ^9» 
 l^jt^reinteifesting tOiher than all Stephen V new-fi^ngled. dispusr 
 fion^, of pVibiic matters, his. «^«rn^s9i sbput* educatipQ apid 
 tbpU£|ht,f^ndiagrieat!many oth^ii things tb^t did, not concern 
 hds^mptbei?. i But she heldi tbisi opiiiiop, i^itblQ: beir^lf, ^Pdi was 
 ItPiipdlgnantr with tbe magazine commitjt^as/he^t QWlidesire. 
 Xhe two fell MWt for pome time, b^^wpg on wji|bh bw Uti^r*- 
 iwre^ j%|id she i^itb. her 90wing, till; .th?, oi^Iy serv^pt they bad 
 )f)fty,a nwden^ ;<Mj|edj?arp««;c#i^w^ Mtip girl,"i<?ftpi^i» i>Witb,a 
 
 tffiiyu Iftdpn, iwithj kniveSi and . f^r^iif) hy th^ Qjptjb/, fpPi ; tdipAejr. 
 
 The girl's eyes wejRpj red j und. i^^jpty fltreftfe ft<;r((?^jpft,».<j^be?k 
 %}4QW^ wh0re h«ri teai* bad) b«^&>^ wiiped^; aiWiajrT ^itb l^r apron. 
 nun Wba*«»->b». matter »•.;■ said M^^^^^e^.^ j,, .i. •■ .i^u^a -.li 
 
If ^ms WLtttA. 
 
 18^ 
 
 ^Oti;^\esMt,iWB/V^ She 
 
 didn^ ouglii'to BpeaklBO; oh^ shedidii'tiHiglitilo; ■! Myimethes'i 
 ft lEleat-bohier in our i}ha|^l, lnid< I'ma member. .<^mimjibt^goaig 
 to ^ear it 1 We ain't folks to be pushed about." u i > t -rm 
 
 " Lay the cloth, and do it quietly/' said the bld> lady.> 1 And 
 with' a JBilent exasperation, such as onlv & woinai^ can- feely she 
 watched the unhandy creature. ** Thank heaTen, we ' •hall 
 want no girl in the country/' she said' tOMherself. But iwheb 
 her eye fell on Stephen, he was actually smildn^^smiHDgofe 
 the plea for exception, with that mingled sadneifs and .bitban 
 ness which it pain^ his mother to see. Thet eirl iwentxm 
 sniffing and sobbing all the same. She had^ already idriveni ibev 
 other mistress almost frantic in the kitchen. iMiss Jane' had 
 left a little stew, a savoury dish such as Stephen's j fanciful nip 
 petite required to tempt it, by the fire, i^o^lycomingitidi per- 
 fection. "The girl" had removed it to the fender, wheifeiit 
 was standing, growing cold, just at the critical moment vihkn 
 all its juices should have been blending under the gentle, ;geniAl 
 influence of the fire. Common cooks cannot' stew. Thejir, cai 
 boil, or <hey can bum ; but they never catch the; delicious im«^ 
 dium between. Only such persons as cook for love, or«udl 
 as possess genius^ can hit this more ithan golden meani^ i^^kM 
 Jane combined both Characters. She did item nmoft andtjmf 
 tmore ; and' when she found hei' fra^ant dish set . asidei ifior tlift 
 sake of " the girl's " kettle, hfet feehngs can; bebut iaint]iji!)jii]»- 
 agined by the uninitiated. *'< I wish I could beat you ! " shftsjojil 
 with natural exaspera/tiion. 'And this to *' a joined msmbev^^ 
 a seat'holder's daughter 1 Stephen kughed When thotaloMwas 
 repeated to him, with a laugh which ' was fiiU of bitterness 
 He tried to swallow his portion of the stew, but it went againftt 
 him. " It is the same everywhere," he; said ; M the \ same > sub* 
 jeotionof the wise to the foolish^ postponing of the b^ toi tha 
 Worst. Rubbish to pleas0><the jomed membersi^silenco.raii^ 
 uselessness to us." ' /^ 
 
 "Oh,'>Stephen 1" said'Mrs.' Holdane, ^'you knowI^amnM* 
 always of your way of thinking. After ailk there isi something 
 in it ; for when a girl is athuirch tcember^ 'she oan't be.iqaifas 
 without thought ;^ and when th^ negleotS'herworkitiis possible, 
 you knowj ^hat she imi^hti > 'b^ obcvpi^dv witk ibetlori. tAungs. • > il 
 don'tme*Df.t0 8af that iti»«ii;exe«seii'' •<>. -^u^ •■ ..n.u .i.u- ^nit 
 
160 
 
 At ms OiiTtS. 
 
 MnMIshoalditliiDkinot, indeed," said Mias Jane. 'f<f'4i^ther 
 htLve. some one that knew her work, and ;did it^ thfin a doj^^a 
 ^taroh members. A heathen to^iay would have been a9 much 
 use to me." . 
 
 I 1 *^ That may be very true," flaid her mother ; "hut I think, 
 considering Stephen's position, that such a thing shpuld not 
 be said by you or me. In my days a person stpod up for chap- 
 el, through thick and thin, especially when he had a relation 
 who was a minister. You think you are wiser, you young ones, 
 and Want to set up for being liberal, and think church as good 
 aS'chfipel, and the world, so far as I can make out, as good as 
 either. But that way of thinking would never answer me." 
 li! *f Well, thank heaven," said Miss Jane in atone of relief, 
 *^ in. the couFitry we shall not want any * girl/ " 
 
 V^liat is what I have been thinking,'' said Mrs, Haldane 
 with alacrity; and in the painful moment which interyened 
 while the table was being cleared and the room put in order, 
 ihe painted to herself a fancy of "the country/' She was a 
 Londoner bom, and had but an imperfect idea what the word 
 meant. It was to her a vague vision of greenness, parks and 
 trees and areat banks of lowers. The village street was a 
 thing she had no conception of. A pleasant dream of some 
 pleasant room opening on a garden and level with it, crossed 
 Aer mind. It was a cottage of romance, one of those cottages 
 which make their appearance in the stories which she half dis* 
 iapproved of, yet felt a guilty pleasure in reading. There had 
 Deen one, an innocent short one, with the gentlest of good 
 meanings, in the last number of Stephen's magazine, with just 
 such a cottage in it, where a sick heroine recovered. , She 
 thought she could see the room, and the invalid chair outside 
 the door, in which he could be wheeled into the garden to the 
 aeat under the apple-tree. Her heart overflowed with that 
 pleasant thought And Stephen might eet well 1 Such a joy 
 was at the end of every vista to Mrs. Haldane. She sat and 
 dreamed over this with a smile on her face while the room was 
 being cleared ; and h r vision was only stayed by the unusual 
 sound of Helen's knock at the door. . ^ 
 
 ->i<^Mt will be some one to, see. the house," said Mis9 Jane, and 
 she went away hurriedly, w^ith loud- whispered ins^ructipns tio 
 the girl, into " the front drawing-room/' W be ready to receive 
 
x¥yi& OATBlk 
 
 M! 
 
 any applicant ; so tliat Miss Jane was not in the room when 
 Beikm with lier heart beating, ^d Norah clinging close to hisf 
 as her shadow, was shown abruptly into the invalid's room. 
 "The girl" thrust her in without a word ot introduction or 
 explanation. Norali was familiar in the place, though her 
 mother was a stranger. Mrs. Haldane rose hastily ^ mcQt 
 them, and an agitated speech was on Helen's lips that she had 
 come to say good-bye, that she was going away, that they 
 might never meet again in this world, — ^when her eye caught 
 the helpless figure seated by the window, turning a half-sur- 
 prised, half-sympathetic look upon her. She had never seen 
 poor Stephen since his illness, and she was not prepared for 
 this complete and lamentable overthrow. It drove her own 
 thoughts, even her own sorrows, out of her mind for the mo- 
 ment. She gave a cr^ of nungled wonder and horror. She 
 had heard all about it, but seeing is so very different from 
 hearing. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Hsddane I " she said, going up to him, forgetting 
 herself — with such pity in her voice as he had not heard for 
 years. It drove out of his mind, too, the more recent and still 
 more awful occasion he had to pity her. He looked at her 
 with sudden gratitude in his eyes. ; , .^j; 
 
 " Yes, it is a change, is it ^ot 'i " he said with a faint smile, 
 He had been an Alp-climber, a mighty walker, when she saiffj 
 him last. 
 
 Some moments passed before she recovered the shock. She; 
 sat down by him trembling, and then she burst into sudden 
 tears — not that she was a woman who cri§d much in her sor- 
 row, but that her nerves were affected beyond her power of 
 control 
 
 " Mr. Haldane, forgive me," she faltered. " I have nevcg, 
 seen you since — and so much has happened — oh, so much 1" ..,f 
 
 " Ah, yes," he said. " I could cry too — not for myself, for 
 that is an old story. I would have gone to you, hadlbeei|i 
 able — ^you know that; and it is very, very kind of you to 
 come to me." 
 
 " It is to say good-bye. We are going away to the country, 
 Norah and I," said Helen ; "there is no longer any place for 
 us here. But I wanted to see you, to tell you^-you seem — ^to 
 belong— -so much — ^to the old time." 
 
16? AT HIS Gi,TB8S. , 
 
 Ah, that old, tune! the time which spfi^ns aU hearty. |t 
 hiAd' not b^en p^(^ While It ^xblted^but ndW^oWis^r^^ ! 
 
 Peih^|is 3t6|>h6h Haldane renien|i.bet^ It h4ttet than she .^Ijd ; 
 porhaps iti might eVdn crosa hk mind t^t in ihat pld^time's^^^ 
 hadkibt 6itrea much tb see hiih^ had libt -^^elcomed him to' W 
 house with any pleasure. Biit he vras too generoUs to allpw 
 himself even to think such a thought, in her moment of dbwi 
 fall. The dejpths were more bitter to her even' thaif to hmi 
 He would not let the least sl^dow even in his mind fret he 
 in her great trouble. He put out his hand; and graspe^ %6Xk 
 with a sympathy which was more tilling than wotds. "r''^t , "; 
 '"Arid I hope your mother will forgive me too," she siiid 
 with some timidity. " I thought I had more (Command of my- 
 self. We could not ^o without saying g6od-bye." 
 
 ** It is very kind — it is more than I have any right io expect," 
 said iMrs. Haldane. " And we are going to the country too. 
 We are going to Dura, to a house Mr. Burton has kindly offered 
 to us. Oh, Mrs. Drummond, now I think of it, probably we 
 owe it to you." 
 
 ** No," said Helen, startled and mystified ; and Jien she added 
 slowly, "I am going to Dura too." 
 
 " Oh, how very lucky that is ! Oh, how glad I am !" said 
 the old lady. " Stephen, do you hear ? Of course, Mr. Burton 
 is your cousin ; it is natural you should be near him. Stephen, 
 this is good newb for you. You will have Miss Norah, whpm 
 you were always so fond of, to come about you as she used to 
 ddi^that is, if her mamma will allow her. Oh, my dear, I am 
 s6 glad ! I must go and tell Jane. Jane, hei'e is something 
 that will make you quite happy. Mrs. Druniinond is coming too. 
 
 "She Vent to the dOor to sunurion her daughter, and llelen 
 was left alone with the sick man. She had not loved lUm in 
 the old time, but yet he looked a part of Robert now, and her 
 heart melted towards him. She was glad to have hihi tb her- 
 self, as glad as if he had beeii a brother. She pilt her hahd on 
 the airm of his chair, laying & sort of doubtfbl claim to him. 
 *< You have seen what they say)" she asked, looking in his face. 
 
 " Yes, ail ; with fury," he said, " with indignation ! Oh ttiy 
 6bd, that I should be chained here, and good lor nothing ! 
 
 They might as well have said it of that child." 
 **0h, & it not tmxel, ctu^U" she s^d, ' 
 
 ihfiiii 
 
 .(Ill 
 
 (..J 
 

 im 
 
 These half-dozen words were all 'that passed between them, 
 and yet they comforted her more [than all Dr. Maurice had 
 8ud. He had been indignant too, it is true ; but not with this 
 fiery, visionary wrath — ^the rage of the helpless, who can do 
 nothing. SirrA UMT'IAl: > 
 
 When Miss Jane came in with her mother they did the moi|t 
 of ^e tallpng».aQd Hcilen shruxik into her^^^Af ; but when^she hafl 
 risen tjo go ^iiray^ Stephen thrust a little packet into her ^an4« 
 " Bead it^ whei^ you go home/' he. said. It was his little di'S' 
 senting magazi^e> the insignificant brochure which she would 
 have scorped ;90 in the old days. With what tears, with what 
 swelling, pf her heart,, with what an agony of pride and love 
 and sorrow: she read it that night 1 .a 
 
 And so the old house was closed, and the old life ended.* 
 Henceforwfurd) eyerythipg that, awaited her w^s cold and sad 
 
 ,! ■:-■! (/jiiit, mI'J •I'.-'t ••'•:, '■ ' ...,-. «.; ^^*Ui:- • 
 
 l,t;uii ^»J''^i' ,'»-::i(Oif i'-^"- •U-n'., - . . •_.'-. :-JiW/ !>/•/■ •'■■ 
 
 , .•; -Uiut M»it .rri liw' -^ri 'nb^N \;}fIT .;•■ * 
 
 . r;j;;) Hid ■iiiiii'.yji uJ tKxftn ij^ t>lwntr 
 i :r. •,ain|ui;> u,] •.. /■ ;/^ '-1 " ,l>i.«i>^ ofi '\Mlno isoj, ImuI t " 
 
 "Jii ^>. / ■•ll I 'Ui'l 
 
 '-\ .. > ' 
 
 V^ill 
 
 111 I' I 
 
164 
 
 AT Htt aJL*nA, 
 
 . :! ' ^ilutli. 
 
 CHAPTER XVm. 
 
 ELEN had still another incident before her, hoiireyer, ere 
 she left St. Mary's Road. It was late in th6 afbanoon 
 _ when she went back. To go back at all, to enter the 
 dismantled place, and have that new dreary picture thrust into 
 her mind instead of the old itnage of home, was painful enough, 
 and Norah's cheeks were pale, and even to Helen the air and' the 
 movement conveyed a certain relief. They went into the quieter 
 part of the park and walked for an hour or two saying little, 
 liow and then poor Norah would be beguiled into a Uttl? mono^ 
 logue, to which her mother lent a half attention — but that yas 
 alL It was easier to be in motion than to keep still, and it was 
 less miserable to look at the trees, the turf, the blue sky, than 
 at the walls of a room which was full of associations of happi- 
 ness.. They did not get home until the carriages were 
 beginning to roll into the park for the final round before 
 dinner. And when they reached their own house, there stood 
 a smart cabriolet before it, the horse held by a little tiger. 
 Within the gate two gentlemen met them coming down the 
 steps. One of them was a youth of eighteen or nineteen, who 
 looked at Helen with a wondering awe-stricken glance. The 
 other was — Mr. Golden. Norah had closed the garden door 
 heedlessly after her. They were thus shut in, the four con- 
 fronting each other, unable to escape. Helen could not believe 
 her eyes. Her heart began to beat, her pale cheeks to flush, a 
 kind of mist of excitement came before her vision. Mr. Golden 
 too, was not without a certain perturbation. He had not expected 
 to see any one. He took off his hat, and cleared his voice, and 
 made an effort to seem at his ease. 
 
 " I had just called," he said, " to express — ^to enquire — did 
 not know things had so far advanced. I would not intrude — 
 for the world.' 
 
 ** Oh !" cried Helen, facing him, standing between him and 
 the door, " how dare you come here 1" 
 
 " Dare, Mrs. Drummoud 9 I — I don't understand- 
 
 » 
 
>T mS CMLTIIB. 
 
 166 
 
 << Yiom do understfOK^*' Micl«he» '' lMitfir-4tf«r better thttuwqr 
 one else does. And how dare you come to. look at ^our 
 handiwork i A man may be what you .are* and yet have a 
 little shame. Oh, you robber of the dead 1 if I had been any- 
 thing but a woman, you would not have ventured to look me in 
 the face." 
 
 He did not venture to look her in thefSAoe then ; he looked at 
 his companion instead, opening his eyes, and nodding hia head 
 slightly, as if to imply that she was crazed. " It is only a 
 woman* who^can insult a man with impunity," he said, " but I 
 hope I am able to make allowance for your excited feelings. It 
 is natural for a lady to blame some one,, I suppose. Savers, let 
 us go." 
 
 ** Not till I have spoken," she cried in her excite- 
 ment " This is but a boy, and he ought to know whom he is 
 with. Oh, how is it that I cannot strike you down and trample 
 upon you 1 If I were to call that policeman he would not take 
 you, I suppose. You liar and thief! don't dare to answer me. 
 What, at my own door ; at the door of the man whose good 
 name lyou have slandered in his grave — oh my God ! who has 
 not even a .grave because you drove him miad ! — " she cried, her 
 eyes blazing, her cheeks glowing, all the silent beauty of her 
 lace growing splendid in her passion. 
 
 T^.youi^g man gazed at her as at a^ apparition, his lips 
 falling apart, his face paling. He had never heard such a voice, 
 never seen such an outburst of outraged human feeling before. 
 
 " Mrs. Prummond, this is madness. I — I can make allow- 
 ance for— for excitement " 
 
 " Be silent, sir," cried Helen, in her fury. " Who do you 
 suppose cares what you think 1 And how dare you to open 
 your mouth before me 1 It is I who have a right to speak. 
 And I wish there were a hundred to hear instead of one. This 
 man had absconded till he heard my husband was dead. Then he 
 came back and assumed innocence, and laid blame on him who — 
 could not reply. I don't know who you are ; but you are young, 
 and you should have a heart. There is not a liar in England 
 — not a thing so vile as this man. He has plundered the dead 
 of l^is ,good nm9e. Now go, sir. I have said what I have to 
 si^." 
 
 '^.Htfrn-. Vmmm^ m^p^ifOB you will MTe to ^asweisn- 
 
166 
 
 At HIS GATES. 
 
 aometime von will re](»6iit of this/' dried Odld^n, Idieli^g his 
 preseiioe of mind. • 
 
 " I shall never repent it/' cried Helen. ** Go ; yon^lnake 
 the place you stand on vile. Take him away from m^ si^ht; I 
 have said what I had to say." '.;'"' ^f" '; 
 
 Mr. Golden made an effort to recover himself. He sti^ckhis 
 young companion onithe shoulder with an attempt at jocularity. 
 
 ** Come, Rivers/' ne said, "come along, we are dismissed. 
 Don't you see we are no longer wanted here 1" 
 
 But the lad did not answer the appeal. He stayed behind 
 with his eyes still fixed upon Helen. ' '/ 
 
 " Please, don't blame me," he said. " Tell me if I can do 
 anything. I — did not know " 
 
 ** Thank you," she said faintly. Het excitement had failed 
 her all at once. She had put her arms round Norah, and was 
 leaning upon her, haggard and pale as if she Were dying. ** Thank 
 you," she repeated, with a motion of her hand towards the 
 
 door. • '•• ''' ' .v-rlij:,,; .; ,1H' 
 
 The youth stole out with a sore heart. He stood f6!^ a indtiient 
 irresolute on the pavement. The cab was his and not Gulden's ; 
 but that personage had got into it, and was calling him to 
 follow. ' 
 
 " Thanks," said young Rivers, with the impetuosity of his 
 years. "Ishallnottrouweyou. Go on pray. I prefer to walk." 
 
 And he turned upon his heel, and went rapidly- away. He 
 was gone before the other could realise it ; and it was with 
 feelings that it would be impossible to describOj with a con- 
 sciousness that seemed both bodily and niental of having been 
 beaten and wounded all over, with a singing in his ears, and a 
 bewildered sense of punishment, that Golden picked up the 
 reins and drove away. It was only a few sharp words from a 
 woman's tongue, a thing which a man must steel himself to 
 bear when his operations are of a kind which involve the ruin 
 of families. But Helen had given her blow far more skilftilly, 
 far more effectively than she was aware of. She had clutched 
 at her first chance of striking, without any calculation of results ; 
 and the youth she had appealed to in her excitemetit might have 
 been any nameless lad for what she knew. It was Mr. Golden's 
 hard fate that he was not a nameless lad. He was Oyril Rivers, 
 Lord Eiveii' eldest son. The manager droVti on a little way, 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 f^'l\ 
 
 slowly, and in great perturbation, ^^d.^^en ^ei 4f€|W,;iip ^ 
 horse, and srwang to the ground* i;^, ,f r, ^f '^,,:,u-^.,.lr!/. .,,^,^ 
 f V You had better go home," he said to tbe little groom. 
 ' ' And then, still with that sense of bodily suffering as well as 
 mental, he made his way through Kensington Gardens to the 
 drive. He was a ^lan of fashion too, ^ well as, fk.^v^.pf 
 business— if he ever could hold up his head again. : i' , ' . > 
 
 Of (iourse he did hold up his head, and in an hour after was 
 ready to have made very ^ood fun of the "scolding" he had 
 received, and the impression it had made on hi$ young 
 companion. 
 
 "I don't wonder," he said ; " though her rage was all against 
 me, I could not help admiring hen You never can tell what 
 a woman is til! you see her in a passion. She was splendid. 
 Her friends ought to advise her to go on the stage." 
 
 " Why should she go on the stage ?" said some one standing 
 
 *f B^ause she is left a beggar. She has not a penny, || 
 suppose." 
 
 ** It is lucky that you have suffered so little when so many 
 people are beggared. Golden," said one of his fine friends. 
 
 This little winged shaft went right into the wound made. by 
 Helen's fiery lance, and so far as sensation went (which was 
 nothing) Mr. Golden had not a happy time that night. 
 
 Ab for Helen, she went in, prostrated by her own vehemencei 
 and threw herself down on her bed, and hid her face from the 
 light. After the first excitement was over shame seized upon 
 her. She had descended from her proper place. She had 
 flown into this outburst of passion and rage before her child. 
 She had lowered herself in Norah's eyes, as she thought — 
 though the child would not take her arm from her neck, nor 
 her hps from her cheek, but clung to her sobbing, " Oh, poor 
 mamma ! poor mamma !" with sympathetic passion. All this 
 fiery storm through which she had passed had developed 
 Norah. She had gained three or four years in a day. At one 
 bound, from the ehild who was a piece of still life in 
 the family, deeply beloved, but not needed, by the two who 
 were each other's companions, she had become all at once her 
 mother's only stay, her partizan, her supporter, her comrade-in-' 
 arms, it is impossible to over-estimate the difference this 
 
 »-'>l'(-.?««S=ns«8K*%*.' »KM«j'i*s-! 
 
168 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 B(Uike8 in a child's, especially in a fffrYB life. It made of her 
 an independent, thinking, active creature all in a moment For 
 yean eyervthing had been said before her under the supposition 
 that Norah, absorbed in her book, heard nothing. But she had 
 heard a thousand things. She knew idl now without any need 
 of explanation, as well as so youne a mind could understand. 
 And she began to grope in her mind towards further knowledge, 
 to put things togetiier which even her mother had not thou^t 
 o£ 
 
 " Do jovL know who the boy was, mamma V* she whispered, 
 after she had sat a long time on the bed. rilently consoling the 
 sufferer, " Oh, I am so glad you spoke, he will never forget it. 
 ISfow one more knows it besides you and me." 
 ,, '^ There are others who know, dear" said Selen, who had 
 still poor Stephen's magazine in her hand. 
 
 "Yes," said Norah. "Mr Maurice and the people who 
 wrote to the papers ; but, me.mma, nobody like you and me. 
 Whatever they say we know. I am little, and I suppose I 
 shall always be little; but that does not matter. I shsll 
 soon be grown up, and able to help. And, mamma, this sh&ll 
 be my work as well as yours — I uiall never stop tail it is done 
 —never all my life !" 
 
 " Oh my darling ! " cried Helen, clasping her child in her 
 arms. It was not that she received the vow as the child 
 meant it, or even desired in Norah's opening life there should 
 be nothing of more importance than this eany self-devotion ; 
 but the sympathy was sweet to her beyond describing, the 
 more that the little creature, who had played and chattered by 
 her side, had suddenly become her mend. In the midst of 
 her sorrow and pain, and even of the prostration, and sensitive 
 visionary shame with which this encounter had filled her, she 
 had one sudden throb of pleasure. She was not alone any 
 more. 
 
 It was Helen who fell asleep that evening, worn out with 
 emotion, and weariness, and suffering. And then Norah rose 
 up softly, and made a pilgrimage by herself all over the desert- 
 ed house. She went through the conservatory, where of all 
 the beautiful things poor Robert had loved to see, there re- 
 mained 1 3thing but the moonlight which filled its emptiness ; 
 and into the studio, where she sat dowi^ oi]l the floor beside 
 
▲T HIS QATSa 
 
 169 
 
 the easel, and clasped her arms round it and cried. She iraa 
 
 indulged 
 
 papa I " That is all Norah said to herself. But the recollec- 
 tion of all he had been, and of all that had been done to him, 
 surged over the child, and filled her with that sense of ^ecin- 
 tolerable which afflicts the weak. She could not bear it, yet 
 she had to bear it ; just as her mother, just as poor Haldane 
 had to bear — struggling vainly against a power greater than 
 theirs, acquiescing when life and strength ran low, sometimes 
 for a moment divinely consenting, accepting the wiU of God. 
 But it is seldom that even the experienced soul gets so far as 
 that. 
 
 Next morning Mrs. Drummond and her dau^ter went to 
 Dura. Their arrival at the station was very different from 
 that of Mr. Burton. No eager porters rushed at them as they 
 stepped out of the railway carriage ; the station-master moved 
 to the other side ; they landed, and were left on the platform 
 by themselves to count their boxes while the train swept on. 
 It was the first time it had ever happened so to Helen. Her 
 husband had always either been with her, or waiting for her 
 wherever she travelled. And she was weary with yesterday's 
 agitation and with all that had so lately happened. • Norah 
 came forward and took everything in hand. It was she who 
 spoke to the porter, and set the procession in order. 
 
 " Cab ? Bless you miss ! there ain't but one in the place, 
 and it's gone on a 'xcursion," he said, " but I'll get a wheel- 
 barrow and take 'em down. It ain't more than ten minutes' 
 walk." 
 
 *' I know the way," said Helen ; and she took her child's 
 hand and walked on into the familiar place. She had not 
 been there since her marriage ; but oh ! how well she knew it I 
 She put her crape veil over her face to hide her from curious 
 eyes ; and it threw a black mist at the same time over the 
 cheerful village. It seemed to Helen as if she was walking in 
 a dream. She knew everything, every stone on the road, the 
 names above the shops, the forms of the trees. There was one 
 great elm, lopsided, which had lost a huge branch (how well 
 she repieinbered I ) hy a thunderstorpi whe|i she w^ ^ phild ; 
 
170 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 Wfts it all a dream t Everything looked like a dream except 
 Korah ; but Norah was real. As for the child, there was in 
 her heart a lively thrill of pleasure at sight of all this novelty 
 which she could not quite subdue. She had no veil of crape 
 over her eyes, and the red houses all lichened over, the glimpses 
 of fields and trees, the rural aspect of the road, the vision of 
 the common in the distance, all filled her with a suppressed 
 delight. It was wrone, Norah knew ; she called herself back 
 now and then and sighed, and asked herself how she could be 
 so devoid of feeling ; but yet the reaction would come. She 
 began to talk in spite of herself. 
 
 " I think some oae might come to meet us at the station," 
 she said. ** Ned might have come. He is a boy, and can ao 
 anywhere. I am sure, mamma, we would have gone to male 
 them feel a little at home. Where is the Gatehouse ? What 
 is that place over there? Why there are shops — a draper's 
 and a confectioner's — and a library ! I am very glad there is a 
 library. Mamma, I think I shall like it ; is that the common 
 fittr away yonder ? Do you remember any of the people 1 
 I should like to know some girls if you will let me. There is 
 little Clara, of course, who is my cousin. Do you think we 
 shall live here always, mamma 1 
 
 Norah did not ask, nor, indeed, look for any answer to this 
 string of questions. She made a momentary pause of courtesy 
 to leave room for a reply, should any come; but Helen's 
 thoughts were full of the past, and as she made no answer 
 Norah resumed the strain. 
 
 " It looks very cheerful here, mamma ; though it is a village, 
 it does not look dull. I like the red tiles on the cottages and 
 all this red-brick ; perhaps it is a little hot-looking now, but in 
 winter it will be so comfortable. Shall we be able t^ get our 
 things here without going to town ? That seems quite a good 
 shop. I wonder what mxb. Burton and Clara dol But then 
 they are so rich, and we are — ^poor. Shall I be able to have 
 any lessons mamma ) Can I go on with my music % I wonder 
 if Clara has a governess. She will think it very .strange that 
 vou should teach me. But I am very glad; I Uke you better 
 than twen^ governesses. Mamma, wiU it make any difference 
 between Clara and me, them being so rich and us so 
 poor I" 
 
At HIS OATfeS. 
 
 m 
 
 ** Oh, Norah, I cannot tell you. Don't ask so iaany ques- 
 tions," said Helen. 
 
 Norah was wounded ; she did not give up her mother's hand, 
 but she loosed her hold of it to show her feelings. She had 
 been very sympathetic, very quiet, and respectflil of the grief 
 which iti its intensity was beyond her ; and now she seemed to, 
 herself to have a right to a little sympathy in return. She 
 could Understand but diml^ what was in her mother's mind ; 
 she did not know the assocmtions of which Dura was full ; and 
 it was hard to be thus stopped short in that spring of reno- 
 vating life. As she resided herself to silence, a feeling of in- 
 jury came over her; ana here, just before her eyes, suddenly 
 appeared a picture of life so different from hers. She saw a 
 band of children gathered about the gate of a house, which 
 stood at a short distance from the road, surrounded by shrub- 
 beries and distinguished by one great splendid cedar which 
 stretched its glorious branches over the high garden wall behind, 
 and made a point in the landscape. A lady was driving a 
 little pony-carriage through the open gate, whUe the children 
 stood watching and waving their hands to her. " Good-bye, 
 mamma," " Don't be lon^," " And mind you bring back Clara 
 with you," they were callmg to her. "With a wistful sense of 
 envy Norah gazed and wondered who they were, and if she 
 should ever know them. " Why are people so different 1" she 
 asked herself. She had nobody in the world but her mother, 
 lost behind that crape veil, lost in her own thoughts, who told 
 her not to ask questions, while those other little girls had a 
 smilihg mamma in a pretty pony-carriage, who was taking one 
 to drive with her, and was to bring Clara hatk to see tnem. 
 Which Clara? Was it the Clara who belonged to Norah, her 
 own cousin, to whom she had a better right than any one 1 
 Norah's heart sank as she realized this. No doubt Clara must 
 have many friends ; she could not stand in need of Norah as 
 Norah did of her. She would %e a stranger, an interloper, a 
 new little girl whom nobody perhaps would care to know. 
 Tears came to the child's eyes. She had been a woman last 
 night rising to the height of the tragedy in which her little 
 life was involved ; but now Nature had regained its sway, and 
 she was only twelve years old. It was while her mind was 
 occupied with these thoughts that her mother interrupted them, 
 suddenly pressing her hand, 
 
m 
 
 AT HIS OATE& 
 
 
 /'Norah, this is our bouse, wheie we are to live," saiO 
 Helen. Her voice faltered, she held the child's hand as if for 
 support And now they were at their own door, 
 .^orah gazed at it with a certain dismay. She, too, like 
 |drs. 'SLaXfir.'r.pj, had her theory about a house in the country. It 
 must be like Soutblees, she thought, though without the river ; 
 Oir perha,ps as- they had grown poor, it might be soinediing a 
 liittle better than the lodge at Southlces, a Uttle cottage ; but 
 lihe had never dreamed <4 anything like this tail red •bride house 
 ITrhiph twinkled at her with all its windows. She was awed 
 and chilled, and a little frightened, as she crossed the road. 
 Susan was standing at the open door parleying with the porter 
 about their boxes, which she declined to admit till "the 
 family" came. The ono fear which possessed Susan's life, the 
 fesa: of being " put upon," was strong in her at this moment. 
 But she set the balance straight for Norah, by making a 
 sudden curtsey, which tempted the child so sorely to laugAter, 
 that her eyes began to shine and her heart to rise once more. 
 She ran up the white steps eagerly before her mother. "Oh, 
 mamma, I am first. I can say welcome to you," she said. 
 
 But the sight of the drawing-room, into which Susan ush- 
 ered them, solemnly closing the door after them, struck a mo- 
 ment's chill to Norah's heart. It seemed so strange to be thus 
 shut in, as if it was not their own house but a prison. It was 
 afternoon, and the sunshine had all gone from that side of the 
 road, and the graceful, old-fashioned room looked dim and 
 ghostly to eyes which had just come out of the light. The 
 windowt? all draped with brown and grey, the old-fashioned slim 
 grand piano ii^e comer ("I shall have my music," said Norah), 
 the black japsmned screen with its funny little pictures, the 
 .high carved mantelpiece with that square mirror which nobody 
 could see into, puzzled the child, at once attracting and repel- 
 ling her. There was another round, convex mirror Tike a shield, 
 on the side wall, but even thattodid not enable Norah to see her- 
 self, it only made a little twinkling picture of her in a vast per- 
 spective of drawing-room. Helen had seated herself as soon 
 a|S the door was shut, and there was she, too, in thd picture like 
 a lady come to call What a strar.ge, dim, ghostly place it was ! 
 Tl^e bumping of the boxes as thev went i;p stairs was .^ 
 (CpQ^ort to N'or^^ It was a mmi qf Ufo bireiikii^g Uie terrible 
 
At BIS C^JLUBS. 
 
 178 
 
 silence. She aciked herself what would happen when it was 
 over. Should they fall under some charm and sleep there, like 
 the enchanted princess, for a hundred years ? And to think 
 that all this was within reach of that lady in the pony-carriage, 
 and of her children who waved their handt^ to her ! — so near, 
 yet in a different world. 
 
 ** Mayn't we go and see the house, mamma )" Norah whis- 
 pered, standing close to her mother's side. '* Shouldn't you 
 hke to see where we are to sleep? Shouldn't you like to get 
 out of this room ? It frightens me so ; it feels like a prison. 
 Oh, mamma ! perhaps it would not look so strange — ^and so — 
 duU — and so — ^funny," cried Norah, feeling disposed to cry, " if 
 you would take your bonnet off." 
 
 Just at this moment there was a sound in the road which 
 stirred the whole village into life, and roused Norah. She ran 
 to the window to see what it was. It was an event which hap- 
 pened every evening, which all the children in Dura riui to see, 
 though they were so familiar with it. It was Mr. Burton driv- 
 ing his high-stepping bays home from the station. He had 
 come by th6 express, made on purpose for him and such as him, 
 which arrived half-an-hour later than the train by which the 
 Drummonds had come. Norah climbed up on her knees on a 
 chair to see over the little old-fashioned blinds. There was 
 some one seated by Mr. Burton ii^ the dog-cart, some one who 
 looked at the Gatehouse, as Mr. Burton did, while they dashed 
 past. At the sight of him Norah started, and from a little 
 fantastical child oecame a woman all at once again. It was the 
 young man who the day before had been with Mr. Golden at 
 St. MAr/s Road, he who had heard her father's' vindication, 
 and hi^ believed it, and " was on our side/' Norah felt, against 
 all the world. 
 
 i ji ' ilH'J^I. ' 
 
174 
 
 ▲T HIS OfTEa 
 
 
 n i'.i ■ I 
 
 ill 
 
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 . . mk ilsi ir.ib 
 
 I HERE is always a little excitement in a village over a new 
 inhabitant, and the Drummonds were not common 
 strangers to be speculated vaguely about. There were 
 many people in Dura who remembered Helen in her beauty 
 and youth. The next morning, when it became known that 
 she had arrived at the Gatehouse, the whole place burst into 
 gossip on the subject. Even the new people, the City people 
 who lived in the white villas near the station, were moved by 
 it. For poor Drummond's story was known everywhere, ar^d 
 his miserable fate, and the discussion in the newspapers, '^ven 
 here, in the quietness of the country, people took sides, and 
 public opinion was by no means so unanimous as poor Helen 
 had supposed. The papers had accepted her husband's guilt as 
 certain, but opinion was very much divided on the subject 
 among people who had means of knowing. " Burton ought to 
 have warned that poor fellow," one of the city gentlemen said to 
 another at the station, going up by the early train. " I would 
 not trust a simpleton in the hands of a smart man like Golden." 
 
 "Do you think he was a simpleton V' said the other. 
 
 " In business, yes " said the first speaker. " How could 
 
 he be otherwise 1 But, by Jove, sir, what a splendid painter! 
 I never saw anything I liked better than that picture of his at 
 the last Exhibition. Poor fellow ! And to put him in Golden's 
 h^,nd8, a man well known to be up to every dodge. I wonder 
 what Burton could be thinking of. I wonder he can look that 
 poor lady in the face." 
 
 "I should just like to find out how much Burton himself 
 knew about it," said the other, nodding his head. 
 
 "And so should I," the first speaker said significantly, as 
 they took their places in the train. 
 
 Thus it will be seen that the world, which Helen thought of 
 80 bitterly as all against her, was by no means so clear on the 
 subject. At the breakfast-table in the Rectory the conversa- 
 tion took a still more friendly tone. 
 
▲T HIS GATES. 
 
 176 
 
 3r a new 
 common 
 3re were 
 
 " I hear that poor Mrs. Drummond has come t<;> the Gktte- 
 house,** said Mrs. Dalton. " I almost think' I saw her yester- 
 day — a tall woman, in a crape veil, with a little girV about 
 Mary's size. I shall make a point of calling the first time I go 
 out. Oh, George, what a sad, sad story ! I hope she will let 
 me be of use to her." 
 
 *' I don't see that you can be of much use," said her husband. 
 "She has the Burtons, of course, ito fall back upon. How 
 strange to think of Helen Burton coming back here ! I could 
 not have supposed it possible. So proud a girl ! And how 
 that man at Dura could ask her ! I suppose he feels the sweet- 
 ness of revenge in it. Everybody knew she refused him." 
 
 "Oh George, hush ! the children," cried Mrs. Dalton under 
 her breath. 
 
 " Psla ! everybody knows. What a difference it would have 
 made to her, though ! It is strange she should have chosen to 
 come and live in i^ht of his splendour." 
 
 "Oh, do you thwidc she cares about his splendour? Poor^ 
 soul ! " said kind Mr* Dalton, with tears in her eyes. " She ' 
 must have very different thoughts in her mind. Most likely 
 she wao glad of any shelter where she could hide her head, 
 after all the newspapers smd the publicity. Oh, George! it 
 must be doubly hard upon her if she was proud." . j 
 
 " Probably it was her pride that made her husband such' ii 
 fool," said the rector. " You women have a great deal to an- 
 swer for. If she drove him into that thirst for mOTiJV-makilig 
 — a thing he could know nothing about — — You iw.mey. are- 
 all fond of money — " 
 
 " For money's worth, George," said Mrs. Dalton humbly. 
 She could not deny the accusation. For her own part she 
 would have done anything for money — she witix her eight child- 
 ren, and Charlie's education so dreadfully on her mind. 
 
 "Oh, I don't say you are miserly," said the rector, who i^as' 
 a literary man of superior mind, and hated to be bothered bv 
 family cares, which incapacitated him for thought; "but whe^ 
 a woman wants more than her husband can give her, what is 
 the unhappy man to do 1 Ne sutor ultra crepidam. Which meanr^ 
 Mary " 
 
 " I have heard it before," said his wife meekly. " I think I 
 know what it means," 
 
 '•a 
 
mm 
 
 176' 
 
 AT His OATBa 
 
 
 f 
 
 '''Thenycu see what comes of it/' said Mr. Dalton. ''I 
 don^t believe a word that is in the papers. I seldom do. He 
 weiii and got himself invulvea and bamboozled. How was he 
 to know what he was'^oing 1 I don't blame poor Drummond, 
 but I am not so sure it was not her fault." 
 
 At the great house the talk was different ; there was no dis- 
 cussion of the rights or wrongs of the question. Mr. Burton, 
 indeed, preferred not to speak of Mr. Drummond ; and young 
 Mr. Bivers, who had come down with him on the previous 
 night, had got no opening to report the scene of which he had 
 been a spectator. They were early people, and though they 
 had entertained a large party the night before, their breakfast 
 was earlier than that at the Rectory. They were all out on the 
 lawn, visitors, children, dogs, and all, while Mr. Dalton drank 
 his coffee. Ned was busily employed training the Skye to 
 jump over a stick, an exercise which was not much to Shaggy's 
 taste ; while the big pointer (who was only in his babyhood, 
 though he was so big, and was imbecile, as puppies are), looked 
 OIL and made foolish springs and vaults about his clever brother. 
 Malta^ in his blue ribbon, kept close to Mrs. Burton's side, and 
 looked on at the performance with the contemptuous toleration 
 of a superior being ; and Clara, also decked with blue ribbons, 
 hung by her mother too. 
 
 "You had better come with me and see Helen," said the 
 heiEul of the house. " I told you she arrived last night." 
 
 "Now ! " said Mrs. Burton, with dome surprise. She had 
 her gardening gloves on and a basket in her hand for flowers. 
 These she would have laid down at once, had it been only a 
 walk to the station which was in question ; but this was a dif- 
 ferent affair. 
 
 " Yes ; why not now 1" said her husband with that roll of 
 wealth and comfort in his voice. " We are relations, wo need 
 not stand upon ceremony. You mean to call on her some time, 
 I suppose." 
 
 ** Oh, certainly, I shall call ; but not at this hour, Mr. Bur- 
 ton. I have only seen her oace. Familiarity would be imper- 
 tinence in me." 
 
 ** Pshaw, nonsense ! one of your fantastic notions," he said. 
 ** I have seen her more than once, and I can't afford to stand 
 on ceremony. Come along. I am going there now." 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 177 
 
 " Then I think you should ^'mmediately," said Mrs. Bur- 
 ton, looking at her watch, " . will be too late for the 
 train. Clara, papa will not us this morning ; we can go 
 for some flowers. You will b oack by the usual train 'i I mil 
 pick you up at the station, if you like, for I have some calls to 
 make to-day." 
 
 " As you please," said her husband ; " but I can't understand 
 why you should cross me, Clara, about my cousin. You don't 
 mean to say," he added with a laugh, " that you have any — 
 feeling on the subject ? That you are — ever so little — piqued 
 about poor Helen ? I shouldn't like to use tht other word." 
 
 Clara Burton looked at her husband very calmly. She was 
 not offended. It was human nature; men were known to 
 possess this kind of vanity, though it was so strange. " I am 
 not at all piqued," she said ; " but I like to be civil. I don't 
 suppose Mrs. Drummond and I will be moved to rush into 
 each other's arms all at once, and I don't wish to look as if I 
 paid her less respect because she is poor. If you are going 
 there, you ought to go immediately. You will be late for the 
 train." 
 
 " Confound your composure !" Mr. Burton said to himself, as 
 he went down the avenue. 
 
 It would have pleased him had his wife been a little discom- 
 posed. But, after a while, he took comfort, saying to himself 
 that Clara was a consummate little actress, but that she could 
 not take him in. Of course, she was nettlod by the presence of 
 his old love, and by his haste to visit her : but she was proud, 
 and would not she ^^^ it. He felt a double triumph in the sense 
 that these two women were both affected, and endured, for his 
 sweet sake, a certain amount of pain. He set out his chest 
 more than ever, and held up his head. Now was his moment 
 of triumph over the woman who had once rejected him. Had 
 he been able to induce her to come to Dura while she was still 
 prosperous, the triumph would have been sweeter, for it would 
 have been unmingled with any tinge of regretful or remorseful 
 feelings ; but as it was it was sweet. For the first time she 
 would see him in his full importance, in all his state and splen- 
 dour, she would see him from the depths of her own humiliar 
 tion, and the force of a contrast greater than he had desired, 
 more complete even than he had dieamed, must already have 
 L 
 
 
 S' 
 
 .;!) 
 
 ,h 
 
 m i m t m 
 
178 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 ' If 
 
 flashed upon her. Yes, now she would see what she had lost 
 — ^what a mistake she had made. He meant to be very kind ; 
 he would have given her anjrthing she chose to ask for, if she 
 but showed the least sign of penitence, of clearer perception, of 
 being aware of what she had lost. There was nothing which 
 her cousin would not have done for Helen ; but he could not 
 resign his own deUghtful consciousness of triumph. Under 
 its genial influence, he was overflowing with goodness and kind- 
 ness. 
 
 " What ! come out for a little sunshine, old John," he said 
 to the Old man at the lodge, who was seated basking in the 
 warmth « m ihe bench at his door. " Good for the rheumatics, 
 ain't it, f day like this 1 I envy you, old fellow, with nothing 
 to do f.nt it by your door in the sun and sniff you: flowers ; 
 yoii ftre befcter off than I am, I can tell you." 
 
 ** -.V^ •')' ' master, it's fine for me; but you wouldn't think 
 mifcii 0!»'\ vourself, if you had it," said old John. 
 
 Mr. B ut< 1 went on laughing and waging his hand, amused 
 with the old man's impudence. 
 
 " If I had it myself," he said, with a smile, " I ! " The 
 
 thought ticklefl him. It was hard to believe that he himself, a 
 man in the prime of life, growing richer every day, was made 
 of the same cLiy as old John ; and yet of course it was so, he 
 admitted good humouredly. His mind wsls full of his own 
 benevolence and kind-heai-tedness as he pursued his way to 
 visit his cousin. What quantities of people were dependent 
 upon his will and pleasure — upon his succour and help ! his 
 servants, so many that he could scarcely count them ; the clerks 
 in his office ; the governess who taught Clara, and who in her 
 turn supported her mother and sisters ; and then there was 
 old Stephenson in the village, in his decay, who had once been 
 in Mr. Burton's office ; and hif eld ntvase ; and the poor Joneses 
 and Bobinsons, whose boys he had taken in as errand boys. 
 He ran over this list with such a pleasant sense of his goodness, 
 that his face shone in the morning sunshine. And at the head 
 of all, first of his pensioners, chief of his dependents — Helen ! 
 Mr Burton laughed half aloud, and furtively rubbed his hands. 
 Yes, yes, by this time there could be no doubt she must have 
 found out her mistake. 
 Helen had got up that moi'uing with the determination to 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 179 
 
 put grief nway from the foreground of her life, and resume 
 such occupations as remained to her. Norah's books had been 
 got out, and her music, and some work — small matters which 
 made a difference in the ghostly drawing-room already, and 
 brought it back to life. Helen was standing by the table ar- 
 ranging some flowers when Mr. Burton came in. Norah had 
 gathered them almost before the dew was off them, and stood 
 by her mother watching her as she grouped them together. 
 
 " I wish I could arrange flowers as you do, mamma," Norah 
 was sa3ing admiringly. " How nice it must be to be able to do 
 everything one tries ! They will not come right if / do it. You 
 are like the fairy that touched the feathers with her wand, and 
 they all come together as they ought. I wonder how you do 
 it. And you never break anything or spoil anything ; but if I 
 only look at a vase it breaks." 
 
 Norah was saying this with a rueful look when Mr. Burton's 
 smart summons came to the door ; and the next minute he had 
 come in, bringing so much air with him into the room, and mo- 
 tion, and sense of importance. Helen put the flowers aside 
 hastily and gave him her hand. 
 
 '' So you are making use of the garden," he said, taking note 
 of everything with an eye of proprietorship; "quite right, 
 quite right. I hope you will make yourselves quite at home. 
 It is a funny old house, but it is a good style of a place. You 
 need not be ashamed to receive any one here. And I have no 
 doubt you will find everybody very civil, Helen. I have let 
 the people in Dura know you are my cousin. That, though I 
 say it that shouldn't, is a very good passport here." 
 
 " I hope you will not take any trouble about us," said Helen 
 hastily. "All I want is to be quiet. I do not care for civili- 
 ties." 
 
 " But you prefer them to incivilitiea, I hope," said Mr. Bur- 
 ton. " My wife thinks 1 am wrong to come in this uncere- 
 monious way to call. I wanted her to uonio with me, but she 
 would not. You ladies have your own ways of acting. But I 
 felt that you would be mortified if you saw me pass the door.** 
 
 "Oh no. I should not have been mortified." 
 
 " I will take care you shan't," he said, the roll in his voice 
 sounding more full of protection and benevolence than ever. 
 <' I have not much time now. But, my dear Holeui remember 
 
 mmm 
 
180 
 
 AT HIS OATE& 
 
 mU' 
 
 lijii : ill 
 
 •.illi 
 
 that I am always at yonr service — always. I have mentioned 
 you to ail the nicest people. And I hope very soon to see you 
 at the House. I shoula not have brought you here, I assure 
 you, without intending to be a friend to you in every way. 
 You may rely upon me." 
 
 " You are very kind," was all Helen could say. 
 
 " I want to be kind. You cannot please me better than by 
 asking me for what you want. Tell me always when your 
 mother wants anything, Norah. There now, I won't say any 
 more ; you understand me, Helen, I have a few things in my 
 power, and one of them is to make you comfortable. When 
 you have time to see about you, you will perceive that things 
 have gone very well with me : not that I intend to boast ; but 
 Providence, no doubt, has been very kind. My wife will call 
 this afternoon, and should you like a drive or anything, I am 
 sure Clara " 
 
 " Please don't trouble. I would rather be quiet. You for- 
 get," said Helen, with a momentary sharpness in her voice, 
 " that Providence, which has been so kind to you, has been 
 hard on us." 
 
 " My dear Helen ! You are too good and pious, I am sure, 
 not to know that we ought not to repine." 
 
 " I don't think I repine, and I am sure you mean to be kind ; 
 but oh ! if you would take pity on me, and let me alone " 
 
 It was all she could do to keep from tears. But she would 
 not weep before him. -Her jealousy of him and distrust were 
 all coming back. Instinctively she felt the triumph in his 
 voice. 
 
 " Poor Helen !" said Mr. Burton, " poor girl ! I will not 
 trouble you longer just now. You shall not be bothered. 
 Good-bye ; trust to me, and I will take care of you, my poor 
 dear !" 
 
 It was ludicrous, it was pitiable ; she scorned herself for the 
 impression it made upon her ; but how could she help it 1 She 
 felt that she hated Reginald Burton, as he stood before her in 
 all his wealth and comfort, patronising and sooth ijg her. 
 When he was gone, she rushed up to hsr room, that Norah 
 might not see her weakness, too weep a few hot, buraiiig tears, 
 and to overcome the wild, unreasonable anger that swelled in 
 her heart. It was his moment of triumph. Perhaps Helen 
 
AT HIS OiTSa. 
 
 181 
 
 felt it adl the more becaose, deep down in her heart, she had a 
 consciousness that she too had once triumphed over him, and 
 rejoiced to feel that she could humble him. This was a hard 
 punishment for such an old girlish offence ; but still it felt like 
 a punishment, and added a sting to everything he did and said. 
 And whether it was at that moment or at a later period, she 
 herself could not have told, but a sudden gleam came across 
 her of some words which she had once read somewhere — ** Bur- 
 ton and Golden have done it." Whence came these words Y 
 had she dreamt them t had she read them somewhere 1 They 
 came before her as if they had been written upon the wall* 
 Burton and Golden ! Was it true ) What could it mean t 
 
 Mrs. Burton called in the afternoon. She had Clara with 
 her, and what was still more remarkable, young Mr. Rivers, 
 who was staying in the house, but who up to this time had 
 made no mention of the scene he had witnessed. Perhaps it 
 was for lack of an opportunity, perhaps because he did not 
 know how far it would be safe to mention Helen — ^whom he 
 had heard spoken of as a relative, yet not with the feeling 
 which moved his own mind when he thought of her. Cyru 
 Bivers wau but a big boy, though he began to think himself a 
 man, and Helen had moved him to that sudden fantastic vio- 
 lence of admiration with which an older woman often inspires 
 a boy. He was eager to go with Mrs. Burton to call. He 
 would walk down with her, he said, and continue his walk 
 after the carriage had picked her up; and in his heart he 
 said to himself that he must see that woman again. He was 
 full of awe and enthusiasm at the thought of her. She was to 
 him like the heroine of a tragedy, of a story more striking than 
 any tragedy he had ever heard of ; for this was real, and she was a 
 true woman expressing her natural sentiments, forgiving nothing 
 It seemed to bring the youth, who was all thrilling with natu- 
 ral romance, within that charmed inner circle of emotion and 
 passion which is, though it is seldom visible, the centre and 
 heart of life. 
 
 But Helen bore a very different aspect when she waited to 
 receive Mrs. Burton's call from that which she bore at the door 
 of St. Mary's Road, confronting Golden. Her flush of colour 
 and glow of energy and vehemence were gone. She was seat- 
 ed, pale and silent, by the table near the window, with her 
 
182 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 I 
 
 dead white cap encircling her fiice, and some needlework in her 
 hand. It was not the same Mrs. Drummond, was young Riv- 
 ers* first disappointed thought. And when she invited the party 
 to ait down, and b^an to talk about the weather and the cc\^n- 
 try round, he was so bewildered that he longed to steal a^af. 
 The two ladies sat opposite to each other, and said the sort of 
 things which all ladies say when they call or are called upon. 
 Helen's tone was low, and her voice fell ; but these and her 
 black dress were the only things that made it apparent that uay- 
 thing had happened to her. It was only when this little ar- 
 tificial conversation flagged and a pause occurred that the real 
 state of affairs became even slightlv visible. The momentary 
 silence fell heavy upon people who had so much on their minds; 
 and while they all sat motionless, the little mirror on the wall 
 made a picture of them in little, which looked like a caricature, 
 full of humorous perception and significance. Mrs. Burton had 
 been hesitating as to what she should say. Helen was a study 
 to her, of which she had as yet made nothing ; and perhaps it 
 was as much from curiosity as any other feeling that she at last 
 introduced a subject more interesting than the weather or the 
 landscape. It was after a second pause still more serious than 
 the first. 
 
 **It must be very strange to you coming back to Dura 
 after all that has happened. It must be — ^hard upon you," 
 she said. 
 
 " Yes ; it is hard." Helen could not trust herself to many 
 words. 
 
 " If there is anything in which I can be of use," Mrs. Bur- 
 ton began, " will you let me know ? If there is anything that 
 can make it less painful for you, I should be very glad to be 
 of use." 
 
 Mrs. Drummond made no reply : she gave a little bow, and 
 went on with the needle-work she held in her hands, but not 
 as if she cared for that. She was not like what he thought, 
 but yet young Rivers got up with a certain tremulous awe and 
 approached her. She had not recognized him. She turned 
 her eyes upon him wondering what he could have to do with 
 her. Her heart was steeled to encounter all those words of 
 routine which she knew would have to be said — ^but who was 
 this boy 1 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 183 
 
 **JI thiiik I will go now," he said hastily to Mrs. Burton ; 
 and then helowerea his voice. 
 
 "May I say just one word) If I can ever do anything to 
 set things ri^ht, will you let me know 1 I shall never forget 
 what you said — on Tuesday." 
 
 " On Tuesday ) " Helen repeated, in her great surprise look- 
 ing at him. She ran over Tuesday's pro«e^ings in ner mind : 
 at first in vain, and then a little flush came over her face. 
 " Ah," she said, " It was you who came with — Mr. Golden. I 
 remember now." 
 
 ^' But I shall never be with him again," said the vouth with 
 energy, which brought the responsive bloo^ to nis cheeks. 
 " Of that you may be sure. I am Cyril H '•s. I am not 
 much good now, but I might be — afterwards. iii you remem- 
 ber me? Will you let me serve you if ever I can 1 " 
 
 " Thanks," said Helen, putting out her hand, with a sudden 
 softness in her voice. 
 
 The lad was young, romantic, chivalrous. She was to him 
 like some majestic dethroned queen in her sorrow and wronged 
 estate. He stooped down, and touched her white fingers with 
 his lips, aud then without looking round, turned, and went 
 away. His impulsive generous words, his fanciful pledge of ea- 
 gerness to help her went to Helen's heart. She had not ex- 
 pected this, and it surprised and touched her. She was not 
 conscious for a moment of her visitor's steady, investigating 
 glance. 
 
 " What a romantic boy ! " said Mrs. Burton, with a smile. 
 
 " Yes," said Helen, and she called herself back with an ef- 
 fort. *' But romance sometimes does one good. It is a sur* 
 prise at least." 
 
 *' At that age it does not matter much. I did not know you 
 knew the Eiverses," said Mrs. Burton. *•' This is the eldest 
 son, to be sure ; but since the late misfortune they are quite 
 poor. They have not much in their power. " 
 
 She said this with a charitable motive. It seemed to her as 
 if Helen must mean something by it. Everybody appeared to 
 mean something in the eyes of this philosopher. And she was 
 a Uttle moved by the misfortunes of the woman beside her. 
 She thought it kind to warn her not to waste her efforts. 
 Helen, on her side, did not know in the least what Mrs. Bur- 
 
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 ton meant ; did not snppote she meant anything indeied^ and 
 sat patient, accepting this speech with the othera as an effort 
 to make conversationy not ungrateful to Mrs. Burttm^ buti won- 
 denng when dhe would go away. -r lliv >.)^nti i 
 
 Meanwhile Cyril Rivers hastened out Ihll of emotion. He 
 took the wrong; turn in going outy and before he kne#, found 
 himdelf in the garden^ ifniere the two girls wetet " making ac- 
 quaintance/' as Mrs. Burton had bidden them do^ Olara was 
 big and fair, with her father's full foixn, and a beautiful com- 
 
 Slezion, the greatest possible contrast to little Norah, with her 
 ght figur^ and faint rose tints. But Norah at this moment 
 was flushed and angiy, looking as her mother had done that 
 memorable evening at St. Mary's Koad. 
 . "Oh, do come here, Mr. Rivers," said Clara, "Norah is so 
 cross. I only said what papa says so often-^that it would be 
 wretched to Uve in the country without a carriage or a pony 
 or anything. Don't you think so too 1 " . \ . 
 
 : Ncorah flushed more deeply than ever. >^Iam not cii^dss. 
 We did not come to live in the country for pleasure, and what 
 does it matter to us about carriages and ponies! We are 
 poor." ■•.'■[ -r; 
 
 - '* And so am I," daid the boy, with that instinctive adoption 
 of "our side" which ^orah had attributed to him. He 
 thought how pretty she was as she lifted her brown eyes. 
 What a pretty child ! and he was approaching twenty, a man, 
 and his heart yearned over the helpless and sorrowful " I 
 shall have to sell my horses and go afoot ; but I don't. think I 
 shall be wretched. Everybody cannot be rich like Mr. Burton, 
 you know.?* 
 
 " But you are always Lord Rivers's son," said Clara. You 
 ean have what you likti everywhere. I tbink it is very cross 
 of Norah not to care." 
 
 And Mr Burton's daughter, foiled in her first attempt to 
 secure her own cousin's envy and admiration, looked as if she 
 would like to cry. Young Kivers laughed as he went away at 
 her diiscomfiture. As he turned to find the right way <^ exit, 
 he looked back upon them with an unconscious comparison. 
 He did not know or think what was Norah Drumn^ond's de- 
 scent. He took her unconsciously as the type of a higher class 
 impoverished but not fallen, beside that small representative of 
 
▲t HIS oyiTCa 
 
 185 
 
 the nowoeama riehes. And all his mipathies were on the nde qf 
 the former. He pulled a little white rosebud from a tree as h« ^ 
 passed, and put it into his coat with a meaning which was 
 partly real and partly fantastic. They were poor, they were 
 injurod, and wronged, and ill ttontU^i He put their colours, 
 as it were, in his helmet. Foolish boy, fuU of romance ai\d 
 nonsense ! one day or other in theiv caule he lelt hd H^ffit 
 couch his lance. ^ ,. , „ 
 
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 AT filS GATES. 
 
 CHAPTEE XX. 
 
 [HE next day after Mrs. Barton's carriage had been seen 
 at Helen's door a great many people called on Mrs. 
 Drummond — all " me nicest people " — some who had 
 known her or known about her in the old days, some who 
 came because she was Mr. Burton's cousin, and some who took 
 that means of showing their sympathy. The door was besieg- 
 ed ; and Susan, half flattered by the importance of her posi- 
 tion, half-alarmed lest this might be the commencement of the 
 system of putting upon which she dreaded, brought in the 
 cards, gingerly holding them in a hand which she had wrap- 
 ped up in her apron, and giving a little sketch of the persons 
 represented. There was the doctor's wife, and the major's 
 lady, and Mrs. Ashurst from the Row, and " them London 
 folks," all of whom were sensible enough to make their advances 
 solely in this way. Mrs. Dalton was the only person admitted. 
 Helen was too well brought up, she had too much sense of the 
 proprieties of her position, to shut her door against the clergy- 
 man's wife — who brought her husband's card, and explained 
 that he would have come too but for the fear of intruding too 
 early. 
 
 *• But I hope you will let us see you," the kind woman ad- 
 ded. " We are such near neighbours. My eldest little girl is the 
 same age as yours. I think we should understand each other. 
 And I have such a busy life — ^to be able to run across and talk 
 thin^ over now and then would be such a comfort to me." 
 
 ** 1 ou mean it would be a comfort to me," said Helen, " the 
 sight of a kind face." 
 
 " And Norah will come and see my Mary. They can take 
 their walks together, and amuse each other. It is such a plea- 
 sure to me," said Mrs. Dalton, " to look across at these Win- 
 dows, and think that you are here." She had said much so with 
 the amiable power of make-believe, not exactly deception, 
 which an affectionate temper and her position as clergy-woman 
 made natural to her — when she caught Helen's eye, and nature 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 isr 
 
 saddeiilj hadthemasteir. *' Oh, Mrs. Dnmunond, how I babble I 
 I am so sorry, so sorry, she said, and her eyes ran oyer with ^ 
 tears, thou^ Helen £d not weep. It is not easy to repel such 
 a'visitor. They grew friends at that first interview, while 
 Korah stood by and made her observations too. 
 
 '' May I go and see Mary 1 " she asked, when Mrs. Dalton 
 had gone. ** I think I shaU like her better than Clara Burton. 
 How funny it must be to have so many brothers and sisters, 
 mamma ; andl who never had either abrotherora sister ! Ishould 
 like to have had just one — a little sister with blue eyes. But, 
 then, if you had been very fond of her, fonder than of me, I 
 should not have liked that. Perhaps, on the whole, a brother 
 would have been the best. A boy is a change — ^they are use- 
 less, and yet they are nice— for a long walk for instance. I 
 wish I had had a big brother, older than me — quite old — ^al- 
 most grown up. How funny it would have been ! I wonder 
 what we should have called him. If he had been as big as Mr. 
 Bivers, for instance-^that would have been nice for you too." 
 
 Helen smiled, and let the child run on. It was the music to 
 which her life was set. Norah's monologue accompanied every- 
 thing. Sometimes an answer was necessary, which interrupt- 
 ed the strain, but generally a word, a smile, or a monosyllable 
 was enough. She went on tveaving her big brother out of her 
 imagination ; it was more deligh&d than speculating about 
 Mary Dalton. 
 
 " I am sure it would have been nice for you too," she said. 
 " He would have given you his arm when you were tired, and 
 looked after the luggage, and locked all the doors at ni^ts. 
 The only thing is, it would have been a great expense. When 
 people are poor, I suppose they can't afford to have boys. They 
 want so many things. But yet he would have been nice all the 
 same, I hope he would have had a pretty name ; not so short 
 as Ned, and not so common as Charlie. Charlie is the eldest 
 of the Daltons — such a big boy. Oh, I wonder what our boy's 
 name would have been 1 Do you like Oswald, mamma, or 
 Eustace 1 Eustace sounds like a priest or something dreadful- 
 ly wise. I don't like solemn boys. So long as he was big and 
 strong, and not too clever. But oh, dear, dear, what is the 
 use of talking 1 We never can have a big boy, I suppose 1 I 
 must be content with other girls' brothers. I shall never have 
 one of my own." 
 
 ■'y^-\ir*--^''*^;;^'V.!8)U.; 
 
188 
 
 AT HIS OATEIt. 
 
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 ** The less yoa hare to do -^th other girls' btothdra the bet- 
 ter, Norah," said Helen, beguiled into a smila 
 
 ** I do not care for them, I am sure," said Norah, "with dig- 
 nity ; "though I don't dislike gentlemen, mamma — quite old 
 gentlemen, like Dr. Maurice and Mr. flaldane, are very nice. 
 And I should like to have had — ^Mr. Rivers, for instance 
 —-for a big brother. I raider think, too, I like Ned Burton 
 better than Clara. It is more natural to hear a boy talk of 
 ponies and things. She never thinks of anything else — dogs, 
 and horses, and carriages, and the fine things she has. It is 
 not polite to talk of such things to people who have not got 
 them. I told her I did not care for ponies, nor grapes, nor hot- 
 house flowers ; and that I woidd rather live in London than at 
 the House. And, oh, so many stories, mamma ! Is it wrong 
 to tell a little fib when you don't mean any harm 1 Just a 
 little one, when people boast and make themselv^es disagreeable 
 — ^and when you don't mean any harm 1 " \ 
 
 " It is always wrong to tell fibs ; and I don't know the dif- 
 ference between big ones and little ones," said Helen. 
 
 " Oh, mamma, but I do ! A big story is — ^for instance. If 
 I were to say Susan had stolen your watch, that would be a 
 wicked lie. But when I say I don't care for grapes, and would 
 not like to have a pony, it isn't quite true, but then it makes 
 Clara be' quiet, and does nobody any harm. I am sure there 
 is a great difference. It would be very nice to have a pony, 
 you kno^. Only think, mamma, to go cantering away across 
 the common and on the turf ! But I would not give in to say 
 that I should like to be Clara, or that she was better off than 
 me!" 
 
 Norah's casuistry silenced her mother. She shook her head, 
 but <Ud not say anything. Something of the same feeling was, 
 indeed, in her own mind. She, too, would have liked to be 
 contemptucfus! of the luxuries which her neighbours dangled be- 
 fore her eyes. And Norah resumed her monologue. The 
 mother only partially heard it, waking up now and then to 
 give the necessary response, but carrying on all the time her 
 own separate thread of cogitation, which would not shape itself 
 into words. The old parlour, with its brown-grey curtains 
 and all its spindle4egged furniture, enclosed and seemed to 
 watch the' human creatures who disturbed the silence. A room 
 
 i< ' ip 
 
AT HIS OATBa 
 
 189 
 
 which has long been onoccnpied, and which is too large for its 
 new inhabitants, has often this spectator look. The pictured , 
 looked down from the walls and watched ; up in the little round 
 mirror two people in a miniature interior, who were in reality 
 reflections of the two below, but looked quite different, fflanced 
 down upon them, and watched also. The sky looked in 
 through the five windows, and the lime-trees in front kept* tap- 
 ping with their branches against the panes to show that they 
 were looking on. All the rest were clandestine, but the lime- 
 trees were honest in their scrutiny. And in the midst of it the 
 mother and daughter led their subdued lives. Norah's voice 
 ran through all like a brook or a bird. Helen was mostly si* 
 lent, saying little. They had a roof to shelter them, enough 
 of daily bread, the kindness of strangers outside, the rude but 
 S3rmpathetic kindness of Susan within. This was more, a great 
 deal more, than often falls to the lot of human wrecks after a 
 great shipwreck. Korah, after a little while accepted it as the 
 natural rule of life, and forgot every other ; and Helen was 
 silent, though she did not forget. The silence of the house, 
 however, by times oppressed the child. She lay awake in the 
 great bedroom up-stairs, afraid to go to sleep till her mother 
 should come ; and even in the daylight there were moments 
 when Norah was afraid of the ghostly drawing-room, and could 
 not but feel that weird, aged women, the Miss Pagets, whom 
 her mother had known, or some of the old Harcourts were 
 watching her from behind the doors, or from the shade of the 
 curtains. There was a deep china closet beside the fireplace with 
 one particular knot in the woodwork which fascinated Norah, 
 and made her feel that some mysterious eye was gazing at her 
 from within. But all these fancies dispersed the moment Mrs. 
 Drummond appeared. There was protection in the soft rustle 
 of her gown, the distant sound of her voice. And so the rou- 
 tine of life — 9. new routine, but soon firmly established, sup- 
 porting them as upon props of use and wont, began again. 
 There were the lessons in the morning, and Norah's music, and 
 a long walk in the afternoon ; and they went to bed early, glad 
 to be done with life and another day. Or at least Helen was 
 glad to be done with it — ^not Norah, to whom it was the open- 
 ing of the story, and to whom once more the sunshine began ta 
 look as sweet as ever, and each new morning was a delight. 
 
190 
 
 AT HIS OATB& 
 
 A few weeks after their arrival the Haldanes followed them. 
 Miss Jane had written beforehand besging for information 
 about the house and the journey ; anoit was only then that 
 Helen learned, with a mortification she could scarcely overcome, 
 that the Gatehouse was to be their refuse too. This fact so 
 changed the character of her cousin's kindness to her, that her 
 pride was with difficulty subdued to silence ; but sho had 
 sufficient self-control to say nothing — ^pride itself coming to 
 her aid. 
 
 ** Perhaps yon would be so good as to send me a line with a 
 few pai^iculftrs/' Miss Jane wrote. " I should li]^e to know for 
 myself and mother if there is a good minister of our denomina- 
 tion, and if you would mention the price of meat, and how 
 much you are giving for the best butter, I should be very much 
 obliged. I should like to know if there is a good room on the 
 0X>imd-floor that would do for Stephen, and if we could hay:e a 
 Bath-chair to bring him down in from the station, for I am very 
 distrustful of cabs. Also about a chuwoman, which is very 
 important. I am active myself and always look after the wash- 
 ing, so that one strong handy woman to come from six in the 
 morningtill two would do all that I should require." 
 :-r: Mrs.T)rummond made an effort and answered all these ques- 
 tions, and even walked to the station to see them arrive. It 
 was a mournful sight enough. She stood and looked on with 
 her heart aching, and saw the man whom she had known so 
 different litted out of the carriage and put into the invalid 
 chair. She saw the look of dumb anguish and humiliation in 
 his eyes which showed how he felt this public exposure of his 
 weakness. He was very patient ; he smiled and thanked the 
 people who moved him : yet Helen, with her perceptions 
 quickened by her own suffering, felt the intolerable pain m the 
 other's soul, and went away hurriedly, not to afflict him further 
 by her presence. What had he done 1 How had this man 
 sinned more than others t All the idlers that lounged about 
 and. watched him, were they bettor or dearer to God than 
 he was i Mrs. Drummond was half a Pagan, though she did 
 not know it. She hurried away with a miserable sense that it 
 was past bearing. But Stephen set his lips tight and bore it. 
 He bore the looks of the vUlage people who came out to their 
 doors to look at hinx as he paaaed, ; As for his mother and sister 
 
AT HIS OA.TB& 
 
 191 
 
 they scarcely remarked his silence. Thej were so happy that« 
 eveiythinff had gone off so well, that he had borne it so easily, a 
 
 ** I don^ thinK he looks a bit the worse," said Miss Jane. 
 
 They were the tenderest, the most patient of nurs^^ but they 
 had accepted his illness long ago as a matter of course. From the 
 moment he was placed in the chair, and so off their mind, as it 
 were, the luggage came into the ascendant and took his ^laoe^ 
 They had a wonderful amount of parcels, mostly done up in 
 brown paper. Mrs. Haldane herself carried her pet canary in its 
 cage, tied up in a blue and white handkerchief She was more 
 anxious about this for the moment than about her son. The pro- 
 cession was one which caught everybody's eye. First two wheel- 
 barrows withthe lusgage, the first of which was occupied by Ste- 
 phen's bed and chair, the other piled up with boxes, among, the 
 rest two portmanteaus of his own, on which.he could still read, on 
 old labels which he had preserved with pride, the names of Na- 
 ples, Florence, and Rome. Had he been actually there, he who 
 was now little more than a piece of luggage himself ? Miss Jane 
 divided her attentions between her brother and the second 
 wheel-barrow, on which the brown-paper parcels were tumbling 
 and nodding, ready to fall. His mother walked on the other 
 side, holding fast by the parcel in the blue-and-white handker- 
 chief. Mrs. Burton, who was passing in her carriage, stopped 
 to look after them. She, too, had known Stephen in better 
 days. She did not ask passionate questions as Helen was doing ; 
 hut she felt the shock in her way, and only comforted herself 
 by thinking that the feelings get blunted in such unfortrnate 
 cases, and that no doubt other people felt more for him thai; uo: 
 felt for himself. 
 
 But notwithstanding the callousness which use had brought, 
 there was no indifference to Stephen's comfort in the hands of 
 his attendants. Everything was arranged for him that evening 
 as if he had been surrounded by a crowd of servants. When 
 Helen went to see him he was seated by the window with 
 flowers upon his ta>>le and all his papers arranged upon it. H^e 
 flowers were not very choice ; they were of Miss Jane's selec- 
 tion, and marigolds and plumy variegated grass looked beout^l 
 in her eyes. Yet nothing but love could have put everything 
 in its place so soon, and metamorphosed all at once the dining^ 
 room of the Gatehouse into Stephen's room^ wherQ Qv^thing 
 
192 
 
 AT HIS OATBS. 
 
 bore a Mferenee to him and was arranged for his special comfort. 
 Peihaps they did not always feel for him, or even see what room 
 there was for feeling, fiut this they could do— and in it they 
 never failed. 
 
 " Does not he look comfortables" Miss Jane said with 
 triumph. ** You would think to see him he had never budged 
 from his chair. And he got through his journey very weU. If 
 you but knew how frightened I was when we set out 1" 
 
 Stephen looked at Mrs. Drummond with a smile. There were 
 some lines about his month and a quiver in his upper lip which 
 spoke to her more clearly than to his sister. Helen had not been 
 in the way of goine out of herself to sympathise with others ; 
 and it seemed to ner as if she had suddenly ^ot a new pair of 
 eyeS) an additional sense. While they were all talking she saw 
 what the journey had really cost him in his smile. 
 
 " It is strange to see the world again after so long," he i^aid, 
 to realize that once one walked about it quite carelessly like 
 other people, without thinking what a thing it was." 
 
 *'But, Stephen, I am sure you don't repine," said his mother • 
 
 you know whose will it is, and you would not have it differ- 
 ent 9 That is such a comfort whatever we may have to suffer." 
 
 ** You would not have it different !" 
 
 Helen looked at him almost with tears in her eyes. 
 
 " That is a great deal to say, mother," he answered with a 
 suppressed sigh ; while she stiU went on asking herself passion- 
 ately what had he done ) what had he done T 
 
 " I think the charwoman will suit very well," said Miss Jane. 
 She seems very clean, and that is the great thing, I am very 
 well satisfied with everything I have seen as yet. The kitchen 
 garden is beautiful. I suppose as there is no division, we are 
 to have it between us — ^that and the fruit 1 I have been think- 
 ing a few fowls would be very nice if you have no- objection. 
 They cost little to keep, and to have your own eggs is a great 
 luxury. And meat seems reasonable. I am very well satisfied 
 with all I have f<een." 
 
 '* If we only knew about the chapel," said Mrs. Haldane. 
 ** So much of your comfort depends on your minister. If he is 
 a nice man he will be company for Stephen. That is what I am 
 most afraid of— that he will be dull in the country. There was 
 iJways some one coming in about the magazine or some society 
 
At HtS OA'f BS. 
 
 I9d 
 
 i, we are 
 
 or other when we were in town. I am afraid, Stephen, yon will 
 feel quite lost here." 
 
 " Not for want of the visitors, mother/' he said ; ** especially 
 if Mrs. Drummond will spare me Norah. She is better than any 
 minister — not meaning any slight to my brethren," he added, 
 in a half apologetic, half-laughing tone. He could laugh still, 
 which was a thing Helen found it very diificult to understand. 
 
 " Norah is very nice, and I like dearly to see her," said hii 
 mother ; " bi)t, Stephen, I don't like to hear you talk like that. 
 Mrs. Drummend is not to know that it is all your nonsense. 
 You were always such a one for a joke." 
 
 " My jokes have not been very brilliant lately," he said, with 
 a smile. Mrs. Haldane rose at that moment to help her daugh- 
 ter with something she was moving to the other end of the 
 room, and Stephen, seizing the opportunity, turned quickly 
 round upon Helen, who was sitting by him. ** You are very 
 sorry for me," he said, with a mixture of gratitude and impa- 
 tience. Don't ! it is better not V* 
 
 " How can I help it," cried Helen. ** And why is it better 
 notl" 
 
 " Because I cannot bear it," he said, almost sternly. 
 
 This passed in a moment, while the unconscious women at 
 the other end had altered the position of a table. Never man 
 had more tender nurses than these two ; but they had ceased 
 to be sorry for him in look or vford. They had accepted their 
 own fate and his ; his helplessness was to them like the day- 
 light or the dark, a thing inevitable, the course of nature ; and 
 the matter-of fact way in which they had learned to treat it 
 made his life supportable. But it was difficult for a stranger to 
 realize such a fact. ' 
 
 " I never told you that we were disappointed about letting 
 the house," said Miss Jane. " A great many people came, but 
 no one who was satisfactory. It is a great loss. I have left a 
 person in to try for a few months longer. People are very un- 
 principled, coming out of mere curosity, and turning over your 
 blankets and counterpanes without a thought." 
 
 Here the conversation came to a pause, and Helen rose. She 
 was standing saying her farawelis and making such offi^rs of as- 
 sistance as she could, when the daily event with which she had 
 grown familiar took place. 
 
194 
 
 AT HIS OATia 
 
 ! f , « There ig some one ooming," said Stephen, irom the wincloir. 
 It ought to be the queen by the commotion it makes : but it 
 is only Burton." 
 
 And Mrs. Haldane and Miss Jane both rushed forward to 
 see. Helen nvithdrew out of sight with a secret bitterness 
 which she oould not have put into words. Mr. Burton was 
 driving home from the station in all his usual importance. 
 His horses were groomed to perfection, the mounting of his 
 luumess sparhled in the sun. He half drew up as he passed, 
 making his bays prance and express their disapprolbation, while 
 he took off his hat to the new arrivals. It was such a saluta- 
 tion as k jocund monarch might have tossed at a humble wor- 
 shipper, mock ceremony and conscious oocdtscension. The 
 women looking out never thought of that They ran from one 
 window to another to watoh him entering the avenue, they 
 talked ^ eaoh other of his fine horses, the neat groom beside 
 1^4 and how polite he was. Stephen had been lookine ^n, 
 too, with keen mterest. A smile was on his face, but the lines 
 above his eyes were contracted, and the eyes themselves 
 gleamed with a sudden fire which startled Helen. 
 
 " I wonder what he thinks of it all," he said to her under 
 his breath, ** if he thinks at all. I wonder if he is comfortable 
 when he reflects who are living at his gates V 
 
 The WQtds were said so low that she had to stoop to hear ; 
 and with a wondering thrill of half*comprehension she looked 
 at him. What did he mean? From whence came that tone 
 which was almost fierce in its self-restraint 9 It seemed to 
 kindle a smouldering fire in her, of the nature of which she was 
 not quite aware. *' Burton and Golden" suddenly flashed 
 across her thoughts again. Where was it she had seen the 
 names linked together 1 What did it meani and what did 
 Stephen mean ) She felt as if ^e had almost found out some- 
 thii^, whieh quickened her pulse and made her heairt beat — 
 almost. But the last point of enlightenment was yet to 
 
 come. 'iJiVu X(^Hi;','i(.t [. ii.i; ,VJi<i(.:'llJ'i ■ _ii;ii.i:--> .!i.'.'i<r- 
 
 "Now he had turned in at 'the gate," said Miss iXane. 
 *< Well, for my piart, I am glad to have seen him; and to think 
 that a man could do all that by his own exertions l\ If he had 
 been a nobleman I should not have thought half so much of it. 
 1 suppose^ now, that could not be seen anywhere but in 
 
i^ m^ pffn^ 
 
 m 
 
 E^igl^df Ycmiiiay am^» Q^phw^jH^d thipjc i^p very yulgw^ 
 mi944d ; b\ifc I 4o w«>k it U a veiry wqad^rful s^ht ^ 
 
 And tiiu.s the aecopd. household settled dpiv;n and ,becitpiie » 
 p»^ of the l^dsc^pe which the family 9>t Bm^ surveyed yri^^ 
 con]|p)aisADt propnetorship, ^nd through whieh Mr. burton 
 drove every afternoQD, calUng admiriug 8pectat<«8 to jiU th^ 
 windows. The rich mi^n hflid never enjoyed the commotion he 
 n^e so much as he did now when he could see at the Gate- 
 house those faces looking out There was scarcely an evening 
 but Miss Jane or her mother would stand up to see him, gasifig 
 with unoonscioufii worship j^t this representative of wealw and 
 strength, and that practical power which sways the world ; 
 while Nprah would clamber i^p on a chair behind the blinds ai 
 the Qther epdf and look oi^t with her big brown eyes full of 
 S^riou^ obsoryatipn. I^e thougl^t j^prah wpndered and worr 
 shipped too, not h^i^ able to understf^nd the language of her 
 eyes,, A^d spn^etimes he would see, or think he sayr> her 
 mother behind her. When he did, so he went home in good- 
 humour, and WS^ more jpcu^r than usual; for nothing save 
 him such a sense of his own greatness, his prosperity, and si^; 
 peripi^ity to, Cjommon ^e^h and bipod, as the homage, or suppos- 
 ed hom<lg^ paid to hii^ l^y those looJEers-pn at the wihdjows of 
 the j^^te^QUse. 
 
 Mr. Burfipn's eiatisfaction came tp la climax when bis fi^tfier- 
 in-law came to pay his next visit, whiph h^pnened not very 
 loiig after the arrival of the Haldanes. Mr. Bfildwin,^ as wp 
 have s^d, was a Disseuter, a^d something like a lay bishop in 
 his denomination. He was very rich, a^n|d lived very plainly 
 at Clapham with his twosis^rs, Mrs. Everett and ^iss Louisa. 
 They ijirerp all veiy, good people in their way. There was not a 
 man in England who, subscribed to more societies or presided 
 at a greater number of meeting. I^e spent half his income in 
 this way ; he " prompted " charities as his sopiiin-law prompted 
 joint sto(^ cpmp^nies ; and prided himself on the simplicity pf 
 his living and his tastes, notwithstanding his wealth. Whe^ 
 he and his sisters eame to pay a visit lat Dura they walked froin 
 the station, leaving their servants ancl then: boxes to fpllpw i)^ 
 a fly. " "VVe have the^ use of our limbs, I am thankful to Prp- 
 videujcp," one, of .the siste?^ would, say. ; " wby shou^ we have^ 
 parri^e fp^ ft^itllp b^ 0)(,W»d M^M^} " TJ^eJr/^Falkj^, in * 
 
m 
 
 AT m^ OATSS. 
 
 little {irocessiofi, thi gentleman in advance, like a trinmpiiant 
 cock in his harem, the two ladies a little behind. Mr. Baldwin 
 wore his hat on the, back of his head, and a wllte tie, like one 
 6t his favourite ministers ; h^ hftd a round, chubby face, withoat 
 any whiskers, and a c6mpldxion almost as clear as little Clara's. 
 ThiB two ladies were like him, except that Mrs. Everett, who 
 was a widow, was large and stout, and Miss Louisa pale and 
 thin. They walked along with a natural feelins of benevotent 
 supremacy, making their remarks on everybody and every- 
 tuing with distinct voices. When they got to the Gatehouse 
 fhey paused and inspected it, though ulq windqws were all 
 open.' ■"■;'" 
 
 .'*f £ think Reginald was wrong to five such a bouse as this 
 totbose poor p9«}ple," said the married sister in front of the 
 dbor, "It is a handsome house. He might have found some 
 little cobta^e for them> and let this to a family." 
 
 '* Biit, Martha, he gave what he had. and ijt i6 that thajb\is 
 always accepted," said MUs Louisa. m uri^^.m.. .-^irn.. 
 
 The brother, drowned her pliintive little voice with a more 
 decided reply — 
 
 "I am very glad Haldane has such good quatters. As for 
 the lady, I buppose she was not to blame; but wLena man 
 flies in the face of Providence I would not reward him by 
 providing for his wife and family. I agree with Martha. It 
 is.a waste of the gifts of God to jnve this house to poor people 
 who cannot enjoy it ; but stilL Burton is right on the whole. 
 If you cannot do better with your property, why should not 
 you use it to make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness? 
 I approve of his charity on the whole." 
 
 Inside the recipients of the charity sat and heard All through 
 the open windows. But what then? Mr Baldwin and his 
 sisters were not responsible for that. They went on to the 
 avenue making the same candid and audible remarks all along 
 ^he road. It was not necessary that they should exercise self- 
 testra^nt. They were in the dominions of their relation. They 
 were absolute over all foolish sentiment and false pride. They 
 said it loud out, frankly, whatever they might haye to say. 
 The arrival of thes^ visitors always made a certain commotion 
 at Dura. It moved Mr. BurtoQ a great deal morti th^n it did 
 ids wife. Indeed, if there wfiJil anything Which vexed him in 
 
f?riW m^ 
 
 m 
 
 her exemplary behaviour, it was that she would not make tem- 
 porarily tne changes which he thought were ** only respectful" 
 to suit the tastes of her father and aunts. " You know your 
 father likes only plain roast and boiled," he would say to her, 
 half-indignantly, adding, with a laugh, *' and minister sauce." 
 This last was one of his favourite jokes, though it 4id not 
 strike his wife as particularly brilliant. But the minister 
 sauce was the only thing which Mrs. Burton provided for her 
 father. She held fast by her menu, though he disapproved of 
 it. She dressed herself tranquilly for dinner, though her aunts 
 held up their hands, and asked her solemnly if she knew what idl 
 this extravagance must come to 9 In these matters Clara would 
 not give way ; but she asked the minister of the chapel in the 
 village to dinner, and it was in presence of this functionary that 
 Mr. Baldwin filled up the measure of his son-in-law's content. 
 
 "I see you have been very generous to poor Haldane," he 
 said. " I am very much obliged to you. Burton. He is my own 
 man ; I should have been compelled to do something for him 
 if you had not taken him up; and my hands are always so full! 
 Yuu will find I do not forget it. But it was a great waste to 
 put him into such a handsome house." 
 
 " I a,m delighted to have pleased you," said Mr. Burton. 
 << It was an empty house ; and I have put my cou^n, Mrs^ 
 Drummond, in the other end, whom I was obliged to take care 
 of. It was the cheapest way of doing it. J am most happy 
 to think I have relieved you, even of so little as that." 
 
 " Oh yes, you have relieved me," said Mr. Baldwin. " I shan't 
 forget it. it will be an encouragement to^r. Truston and to 
 many of the brethren to see that a sick friend is never abandoned. 
 I don't mean to say that you want any inducement— but, still, 
 when vou can see that even in the case of failing strength " 
 
 ** Oh yes. I am sure it |s most encouraging," the poor min- 
 ister faltered. ^ ^^^,[; .;^ .^^k 
 
 Encouraging to think of Stephen Haldane, who was thus 
 provided fori The two rich men went on with their talk over 
 their wine, while some confused speculation as to the ways of 
 Providence went through tne head of theircompanion. He wiub 
 young, and he felt ill-at-ease, and he (^id not like to interfere 
 much. Had it been Mr. Dalton he would have been less easily 
 silenced. Thus Mr. Burton found his benevolence in one par- 
 ticular at least attended with the most perfect success. 
 
iff ^ CfAW^. 
 
 
 ...;i.wi .,. 
 
 CHlArtfilt XM 
 
 •utdfM/: 
 
 
 ND everything settled db^^m, and' Natifire restltned lueir 
 common rbund. This is what lifature does in all cir- 
 cumstances. There never Was so bad a storm but next 
 tuoming the thrifty mother took heart and set to work again 
 as best sEe could to make amends for it. It is only when the 
 storm affects human hearts and lives that this cheerral^ pathetic 
 effort to get the better of it becomes terrible ; for the menditig 
 in toch cases is so ofteli superficial, the cure impossible: Other 
 tr^es grow Up to fin the gap made by the one blown dbwit; 
 but riot othetr loves or otheir nopes. Yet gradually the teiDtpe^t 
 cdihib, the -\^eck is swept away, aUd sotUe things that are new 
 are always better than some thihgs that weirei old, ciVen though 
 the old can never be replaced whfle life g06S Ott. 
 
 6f all the dwellers in the OatehoUse, it Wdb poor Haldto 
 who felt this the most. The r^ali^ of this lif6 & the cfOUntfy 
 #iid Vfcry differfeflt froiii the antidipatibh. The frfesh air ^hich 
 hid motheir^had hoped to hkv6 for ^phcfri — ^tlie cottage garden 
 #hich they had m dreamt of (even He hiintelf by momfetitsl 
 •^here he could be wheeled in his chair to sit under the apple- 
 tree and smdl the floWers — had vahished froiii their 116t of 
 pbssibilities. All the fresh air he coUld hav6 Was frotn the 
 open window by which his chair Was placedl But Hot eHrieti 
 ffh^ garden and the apple-tre^ would havo done so much for 
 him as the varieties of the country rbadl Instead of thegm:- 
 den walls sit Yictoria Villas, the strip df dUsty grass, the chaticie 
 sight Of a neighbour's child at play, or (more likely) of a 
 neighbour's clothes hung out to dry, he had a gettuine rural 
 high-road, With all iti^ sights. He saw the darts passing with 
 rural ptodilce, fall of big baskets of vegetables for the Londdh 
 tharket ; he saw the great waggOUs of odbrous hay, With a man 
 asleep on the top, half buried iu the wanu aud fragknt mass, 
 bir crackitig his Whip On the path, and shbUting di'bwsy, iu- 
 
 itrticulate calls to the hbta^s, Who tbok iihteir 6#ii w&y, and dH 
 iiot n^hd hith : he s^w the carrjutges gleiAm past "idth the great 
 
AT HIS OATESw 
 
 199 
 
 pdopto, irhotk hr degrees he got to know ; and then the Eector^ 
 ohildi«n were always about, and Mrs. Daltonin her ponj-ohaise, 
 and the people coming and going from the village. There 
 were two of the village folk in particular who brought a posi- 
 tive pleasure into his life — not a pair of lovers, or any pretty 
 group, but only Olippings, the tailor, and Brown, the shoemaker, 
 who strolled down tne road in the evening to smoke their pipes 
 and talk politics as far as the Rectory gate. Clippings, who 
 lived " up town," was always decorous in his shabby coat ; but 
 Brown, whose shop was at ** the corner," came in his shirt- 
 sleeves, with his apron turned up obliquely to one side. They 
 would stop just opposite his window when they got hot in 
 their discussion. Sometimes it was the parish they talked of, 
 sometimes the affairs of the state, and it was in Stephen's mind 
 sometimes to invite them to cross the road, and to have his say 
 in the matter- They were hot men of education or intelligence 
 perhaps ; but they were men, living the natural human life 
 from which he had been torn, and it did him good to watch 
 them. After a while they began to look over at him and take 
 off their hats, half with village obsequiousness to a possible 
 customer, half with natural feeling for a soul in prison ; and 
 he gave them a nod in return. 
 
 But this vulgar fancy of his was not quite approved of within. 
 " If you are so friendly with these men, Stephen, you will 
 have them coming over, and poisoning the whole hou3e with 
 tobacco," Mrs. Haldane said, with an expressive sniff. ^'I 
 think I smell it even now." But his mother was not aware 
 that the scent of the tobacco was like an air of paradise to poor 
 Stephen, who had loved it well enough when he was his own 
 master, though it had become impossible now 
 
 Mrs. Haldane, however, did not say a word against Mr. 
 Dalton's cigar, which he very often smoked under Stephen's 
 window in those summer mornings, lounging across in his 
 study coat. It must be remembered that Stephen was not a 
 Dissenting minister pw et simpky but a man whose name had 
 been heard in that literary world which Mr. Dalton, as a 
 "thoughtful" and " liberal" clergyman, chiefly affected. The 
 rector felt that it was kind to go and talk to poor Haldane, 
 but he was not so overwhelmingly superior as he might have 
 been under other circumstances. He did not set him down at 
 
200 
 
 ▲T HIS GATES. 
 
 onoe ftt a distanoe of a hundred miles, as he did Mr. Trnston, 
 the minister of the chapel at Dura, by the mere suavity of his 
 *' good morning." On the contrary, they had a great deal of 
 talk. Mr. Dalton was a man who piqued himself on his Radi- 
 calism, except when he happened to come in contact with 
 JCadicals, and he was very great in education, though he left 
 the parish schools chiefly to his wife. When anything had 
 happened which was more than ordinarily interesting in public 
 affairs, he would stride across with gaiety to the encounter : 
 ** I told you your friend Bright was not liberal-minded enough 
 to see that distinction," he would say ; or, " Gladstone has 
 gone off on another search after truth ; " and then the battle 
 would go on, while Stephen sat inside and his interlocutor 
 paced the white flags in front of the Gatehouse up and down 
 under the windows with that fragrant cigar. Sometimes Mary 
 would come flying over from the Rectory : " Papa, papa, you 
 are wanted. There are some papers to sign, and mamma can't 
 doit, she says." ** PazUnzal" the rector would answer, for 
 he had travelled too. 
 
 And then on the Saturday there were other diversions for 
 Stephen. Old Ann from the farm of Dura Den would whip 
 up her old white pony and stop her cart under his window. 
 She had hef grandson with her, a chubby lad of twelve, in a 
 smock-frock, beautifully worked about the shoulders, with 
 cheeks as red as the big poppies in the nosegay which his 
 grandmother made a point of bringing' every Saturday to the 
 poor sick gentlemen. 
 
 "And how do you do, sir, this fine fresh morning 1" she 
 would shout to him. " I hope as I sees you better. Sammy, 
 give me those flowers. It's old-fashioned, master, but it's sweet 
 and I just wish I see you able to come and fetch 'em for your- 
 self." 
 
 "Thank you, Ann ; but I fear that's past hoping for," Ste- 
 phen would say with a smile. 
 
 The, same colloquy passed between them every week, but 
 they did not tire of it, and the little cart with its mixture of 
 colours, the red carrots, and white cauliflowers, and many-tinted 
 greens, was a pleasant sight to him. He did not object even 
 to the pungent odour of the celery, which often communicated 
 itself to hu bouquet The white pony, and the red and white 
 
AT HIS 0AT9& 
 
 201 
 
 and green of the vegetables, and old Ann with, a small face, 
 like a russet winter apple, under her deep bonpet, and l^er 
 little red shawl, trimly tied in round her waist by the greajt, 
 many pocketed apron ; and Sammy trudging behind, with boots 
 like buckets, with a basket of crimson cabbage for pickles on 
 his arm, and his puffy, peony cheeks, made up a homely picture 
 which delighted the recluse. It was an event for him when 
 the Saturday came round, and he began (he said) to be very 
 fond of the smell of celery, and to think double poppies very 
 hanisume, showy flowers to put into a nosegay. Miss Jane 
 took an interest in Ann too, but it was of a different kind. 
 She would go to the door, and have long discussions with her 
 on various subjects, quite as interesting as the rector's battles 
 with Stephen — whether the butter was rising, and what was 
 the cheapest for her poultry ; for Ann's butter and her poultry 
 were the best in Dura, and when she knew you, and felt that 
 you were to be depended upon, she was not dear, Miss Jane 
 always said. 
 
 There was also another visitor, who came once a week, not 
 to Stephen's window, but to make a call in all proper state. 
 This was Mr. Truston, the minister of the chapel, who was 
 like Stephen, b, protege of Mr. Baldwin, but had not either done 
 so much credit or given so much trouble to the denomination 
 as Haldane had. Mr. Truston was aware how his new acquain- 
 tance was spoken of by the community, and his mind was 
 much divided between veneration for Step! en's powers and a 
 desire to be faithful with his brother. If he could be the 
 humble instrument of setting him quite right with the denomi- 
 nation and preserving the efficiency of the magazine, he felt 
 that he would not have lived in vain. But it was a dreadful 
 trial to his modesty to assume an admonitory position to onei 
 whom he respected so much. He confided his difficulties to 
 Mrs. Wigginton, the wife of the draper at Dura, who was a 
 leading member of the congregation, and a very thoughtful 
 woman ; and she had given him a greM deal of eneouragment, 
 and put his duty before him in the clearest light. ,,^ 
 
 " The thing is to keep him to fundamental principles," Mrs. 
 Wigginton said. '' I would excuse a great deal if he preserved 
 these. We may be superior to distinction, and know that there 
 is good both in church and chapel. But that wiU not do for 
 
tot 
 
 £t Hi^ MrM 
 
 the comttion mass. And we xmist support the detidlninatioii, 
 Mr. TVuston^ It has its faults — ^but, whatever its faults may 
 be, We must staud by our flag. 
 
 '* Ah, I' wish you would take him iu hand," said the minis- 
 ter "tdth a sigh ; but, all the same, such inspiration as this did 
 not go for nothing. He began to call on the Haldanes every 
 week; and when ne screwed up his courage he jtneant to be 
 very Mthful with Stephen ; but a man cannot begin that pro- 
 cess all at once. 
 
 -; Thus the Haldanes settled down iu the Gatehouse; and 
 their settling down a£flected Helen with that unintentional ex- 
 ample and encouragement, which people convey to each other 
 without meaning it. They wei*e wl very poor, but Miss Jane, 
 who had never beeit very rich, and who had been trained to 
 liv6 6il th^ smallest sum imaginable, made no hardship of her 
 poterty, and communicated a certaiu cheerfiilliess about it e-Ven 
 to her neighbour, whose mind and training were so very differ- 
 ent. Miss Jane took it as she had learned to take (though 
 itdt tih after many struggles) her brother's illness, as a matter of 
 cbiirse. She was aware that there were rich people in the world 
 i%e sai;^ thetn even, the Burtons, fbr instance, who passed her 
 Sve^ day, and whose Kfe was full of luxury ; but this did not 
 mow her, anymore than the sight of a great beauty would 
 hkve moved her to impatience of her own plain and homely 
 ttce. The we&lih like the beauty was exceptional. Thehome- 
 finess and the poverty were the natural rule. And Helen saw 
 that the Hues of pain were softened in Stephen's face, and that 
 he had begun to feel something like pleasure in those allevia- 
 tions of his loneliness which have been described. All this 
 prodticed a soothing, quieting influence upon her.' She was 
 flushed, as a child is who is not satisfied, whose cry is ready to 
 burst fbrth at any moment, but upon whom the very atmos- 
 phere, the stOlUess of the air has produced a certain calm. The 
 wrong which had burnt her heart like a fire was not extinguish- 
 ed ; it burned low, not for want of fuel, but because the air was 
 soft and humid, and kept down the flame. And she herself 
 was subdued. She was weary of sufifbring, and the routine 
 of the new life acted upon her like an opiate, and the sense 
 tSiat all thils was a,eeepted as ordinary and natural by others, 
 kc^t het dowa And then Norah had cast away those bonds 
 
l^'in^MTiBl. 
 
 208 
 
 #hiohMdpt^ress a e1i9d— the Bdnda of cbnventidiud qttitBt, itvKiblit 
 remain when iiatiiral grief has passed away in the order of 
 things. Nora,h had begun to sing i^boat the house, to danoo 
 when she should have walkisd, to wake up*l^e the flowers, to 
 Hve like the birds, spending her days in a chatter and flutter 
 of lifb and gladness. All this ckhned down and suppressed the 
 Mings which had swayed Helen after her husband's dtoth. 
 Though her old sense of suspicion in resj^ect t6 her cousin had 
 succeeded the momentary relenting which his kindness had 
 produced in her, even that was suppressed in the artificial calm. 
 She bli&med herself for shrinking from his presence, for cUslik- 
 ing his friendliness ; she evenjbiade an effort to go to his house^ 
 to overcome what she said to herself wac her mean envy of his 
 prosperity. She made friends with his wifb, as fito as two wo- 
 men so different could make friends, and tried to believe thiiCt 
 Rednald Burton himself had never meant but well. It was in 
 October; when she had first begun fully to realize the stntid^^ 
 qtiietness that had come tipon her, that it was suddenly brokdi 
 up, never in that same fashion to return again. 
 
 There were visitors at the time at Dura Hbuse, vidtoM of 
 importJeUice, great county people, potentates whom it was said 
 Mrs. Btirton ifAB specialt^^ bent on conciliating in order to Open 
 the way into Parliament — a glory upon which she was set — 
 to he^ nusband. Mr. Burton had himself taken a holiday ftotb, 
 basinesd, and, on this particular day had gone up, after a long 
 intiBrV^l, " to see," he said, with that cheerfiil, important laugh 
 of his, "how things were going on." That evening, however, 
 Dura tillage was disappointed of its usual amusement. The 
 phaetoii with the bays went slowly past, driven by the groom; 
 with a certain consternation in every line of the horses, and iti 
 every splendid tail and high-stepping hoof. 
 
 "Has Hot your master comel" JiSib. Burton asked, wheii 
 she met this forlorn equipage in the avenue. Such a thing 
 had been known ; sometimes business was so urgent that Mr. 
 Burtoii had lost his train, or waited for one that went lat^r. 
 But that tirhich had happened this evening had never happened 
 before. 
 
 "He is ivalking, ma'am," said the groom, with gloom;$r sig- 
 nification- It gave even Mrs. Burton a start, though tAA wa^ 
 ttsuaily so ci^-possessed ; a^d a$ fbr the groom, he «ptM it 
 
m 
 
 J^,^^J^ATEa. 
 
 ^lK>iit throneh the house that there had been " a smash " in 
 the City. Nothing else could account for so extraordinary a 
 
 Mr. Burton walkedi and his countenance was clouded. There 
 was a shade on it, which the people about Dura, stupefied in 
 the first instance, by seeing him afoot at that hour, interpreted 
 as the groom did. They thought ** something must have hap< 
 pened4' The Bank of England must have faltered on its 
 throne ; half the merchants, at home and abroad, must have 
 fallen to the dust, like Oagon. Some one of weak mind, who 
 suggested that the ministry might be out, was snubbed by 
 everybody with a contempt proportioned to his foolishness. 
 Would Mr. Burton look like that for any merely political mis- 
 fortune 1 But no one ventured even to suggest that Burton 
 4? Co. themselves might have sustain(^ some blow. Such 
 treason might be in men's thoughts, but no one dared to hint 
 at an event which more than a revolution or a lost empire would 
 have convulsed Dura. There are spf^e^hingfi which it is impi- 
 ous even to speculate about. ' I ' 
 
 Mr. Burton, went rlirect to the Gatehouse. He had no.t his 
 usual condescending word to Susan, nor did he remember to 
 wave his hand to Stephen as he passed the window. He went 
 straight into the drawing-room where Helen and Norah were 
 sitting. They had just coI^e in from their walk, and were go- 
 ing to have tea ; and such a visit at this hour startled them. 
 There was something more. than gloom on his face ; there was 
 suppressed an^er, and he had the look of a map who had come 
 t9 speak hi^ miq4. He shook hands in the slightest, most hasty 
 way, not evidently caring to waste time in salutations, and he did 
 uot take the cMair that was offered to him. He ke^t standing, 
 looking first at Helen and then at Norah, with glances which 
 he seemed to e2;pect would be understood ; but as Norah had 
 b^en present at every discussion in the he use all her life, it did 
 not occur to her to go awaiv, nor to her mother to send her. At 
 last he was obliged to speiak plainly. 
 
 " I am anxious to taljc to you by yourself,** he said. "I 
 have something very important to say. Norah, perhaps, would 
 run out to the garden, or, spmewhere-^for half an hour. I 
 shouldnot askfor morp.' ,;,j,,,,.cf , .|/^,,^,^,, . 
 
 *^ I^orah ! " said Helen, V^w surprise. ** But she ^las heard 
 
At fits OAttS. 
 
 205 
 
 everything that any one can have to say to me. She knows as 
 much as I do. You may say anything before Norah." 
 
 •« By ! " said Mr. Burton. He did not put any word 
 
 in the vacant place. He swore by BUhlc* as we do in books, 
 
 contenting himself with the "By r!" "/don't mean to 
 
 speak of my affairs before Korah," he saici, walking to the win- 
 dovTt and looking out. " Send her away.*' 
 
 He waited there with his back turned to the two, who gazed 
 at each other amazed. 
 
 " Go up stairs till I send for you, Norah," said Helen, with 
 a trembling voice. It must be some new pain, some new ter- 
 ror, something about Norah's father. She put her hand on her 
 heart to keep it still. This was how her calm was broken all 
 in a moment. She put her child away with the other hand. 
 And Norah, astonished, indignant, choking with sudden rage 
 and mortification, flew out of the room aiid rushed up-stairs. 
 The sound of her hurried, angry retreat seemed to ring through 
 all the house. It was not till her foot was heard overhead that 
 her mother found breath to speak. " What is it 1 — tcdl me I 
 There can be nothing now so very hard to bear." 
 
 "I don't know what you mean about hard to bear," said 
 Mr. Burton, turning pettishly round and seating himself on a 
 chair in front of hor. " Helen I have done all T could to be 
 kind to you. You will say it has not cost me very much, but 
 it has cost me more than you think. I have put myself to a 
 great deal of trouble, and »-■>•'■ 
 
 " Is this all you have to tell'm'^ V'bH^ asked faintly, still 
 holding her hand upon her heart. 
 
 " All ! " he repeated ; and then changing his tone suddenly, 
 " do you know anything of this new folly Maurice has taken 
 in hand 1 Don't prevaricate, Helen ; answer me yes or no." 
 
 " I do not know what you mean," she said, and paused for 
 breath. Her fright, and the strange assaolt that had been 
 made upon her, confused her mind. Theii gradually with 
 Maurice's name came a sudden gleam of light. 
 
 " That is a pretence," he Said. " I can s(^e in your facia that 
 you understand. You that 1 have been, so to speak, ndUrisH-^ 
 ing in my bosom— you —Helen ! There is still time to think' 
 better of it. Have you given yoiir consent to it ? Has he got 
 yournamel" ^ 
 
 
AT,5I8 (ifAWW. 
 
 ''If it is anything Dr. Maurice is doing/' she sai4» "yes, he 
 has got my consent, and more than my consent" 
 
 "Good heaveqsy why f Are ^ou in your senses ? I thought 
 it was some idiotic woman's notion., What good can it possi- 
 bly do to rake up that business all over again ? What ihe 
 deuce do you mean by it ? What can it ever be to you, ) " 
 
 ''What is it to you 1 " she said. 
 
 " To 1^9 r" She was looking at him, and his voice f^ll. He 
 had begun loudly, as if with the intention of declaring that to 
 hka it was less than nothing ; but he was caught by her look, 
 and only grew confused, and stammered out again, " To me ! " 
 
 " Yes," said Helen. " You are not a Director. You have 
 said you were a loser only, you ^4 n9 req^wnsjbjl^tjf. Tj^en 
 what does it matterto you r , . , 
 
 Mr. Burton turned away his head; he stamped his foot 
 slightly on the floor in impatience. "What is the use f'jhe 
 wd, as if to himself, "you might teach an elephant to i fly 
 sooner than make a woman understand about business. With- 
 out being anything to me, it loight be something, tp my 
 friends." 
 
 " Is th^t man — ^that— golden— is he your friend T 
 
 " Of course he is," said Mr. Burton roughly, with a certain 
 defiance* *^ You a^e prejudiced against him unjustly. But he 
 is niyiri^d, and a very good fellow too." 
 
 " Then it is better not to say any more," said Helen rising, 
 trembling in every limb. "It is best not to say any more. Oh, 
 4on't venture to name his name to me 1 If I had not been a 
 woman, I should have — not killed him. — That would have 
 been too good. Innocent men are killed, and you others look 
 on, and never lift a finger. I would have pursued him till his 
 last breath — crushed nun— ma^e Him feel what he ha^ done, 
 ^d I will— if t have the power r 
 
 $he stood up confronting her cousin, trembling, yet glowing 
 i^h that passion which me name of her husband's slanderer 
 always roused within her. She was almost as tall as Burton 
 w{^ an^d he felt as if she towered over him^ and was cowed by 
 the strength of her emotion. He rose too, but he shrank back 
 a stet^ not knowing how to meet the spirit he had r<)used. 
 
 " These are nice Christian sentiments," he said^ ^t^ an 
 attempt at a sneer ; but in his heart he was afraid* 
 
 ■vrt;r.n 'it!' 
 
At Bts «A¥.U. 
 
 i07 
 
 g 
 
 '^task nobody what kind of sentiments they fuw/' sb« oned. 
 " If he had wronged me only, I would have forgiven him. Bi|t 
 no man shall say his name before me — no man 1 I may not 
 have the power ; my friends may not have the power ; bat it is 
 that and not the will, which will fail if we fail I will n^ver 
 give up trying to punish him, never in mv life 1" 
 
 " Then you will be acting like a fool," Mr. Burton said ; but 
 he changed his tone, and took a great deal of trouble to persuade 
 her to take her seat again, and discuss the inatt^ caWly 
 with him. 
 
 Norah stood up-stairs by the window, watching till he should 
 0. The child's heart was bursting with rage and pain. She 
 ad never been sent away before ; she had heard everythjlog, 
 had been al^rays present whatever was going on. Her father^ 
 Dr. Maurice, Mr. Haldane, every one of them had spoken ii^h«r 
 presence all that they had to say. And she remepibered woirda 
 that no one else remembered, scraps of talk which she could put 
 together. She did so with a violent exercise of her memory 
 as she stood there drumming on the window, and wondering 
 when he would go. ** He thinks I am only a child," she said to 
 herself, in the fiery commotion of her spirits, and thought of a 
 hundred things she could do to prove the contrary. She would 
 go to Dr. Maurice ; she would let " everybody" know. He was 
 no friend ; he was a conspirator against them — one of those who 
 killed her father. Every moment that passed inflamed Norah 
 more. She stood at the window and watched, thinking would 
 he never be gone, thinking, oh why could she not make 
 herself a woman ! What.her mother had done was nothine to 
 what Norah felt herself capable of doing. Every vein in her 
 body, and every nerve had begun to thrill and tremble before 
 she heard the sound down-stairs of the door opening, and saw 
 him go hastily away. 
 
 This was what he said when he opened the door of the sit- 
 ting-room down-stairs — 
 
 " You will do what you please, of course. I have found out 
 before now what it is to struggle with an unreasonable woman. 
 Do what you like. Drag your husband's name through the 
 diit again. Throw all sorts of new light on his motives. That 
 is what you will do. People might have forgotten it; but after 
 what you are going to do, they will never forget. And that is 
 
M 
 
 AT tan 0AT1B8. 
 
 all you will have for yonr pains — ^you may be inre yon caa ^o 
 nothing to us.*' 
 
 " Us 1" said Helen. '* You told me you were not con- 
 cerned." 
 
 And then Mr. Burton changed colour and lost his temper. 
 
 " You drive a man wild," he cried. " You make me that I 
 don't know what £ am saying. Of course you know what I mean 
 though you pretend you don't. I mean my friends. And you 
 know that, and you know how much you owe to me, and yet 
 the answer I get is — this 1" 
 
 He slammed the door after him like ?n angry maid-servant ; 
 he strode hastily away to his own house, with a face which of 
 itself gave a new paralytic seizure to old John at the lodge. He 
 filled everybody with consternation in his own house. And 
 Helen stood still after he had left her, half exultant, half stupe- 
 fied. Us/ Had she found his cunning manoeuvres out f 
 
 \ 
 
 
 
 P,rf. 
 
▲T HIS GATES. 
 
 209 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 jR. MAURICE came down next day. He was a man 
 of very quiet manners, and vet he was unable to con- 
 ceal a certain excitement. He walked into the Qate- 
 house with an air of abstraction, as if he did not quite know 
 what he was about. 
 
 ** I have come to talk about business/' he said, but he did 
 not send Norah away. Probably had he not been so glad to see 
 her once more, it would have surprised him to see the child 
 whom he had never beheld apart from a book, standing up by 
 her mother's chair, watching his face, taking in every word. 
 Norah's role had changed since those old days. She had no 
 independent standing then ; now she was her mother's 
 companion, champion, supporter. This changes as nothing 
 else can do a child's life. 
 
 " Our case is to be heard for the first time to-morrow," he 
 said. " I believe they are all very much startled. Golden was 
 brought before the magistrate yesterday ; he has been admitted 
 tobul, of course. If I could have had the satisfaction of 
 thinking that rascal was even one night in prison ! But that 
 was too much to hope for. Mrs. Drummond, can you guess 
 who was his bail 1 " 
 
 Helen shook her head, not understanding quite what he 
 meant ; but all the same she knew what his answer would be. 
 He brought it out with a certain triumph — 
 
 "Why, Burton — ^your precious cousin ! I knew it would be 
 so. As sure as that sun is shining. Burton is at the bottom of 
 it all I have seen it from the first." 
 
 "Dr. Maurice," said Helen, " where have I seen, where have 
 I read. * Burton and Golden have done it 1' The words seem 
 to haunt me. I cannot be fancy." 
 
 Dr. MauriceHpok out his pocket-book. He too> a folded 
 paper from an inner pocket, and held it to her without a word. 
 Poor Helen, in the composure which she had attained so pain- 
 fully, began to shake and tremble ; the sight of it moved her 
 N 
 
 
210 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 beyond her self-control. She could not weep, but her strained 
 nerves quivered, her teeth chattered, her frame was convulsed 
 by the shock. " Ah !" she cried, as people do when they re- 
 ceive a blow; and yet now she remembered it all— every word; 
 it seemed to be written on her heart. 
 
 The physician was alarmed. Human emotion has many 
 ways of showing itself, but none more alarming than this. He 
 put the letter hastily away again, and plunged into wild talk 
 about the way she was living , the house, and the neighbour- 
 hood. 
 
 " You are taking too little exercise. You are shutting your- 
 self up too much," he said, with something of that petulance 
 which so often veils pity. He was not going to encourage her 
 to break down by being sorry for her : the other way, he thought, 
 was the best And then he himself was on the very borders of 
 emotion too, the sight of these words had brought poor R* bert 
 so keenly to his mind. And they had brought to his mind also 
 his own hardships. Norah in her new place was very bewilder- 
 ing to him. He had noted her closely while her mother was 
 speaking, and with wonder and trouble had seen a woman look 
 at him through the girl's brown eyes — a woman, a new 
 creature, an independent being, whom he did not know, whom 
 he would have to treat upon a different footing. This discovery, 
 which he had not made at the first glance, filled him with dis- 
 may and trouble. He had lost the child whom he loved. 
 
 " Norah, come and show me the house," he said, with a 
 certain despair ; and he went away, leavmg H<-len to recover 
 herself. That was better than going back upon the past, recall 
 ing to both the most painful moments of their life. 
 
 He took Norah's hand, and walked through the open door 
 into the garden, which was the first outlet he saw. 
 
 "Come and tell me all about it," he said. "Norah, what 
 have you been doing to yourself 1 Have you grown up in these 
 three mouths ? You are not the little girl I used to know." 
 
 " Oh, Dr. Maurice, do you think 1 have grown? " cried Norah, 
 with her whole heart in the demand. 
 
 And it would be impossible to deticribe what a comfort this 
 eager question was to him. He laughed, and looked down up- 
 on her, and began to feel comfortable again. 
 
 " Do you know, I am afraid you have not grown/' he said, 
 
▲T HIS GATES. 
 
 211 
 
 patting his other hand fondly on her hrown hair. "Are you 
 vexed, Norahl For my part, I like yon best as you ara" 
 
 " Well, it cannot be helped," said Norah, with resignation. 
 
 " I did not think I had ; but for a moment I had just a little 
 hope, you looked so funny at me. Oh, Dr. Maurice, I do so 
 wish I was grown up !— for many things. First there is, Mr. 
 Burton, who comes and bullies mamma. I hate that man. I re- 
 member at home, in the old days, when you used to be talk- 
 ing, and nobody thought I paid any attention^ " 
 
 "What do you remember, Norah?" 
 
 " Oh heaps of things. I can s<?arcely tell you. They would 
 look at each other — I mean Mr. Golden and he. They would 
 say things to each other. Oh, I don't remember what the words 
 were ; how should I remember the words? but things — just as 
 you might look at me, and give a little nod, as if we had some- 
 thing secret from mamma, I know they had secrets, those 
 twOg If I were grown up and could speak, I would tell him so. 
 Dr. Maurice, can't we punish them 1 I cannot imagine " cried 
 Norah passionately, " what God can be thinking of to let them 
 alone and let them be happy, after all they have done to — ^poor 
 papa!" ;,y^^ Ob ;,t/.'i 
 
 " Norah these are strange things for you to be thinking of," 
 said Dr. Maurice, once more disturbed by a development which 
 he was not acquainted with. 
 
 " Oh, no. If you knew how we live, you would not think 
 them strange. I am little ; but what does that matter? There 
 is mamma on one side, and there is Mr. Haldane. How diffe- 
 rent we all used to be ! Dr. Maurice, I reuiember when poor 
 Mr. Haldane used to take me up, and set me on his shoulder ; 
 and look at him now ! Oh, how can any one see him, and 
 bear it ? But it does no good to cry." 
 
 " But, Norah, that is not Mr. Burton's fault." 
 
 " No, not that ; but, oh, it is God's fault," said Norah, sink- 
 ing her voice to a whisper, and ending with a burst of passion- 
 ate tears. 
 
 " Hush, hush, hush ! " He took her hand into both of his, 
 and soothed her. Thoughts like these might float through a 
 man's mind involuntarily, getting no utterance ; but it horrified 
 him to hear them from the lips of a child. Was she a child 1 
 Dr. Maurice said to himself once more, with an inward groan, 
 
^ 
 
 AT HIS o!4TES 
 
 m 
 In' 
 
 ihit his little Norah, his dream-child of the f^ 'tkle«/wite 
 gone, and he should fihd her no mote. 
 
 "And then it vexes one rather to belittle," she said, sud- 
 denly dr3dng her eyes," because of Clara. Clara is not twelve 
 tod she is much bigger than I am. She can reach to these 
 roses— look — while I can't get near them ; and they are the on- 
 1^ roses we have now. But, after all, though it may be nice to 
 be tall, it doesn't matter very much, do you think, for a woman t 
 So mamma says ; and girls are just as often little as tall — ^in 
 books." 
 
 " For my part, I am'fond of little women," said Dr. Maurice, 
 and this time he laughed within himself. She kept him be- 
 tween the two, changing from childhood to womanhood with- 
 out knowing it. " But tell me, who is Clara 1 I want to 
 know about your new friends here." 
 
 "Clara is Clara Burton, and very like him," said Norah. 
 ** I thought I should be fond of her at first, because she! is 
 my cousin ; but I am not fond of her. Ned is her brother. I 
 like hJm better. He is a horsey, doggy sort of a boy ; but 
 then he has always lived in the country and he knows no 
 jbetter. One can't blame him for that ; do you think 1" 
 
 "Oh, no," said Dr. Maurice with great seriousness; "one cau't 
 blame him for that." The man's heart grew glad over the 
 child's talk. He could have listened to her running on about 
 her friends for ever. 
 
 "And then there was — some one else," said Norah, instinct- 
 ively drawing herself up ; " not exactly a boy ; a — ^gentleman. 
 We saw him in, town, and then we saw him here ; first with 
 that horrible man, Mr. Golden, and another day with the Bur- 
 tons. But you are not to think badly of him for that. He was 
 — on our side." 
 
 " Who is this mysterious personage, I wonder 1 " said Dr. 
 Maurice smilingly ; but this time it was not a laugh oi* a groan, 
 but a little shivering sensation of pain that ran through him, he 
 could not tell why. 
 
 " He was more like Fortunatus than any one," said Norah. 
 
 "But he could not be like Fortunatus in everything, for he 
 said he was poor like us — ^though that might be only, as I say 
 it myself, to spite Clara. Well, he was grown up — ^taller than 
 7<)ti «re, Dr. 'Mmitice^iidth tdciQ caditig'sbrtt>f luUr.allmlit- 
 
m.^^ Qim^f. 
 
 V\% 
 
 iJ[9 t^in^ iaMibiiif«, l^)4J?ea^1#ul,e]r«& Thej flaished up apt. 
 wjjifiT^. ;m$^mn% 8{v>>ce. Man^pia was v^ry, yery angry t^l^ing, to, 
 th^^jhoiT^lt^^ vfim at par o^inai very door. Fanqy, he had darea^ 
 to go a^ call and leave his horrid card. I tore it into twenty, 
 pieces, and stamped upon it. It was silly, I suppose; but to 
 think he should dai;e to call — at our own very house " 
 
 " I am gettins dreadfully confused, Norah, between ihe 
 beautiful eyes and the horrible man. I don't know what I am 
 about. Which was which t " 
 
 " Oh, Dr. Maurice, how could you ask such a question ?; 
 Are there two such men in the world 1 It was that Mr. Golden 
 whom I hate ; and Mr. Rivers — Cyril Rivers — was with him, 
 not knowing — ^but he says he will never go with him again. I 
 saw it in his eyes in a moment ; he is on our side." 
 
 '' You are young to read eyes in this way. I do not think I 
 quite like it, Norah," said Dr. Maurice, in a tone which she re- 
 cognized at once. 
 
 " Why, you are angry. But how can I help it 1 " said Korah, 
 growing a woman again. " If you were like me, Dr. Maurice 
 —if you felt your mamma had only you — if you knew there 
 was nobody else to stand by her, nobody to help her, and you 
 so little! I am obliged to thinlc; I cannot help myself. 
 When I grow up. I sh^ have so much to do ; and how can I 
 know whether people are on our side or against us, except by 
 looking at their eyes 1 " 
 
 " Norah, my little Norah ! " cried the man pitifully, " don't 
 leave your innocence for such fancies as these. Your mother 
 has friends to think for her and you — many friends ; I myself, 
 for example. As long as I am alive, do you require to go and 
 look for people to be on your side ? Why, child, you forget. 
 me" 
 
 Norah looleO at him searchingly, penetrating, as he thought, 
 to the bottoui of his heart, 
 
 " I did not forget you. Dr. Maurice. You are fond of me and 
 of— poor papa. But I have to think of Jier. I don't think you 
 love her. And she has the most to bear." 
 
 Dr. Maurice did not make any reply. He did not love 
 Helen ; he even shrank from the idea with a certain prudish 
 sense of delicacy — an old bachelor's bashfulness. Love lilrs. 
 Drummond I Why, it was out of the question. The i^^ft dis- 
 
214 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 concerted him. He had been quite pained and affected a mO' 
 ment before at the thought that his little Norah — the child 
 that he was so fond of — shoald want other champions. But 
 now he was disconcerted, and in front of the grave little face 
 looking; up at him, he did not even dare to smile. Norah, 
 however, was as ready to raise him up as she had been to cast 
 him down. 
 
 " Do you think Cyril is a pretty name. Dr. Maurice 1 " she 
 asked. " I think it sounds at first a little weak- too pretty 
 for a boy. So is Cecil. I like a rough, round sort of name 
 —Ned, for instance. You never could mistake Ned. One 
 changes one's mind about names, don't you think t T used to 
 be all for Geralds and Cyrils and pretty sounds like that ; now 
 I like the others best. Clara is pretty for a girl ; but every- 
 body thinks I must be Irish, because I'm called Norah. Why 
 was I called Nurah, do you know 1 Charlie Dalton calls ihe 
 Norah Creina." 
 
 " Here Is some one quite fresh. Who is Charlie Dalton 1 " 
 said Dr. Maurice, relieved. 
 
 " Oh, one of the Rectory boys. There are so many of them ! 
 What I never can understand," cried Norah suddenly, " is the 
 difference among people. Mr. Dalton has eight children, and 
 mamma has only one ; now why 1 To be sure, it would have 
 been very expensive to have had Charlie and all the rest on so 
 little money as we have now. I suppose we could not have 
 done it. And, to be sure, God must have known that, and ar- 
 ranged it on purpose," the child said, stopping short with a puz- 
 zled look. " Oh, Dr. Maurice, when He knew it all, and could 
 have helped it if He pleased, why did He let them kill poor 
 papa 1" 
 
 " I do not know," said Dr. Maurice under his breath. 
 
 It was a relief to him when, a few minutes after, Helen ap- 
 peared at the garden door, having in the meantime overcome 
 her own feelings. They were all in a state of repression, the 
 one hiding from the other all that was strongest in them for 
 the moment. Such a thing is easily done at twelve years old. 
 Norah ran along the garden path to meet her mothbr, throw- 
 ing off the shadow in a moment. But for the others it was 
 not so easy. They met, and they talked of the garden, what a 
 nice old-fashioned garden it was, full of flowers such as one 
 
AT fits OAtES. 
 
 215 
 
 rarely sees nowadays. And Dr. Maurice told Norah the names 
 of some of them, and asked if the trees bore well, and comment- 
 ed upon the aspect, and how well those pears ought to do upon 
 that warm wall. These are the disguises with which people 
 hide themselves when that within does not bear speaking of. 
 There was a great deal more to be told still, and business to be 
 discussed ; but first these perverse hearts had to be stilled some- 
 how in their irregular beating, and the tears which were too 
 near the surface got rid of, and the wistful, questioning 
 thoughts silenced. 
 
 A fter a while Dr. Maurice went to pay Stephen Haldane a 
 visit. He, too, was concerned in the business which brought the 
 doctor here. The two men went into it with more understand- 
 ing than Helen could have had. She wanted only that Golden 
 should be punished, and her husband's name vindicated — a 
 thing which it seemed to her so easy to do. But they knew 
 that proof was wanted — proof which was not forthcoming. 
 Dr. Maurice tuld Haldane what Helen gave him no opportunity 
 to tell her — ^that the lawyers were not sanguine. The books 
 which had disappeared were the only evidence upon which 
 Gulden's guilt and Drummond's innocence could be either 
 proved or disproved. And all the people about the office, from 
 the lowest to the highest, had been summoned to tell what 
 they knew about those books. Nobody, it appeared, had seen 
 them removed ; nobody had seen the painter carry them away ; 
 there was this negative evidence in his favour, if no other. But 
 there was nothing to prove that Golden had done it, or any 
 other person involved, and, so far as this was concerned, obscur- 
 ity reigned over the whole matter — an obscurity not pierced as 
 yet by any ray of light. 
 
 " At all events, we shall fight it out," said Dr. Maurice. 
 " The only thing to be risked now is a little money more or 
 less, and that, I suppose, a man ought to be willing to risk 
 for the sake of justice — myself especially, who have neither 
 chick nor child." 
 
 He said this in so dreary a way that poor Stephen smiled. 
 The man who was removed from any such delights — who could 
 never improve his own position in any way, nor procure for 
 himself any of the joys of life, looked at the man who thus 
 announced himself with a mixture of gentle ridicule and pity. 
 
 ■^■tnr'.'xmmmimm mmmmimmMxiimaaisisAif. •*,) 
 
216 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 ml 
 
 lii' 
 
 ** That at least must be your own fault/' he said ; and then 
 he thought of himself, and sighed. 
 
 No one knew what dreams might have been in Stephen 
 Haldane's mind before he became the wreck he was. Probably 
 no one ever would know. He smiled at the other, but for him- 
 self he could not restrain a sigh. 
 
 ''I don't see how it can be said to be my own fault/', said 
 Dr. Maurice with a whimsical petulance. " There are preli- 
 minary steps, of course, which one might take — ^but not neces- 
 sarily with success — not by any means certainly, with suc- 
 cess. I tell you what, though, Haldane," he added hastily 
 after a pause, " I'd like to adopt Norah Drummond. That 
 is what I should like to do. I'd be very good to her ; 
 she should have everjrthing she could set her face to. 
 To start a strange child from the beginning, even if it were 
 one's own, is always like putting into a lottery. A baby is no 
 better than a speculation. How do you know what it may turn 
 
 out? whereas a creature like Norah Ah, that is what Ii 
 
 should like, to adopt such a child as that ! " 
 
 " To adopt — Norah 'i " Stephen grew pale. What ! to take 
 her from her mother ! to carry away the one little gleam of 
 Ught ! " 
 
 " She would be a gleam of light to me too," said Dr. 
 Maurice, "and I could do her justice. I could provide for 
 her. IJer mother, if she cared for the child's interest, ought 
 not to stand in the way. There ! you need not look so horror- 
 stricken. I don't mean to attempt it. I only say that is what 
 I should like to do." 
 
 But the proposal, even when so lightly made, took away 
 Stephen's breath. He did not recover himself for some time. 
 He muttered, " Adopt — ^Norah ! " under his breath while his 
 friend talked on other subjects. He could not forget it. He 
 made Dr. Maiirice a little speech when he rose to go away. 
 He put out his hand and grasped the other's arm in the ear- 
 nestness of his interest. 
 
 " Look here, Maurice," he said, " wealth has its temptation'; 
 as well as poverty ; because you have plenty of money, if you 
 think you could make such a proposition " 
 
 " What proposition 1 " 
 
 " To take Norah from her mother. If you were to tempt 
 
AT HIS QATEa 
 
 2117 
 
 Mrs. OvommoiKl for the ebild's sake to give up the child, b^ 
 promising to provide for her, or whatever you might say-^if 
 you were to do that, God forgive you, Maurice — I know I never 
 could I" 
 
 *' Of course I shall not do it,'' said Maurice hastily. And 
 he went away with the feeling in his mind that this man, too, 
 was his rival, and his successful rival. The child was as good 
 as Stephen's child, though so far removed from himself. Dr. 
 Maurice was so far wrong that it was Helen Stephen was think- 
 ing oi, and not Norah. The child would be a loss to him ; Jbut 
 the loss of her mother would be so much greater that the very 
 thought of it oppressed his soul. He had grown to be Helen's 
 friend in the truest sense ; he had felt her sympathy to be al- 
 most too touching to him, almost too sweet ; and he could not 
 bear the possibility of seeing her deprived of her one solace. 
 He sat alone after Maurice had gone away (for his mother and 
 sister had left them to have their conversation unfettered by lis- 
 teners), and pondered over the possible fate of the mother and 
 child. The child would grow up ; in a very few years she would 
 be a woman ; she would marry, in all likelihood, and go away, 
 and belong to them no more ; and Helen would be left to bear 
 her lot alone. She would be left in the middle of her days to 
 carry her burden as she might, deserted by every love that 
 had once belonged to her. What a lot would that be ! — ^worse, 
 even, than his own, who, amid all his pains, had two hearts 
 devoted to him never to be disjoined from him but by death. 
 Poor Stephen, you would have supposed, was himself in the 
 lowest depths of human sufifering and solitude ; but yet he 
 looked down upon a lower still, and his heart bled for Helen, 
 who, it might be, would have to descend into that abyss in all 
 the fulness of her life and strength. What a sin would that 
 man's be, he thought, who arbitrarily, unnaturally, should try 
 to hasten on that separation by a single day ! 
 
 Dr. Maurice went back to the. other side of the house, and 
 had his talk out quietly with Mrs. Drummond ; he told her 
 what he had told Haldane, while Norah looked at him over 
 her mother's chair, and listened to every word. To her he 
 Bald that it was the lawyer's opinion that they might do good 
 even though they proved nothing — they would stir up pub- 
 lic opinion ; they might open the way for further information. 
 
218 
 
 AT HIS OATE& 
 
 And with this, perhaps, it might be necesssiy to he con^ 
 tent. 
 
 " There is one way in which something might be possible," 
 he said. " All the people about the office have been found 
 and called as witnesses, except one. That was the night- 
 porter, who might be an impoitant witness ; but I hear he lives 
 m the country, and has been lost sight of. He might know 
 something ; without that we have no proof whatever. I for 
 my own part should as soon think the sun had come out of the 
 skies, but Drummond, for some reason we know nothing of, 
 might have taken those books- 
 
 » 
 
 it 
 
 Are you forsaking him too ? " cried Helen in her haste. 
 
 " I am not in the least forsaking him, " said Dr. Maurice ; 
 " but how can we tell what had been said to him — what last 
 resource he had been driven to t If we could find that porter 
 there might be something done. He would know when tha^ 
 were taken away." ' 
 
 Helen made no answer ; she did not take the interest she 
 might have done in the evidence. She said softly, as if repeat- 
 ing to herself — 
 
 "Burton and Golden! Burton and Golden !" Could it be? 
 What communication could they have had t how could they have 
 been together 1 This thought confused her, and yet she be- 
 lieved in it as if it were gospel. She turned it over and over like 
 a strange weapon of which she did not know the use. 
 
 " Yes, something may come out of that. We may discover 
 some connection between them when everything is raked up 
 in this way. Norah thinks so too. Norah feels that they are 
 linked together somehow. Will you come with me to the 
 station, Norah, and see me away ? " 
 
 " We are both going," said Helen. And they put on their 
 bonnets and walked to the railway with him through the early 
 twilight. The lights were shining out in the village windows 
 as they passed, and in the shops, which made an illumination 
 here and there. The train was coming from town — men coming 
 from their work, ladies returning, who had been shopping in 
 London, meeting their children, who went to carry home the 
 
 Jmrcels, in pleasant groups. The road was full of a dozen 
 ittle domestic scenes, such as are to be seen only in the neigh- 
 bourhood of London. A certain envy was in the thoughts of 
 
▲T ma OATKa 
 
 219 
 
 all three as they* passed on. Norah looked at the boys and girls 
 with a little sign, wondering how it would feel to have bro- 
 thers and sisters, to be one of a merry happy family. And Helen 
 looked at them with a different feeling, remembering the time 
 when she, too, had gone to meet her own people who were 
 coming home. As for Dr. Maurice, of course it was his 
 own fault. He had chosen to have nobody belonging to him, 
 to shut himself off from the comfort of wife and child. Yet he 
 was more impatient of all the cheerful groups than either of 
 the others. " Talk of the country being quiet ! it is more 
 noisy than town," he said ; he had just been quietly pushed off 
 the pavement by a girl like Norah, who was running to meet 
 her father. That should have been nothing to him surely, but 
 he felt injured. " I wish you would come with me and keep 
 my house for me, Norah." he said, with a vain harping on his 
 one string; and Norah laughed with gay freedom at the thought. 
 *♦ Good night, Dr. Maurice ; come back soon," she said, wavine 
 her hand to him, then turned away with her mother, and did 
 not even look back. He was quite sure about this, as he set- 
 tled himself in the corner of the carriage. So fond as he was 
 of the child ; so much as he would have liked to have done for 
 her ! And she never so much as looked back ! 
 
220 
 
 AT HIS OATE& 
 
 \' 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 'HEN Helen and Norah emerged again out of the lights 
 of the little railway station to the darkness glimmer- 
 ing with a few lamps of the road outside, Mr. 
 Burton's phaeton was standing at the gate. The air was 
 touched with the first frost, there was a soft haze over the 
 distances, the lamps shone with a twinkling glow, and the 
 breath of the horses was faintly visible in the sharpened 
 air. Mr. Burton was standing talking to some one on the 
 pathway accompanied by his son Ned, who though he was but 
 a year older than Norah was nearly as tall as his father. 
 Helen's last interview with her cousin had not been pleasanu 
 enough to tempt her to linger now for any greeting, and her heart 
 was sore and wroth against him. She put her veil down over 
 her face, and hurried past. But Mr. Burton had seen her, and 
 long before this he had repented of his rudeness of last night. 
 Had it been successful, had he succeeded in bull3dng and fright- 
 ening her, he would have been perfectly satisfied with iiimself ; 
 but he had not succeeded, and he was sorry for the cruelty 
 which had been in vain. It was so much power wasted, and 
 his wisest course now was to ignore and disown what he had 
 done. He stopped short in his conversation, and made a step 
 after her. 
 
 "Ah, Helen!" he cried, "you out this cold evening! 
 Wait a moment, I will take you with me. I am going to pass 
 your door." 
 
 " Thanks," said Helen, "I think we prefer to walk." And 
 she was going resolutely on ; but she was not to be allowed so 
 easily to make her escape. 
 
 " One moment. I have something to say to you. If you 
 will not drive with me, I will walk with you," said Mr. Burton, 
 in his most genial mood. " Good evening, Tait, we can finish 
 our talk to-morrow. Well, and where have you been, you two 
 ladies 1 — seeing some one off by the train? Ned, see if you 
 can't amuse your cousin Norah while I talk to her mother. 
 
±T HIS GATIS. 
 
 *lt:. 
 
 Helen, when you and I were that age I think We found more 
 to say." 
 
 *' I do not think we were great Mends — at that age/' said 
 Helen. 
 
 She had meant to say at any age ; bat the gravity of her 
 thoughts made such light utterances of her anger impossible. 
 When people are going to serious war with each other, they 
 may denounce and vituperate, but they rarely jibe. 
 
 ** No ; I suppose it was at a latter period we were friends," 
 Mr. Burton said, with a laugh. ** How circumstances alter ! 
 I am afraid I made myself rather disagreeable last night. 
 When a man is bilious, he is not accountable for his actions : 
 and I had been worried in town ; but it was too bad to go and 
 put it out on you ; what I really wanted to ask last night was 
 if the house was quite in order for the winter 1 But something 
 brought on the other subject, and I lost my temper like an 
 idiot. I hope you won't think any more of it. And it is really 
 important to know if the house is in order — ^if you are prepared 
 to run the risk of frost, and all that. I was speaking to Tait, 
 the carpenter this moment. I think I shall send him just to 
 look over the house." 
 
 Helen made no reply ; this talk about nothing, this pretence 
 of ease and familiarity, was an insult to her. And Norah clung 
 close to her arm, enclosing it with both hands calling her 
 mother's attention to every new sentence with a closer pressure. 
 They went on for a few minutes before Mr. Burton could invent 
 anything more to say, and Ned stalked at Norah's other side 
 with all a boy's helplessness. He certainly was not in a con- 
 dition to help his father out. 
 
 " Ned has been up to town with me to-day," said Mr. Bur- 
 ton still more cheerfully. ** It will be a loss, but we must 
 make up our minds to send him to school. It is a disadvantage 
 to him being so tall ; every body thinks he is fifteen at least. 
 It is handy for you that Norah is so small. You can make a 
 baby of her for three or four years yet." 
 
 Here Norah squeezed her mother's arm so tight that Helen 
 winced with the pain, yet took a kind of forlorn amusement too 
 from the fury of -the child's indignation. 
 
 "Norah is no baby," she said, " happily for me ^ Norah ia 
 my best companion and comfort" 
 
222 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 \ 
 
 '' Ah yes ; she is in your confidence ; that is charming," 
 said Mr. Burton ; " quite like a storv-book ; whereas Ned, 
 the great blockhead, cares for nothing but his dogs and non- 
 sense. But he shall be packed off to Eton directly. The 
 house is so full at present, my wife has been regretting we have 
 seen nothing of you, Helen. I suppose it is too early to ask 
 you to come to us under present circumstances) But after 
 a while, I hope, when we are alone — And Norah must come 
 before Ned goes away. There is to be a children's party. 
 What did your mother settle about that, Ned 1" 
 
 '' Don't know," growled Ned at Nurah's other side. 
 
 " Don't know ! Well you ought to know, since it's in your 
 honour. Clara will send you word, Helen. Now, I suppose I 
 must be off, or I shall not have time to dress. Why, by Jove, 
 there goes the bell already !" cried Mr. Burton. 
 
 He looked round, and the bays, which had been impatiently 
 following at a foot-pace, held in with dif&culty by the gioonl, 
 stopped at the sign he made, while the sonorous dinner-bell, 
 which rang twice every evening through all seasons, sounded its 
 first summons through the darkness. There was something 
 very awe-inspiring in the sound of that bell That as much as 
 anything, impressed the village and neighbourhood with a 
 sense of the importance of the master of Dura. The old Har- 
 courts had used it only on very great occasions ; but the Burtons 
 used it every evening. Ail the cooks in Dura village guided 
 themselves by its sound. *' Lord, bless us ! there's the bell 
 ag ling at the great house, and my chickens not put down to 
 roast yet," Mrs. Witherspoon at the Rectory would say, giving 
 herself such " a turn " as she did not get over all the evening. 
 Mr. Burton, too, got " a turn " when he heard it. 
 
 He cried, *' Good night, Helen ! Ned, come along," and he 
 jumped into his phaeton. 
 /:" I'll walk," shouted Ned. 
 
 And then there was a jingle, a flash, a dart, and the two bays 
 flew^ as it' something had stung them, along the frosty road. 
 
 ** It will be a long walk for you up that dark avenue," said 
 Helen, when the boy, with his hands in his pockets, ^tood by 
 them at the door of the Gatehouse, hesitating with the awkward- 
 ness natural to his kind. 
 
 " Oh, I don't mind," said Ned. 
 
 *' Will you come in — and have some tea 1 '* 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 228 
 
 N'ever was an invitation more reluctantly given. When his 
 mother heard of it, it flashed through her mind that Mrs. 
 Drummond had constructed the first parallel, and that already 
 the siege of Ned, the heir of Dura, had begun ; but Helen had 
 no such idea. And Norah squeezed her arm wit;h a force of 
 indignation which once more, though she was not merry, made 
 her mother smile. 
 
 ** Mamma, how could youl" Norah cried, when the boy had 
 come in, and had been left by the bright little fire in the 
 drawing-room to wat<)h the flickering of the lights while his 
 entertainers took ofif their bonnets ; " how could you ? It is I 
 who will have to talk to him and amuse him. It was selfish of 
 you, mamma !" 
 
 And Ned sat by the drawing-room fire alone, repenting him- 
 self that he had been seduced, in his big boots, with mud on 
 his stockings, into this unknown place. It was not actually 
 unknown to him ; he had broken the old china cups and 
 thumped upon the piano, and done his best to put his fingers 
 through the old curtains more than once while the place was 
 empty. But he did not understand the change that had passed 
 upon it now. He sat by the fire confused ; wondering how he 
 had ever had the courage to come in ; wondering if Mrs. Drum- 
 mond would think him dirty, and what Norah would say. He 
 would not have to put himself into velvet and silk stockings 
 and show himself in the drawing-room at home, that was a 
 comfort. But what unknown mazes of conversation, what 
 awful abysses of self-betrayal might there be before him here I 
 Norah came in first, which at once frightened an*^ relieved him. 
 And the room was pretty — the old homely neutral-tinted room, 
 with the lively gleam of firelight lighting it up, and all the 
 darkness made rosy in the corners, which was so different from 
 the drawing-room at the great house, with its gilding and 
 grandeur, its masses of flowers and floods of light. Ned's head 
 felt very much confused by the difference ; but the strangeness 
 awed him in spite of himself. 
 
 " I am always frightened in this room," said Norah, drawing 
 the biggest chair into the circle of the firelight, and putting 
 herself into it like a little queen. She was so small that her 
 one foot which hung down did not reach the floor ; the other, I 
 
mi 
 
 AT HIS OATES. 
 
 \ 
 
 tcta BOtry to naj, so regaiylless was Norah of deconim, Was 
 tueked libd^r her in the big chair. 
 
 « What a funny girl you are ! Why V* 
 
 " Do you see that cupboard T* said Norah. " I know there 
 is an old woman Who lives there, and spins and spins, and keeps 
 looking at me, till I daren't breathe. Oh, I think sometimes 
 if I lo^ up it will turn me to stone, that eye of hers. If you 
 weren't here I shouldn't dare to say it ; I am most frishtcned 
 for her in the day, when the light comes in at all the windows, 
 imdall the pictures and things say, ^What's that little girl doing 
 here V AiSi then the mirror up on the wall — There's two people 
 in it I know, now. You will say it's you and me ; but it isn't 
 you and me. It's our ghosts, perhaps, sitting so still, and look- 
 ing at each other and never saying a word." 
 ' ' Ned felt a shiver run over him as he listened. He thought 
 of the dai^ avenue which he had to go through all by himselfi 
 and wished he had driven with his father instead. And there 
 where he was sitting he just caught that curious little round mir- 
 ror, and there were two people in it — nevermoving, never speak- 
 ing, just as Norah said. 
 
 ** There is always a feeling as if somebody were by in this 
 house," Norah went on, " somebody /ou can't see. Oh, it is 
 
 2uite true. You can't go anjrwhere, up or down, but they 
 livays keep looking and looking at you. I bear it as long as I 
 can, and then I get up and run away. I should not mind so 
 much if I could see them, or if they were like the ladies 
 that wsdk about and rustle with long silk trains going over 
 the floor, as they do in some old houses. But the ones 
 here are so still ; they just look at you for hours and hours 
 together, till you get into such a dreadful fright, and feel you 
 can't bear it any longer and rush away." Just then there was 
 the sound of a little fall of ashes from the fire which made 
 Ned start ; and then he laughed hoarsely, frightened, but de- 
 fiant. 
 
 ** You are making it all up out of your own head to frighten a 
 fellow," he said. 
 
 " To frighten — a fellow !" said Norah, with gentle but 
 ixkeffable contempt. " What have I to do with — ^fellows 1 It 
 brightens tne. 
 And she gave a little shudder in her big chair, and shook her 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 225 
 
 head, waving her brown hair about her shoulders. Perhaps the 
 colour of her hair would not have showed so much but for the 
 black frock with its little white frill that came to the throat ; 
 and the firelight found out Norah's eyes, and kindled two lamps 
 in them. She was all made up of blackness and brightness, a 
 shadow child, not much of her apparent except the pale face 
 and the, two lights in her eyes — unless, indeed, it were that 6be 
 leg, hanging down from under the black frock, with a white 
 stocking on it, and a varnished, fire reflecting shoe. 
 
 Never in Ned's life had he experienced anything like this 
 before ; the delicious thrill of visionary terror made the actual 
 pleasantness of the warm corner he sat in all the pleasanter ; 
 he had thought himself past the age to have stories told to him ; 
 but nothing like Norah's visions had ever come in his way. 
 No happiness, however, is perfect in this world. The dark 
 avenue would come across him by moments with a thrill of terror. 
 But the old woman could not sit and spin, that was certain, in 
 the dark, windy, lonely avenue ; there would be no mirror there 
 to reflect his passing figure ; and he would run ; and if the 
 dogs were about they would come to meet him ; so the boy 
 took courage and permitted himself to enjoy this moment, 
 which was a novelty in his life. Then Mrs. Drummond came 
 in with her black dress like Norah's, and the long white streamers 
 to her cap, which looked like wings, he thought. Her sorrow- 
 ful look, her soft voice, that air about her of something subdued 
 and stilled, which had not always been so, impressed the boy's 
 imagination. Ned was an honest, single-hearted boy, and he 
 looked with awe upon any suflFering which he could understand. 
 He explained afterwards that Helen looked as if she were very 
 sorry about something. " " Awfully sorry — ^but not bothering," 
 he said ; and the look of self-control impressed him, though he 
 could not tell why. Altogether it was so different from home ; 
 80 much more attractive to the imagination. There was no 
 dimness, no shadows at the great house. There nobody ever 
 sat in the firelight, nor " took things into their heads ;" and 
 here everything was so shadowy, so soft, so variable ; the fire- 
 light gleaming suddenly out now and then, the air so full of 
 mystery. Everything that is strange is attractive to the young 
 fancy to begin with ; and there was more than simple novelty 
 here. 
 
226 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 \l 
 
 Helen brought the lamp in her hand and set it down on the 
 table, which to some extent disturbed his picture ; and then 
 she came and sat down by the children, while Susan — old Susan, 
 who was a landmark to Ned, keeping him to reality in the 
 ihidst of all this wonderfulness — brought in and arranged the 
 tea. 
 
 " Are you sure they will not be anxious )" said Helen.' " I 
 am afraid your mother will be unhappy about you when she 
 finds you don't come.,' 
 
 " Oh, she'll never find out," said Ned. " Unhappy ! I don't 
 suppose mamma would be unhappy for that ; but I'll get home 
 before they come out from dinner. I shan't dress though, it 
 would be absurd, at nine o'clock." 
 
 " It will be a dark walk for you up the avenue," said Helen, 
 kindly ; and when she said this Ned shrank into his comer and 
 shivered slightly. She added, " You are not afraid 1" 1 
 
 " Oh no — I should hope not ! " said Ned. 
 
 "I should be afraid," said Norah tranquilly; "the wind in 
 the trees always makes me feel strange. It sounds so moaning 
 and dreary, as if it were complaining. We don't do it any 
 harm that it should complain* It is like something that is in 
 prison and wants to get out. Do you know any stories about 
 forest spirits 1 I dont like them very much ; they are always 
 dwarfs, or trolls, or something grim — funny little men, hairy 
 all over, that sit under the trees with their long arms, and dart 
 out when you pass." 
 
 Ned gave another suppressed shiver in his corner, and Helen 
 came to his aid. 
 
 " Norah has read nothing but fairy tales all her life," she 
 said ; ** but I daresay you know a great deal more than she 
 does, and don't care for such foolish things. You are going to 
 Eton 1 I was once there when all the boats were out, and 
 there were fireworks at night. It was so pretty. I daresay 
 when you are there you will get into the boats." 
 
 " I shall try," said Ned, lighting up. " I mean to be very 
 good at athletics if I can. It does not matter if I work very 
 hard, for I am going into papa's business, where I shkn't want 
 it. I am not going to Eton to work, but to get among a good 
 set, and to do what other people do." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Helen, with a smile. She took but a languid 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 227 
 
 interest in Ned, and she was scarcely sorry that Mr Burton's 
 son showed no likelihood of distinguishing himself. She 
 accepted it quite quietly ; without any interest in the 
 matter, which somehow troubled Ned, he could not have told 
 why. 
 
 « At least, they say you are not obliged to work," he said, a 
 little abashed. " I shall do as much as I can at that too." 
 
 And then there was a momentary silence, broken only by 
 the ring of the teacups as Susan put them down. Ned had a 
 feeling that no very profound interest was shown in his prospect 
 and intentions, but he was used to that. He sat quite quiet, 
 feeling very shy, and sadly troubled to find that Susan had placed 
 the lamp where it threw its strongest light upon himself. He 
 drew his muddy boots and stockings as much as he could under 
 his chair, and hoped Mrs. Drummond would not notice them ; 
 how foolish he had been to come, making an exhibition of him- 
 self ! and yet it was very pleasant, too. 
 
 '* Now you must come to the table and have some tea," said 
 Helen, placing a chair for him with her own hand. Ned knew 
 it was a gentleman's duty to do this for a lady, but he was so 
 confused he did not feel capable of behaving like anything but 
 a loutish boy ; he turned everything he could think of as a 
 pleasant subject of conversation over in his mind, with the 
 idea of doing what he could to make himself agreeable ; but 
 nothing wnuld come that he could produce. He sat and got 
 through a great deal of bread and butter while he cudgelled 
 his brains in this way. There was not much conversation. 
 Helen was more silent than usual, having so much to think of; 
 and Norah was amused by the unusual specimen of humanity 
 before her, and disti*acted from the monologue with which she 
 generally filled up all vacant places. At last Ned's efforts re- 
 solved themselves into speech. 
 
 "Oh, Mrs. Drummond, please, should you like to have a 
 dog 1 " he said. 
 
 " I knew he was a doggy sort of a boy," Norah said to her- 
 self, throwing a certain serious pity into her contemplation of 
 him. But yet the ofifer was very interesting, and suggested 
 various excitements to come. 
 
 " What kind of a dog ? " said Helen, with a smile. 
 
 " Oh, we have two or three different kinds. I was thinking, 
 
228 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 perhaps, a nice little Skye — ^like Shaggy, hut smaller. Or if 
 you would like a retriever, or one of old Dinah's pups." 
 
 " Thanks," said Helen. " I don't know what we should do 
 with it, Ned ; but it is very kind of you." 
 
 " Oh, no," said the boy, with a violent blush. " It would be 
 a companion for — her, you know. It is so nice to have a dog 
 to play with. Why, Shaggy does everything but talk. He 
 knows every word I say. You might have Shaggy himself, if 
 you like, while I am away." 
 
 " Oh, what a nice boy you are ! " said Norah. " I should 
 like it, Ned. Mamma does not want anything to play with ; 
 but I do. Give it to me ! I should take such care of him ! 
 And then when you came home for the holidays, I should pro- 
 mise to take him to the station to meet you. I love Shaggy — 
 he is such fun. He can't see out of his eyes ; and he does so 
 frisk and jump, and make an object of himself. I never kneiw 
 you were such a nice boy ! Give him to me." 
 
 And then the two ^ell into the most animated discussion, while 
 Helen sat silent and looked on. She forgot that the boy was 
 her enemy's son. He was her cousin's son ; some drops of 
 blood-kindred to her ran in his veins. He was an honest, simple 
 boy. Mrs. Drammond brightened upon him, according to her 
 nature. She was not violently fond of children, but she could 
 not shut her heart against an ingenuous open face. She scarcely 
 interfered with the conversation that followed, except to subdue 
 the wild generosity v^ith which Ned proposed to send every- 
 thing he could think of to Norah. " There are some books 
 about dogs, that will tell you just what to do. I'll tell John to 
 
 bring them down. And there's Are you very fond of books ? 
 
 You must have read thousands and thousands, I am sure. 
 
 " Not so many as that," Norah said modestly. " But I have 
 got through — some." 
 
 " I could lend you — ^I am sure I could lend you — Papa has got 
 a great big library ; I forget how many volumes. They are 
 about everything that books were ever written about. We 
 never read them, except mamma, sometimes ; but if you would 
 like them " 
 
 " You must not give her anjrthing more," said Helen ; " and 
 even the dog must only come if your people are willing, You 
 are too young to make presents." 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 229 
 
 " T am not so very young," cried Ned, who had found his 
 voice. " I am near fourteen. When Cyril Rivers was my age, 
 he was captain of fourth form ; — he told me himself. But then 
 he is very clever — much cleverer than me. Norah ! if I should 
 only he ahle to send Shaggy's puppy, not Shaggy himself, shall 
 you mind 1" 
 
 " Are you sure you will not be afraid to walk up the avenue 
 alone ? " said Mrs. Drummond, rising from the table. " I fear 
 it will be so very dark ; and we have no one to send with you, 
 Ned." 
 
 " Oh, I don't want any one," said the boy ; and he stumbled 
 up to his feet, and put out his hand to say good night, feeling 
 himself dismissed. Norah went to the door with him to let him 
 out. "Oh, I wish I could go too," said Norah ; " it is so lonely 
 walking in the dark; but then I should have to get back. 
 Oh, I do wish you could stay. Don't you think you could 
 stay a There are hundreds of rooms we don't use. Well, then, 
 good night. I will tell you what I shall do. I shall stand at 
 the door here and watch. If you should be frightened, you 
 can shout, and I will shout back ; and then you will always 
 know that I am here. It is such a comfort when one is fright- 
 ened to know there is some one there." 
 
 " I shan't be frightened," said Ned boldly. And e walked 
 with the utmost valour and the steadiest step to the Hall gates, 
 feeling Norah's eyes upon him* Then he stopped to shout 
 — « Good night ; all right 1" 
 
 " Good night !" rang through the air in Norah's treble. And 
 then, it must be allowed, when he heard the door of the Gate- 
 house shut, and saw by the darkness of the lodge windows 
 that old John and his daughter had gone to bed, that Ned's 
 heart failed him a little. A wild recollection crossed his mind 
 of the dwarfs, with their long arms, under the trees ; and of the 
 old woman spinning, spinning, with eyes that fixed upon you 
 for hours together ; and then, with his heart beating, he made 
 one plunge into the gloom, under the overarching trees. 
 
 This is how Ned and Norah, knowing nothing about it, made, 
 so they each described the process afterwards, " real friends." 
 The bond was cemented by a gift of Shaggy's puppy some 
 days after, and it was made permanent and eternal by the fact 
 that very soon afterwards Ned went away to school. 
 
 'ii. 
 
280 
 
 AT HIS OATISL 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 SEAN WHILE the great case of Rivera's bank oame before 
 the law courts and the public. It was important 
 enough — for there was no war in those days — to be 
 announced in big capitals on the placards of all the newspapers. 
 The Great Bank Case — Arrest of the DirecUns — Strange Disclosures 
 in the Cit'if — were the headings in the bills, repeated from day 
 to day, and from week to week as the case went on. It was of 
 course doubly attractive from the fact that it was founded upon 
 a tragedy, and that every writer in the papers who referred to it 
 at all was at liberty to bring in a discussion of the motives and 
 intentions of " the unhappy man " who had introduced "'a 
 watery grave" into the question. A watery grave may not be 
 pleasant for the occupant of it, but it is a very fine thing for ^he 
 press. The number of times it appeared in the public prints at 
 this period defies reckoning. In some offices the words were 
 kept pennanently in type. The DaUy Seiaaphore was never 
 tired of discussing what the feelings of the wretched man must 
 have been when he stole down to the river just as all the world 
 was going to rest, and plunged himself and his shame, and the 
 books of the company under the turbid waters. The Daily 
 Semaphore held this view of the matter very strongly, and 
 people said that Mr. Golden belonge4 to the same club as 
 itseditor, and that the two were intimate, which, of course, was 
 a very natural reason for its partisanship. Other journals, 
 however, held different opinions. The weekly reviews, less 
 addicted to fine writing, leaned to the side of the unfortunate 
 painter. Their animadversions were chiefly upon the folly of 
 a man interfering with business who knew nothing about it. 
 When would it come to be understood, they said, that every 
 profession required a training for itself, and that to dabble in 
 the stocks without knowing how, was as bad, or at least as 
 foolish, and more ruinous than to dabble in paint without 
 knowing how. There was a great deal about the suitor, who 
 should stick to his last in these discussions of the subject ; but, 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 231 
 
 except in this particular, neither the Sword nor the Looker-on 
 had a stone to throw at poor Drummond. Peace to his ashes 
 they said, he was a good painter. *' During his lifetime we 
 thought it our duty to point out the imperfections which 
 lessened the effect of his generally most conscientious and 
 meritorious work. It is the vocation of a critic, and happy is 
 he who can say he han never exceeded the legitimate hounds of 
 criticism, never given utterance to a hasty word, or inflicted 
 unnecessary pain. Certain we are, for our own part, that our 
 own aim has always heen to temper judgment with charity; and 
 now that a gap has been made in so melancholy a manner in 
 the ranks of the Academy, we may venture to say that no man 
 better deserved his elevation to the first rank of his profession 
 than Robert Drummond ; no man we have ever known worked 
 harder, or threw himself more entirely into his work. His feel- 
 ing for art was always perfect Now and then he might fail to 
 express with sufficient force the idea he intendod to illustrate ; 
 but for harm<my of conception, true sense of beauty, and tender 
 appreciation of English sentiment and atmosphere, he has been 
 surpassed by no painter of our modern school We understand 
 that an exhibition of his collected works is in contemplation, a 
 plan which has been lately adopted with great success in so 
 many cases. We do not doubt that a great *many of our 
 readers will avail themselves at once of the opportunity of 
 forming a comprehensive judgment of the productions of a most 
 meritorious artist, as well as of paying their tribute of sympathy 
 to the, wti firmly believe, undeserved misfortunes of an honest 
 and honourable man." 
 
 It was thus the Looker-on expressed its sentiments. The 
 Sword did not attempt to take up the same tone of melancholy 
 superiority and noble-mindedness — qualities not in its way ; 
 but it made its stand after its own fashion against the ruthless 
 judgments of the public. " No one cm respect the British 
 public more than we do," said that organ of the higher intellect ; 
 '' its instincts are so unerring, and its good taste so unimpeach- 
 able, that, as a matter of course, we all bow to a decision more 
 infallible than that of the Holiest Father that ever sat in Papal 
 See. But after we have rendered this enlightened homage, and 
 torn our victim.to pieces, an occasional compunction will make 
 itself audible within the most experienced bosom. Aft^r all, 
 
 !i 
 
 1^ 
 
 m 
 
232 
 
 AT HfS QATEfL 
 
 tliere is gach a thing as probability to be taken into account 
 Trathy as we all knoir, is stranger than fiction ; but j^et the 
 cases are so few in which fact outrages every likelihood that we 
 are justified in looking very closely into the matter before we 
 give an authoritative assent. So far as our personal knowledge 
 goes, we should say that a painter is as much afraid of the 
 money market as a woman is (or rather used to be) of a revolver, 
 and that the dramatic completeness of the finale, which the 
 lively commercial imagination has accepted as that of poor 
 Drummond, quite surpasses the homelier and mildet* invention 
 of the daughters of art. A dramatic author, imbued with the 
 true modern spirit of his art, might indeed find an irresistible 
 attraction in the * situation ' of the drowning director, tossing 
 the books of the joint-stock company before him into the abyss, 
 and sardonically going down into Hades with the proofs of his 
 guilt. But though the situation is fine, we doubt if even thei 
 dramatist would personally avail himself of i% for dramatists 
 have a way of being tame and respectable like their neighbours. 
 In our days your only emulator of the piratical and highway 
 heroes of the past is the commercial man pur sang, who has not 
 an idea in his head unconnected with business. It is he who 
 convulses society with those witticisms and clevernesses of 
 swindling which charm everybody ; and it is he who gives us 
 now and then the example of such a tragical conclusion as used 
 to belong only to poetry. It is no longer the Bohemian, it is 
 the Philistine, smug, clean, decorous, sometimes pious, who is 
 the criminal of the nineteenth century." 
 
 This article made a great sensation in many circles. There 
 were people who thought it was almost a personal libel, and 
 that Golden would be justified in " taking steps" against the 
 paper, for who could that smug, clean, decorous Philistine be 
 but he 1 But the manager was better advised. He was the 
 hero of the day to all readers and writers. He was kept under 
 examination for a whole week, badgered by counsel, snubbed 
 by the judge, stared at by an audience which was not generally 
 favourable ; but yet he held his own. He was courageous, if 
 nothing else. All that could be done to him in the ^ay of 
 cross-examination never made him falter in his story. Other 
 piedes pf information damaging to his character were produced 
 by the researches of the attorneys. It was found that the fate 
 
AT HIS OATI& 
 
 233 
 
 of aO the speonlfltions in which he had heen invohred wie tiia- 
 picioualy , similar, and that, notwithstanding those buriness 
 talents which eveiybodv allowed to be of the highest order, rain 
 and bankroptcy had followed at his heels wherever he went. 
 The counsel fcH: the prosecution paid him unbounded compli- 
 ments on his ability, mingled with sarcastic condolence on this 
 strange and unfailing current of misfortune. He led the wit- 
 ness into a survey of his past life with deadly accuracy and 
 distinctness, damning hi«n before all the world, as history only 
 can damn. " It is unfortunate that this should have happened 
 to you again after your previous disappointments," he said. 
 "Yes, it was unfortunate," said the unhappy man. Bat he held 
 such head against the torrent of facts thus brought up, that the 
 sympathy of many people ran strongly in his favour for the 
 moment. " Hang it all i which of us could stand this turn-up of 
 everything that ever happened to him )" some said. Gulden con- 
 fronted it all with the audacity of a man who knew everything 
 that could be said against him ; and he held steadily by his story. 
 He admitted that Drummond had done nothing in the business 
 and indeed knew next to nothing about it until that day in 
 autumn, when, in the absence of all other officials, he had him- 
 self had recourse to him. " But the more inexperienced a 
 man may be, the more impetuous he is — in business ; when 
 once he begins," said the manager. And that there was truth in 
 this, nobody could deny. But gradually as the trial went on, ■ 
 certain mists cleared off and other mists descended. The story . 
 about poor Drummond and the books waned from the popular 
 mind ; it was dropped out of the leading articles in the Sema- 
 phore. If they had not gone into the river with the painter, 
 where were they ? Who had removed them ? Were they 
 destroyed, or only hidden somewhere, to be found by the mir- 
 aculous energy of the police 'i This question began to be the 
 question which everybody discussed after a while ; for by this 
 time, though proof was as far off as ever, and nobody knew who 
 was the guilty party, there had already fallen a certain silence, 
 a something like respect, over that " watery grave." 
 
 And something more followed, which Helen Drummond 
 scarcely understood, and which was never conveyed in words 
 to the readers of the newspapers — ^a subtile, unexpressed sen- 
 timent, which had no evidence to back it, but only that strange 
 
 ii 
 
 !<«1 
 
 }')\ 
 
 m 
 
234 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 \ 
 
 tiiTiU of certainty which moves men's minds in spite of them- 
 selves. '*! would just like to know what state Rivera's was 
 in before it became a joint-stock company," was the most dis- 
 tinct expression of opinion any one was guilty of in public ; 
 and the peraons to whom this speech was addressed would 
 shake their heads in reply. The consequence was one which 
 nobody could have distinctly accounted for, and which no one 
 ventured to speak of plainly. A something, a breath, a mist, 
 an intangible shadow, gathered over the names of the former 
 partners who had managed the whole business, and transferred 
 It to the now company. These were Mr. Burton and another, 
 who has nothing to do with this history. In what condition 
 had they handed it over ] What induced them to dispose of 
 such a flourishing business? And why was it that both had 
 got so easily out of it with less loss than many a private share- 
 holder ? ■ These were very curious questions, and took an im-i 
 mense hold on the public mind, though they were not discussed^ 
 in the newspapers : for there are many things which move the 
 public mind deeply, which it would not answer to put in the 
 newspapers. As for Lord Rivers, he was a heavy loser, and 
 nobody suspected for a moment that he knew anything about 
 it The City men were sorry for him as a victim ; but round 
 the names of Mr. Burton and his colleagues there grew that in- 
 definable shadow. Not a word could be said openly against 
 them ; but everybody thought the more. They were flourish- 
 ing, men in great business — keeping up great houses, wearing 
 all the appearance of prosperity. No righteous critic turned 
 his back upon them. At kirk and market they were as much 
 applauded, as warmly received, to all outward appearance, as 
 ever. But a cold breath of distrust had come rouud them, like 
 &D. atmosphere. The first prick of the canker had come to this 
 flower. 
 
 This was the unrecorded, undisclosed result of the inquiry with 
 which Helen Drummond, and the Haldanes, and all uninstruct- 
 ed, were so deeply dissatisfied. It had ended in nothing, they 
 said. The managers and directors were acquitted, there being 
 no proof against them. No authoritative contradictipn had 
 been or could be given to the theory of Robert Drummond's 
 guilt. The Semaphore was still free to produce that " watery 
 grave " any time it was in want of a phrase to round a para- 
 
AT HIS OATSS. 
 
 2d5 
 
 grapli. Their hearts had been wrung with the details of the 
 terrible story all over again, and — nothing had come of it '* I 
 told you it would be so," Mr. Burton said, who knew so much 
 better. " It would have been much more sensible had you 
 persuaded Maurice to leave it alone." But Maurice had a dif- 
 ferent tale to tell when he came to make his report to his anx- 
 ious clients. He bewildered them with the air of triumrph 
 he put on. "But nothing is proved," said Helen sadly. 
 " No, nothing is proved," he said, " but everything is imput- 
 ed." She shook her head, and went to her room, and knelt 
 down before the Dives, and offered up to it, meaning no harm, 
 what a devout Catholic would call an acte de reparatimi — an of- 
 fering of mournful love and indignation — ^and, giving that, 
 would not be comforted. " They cannot understand you, but 
 I understand you, Robert," she said, in that agony of com- 
 punction and tenderness with which a true woman tries to 
 make up to the dead for the neglect and coldness of the living. 
 This was how Helen, in her ignorance, looked upon it. But 
 Stephen Haldane understood better when he heard the tale. 
 Golden, at least, \f luld never hold up his head again — or, at 
 least, if ever, not for long years, till the story had died out of 
 men's minds. And the reputation of others had gone down as 
 by a breath. No one could tell what it was ; but it existed — 
 the first shadow, the beginning of suspicion. " I am satisfied," 
 Dr. Maurice said, with a stern smile of triumph. The man 
 had thrown himself entirely into the conflict, and took pleasure 
 in that sweet savour of revenge. 
 
 " But Mrs. Drummond," said Stephen, whose mind was mov- 
 ed by softer thoughts. 
 
 " That woman cannot understand," said Dr. Maurice. ** Oh, 
 I do not mean any slight to your goddess, your heroine. I 
 may say she is not my heroine, I suppose ? She can't under- 
 stand. Why, Drummond is clear with everybody whose opin- 
 ion is worth having. We have proved nothing, of course. I 
 knew we could prove nothing. But he is as clear as you or I 
 — with all the people who are worth caring for. She expected 
 me to bring her a diploma, I suppose, under the Queen's hand 
 and seal." 
 
 •*I did not expect that," sa'i Haldane, "but I did look for 
 something more definite, I allow." 
 
 !!W| 
 
tse 
 
 AT HI8 OATSS. 
 
 *' More definite I " It is a little hard to deal with people so 
 exigent/' said Dr. Maurice, discomfited in the midst of his en- 
 thusiasm. " Did you see that article in the Looker-on ? The 
 Drummond exhibition is just about to open ; and that, I am 
 confident, will be an answer in full. I believe the public will 
 take that opportunity of proving what they think." 
 
 And so far Maurice turned out to be right. The public did 
 show its enthusiasm— for two days. The first was a private 
 view, and everybody went. The rooms were crowded, and 
 there were notices in all the papers. The next day there was 
 also a very fair attendance ; and then the demonstration on 
 the part of the public stopped. Poor Drummond was dead. 
 He had been a good but not a great painter. His story had 
 occupied quite as much attention as the world had to give him, 
 perhaps more. He and his concerns — his bankruptcy, his sui- 
 cide, and his pictures — had become a bore. Society wanted 
 to hear no more of him. The exhibition continued open for ' 
 several weeks, not producing nearly enough to pay its expenses, 
 and then it was closed ; and Drummond's story came to an 
 end, and was heard of no more. 
 
 This is the one thing that excited people, wound up to a 
 high pitch by personal misfortune or suffering, so seldom un- 
 derstand. They are prepared to encounter scurrility, opposi- 
 tion, even the hatred or the enmity of others ; but they are not 
 prepared for the certain fact that one time or other, most like- 
 ly very soon, the world will get tired of them ; it is their worst 
 danger. This was what now happened to the Drummonds ; 
 but fortunately at Dura, in the depths of the silent country, it 
 was but imperfectly that Helen knew. She was not aware 
 how generally public opinion acquitted her husband, which was 
 hard ; and she did not Know that the world was tired of him, 
 which was well for her. He was done with, and put aside 
 like a tale that is told ; but she still went on planning in her 
 own mind a wider vindication for him, an acquittal which this 
 time it should be impossible to gainsay. 
 
 And quietness fell upon them, and the months began to flow 
 on, and then the years, with no incident to disturb the calm. 
 When all the excitement of the trial was over, and everything 
 done that could be done, then the calm reign of routine began. 
 There were times, no doubt, in which Helen chafed and fretted 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 237 
 
 to a 
 
 at it ; but yet routine is a great support and comfort to the 
 worn and weary. It supplies a kind of dull motive to keep life 
 going when no greater motives exist. The day always com- 
 menced with Norah's lessons. Helen was not an intellectual 
 woman, nor did she feel herself consciously the better for such 
 education as she had herself received ; but such as she had re- 
 ceived it she transmitted it conscientiously to Norah. She 
 heard her read every morning a little English and a little 
 French. She made her write a succession of copies, and do ex- 
 ercises in the latter language, and she gave her an hour's music. 
 I fear none of this was done with very much spirit, but yet it 
 was done conscientiously every morning of their lives except 
 Sunday, when they went to church. She did it because it was 
 right, because it was necessary, and her duty ; but not with 
 any strong sense of the elevated character of her employment, 
 or expectation of any vast results from it. It had not produced 
 very great results in heraelf. Her mind had worked busily 
 enough all her life, but she did not believe that her music, or 
 her French, or anything else she had learned had done her 
 much good. Therefore she proceeded very calmly, almost cold- 
 ly, with the same process with Norah. It was necessary, it 
 had to be done, just as vaccination had to be done when the 
 child was a baby ; that was about all. 
 
 Then after the lessons they had their homely dinner, which 
 Susan did not always cook to perfection ; and then they took 
 their walk ; and in the evening there were lessons to be learn- 
 ed and needlework to do. When the child went to bed, the 
 mother read — not anything to improve her mind. She was 
 not bent upon improvement, unfortunately ; indeed, it did not- 
 occur to her. She read, for the most part, novels from the circu- 
 lating library. The reader, perhaps, is doing the same thing 
 at this moment, and yet, most likely, he will condemn, or even 
 despise, poor Helen. She had one or two books besides, books 
 of poetry, though she was not poetically disposed in any way. 
 She had '' In Memoriam " by her, which she did not read (does 
 any one who has ever lived in the valley ol the shadow of 
 death read " In Memoriam ? ") but pored over night and day, 
 thinking in it, scarcely knowing that her own mind had not 
 spoken first in these words. And then there was Mr. Brown- 
 ing's poem of " Andrea," the painter who had a wife. Helen 
 
 M 
 
 -' ■■. w: V* ■•«f*&wmmmt 
 
^8 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 woald sit over the fire and watch it dying out at her feet, and 
 ponder on Andrea's fate — wondering whether, perhaps, a wo- 
 man might do hadly for her husband, -and yet be a spotless wo- 
 man, no Lucrezia ; whether she might sap the strength out of 
 him with gentle words, and even while she loved him do 
 him harm? Out of such a question as this she was glad to es- 
 cape to her novel, the first that might come to hand. 
 
 And so many persons in Helen's state of mind read novels 
 — ^people who fly into the world of fiction as a frightened child 
 flies into a lighted room, to escape the ghosts that are in the 
 dark passages and echoing chambers — that it is strange so lit- 
 tle provision is made for them, and that the love-story keeps 
 uppermost in spite of all. Yet perhaps the love-story is the 
 safest. The world-worn sufferer is often glad to forget all that 
 reminds him of his own trouble, and even when he is not 
 touched by the fond afflictions of the young people, finds a lit4 
 tie pleasure in smiling at them in the exuberance of tlieir misery. 
 They think it is so terrible, poor babies, to be ** crossed in 
 love." The fact that they cannot have their own way is so as- 
 tounding to them, something to rouse earth and heaven. Helen 
 ran over a hundred tales of this description with a grave 
 face, thankful to be interested in the small miseries which 
 were to her own as the water spilt from a pitcher is to the sea. 
 To be sure,. there were a great many elevating and improving 
 books which Helen might have had if she pleased, but nobody 
 had ever suggested to her that it was necessary she should 
 improve her mind. 
 
 And thus the time went on, and Mrs. Drummond dropped, 
 as it were, into the background, into the shade and quietness 
 of life. She was still young, and this decadence was prema- 
 ture. She felt it creeping upon her, but she took no pains 
 to stop the process. So long as Norah was safe there was no- 
 thing beside for which she was called upon to exert herself ; 
 and thus, with all her powers subdued, and the stream of life 
 kept low, she lived on, voluntarily suppressing herself, as so 
 many women do. And in the meantime new combinations 
 were preparing, new personages were coming upon the scene. 
 While the older people stood aside, the younger ones put on 
 their singing garments, and came forward with their flowery 
 wreaths, with the sunshine upon their heads, to perform their 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 289 
 
 romance, like the others before them, and so it happened that 
 life had stolen imperceptibly away, so noiseless and soft that 
 no one knew of its going, until all at once there came a day 
 when its progress could no longer be ignored. This was the 
 day when Norah Drummond, eighteen years old, all decked 
 and dressed by her mother's hands, spotless and radiant as 
 the rose in her hair, with her heart full of hopes, and her eyes 
 full of light, and no cloud upon her from all the tragic ihists 
 through which her youth had passed, went up the long avenue 
 at Dura to the House which was brilliant with lamps and gay 
 with music, to make her first appearance, as she thought, in 
 the world. Norah's heart was beating, her gay spirit dancing 
 already before she reached the door. 
 
 " Oh, I wonder, mamma, I wonder," she said " what will 
 happen 1 will anything happen to-night 1" What could happen 
 to her by her mother's side, and among her old friends ) She 
 did not know; she went out to meet it gaily. But Norah 
 found it impossible to believe that this first triumphant even- 
 ing, this moment of glory and delight, could pass away like 
 the other evenings ; that there should not be something in it, 
 something unknown, sweet, and yet terrible, which should afifeot 
 all her iSe. 
 
S40 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 GIRL'S first ball ! What more full of ecstasy could be 
 breathed in this dull world ! A vague, overwhelming 
 vision of delight before she goes into it— -all bright- 
 ness, and'poetry, and music and flowers, and kind admiring faces; 
 everything converging towards herself as a centre, not with any 
 selfish sense of enjoyment, but sweetly, spontaneously, as to the 
 natural queen. A hundred unexpected, inexpressible emotions 
 go to make up this image of partidise. There is the first glow 
 and triumph of power which is at once a surprise to her and 
 a joy. The feeling that she has come to the kingdom — that sl^e 
 herself has become the fair woman whose sway she has read of 
 all her life ; the consciousness, at last, that it is real, that wo- 
 manhood is supreme in her person, and that the world bows 
 down before her in her whiteness and brightness, in her shame- 
 facedness and innocent confidence, in her empire of youth. 
 She is the Una whose look can tame the lion ; she is the prin- 
 cess before whose glance the whole world yields ; and yet at 
 the same time, being its queen, is she not the world's sweet hand- 
 maid, to scatter flowers in its path, and dance and sing to make 
 it glad 1 All these thoughts are in the girl's mind, especially 
 if she be a fanciful girl — though, perhaps, she does not find 
 words to express any of them ; and this it is which throws 
 such a charm to her upon the pleasure-making, which to us 
 looks sometimes so stale and so poor. 
 
 And it is only after a long interval — ^unless her case be an 
 exceptionally hard one — ^tbats he gets disenchanted. When 
 she goes into the fairy palace, she finds in it all that she 
 thought : all, with the lively delight of personal enjojrment 
 added, and that flattery of admiring looks, of unspoken hom- 
 age, not to the ideal princess, or representative woman, but to 
 her, which is so sweet and so new. Thus Norah DrhmmoDd 
 entered the ball-room at Dura House, floating in, as it were, 
 npon the rays of light that surrounded her — ^tne new woman, 
 the latest successor of Eve in the garden, unexacling queen of 
 
AT BtS OATSS. 
 
 Ul 
 
 the fresli world she had entered into, fearing no rivalei — ^nay, 
 reigning in the persons of her rivals as weU as in her own. 
 And when she had thus made her entrance in an abstract tri- 
 umph, waking suddenly to individual consciousness, remember- 
 ing that she was still Norah, and that people were looking at 
 her, wondering at her, admiring her — her, and not anothiir — 
 she laughed as a child laughs for nothing, for delight, as she 
 stood by her mother's side. It was too beautiful and wonder- 
 ful to be shy of it. 
 
 " Pinch me, mamma, and it will all pass away like the other 
 dreams," she whispered, holding fast by her mother's arm. 
 But the curious thing, the amazing thing was, that it continu- 
 ed, and warmed her and dazzled her, and lighted her up, and 
 did not pass away. 
 
 " Norah, come ! you are to dance this dance with me," cried 
 Ned, rushing up. He had seen them come in, though he was 
 in the other nr^^ of the room : he had watched for them since 
 the first note r»r ^? music struck ; he had neglected the duty 
 to which he b . n en specially appropriated, the duty of look- 
 ing after and amusing and taking care of the two fair daugh- 
 ters of the Marchioness who was as good as Lady Patroness 
 of Mrs Burton's Ball. To keep up the proper contrast, I am 
 aware that Lady Edith and Lady Florizel should have been 
 young women of a certain age, uninviting, and highly aristo- 
 cratic, while Norah Drummond had all the beauty and sweet- 
 ness, as well as poverty and lowliness, to recommend her ; but 
 this, I am sorry to confess, was not the case. The Ladies Mere- 
 wether were very pretty girls, as pretty as Norah ; they were 
 not " stuck up" but as pleasant and as sweet as English girls 
 need be — indeed, except that they were not Norah, I know no 
 fault they had in Ned's eyes. But they were not Norah, and 
 he forsook his post. Nobody ^noticed the fact much except 
 Mrs. Burton. As for Lady Florizel, she had the most unfeign- 
 ed good-humoured contempt for Ned. He was a mere boy, she 
 said : she had no objection to dance with him, or chatter to 
 him * but she had in her reach two hundred as good, or better, 
 than him, and she preferred men to boys, she did not hesitate 
 to say. So that when Ned appeared by Norah's side, Lady 
 Florizel, taking her place with her partner, smiled upon him 
 as he passed, and asked audibly, " Oh, who was that pretty 
 
 
 1 Jiiil 
 
 I 11 
 
 1 
 
 IJ'S 
 
^42 
 
 AX B|s qA'W- 
 
 ^rl with Mr. Burtoi^l oh how prpljty «hpi ww J ClQuWn't a^^y- 
 bociy tell her?" Lady Florizel was npi oQi^nded. B\i^ Mi^. 
 ^ur(oD 8a Wy and was wroth. 
 
 Mapy changes had happened in those six years. At the time 
 of the trial and after it there had heen many douhts and spec- 
 ulations in Helen's mind as to what she should do. Suspect- 
 ii^g l^er cousin as she did, and with Rohert's judgment against 
 him, as recorded in that last mournful letter, how was she to 
 go on accepting a shelter from her cousin, living at his very 
 jg;ates in a sort of dependence upon him ? " But she had no- 
 where else^ to go for one thing, and the shade of additional 
 aouht which had heen thrown upon Burton hy the trial, was 
 not of a kind to impress her mind ; nothing had heen brought 
 forward against him, no one had said opeijily that he was to 
 bli^e, and Helen was discouraged when it all ended in nothing 
 w she thought, and had not energy enough to uproot herself 
 irom the peaceful corner she had taken refuge in. Wheve 
 cpuid she go 1 Then she had the Haldt^nes to keep her to this 
 spot, which now seemed the only spot in thp world where pity 
 a|id friendship were to be found. Stephen, whom she con- 
 templated with a certain reverence in his great suffering and 
 pa.tience, was the better for her presence and that of I^orah, 
 and the kind eyes and voices that bade her welcome whenever 
 she crossed iheir threshold was a comfort to her. She kept 
 i^erself apart from the Burtons for a long time, having next to no 
 intercourse with them, and so she would have done still had the 
 matter been ip her hands. But the matter was no longer in 
 her hands. The children had grown up, all of them together. 
 They had grown into those habits which fathers and mothers 
 cannot cross, which insensibly affect even their own feelings 
 and relations. Clara Burton and Norah Drummond were 
 cousins still, though so great, a gulf of feeling lay between 
 their two houses. Both of them had been, as it were, brought 
 lijf with the Daltops at the Rectory^ They were aU children 
 tbgethe^:, all boys and girls together. Insensibly the links 
 multiplied, the connection grew stronger. 'When Ned Burton 
 in^as at Dura there was never a day ii^ his life tha,t hp 4i^ not 
 iGipen4) or atteinpt to spend, part of it in the Gatehouse. An4 
 yl^^ TSi,p, in B,pd ovit — she &X^^, M^ry Paltop ji they "^eT^, all 
 i^l^out the samcj a^e; at this mpn^f^i^t ih^y raQ^ed fron^ twenty 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 d4S 
 
 
 J very 
 id no- 
 tional 
 J, '"'as 
 rought 
 siras to 
 othing 
 herself 
 Wheie 
 to this 
 re pity 
 le con- 
 Dg and 
 mrah, 
 lenever 
 
 tekept 
 ttono 
 lad the 
 
 to, 9QVenteeti, a group of companions more intimate than any- 
 tJiiing but youth, and this long a^d close association could hay« 
 ma^e them. They were like brothers and sisters, Mrs. Dalton 
 said anxiously, veiling from herself the fact that some of them 
 had begun to feel and think as brothers and sisters do not feel 
 Qharlie Dalton, for instance, who was the eldest of all— K>ne-andr 
 twenty, instead of falling in love with Norah, who was as poor as 
 himself — a thing which would have been simple madness, of 
 course, but not so bad as what happened — ^bad seen fit to bestow 
 his heart, upon Clara Burton, whose father dreamed of nothine 
 less than a duke for her, and who had not so much heart as woul4 
 lie on a sixpence, the rector's wife said indignantly ; and Heaven 
 knows how many other complications were foreshadowing 
 through those family intimacies, and the brother and sister couf 
 dition which had been so delightful while it lasted. Mra» 
 Drummond and Mrs. Dalton went together on this particular 
 evening, watching from a distance over their respective children* 
 Helen's face was calm, for Norah was in no trouble; but the rec' 
 tor's wife had a pucker on her brow. She could see her Charlie 
 watching so wistfully the movements of Clara Burton through 
 the crowd, hanging about her, stealing to her side whenever he 
 could, following her everywhere with his eyes. Charlie was 
 esi>ecially dear to his mother, as the eldest boy of a large fam- 
 ily, wheu he is a good boy, so often is. She had been able to 
 talk to him many a dav about her domestic troubles when she 
 could not speak to his father. She had felt herself strengtheur 
 ed by his sympathy and support, that backing up which is so 
 good for everybody, and it broke her heart to see her boy 
 breaking his for that girl. What could he see in her ) the 
 mother thought. If it bad been Norah Drummond ! and then 
 she tried to talk to her friend at her side. They had come to 
 be very fast friends ; they had leant upon each other, by tumf ^ 
 corners, as it were, of the burdens which each had to bear, and 
 Mrs. Dalton knew Mrs. Drummond could guess what the sigh 
 meant which she could not restrain. 
 
 " How nice Norah is looking," she said, " and how happy I 
 I think she has changed so much since she was a child. She 
 used to haye suqh a dreamy look ; but now there is no.omtr^ 
 pfiPSf^ she goes in to everything with all her heart." 
 
 " Yes " sidd Helen ; but she did not go on talking of Nor»b| 
 
244 
 
 AT BIS GATES. 
 
 \ 
 
 she^understood the give and take of sympathy. '* I like Mary's 
 dress so much. She and Katie look so fresh, and simple, and 
 sweet. But they are not such novices as Norah ; you know it 
 is her first hall." 
 
 ** Poor children, how excited it makes them ! hut dressing 
 them is a dreadful business," said Mrs Dalton with her anxious 
 look still following her Charlie among all the changing groups. 
 ** I need not disguise it from you, dear, who know all about us. 
 It was sometimes hard enough before, and now what with 
 evening dresses I And when they come to a dance like this 
 they want something pretty and fresh. You will feel it by- 
 and-byeven with Norah. I am sure if it were not for the 
 cheap shops, where you can buy tarlatan for so little, and 
 making them up ourselves at home, I never could do it. And 
 vou know whatever sacrifices one makes, one cannot refuse a 
 little pleasure to one's children. Poor things, it is all they 
 are likely to have" 
 
 "At least they are getting the good of it." said Helen. 
 Norah's dress was the first task of this kind that had been put 
 upon her, and sKe had been forced to make her sacrifices to 
 dress the child wbo had grown a woman ; but Helen, too, 
 knew that she could not buy many ball dresses off her hundred 
 a year. And it was so strange to think such thoughts in this 
 lavish extravagant house, where every magnificence that could 
 be thought of adorned mother and daughter, and the room and 
 the walls. Mrs. Dalton answered to the thought before it had 
 been expressed. 
 
 "It is curious," she said, " there is Clara Burton, who might 
 dress in cloth of gold if she liked — but our girls look just as well. 
 What a t,hing it is to be rich ! — for the Burtons you know 
 are — " Here Mrs. Didton stopped abruptly, remembering that 
 if the Burtons were nobodies, so was also the friend ^t her side. 
 She herself was connected with the old Harcourts, and had a 
 right to speak. '^ "■^"' 
 
 *'Now, ladies, I know what you are doing," said Mr Burton, 
 suddenly coming up to them ; "You are saying all sorts of 
 sweet things to each other about your children, and privately 
 you are thinking that there is nobody in the room fit to be 
 seen except yotur own. Oh don't look so caught I I know, 
 ))ecause I am doing the same thing myself." 
 
 a su 
 wou 
 Uke 
 Ai 
 thou| 
 poin 
 mam 
 kno^ 
 
AT HIS OATEa 
 
 245 
 
 !>. 111.' 
 
 Doing the same thine himself — comparing his child to mj 
 Norah — ^to my Mary, the ladies inwardly replied ; but no such, 
 answer was made aloud. *' We were saying how they all enjoy 
 themselves/' said Mrs. Dalton, ** that was all." 
 
 Mr. Burton laughed that little laugh of mockery which men 
 of vulgar minds indulge in when they talk to women, and 
 which is as much as to say, ** you can't take me in with your pre- 
 tences, I see through you." He had grown stoutef, but he did 
 not look so vigorous as n." o? ' He was fleshy, there was a 
 furtive look in his eye x hen : glanced round *<« at the 
 brilliant party, and all the splendour of which he was tne owner, 
 it was not with the complacency of old. He looked as if at 
 any moment something disagreeable, something to be avoided 
 might appear before him, and had acquired a way of stretching 
 out his neck as if to see who was coming behind. The thing 
 in the room about which he was most complacent was Clara. 
 She had grown up, straight, and large, and tall in stature, like 
 our Anglo-Saxon queens, with masses of white rosy flesh and 
 gold-coloured hair. The solid splendid white arm, laden with 
 bracelets, which leaned on her partner's shoulder, was a beauty 
 not possessed by any of the slight girls whose mothers were 
 watching her as she moved past them. Clara's arm would 
 have made two of Norah's. Her size and fulness and colour 
 dazzled everybody. She was a full-blown Rubens beauty, of 
 the class which has superseded the gentler, pensive, unob- 
 trusive heroine in these days. " I don't pretend to say any- 
 thing but what I think," said Mr. Burton, ** and I do feel 
 that tfiat is a girl to be proud of. Don't dance too much, 
 Clary, you have got to ride with me to-morrow." She gave 
 him a smile and a nod as she whirled past. The man who was 
 dancing with her was dark, a perfect contrast to her brilliant 
 beauty. " They make a capital couple," Mr. Burton said with 
 a suppressed laugh. " I suppose a prophet, if we had one, 
 would see a good many combinations coming on in an evening 
 Uke this. Why, by Jove, here's Ned." 
 
 And it was Ned, bringing Norah back to her mother. " I 
 
 thought you had been dancing with one of " said his father, 
 
 pointing with his thumb across his shoulder. "Have you ho 
 manners, boy 9 Norah, I am sure, will excuse you when she 
 knows you are engaged— people that are stopping in the house." 
 
 lit'' > 
 
 
246 
 
 AT HIS GATES, 
 
 "Oh, of course I wUl excuse him," said N-^ah. "I Ad 
 libt ^aut him at all. I would rather sit quiet a little and see 
 everybody. And Charlie has promised to dance with me. I 
 suppose it was not wrong to ask Charlie, was it ? He might as 
 welt have me as any one, don't you think, mamma f 
 
 " If you take to inviting gentlemen, Norah, 1 :hall expect 
 you to ask me," said Mr. Burton, who was always jocular to 
 ^rls. Norah looked at him with her bright observant eyes. 
 She always looked at him, he thought, in that way. If e was 
 half afraid of her, though she was so young. He had even 
 tried to conciliate her, but he had not succeeded. She shook 
 her head without making any reply, and just then something 
 happened which made a change in all the circumstances. It 
 was the approach of the man with whom Clara had been 
 dancing; a man with the air of a hero of romance ; bearded, 
 with very fine dark eyes and hair that curled high like a crests 
 upon his head. Norah gave a little start as he approached, 
 and blushed. " It is the hero," she said to herself. He looked 
 as if he had just walked out of a novel with every sign of his 
 character legibly set forth. But though it iri.y be very well 
 to gibe at beautiful dark eyes and handv le features, it is 
 difficult to remain unmoved by their influence. Norah owned 
 with that sudden flush of colour a certain curiosity, to say the 
 least of it Mr. Burton frowned, and so did his son and diingh- 
 ter simultaneously, as if by touching of a spring. 
 
 " 1 am afraid you don't remember me, Mrs. Drummond," 
 the stranger said ; ** but t recollect you so very well that I 
 hope you will let me introduce myself— Cyril Bivers. It is a 
 long time since we met." 
 
 " Oh, I remember ! " cried impulsive Norah, and thsn was 
 silent, blushing more deeply than ever. To ask Chailie Dalton 
 to dance with her was one thing, but meeting the hero 
 was entirely different. It took away her breath. 
 
 And two minutes after she was dancmg with him. It was this 
 he had come to her mother for — not asking any one tO intro- 
 duce him. He was no longer a boy, but a man travelled and 
 ^eri^nbed, who knew, or thought he knew, society and th^ 
 world: But he had not yet dismissed from his mind that pa6t 
 ^tod^^ah epidOd^ Whibh had beidn flx6d tind depended in his 
 mirmii^rjr by the trial and idl the discussion and the neWB< 
 
 « 
 
 « 
 
 You 
 tt 
 
 ittcri 
 
AT filS GATES. 
 
 24i 
 
 ^MerL T6 say that lie h4d contintied to think aboat the 
 l>ramttiond6 Would have been foolish ; but when he came back 
 to Dur^ to* vitiit the Burtons, they were the first people who 
 relcurred to hlis mind. As his host drove him past the Gate- 
 house on the night of his arrival, he had asked about them. And 
 Mr. Burton remembered this now, and did not like it. He 
 stood and looked after the pair as they went away ann-in-arm. 
 Norah did not answer as Clara did as a complete foil and coun- 
 ter to Mr. Bivers's dark handsomeness. It was a mistake 
 altogether. It was Clara who should have been with him, 
 who was his natural companion. Mr. Burton reflected that 
 nothing but kindness could have induced him to invite his 
 cousin's penniless girl to the ereat ball at which Clara made her 
 ddntt in the world as well as Norah. He felt as he stood and 
 looked on that it was a mistake to have done it. People so 
 poor ought not to be encouraged to set themselves up as equals 
 of the richer clashes. He said to himself that his system had 
 been wrong. Different classes have different duties, he felt sure. 
 His own was to get as much of the good things of this world, as 
 much luxury and honour as he could have for his money. Helen's 
 was to subsist on a hundred a year; and to expect of her that she 
 could anyhow manage to buy ball dresses, and put her child in 
 competi.<lon with his ! It was wrong ; there is no other word. 
 Mr. Burton left his neighbours and went off with a dissatisfied 
 countenance to another part of the room. It was his own 
 &ult. 
 
 " 1 should have known you anywhere," said Mr. Rivers in 
 the pause of the waltzing. " You were only a child when I 
 saw you last, but I should have known you anywhere." 
 
 " Should you 1 How very strange ! What a good memory 
 you must have !" s^aid Norah. ** Though, indeed, as soon as 
 y6u said who you were, I remembered you." 
 
 " But nobody told me who vou were," he said, " when I saw 
 you just now, dancing with that young fellow, the son of the 
 house." 
 
 " Did you see us then 1" 
 
 " Yes, and your mother sitting by that stand of fiowerd. 
 You are half yourself as I remember you, and half her." 
 
 " What a good memory you must have !" said Norah, very 
 incredulous; and then they fioated away again to the soft 
 
 
 w 
 18*1'" 
 
248 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 dreamy music, he supporting her, guiding her through the 
 moving crowd as Norah had never dreamt of being guided. 
 She had felt she was on her own responsibility when dancing 
 with Ned and Charlie ; with, indeed, a little share of respon- 
 sibility on account of her partners too. But Mr. Rivers danced 
 beautifully, and Norah felt like a cloud, like a leaf lightly car- 
 ried by the breeze. She was carried along without ary trouble 
 to herself. When they had stopped, instead of feeling out of 
 breath, she stopped only from courtesy's sake, to let the others 
 go on. 
 
 " How well you dance, Mr. Rivers !" she cried. " I never 
 liked a waltz so much before. The boys are so different. One 
 never feels sure where one is going. I like it now." 
 
 ** Then you must let me have as many waltzes as you can," 
 he said, " and I shall like it too. Who ar3 the boys 1 You 
 have not any — brothers] Boys are not to be trusted for 
 waltzing: they are too energetic — too much determined to 
 have everything their own way." 
 
 " Oh, the boys 1 they are chiefly Ned and — Charlie Balton. 
 They are the ones I always dance with," said Norah. " And 
 oh, by-the-bye, I was engaged to Charlie for this dance." 
 
 " How clever of me to carry you off before Mr. Charlie 
 came !" said the hero. ** But it is his own fault if he was not 
 up in time." ,i.i;^i 
 
 " Oh, I don't know," said Norah, with a blush. " Theiac^is— 
 he did not ask me ; I asked him. I never was at a ball before, and 
 I don't know many people, and of course I wanted to dance. I 
 asked him to take me if he was not engaeed, so if he found 
 any one he liked better, he was not to bo blamed if he forgot. 
 Why do you laugh ? Was it a silly thin^ to do 1" 
 
 "I don't know Charlie," said Mr. Rivers ; " but I should 
 puncb his head with pleasure. What has he done that he 
 should have you asking him to dance % " 
 
 And then that came again which was not dancing, as Norah 
 understood it, an occasion which had always called for consider- 
 able exertion, but a very dream of delightful movement, like 
 flying, like — she could not tell what. But this time she was a 
 little ashamed about Charlie ; and the waltz put it out of Mr. 
 Rivers's mind. 
 
 " Po you think I may call to-morrow T he (W-id, when they 
 
 "01 
 
AT HIS OATQS. 
 
 249 
 
 ' :, II 'I 
 
 stopped again. ** Will your mother let me 1 There are so 
 many things I should like to talk over with her. You are too 
 young, of course, to remember anything about a certain horrid 
 bank." 
 
 "Ah, no, I am not too young," said Norah, and the smiles 
 with which ^she had been looking up at him suddenly vanished 
 from her face. "' 
 
 « I beg your pardon. I had forgotten that it was of more 
 importance to you than to any one. I want to talk to your 
 mother about that. Do you think I may come ? Look here ; 
 is this Charlie ? He is just the sort of youth whom a young 
 lady might ask to dance with her. And, good heavens, how 
 he waltzes! I don't wonder that you felt it a painful exercise. 
 Are Miss Burton and her guests friends V* 
 
 ^'Wg are all great friends," said Norah, half displeased. And . 
 Clara Burton as she passed gave her an angry look. ** Why 
 Clara is cross," she said pathetically. " Wliat can I Lave 
 done 1" 
 
 Mr. Bivers lauehed. Norah did not like the laugh ; it 
 seemed a little like Mr. Burton's. There was a certain con- 
 scious superiority and sense of having found some one out in 
 it which she did not either like or understand. 
 
 " Yuu seem to know something I don't know," she said, with 
 prompt indignation. " Perhaps why Clara is cross ; but you 
 don't know Clara. You don't know any of us, Mr. Rivers, and 
 you oughtn't to look as if you had found us out. How could 
 you find out all about us, who have known each other from 
 babies, in one night ? " 
 
 " I beg your pardon," he said, with au immediate change of 
 tone. " It is one of the bad habits of society that nobody can 
 depend on another, and everybody likes to grin at his neigh- 
 bours. Forgive me ; I forgot I was in a purer air." 
 
 " Oh, it was not that," said Norah, a little confused. He 
 seemed to say things (she thought) which meant nothing, as if 
 there was a great deal in them. She was glad to be taken back 
 to her mother, and deposited under her shelter; but she was. 
 not permitted to rest there. Ned came and glowered at her 
 reproachfully, as she sat down, and other candidates for her 
 hand arrived so fast that the child was half intoxicated with 
 pleasure and flattery. What do they want me for 1" she won- 
 
 tiiii 
 
 1 
 
2M) 
 
 AT RIB OATEd. 
 
 dMi Within herself. She #^ tJo ^uch ih reauest that Ned did 
 not get ai^other dance till the very end of the evening : and 
 ev^h Mr. Rivers was balked in at least one of the waltzes he 
 had engaged her for. He drew back with a smile, seeing it ivas 
 Mr. Burton himself who was exerting himself to find partners 
 for Norah. But Norah was all smiles ; she danced the whole 
 evening, comine- little by little into her partner's sway. PleaSed 
 to be so popular, delighted with everybody's ** kindness" to 
 her, and dazzled with this first opening glimpse of ''the 
 world." 
 
 ^ ^' If this is the world, I like it," she said to her mother as 
 they drove home. ** It is delightful ; it is so beautiful ; it is 
 so Kind ! Oh, mamma, is it wrong to feel so 1 I never iitras so 
 happy in my life." 
 
 "No, my darling, it is not wrong," Hekti Said, kissing heiy 
 She was not insensible to her child s triumph. 
 
 ; ' 
 
 • -■ . ■' 
 
 1:. • -i, 
 
 ri.trw [y 
 
▲T UIS GATES. 
 
 251 
 
 OHAPtER XXVI. < 
 
 .T k tanity, mv dear, Vattity. You iaxait not set your 
 taind npon it, ^^ MtiB. Haldane. 
 ** Oh, but it was delightful," said Korah, '' it was won- 
 derful ! if you had been there yourself you would have liked 
 it as much as I did. Everybody looked so nice, and e\ i^body 
 was BO nice, Mrs. Haldane. A thine that makes 6very one 
 kind and pleasant and smiling must oe ^ood, don't jrou th^nk 
 so 1 We were all as amiable, as charming, as fa8cin(^.ting iir 
 ever we could be." 
 
 " And whom did you dance with t " said Miss Jahe. 
 
 " I danced with everybody. It is quite time. You 6anii(^t 
 think how kind the people were. When we went in firsi ," 
 said Norah, with a laugh and a blush, ** I saw so many sttaU^ 
 faces, I was afraid I should have no dancing at all ; so I whis- 
 pered to Charlie Dalton, ' Do take me out for the next dance !* 
 abd he nodded to say yes. I suppose it was dreadfully wix>ng 
 and ignorant ; but I did so Want to have a good dance ! " 
 
 " Well, then, that is one,** said practical Miss Jane, bd^ining 
 to count on her fingers. 
 
 ** Oh, no ! it is not one ki all Mr. Bivers came and i^ked 
 iti6, tod I forgot all about Chairlie. He forgot too, I supposo ; 
 for I did not dance with him the whole evening. And thcin 
 th^re Wto Ned, and young Mr. Howard, and CapciJ i Douglas, 
 and Mrb. Dalton's brother, tod— I told you, everybodv; and, 
 to biB very gttod. Lord Merewether himself At the end. 
 
 ** Lord Mei'owether ! " Misd JaUe was deeply impressed, tod 
 held the finger on which dhe had counted ttiis potentate fO^ ^ 
 fall minute. " Then. Norah, my dear, you had the vety b66t 
 of the great bounty folks." 
 
 •* Ye&," said Norah, " it was V6ty hia^ ; only he Wte ft littlo^ 
 stupid. And then Ned again, tod Mr. Bive^; Mr. BiV^ 
 was Always coming ; mamma made me say I ^as engft^^. It 
 did i^t turn out to bo ft fib, foir sOiho ^ehtlemftn ^t^a^l HHaiA 
 to ask me ; btit one ftlway^ gHdV^ it in bil^B im #h^ dtUi 
 says a thing that is not quite true." 
 
 I' 
 
 "Si ■: 
 
252 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 ** Ob, Norah ! " said Mrs. Haldane, ** is not that just what I 
 told you ) Do you think anything can be good or right for a 
 young girl in a Christian land that makes you say what is not 
 quite true ? There may be no harm in th€ dancine by itself, 
 though in my day we were of a different way of thinking ; but 
 
 to teU—lies " 
 
 , **Not lies, mother," said Stephen. " When Norah told Mr. 
 Rivers she was engaged, he understood, of course, that she did 
 not want to dance with him." 
 
 "Well," said Norah slowly, " T don't tnow. To tell the very, 
 very truth, I did want very much to dance with him, He 
 dances like an angel— at least, I don't know how an angel dan- 
 ces—Oh, please don't look so shocked, Mrs. Haldane ; I did 
 npt mean any harm. He is just simply delightful to dance 
 with. Biit mamma thought something — I don't know what 
 It is etiquette, you know ; a girl must not dance very often 
 with one man." 
 
 " And who is this Mr. Rivers 1 " said Stephen. " Is he as 
 delightful in other ways?" 
 
 '^*j[)oii't you rememher 1 " said Norah. '' It is so funny no- 
 body seems to remember but me. When we came here first, 
 he was here too, and mfimma and I met hin^ one day at our 
 own old home in London. Mr. Stephen, I am sure I have, 
 tpld you ; the boy, I used to call him, that was on our side % " 
 
 ^* Ah, I remember now," said Stephen ; " and he seems to be 
 on your side still, from, what you say. But who is he, Norah, 
 and what is he, and why did he want to dance so often with 
 
 "As' for thai, saiclN^oi'ah, laughing, " I suppose he liked me 
 tQo ;. there was not any other reason. He is so handsome ! — 
 jiisti exactly like the hero in a novel. The moment I saw him 
 I said to myself, ' Here is the hero.' He is almost too hand- 
 sbnie : dark, with hair that curls all over his head, and the 
 mqs^ beautiful dark eyes. You never saw such beautiful dark 
 eyes I Oh, I am not speaking because I like him. I think I should 
 almost like him better if he were not quite no — don't you Jcnow ? 
 If I were writing , a novel. I should take him for the hero. I 
 should make, everybody fall in love with him— all the ladies, 
 o^d afber another. When one sees a man like that in real life," 
 s^d Norah, with gravity, " it puts one on one's guard," 
 
 ( •. 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 253 
 
 "Are you on yotir guard, Norahl" said Stephen, with a 
 smile. The incipient fiin in his eyes was, however, softened 
 hy a tend&K^r alarm, a wistfUl curiosity. The child! Since 
 poor Drummond used to call her so, regarding her as the child 
 par excellence-- the type and crown of childhood — this was the 
 name that had seemed most appropriate to Norah. Arid it 
 meant so much — not only Robert's child, who had gone and 
 had left her to the love of his friends, but the very embodi- 
 ment of youth and innocence — the fresh, new life, to be made 
 something better of than any of the older lives had been. 
 Should she, too, fall just into the common snare^ — just into the 
 vulgar pitfalls, as everybody did ? The thought disturbed her 
 self-appointed guardian— her father's friend. 
 
 ''Me ! " said Norah, and her colour rose, aud she laughed, 
 with a light in her eyes which had not been there before. It 
 was not the glance of rising excitement, as Stephen feared, but 
 onlj^ a merry glow of youthful temerity — that daring which 
 loves to anticipate danger. " Oh, what fun it Would be 1 But 
 no, Mr. Stephen ; oh, no ! that was not what I meant in the 
 least. I am not that sort of girl. Mr. Rivers," she added, 
 with a certain solemnity, " had Something to do with that bank, 
 you know. I don't know what he had to do with it. He is 
 Lord Rivers's son, and it is to talk over that that he is coming 
 to see mamma." '^'"'^'^ "^^^^ :"'^ ; ' \'' .^^'-''^'^ ^ 
 
 " Oh, to talk over that ! " said Stephen, half amused. 
 
 "Yes, to talk it over," said Norah, with great gravity; and 
 then she made a sudden leap from the subject. " The Mere* 
 wethers are all staying at the great house-^the marchioness 
 herself, and Lord Merewether, and the girls ; I think they aire 
 very nice girls. But, oh ! Miss Jane, I must tell you one thing; 
 she had on her diamonds. I never saw diamonds before. They 
 are like light. They change, and they glimmer, and they make 
 little rainbows. I never saw anything so beautiful ! They are 
 like a quantity of dewdrops when the sun is shining— only you 
 never could get dewdrops to keep still in one place.'*' 
 
 " And I suppose they are worth a mint of money," said Miss 
 Jane, with a sigh of admiration. " I have never seen them but 
 in the shops, Norah ; but I don't think I should like to wear 
 as much as would keep half-a-dozen poor families round my 
 neck." 
 
 .!*''■ 
 
SI4 
 
 AT HIS ^ATll^S. 
 
 V 
 
 Ij^QXBh, pAUaad doubtfully, uot feeling equal to this question. 
 
 " I suppose they belong to the fwily, m)4 ^^^ 4ive not i|eli 
 them, an j thei|» perhaps— Would God have tnajde 4j(amond9 jf 
 ]^e did not mean people to wear them ?" she askedr^ith hesi- 
 tiiition. " Oh, do you know, I think I should like so much to 
 we^ them, if they were mine I " 
 
 " Ah, my dear," said old Mrs. Haldane, " see how vanity 
 comes into the mind. Yesterday you had never thought of 
 diamonds ; npw you would like — ^you know you would like — 
 to have them; and from that to trying to get theiU is but a 
 siiep, l^orah, but a step— if you don't mind." 
 
 ** I could only try to get them by stealing tl^em," said Korah ; 
 "and, after all, I don't care so much as tba)>. i$esides, girls 
 don't wear diamonds. But 111 tell you what I should like. T 
 should like to take those lovely things of the mf^clUonera's, 
 and put ihem upon mamma." . , .j;^ , rt j w. .1 | 
 
 « There, I toW you ! " said the old lady. " IToraJi,, doa't^ 
 to these places any more. You have begun to covet them m 
 your heart." 
 
 "Oh, how beautiful mamma would look in them!" cried 
 Norah. " Mr. Stephen, is it vanity to admire one's mother ? 
 I suppose it must be really ; for if there is anything in the 
 world that belongs to you, of course it is your mother. ^ think 
 mamma is beautiful : even in her black silk, made square, and 
 not so fresh as it once was, she was the most beautiful in the 
 room — I don't mean pretty, like us girls. And if I could have 
 put her into black velvet instead, with lovely lace like Mrs. 
 Burton's, and the marchioness's diamonds — oh ! " cried Norah, 
 expanding in her proud imagination, " she would have been 
 like a queen 1 " 
 
 " Oh, Norah, Norah ! " cried Mrs. Haldane, shaking her 
 head. 
 
 " And so she would," said Stephen. " Norah is quite ri^ht." 
 
 He spoke low, and there was a melancholy tone in his voice ; 
 he was thinking sadly how she had been buried like himself 
 ii^ the middle of her d^iys — shut out from aU thpse triumphs 
 i^pd glorias which are pleasant to a woman. A less\hum&Q- 
 hearted man in Stephen Haldape's position would no doubt 
 have pronounced it hAppy for Helen that she was thuisi preserved 
 ^m vanity and vainglory. Bat he had learned to teel for aU 
 
^t HIS GATES. 
 
 m 
 
 III' 
 
 l^iit npt wh*t he w?if3 suppo^^d to think. Mm ^i^pe gayjp a 
 ^liqce of h^r eye at him frpm her sewing, half-indignapt, n|Jf- 
 sprrpwful. ShQ hiul f^^ncied something of the sort often, she 
 8^<d to herselC Stephen, poor Stephen ! who could never have 
 {t wife, pr any other love different fro^i her own. She thought 
 thftt the other woman whom she had admitted in all the coi^- 
 dence of friendship had stolen from him her brother'sheart 
 
 *' Well, and if she had/' said Miss Jane, with some shaTpness, 
 " what good wpuld that have done her 1 I never heard that to 
 be like a queen made anybody the happier yet.** 
 
 " I was not thinking of what made her happier," sjiid 
 Norah, coming behind Miss Jane's chair, and stetding an axvfi 
 round her neck, "but of what would make me happier. 
 Shouldn't you like to have everything that was nice for Mrs. 
 Haldane and Mr. Stephen, even if they didn't want it 1 Qh, I 
 know you would ! and so should 1." 
 
 " iTou coipcing child I ycu would m^^ce one swear black was 
 white 1 What has thiat to do with lace and diamonds V said 
 "i/^m Jane ; but she was vanquished, and had no more to say. 
 
 "'Mary and Katie were in white tarletane," said KoT^h. 
 " They looked so pretty ! Clara looked very much the same. 
 You can't have much better than fresh white tarletane, you 
 know; pnly she had the mpst bfi^autiful silk underneath, and 
 heaps of ornaments. She isso bigshec^n stand a greatdeal of de- 
 coration ; but it would npt have done for any of us little things. 
 How anxipus I used to- bp to grow big ! " Norah went on. 
 "Now, on the whole, I think it is best not; one does not take 
 up so much room ; one does not require so much stuff for a 
 dress ; one can do without a ^reat many things. If I h(^l 
 been as big as Clar^ now, for instance, I never could have 
 done with those little bits of bracelets and mamma's one string 
 of pearls." 
 
 **So you seegopd ppmes froi^ eyil," said Stephen, with a 
 smile. '[",'"- j 
 
 " Oh, Stephen, dpn*t ti^ll; 8Q tp eqcpurage the child I With 
 your upbringing, Nor^i^, ai^d alj, the advantages you have ha^ 
 tp ^ve upi your mi^4 \^ WO^i follies ! If I ^pre yo^r ppc^ 
 
 e ii lajring nolt^Qg, wwn^, mo^fiVr w^^, ^ fpi^ 
 
256 
 
 AT ms GATES. 
 
 <>;r 
 
 " It is a great gain to Norah, you know, that she is little, and 
 can get a pretty dress out of twelve yards of stuff, when Clara 
 Burton takes twenty. That is thrift, and not vanity. I am 
 very glad you are little, Norah ; hig women are always in the 
 way. That Clara Burton, for instance — if she were in a smal! 
 house she would fill it all up ; there would not he room fot an} 
 one else. What does Mr. Rivers see in her, I wonder 1 Sh( 
 is not half so nice as some people I know." 
 
 " Mr. Rivers 1 " said Norah. 
 
 ** Yes, my dear. They say it is almost a settled thing be- 
 tween the two families. She will have quantities of money, 
 and he will be Lord Rivers when his father dies. They say 
 that is why he is here." 
 
 It did not matter anything to Norah. She did not care ; 
 why should she 1 Her very admiration of him had been linked 
 with a gibe. He was too handsome ; he was a man out of 4 
 book. Nevertheless, she looked at Miss Janie for a moment 
 achast. " The boy that was on our side !" she said to herself. 
 
 " Who are thept and what do they know about it ? " said 
 Stephen. "People don't make such arrangements nowadays. 
 if this were intended, you may be sure nothing at ail would be 
 said." 
 
 Stephen made this little speech out of a real regard for 
 Norah's cheerfulness, wliicli he thought was affected, and part- 
 ly to rouse her to self defence. 
 
 ■ ; ** But it would be quite nice," said Norah, recovering her 
 diismay. " Oh, how funny it would be to think of one of us 
 being married ! It should be Clara the first ; she is the young- 
 est^ but she is the biggest, and she was always the one who 
 would be first, you know. She is very, very handsome, Miss 
 Jane. Y"ou never were fond of Clara ; that is why you don't 
 see it. It would be the very thing !" cried Norah, clapping her 
 hands. " She is not one of the girls that would go and make 
 him vain, falling in love with him. She will keep him in his 
 right place ; she will not let him be the hero in the novel. The 
 onlv thing is, I am a little disappointed — though it is very 
 foolish and stupid ; for of course all that is over long ^o, and 
 Clara is like my sister ; and if Mr. Burton was wicked, I hope 
 he has repented. But still, you know, I have always thought 
 of Mr. Rivers as one that was on our side/* 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 267 
 
 ** Hush child ! " cried Mi«9 Jane. ** Don't be the one to 
 keep up old quarrels. That is all over now, and we have no 
 sides." 
 
 " So I suppose/' saidNorah; "but I feel a little as if he 
 were a deserter. I wonder if Clara likes him. I wonder if 
 
 It is all so very funny 1 One ox us girls ! But I must 
 
 go now to mamma. Mr. Stephen, I will come back in the 
 evening, and tell you what mamma thinks, and if Mr. Bivers 
 had anything to tell her — ^that is, if he comes to-day." 
 
 And Norah ran away unceremoniously, without leave-tak- 
 ing. She was the child of both the households. Sometimes 
 she went and came a dozen times in a day, carrying always a 
 little stream of youth and life, and freshness into the stagnant 
 places. Stephen laid down his book with a smile at the sight 
 of her ; he took it up now with a little sigh. He had sat there 
 all these six years, a motionless, solemn figure, swept aside 
 from the life of man, and Norah's comings and goings had 
 been as sweet to him as if she had been his own child. Now 
 he feared that a new chapter of life was opening, and it moved 
 him vaguely, with an expectation that was mingled with pain ; 
 for any change must bring pain to him. To others there 
 would be alternations- threads twisted of dark and, bright, of 
 good and evil; but to him in his chair by the window, no 
 change, he felt, could bring anything but harm. 
 
 "Oh, mamma," said Norah, ruslung into the drawing room 
 at the other side of the house, " fancy what I have just heard ! 
 They say it is all but settled that Clara is to marry Mr. Rivers. 
 They say that is why he is here." 
 
 " It is very likely, dear," said Helen. " I thought some- 
 thing jf that kind must be intended from what I saw last 
 night." 
 
 " What did you see, mamma % How odd I should never 
 have thought of it ! I feel a little disappointed," said Norah ; 
 " because, you know, I always made up my mind that he was 
 on our side." 
 
 " We don't want him on our side," said Mrs. Drummond, 
 with a decision which surprised her daughter. " And, Norah, 
 I am glad you havo spoken to me. Be sure you don't forget 
 this when yoa meet Mr Rivers ; he is very agreeable, and he 
 seems very friendly ; but you must take care never to say any- 
 Q 
 
 'iii'^H 
 
 
258 
 
 1^ HIS GAT^S. 
 
 thing, or to let hiro say anything, that you trould not wish 
 Clara to hear." 
 
 Norah paused, and looked at her mother with considerable 
 bewilderment. " How veiy strange of you to say this, mam- 
 ma! How very disagreeable — never to say anything, nor let 
 him say anything ! But I should hate to have Clara, or any 
 one, listening to all I say. I will not talk to him at alL I 
 will close my lips up tight, and never say a word. I Suppose 
 that will be best." 
 
 "Not to-day, however," said Mrs. Drummond; "fori see 
 him coming, Norah. You must be as you always are — neither 
 opening your mouth too much, nor closing it up too tight." 
 
 "I hate the juste milieu" said naughty Norah; but at that 
 moment the door-bell rang, and, before she could speak again, 
 Mr. Rivers was shown in, looking more like the hero of a novel 
 than ever. He was tall, slender, well-proportioned. Hej 
 had those curls about his temple§ which go to a girl's heart. 
 He had the most ingratiating nose, the beauti^Uest eyes. 
 " For one thing," said Norah to herself savagely, " Clara will 
 not go and fall in love with him and make him vain ! " Clara 
 had too great an opinion of herself ; she w as not likely to be 
 any man's worshipper. There was consolation in that. 
 
 " It is a long time since we met," Mr. Rivers said ; " but 
 you must pardon me for thrusting myself upon you all at once, 
 Mrs. Drummond. I have never forgotten what passed when 
 I saw you last. I doubt whether I ought to speak of it after 
 all these years." 
 
 " Perhaps it is better not," said Helen. 
 
 " Perhaps ; but I should like to say one thing — just one 
 thing. I do not know if you thought my father to blame. He 
 is a quiet man ; he never makes any public appearance ; he was 
 a sufferer only. He had nothing to do with the bank. He 
 was one of those who were wronged, not of those who did the 
 wrong." 
 
 "I have always known that," said Mrs. Drummond; and then 
 there was a pause. (" He is on our side still," Norah thought 
 to herself; but her mother changed the subject abruptly^ 
 " The children have all grown up since you Were here. Time 
 has made more change upon them than it h&s upon yimj*^ 
 
 " Do you think so \ " said the hero. " I am uot sure* llm« 
 
!'''■ 
 
 AT HIS QATES. 
 
 259 
 
 has made a great deal of difference in me. I am not half so 
 sure of the satisfactoriness of life and the good qualities of the 
 world as I used to be. I suppose it is a sign that age is com- 
 ing on : whereas these young people, these fairy princes and 
 princesses, who were babies when I was here " 
 
 At this point Norah was seized with one of those irrestrain- 
 able, seductive laughs which lead the spirit astray. " Oh, I 
 beg your pardon," she said ; " but I was puzzled to think how 
 poor, dear Ned could be a fairy prince ! He is such a dear 
 fellow, and I am so fond of him; but Prince Charmant, mamma !" 
 
 " If he is a dear fellow, and you are fond of him, I should 
 think it did not matter much whether he looked like Prince 
 Charmant or not," said Mr. Rivers ; and then he added, with a 
 smile — " There are other kinds of princes besides Charmant. 
 Riquet, with the tuft, for instance ; and he with the long 
 nose " 
 
 Now Ned, poor fellow, had a long nose. He had not grown 
 up handsome, and Norah was strongly conscious of the fact. 
 She felt that she had been the first to laugh at him, and yet she 
 hated this stranger for following her example. She grew very 
 red, and drew herself up with the air of an offended queen. 
 
 " They all got charmani at the last," she said stiffly ; " that 
 is better than beginning by being charmant, and turning out 
 very disagreeable in the end." 
 
 Mrs. Drummond gave her daughter a warning glance. " It 
 was a pretty party last night," she said ; " I hope you liked it. 
 We thought it very grand ; we have so little gaiety here." 
 
 " Was it gaiety 1" said the young man. "I suppose it was ; 
 but a ball is always rather a solemn affair to me, especially when 
 you are staying in the house. The horror that comes over you 
 lest you have danced with some one you oiight not to have danced 
 with, or left some one whom you ought. I broke away for a 
 little while last night when I saw you, and went in for simple 
 pleasure — but duty always drags one back at the end." 
 
 " Duty at a ball ! Why it is all pleasure," cried Norah. " It 
 may be foolish and frivolous, or it may even be — ^wrong ; but I 
 never was so happy in my life." 
 
 Then the hero of romance turned upon her, and smiled^ ^* You 
 told me it w^ your first ball/' he said ; " and that, I suppose, 
 would naturally make it look like Paradise^'* 
 
'260 
 
 Ai* HIS GATES. 
 
 \ 
 
 u 
 
 tt 
 
 <' It was very nice,'' said Norah. His smile and his look drove 
 her back into the shelter of commonplace. Somehow when he 
 looked at her, her energy seemed to turn into exaggeration, 
 and her natural fervour into pretence. Then she plunged into 
 the heart of a new subject with all a child's temerity. ** Don't 
 you think Clara is very handsome 1" she said. 
 
 Mr. Rivers did not shrink from a reply. ** She is very 
 handsome— if she knew how to dress." 
 
 Dress ! why, she had the loveliest dress ^" , 
 
 It was all white and pufly — like yours," he said. **iJ*ancy 
 that girl having no more perception than to dress herself like 
 you ! What nas she to do with shadows, and clouds, and 
 m^stenr ? She should be in heavy silks or satins, like the Juno 
 she is.' 
 
 Norah did not quite make out what this meant ; whether it 
 was the highest admiration or a covert sneer. She took it fob 
 granted it must be the former. ** Yes ; I know she is like a 
 Juno." she said, somewhat doubtfully ; adding, with a slightly 
 faltering tone, ** and she is very nice too." 
 
 " She is your cousin, Norah," said Mrs. Drummond quietly ; 
 and then the child grew redder than ever, and felt herself put 
 on her defence. 
 
 "I did not mean to gossip, mamma. I don't know what 
 Mr. Bivers likes to talk about. When anyone is quite a 
 stranger, how can you tell, unless you are very, very clever, 
 what to talk about ) And then I have been with Mr. Stephen, 
 telling them all about the ball. It is in my head. I can't think 
 of anything else. How pretty the Meren^ether girls are ! Oh, 
 I beg your pardon. I did not mean to go back to the same 
 ^ aubject. But I had to tell them everything^— what people were 
 there, and whom I danced with, and ^" 
 
 ** Mr. Stephen always encourages your chatter," said Helen, 
 with a smile. 
 
 '* What a sensible man Mr. Stephen must be ! May I know 
 "who he is ? " said young Rivers ; and thus a new topic presented 
 itself. Stephen Haldane's name and his story brought up an 
 unintentional reference to the misfortunes which link^ the two 
 households together, and which had given Cyril Rivers a cer- 
 tain hold upon them. When this chance was afforded him, he 
 told them, very simply and shortly, what sacrifices his father 
 
AT BIS GATES. 
 
 261 
 
 had made ; how he had mortgaged some of his property, and 
 sold some, and was living very quietly now, in retirement, till 
 his children were all educated. '* I am sent out into the world 
 to see how it looks after the waters have abated," he said 
 laughing. " I have got to find out how the land lies, and if 
 there is any green showing above the flood ; but I don't Vtibw 
 whether I am most likely to turn out the raven or the dove." 
 
 " Oh, I should like to find an olive leaf for you to fly back 
 with !" said Norah, obeying her first impulse, in her foolish 
 way. Mrs. Drummond lo<3ced at him gravely, without any of 
 her daughter's enthusiasm. 
 
 " Mr. Rivers must find the olive leaf in some warmer cor- 
 ner," she said. " They don't grow in our garden, Norah. We 
 have none to give." 
 
 " That is tnie," said the heedless girl ; " but, if the olive 
 would do, Mr. Rivers, there is one in the conservatory at the 
 great house — a poor, little, wee, stunted thing ; but there is 
 one there, I know." 
 
 Did she mean it ) or was it mere innocence, heedlessness % 
 It was not wonderful if Cyril Rivers was puzzled, for even Mrs. 
 Drummond could not make quite sure. 
 
 
262 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 ,T was natural that there should be nothing talked about 
 that morning throughout Dura except the ball. All the 
 young people were Tate of getting up, and they were all 
 full of the one subject — how this one a^d ci ^.t one looked ; how 
 Charlie haunted Clara all the evening ; how young Mr. Nicholas 
 the curate, whom decorum kept from waltzing, stood mourn- 
 fully, and gazed at Mary Dalton through all the round dances. 
 Things were getting very serious between Mary and Mr. Nicho- 
 las ; though waltzing was such a temptation to her, poor child, 
 and though she had plenty of partners, she sat still half the' 
 evening out of pity for the cui-ate's wistful eyes ; and yet he 
 had been ungrateful all the same, and reproachful on the way 
 home. Katie Dalton, to her own great comfort, was still quite 
 loverless and hampered by nobody's looks. " I would not put 
 up with it," she said to her sister ; ** because a man chooses to 
 make himself disagreeable, can you not be allowed to enjoy your- 
 self t It is not so often we have a dance. I should let him 
 know very plainly, if it were me." 
 
 " Oh, Katie dear," said her sister, " you don't know what 
 you would do if it were you." 
 
 " Well, then, I am very glad it isn't me. I hate parsons ! " 
 cried Katie, This was but a specimen of the commotion made 
 by the ball. .The sudden incursion of quantities of new people 
 into the limited little society in which everybody had appro- 
 priated a companion to his or herself was at the first outset as 
 disagreeable as it was bewildering. The Dura boys and girls 
 had each a sore point somewhere. They had each some 
 reproaches to make, if not audibly, yet in their hearts. Norah 
 and Katie, who were quite fancy-free, were the only ones who 
 had received no wound. At the moment when Mr. I^ivers sat 
 in the d^-awing-room at the Gatehouse, Ned and Clara Burton 
 were walking down the avenue together, discussing the same 
 subject. They were both of them somewhat sulky ; and both 
 with the same person. It was Norah who had aflfronted both 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 263 
 
 the brother and sifter ; and to Clara, at least the affront was 
 doubly bitter, froQi her consciousness of the fact that, but for 
 the kindness, nay, charity, of the Burtons, Norah never cou|d 
 have Qome into such a scene of splendour at all. Clara was her 
 father's child, and this was a thing which she never forgot. 
 
 " I have never b^en so fond of Norah Drummond as the rest 
 of you were," she said. "I think she is a heartless little thing. 
 I am syre wl^at she and her n^other want is to be revenged on 
 us because we are so much better o£ I am sure papa thinks 
 so. It is the shabbiest, the most wretched thing in the world, 
 to hate people because they are better off." 
 
 "Trust to you girls for imputing bad motives," said Ned. He 
 was very sulky, and rather unhappy, and consequently ready 
 to quarrel with his best friend. In his heart he had no such 
 bad opinion of " girls ;" but at this moment he felt that nothing 
 was too disagreeable to be said. 
 
 ''We girls know better what we are about a great deal than 
 you do," said Clara. " We see through things. Now that yo\i 
 begin to have your eyes opened about Norah Drummond, I mAy 
 speak. She is a dreadful little flirt. I have seen itl^efore, 
 though you never did. Why, I have seen her even with Mr. 
 Nicholas ; and she asked Charlie Dalton to dance with her last 
 night — asked him 1 Would any girl do' that who had a fespect 
 for herself, or cared for what people think 1 " 
 
 " Did Charlie tell you 1 " said Ned with deeper wrath and 
 wretchedness still. " She never asked me," he said to himself; 
 though he would have been ready to dance himself half dead in 
 her service had she but taken the trouble to ask. 
 
 *' I heard her," said Clara ; " and then^ as soon as something 
 better came, she forgot all about Charlie. She made Cyril 
 Rivers dance with her, claiming acquaintance, because she met 
 him once when we were all little. Ned, I would never think 
 of that girl more, if I were you. In the first place, you know 
 it could never come to anything. Papa would not allow it — a 
 girl without a penny, without a position even, and all that 
 dreadful story about her father !" 
 
 " The less we say of that dreadful story the better," said 
 Ned. 
 
 " Why ^ We have nothing to do with it — except that papa 
 has been so very kind. I don't think it is wise t9 have poor 
 
 V rl 
 
 I 
 
264 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 relations near," said Clara. ** You are obliged to take some 
 notice of them ; and they always hate you, and try to come in 
 your way. I know mamma was quite wild to see you, the very 
 first thin^ — before you had danced with Lady Florizel, or any 
 one — takmg Norah out." 
 
 ** Mamma is too sensible to think anirthine about it," said 
 Ned. 
 
 *' You may suppose so, but I know to the contrary. Mamma 
 was very anxious you should be attentive to Lady Florizel. 
 We are rich, but we have not any connections to speak of; 
 only rich people, like poor grandpapa. I don't mean to say I 
 am not very fond of grandpapa ; but the exhibition he always 
 makes of himself at those meetings and things, and the way he 
 throws his money away — money that he ought to be saving up 
 for us. Papa says so, Ned ! Why should you look so fierce 
 atmel" 
 
 " Because it is odious to hear you," said Ned. " You have 
 nq right to repeat what papa says — if papa does say such 
 things. I hope my grandfather will do exactly what he likes 
 with his money. I am sure he has the best right." 
 
 " Oh, that is all very well," said Clara. " / never had col- 
 lege d^bts to be paid. It suits you to be so independent, but 
 it is chiefly you that the rest of us are thinking of. You know 
 we have no connections, Ned. Grandpapa and his Dissenters 
 are enough to make one ill. If he had only been philanthropic, 
 one would not have minded so much ; but fancy having, every 
 month or two, Mr. Truston from the chapel to dinner ! So 
 you are bound to make a high marriage when you marry." 
 
 " I wish, Clara, you would talk of things you understand. I 
 marry — is it likely % " said Ned. 
 
 " Very likely — if you ask Lady Florizel. Papa would not 
 ask you to go into the business, or anything. Oh, I know ! 
 He does not say much about his plans, but he cannot hide a 
 great deal from me. But you .spoil it all, Ned," said Clara 
 severely. "You put ipverjrthing wrong, and make your own 
 people your enemies. Instead of seeing how nice and how 
 sweet and how charming the right young lady is, you go and 
 throw yourself away on Norah Drummond — who leaves you in 
 the lurch the moment she sees some one else better worth her 
 pains." 
 
"1 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 265 
 
 ** And who might that be 1 " asked Ned. He tried to laugh, 
 poor fellow, but his laugh and his voice were both unsteady. 
 There was truth in it all; that was what made him so tremu* 
 lous with anger and suppressed passion. 
 
 ** As if you could not see for yourself," said Clara, herself 
 flushing with indignation. " Why, Cynl Rivers, of course. 
 No doubt they had decided he was the best man to pitch upon. 
 Lord Merewether was too grand ; they could not venture upon 
 him — and the marchioness was there to take care of her son. 
 But poor Cyril had nobody to take care of him. I saw Mrs. 
 Drummond look at him in her languid way. She has some 
 magnetism about her, that woman. I have seen her look at 
 people before, and gradually something drew them that they 
 had to go and talk to her. That was how it was last night. 
 Of course, Norah thought no more of you. She had bigger 
 game. She knew very well, if things changed, and Cyril 
 Bivers escaped from her, that, so far as you were concerned, 
 she had only to hold out a finger," 
 
 " You don't seem to make very much of me," said Ned with 
 an angry blush. 
 
 ** No, I should not make much of — any boy," said Clara 
 calmly. ** What could you do t You would fall into the net 
 directly. You are such a simpleton, such a baby, that, of 
 course, Norah would not need even to take any trouble. If 
 she only held up her finger— •*' 
 
 " That is what you mean to do to Charlie, I suppose 9 " said 
 Ned, with concentrated brotherly malice ; and then it was 
 Clara's turn to flush crimson, not so much with shame as with 
 anger. Her complexion was so beautiful, her white so white, 
 and her red so rosy, that the deeper colour which flushed all 
 over her face in a moment seemed to dye the wavy, downy, 
 velvety surface. Her blue eyes flashed out, deepening in colour 
 like the sea under the wind. 
 
 ** What does it matter to you what I mean to do ) " she cried, 
 and turned her back upon him in her wrath, and went back 
 again up the avenue without a word of warning. She was like 
 a Juno, as Mr. Bivers had said. She was the youngect of the 
 whole band ; but yet the great scale on which she was formed, 
 her imperious manner and looks, gave her a certain command 
 among tliem. The others were pretty girls ; but Clara was 
 
\ • 
 
 266 
 
 >f HIS GATES. 
 
 splendid, and a woman. She had to be judged on a different 
 standard. Poor Ned'r heart was verj'^ sore ; he was very angry, 
 and wounded, and unhappy ; and yet he recognized the differ- 
 ence as he stood and looked after his sister. It was natural 
 that she should make up her mind to marry whosoever pleased 
 her — and break a heart as she would caso away a flower. There 
 was nothing out of character in the superior tone she had taken 
 with her elder brother. On the contrary, it was natural to 
 her j and as for Norah, poor little Norah, what would befall 
 her should she come in the way of this queen 1 Ned went up- 
 on his own way down the village ivith a hankering in his heart 
 which all Clara's worldly wisdom and all his wounded pride 
 could not quite subdue. Norah had been unkind to him. She 
 had danced with him but twice all that long evening. She had 
 danced with everybody but him. He had seen her — was it a 
 dozen times') — with Rivers — confound him! And then he 
 wondered whether there was any trul^n in Clara's theory about 
 Rivers. Had Mrs. Drummond herself fallen into that way of 
 match-making which was natural to mothers ? He breathed a 
 little more freely when he presumed that it must be she, and 
 she only, who wwi to blame, not Norah. He strolled on with 
 his hands in his pockets, thinking if, perhaps, he could meet 
 her, or see her at a window, or persuade Katie Dal ton to fetch 
 her ; there were always a hundred chances of an accidental 
 meeting in Dura. But he could not with his own sore heart 
 and wounded temper go to the Gatehouse. 
 ^i Just as Ned reached the lodge going out, ^Ir. Rivers entered 
 the gates coming back. He had a condescending, friendly way 
 of accosting Ned which the young fellow could not bear. 
 
 " Ah, going into the village 1 he said. " I am glad to be 
 able to assure you that nobody has suffered from last night." 
 
 " I didn't suppose they had. I am going to the post," said 
 Ned, surly as a young bear. 
 
 " Don't let me detain you, in that case. The post is too im- 
 portant to wait for anything," Rivers said, stepping a^de. 
 
 Ned looked at him, and would have liked to knock him 
 down. He thought what an effeminate puppy the fellow was, 
 what a curled darling — the sort of thing that girls admire and 
 think very fine, and all men despise. In short, the feelings 
 with which a washed-out young woman contemplates the crea- 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 267 
 
 ture who is recognized as " a gentleman's beauty " were a trifle 
 to those which governed Ned. Such feelings, it would appear, 
 must be natural. Ned despised the man for being handsome, 
 and the women for thinking him so, with a virulence which no 
 neglected maiden ever surpassed. 
 
 "Do you want me, Burton ?" Mr. Rivers said pleasantly, see- 
 ing that the other did not pass on. 
 
 " Oh, good heavens, no I not the least in the world," cried 
 boorish Ned, and went on without another word. 
 
 " Country lout !" the hero said quietly, with a smile to him- 
 self. If he could but have heard the comments upon him which 
 were passing through the mind of Ned ! 
 
 Clara, for her part, went home with her mind full of angry 
 thoughts. She had no personal feeling about Cyril Rivers. If 
 she liked any one it was poor Charlie, who was her slave. But 
 Clara knew with precocious worldly wisdom that that would 
 never come to anything. It might be all very well for the mo- 
 ment. It was pleasant enough to have him hanging about, 
 watching her every look, attentive to her lightest word. But 
 it^never could come to anything. The highest prosperity which 
 the future could bring to Charlie would be advancement in the 
 public office where he was now a junior clerk. And that waa 
 no lot for her to share : she, Mr. Burton's daughter, might, 
 (her father said) pick and choose among the most eligible men 
 in England. Mt*. Burton was in the habit of speaking in this 
 unQ;uarded way. Clara was his favourite in the family, his 
 chv. en companion, his almost confidante. He was proud of 
 her beauty and " style," and fond of thinking that, in mind at 
 least, she resembled himself. It was he who had settled that 
 Cyril Ri" ers should be invited to Dura, and should, as a natural 
 consequence, offer all that remained to the Riverses to Clara. 
 The idea of this alliance pleased his mind, though the Riverses 
 were not so rich as they used to be. "They are still very well 
 off, and the title must be taken into consideration," he had said 
 to his wife. And when Clara returned home she found her 
 parents sittir g together in the library, which was not very 
 common, and discussing their children's prospects, which was 
 less common still. It was October, and thers was a fire over 
 which Mrs. Burton was sitting. She was a chilly woman at all 
 times. She had not blood enough, nor life enough physically. 
 
 (Q 
 
 i 
 
268 
 
 AT HtS GATKSJ. 
 
 to keep her warni) and she had been up late, and was tired and 
 not disposed to be on her best company behaviour in the big 
 drawing-room on the chance that the Marchioness might come 
 down stairs. Mrs. Burton was not quite so placid as she once 
 had been. As her children had grown up there had been com- 
 plications to encounter more trying to the temper than the 
 naughtiness of their childhood ; and it sometimes happened 
 that all the advantage to be gained from a miccessien of fine 
 visitbrs would be neutralised, or partly r*eutralised, by the re- 
 luctance of the mistress of the house to devote her personal at- 
 tention ti them. Or so, at least, Mr. Bitrton thought. His 
 wife, on the other hand, was of opinion that it was best to leave 
 the visitors sometimes to themselves ; and this was what she 
 had done to-day. She had established herself over the library 
 fire with a book after luncheon, leaving the Marchioness and 
 the young ladies to drive or to repose as they pleased. And 
 the piece of self it ill had produced her a reprimand, as forcibly 
 as Mr. Burton dared to deliver, when he came in and found her 
 there. 
 
 " You are throwing away our chances, Clara," he said. * ' You 
 are setting the worst evample to the children. If the Marchfo- 
 ness had not been resting in her own rooms " 
 
 " The Marchioness is very well, Mr. Burton," said his wife. 
 " You may be sure I know what I am doing so far as she is 
 concerned. She does not want me to follo^r her about and 
 make a fuss, as some people do." 
 
 i«< " I have told you," said Mr. Burton, "that I wished the ut- 
 most civility to be shown to people of her rank in my house. 
 ^Vhy, Glara, what can you be thinking of? With all the 
 ambitious ideas you have in your head for Ned. " 
 
 " My ambition is very easy satisfied," she said, " if you 
 will let the boy follow his own inclinations. He has no turn for 
 business ; all that he would do in business would be to lose 
 what you have made." 
 
 " If he makes a good match — if he marries into the Mere- 
 wether family — I should not say another word about business," 
 said Mr. Burton.^ Looking at him in daylight, it was still 
 more easy to perceive the change that had come over him. 
 His clothes, those well-made, light-coloured clothes which had 
 once been a model of everything that clothes should be, h^^ 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 269 
 
 begun to look almost shabby, though they were in themselves 
 as glossy and as spotless as ever. Anxiety was written in the 
 lines about his eyes. " Should the children do well, Clara — 
 should they do as we wish them — I should be tempted myself 
 to get out of the business, when I have an opportunity/' he 
 said. "It is wearing work, especially when one has no- 
 body to help, nobody to sympathize ;" and the man who had 
 been always the incarnation of prosperity, needing no props of 
 external support, puffed out from his bosom a real sigh. 
 
 Mrs. Burton took no notice ; she was perfectly calm and un- 
 moved, either unaware that her husband had displayed any- 
 thing like emotion, or indifferent to it. 
 
 " 1 cannot say that I have ever been fond of these match- 
 making Hcheim^^" »he «aid, " and Ned is only a boy ; but there 
 is one thing t^tit^. must be taken into consideration, whatever 
 you may do in thm matter; that is Norah Drummond. If she 
 thinks differently, you may as well give up the conflict." 
 
 " Norah Drummond ' " said Mr. Burton, grinding his teeth. 
 " By Jove ! they talk aJ>out a man's pleasant sins being against 
 him ; but there is nothing so bad in that way as his unpleasant 
 virtues, I can tell you. If all tfee annoyance I have had through 
 these two women could be reckoned up " 
 
 " T do not know what annoyance you may hp'»\^ had your- 
 self," said Mrs. Burton in her cold judicial way. I hr.ve seen 
 nothing to complain of. But now I confess lo hegma to be un- 
 pleasant. She has more influence over Ned th?»n any of us. 
 He danced with her last night before any «nc else. He ifi 
 always there, or meeting her at other placets, I have observed 
 it tor some time. But you have done nothing tc) stop it, Mr. 
 Burton. Sometimes I have thought you approved, from the 
 way you have allowed things to go on." 
 
 " I approve !" he cried, with something like horror. 
 
 " How was I to know? I do not say it is of very mucli im- 
 portance. Ned, of course, will follow his own taste, not ou^a." 
 
 "But, by Jove, he shan't !" cried Mr. Burton. "By Jove, he 
 shall take himself out of this, and make his own way, if 1 hear 
 any more nonsense. What ! after all I have done to set them 
 up in the world — after all I have gone through!" 
 > He was affected, whatever was the cause. There was some 
 thing like agitation about him. He was changed from the con- 
 
 I 
 
270 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 fident man of formor times, iiis wife looked at him in surprise, 
 and came to this conclusion quite suddenly. She had not no- 
 ticed it when he was among other people, playing his part of 
 host with an offensive hospitality which often annoyed her, 
 and which the Marchioness, for example, scarcely hesitated to 
 show her contempt of. But now, when there was no one pres- 
 ent, when he was free to look as he pleased, Mrs. Burton found 
 out all at once that her husband was changed. Was it merely 
 that he was older, tired with last night's dissipation, not so 
 able to defy the late hours, and supper and champagne, as he 
 had once done 'i She was not a woman to rest in so superficial 
 a view of affairs ; but for the moment these were the questions 
 she asked herself, as she looked at him with calm yet undenia- 
 ble surprise. 
 
 " You seem to be excited, Mr. Burton," said she. \ 
 
 " Excited !" he cried ; " and good reason, too ; with you sit- 
 ting there as cold as a little fish, never thinking of the interests 
 of your family, talking of Ned thwarting me as if it was 
 nothing! If I were excited it would be little wonder, I 
 think.'^ 
 
 " I have no desire that Ned should thwart you," she said; 
 " on the contrary, it is my own wish. He will never make a 
 good man of business. A marriage with one of the Mereweth- 
 ers, or a girl in that position, with your money, Mr Burton, 
 would be the best thing for him. He might get into Parli- 
 ment, and do all that I once hoped for you; but what I hoped 
 is neither here nor there." 
 
 Mrs. Burton was only human, though she was so philosophi- 
 cal ; and this was a stroke in her own defence. 
 
 " See that Ned does it, then," he said. " Perhaps it was 
 what I hoped too ; but business has swallowed me up, instead 
 of leaving me more free. You ought to make it your duty to 
 see thai Ned does as we both wish. What is there to stand in 
 the way?" 
 
 "Not much," said Mrs. Burton, shrugging her shoulders. 
 "Norah Drummond — not a very large person— thai is all." 
 
 " Confound Norah Drummond ! A man is always a fool 
 when he thinks of other people. I am finding that out too late. 
 But you may compose yourself about Ned," added the father 
 with irony. '^ That little thing has other fish to fry. She is 
 
mlders. 
 all." 
 fool 
 00 late, 
 father 
 Slieis 
 
 AT FT^* OATES. 
 
 271 
 
 n 
 
 Mr. Burton 1 " asked his 
 
 am tired of working and 
 a son-in-law and daugh- 
 above all, a son-in-law. 
 
 poking herself into Clara tjr, confound her! That senti 
 mental ass, Rivers, who is i atit to touch my child's hand— 
 
 " I heard of that too," said Mrs. Burton, in a low voice. 
 
 " I should think you did hear of it ; but you never interfered, 
 so far as T could see. He would have danced with her all 
 night, if I had not taken it into my own hands. The ass ! a 
 poor little chit like that, when he might have had Clary ! But^ 
 however, understand me, Clara, this is a woman's business. I 
 want these children settled and put out in life. Ned may be 
 rather young, but many a young fellow in his position is mar- 
 ried at one-and twenty. And by Jove, I can't go on bearing 
 this infernal strain ! I should give it up if it was not for 
 them. 
 
 " Is there anything going wrong 
 wife. 
 
 " What should be going wrong? I 
 never getting any sympathy. I want 
 ter-in-law who will do us credit — but. 
 And I don't see any obstacle in the way which you cannot over- 
 come, if you choose." 
 
 "I wonder." said Mrs. Burton, " can I overcome Norah 
 Drummond? — and her mother ? They are the obstacles in the 
 way." 
 
 "Thanks to my confounded good-heartedness," said her hus- 
 band. 
 
 And it was at Lliis moment Clara came in and joined their 
 deliberations. Little more, however was said, and she was 
 sent away to seek out Lady Florizel, and do her duty to the 
 young visitors as the daughter of the house should. Mr. Bur- 
 ton went off himself to see if the Marchioness had made herself 
 visible, and do his best to overwhelm her with fussy hospital- 
 ity. But Mrs. Burton sat still at the library fire and warmed 
 her coM little feet, and set her mind to work out the problem. 
 It was like a game of chess, with two skilfully-arrayed, scien- 
 tific lines of attack all brought to nothing by a cunning little 
 knight, of double movement-power, in the centre of the board. 
 Either of the schemes on which her husband had set his heart, 
 or both — and one of them was deai to herself also if she would 
 have acknowledged it — might be brought to a satisfactory is- 
 gue^ if this little Norah, this penniless child, this poor Uttle 
 
 mM- 
 
272 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 waif who had grown up at their gates, could be put out of the 
 way. Was the part of Nemesis, so unlike her childish appear- 
 ance and character, reserved for Norah 1 or was the mother us- 
 ing her child as the instrument of a deep, and patient, and long- 
 prepared vengeance 1 It was the latter view of the question 
 which was most congenial to Mrs. Burton's mind ; but whether 
 it was thnt or fate, the greatest combinations which the fainily 
 at the great house had yet ventured on, the things most con- 
 cerning their comfort and happiness, were suddenly stopped 
 short by thi? little figure. It was Norah Drummond, only No- 
 rah, who was the lion in the way. 
 
AT niS GATES. 
 
 273 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 ED BURTON went to the post, as he had said. He 
 had to pass the Gatehouse on his way ; and his busi- 
 ness was not of so important a description that he 
 should make any haste about it or tire himself with walking. 
 He loitered along, looking into the windows, sOre at heart and 
 wistful. There was no one, to be sure at Mrs. Dnimmond's 
 end of the Gatehouse. He tried to get a glimpse at the inte- 
 rior through the Venetian blinds which veiled the lower panes ; 
 but they were turned the wrong way, and he could not see any- 
 thing. He had made up his mind he should be sure to see 
 Norah, for no particular reason except that he wanted so much 
 to see her. But no Norah was visible. At the other end of 
 the house, however, Stephen Haldane's window was open as us- 
 ual, and he himself sat within, looking almost eagerly for that 
 interview with the outside world which his open window per- 
 mitted. The summer was over, with all its delights, and soon 
 the window would have to be closed, and Stephen's chair re- 
 moved to winter quarters. What a deprivation this was to 
 him no one knew; — but just at the fall of the year, when the 
 transparent lime-leaves had turned into yellow silk instead of 
 green, and littered the flags under th« window, Stephen looked 
 out more eagerly for some one to talk to him. It was his 
 fareAvell, in a measure, to life. And Ned was but too glad to 
 stop and lean against the outer gill, always keeping an eye up- 
 on the door, and Mrs Drunimoud'H win<lowH. lie was not 
 handsome. He had a large noso -too large for the rest of his 
 face — which his aunt Mrs. Everest, sometimes comforted him 
 by suggesting was a «igu of oharacter and energy, but which 
 Ned havl been used to hear all his friends laugh ai-. The Yi>ung 
 community at Dura had brought themselves up xn all the 
 frankness of family relations, and were wont to laugh freely at 
 Ned's nose, as they laughed at Katie's large teeth, and as, 
 while they were children, they had laughed at Clara's red hair 
 On that last particular they were undecided now, and gloried 
 
 R 
 
 M 
 
274 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 were still amusing to everybody concerned, 
 had not any feature which was so good as 
 imperfection. He had "nice," eyes, a tolerable 
 
 in it as fashion required ; but Katie's teeth and Ned's nose 
 
 Poor boy ! he 
 to redeem this 
 mouth, and 
 was well grown and strong ; but nobody could say he was 
 handsome. And then, though he was a gentleman in thought 
 and heart, he was a gentleman of twenty whose real refine- 
 ment had not yet had time to work out to the surface, and sof- 
 ten away the early asperities. This was why he looked boor- 
 ish and loutish in the presence of Cyril Rivers, who had not 
 only the easy confidence which springs from good looks, but 
 that inevitable surface suavity which can only be attained by 
 ' intercourse with the world. 
 
 " You are not shooting to day," said Stephen, from within. 
 
 " No; we were all late this morning. I don't know why we 
 should be such muflfs," said Ned. " Merewether had to go ofif 
 to town to get his leave extended ; and Kivers is too fine a 
 gentleman, I suppose, to take much trouble. That's not fair, 
 though. I did not mean it. He is a very good shot." 
 
 " Who is he ? " said Stephen. I have been hearing a great 
 deal about him this morning," 
 
 " Oh, have you 1" Ned looked yellow as the limeleaves 
 which came tumbling about his head, and his nose was all that 
 was visible under the hat which somehow, in his agitation, he 
 had pulled over his brows. " He is a man about town, I suppose. 
 He is a member for somewhere or other — his father's borough. 
 He is an aesthetic sort of politician, diplomatist, whatever you 
 like to call it : a man who plays at setting all the world right." 
 
 " But who does not please Ned Burton, I am afraid," said 
 Stephen, with a smile. " I hear you all enjoyed yourselves 
 
 very much last night." 
 
 "Did we?" said Ned. 
 don't think of much else, 
 the absurdity of things. 
 
 "The girls did. I suppose they 
 But as one grows older, one sees 
 To think of a man, a rational being, 
 putting his brains in his pocket, and giving himself up to the 
 cultivation of his legs ! Oh, yes ; we all did our fetish worship, 
 and adored the great god Society, and longed to offer up a few 
 human sacrifices ; though there are enough, I suppose, without 
 any exertion of ours," said Ned, leaning both his arms on the 
 window. He heaved such a sigh, that the leaves fluttered and 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 275 
 
 > 
 
 whirled before the mighty breath. And Stephen Haldane sup- 
 pressed a lau«i;h, though he was not very gay. It was hardly 
 possible to help being amused by this juvenile despair. And 
 yet, poor Stephen going back into those old memories, which 
 looked a thousand years off, could not but recollect, with a 
 smile and a sigh, similar hours and moments, in which he too 
 had sounded the very depths of tragedy and endured all the 
 tortures of despair. 
 
 " My poor boy," he said, with a tone which was half comic, 
 half pathetic, "I feel for you Did yon ever hear of ces 
 beaux jours quandfetais si malheureux ? " 
 Ned looked up in a blaze of sudden resentment. 
 " I did not think I had said anything funny — though it is 
 always pleasant to have amused you, Mr Haldane," he said, 
 with desperate politeness. " I am going to the post-office. I 
 rather think I shall have to be post-man and carry out the bag 
 to-day. Good morning. I ought not to have stood so long 
 keeping you from yonr book." 
 
 5ut Stephen's laugh was very low and tender when the 
 young fellow went on, walking at the rate of six miles an 
 hour. Poor Ned! There was not so much to laugh at, for 
 he had serious difficulties in his way, difficulties of which he 
 had tried to remind himself as he turned up the village street, 
 by way of making himself a little more unhappy. But the at- 
 tempt did not succeed. The fact was that his real troubles 
 counted for nothing in the mixture of misery and anger which 
 filled his youthful bosom. The shadow which filled the air with 
 blackness, and made life intolerable, was — Norah. She had 
 slighted him, wounded him, preferred some one else. In pres- 
 ence of this terrible sorrow, all the doubts about his future ca- 
 reer, the serious question about the business, the discussions of 
 which he had been the subject, faded into insignificance. It 
 seemed to Ned even that he would gladly consent to go into 
 the business at half an hour's notice if only that half hour 
 would procure him the chance of making himself more mise- 
 rable still by an interview with Norah. What a f joI he was, 
 poor boy ! how wretched he was ! and what poor creatures those 
 people are who are never wretched and never fools ! 
 
 Ned Burton lounged about into half the shops in the village 
 in his unhappiness. He bought an ugly little mongrel from 
 
276 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 a lying porter at the station, who swore to its purity of 
 blood. Ned, in an ordinary way knew a great deal more ab .jiib 
 this subject than the porter did, but it gained him a little time 
 and Norah might, for anything he knew, become visible in the 
 meantime. He went into Wigginton's and bought a rose-colour- 
 ed ribbon for his straw hat. It was quite unsuitable: but 
 Norah wore rose-coloured ribbons, and it was a forlorn profess- 
 ion of allegiance, though nobody would ever know it. He 
 went to the confecttoner's, and bought a bag of cakes, with 
 which he fed half a dozen gaping children outside. In short 
 he visited as many tradespeople as Mother Hubbard did. But 
 it was all in vain. No Norah passed by ; no one like her went 
 into any of the shops. When he passed the Gatehouse once 
 more the windows were all vacant still. Tlien Ned took jp, 
 desperate resolution, and went and paid a visit to the Rectory. 
 He sat with Mrs. Dalton in the drawing-room, and then he 
 strolled round the garden with the girls. When things had 
 come to this pass. Providence befriended him, in the shape of 
 Mr. Nicholas, to take up Mary's attention. As soon as he 
 was alone with her sister, Ned seized the opportunity. 
 
 " Katie," he said, breatbless, " you might do me such a fa- 
 vour." 
 
 " Might I ? " said friendly Katie j " then of course I will, 
 Ned." 
 
 " You are always the nicest and the kindest ! Katie, I have 
 something to say to Norah Drummond ; something I — have to 
 tell her — by herself. I can't go into the house, for it is some- 
 thing — a kind of a secret." 
 
 " I'll run and fetch her. I know what you have got to say to 
 her," said Katie, laughing. " Oh, how funny you are ! Why 
 didn't you say it right out, you silly boy 1 " 
 
 " It is not what you mean at all," said Ned, with great gravity. 
 
 But Katie laughed, aud ran across the road. 
 
 And this was how the interview- came about. Norah came 
 over to the Kectory in all innocence, fearing nothing. She 
 said, " Oh, Ned is here too ! " as if nothing had happened. In- 
 deed, she was not aware that anything had happened — only 
 that a game at croquet would be the best way of spending the 
 listless afternoon after the dissipation of the previous night. 
 They sat down on a bench behind that clump of laurels which 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 277 
 
 hid a portion of the lawn from the windows of the Rectory. 
 Mary and Mr. Nicholas were walking up and down, round 
 and round. The red geraniums were still bright in the boi* 
 ders, with all manner of asters, and salvias, like scarlet velvet. 
 The autumn leaves were dropping singly, now one, now another, 
 without any sound ; the air was very still and soft, the sun 
 shining through a pleasant haze. A sheaf of great, spendid, 
 but dusty gladiolus, stood up against the danc green laurel. 
 They were like Clara in her full and brilliant beauty — not like 
 little Norah in her grey frock, sitting quit still and happy, 
 thinking of nothing, on the warm bench in t sunshine, with 
 her hands folded in her lap, waiting for K lo come back 
 with the croquet mallets, and altogether unconscious of the 
 dark looks Ned was casting upon her from under his hard brows. 
 
 " I suppose Katie will come when she is ready," he said, in 
 reply to some question. " She is not always at your word and 
 beck, like me." 
 
 " Are you at my word and beck 1 " she said, looking round up- 
 on him with some surprise. " How funny you look, Ned ! Is 
 anything the matter 1 Are you — going away 1 " 
 
 *' I often think I had best go away," said Ned, in Byronic 
 melancholy. " That would be better than staying here and hav- 
 ing every desire of my heart trampled on . It seems hard to leave 
 you ; and I am such a fool — I always stay on, thinking anything 
 is better than banishment. But after being crushed tu the earth, 
 and having all my wishes disregarded, and all my feelings tram- 
 pled on " 
 
 " Oh, Ned ! what can you mean t Who has done it 1 Is it 
 that dreadful business again ) " 
 
 " Business ! " said Ned, with what he would have described 
 as the hollow laugh of despair. " That seemed bad enough 
 when I had nothing worse to bear. But now I would embrace 
 business ; I would clasp it in my arms. Business ! No ! That 
 aifiected only my inclinations ; but this goes to my heart." 
 
 " Ned," said Norah, growing pale, " you must be over-tired. 
 That is it. You shoot all day — and then the ball last night. 
 Poor boy ! you are taking fancies in your head. You don't 
 know what you are saying. You have been over-tired," 
 
 Upon which Ned shook his head, and laughed again, this 
 time " wildly." He was very miserable, poor fellow, and yet 
 

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 23 WEST MAIN STREET 
 
 WEBSTER, N.Y. 14S80 
 
 (716) 872-4503 
 

 ;\ 
 
 
 O^ 
 
^?8 
 
 AT HIS OATBS. 
 
 it Jciannot be said that he was quite indifferent to th^ effect he 
 Produced. It gave him a certain satisfaction in tho midst of 
 his despair. 
 
 " If you were to ask yourself, Norah, what is the matter, 
 instead of suggesting so far less than the reality-^so much 
 " he began. ' ■\uni4n^ 
 
 Then Norah took courage. 
 
 ** Is that all ! " she said. ** Oh, what a fright you gave me ! 
 Is it only something I have done without Imowing it ? You 
 ridiculous,^ silly boy ! Why can't you tell me plainly what it 
 is, without all this nonsense 1 You know it is nonsense," Norah 
 continued, warming as she went on. " What can I have done ) 
 Besides, however disagreeable I might have been, what right 
 have you to mind 1 Nobody else minds. I am not a slave, 
 n^ver to be allowed to make myself unpleasant. There ! I 
 will be disagreeable if I like^ I am not to be always bound 
 to do what is pleasant to you." 
 
 " If you mean to take me up in this spirit, Norah " 
 
 " Yes, I mean to take you up in this spirit. You have no 
 right to feel everything like a ridicule us sensitive plant Why 
 should you ? If I were a sensitive plant I might hav< some 
 cause. I am little, I am friendless, I am very poor ; I have 
 nothing in the world but mamma. But for you to set up to 
 have feelings, Ned ! that can go where you like, and do what 
 you like, and have heaps of money, and everybody bowing 
 down before you ! It is because you have nothing reaJty to vex 
 you, that you are obliged to invent things. Oh, you wicked, 
 ungrateful boy, to pretend that you are unhappy ! Look at 
 Mr. Stephen, and look at mamma ! " 
 
 " But, Norah," said N^d hurriedly ; " Norah, dear I listen to 
 me only one moment." 
 
 " You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she said. " I won't 
 listen to you. I have plenty of things to bother me, and you 
 have nothing. You never had to think whether you could 
 spend this or that — whether you could have a new coat, or go 
 a journey, or anything ; and you go and make troubles ^because 
 vou have not got any." Here she made a pause, turning her 
 head away, so that poor Ned was more miserable than ever. 
 And then all at once she turned and looked up ktndly at him. 
 " What was it I did, Ned 1 " 
 
w 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 279 
 
 This sudden reyolution overwhelmed him altogether. He 
 felt the water leap to his eyes. He was so young. And then 
 he laughed unsteaaily. 
 
 " What a girl you are, Norah ! " he said. 
 
 " Was I cross last night ) What did I do f I didn't mean 
 it, I am sure. I came over quite innocently, never thinking 
 Katie was bringing me to be scolded. It wa^ not friendly oi 
 Katie. She ought to have told me. But !Ned, what wasiti 
 Toll me what I did." 
 
 " Noi-ah, things must not go on like this. I cannot do it. 
 It may be as much as my life is worth," said the youth. ** Look 
 at those two over there ; they may quarrel sometimes " 
 
 " They quarrel every day of their lives," said Norah, breath- 
 less, in a parenthesis. 
 
 " ;6ut they know that they belong to each other," said Ned ; 
 " they know that right or wrong nobody will part them. But, 
 Norah, think how different I am. You may not mind, but it 
 kills me. Once you said you loved me — a little." 
 
 " I love — everybody ; we, all of us, love each other," said 
 Norah, in a subdued voice. 
 
 " But that is not what I want. I love you very differently 
 from that, Norah j you know I do. I want you to belong to 
 me as Mary belongs to Nicholas. Next year I will bd of age, 
 and something must be settled for me, Norah. How do you 
 think I can face all this talking and all this advising if I don't 
 know what you are going to do ) Give me your hand, Norah ; 
 give it me into mine ; it is not the first time. Now, am I to 
 keep it always 1 Tell me yes or no." 
 
 « Oh ! you hurt me— a Httle, Ned ! " 
 
 " I cannot help it," he said ; not so much, not half so much, 
 as you hurt me. Oh, Norah, put yourself in my place ! Think, 
 only think, how I can bear to see you talking to other people, 
 smiling at them, looking up as you look at me. Is it possible, 
 Norah 1 And perhaps I may have to go away to fight with the 
 world, and make my own career. And you would send me 
 all in the dark without knowing 1 Oh, Norah, it would be 
 cruel ; it would not be like you." 
 
 " Please, j>lea(ie, Ned ! Mary and Mr. Nicholas are coming. 
 Let go my hand." 
 
 *' Not until you give me some sort of answer," said Ned, 
 
280 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 " I have loved you since ever I can remember — since I was a 
 boy, iHghtened to speak to you. You have always laughed and 
 gibed; but I never minded. I love you more than all the world, 
 Norah ! 1 can't help thinking it would be so easy for you to love 
 me, if you would only try. You have known me since we 
 were children. You have always had me to order about, to 
 do whatever you liked with." 
 
 "Wait till they have passed," said Norah, in a whisper, 
 drawing her hand out of his. 
 
 And then the elder pair, who were engaged, and had a right 
 to walk about together, and hold long private conferences, and 
 quarrel and make friends, passed slowly, suspending their talk 
 also out of regard for the others. 
 
 " Are you tired waiting for Katie 1 " Mary said. " She is 
 so tiresome ; always finding something unexpected to do." • 
 
 " Oh, I am talking to Ned. • We are in no hurry," Norah re-' 
 plied. 
 
 And then those full-grown lovers, the pair who had devel- 
 oped into actuality, whom Ned envied, and who had been having 
 a very sharp little quarrel, passed on. 
 
 Ned was very much in earnest, poor fellow. His face was 
 quite wprn and full of lines. There was a strain and tremulous 
 tension abou# him which showed how high his excitement was. 
 
 '*It isn't as if this was new to you, Norah," he cried piteously. 
 " You have known it ever so long. And I cannot help thinking 
 you might love me so easily, if you would, Norah, you are so 
 used to me — if you only would !" 
 
 Norah was very sympathetic, and his emotion moved her 
 much. She cast down her eyes ; she could not bear to look at 
 him, and she nearly cried. 
 
 " Oh, Ned," she said, " I do love you. I am very fond of 
 you ; but how can I tell if it is in that way 1 How can you 
 tell 'i We are just like brother and sister. We have never 
 known anybody else all our lives." 
 
 " I have," said Ned, " I have known hundreds. And there 
 is no girl in all the world but one, and that is you. Oh, Norah, 
 that is you !" 
 
 • ** But I have never, seen any one," said Norah again. She 
 spoke so very softly that he could scarcely hear. " I have 
 never seen any one," she repeated, heavipg a gentle sigh — a 
 
 i i. 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 281 
 
 >:H.i 1 
 
 sigh which was half regret for Ned, and half for herself. *' Bear 
 Ned, I do love you. But how could I tell until I saw " 
 
 " Ah !" he cried, and let her hand drop in his youthful im 
 patience and mortification. " If that is all your answer, Norah, 
 the hest thing for me is to rush away. Why should I stay hero 
 any longer ) There will he nothing to live for, nothing tti hope 
 for !" 
 
 ** Oh, don't talk nonsense, Ned !" 
 
 "It is not nonsense," said Ned,rising up. "Norah, if you'hear 
 I am gone you will Imow why it is. If you hear of anythins 
 happening to me, I hope you will he sorry. Oh, Norah, N orah, 
 he cried, the tears forcing themselves to his eyes, " is it all to 
 endUkethisr' 
 
 He was so young. His despair was real, though it might be 
 too tragical in its outward form. He was capable of going 
 away, as he said, and making himself hugely uncomfortable, 
 and for a time intensely unhappy ; end yet perhaps being all 
 the better for it in the end. But Norah, who was not much 
 wiser than himself, was driven to her wits' end by this adjura- 
 tion, and did not know what to say. 
 
 *^ Ned, don't be so sorry," she said, taking his hand in her 
 turn. " Oh, dear Ned, I do love you ; but your people would 
 be very angry, and we are so young. We must not think of 
 such things yet. Oh, I am sure I did not mean to make you 
 unhappy. Don't cry. I could not bear to see you crying, 
 Ned !" 
 
 " I am not crying," he said roughly. He had to be rough, 
 he had been so near it. And just at this moment Katie came 
 smiling up with the mallets over her shoulders. He could not 
 come down from that elevation of feeling into this. ** I am 
 afraid I must go now," he said, almost turning his back upon 
 them. *' I am going to the — to the station now. Merewether 
 is coming by this train." 
 
 " Oh, Ned, how unkind of you, when everything is ready for 
 a game !" cried Katie. But Norah said nothing as he strode 
 away, giving a nod at them over his shoulder. He had not been 
 boorish while he was pleading his own cause ; but he had not 
 the heart to be civil when it was over. Caesars of twenty do 
 not pull their cloaks gracefully about them when they are 
 going to die. 
 
282 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 : Then Norah suddenly turned upon her companion, and 
 metaphorically gagged and bound her. 
 
 " How tiresome it was of you to be so long !" she cried. 
 ** Here we have been waiting and waiting, till Ned's time was 
 up ; and so is mine. I must go back to mamma." 
 
 " Why, I have not been gone ten minutes !" cried indignant 
 Katie. 
 
 But Norah, too, waved her hand, and moved majestically 
 away. She could scarcely keep from crying. Her heart was 
 full, something was quivering in her throat. It was not so much 
 her own emotion as the reflection of his. Poor Ned ! how hard 
 it was that he should.be so miserable. She wanted to get safely 
 to her own room, that she might think it over ! She walked 
 across the road as if she had been in a dream. She did not 
 hear Mr. Stephen call to her in her abstraction. She went in 
 enveloped, as it were, in a cloud of sad and curious fancies, \ 
 woiidering — Was it all over 1 Would he never say any more 
 About it ) Would he go away, and never be heard of more 1 
 Would it — and the very thought of this thrilled through Norah's 
 veins, and chilled her heart — would it do him harm ) Would 
 he die ) 
 
 I ! 
 
 it > 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 28a 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 RS. BURTON had taken a very serious piece of work 
 in hand. No wonder that she lingered over the fire in 
 the hbrary, or in her drawing-room, or wherever she 
 could find a fire, in those early chills of October, to warm her 
 little cold toes, and to make up her plan of warfare. She was 
 a chilly little woman, as I have said. She had not much except 
 a mind to keep her warm, and mind is not a thing which pre- 
 serves the caloric thoroughly unless it is comforted by the close 
 vicinity of other organ(>. Mrs. Burton had no body to speak of ; 
 and, so far as has been seen, not very much heart. Her mind 
 had to fulfil all the functions usually performed by these other 
 properties, and to keep her warm besides ; so that it was not 
 wonderful if she sat over the fire. 
 
 It was not to be expected, however, that the Machioness would 
 always be so obliging as to remain in her room till three o'clock; 
 and consequently Mrs. Burton's thinking had to be done at odd 
 moments when the cares of the household could be lawfully 
 laid aside. She was rather in bondage to her distinguished 
 guest ; and as she was a little republican, a natural democrat at 
 hearty the bondage was hard to her. She was a great deal 
 cleverer than the Marchioness of Upshire ; her mind went at 
 railroad speed, while that great lady jogged along at the gen- 
 tlest pace. Where the heart is predominant, or even a good 
 honest, placid body, there is tolerance for stupidity ; but poor 
 intellect is always intolerant. Mrs. Burton chafed at her noble 
 companion, and suffered tortures inwardly ; but she was very 
 civil, so far as outward appearance went, and did her duty as 
 hostess in a way which left nothing to be desired. 
 
 But it took all her powers to master the problem before her. 
 She had an adversary to overcome ; an adversary whom she did 
 not despise, but whom everybody at the first glance would have 
 thought too slight a creature to merit so much as a thought. Mrs. 
 Burton knew better. She looked at Norah Drummond not in her 
 simple and evident shape as a little girl of eighteen, the daugh- 
 
284 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 ter of a poor mother, who lived upon a hundred pounds a year. 
 This was what Norah was ; and yet she was a great deal more. 
 She was the commander of a little compact army, of which the 
 two c)uef warriors, love and nature, were not much known to 
 Mrs. Burton ; but which was reinforced by youth, and supreme 
 perverseness and selfwill, powers with which she was perfectly 
 acquainted. Ned's love his mother might ^)erhap8 have laughed 
 at ; but Ned's obstinacy, his determination to have his own way 
 were opponents at which she could not laugh ; and they were 
 arrayed again, t her. So was the capricious fancy, and perverse 
 individuality of Cyril Rivers, who was a man accustomed to be 
 courted, and not over-likely to fall into an arrangement made 
 for him by his family. Mrs. Burton pondered much upon all 
 these things. She found out that her guest was seen at the 
 Gatehouse almost every day, and she saw from her son's aspect 
 that he too knew it, &nd was begining to hate his rival. Then 
 there arose a little conflict in her mind as to which of her two 
 children she should make herself the champion of. A mother, 
 it may be thought, would incline most to the daughter's side ; 
 but Mrs. Burton was not an emotional mother. She was not 
 scheming how she could save her children pain. The idea of 
 sufiering on their part did not much affect her — ^at least, suffer- 
 ing of a sentimental kind. She formed her plan at last with a 
 cold-blooded regard . to their advantage, founded on the most 
 careful consideration. There was no particular feeling in it one 
 wi.y or another. She had no desire to injure Norah, or even 
 Noiuli's mother, more than was inevitable. She had not even 
 any harsh or revengeful feelings towards them. To confound 
 their projects was necessary to the success of her own — that 
 v/as all ; but towards themselves she meant no harm. With an 
 c({uul impartiality she decided that her operations should be on 
 Ned's side. If she could be said to have a favourite, it was Ned. 
 Clara was self-seeking and self-willed to a degree which was 
 disagreeable to Mrs. Burton. Such strenuous sentiments were 
 vulgai- and coarse to the more intellectually constituted nature. 
 And Clara had so much flesh and blood, while her mother had 
 so little, and this, too, weakened the sympathy between them. 
 The mother, who was all mind, could not help having a certain 
 involuntary unexpressed contempt for the daughter whose over- 
 whelming physique cairied her perpetually into a different world. 
 
AT HIS 0ATE3. 
 
 285 
 
 But what was vulgar in Clara was allowable in Ned ; and then 
 Ned had talent in his way, and had taken his degree already, and 
 somewhat distinguished himself, though he was careful, as he 
 himself said, to " put his brains in his pocket," and refrain from 
 all exhibition of them when he got homo. Then, it would not 
 have flattered Mrs. Burton'.'^ vanity at all to see her daughter the 
 Hon. Mrs., or even Lady Rivers ; but it was a real object with 
 her to see her son in Parliament. She had tried hard to thrust 
 her husband into a seat, with a little swell of impatience and 
 ardour in her heart, to have thus an opportunity of exercising 
 her own powers in the direction of the State. It was a thing 
 she could have done, and she would have given half her life to 
 have it in her power. But this had turned out an impossible 
 enterprise, and now all her wishes were set upon Ned. With 
 the Merewethers' influence, in addition to their own, Ned, 
 almost as soon as he had come of age, might be a legislator. 
 With the talents he had derived from her, and which she would 
 stimulate and inspire, he might be of service to his country. It 
 was not an ungenerous aspiration ; it was rather, on the con- 
 trary, as noble a wish as mere intellect could form. And to 
 attain this it was necessary that Ned should gain his father^s 
 favour by bringing a splendid connection to the house of Dura ; 
 and that, on the other hand, he should obtain that influence 
 which was his shortest way to the coveted position. What 
 did it matter if a temporary heart-break were the price he had 
 to pay, or even a temporary humiliation in the shape of giving 
 up his own will 1 His mother deci(^^d for him that such a price 
 was a very small matter to pay. kjhia made up her mind ac- 
 cordingly that he should pay it at once, and in its most unques- 
 tionable form. That Clara should be humbled too, and 
 exposed to tortures .of wounded pride and mortification, was a 
 pity ; but there was no other way. 
 
 This, then, was Mrs. Burton's plan : to encourage young 
 Rivers, the suitor whom her husband had chosen for her daugh- 
 ter, to devote himself to Norah ; to throw him continually in 
 the girl's way ; to make him display his admiration, and if 
 possible his devotion to her ; to delude Norah into satisfaction, 
 even response, to the assiduities of her new suitor; and by 
 these meaniB to disgust and detach Ned from the object of his 
 youthful aflfection. It was a bold scheme, and at the same 
 
286 
 
 AT HI8 OATEa 
 
 \ 
 
 time it promised to be an easy one. As to what might follow in 
 respect to Clara, the risk would have to be run ; but it did not 
 seem a very great risk. In the first place, Clara's " feelings " 
 (a word at which her mother smiled) were not engaged ; and 
 • in the second place, Cyril Rivers, though he might be foolish 
 enough, was not such a fool as to throw his handsome self away 
 upon a penniless girl without connections or anything to re- 
 commend her. Tnere was very little fear that it would ever 
 oome to that. He might fall in love with Norah, might flatter 
 and woo, and oven break (Mrs. Burton smiled again, the risk 
 seemed so infinitesimal) the girl's heart ; but he was not likely, 
 as a man of the world, to commit himself. And, if after her 
 end was served it might be thought expedient still that he 
 should marry Clara, why a flirtation of this kind could make 
 very little difference ; it might put a stop to Mrs. Burton's 
 ideas at the moment, but it need not affect them in the future. 
 . She made this plan, with her toes warming at the library fire, 
 and she did not confide it to any one. Such schemes sound a 
 ^eat deal worse when they are put into words than they feel 
 m the recesses of the bosom that gave them birth. She felt 
 very well satisfied when she had thus settled what to do. It 
 seemed the minimum of pain for the maximum of advantage ; 
 and then it was a kind of pain which Mrs. Burton could not 
 but contemplate with a certain mockery, and which she could 
 but faintly realize. 
 
 At luncheon that day it turned out, as she supposed, that 
 Mr. Rivers was not one of the shooting party. He had been 
 writing letters, he said ; he was going to call at the Rectory in 
 the afternoon to see Mr. Dalton. In short, he had an appoint- 
 ment. Mr. Dalton was a member of the Anthropological So- 
 ciety to which he also belonged. 
 
 ** I wonder if I might ask you to do something for me," said 
 Mrs. Burton. " It is just to leave a note at the Gatehouse. 
 You know the Gatehouse 1 Mrs. Drummond's, just opposite 
 tho Rectory." 
 
 "Certainly. I know Mrs. Drummond," said Rivers. He 
 aoswered very promptly, feeling that there was a covert Attack 
 intended, and that this was meant to remind him of the allegi- 
 ance he owed elsewhere. His reply had thus quite an unneces- 
 sary degree of promptitude and explanatorinessi "I have 
 
AT HIS OJLTBS. 
 
 887 
 
 known her for many years. In fact, I called there yesterday." 
 He felt it was Axpedient for his own indepoiidence to assert his 
 freedom of action at once. 
 
 " Then you won't mind leaving my note," said Mrs. Burton. 
 " We are getting up a picnic for Wednesday, you know ; and 
 I should like Norah to be with us. She has rather a dull life 
 at home, poor child." 
 
 " That is the pretty girl you were dancing with, Mr. Rivers," 
 said Lady Florizel, *' with dark hair and hundreds of little 
 flounces. I should have said she was too little for so many 
 flounces, if she had consulted me." 
 
 " That is the mistake girls always make," said the March* 
 ioness, " especially girls who are not in society. They foUoiw 
 the fashion without ever thinking whether it suits them or 
 not. 
 
 " But, under correction, I think it did suit her," said Mrl 
 Rivers. ** Do not let us call them flounces — call them cloudy, 
 or lines of soft white mist I am not sufficiently learned ii^ 
 chiffons to speak." 
 
 " Oh, but you are delightful on chiffons /" said Lady FkrizeL 
 " Men always are when they know just a little. Sometimes, 
 you know, one can actually derive an idea from you ; and then 
 you make the most delicious mistakes. Clara, let us make him 
 talk chiffons; it is the greatest fun in the world." 
 
 '' I have more confidence in my maid," said Clara. She was 
 not in the habit of controlling herself or hiding her emotions^ 
 She contracted her white forehead, which was not very high by 
 nature, with a force which brought the frizzy golden fringe of 
 hair over her very eyebrows — and pouted with her red lips. **Bot 
 sides, Mr. Rivers has something better to do," she said, getting 
 up from the table. . i 
 
 She was the first to get up— a thing which filled the March^ 
 ioness with consternation. Clara was a girl of the nineteenth 
 century, feeling that her youth, and her bloom, and riotous, 
 luxurious beauty made her queen of the more gently toned, 
 gently mannered company. She broke up the party with that 
 pout and frown. ^n (n^ 
 
 Rivers went away with the note in his pocket, believing d«^ 
 voutly that it had been intended for a snare for him, a way of 
 interfering with his freedom. " Let her wait at least till I am 
 
 5j&e;.*^w*ws^^;ij5rasf?«sc^^ , 
 
288 
 
 ▲T HIS GATES. 
 
 in her toils, which will not be just yet/' he said to hknself 
 while he went down the avenue; while Clara pursued her 
 mother, who had gone to put on her bonnet to accompany the 
 Marchioness on her drive, up-stairs. 
 
 " How could you, mamma f ' she cried. " Oh, how could 
 you Y It is beoause you think nothins of me ; vou don't care 
 for me. To ask the Drummonds at all was bad enough ; but 
 to send Cyril Rivers to ask them. It seems too bad even for 
 you." 
 
 " Clara, what is Cyril Rivers to you 1 '* 
 
 " To me 1 " Clara faltered, stopped short, was silent, gazing 
 at her mother with blue, wide-open eyes, which astonishment 
 made round. Even to a dauntless girl, accustomed to speak 
 her mind, the question was a hard one. She could not answer, 
 " Papa means nim to marry me. He is my property ; no one 
 has fLuy right to him but me," as she might have done had she 
 spoken at all. It requires a very great deal of hardihood to' 
 
 Snt such sentiments into speech, and Clara, with all her confi- 
 ence, was not quite bold enough. She gazed at her mother 
 with angry blue eyes, speaking with them what she could not 
 say in woras ; but all she could do audibly was to murmur 
 again, " To me 1 " 
 
 ** Yes, to ^ou. I don't see what ri^ht you have to interfere. 
 If you consider that you have any just right, state it to me ; 
 ana if I find it reasonable I will tell you what I am doing; but, 
 otherwise, not a word. In the circumstances, composure and 
 patience are the best things for you. I am acting, and I shall 
 act, towards Mr. Rivers according to principles of my own, and 
 a system of my own ; and I don't mean to be interfered with, 
 Claxa. You understand that." 
 
 "I shall speak to papa," said Clara, in her anger. " I shall 
 just tell it all to papa." 
 
 "Do, my dear, ' said her mother calmly, and put on her bon- 
 net It was dear that now, at least, there was not another 
 word to be said. 
 
 Clara went away in her anger to Lady Florizel for sympathy. 
 
 " Mamma has made up her mind to ask those people," she 
 said. " And I hate them. They are low people — people that 
 ought not to be asked to meet you." 
 
 ** Oh, as for us, never mind ! They will not hurt us," said 
 
AT BIS GATES. 
 
 289 
 
 Lady Florisel, 8hrum|ing her shoulden ; but I thought you told 
 me you were great mends with the people in the vulage before 
 the ball" 
 
 '<That is the worst of all/' said CUra. <<We are great 
 friends. They are all the company I ever had before I came 
 out. But now, when I don't require them any longer, they 
 have ffrown disasreeable ; and yet there is the old habit exist- 
 ing all the same. 
 
 " Poor Clara 1" said her new companion, ** what a bore for 
 you I Village companions are so apt to be a bore. But I am 
 sure if you were to talk to your mamma she would find some 
 way of getting rid of them. That would be the best." 
 
 ** Why, it is she that is asking them," said Clara. 
 
 And it became more and more apparent that her injury was 
 past help ; for in the face of her mother's invitation what could 
 even papa do 1" 
 
 Mr. Kivers carried the note with much fidelity to its desti- 
 nation. ** I should not have ventured to come," he said, when 
 he went in and met Mrs. Drummond's look of suspicion, *' but 
 for this. And I hope it will find favour in your eyes. I sup- 
 pose I am to wait and take an answer ? Aad it will be a fa- 
 vourable answer, I hope." 
 
 Helen and her child had been talking of him before he ap- 
 peared, and Norah had been a little agitated, half-pleasur- 
 ably, half-painfuUy, by her mother^s warning. 
 
 " I do not like him to come so often/' Mrs. Drummond had 
 said. " Whether he means anything or not> I would much 
 rather he did not come." 
 
 " Mean, mamma ! What could he mean, except to talk to 
 you a little 1 I am sure he does not mean anything," Norah 
 had cried, with the premature confidence of her age. 
 
 And then he had made his appearance, and with the know- 
 ledge of that brief discussion in her mind she was embarras- 
 sed, and felt as if he must read all about it in her eyes. 
 
 " May I tell you what it is, Miss Drummond," he asked, 
 turning to her, while her mother opened the note, and sinking 
 his voice. " It is a picnic to the old tower of Dura. I sup- 
 pose you know all about it. It is to be on Wednesday, and I 
 hope you will come." 
 
 " Oh, a picnic I" said Norah, with a flush of joyful antici- 
 a 
 
 rimwa 
 
290^ 
 
 AT mS GATES. 
 
 pittion. ''I never was at a real grown-up picnic. iBhonfd like 
 it so much, if mamma thinks we may." 
 
 " But perhaps you could influence mamma." 
 
 " No, no. I don't think it I would rather not botheriher," 
 said Norah, with a little, hegitation, feeling all her embarrass^ 
 ment return. " Of course she must know best." 
 
 "Oh, of course," said Mr. Rivers. He smiled as he looked 
 at her, and Norah, giving a wistful, furtive glance at him, was 
 suddenly seized with spontaneous wonder as to what he 
 meant— a question not arising from what her mother had said, 
 but from herself. The thought sprung up in her mind un- 
 awares, bringing with it a blushi What could he mean ? Why 
 did he come so often 1 Why did he wish that she should have 
 this new pleasure? What could it matter to him? There 
 would be plenty of people at the picnic— young people, nice 
 people, pretty people, people all dressed in purple and fine 
 linen— who would be much more like him than Norah. Andj 
 why should he care ? A delicious doubt, a delicious suspicion 
 came into her thoughts. Gould it be possible? Might it 
 really, really — ? 'She shut some. little trapdoor down upon it 
 resolutely in her mind, and would not look at, would not con- 
 sider that suggestion ; but it ran through all her veins when 
 she cast it out of her thoughts. Could it be possible 1 And 
 this was not Ned Burton, a boy whom she had known all her 
 life, but the hero of romance himself — he who looked as if he 
 had walked out of a book. It flattered her — she could not tell 
 why. She cast down her eyes, for he had been looking at her 
 all the time, and it seemed to her as if he must be able to tell 
 her thoughts. 
 
 i But he did not. He took up the cotton with which she was 
 working, and wound and unwound it upon his fingers.; 
 
 "I have to run over to the Rectory," he said. "Perhaps I 
 had better do that dow, and come back to get my answer. 
 Perhaps then I might have a cup of tea ? This room is the 
 very sort of room to drink tea in. The first dish of tea must 
 have been made here." 
 
 " It is not so old as that." » 
 
 " Oh, it is as old as we like to believe it," said Mr.'^ Rivers. 
 ** Don't disturb Mrs. Drummond. I will go away now, and in 
 half an hour I shall come back." And he let himself out like 
 
AT HIS OATES. 
 
 291 
 
 a child of the house, assiiming a familiarity tp which he had 
 not any right. 
 
 Norah sat ^uite tremulous, yet perfectly quiet, after he was 
 gone, wondenng, and trying to stop herself from wondering — 
 feeling somehow that this must be that power of which she 
 had read, which made the strongest and best of men subject to 
 a girl — and feeling that it was not possible, seeing the ^d was 
 "only me." 
 
 "It is another invitation," Mrs. Drummond said, with a 
 little sigh. " You must decide about it, Norah. It will be a 
 pleasure to you, and it seems hard you should not have a little 
 pleasure. But, on the other hand, my dear, after all you told 
 me about Ned, and how Mr. Rivers — — " 
 
 " There is nothing about Mr. Rivers, mamma." 
 
 " Perhaps not, perhaps not, dear. I do not say there is— 
 anything, Norah ; but still it is not comfortable that he should 
 come so often. There is the note. I will not say yes or no, 
 my darling. You shall decide whether we shall go or stay." 
 
 Norah read the note over with glowing eyes. The blood 
 came hot to her face. It seemed to open up before her a day 
 out of Paradise. The children had made picnics among them- 
 selves often enough to Dura Tower. They had gone in the 
 height of the summer for a long day ; the boys walking, the 
 girls packed into Mrs. Dalton's pony-carriage, or the little 
 donkey-chair, which lived in the village. Bread and butter, 
 and fruit, and hard-boiled eggs, and bottles of milk was what 
 they used to take with them ; and they would come home 
 laden with garlands of the lush woodbine, with honeysuckles 
 in sheaves, and basketfuls of those fragile wild-flowers which 
 never survive the plucking, but which children cannot resist. 
 These old days rose before her with all their sweetness. But 
 this was different ; — one of the Dura carriages to take them 
 up ; a few hours among the woods, and luncheon out of doors, 
 if it was warm enough ; " to show the Marchioness and the 
 young ladies what little antiquities we have." Perhaps the 
 grandeur and the glory of the society would make up for the 
 absence of the brilliant summer, and the freedom of the child- 
 ish party ; but yet She looked up shyly at her mother 
 
 with cheeks that were crimson upon her dark eyelashes. 
 
 "I suppose, mamma, it would be selfish of me to want to go?" 
 
292 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 ** That means you do want to go, Norah/' said Helen, shak- 
 ing her head softly, with a half-reproachful smile. 
 
 " Is it wrong f " said Norah, stealing behind her mother's 
 chair with a coaxing arm round her neck. " I never saw any- 
 thing like it. I siMuld like, just this once. Our old little 
 parties were such baby affairs, mamma. That donkey-chair, 
 what fun it was ! And oh ! do you remember how it always 
 ran away, and that time when little Jenny fell asleep 1 But 
 this will be grand— something to see. And you will like the 
 drive; it is such a pretty drive ; and the woods will be lovely. 
 I never was, there in October before." 
 
 " You coaxing child, as Miss Jane says ; you want to go." 
 
 " Yes, please, mamma." 
 
 And Norah dropt a little curtsey demurely like the child she 
 was no longer. And yet as she stood there in her grey frock, 
 she was so very like a child that Helen had to rub her eyes 
 and ask herst.lf what was this wonderful difference. Yester- > 
 day or so Norah had trudged along among the boys, taking her 
 share, pushing them about, carying her own basket in ail the 
 ban camaraderie of childhood. Now she was the princess, 
 drawing her wistful looks after her, breaking poor Ned's heart, 
 attracting the other hero out of his natural sphere. How was 
 it 1 The mother sighed a little, wondering, and smiled, with 
 a sense that the world which had so long neglected her, was 
 offering to her, to herself, not to Norah, the sweetest, strangest 
 flatteries. She was anxious as to how it might all end, and 
 sometimes was unhappy ; and yet she was pleased — what mo- 
 ther ever was otherwise 1 — "to see her bairn respected like 
 the lave." 
 
 And then Mr. Bivers came back for his cup of tea. What 
 did he want, haunting the old house ) He came back for the 
 answer, he said ; and called himself Mrs. Burton's man, and 
 the penny-post, and made very merry over the whole transac- 
 tion. But in all this he made it very apparent ^hat any excuse 
 was sweet to him. And Norah laughed at the ^oke, and cast 
 down her pretty eyes, and her colour went and came like the 
 wind. What did he mean 1 Did he mean anything 1 Or 
 was it for mere amusement that on every pretext possible he 
 came to the Gatehouse 1 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 293 
 
 m-' 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 [HERE was, however, another point to be considered be- 
 fore Wednesday, and that was the question of dress, 
 which convulses a poor household when unusual festivi- 
 ties are in progress. Mrs. Drummond's black silk was, as Mrs. 
 Dalton said, " always nice." It had lasted from Helen's pros- 
 perous days till now ; it had changed its form half-a-dozen 
 times, and now, thanks to the beneficent fashion which pre- 
 vailed of short walking dresses had " come out quite fresh," as 
 Norah declared in triumph. But Norah did not possess that 
 toilette fraiche which is indispensable for a young lady at a pic- 
 nic. Her grey frock was very pretty at home ; but amid all 
 the shining garments of the great young ladies, their perfect 
 ribbons, and hats, and boots, and gloves, and all those wonder- 
 ful accessories which poor people cannot hope for, how could 
 she look anything but a poor little Cinderella 1 " My dress 
 would do, mamma — it is not the dress," Norah said, looking at 
 herself in dismay in the old fashioned long glass in its ebony 
 frame as they discussed this matter, ** and all that I have is 
 well enough ; good enough, you know, very nice for common 
 wear. Short dresses are a blessing, but then they show one's 
 boots ; and the cuffs, and the collars, and the ribbons ! Per- 
 liaps we ought not to have said we would go." 
 
 "That is what I feared," said Helen. "It is hard you should 
 not have a little amusement when it comes in your way : and 
 then there are other things to think of ; but to live among people 
 who are richer, much richer than one is one's self. — 
 
 " What are the other things that have to be thought of ? " 
 said Norah, with that sudden fantastic jealousy of ulterior mo- 
 tives which affects the young. 
 
 " My dear Norah, I am not mercenary. I would not sacri- 
 fice your happiness for any worldly motive. I would not even 
 
 suggest But, my darling, you must see people — you 
 
 must have it in your power to meet those whom — you must 
 go into the world." 
 
294 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 Norah gazed at her mother with dilated eyes. They had 
 come down into the drawing-room after their inspection of the 
 poor boots and gloves that suggested Cinderella. And the 
 child was standing against the light, against the old brown- 
 grey curtains, which threatened to crumble into dust any day, 
 and yet held out miraculously. The round mirror made ^ lit- 
 tle picture of h^r standing there alone, like an old miniature in 
 dim enamel. But Norah was not dim in herself at that mo- 
 ment — her brown eyes were dilated and shining — her cheeks 
 mantled with the overwhelming blush of mingled indignation 
 and shame. "To meet — people ! — oh ! mamma, mamma, how 
 can you ! — is it all true, then, what people say 1 " 
 
 "Yes," said Helen, gravely, "or at least it is half true. I 
 am ashamed, and yet I should not be ashamed. I want you to 
 meet those who can appreciate you, who may love you, Norah, \ 
 and make your life happy. Why should you look at me so in-* 
 dignantly ? it is my duty. But I do not wish to speak of it to 
 you." 
 
 " Then I am going — to be inspected — ^to be offered in the 
 market — to be — oh, mamma, I would rather die ! " 
 
 " You are going for nothing of the kind. I shall have to put 
 away my companion and friend who was such a comfort to 
 me; and send you back into the place of a silly, impatient child." 
 
 " So I am," said Norah, throwing herself at her mother's feet, 
 and hiding her tears and burning cheeks in Helen's gown. 
 " So I am ; Oh, *inamma, can't I work or do something 1 is 
 there nothing, nothing in the world for a girl, but that ? " 
 
 "Hush, my darling, hush!" said Helen, and it was upon 
 this group that some one came in suddenly, whose indignation 
 was prompt at the sight and unhesitating. It was Dr. Mau- 
 rice, who had come down from London, as he did periodically 
 to see the child, whom he considered as his ward ; and who in- 
 stinctively, seeing tears, made up his mind that Norah had 
 been suffering cruelty, and that the mother was in fault. 
 
 " What is the matter 1 " he said. " Norah crying ! I have 
 not seen her cry before since she was a baby — there must be a 
 good cause." 
 
 " She is growing a woman," said her mother, " and learning 
 something about life, poor child ; but fortunately this time the 
 cause is not very grave." 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 ^95 
 
 Norah spriing to her feet and dried her tears. She had de- 
 vined long ere now that her old friend loved her a great deal 
 better than he loved her mother. And Norah was ready to 
 take up arms for her mother, h outrance, night or day. 
 
 "No, it was not very much," she said, afl glowing with tears 
 and blushes and excitement : " it is something you will laugh 
 at— you will think it so like a silly woman. You know you 
 bate us all, Dr. Maurice, and that is what you will say." 
 
 " Yes, I hate you all," said the doctor, looking at her with 
 eyes that softened and brightened unconsciously, and a voice 
 that soanded caressing in spite of himself. 
 
 " I know it," said Norah. " Well then, Dr. Maurice, this 
 is what I was crying about. We are going to a picnic with the 
 Burtons, and the Marchioness of Upshire, and all kinds of fine 
 people. And I was crying because I have not got a pretty dress. " 
 
 Dr. Maurice gave a short laugh, and then he turned away 
 his head, and his eyes glistened under his heavy brows. 
 "Poor child," he said, with a tremble in his voice — if it had 
 been any one else probably he would have sneered, as Norah 
 said at the frivolitj^ of woman's nature ; but, because it was 
 Norah, his heart melted within him, and the water came to his 
 eyes. 
 
 " When is it going to come oflf 1 " he said. 
 
 " Oh, to-day — at one o'clock they were to call for us. Dear 
 doctor," said Norah, looking up at him laughing, yet with the 
 tears still on her eyelashes, " won't you say that, after all, I 
 look very nice in my grey frock." 
 
 " Go away, child," he said almost angrily, " go and dress 
 yourself and let me look at you after. I want to speak to your 
 mamma." 
 
 When she heard this Helen was afraid. She believed in 
 Dr. Maurice because he had been substantially kind, and be- 
 cause he was her husband's friend ; but she did not like him, 
 and she had that fear of him which came from the conviction 
 that he disliked and distrusted her. 
 
 " Why is this 1 " he said, as Norah went away. " Mrs. Drum 
 mond, 1 thought you knew that I looked upon Norah as if she 
 was my own. She should not want anything if you would let 
 me know— I think you ought for Norah's sake to get over any 
 feeling — and put pride aside." 
 
 .-»'*,.r'»-'»»W'- 
 
296 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 ** It is not so ^asy/' said Belen^ with a smile. ** Pride, if 
 you call it so, sticks very close. You are very, very kind 
 
 "I am not kind — I don't mean to be; but I look upon 
 Korah as if she were my own." 
 
 " She is not your own, Dr. Maurice," said Helen with spirit. 
 " I cannot put a feeling in the place of a right. Nothing in 
 the worid would make me appeal to a stranger for finery for 
 my child. We can live with what we have of our own." 
 
 " Pride, pride I " said the doctor hastily. " I don't mean to 
 give offence : but I am not a stranger — I have known the child 
 from her cradle. Why shouldn't you be so yielding — so kind 
 if you will — as to tell me when she wants a dress 1 My little 
 Norah ! she has been a delight to me all my life. If I had my 
 will she should inistle with the best" 
 
 Helen was angry, but she was moved. A man who lov^d 
 her child could scarcely shut her heart even by disliking her- 
 self. She put out her hand to the surly critic who had never 
 trusted her — " Thanks," she said, " many thanks. I accept 
 your love for Norah ; but I could not accept anything else. 
 Why, you must know that ! My child, Robert's child, appeal- 
 ing to your charity ! Dr. Maurice, I am not ungrateful, but 
 surely Cinderella's frock is better than that." 
 
 The doctor was silent, he could not reply. " Poor little 
 Cinderella ! " he said ; but just then there appeared a vision 
 at the door, which took away his breath. Men are poor crea- 
 tures where a woman's dress is concerned. To Dr. Maurice, 
 who knew no better, Norah's pretty rose-coloured ribbons, the 
 little end of rose-coloured feathet*, which relieved the black in 
 her hat, and the fresh little pair of grey gloves, which she had 
 indulged in, made Cinderella at once, without more ado, into 
 the fairy princess. " Why, good heavens, child, what would 
 you have more 1 " he said, almost with offence. He had been 
 taken in, he thought, and betrayed into an unnecessary warmth 
 of sympathy. It is true that, after a little, even Dr. Maurice 
 saw points which might be improved ; but he could not look 
 upon Norah's toilette with the instructed eyes which Clara 
 Burton and Lady Florizel turned upon it ; and it was the other 
 girls, the Marchioness, the ladies who knew, not a mere man, 
 ignorant as a baby, whom Norah feared. 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 297 
 
 However, it was grand to see the carriage glide up to the 
 door, and the ladies get into it. Mrs. Ashurst and her niece 
 were in it already, two highly respectable persons with claims 
 to belong to the county. The Rectory people were not asked, 
 and Katie stood at the window and watched with somewhat 
 wistful looks, waving hur hand as they drove awav. And Dr. 
 Maurice put them into the carriage, and stood on the steps with 
 his hat off watching them too. There was a splendour about it 
 certainly, whether it was delightful or not. Norah thought of 
 the donkey-chaise loaden with children, and for a moment 
 sighed ; she had worn brown hoUand in those days — but now 
 brown holland all embroidered and decorated was a great deal 
 too expensive — ^far more costly than her grey — and she had 
 not cared what she wore then, which was far better ; whilst 
 now she felt that Miss Ashurst was looking at her, and saw 
 that her cuffs were rather coarse in texture and her feather no- 
 thing but a tip. Neither was the drive very lively in the so- 
 ciety of these respectable ladies, the younger of whom was old- 
 er than Norah's mother. But when the carriage approached 
 the end of the pilgrimage, Norah's sky began to brighten. All 
 the others had already arrived, and on a green knoll in front 
 of the old tower the luncheon was bein^ arranged. It was a 
 prettier, gayer sight than the old parties with the donkey- 
 chaise. Lady Florizel and her sister were standing at one of 
 the windows in the tower with Ned Burton, looking down : but 
 among the trees near the gate Cyril Bivers was waiting on the 
 outskirts of a group, looking round with evident anxiety, wait- 
 ing to open the carriage door and hand the ladies out. " I am 
 so glad you have come," he whispered into Norah's ear. His 
 very face brightened up at the sight of them. There is no 
 girl living who could withstand such delicate flattery, and that 
 not from any nobody, not from an old friend and faithful slave 
 like Ned Burton, but from the hero, the prince of romance. 
 Norah's heart grew light in spite of herself ; she might be in- 
 differently dressed, she might even look as she felt, a poor re- 
 lation : but this distinction all the same was hers — the prince 
 had found Cinderella out, and none of the others could get a 
 word from him. He took them to Mrs. Burton, who was do- 
 ing the honours of the old tower to the Marchioness, and who 
 received them veiy graciously, giving thanks to some heathen- 
 
298 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 ish deity of her own for the success of her plans ; and then he 
 found a shady spot for them where they could command every 
 thing. " I suppose you do not care to go over the tower," he 
 said. " I know it as well ais my A B C," said Norah ; and 
 then he placed them under the great ash-tree and took up his 
 own position by Mrs. Drummond's side. 
 
 Mrs. Burton gave thanks to her gods for her success. She 
 ;^looked up and saw Ned's eyes peering out of the window above 
 as if he were about to swoop down upon her. " What are you 
 doing, Ned," she said in momentary alarm. 
 
 " Setting this for Lady Florizel," he said, holding out a tuft 
 of wild flowers from the old wall. And Mrs. Burton thank- 
 ed that fetish, whoever he was. But she did not see that be- 
 tween the line of Ned's hat and his nose, were a pair of eyes 
 glancing fiercely down upon the ash-tree. If lightning couW 
 have come out of mortal eyes, that tree would have shrivelled 
 up and borne no more foliage. The spell was beginning to 
 work. Perhaps Cyril Rivers would not have so far committed 
 himself had he not believed that the Burtons had made some 
 scheme to detach him from Norah's side, and to slight and 
 scorn her. He thought they had attempted to make him privy 
 to a plot against her comfort and honour, and that she had been 
 asked here on purpose to be insulted by that impertinence of so- 
 ciety which women cannot struggle against. This was the con- 
 clusion he came to, and all that was chivalrous and kind was stir- 
 red within him, If everybody else neglected them, he at least 
 would show that a man's proper place was by the side of the 
 weak. And then the weak, who had to be succoured, was so 
 pretty, so charming, so sweet ! A man's 'generous impulses 
 are immensely strengthened in such cases. Miss Ashurst, who 
 was as weU bom as anybody there, and as well dressed, was 
 really neglected by the whole company ; but Mr. Rivers did 
 not feel himself impelled to her side by his desire to succour 
 those who were in need. 
 
 " Look there, papa," said Clara Burton, going to her father, 
 and thrusting her hand through his arm, " only look there ! " 
 
 " Rivers ! " said Mr. Burton, gazing through the branches, 
 " with that girl again ! " 
 
 " And whosiB fault is it ? Mamma's ! It is all mamma. I 
 told you; she actually sent him there— sent him to their house !" 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 299 
 
 " 1 Will soon put a stop to all that ; don't be disturbed, 
 Clara/' said her father, and he went off with great vehemence 
 to where his wife was standing. He put his hand on her arm 
 and drew her away from the Marchioness. " One moment — a 
 thousand pardons," he said, bowing to the great lady, and then 
 turned to his wife with the air of a suppressed volcano. 
 " Clara, what on earth do you mean 1 there's fivers with those 
 Drummonds again.'' 
 
 " He has been with them ever since he came, Mr Burton ; 
 probably he will drive home with them. He seems to have 
 made himself their attendant for the day." 
 
 "But good Lord, Clara ! what do you mean 1 Do you mean 
 to drive your daughter out of her senses — don't you intend to 
 interfere 1 " 
 
 " I am acting for the best," said Mrs. Burton, " and it will 
 be at your peril if you meddle. Take it in hand if yoyi please > 
 but if the work is to be mine I must do it my own way." 
 
 " But, Clara, for heaven's sake " 
 
 " I have no tima for any more, I must be allowed to work, 
 if I work at all, in my own way." 
 
 And with this poor satisfaction Mr. Burtonhad to be content. 
 He went away fuming and secretly smarting with indignation, 
 through the groups of people who were his own guests, gather- 
 ed together to make him merry, A mixture of rage and be- 
 wilderment filled his bosom. He could no more bear to have 
 his Clara crossed than Mrs. Drummond could bear to cross 
 Norah ; and his wife's silence was far beyond his comprehen- 
 sion. Clara met him as he came up, with a fluctuating colour, 
 now pale, now crimson, and her white low forehead almost lost 
 under the fringe of hair. She clasped his arm energetically 
 with both hands. " Tell me, papa, what has she got to say 1 " 
 
 " Well, Clara, we must not interfere. Your mother has her 
 own way of acting ; she says it is all right. There are dozens 
 more who would be glad of a look from you, Clara. For to- 
 day we are not to interfere." 
 
 Clara, who was not in the habit of disguising her feelings, 
 tossed his arm from her, pulling away her hands ; she was half 
 wild with injured pride and self-will. She went up to the 
 group under the tree with anger in her step and in her eye. 
 
 " Oh Norah ! " she said, " I did not know you were com- 
 
soo 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 ing. Good morning, Mrs. Drummond. Mr. Rivers, I thought 
 you were altogether lost. You disappeared the moment we 
 set you down. I suppose you had something more agreeable 
 in hand." 
 
 ** I had nothing in hand, Miss Burton, except like everybody 
 else — to amuse myself, I suppose." 
 
 ** And you have found a charming way of doing that, I am 
 sure,'' said poor, jealous, foolish Clara ; her face was flushed, 
 her voice slightly elevated. She could not bear it ; if it had 
 been one of the Ladies Merewether, or even one of the Daltons 
 from the Rectory — but Norah ! It was more than she could 
 put up with. Mrs. Drummond, who was decorous, the very 
 soul of good order and propriety, rose up instinctively to co- 
 ver this little outbreak. " Let us walk about a little," she 
 said. Let us hide this unwomanly self-betrayal, was what she 
 meant. \ 
 
 Norah, too, was wounded and ashamed, though without 
 feeling herself involved. Clara was "in a temper," Norah 
 thought. They all knew that Clara in a temper was to be 
 avoided. She was sorry Mr. Rivers should see it. " Oh Clara ! 
 isn't it strange to be here with everything so different." she 
 said. " Don't you remember our pranks on the grass when 
 we were children 1 and your pony which we all envied so 
 much 1 How odd it is in some ways to be grown up ! " 
 
 Clara took no notice of this conciliatory speech, but Mr. 
 Rivers' did. ** I hope it is not less pleasant," he said. 
 
 " I don't know — we walk about now, instead of running 
 races and playing games. Do you remember, Clara " 
 
 " I have not time to talk over that old nonsense," said 
 Clara. " The Marchioness is calling me ; " and she turned 
 sharply off and joined her mother, who was with that great 
 lady. She was quite pale with anger and dismay. She walk- 
 ed up to Mrs. Burton and looked her in the face. It was her 
 doing; and then she drew back a step, and stood behind, doing 
 all she could to make her vexation visible. She wanted to 
 punish her mother. The others had all dispersed into groups ; 
 but Clara stood alone, determined to be unhappy. Mrs. Bur- 
 ton, however, was not punished at all ; her scheme had suc- 
 ceeded. Her daughter's temper could not last above an hour 
 or two ; and her son was ssSe. He was walking about with 
 
AT HIS QATE& 
 
 801 
 
 Lad^ Florizel, ** paying her/' as Miss Ashurst said, ''every at- 
 tention," under her satisfied eyes. 
 
 The picnic ran its course like other picnics. It was very de- 
 lightful to some, and very wretched — ^a day to date from, as 
 the unhappiest ever known — to others. Cyril Rivers, did not, 
 as Mrs. burton had predicted, leave the Drummonds all day. 
 Had he suspected that this was the very result she aimed at, 
 and that Ned's lowering hrows and ui^ppy looks were the 
 very things the party had been given for, the chances are that 
 he would nave resisted the temptation which was stealing over 
 him ; but he did not know this, and he did not resist. He 
 thought they were laying vulgar visible claim to him, before he 
 had made up his mind one way or another ; and this was a 
 thing his pnde leiused to allow ; while at the same time Norah 
 was very sweet. She was a " rosebud set about with wilful 
 thorns ; " she would not agree with him, nor yield in argu- 
 ment ; she was not a shadowless beauty idl in broad blaze of 
 sunshine and complacency, like Clara ; there were clouds and 
 shadows about her, and a veil of sofb mystery, spontaneous 
 movements of fancy, wayward digression out of one thing into 
 another. Mrs. Drummond, who was a spectator at the ban- 
 quet, grew alarmed. She tried to separate them, to lead Norah 
 away among the other people. But she was balked in that 
 by every means. The other people were chiefly county people, 
 too grand for the Drummonds, who were civil to the hand- 
 some mother and pretty daughter, but not anxious for their 
 further acquaintance. Wherever they turned Mr Rivers met 
 them. He was not cold, nor slow to see when Helen wanted 
 to seat herself, when she wanted to move about. At last, 
 when the afternoon was beginning to wane, and the elder ladies 
 to think of their shawls, some of the younger ones proposed a 
 dance on the green. Mrs. Drummond was left sitting by her- 
 self, wbole Norah went to dance with Mr. Rivers, and it was 
 then for the first time time that Mr. Burton came up to her. 
 She could not but suppose that hehad been taking too much wine. 
 
 ** Well, Helen," he said, in his loud voice, " this is an un- 
 usual sort of scene for you — like it ? I don't suppose you know 
 many people, though ; but that little girl of yours is going too 
 fast ; mind my word, she is going too fast." 
 
 ** I think, Mr. Burton, you mistake ** 
 
 ;'*»*rS?#«A^ 
 
302 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 ** No, I don't mistake ;---goinff too fast — ^trying to lead Cyril 
 Bivers off his feet, as she dia my Ned. What am I talldAg of 1 
 No, not Ned ; Ned has more sense — some other of the la48. 
 But Oyril Rivers, mind you, ain't such a fool as he looks." n 
 
 He went on, hut Helen did not hear him. Suddenly the 
 whole situation glanced upon her. If a flash of lightning had 
 illuminated eveiything it could not have heen more clear. It 
 was not a good light or a friendly that blazed over that' scene, 
 which was confused by so many shades of good and evil feeling. 
 Helen's whole spirit had been moved in her 1^ the tone and 
 words of her cousin in respect to her child. He had touched 
 her daughter — and a woman is as a tigress when a finger is 
 laid upon her cub, people say. 
 
 I don't kuQw if this was any excuse for her ; but certainly, 
 all in a moment, sometliing appeared within her reach which 
 made her heart beat. Revenge ! Whatever his degree of guilt 
 had been, this man had been her husband's evil angel ; he h^ 
 put him in the way which had led him to his destruction — with 
 how much or how little guilt who could say 1 And Helen 
 looked over the bright scene — ^the dancers on the grass, the 
 groups standing round, the autumn trees dressed out in all 
 their beauty, like their human brethren — and suddenly saw, or 
 thought she saw, that she had the happiness of her adversary's 
 home in her hand. Little Norah, all unaware of her tragic task, 
 was the Nemesis who was to accomplish their overthrow. 
 There was Ned, heart-broken but, defiant — Ned whom she had 
 seen watching all day, miserable as youth only is ; and Clara, 
 furious, making a show of herself in her passion. Was it the 
 sin of the father that was being visited on the children 1 He- 
 len's heart gave one loud, angry throb ; the time of her temp- 
 tation had come. She did not use the word revenge ; all that 
 was brought before her in the sudden tumult of her thoughts 
 waspunisnment — ^retribution for sin. 
 
 While this terrible suggestion flashed into Helen's mind and 
 took sudden possession of it, another ideahad begun to germinate 
 in another bosom, which was to bear fruit also. Dr. Maurice 
 went to see the Haldanes, and had a great deal of conversation 
 with them. This conversation ran chiefly upon the ohe subject 
 in which they were so much interested — " the child." From 
 them he learnt that Norah had " come out," that she had made 
 
A7 JBI8 OJ^TBB. 
 
 «PS^. 
 
 a grehi success, that everybody (to wit the Daltons) were raving 
 of her prettines^s and sprightliness, and how much admired she 
 was ; and that since the ball Cyril Rivers had ** never been out 
 of the house." 
 
 " Find out what sort of fbllow he is, Maurice/' said Stephen 
 Haldane ; " it ^vould b( hard to see our little Norah throw her- 
 self awav. I thought it would have been Ned." 
 
 ,,"Neal Ned! Burton's son — a mere City fellow! Grood 
 heavens ! has it come to that 1" said Dr. Maurice. 
 
 He left the Gatehouse, and walked slowly to the station, and 
 went home just about the time when the dance began on the 
 green. " The child wants some one to take care of her," he 
 said over and over again to himself. When he got home he 
 went over all his house, and looked at it with a haUf comic half 
 puzzled look. The idea perhaps had gleamed across his mind 
 before ; it was an idea he did not half like. It would be a 
 trouble to him — more trouble than anybody could imagine. 
 But still if such a sacrifice should be necessary — for Norah'a 
 sake ! 
 
I" 111 
 
 : I i, ; 'i i 
 
 304 
 
 AT HIS OATBB. 
 
 'l!|f 
 
 ■Ju 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 ^HE thought of revenge which had thus entered Helen's 
 mind might have died out of it naturally, or it might 
 have been overcome by better thoughts. All the passion 
 and conflict of her life had died into stiuness ; six years had 
 come and gone since the great storm had passed over her, 
 which had changed her existence, and though that had not 
 come to any satisfactory conclusion, but only raged itself out, 
 leaving germs that might grow into tumultuous iifo again — so 
 long an interval of quiet had buried these germs very deep. 
 She had grown tranquil in spite of herself ; the calm routine of 
 her life had taken hold upon her, and she had made that change 
 which is so imperceptible while in progress, so real and all-influ- 
 encing when once accomplished — the change which steals away 
 the incGviduality of existence, and introduces that life by proxy, 
 to which we all — or at least to which all women — ^must come. 
 Insensibly, without knowing it, Helen had grafted herseK into 
 her child. She had lived for Norah, and now she lived in 
 Norah, regarding the events of the world and the days as they 
 passed solely in reference to the new creature who had a new 
 career to weave out of them. This change has a wonderful 
 effect upon the mind and being. Her sphere of interests was 
 altered, her hopes and wishes were altered, her very modes of 
 thought. The gravity of her nature gave way before this 
 potent influence. Had she been in the way of it, Helen, who 
 had lived through her own youth with a certain serious dig- 
 nity, accepting her pleasures as a necessity rather than entering 
 into them with enthusiasm, would have acquired for herself, 
 no doubt, the character of a frivolous woman, fond of balls and 
 gaiety, all because of the gayer temper of her child. She felt 
 with Norah that thrill of wonder about Cyril Rivers ; her own 
 heart began to beat a little quicker when she heard him coming, 
 a reflection of Norah's blush passed over her. She had to make 
 an effort now and then not to be altogether carried away by 
 this strange entry she had made into another nature i for Norah 
 
AT HtS OATEa 
 
 305 
 
 ler own 
 
 was not like her mother in nature ; training and constant asso- 
 ciation had made them alike, and it was quite possible that 
 Norah in later life might become Helen, as Helen for the 
 moment had become Norah. But this wondrous double life 
 that ebbs and flows from one heart to another as from one 
 vessel to another — ^the same blood, the same soul — is not very 
 expUcable in words. It was only when Helen sat, as she did 
 at the moment we are now describing, all by herself over her 
 little fire, and felt the silence around her, and realized her own 
 individuality separate from the rest of the world, that the old 
 strain of her thoughts came back to her, and for half an hour 
 at a time she became herself once more. 
 
 It was a month after the day of the pic-nic. The guests at 
 Dura had departed, or rather had been succeeded by new ones, 
 of whom the Drummonds knew nothing. A breach had been 
 made between the great house and the village — a breach which 
 the Daltons murmured and wondered at, but which no one at- 
 tributed distinctly to its true cause. That cause, Mrs. Drum- 
 mond knew very well, was Norah. They had been invited 
 once more to Dura after the pic-nic, and Mr. Rivers once more 
 had constituted himself their attendant. By this time all other 
 motives except one had ceased to influence the young man. 
 He had ceased to think of the Burtons' claims or of Clara's fury 
 — things which, no doubt, had at first made the pursuit of 
 Norah piquant and attractive to him. What he thought of 
 now was Norah herself. He had no intention of commiting 
 himself — no thought of compromising his future by a foolish 
 match ; but he fell in love— he could not help it. It is a thing 
 which men of the best principles, men incapable of ruining 
 themselves by an absurd marriage, will nevertheless do from 
 time to time. How ho should get out of it he did not know, 
 and when he ventured to think at all, he was very sorry for 
 himself for the fatality which made Norah impossible. But 
 impossible or not, this was what had happened to him ; he had 
 fallen in love. The sensation itself was sweet ; and Clara's per- 
 petual angry pout, her flash of wrath when he approached No- 
 rah, her impatient exclamation at the sound of her name, 
 amused him immensely, and at the same time flattered his 
 vanity. So did Ned's lowering brows and unhappy looks. Mr 
 Rivers was tickled with his own position, flattered and amused 
 T 
 
! i:^i^^ 
 
 ti 
 
 . ,1, . 
 fi: 
 
 ! ■ 
 
 :;ii;i 
 
 306 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 by the effect his erratic proceedings had produced. And he 
 
 had fallen in love. I am sorry to say that Mrs. Drummond 
 
 encouraged him on that evening which she and her daughter 
 
 had spent at Dura after the pic-nic. She waved him, as it were, 
 
 in the faces of the Burtons like a flag of triumph. She took 
 
 pleasure in Ned's misery, though she liked Ned — and in ^ Clara s 
 
 wrath. They had scorned her child ; but her child was able 
 
 to turn all their plans to concision, and break up their most 
 
 skilful combinations. Norah was the queen of the moment, 
 
 and the others were crushed under her little foot. She was 
 
 able to make Ned's life a burden to him and destroy Clara's 
 
 prospects. I am very sorry to have to say this of Helen ; but 
 
 I have never set her up as possessing the highest type of 
 
 character, and it was true. 
 
 She was heartily sorry for it afterwards, however, it must 
 be added. When she got home she felt ashamed, but ratl^er 
 for having done something that did not come up to her own 
 ideal of womanly or lady-like behaviour than for the pain she 
 had helped to inflict. Even while she was sorry for having 
 " encouraged " (women are so conscious of all that word means) 
 Mr. Rivers, she was not sorry for Ned's despair, which rather 
 amused her — ^nor for Clara's fury, which made her so angry 
 that she would have liked to whip Clara. She was only 
 ashamed of the deed ; she did not dislike the results. Norah, 
 as so often happens, did not know half, nor nearly half, of 
 what it all meant. She was flattered by Mr. E,ivers's atten- 
 tion ; she admired him, she liked him. He was the hero, and 
 he had taken her for his heroine. The thought entranced her 
 girlish fancy, and seduced her into a thousand dreams. She 
 wondered would he " speak " to her, and what should she an- 
 swer him. She framed pictures to herself of how he shou^c! 
 be brought to the very verge of that " speaking," and then l;y 
 chance prevented and sent away, and longing and anxious, 
 while Norah herself would get a respite. She imagined the 
 most touching scenes — how somebody unknown would be found 
 to watch over her, to bring wonderful good fortune to her, to 
 be at hand when she was in any danger, to save her life, and 
 perform all kinds of wonders ; and how at last, suddenly turn- 
 ing upon this anonymous guardian angel, she should find that 
 it was he. £ver3rthing that a true knight had ever done for 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 307 
 
 his lady she dreamt of having done fur her, and a sweet exulta- 
 tion, a grateful sense of her own humility and yet grandeur would 
 fill her foolish little mind. But still, even in her fancy, Norah 
 held as far oflf as possible the inevitable response. No lady, of 
 course, could accept such devotion without sooner or later be- 
 stowing the reward ; but the devotion, and not the reward, 
 was the thing it pleased her to contemplate. It surrounded 
 with a halo of glory not only herself, the recipient, but even in 
 a higher degree the man who was capable of bestowing such 
 exquisite, and delicate, and generous service. Such are the 
 fantastic fancies of a girl when she finds herself wafted into 
 the land of old romance by the astounding, delicious, incom- 
 prehensible discovery that some one has fallen in love with 
 her. She was not in the very least in love with him. 
 
 All this is a long way from the November evening when 
 Helen sat over her fire, and became for the periodical half-hour 
 herself, and not simply Norah's mother. Thinking it all over, 
 she blushed a little over her own conduct. Mr. Rivers had left 
 Dura, but he kept writing to her on one absurd pretext after 
 another. Mrs. Drummond had answered very briefly one of 
 these notes, and she was taking herself to task for it now. 
 Was she right to " encourage " Cyril Rivers t It had punished 
 the Burtons, and she was not sorry for that. But was such a 
 mode of revenge permissible 1 Was it consistent with her 
 own dignity, or such a thing as ought to be 1 Susan had not 
 yet brought in the lamp, and she was sitting in the ruddy dark- 
 ness, scarcely illuminated, yet made rosy by the brilliant not- 
 flaming redness of the fire. Norah even now, would have 
 been frightened to sit so in that haunted room ; but it was 
 Lot haunted to Helen. It was a clear, moonlight evening out 
 of doors, and the thin long lines of window at the other end 
 of the room let in each a strip of dark wintry blue between 
 the brown-grey curtains. This cold light, and the ruddy, sup- 
 pressed glow of the fire, balanced each other, holding each their 
 own half of the room like two armies, of which the red one 
 made continual sorties upon the realm of the other, and the blue 
 stood fast without a movement. It was a curious little inte- 
 rior, but Helen did not see it. She sat, as thoughtful people 
 80 often sit, with her eyes fixed upon the red glow of the em- 
 bers. In a variation of the same attitude, half visible as the 
 
308 
 
 AT HtS aATES. 
 
 II 
 
 I i 
 
 light rose and fell, like a spell-bound woman, her image shone 
 in the round mirror. 
 
 Norah was at the Rectory spending the evening, and Norah's 
 mother had changed into Helen herself, and not another. How 
 many old thoughts came and went through her mind it is 
 needless to say ; but they resolved themselves into this, that 
 she had sacrificed her own dignity, that what she was doing 
 was not the thing she ought to. What was the punishment 
 of the Burtons to her ? Why should she like to f *' ve a heart- 
 ache to a boy and girl who had done her no harm ? It was to 
 get at their father, and give him a stab through their means ; 
 but was that a kind of warfare for a woman — a lady ? Helen 
 started in the dark, though no one could see her. She had a 
 high, almost fantastic, sense of honour and generosity, yet in 
 this she was sacrificing both. i 
 
 I do not know what impulse it was which made her, when 
 the fire began to burn low and wanted refreshment, to go to 
 the window and look out — no reason in particular — because it 
 was a beautiful night. She stood looking out on the moon- 
 light, on the silent countrj'' road, and the lively lights which 
 shone in the Rectory windows opposite. She had rung for the 
 lamp ; she was going to have her woman's meal, her cup of tea, 
 in the solitude which was not grievous, for to be sure it would 
 last but an hour or two. On the table there was a basket full 
 of work, some dressmaking for Norah, and a novel, for still He- 
 len loved the novels which took her into other lives. All these 
 placid details gave an air of profoundest peace to the scene, and 
 the white, clear moonlight shone outside, and the stars, sharpened 
 and brightened by frost, fluttered as if they had wings or a heart 
 that throbbed, out of the blue of the sky ; when suddenly 
 the place became clamorous, the silence fled, the echoes carried 
 circles of sound all over the unseen country. Mr. Burton was 
 coming home. A slight smile came upon Helen's face. All 
 this ostentation and noise of wealth did not irritate her as it 
 used to do. The phaeton came dashing along, and paused a 
 moment at the corner, where Williams's shop threw out a 
 stream of illumination. Some one else sat by Mr. Burton's 
 side — some one who suddenly, as they passed, turned his face 
 full into the light. 
 
 In a moment Helen's heart had begun to beat like an engine 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 309 
 
 suddenly set in motion ; the blood mounted up into her ears, 
 to her heart, like its moving wheels and piston. She clenched her 
 hand, and a sudden demon seemed to wake up and come into 
 existence all in a moment. It was the man whom she believed 
 to be her husband's murderer — the destroyer of her own hap- 
 piness and of Robert's good name. She stood as if spell- 
 bound while they drove past the window, laughJng and talking. 
 Nay, there was even a half pause, and Mr. Burton made some 
 explanation, and pointed to the Gatehouse, not seeing the se- 
 cret spectator. She heard the sound of their voices — the 
 laugh ; and clenched her hands tighter, and through her mind 
 there passed words which a woman should not say. 
 
 It was then that Susan came into the room with the lamp. 
 When she had set it down on the table, and turned to close 
 the window, it startled her to see where Helen was standing. 
 Susan uttered an exclamation ; it gave her " a turn ;" and she 
 had a still greater turn when she perceived the change in Mrs. 
 Drummond's face. But for the moment she did not ssay any- 
 thing. It was only when she had arranged the tea and put 
 everj'^thing ready that she ventured to look again, and en- 
 countered Helen's eyes, which were fixed, and did not see her. 
 
 " Lord bless us ! " said Susan, " if something has happened ; 
 'm, don't look dreadful like that, but say it out." 
 
 Helen woke up at the sound of her voice. She tried to 
 smile and clear her countenance. 
 
 " Nothing has happened," she said : and it startled her to 
 find how hoarse she was. " I was thinking only about old 
 times." 
 
 " That comes o' Miss Norah being out to tea," said Susan. 
 " I'd think of old times fast enough if I could do any good. 
 But what's the use ? Thinking and thinking only moiders a 
 body's brain. I've give it up for my part." 
 
 " It is the wisest way," said Helen, trying to smile. 
 
 " Shall I ask Miss Jane to come and stay with you a bit 1 
 or shall I run for Miss Norah ? " asked Susan, who wa» practi- 
 cal-minded, and felt that some thing ought to be done. 
 
 " Never mind, Susan. It is very kind of you to think of 
 me. It will pass over directly," said Helen ; and she was so 
 decided and imperative that Susan was forced to yield. 
 
 When she was gone, Mrs Drummond rose and walked about 
 
I M • 
 
 310 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 the room with hasty, tremulous steps. She was not sick nor 
 sorry, as the woman thought, but burning with wild indig- 
 nation, sudden rage. Her better feelings were overwhelmed 
 by the tide of passion that rushed into her mind " Golden 
 and Burton ! Golden and Burton ! " When she had lAst re- 
 peated these words, she had felt herself powerless, helpless, 
 unable to inflict any punishment upon them, compelled to sub- 
 side into silence, knowing that neither her voice nor anything 
 she could do would reach them. It was different now, she 
 said to herself, with fierce satisfaction. Now she had indeed 
 some^hing in her power ; now she could indeed reach the very 
 heart of one of them. Her cheek glowed, her eyes blazed in 
 her solitude. She would do it. She would abstract Mr. Riv- 
 ers from them utterly, and she would break the heart of their 
 boy. She seemed to hold it in her hand, and crush it, as she 
 pursued these thoughts. This was the horrible effect produced 
 upon a reasonable woman by the appearance of a man who 
 had wronged her. It is not easy to bear the seeming prosperity 
 of the wicked. He had taken from Helen all, except Norah, 
 that made life worth having, and he himself had appeared to 
 her full of jovial talk and laughter, going to visit at Dura, evi- 
 dently a favoured guest. The difficulty was one which David 
 felt even more deeply, and has argued with himself upon in 
 many a strain which religion has made familiar to us as the air 
 we breathe. In the Psalms it is never said that it is wrong to 
 chafe at the prosperity of evil-doers, but only that that pros- 
 perity is short-lived, and that ruin is coming. When Helen 
 suddenly saw her enemy, the wicked man par excellencef the 
 incarnation of wrong and cruelty, flourishing like the green 
 bay-tree, gay and confident as he had always been, it was not 
 wonderful if she took the Old Testament rather than the New 
 for her guide. The only strange thing was, that with the 
 curious inconsistency of human nature, she grasped the weapon 
 that she had suddenly found at her side, tc strike, not him, but 
 his companion. Golden and Burton ! Once more' they had 
 become one to her ; her enemies — the incarnation of murder, 
 slander, and wrong ! 
 
 " Mamma, Ned has walked across with me," said Norah, 
 running in all fresh from the outer air, with a red hood over 
 her brown hair. " May I ask him to come in ? He looks so 
 unhappy, mamma." 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 811 
 
 " I don't see that we have anything to do with his unhappi- 
 ness/' said Helen ; but already he was standing at the door, 
 looking in very wistfully. Norah was rather wistful too ; her 
 heart was relenting over her old vassal; and now there was no 
 Mr. Rivers in the way to take possession of her, and come be- 
 tween her and the looks of others. 
 
 Ned came in with very doubtful step, not knowing whether 
 to be frightened or glad. He was not afraid of Mrs. Drum- 
 mond ; she had never been unkind to him, and there seemed a 
 possibility now that his misery might be over, aiid that Norah 
 might relent. But it was a shock to Ned to find that she did 
 not offer him her hand, but only bowed stijQSy, and began to 
 speak to her daughter. 
 
 *^ You are early to-night," she said. " I did not expect you 
 so soon." 
 
 " Oh, mamma, soon ! Why, it is eleven ; and you have the 
 tea-things still on the table. Mamma, I shall never be able to 
 go anywhere, if you behave so. You have not. had any 
 tea." 
 
 " I have not wanted it. I did not observe that it was there," 
 said Helen, seating herself on her former seat by the fire. Tn 
 doing this, she turned her back upon Ned, who, startled and 
 wounded, did not know what to do. Norah was alarmed too. 
 She made a sign to him to sit down, and then went to her 
 mother, taking her hand, 
 
 ** Mamma, you are not well," she said. 
 
 " I a.m quite well. I fear, however, I shall not be good com- 
 pany for — Mr. Burton to-night." 
 
 " Mamma ! Why it is only Ned ! " 
 
 " He is Mr. Burton's son," said Helen, trembling with emo- 
 tion. ** Norah, do you remember the man who murdered your 
 fathei , and tried to disgrace him — Golden — (hat man 1 Well, 
 I have just seen him drive up with Mr. Burton to Dura. They 
 paused, and pointed out this house to each other- -the place 
 where their victims were living. You may understand why I 
 am not fit company for — Mr. Burton to-night." 
 
 " Oh, my poor, dear mother ? have you had this to bear, 
 with no one to support you 1 I will never go out and leave 
 you again.'^ 
 
 " The sight of his face is like a curse to me," said Helen, 
 
812 
 
 AT HIS OATES. 
 
 sci^rcely knowing what ghe said. '' I have had as much as I 
 can bear for one night." 
 
 ''Yes, dear mamma, so you have," said soothing Norah. 
 And then behind her mother's back she made an imperative 
 sign to poor Ned, whispering, " Go awav ; go away 1" 
 
 He stumbled up to his feet, poor fellow ! so dreadfully dis- 
 appointed that he could scarcely find voice enough to speak. 
 But yet his instinct was to strike one blow in self-defence. 
 
 " Mrs. Drummond," he said, clearing his voice, " I don't 
 know much about Mr. Golden ; but if he is such a man as you 
 say, my father must be deceived ; and I have nothing at all to 
 do with it. Is it fair to punish me ?" 
 
 " Oh, your father ! " said Helen, facing suddenly round upnon 
 him, with a flush on her face and the tremulous movement W 
 passion in all her frame. If she had not been so agitated, she 
 would not have spoken so, let us hope, to the man's son. 
 " Your father is not deceived. I don't say you know. But 
 you are his son." 
 
 " Good evening, Norah ! " said Ned ; he crushed his hat be- 
 tween his hands, and went straight out without another word. 
 What a change from the hopeful spirit in which he had crossed 
 the threshold two minutes before ! But like many a man who 
 makes an abrupt retreat, Ned found he fared the worse for his 
 impetuosity when he had got outside. He might have stayed 
 and asked some questions about it, fathomed it somehow, tried 
 to discover what was the meaning of it. He walked up the 
 avenue, upon which the moon was shining bright, so confused 
 and troubled that he could not tell certainly which was the 
 cloud floating along at a breakneck pace before the wind and 
 which the true shadows, themselves immovable, which his rapid 
 progress made almost as wildly fugitive. He thought he had 
 been on the eve of renewed happiness, and lo ! now he found 
 himself pushed further off" than ever ; repulsed, he could not 
 tell how. A tide of wild fancy rushed through his mind, carry- 
 ing a hundred thoughts upon it as the wind carried the cloud. 
 Sometimes it was the image of Mrs. Drummond which was up- 
 permost, sometimes a wondering puzzled question about his 
 father, sometimes the name of Golden. He remembered dimly 
 he trial and the comments upon the latter, and how his own 
 oung mind had glowed half with indignation, half with sym- 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 313 
 
 pathy. He was better able to judge now ; but Helen's lan- 
 guage sounded violent and exaggerated to him. " The man 
 who murdered your father " — " the sight of his face is like a 
 curse." What language was this for any one in their senses to 
 usel 
 
 A stormy night with a full moon is perhaps the most drama- 
 tic spectacle in nature. The world was flooded with light as 
 Ned, a dark speck in all that whiteness, came out into the 
 open lawns amid which his father's house stood. The wind 
 was driving the clouds across the clear blue at such a desperate 
 pace as might become the pursued and terrified stragglers of a 
 great army ; and the army itself, piled up in dark confused 
 masses in the north, loomed behind the house of Dura, which 
 was inundated by the white radiance. These angry forces 
 were turning to bay, heaping themselves in a threatening mass, 
 glooming in silent opposition to all the splendour and ^ory of 
 the li^ht. Ned's heart was so sick and sore that he gazed at 
 this sight with unusual force of fancy, wondering if it could 
 mean anything ] The moon and the wind were doing all they 
 could to disperse these vapours ; they were driven back upon 
 each other, heaped up in masses, pursued oflf the face of the 
 sky, which over Ned's head was blue and clear as a summer 
 noon. But yet the clouds gathered, held together, stood, as it 
 were, at bay. Did it mean anything ? Was that storm about 
 to burst over the house, which stood so tranquilly, whitened 
 over by the moon, below. This was what Ned asked himself 
 (though he was not usually imaginative) as he went in with an 
 ache in his heart to his father's house. 
 
', ""I 
 
 
 4 
 
 AT HIS OATES. 
 
 111 
 
 t^l 
 
 ii 
 
 
 hi ' 
 
 III 
 
 if I 
 
 [1 11 
 
 i!ii i 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 I HE drawing-room within was very dififerent from the wild 
 conflict of light and darkness outside. There was 
 music going on at one end, some people were reading, 
 some talking. There were flirtations in hand, and grave dis- 
 cussions. In short, the evening was being spent as people are 
 apt to spend the evening when there is nothing particular go- 
 ing on. There had been a good deal of private yawning and 
 inspection of watches throughout the evening, and some of the 
 party had already gone to bed, or rather to their rooms, where 
 they could indulge in the happiness of fancying themselves 
 somewhere else — an amusement which is very popular and ge- 
 neral in a country house. 
 
 But seated in an easy-chair by the fire was a tall man, care- 
 fully dressed, with diamond slikds in his shirt, and a toilette 
 which, though subdued in tone as a gentleman's evening dress 
 must be, was yet too elaborate for the occasion. The fact that 
 this new guest was a stranger to him, and that his father was 
 seated by him in close conversation, made it at once apparent to 
 Ned that it must be Golden. Clara was close to them listening 
 with a look of eager interest to all they said. These three 
 made a little detached group by one side of the fire. At the 
 other corner sat Mrs. Burton, with her little feet on a footstool, 
 as near as possible to the fender. She had just said good night 
 to the dignified members of the party, the people who had to 
 be considered ; the others who remained were mere young 
 people, about whose proceedings she did not concern herself. 
 She was taking no part in the talk at the other side of the fire. 
 She sat and warmed her little toes and pondered ; her vivid 
 little mind astir and working, but uninfluenced by, and some- 
 what contemptuous of, what was going on around : and her 
 chilly little person basking in the ruddy warmth of the fire. 
 
 Ned came up and stood by her when he came in. No one 
 took any notice of him, the few persons who remained in the 
 room having other affairs in hand, Ned was fond of his 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 315 
 
 mother, thoush she had never shown any fondness for 
 him. She had done all for him which mere intellect could do. 
 She had been very just to the boy all his life ; when he got 
 into scrapes, as boys will, she had not backed him up emotion- 
 ally, it is true, but she had f<aken all the circumstances into 
 account, and had not judged lim harshly. She had been tole- 
 rant when his father was harsh. She had never lost her tem- 
 per. He had always felt that he could appeal to her sense of 
 justice — to her calm and impartial reason. This is not much like 
 the confidence with which a boy generally throws himself upon 
 his mother's sympathy, yet it was a great deal in Ned's case. 
 And accordingly he loved his mother. Mrs. Burton, too, loved 
 him perhaps more than she loved any one. She was doing 
 her best to break his heart ; but that is not at all uncommon 
 even when parents and children adore each other. And then 
 Ned was not aware that his mother had any share intentionally 
 or otherwise in the cruel treatment he had received. 
 '' Who is that ? " he asked under his breath. 
 " A Mr. Golden, a friend of your father's," said Mrs. Bur- 
 on, lifting her eyes and turning them calmly upon the person 
 she named. There was no feeling in them of one kind or an- 
 other, and yet Ned felt that she at least did not admire Mr. 
 Golden, and it was a comfort to him. He went forward to 
 the fire, and placed himself, as an Englishman loves to do, in 
 front of it. He stood there for ten minutes or so, paying no 
 particular attention to the conversation on his right hand. His 
 father, however, looked more animated than he had done for 
 a long time, and Clara was bending forward with a faint rose- 
 tint from the fire tinging the whiteness of her forehead and 
 throat, and deeper roses glowing on her cheeks. Her blue 
 eyes were following Mr Golden's movements as he spoke, her 
 hair was shining like crisp gold in the light. She was such 
 a study of colour, of splendid flesh and blood, as Rubens would 
 have worshipped ; and Mr. Golden had discrimination enough 
 to peftjeive it. He stopped to address himself to Clara. He 
 turned to her, and gave her looks of admiration, for which her 
 brother, bitterly enough biassed against him on his own ac- 
 count, could have " throttled the fellow ! " Ned grew more 
 and more wrathful as he looked on. And in the meantime the 
 late young ladies came fluttering to say good night to their 
 
 •mt'-.'kmi!*e>»mr^mmmmmi»- 
 
316 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 hostess j the young men went off to the smoking-room, where 
 Ned knew he ought to accompany them, but did not, being too 
 fully occupied ; and thus the family were left alone. Notwith- 
 standing, nowever, his wrath and his curiosity, it was only the 
 sound of one name which suddenly made the conversation by 
 his side quite articulate and intelligible to Ned. 
 
 " I hear the Drummond has a pretty daughter ; that is a 
 new weapon for her. Burton. I wonder you venture to have 
 such a family established at your gates." 
 
 " The daughter is not particularly pretty ; not so pretty by 
 a long way as Helen was," said Mr Burton. " I don't see 
 what harm she can do with poor little Norah. We are not 
 afraid of her, Clara, are we ? " and he looked admiringly at his 
 daughter, and laughed. 
 
 As for Clara she grew crimson. She was not a girl of much 
 feeling, but still there was something of the woman in her. 
 
 " I don't understand how we could be supposed to be afraid 
 for Norah Drummond," she said. 
 
 " But I assure you I do," said Mr. Golden. *' Pardon me, 
 but I don't suppose you have seen the Drummond herself, the 
 Drummond mamma — in a fury." 
 
 " Father," said Ned, " is Mr. Golden aware that the lady 
 he is speaking of is our relation — and friend ? Do you mean 
 to suffer her to be so spoken of in your house 1 " 
 
 " Hold your tongue, Ned." 
 
 " Ned, to be sure it is Ned. Why, my boy, you have grown 
 out of all recollection," said Golden, jumping up with a great 
 show of cordiality, and holding out his hand. 
 
 Ned bowed, and drew a step nearer his mother. He had his 
 bands in his pockets ; there were times, no doubt, when his 
 manners left a great deal to be desired. 
 
 " Ah, I see ! there arc spells," said Mr Golden, and he took 
 his seat with a hearty laugh — a laugh so hearty that there 
 seemed just a possibility of strain and forced merriment in it. 
 "My dear Miss Burton," he said, in an undertone, •yhich 
 however Ned could hear, " didn't I tell you there was danger 1 
 Here's an example for you sooner than I thought." 
 
 " Mother," said Ned, " can I get your candle 1 I am sure 
 it is time for you to go up-stairs." 
 
 '* Yes, and for Clara too. Run away, child, and take care of 
 
 I \ 
 
AT BtS GATES. 
 
 317 
 
 your roses ; Golden and I have some business to talk over ; 
 run away. As for you, Ned, to-morrow morning I shall have 
 something to say to you." 
 
 * Very well, sir," said Ned solemnly. 
 
 He lighted his mother's candle, and he gave her his arm, 
 having made up his mind not to let her go. The sounds of 
 laughter which came faintly from the smoking-room did not 
 tempt him ; if truth must be told, they tempted Clara much 
 more, who stood for a moment with her candle in her hand, 
 and said to herself, " What fun they must be having ! " and 
 fretted against the feminine fetters which bound her. Such a 
 thought would not have come into Norah's head, nor into Katie 
 Dalton's, nor even into that of Lady Florizel, thoujgh it was a 
 foolish little head enough ; but Clara, who was all flesh and 
 blood, and had been badly brought up, was the one of those 
 four girls who probably would have impressed most deeply a 
 journalist's fancy as illustrating the social problem of English 
 young womanhood. 
 
 Ned led his mother not to her own room, but to his. He 
 made her come in and placed a chair for her before the fire. 
 It is piobable that he had sense enough to feel that had he 
 asked her consent to his marriage with Norah Drummond he 
 would have found difficulties in his way ; but short of this, he 
 had full confidence in the justice which indeed he never had 
 any reason to doubt. 
 
 " Do you like this mai Golden, mother," he asked. " Tell 
 me what is his connection with us ] " 
 
 " His connection is, I suppose, a business connection with 
 your father," said Mrs. Burton. " For the rest, I neither like 
 him nor dislike him. He is well enough, 1 suppose, in his 
 way." 
 
 " Mrs. Drummond does not think so," said Ned. 
 
 " Ah, Mrs. Drummond ! She is a woman of what are called 
 strong feelings. I don't suppose she ever stopped to inquire 
 into the motives of anybody who went against her in her life. 
 She jumps at a contlnsion, and reaches it always from her own 
 point of view. According to her view of affairs, I don't won- 
 der, with her disposition, that she should hate him." 
 
 " Why, mother 1 " 
 
 " Well, said Mrs. Burton, " I am not in the habit of using 
 
us 
 
 At His OAfllS. 
 
 li fiP 
 tn 
 
 words which would come naturally to a mind like Mrs. Drum- 
 mond's. But from her point of view, I should say, she m,U8t 
 believe that he ruined her husband — drove him to suicide, and 
 then did all he could to ruin his reputation. These are things, 
 I allow, which people do not readily forget." 
 
 " And, mother, do you believe aU this ? Is it true V 
 " I state it in a different way," she said. " Mr. Golden, I 
 suppose, thought the business could be redeemed, to start with. 
 When he drew poor Mr. Drummond into active work in the 
 concern, he did it in a moment when there was nobody else to 
 refer to. And then you must remember, Ned, that Mr. Drum- 
 mond had enjoyed a good deal of profit, and had as much right 
 as any of the others to suffer in the loss. He was ignorant of 
 business, to be sure, and did not know what he was doing ; but 
 then an ignorant man has no right to go into business. Mr. Gol- 
 den is very sharp, and he had to preserve himself if he could. It 
 was quite natural he should take advantage of the other's fool- 
 ishness. And then I don't suppose he ever imagined that poor 
 Mr. Drummond would commit suicide. He himself would 
 never havedoneit under similar circumstances — nor your father." 
 
 " Had my father anything to do with this 1 " said Ned 
 hoarsely. 
 
 " That is not the question," said Mrs. Burton. " But neither 
 the one nor the other would have done any thing so foolish. 
 How were they to suppose Mr. Drummond would ? This sort 
 of thing requires a power of realising other people's ways of 
 thinking which few possess, Ned. After he was dead, and it 
 could not be helped, I don't find anything surprising," she went 
 on, putting her feet nearer the fire, "in the fact that Mr. 
 Golden turned it to his advantage. It could not hurt Drum- 
 mond any more, you know. Of course, it hurt his wife's feelings ; 
 but I am not clear how far Golden was called upon to consider 
 the feelings of Drummond's wife. It was a question of life and 
 death for himself. Of course, I do not believe for a moment, 
 and I don't suppose anybody whose opinion is worth consider- 
 ing, could believe that a poor, innocent, silly mah destroyed 
 those books " 
 
 " Mother I don't know what you are speaking of; but it 
 seems to me as if you were describing the most devilish piece 
 of villany " 
 
At HIS GATES. 
 
 di9 
 
 " People do employ such words, no doubt," saidjMrs. Burton 
 calmly ; " I don't myself. But if that is how it appears to your 
 mind, you are right enough to express yourself so. Of course, 
 that is Mrs. Drummond's opinion. I have something to say to 
 you about the Drummonds, Ned." 
 
 " One moment, mother," he cried, with a tremor and heat of 
 excitement which puzzled her perhaps more than anything she 
 had yet met with in the matter. For why should Ned be dis- 
 turbed by a thing which did not concern him, and which had 
 happened so long ago 1 " You have mentioned my father. 
 
 You have said theyf speaking of this man's infamous ^Was 
 
 my father concerned V* 
 
 Mrs. Burton turned, and looked her son in the face. The 
 smallest little ghost of agitation — a shadow so faint that it 
 would not have showed upon any other face — ^glided over hers. 
 
 " That is just the point on which I can give you least infor- 
 mation," she said ; and then, after a pause, " Ned," she 
 continued, " you are grown up ; you are capable of judging for 
 yourself. I tell you I don't know. I am not often deterred by 
 any cause from following out a question I am interested in ; 
 but I have preferred not to follow up this. I put away 
 all the papers, thinking I might some day care to go into 
 it more deeply. You can have them if you like. To tell 
 the truth, she added, sinking her voice, betrayed into a degree 
 of confidence which, perhaps, she had never given to human 
 creature before, *^ I think it is a bad sign that this man has 
 come back." 
 
 " A sign of what 1" 
 
 Mrs. Burton's agitation increased. Though it was the very 
 slightest of agitations, it startled Ned, so unlike was it to his 
 mother." 
 
 " Ned," she said, with a shiver that might be partly cold, 
 " nobody that I ever heard of is so strong as their own princi 
 pies. I do not know, if it came to me to have to bear it~ 
 whether I could bear ruin and disgrace." > 
 
 " Kuin and disgrace !" cried Ned. 
 
 " I don't know if I have fortitude enough. Perhaps I could 
 by myself ; I should feel that it was brought about by natural 
 means, and that blame was useless and foolish. But if we had 
 to bear the comments in the newspapers, the a k of very body 
 
M 
 
 320 
 
 AT His GATfiS. 
 
 / 
 
 
 illiiilli 
 
 ili| 
 
 the reflections on our past, I don't know whether I have fortitude 
 to bear it ; I feel as if I could not." 
 
 " Mother, has this been in your mind, while I have been 
 thinking you took so little interest 1 My poor little mamma !" 
 
 The wicked little woman ! And yet all that she had been 
 saying was perfectly true. 
 
 " Ned," she said, with great seriousness, " this dread, which 
 I can never get quite out of my mind, is the reason why I have 
 been so very earnest about the Merewethers. I have never, 
 you know, supported your father's wish that you should go into 
 the business. On the contrary, I have always endeavoured to 
 secure you your own career. I have wished that you at least 
 should be safe " 
 
 " Safe !" he cried. " Mother, if there is a possibility of 
 disgrace, how can I, how can any of us, escape from it — and 
 more especially 1 1 And if there is a chance of ruin, why I 
 should be as great a villain as that man is, should I consent to 
 carry it into another house." 
 
 ** It is quite a different case," she cried, with some eagerness, 
 seeing she had overshot her mark. " I hope there will be 
 neither ; and you have not the least reason to suppose that 
 either is possible. Look round you ; go with your father to the 
 oflB^ce, inspect his concerns as much as you please ; you will see 
 nothing but evidences of prosperity. So far as you know, or 
 can know, your father is one of the most prosperous men in 
 England. Nobody would have a word to say against you, and 
 I shall be rich enough to provide for you. If there is any 
 down-fall at all, which I do not expect, nobody would ever 
 imagine for a moment that you knew anything of it ; and your 
 career and your comfort would be safe." 
 
 " mother ! mother !" Poor Ned turned away from her 
 and hid his face in his hands. This was worse to him than all 
 the rest. 
 
 " You ought to think it over most carefully," she said ; " all 
 this is perfectly clear before you. I may have taken fright, 
 though it is not very like me. I may be fanciful enough" (Mrs. 
 Burton smiled at herself, and even Ned in his misery half 
 smiled) " to consider this man as a sort of raven, boding mis- 
 fortune. But you know nothing about it ; there is abundant 
 time for you to save yourself and your credit ; and this is the 
 
JLT HIS OAT£S. 
 
 321 
 
 wish which, above everything in the world, I have most at 
 heart, that, if there is going to be any disaster — I don't expect 
 it, I don't believe in it ; but mercantile men are always subject 
 to misfortune — ^you might at least be safe. I will not say any- 
 thing more about it to-night ; but think it over, Ned." 
 
 She rose as she spoke and cook up her candle, and her son 
 bent over her and touched her little cold face with his hot lips. 
 " I will send you the papers," she said as she went away. 
 Strange little shadow of a mother ! She glided along the pas- 
 sage, not without a certain maternal sentiment — a feeling that 
 that on the whole she was doing what was best for her boy. 
 She could provide for him, whatever happened ; and if evil came • 
 he might so manage as to thrust himself out from under the 
 shadow of the evil. She was a curious problem, this woman ; 
 she could enter into Mr. Golden's state of mind, but not into 
 her son's. She could fathom those struggles of self-preservation 
 which might lead a man into fraud and robbery ; but she could 
 not enter into those which tore a generous, sensitive, honour- 
 able soul in pieces. She was an analyst, with the lowest view 
 of human nature, and not a sympathetic being entering into the 
 hearts of others by means of her own. 
 
 No smoking-room, no jovial midnight party, received Ned that 
 night. He sat up till the slow November morning dawned 
 reading those papers ; and then he threw himself on his bed, 
 and hid his face from the cold increasing light. A bitterness 
 which he could not put into words, which even to himself it 
 was impossible to explain, filled his heart. There was nothing, 
 or at least very little, about his father in these papers. There was 
 no accusation made against Mr. Burton, nothing that any one 
 could take hold of— only here and there a word of ominous 
 suggestion which chilled the blood in his veins. But Golden's 
 character was not spared by any one ; it came out iu all its 
 blackness, more distinct even than it could have done at the 
 moment these events occurred. Men had read the story at the 
 time with their minds full of foregone conclusions on the subject 
 — of prejudices and the heat of personal feeling. But to Ned 
 it was history ; and as he read, Golden's character stood out be- 
 fore him as in a picture. And this man, this deliberate cold- 
 blooded scoundrel was sleeping calmly under his father's roof — 
 a guest whom his father delighted to honour, Ned groaned 
 V 
 
322 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 and covered his eyes with his hands to shut out the hazy No- 
 vember morning, as if it were a spy that might find out some- 
 thing from his haggard countenance. Sleep was far from his 
 eyes ; his brain buzzed with the unaccustomed crowd of 
 thoughts that whirled and rustled through it. A hundred 
 projects, all very practicable at the first glance and impossible 
 afterwards, flashed before him. The only thing that he never 
 thought of was that which his mother had called the wish of 
 her heart — that he should escape and secure his own career out 
 of the possible fate that might be impending. This, of all pro- 
 jects, was the only one which, first and last, was impossible to 
 Ned. 
 
 The first step which he took in the matter was one strangely 
 different. He had to go through all the ordinary remarks of 
 the breakfast-table upon his miserable looks ; but he was too 
 much agitated to be very well aware what people were saying 
 to him. He watched anxiously till he saw his father prepare 
 to leave the house. Fortunately Mr. Golden was not with him. 
 Mr. Golden was a man of luxury, who breakfasted late, and 
 had not so much as made his appearance at the hour when Mr. 
 Burton, who, above eveiything, was a man of business, started 
 for the station. Ned went out with him, avoiding his mother's 
 eye. He took from his father's hand a little courier's bag full 
 of papers which he was taking with him. 
 
 " I will carry it for you, sir," he said. 
 
 Mr Burton was intensely surprised : the days were long gone 
 by when Ned would strut by his side, putting out his chest in 
 imitation of his father. 
 
 " Wants some money, I suppose !" Mr. Burton — no longer 
 the boys proud progenitor, but a wary parent, awake to all the 
 possible snares and traps which are set for such — said to him- 
 self. 
 
 They had reached the village before Ned had begun to speak 
 of anything more important than the weather or the game. 
 Then he broke into his subject quite abruptly. \ 
 
 "Father," he said, "within the last few days I have been 
 thinking of a great many things. I have been thinking that 
 for your only son to set his face against business was hard lines 
 on you. Will you tell me frankly whether a fellow like me, 
 j;rained so differently, would be of real use to you 1 Could I 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 323 
 
 help you to keep things straight, save you from being cheated ? 
 — do anjrthing for you ] I have changed my ideas on a great 
 many subjects. This is what I want to know." 
 
 " Upon my word a wonderful conversion," said his father 
 with a laugh ; ** there must be some famous reason for a change 
 so sudden. Help me to keep things straight !— keep me from being 
 cheated! You simpleton ! you have at least a capital opinion 
 of yourself." 
 
 " But it was with that idea, I suppose, that you thought of 
 putting me into the business," said Ned, overcoming with an 
 eflfort his first boyish impulse of offence. 
 
 " Perhaps in the long-run," said Mr. Burton jocularly ; " but 
 not all at once my fine fellow. Your Greek and your Latin 
 won't do you much service in the city, my boy. Though you 
 have taken your degree — and a deuced deal of money that 
 costs, a great deal more than it's worth — you would have to 
 begin by singing very small in the office. You would be jun- 
 ior clerk to begin with at fifty pounds a year. How should 
 you find that suit your plans, my fine gentleman, Ned? " 
 
 "Was that all you intended me for?" asked Ned sternly. 
 A rigid air and tone was the best mask he could put upon lus 
 bitter mortification. 
 
 "Certainly at first," said Mr. Burton; " but I have changed 
 my mind altogether on the subject," he added sharply. "I see 
 that I was altogether deceived in you. You never would be 
 of any use in business. If you were in Golden's hands, per- 
 haps — ^but you have let yourself be influenced by some wretched 
 fool or other." 
 
 " Has Mr Golden anything to say to your business ?" asked . ed. 
 
 The question took his father by surprise. 
 
 "Confound your impudence ! " he cried, after a keen ^ance 
 at his son and sputter of confused words, which sounded very 
 much like swearing. " What has given you so sudden an in- 
 terest in my business, I should like to know ? Do you think I 
 am too old to manage it for myself?" 
 
 " It was the sight of this man, father," said Ned, with boy- 
 ish simplicity and earnestness, " and the knowledge who he 
 was. Couldn't I serve you instead of him? I pledge you my 
 word to give up all that you consider nonsense, to settle stead- 
 ily to business. I am not a fool, though I am ignorant. And 
 
w. 
 
 111 
 
 324 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 then if I am ignorant, no man could serve you so truly as 
 your own son would, whose interests are the same as yours 
 Try me ! I could serve you better than he." 
 
 "You preposterous idiot !" cried Mr. Burton, who had made 
 two or three changes from anger to ridicule while this speech 
 was being delivered. " You serve me better than Gdlden ! — 
 Golden, by Jove! And may I ask if I were to accept this 
 splendid offer of yours, what would you expect as an equiva- 
 lent 1 My consent to some wretched marriage or other, I sup- 
 pose, allowance doubled, home provided, and my blessing, eh ? 
 I suppose that is what you are aiming at. Out with it — ^how 
 much was the equivalent to be 1 
 
 " Nothing," said Ned. He had grown crimson ; his eyes 
 were cast down, not to betray the feeling in them — a choking 
 sensation was in his throat. Then he added slowly — "not 
 even the fifty pounds a year you offered me just now — nothing 
 but permission to stand by you, to help to keep danger off." 
 
 Mr. Burton took the bag roughly out of his hand. " Go 
 home," he said " you young ass ; and be thankful I don't chas- 
 tise you for your impudence. Danger ! — I should think you 
 were the danger if you were not such a fool. Go home ! I 
 don't desire your further company. A pretty help and defen- 
 der you would be ! " 
 
 And Ned found himself suddenly standing alone outside the 
 station, his fingers tingling with the roughness with which the 
 bag had been snatched from him. He stood still for half a 
 minute, undecided, and then he turned round and strolled list- 
 lessly back along the street. He was very unhappy. His 
 father was still his father, though he had begun to distrust, 
 and had long given over expecting any sympathy from him. 
 And the generous resolution, which it had cost him so much 
 pain to make, had not only come to nothing, but had been 
 trampled under foot with derision. His heart was very sore. 
 It was a hazy morning, with a frosty, red sun tr3ning hard to 
 break through the mist ; and everything moved swiftly to re- 
 sist the cold, and every step rang sharp upon the road ; except 
 poor Ned's, who had not the heart to do anything but saunter 
 listlessly and slowly, with his hands in his pockets and his eyes 
 fixed wistfully upon nothing. Everything in a moment had 
 become blank to him. He wondered why the people took the 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 325 
 
 trouble to take off their hats to him — ^to one who was the heir 
 of misery and perhaps of disgrace and ruin, as his mother had 
 said. Ruin and disgrace ! What awful words they are when 
 you come to think of it — dreadful to look forward to, and still 
 more dreadful to bear if any man could ever realise their ac- 
 tual arrival to himself ! 
 
 Norah was standing at the open door of the Gatehouse. 
 He thought for a moment that he would pass without taking 
 any notice ; and then it occurred to him in a strange visionary 
 way that it might be the last time he ahould see her. He stop- 
 ped, and she said a cold little " Good morning " to him, with- 
 out even offering her hand. Then a sudden yearning seized 
 poor Ned. 
 
 " Norah," he said, in that listless way, " I wish you would 
 say something kind to me to-day. I don't know why I should 
 be so anxious for it, but I think it would do me good. If you 
 knew how unhappy I am " 
 
 ** Oh Ned, for heaven's sake don't talk such nonsense," cried 
 impatient Norah. " You unhappy, that never knew what it 
 was to have anything go wrong! It makes me quite ill to 
 hear you. You that have got everything that heart can desire ; 
 because you can't just exactly have your own way — about — 
 me — . Oh, go away ; I cannot put up with such nonsense — 
 and to me, too, that knows what real trouble means ! " 
 
 Poor Ned made no protest against this impatient decision. 
 He put on his hat in a bewildered way, with one long look at 
 her, and then passed, and disappeared within his father's gates. 
 Norah did not know what to make of it. She stood at the 
 door, bewildered too, ready to wave her hand and smile at him 
 when he looked round ; but he never looked round. He went 
 on slowly, listlessly, as if he did not care for anything — doing 
 what both had told him — the father whom he had been willing 
 to give up his life to — the girl who had his heart. 
 
 That afternoon he carried out their commands still more 
 fully. He went away from his father's house. On a visit, it 
 was said ; but to go away on a visit in the middle of the shoot- 
 ing season, when your father's house is full of guests, was, all 
 the young men thought, the most extraordinary thing which, 
 even in the freedom of the nineteenth century, an only son, 
 deputy master of the establishment, had ever been known to do. 
 
:l:ii,i:; 
 
 326 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 mm 
 
 i 
 
 31' 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 » 
 
 ,T was a long time before it was fully understood in Dura 
 what had become of Ned. At first it was said he had 
 ^^ gone on a visit, then that he had joined some of his col- 
 lege friends in an expedition abroad ; but before spring it be- 
 fan to be fully understood, though nobody could tell how, that 
 [ed had gone ofif from his home, and that though occasional 
 letters came from him, his family did not always know where 
 he was, or what he was about. There was no distinct autho- 
 rity for this, but the whole neighbourhood became gradually 
 aware of it. The general idea was that he had gone away be- 
 cayse Norah Drummond had refused him -, and the consequence 
 was that Norah Drummond was looked upon with a certain 
 mixture of disaproval and envy by the youthful community. 
 The girls felt to their hearts the grandeur of her position. 
 Some were angry, taking Ned's part, and declaring vehemently 
 that she had " led him on ; " some were sympathetic, feeling 
 that poor Norah was to be pitied for the tragical necessity of 
 dismissing a lover ; but all felt the proud distinction she had 
 acquired by thus driving a man (they did not say boy) to de- 
 spair. The boys, for the most part, condemned Ned as a muff — 
 but in their hearts felt a certain pride in him, as proving that 
 their side was capable of a great act of decision and despair. 
 As for Norah, when the news burst upon her, her kind little 
 heart was broken. She cried till her pretty eyes were like an 
 old woman's. She gave herself a violent headache, and turned 
 away from all consolation, and denounced herself as the wickedest 
 and cruellest of beings. It was natural that Norah should be- 
 lieve it implicitly. After that scene in the Rectory garden, 
 when poor Ned, in his boyish passion, had half thrown the re- 
 sponsibility of his life upon her shoulders, there had\been other 
 scenes of a not unsimilar kind ; and there was that last meet- 
 ing at the door of the Gatehouse, when she had dismissed him 
 so summarily. Oh, if he had only looked round, Norah 
 thought ; and she remembered^ with a passing gleam of couso* 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 327 
 
 lation, that she had intended to wave her hand to him. " What 
 shall I do ? Oh, what shall I do ? " she said, " if— anything 
 should happen to him, mamma, I shall have killed him ! It 
 anybody calls me a murderess, I shall not have a word to 
 say." 
 
 " Not so bad as that, my darling," Helen said, soothing her ; 
 but Helen herself was very deeply moved. This was the re- 
 venge, the punishment she had dreamt of. By her means, 
 whom he had injured so deeply, Eeginald Burton's only son 
 had been driven away from him, and all his hopes and plans 
 for his boy brought to a sudden end. It was revenge ; but the 
 revenge was not sweet. Christianity, heaven knows, has not 
 done all for us which it might have done, but yet it has so far 
 changed the theories of existence that the vague craving of the 
 sufferer for punishment to its oppressors give little gratification 
 when it is fulfilled. Helen was humbled to the dust with re- 
 morse and compunction for the passing thought, which could 
 scarcely be called an intention, the momentary, visionary sense 
 of triumph she had felt in her daughter's power, (as she be- 
 lieved) to disturb all the plans of the others. Now that was 
 done which it had given her a vague triumph to think of ; and 
 though her tears were not so near the surface as Norah's, her 
 shame and pain were deeper. And this was all the more the 
 fact because she dared not express it. A word of sympathy 
 from her (she felt) would have looked like nothing so much as 
 the waving of a flag of triumph. And, besides, from Ned's 
 own family there came no word of complaint. 
 
 The Dura people put the very best face upon it possible. 
 Mrs. Burton, who had never been known to show any emotion 
 in her life, of course, made none of her feelings visible. Her 
 husband declared that " my young fool of a son " preferred 
 amusing himself abroad to doing any work at home. Clara 
 was the only one who betrayed herself. She assured Katie 
 Dalton, in confidence, that she never could bear to see that 
 hateful Norah again — that she was sure it was all her fault. 
 That Ned would never have looked at her had not she every- 
 thing in her power to " draw him on " — and then cast him off 
 because somebody better worth having came in her way. 
 Clara's indignation was sharp and vehement. It was edged 
 with her own grievance, which she was not too proud to refer 
 
 ,'sm»''>'!.Tim»'tmi'-imi 
 
328 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 to in tenns which could not disguise her feelings. But she was 
 the only one of her house who allowed that Ned's disappear- 
 ance had any significance. His mother said nothing at all on 
 the subject even to her husband and her child ; but in reality 
 it was the severest blow that fate had ever aimed at her. Her 
 hopes for his " career " toppled over like a house of cards. The 
 Merew ethers, astounded at the apology which had to be sent 
 in reply to their invitation to Ned for Christmas, suddenly 
 slackened in their friendship. Lady Florizel ceased to write to 
 Clara, and the Marchioness sent no more notes, weighted with 
 gilded corontts, to her dear Mrs. Burton. So far as that noble 
 household was concerned, Ned's prospects had come to an end. 
 The son of so rich a man, future proprietor of Dura, might have 
 been accepted had he been on the spot to press his suit ; but 
 the Ladies Merewether were young and fair, and not so poor as 
 to be pressed upon any one. So Lady Florizel and the parlia- 
 mentary influence sunk into the background ; and keenly to 
 the intellectual machine, which served Mrs. Burton instead of 
 a heart, went the blow, This was the moment, she felt, in 
 which Ned could have made himself " safe," and disentangled 
 himself from the fatal web which instinct told her her husband 
 was weaving about his feet. There was no confidence on busi- 
 ness matters between Mr. Burton and his wife ; but a woman 
 cannot be a man's constant companion for twenty years without 
 divining him, and understanding, without the aid of words, 
 something of what is going on in his mind. She had felt, even 
 before Golden's arrival, a certain vague sense of difficulty and 
 anxiety. His arrival made her sure of it. He had been abroad, 
 withdrawn from the observation of English mercantile society 
 for all these years ; but his talents as the pilot of a ship, des- 
 perately making way through rocks and sandbanks, were suffi- 
 ciently well known ; and his appearance was confirmation sure 
 to Mrs. Burton of all her fears. Thus she felt in her reticent, 
 silent breast that her boy had thrown up his only chance. The 
 son of the master of Dura could have done so much — the son 
 of a bankrupt could do nothing. He might have withdrawn 
 himself from all risks — established himself in a sure position — 
 had he taken her advice ; and he had not taken it. It was the 
 hardest personal blow she had ever received. It did not move 
 her to tears, as it would have done most women. She had not 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 329 
 
 that outlet for her sorrow ; but it disarranged the intellectual 
 machinery for the moment, and made her feel incapable of more 
 thinking or planning. Even her motherhood had thus its an- 
 guish, probably as deep an anguish as she was capable of feel- 
 ing. She was balked once more — her labour was in vain, and 
 her hopes in vain. She had more mind than all of her family 
 put together, and she knew it ; but here once more, as so often 
 m her experience, the fleshly part in which she was so weak, 
 overrode the mind, and brought its councils to nought. It 
 would be hard to estimate the kind and degree of suffering 
 which such a conviction brought. 
 
 Time went on, however, as it always does ; stole on, while 
 people were thinking of other things, discussing Ned's disap- 
 pearance and Norah s remorse, and Mr. Nicholas's hopes of a 
 living, and Mary's trousseau. When the first faint glimmer of 
 the spring began, they had another thing to talk of, which was 
 that Cyril Rivers had appeared on the scene again, often com- 
 ing down from London to spend a day, and then so ingratiating 
 himself with the Rectory people, and even with Nicholas, the 
 bridegroom; elect, that now and then he was asked to spend a 
 night. This time, however, he was not invited to the great 
 house ; neither would Mrs. Drummond ask him, though he was 
 constantly there. She was determined that nobody should say 
 she drew him on this time. But the fact was that 
 Helen's heart was sick of the subject altogether, and that she 
 would have gone out of her way to avoid any one who had 
 been connected with the Burtons, or who might be supposed to 
 minister to that revenge of which she was so bitterly ashamed. 
 While Cyril Rivers went and came to Dura village, Mr. Golden 
 became an equally frequent visitor at the House. The city 
 men in the white villas had been filled with consternation at 
 the first sight of him ; but latterly began to make stiff returns 
 to his hearty morning salutations when he went up to town 
 along with them. It was so long ago ; and nothing positively 
 had been proved against him ; and it was hard, they said, to 
 crush a man altogether, who, possibly, was trying to amend his 
 ways. Perhaps they would have been less charitable had he been 
 living piywhere else than at the great house. Gradually, how- 
 ever, his presence became expected in Dura ; he was always 
 there when there were guests or festivities going on, And 
 
 *«)W5w«s^BW*a»»s^»-^ fonv^mimimf!.*'- 
 
• 380 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 I ' 1 .. 
 
 never had the Burtons been so gay. They seemed to celebrate 
 their son's departure by a double rush of (Ussipation. The idea 
 of any trouble being near so pleasant, so bnlliant a place was 
 ridiculous, and whatever Mrs. Burton's thoughts on the subject 
 might have been, she said nothing, but sent out her invitations, 
 and assembled her guests with her usual calm. The Bectory 
 people were constantly invited, and so indeed were the Drum- 
 monds, though neither Norah nor her mother had the heart to go. 
 
 Things were in this gay and festive state when Mr. Baldwin 
 suddenly one morning paid his daughter a visit. It was not 
 one of his usual visits, accompanied by the two aunts, and the 
 old man-servant and the two maids. These visits had grown 
 rarer of late. Mrs. Burton had so many guests, and of such 
 rank, that to arrange the days for her father on which the 
 minister of the chapel could be asked to dinner, and a plain 
 joint provided, grew more and more difficult , while the old 
 people grew more and more alarmed and indignant at the way 
 Clara was going on. " Her dress alone must cost a fortune," 
 her Aunt Louisa said. " And the boy brought up as if he were 
 a young Lord ; and the girl never to touch a needle nor an ac- 
 count-book in her life," said Mrs. Everest ; and they all knew 
 by experience that to " speak to " Clara was quite futile. " She 
 will take her own way, brother, whatever you say," was the 
 verdict of both ; and Mr. Baldwin knew it was a true one. 
 Nevertheless, there came a day when he felt it was his duty to 
 speak to Clara. '' I have something to say to Haldane ; and 
 something to arrange with the chapel managers," he said apolo- 
 getically to his sisters ; and went down all alone, in his black 
 coat and his white tie with his hat very much on the back of 
 his head, to his daughter's great house. 
 
 ** I have got some business with Haldane and with the chapel 
 managers," he said, repeating his explanation ; " and I thought 
 as I was here, Clara, I might as well come on and see you." 
 
 " You are very welcome always, papa." 
 
 " But I don't know if I shall be welcome to-day," he went 
 on, " because I want to speak to you, Clara." ^^ 
 
 " I know," she said with a faint smile, " about our extrava- 
 gance and all that. It is of no use. I may as well say this to 
 you at once. I cannot stop it if I would ; and I don't know 
 hat I would stop it if I could." 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 331 
 
 " Do you know," he said, coming forward to her, and lay- 
 ing his hand on her shoulder ; for though he wore his hat on 
 the back of his head, and took the chair at public meetings, he 
 was a kind man, and loved his only child. " Do you know, 
 Clara, that in the City — you may despise the City, my dear, 
 but it is all- important to your husband — do you know they 
 say Burton is going too fast 1 I wish I could contradict it, 
 but I can't. They say ho is in a bad way. They say " 
 
 " Tell me everything, papa. I am quite able to bear it." 
 
 " Well, my dear, I don't want to make you unhappy," said 
 Mr. Baldwin, drawing a long breath, " but people do begin to 
 whisper, in the best informed circles, that he is very heavily 
 involved." 
 
 " Well ? " she said, looking up at him. She too drew a 
 long breath, her face, perhaps, paled by the tenth of the tint. 
 But her blue eyes looked up undaunted, without a shadow in 
 them. Her composure, her calm question, drove even Mr. 
 Baldwin, who was used to his daughter's ways, half out of him- 
 self 
 
 " Well 1 " he cried. " Clara, you must be mad. If this is so, 
 what can you think of yourself, who never try to restrain or to 
 remedy 1--who never made an attempt to retrench or save a 
 penny 1 If your husband has even the slightest shadow of em- 
 barrassment in his business, is this great, splendid house, full 
 of guests and entertainments, the way to help him through." 
 
 '' It is as good a way as any other," she said, still looking at 
 him. " Papa, you speak in ignorance of both him and me. I 
 dofi't know his circumstances ; he does not tell me. It is he 
 that enjoys all this ; not me. And if he really should be in 
 danger, I suppose he thinks he had better enjoy it as long as 
 he can ; and that is my idea too." 
 
 " Enjoy it as long as he can ! Spend other people's money 
 in every kind of folly and extravagance ! " cried Mr Baldwin 
 aghast. "Clara, you must be mad." 
 
 " No, indeed," she said quietly. I am very much in my 
 senses. I know nothing about other people's money. I can- 
 not control Mr. Burton in his business, and he does not tell 
 me. But don't suppose I have not thought this all over. I 
 have taken every circumstance into consideration, papa, and 
 every possibility. If we should ever be ruined, we shall have 
 
332 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 M !!' 
 
 m:^. 
 
 ifv".-; 
 
 
 mi 
 
 ill;(;iii,- 
 
 I 11 ! 
 
 plenty to bear when that comes. There is Clary to be taken 
 into consideration too. If there were only two days between 
 Mr. Burton and bankruptcy I should give a ball on one of 
 those days, Clary has a right to it. This will be her only 
 moment if what you say is true." 
 
 To describe Mr. Baldwin's consternation, his utter amazement, 
 the eyes with which he contemplated his child, would be be- 
 yond my power. He could not, as people say, believe his ears. 
 It seemed to him as if he must be mistsJ^eUj and that her 
 words must have some other meaning, which he did not reach. 
 
 " Clara," he said, faltering, ** you are beyond me. I hope 
 you understand yourself — what — ^you mean. It is beyond 
 
 me." 
 "I 
 
 understand it perfectly," she said ; and then with a little 
 change of tone, " You understand, papa, that I would pot 
 speak so plainly to any one but you. But to you I need not 
 make any secret. If it comes to the worst. Clary and I — ^Ned 
 has deserted us — ^will have enough to bear." 
 
 ** You will always have your settlement, my dear," said her 
 father, quite cowed and overcome, he could not tell why. 
 
 " Yes. I shall have my settlement," she said calmly ; " but 
 there will be enough to bear." 
 
 It was rather a relief to the old man when Clary came in, 
 before whom nothing more could be said. And ho was glad to 
 hurry off again, with such astonishment and pain in his heart 
 as an honest couple mi^ht have felt who had found a perverse 
 fairy changeling in their child's cradle. He had thought that 
 he knew his daughter. *' Clara has a cold exterior," he had 
 said times without number; *'but she has a warm heart." 
 Had she a heart at alii he asked himself; had she a con- 
 science 1 What was she ? — a woman or a The old man 
 
 could have stopt on the way and wept. He was an honest old 
 man, and a kind, but what kind of a strange being was this 
 whom he had nourished so long in his heart 1 It was a relief 
 to him to get among his chapel managers, and to regulate their 
 accounts ; and then he took Mr. Truston, the minister, by the arm, 
 and walked upon him. " Come with me and see Haldane," he 
 said. Mr. Truston was the same man who had wanted to be 
 faithful to Stephen about the magazine, but never had ven« 
 tured upon it yet, 
 
AT ms QATES. 
 
 333 
 
 '* I am afraid you are ill/' said the minister. " Lean upon 
 me. If you will come to my house and take a glass of wine." 
 
 " No, no ; with my daughter so near I should never be a 
 charse to the brethren," said Mr. Baldwin. ** And so poor 
 Haldane gets no better ) It is a terrible burden upon the 
 congregation in Ormond Road." 
 
 " It must be indeed. I am sure they have been very kind ; 
 many congregations— ^ — ^" 
 
 " Many congregations would have thrown oflf the burden ut- 
 terly ; and I confess since they have heard that he has pub- 
 lished again, and has been making money by his books ." 
 
 ^' Ah, yes ; a literary man has such advantages," said the 
 minister with a sigh. 
 
 He did uud want to favour the congregation in Ormond 
 Koad to the detriment of one of his own cloth ; and at the 
 same time it was hard to go against Mr. Baldwin, the lay bishop 
 of the denomination. In this way they came to the Gate- 
 house. Stephen had his proofs before him, as usual ; but the 
 pile of manuscripts was of a different complexion. They were 
 no longer any pleasure to him. The work was still grateful, 
 such as it was, and the power of doing something ; but to 
 spend his life recording tea-meetings was hard. He raised his 
 eyes to welcome his old friend with a certain doubt and almost 
 alarm. He too knew that he was a burden upon the congrega- 
 tion in Ormond Boad. 
 
 " My dear fellow, my dear Stephen ! '^ the old man said, 
 very cordially shaking his hand, " why you are looking quite 
 strong. We shall have him dashing up to Ormond Boad 
 again, Mrs. Haldane, and giving out his text, before we know 
 where we are." 
 
 Stephen shook his head, with such an attempt at smiling as 
 was possible. Mr. Baldwin, however, was not so much afraid of 
 breaking bad news to him as ho had been at the great house. 
 
 " It is high time you should,", he continued, rubbing his 
 hands cheerfully ; " for the friends are falling sadly off. We 
 want you there, or somebody like you, Haldane. How we are 
 to meet the expenses next year is more than I can say." 
 
 A dead silence followed. Miss Jane, who had been arrang- 
 ing Stephen's books in the corner, stopped short to listen. 
 y&^, Haldane put on her spectacles to hear the better : and 
 
 aVS«»i(iv,,S|»riji|**ij:.A»;v 
 
dS4 
 
 At HtS OATSS. 
 
 11 
 
 I # 
 
 poor Mr. Truston, dragged without knowing it into the midst 
 ^ of such a scene, looked around him as if begging everybody's 
 forbearance, and rubbed his hands faintly too. 
 
 "The fact is, my dear Haldane — it was but for five years — 
 and now we've come to the end of the second five — and you 
 have been making money by your books, people say——" 
 
 It was some little time before Stephen could answer, his lips 
 had grown so dry. " I think — I know — what you mean," he 
 said. 
 
 " Y^. I am afraid that is how it must be. Not with my 
 will — not with my will," said Mr. Baldwin ; " but then you 
 see people say you have been making money by your books." 
 
 " He has made sixteen pounds in two years," said Miss 
 Jane. 
 
 Stephen held up his hand hurriedly. " I know how it must 
 be," he said. "Everybody's patience, of course, must give 
 way at last" 
 
 " Yes, that is just about how it is." 
 
 There was very little more said. Mr. Baldwin picked up 
 his hat, which he had put on the floor, and begged the minis- 
 ter to give him his arm again. He shook hands very afifec- 
 tionately with everybody ; he gave them, as it were, his bless- 
 ing. They all bore it as people ought to bear a great shock, 
 with pale faces, without any profane levity. "They take it 
 very well," he said, as he went out. " They are good peo- 
 ple. Oh, my dear Truston, I don't know a greater sign of the 
 difierence between the children of this world and the children 
 of the light than the way in which they receive a sudden 
 blow." 
 
 He had given two such blows within an hour ; he had a 
 light to speak. And in both cases, different as was, the mien 
 of the sufierers, the blow itself had all the appearance of a coup 
 de grcLce. It had not occurred to Mr. Baldwin, when he made 
 that classification, that it w|U3 his own child whom he had taken 
 as the type of the children of wrath. He thought of it in the 
 railway, going home ; and it troubled him. " Poo:^ Clara ! her 
 brain must be affected," he thought ; he had never heard of any- 
 thing so heathenish as her boldly-professed determination to 
 give a ball, if need was, on the eve of her husband's bankrupt- 
 cy, and for the reason that they would have a right to it. It 
 
 1 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 335 
 
 horrified him a great deal more than if she had risked some- 
 body else's money in trade and lost. Poor Clara ! what might 
 be coming upon her 1 But, anyhow, he reflected, she had her 
 settlement, and that she was a child of many prayers. 
 
 Mrs. Burton said nothing of this stroke which had fallen up- 
 on her. It made her fears into certainty, and she took cer- 
 tain steps accordingly, but told nobody. In Stisphen's room 
 at the Gatehouse there was silence, too, all the weary after- 
 noon. They had lost the half of their Uving at a blow. The 
 disaster was too great, too sudden and overwhelming to be 
 spoken of ; and to one of them, to him who was helpless and 
 could do nothing, it tasted like the very bitterness of death. 
 
336 
 
 AT His GATiCS. 
 
 !!!::!!! i 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 ^^[ BS. BUBTON said nothiug about her troubles to any 
 one : she avoided rather than sought confidential in- 
 tercourse with her husband. She formed her plans and 
 declined to receive any further information on the subject. 
 Her argument to herself was that no one could have any right 
 to suppose she knew. When the crash came, if come it must, she 
 would be universally considered the first of the victims. The very 
 fact of her entertainments and splendours would be so much 
 evidence that she knew nothing about it — and indeed what did 
 she know ) her own fears and suspicions, her father's hintj^ of 
 coming trouble — nothing more. Her husband had never said 
 a warning word to her which betrayed alarm or anxiety. She 
 stood on the verge of the precipice, which she felt a moral cer- 
 tainty was before her, and made her arrangements like a queen 
 in the plenitude of her power. " There wSi be enough to bear," 
 she repeated to herself. She called all the county about her 
 in these spring months before people had as yet gone to town. 
 She made Dura blaze with lights and echo with music : she 
 filled it full of guests. She made her entertainments on so 
 grand a scale, that everything that had hitherto been known 
 there was thrown into the shade. The excitement, so far as 
 excitement could penetrate into her steady little soul, sustained 
 and kept her up ; or at least the occupation did, and the thou- 
 sand arrangements, big and little, which were necessary. If 
 her husband was ever tempted to seek her sympathy in these 
 strange, wild, brilliant days which passed like a dream — if the 
 burden on his shoulders ever so bowed the man down that he 
 would have been glad to lean it upon hers, it is impossible to say ; 
 he looked at her sometimes wondering what was in her mind ; 
 but he was not capable of understanding that clear determined 
 intelligence. He thought she had got fairly into the whirl of 
 mad dissipation and enjoyed it. She was playing into his hands, 
 she was doing the best that could be done to veil his tottering 
 steps, and divert public attention from his business misfortunes. 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 337 
 
 He had no more idea why she was doin^ it, or with what de- 
 liberate conscious steps she was marchmg forward to meet 
 ruin, than he had of any other incomprehensible wonder in 
 heaven or earth. 
 
 The Haldanes made no secret of the distress which had fallen 
 upon them. It was a less loss than the cost of one of Mrs. 
 Burton's parties, but it was unspeakable to them who had no 
 way of replacing it. By one of those strange coincidences, 
 however, which occur so often when good people are driven to 
 desperation,Stephen's publisher quite unexpectedly sent him in 
 April a cheque for fifty pounds, the produce of his last book, a 
 book which he had caUed " The Window," and which was a 
 kind of moral of his summer life and thoughts. It was not, he 
 himself thought, a very good book ; it was a medley of fine 
 things and poor things, not quite free from that personal twad- 
 dle which it is so difficult to keep out of an invalid's or a re- 
 cluse's view of human affairs. But then the British public is 
 fond of personal twaddle, and liked those bits best which the 
 author was most doubtful about. It was a cheap little work, 
 published by one of those firms which are known as religious 
 publishers ; and nothing could be more unexpected, more for- 
 tunate, more consoling, than this fifty pounds. Mrs. Haldane, 
 with a piety which, perhaps, was a little contemptuous of poor 
 Stephen's powers, spoke of it, with tears in her eyes, as an ans- 
 wer to prayer , while Miss Jane, who was proud of her brother, 
 tried to apportion the credit, half to Providence and half to 
 Stephen ; but anyhow it made up the lost allowance for the 
 current year, and gave the poor souls time to breathe. 
 
 All this time the idea, which had come into Dr. Maurice's 
 mind, on the day of the picnic in October, had been slowly ger- 
 minating. He was not a man whose projects ripened quickly, 
 and this was a project so delicate that it took him a long time 
 to get it fully matured, and to accustom himself to it. It had 
 cope to full perfection in his mind when, in the end of April, 
 Mrs. Drummond received a letter from him, inviting Norah and 
 herself to go to his house for a few days, to see the exhibitions 
 and other shows which belong to that period of the year. This 
 was an invitation which thrilled Norah's soul within her. She 
 was at a very critical moment of her life. She had lost the 
 honest young lover of her childhood, the boy whose love and 
 
 V 
 
Jill 
 
 t];i il'*^! :;;!' 
 
 338 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 service had grown so habitual to her that nobody but Norah 
 knew how dreary the winter had been without lum ; and she 
 was at present exposed to the full force of attentions much 
 more close, much more subtle and skilful, but perhaps not so 
 honest and faithful. Norah had exchanged the devotion of a 
 young man who loved her as his own soul, for the intoxicating 
 homage of a man who was very much in love with her, but 
 who knew that his prospects would be deeply injured, and his 
 position compromised, did he win the girl whom he wooed with 
 all the fascinations of a hero in a romance, and all the persist- 
 ency of a mind set upon having its own way. His whole soul 
 was set upon winning her ; but what to do afterwards was not 
 so clear, and Eivers, like many another adventurer in love and 
 war, left the morrow to provide for itself. But Norah was 
 very reluctant to be won. Sometimes, indeed, capitulation 
 seemed very near at hand, but then her lively little temper 
 would rise up again, or some hidden susceptibility would be 
 touched, or the girl's independent soul would rise in arms 
 against the thought of being subjugated like a young woman in 
 a book by this " novel-hero ! " What were his dark eyes, his 
 speaking glances, his skilful inference of a devotion above words, 
 to her 1 Had she not read about such wiles a thousand times ? 
 And was it not an understood rule that the real hero, the true 
 lover, the first of men, was never this bewitching personage, 
 but the plainer, ruder man in the background, with perhaps a 
 big nose, who was not very lovely to look upon 1 These 
 thoughts contended in Norah with the fascinations of him whom 
 she began to think off as the contre-heros. The invitation to 
 London was doubly welcome to her, insomuch that it inter- 
 rupted this current of thought, and gave her something new to 
 think about. She was fond of Dr. Maurice , she had not been 
 it town since she was a child : she wanted to see the parks and 
 the pictures, and all the stir and tumult of life. For all these 
 six years, though Dura was so near town, the mother and 
 daughter had never been in London. And it looked so bright 
 to Norah, bright with all the associations of her childhood, and 
 full of an interest which no other place could ever have in its 
 associations with the terrible event which ended her childhood. 
 " You will go, mamma? " she said, wistfully reading the letter 
 a second time over her mother's shoulder. And Helen, who 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 339 
 
 felt the need of an interruption and something new to think of 
 as much as her child did, answered " Yes." 
 
 Dr. Maurice was more excited about the approaching event 
 than they were, though he had to take no thought alK)ut his 
 wardrobe, and they had to take a great deal of thought ; the 
 question of Norah's frocks was nothing to his fussiness and agi- 
 tation about the ladies' rooms and all the arrangements for 
 their comfrH. He invited an old aunt who lived near to come 
 ^d ay . h him for the ti'"** '^f the Drummonds' \'isit, a pre- 
 c<?.ution whxK^i^ seemed to her, ^s it seems to me, quite unneces- 
 sary. I do not think Helen would ha^'e had the least hesitation 
 in going to his house at her age, though there had been no 
 chaperon. It was he who wanted the chaperon : he was quite 
 coy and bashful about the business altogether: and the old 
 aunt, who was a sharp old lady, was not only much amused, 
 but had her suspicions aroused. In the afternoon, before his 
 visitors arrived, he was particularly fidgety. "If you want to 
 go out, Henry, I will receive your guests," the old lady said, 
 not without a chuckle of suppressed amusement, "probably 
 they will only arrive in time to get dressed before dinner. You 
 may leave them to me." 
 
 " You are very kind," said the doctor, but he did not go 
 away. He walked from one end of the big drawing-room to 
 the other, and looked at himself in the mirror between the 
 windows, and the mirror over the mantelpiece. And then he 
 took up his position before the fireplace, where of course there 
 was nothing but cut paper. " How absurd are all the relations 
 between men and women," he said, " and how is it that I can- 
 not ask my friend's widow, a woman in middle life, to come to 
 
 my house — ^without " 
 
 " Without having me 1 " said the aunt. " My dear Henry, I 
 have told you before — I think you could. I have no patience 
 with the freedom of the present day, in respect to young peo- 
 ple, but, so far as this goes, I think you are too particular — I 
 
 am sure you could " 
 
 "You must allow me to be the best judge, aunt, of a matter 
 that concerns myself," said Dr. Maurice, with gentle severity. 
 "I know very well what would happen: there would be all sorts 
 of rumours and reports. People might not, perhaps, say there 
 was anything absolutely wrong between us — Pray may I ask 
 what you are laughing at V 
 
 SB><(3l;WMill6!r.V,BSW5st!«vsi»Wi*-v 
 
lb 
 
 ■-^!i:.-i;' 
 
 340 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 For the old lady whc had interrupted him by a low laugh, 
 which it was beyond her power to keep in. 
 
 " Nothing, my dear, nothing," she said in a little alarm. *^1 
 am sure I beg your pardon, Henry. I had no idea you were so 
 sensitive. How old ma v this lady be V 
 
 "JIhe question is not about this lady, my dear aunt,*^' he an- 
 swered in the dogmatic impatient tone, which was so unlike him, 
 " but about any lady. It might happen to be a comfort to me 
 to have a housekeeper I could rely on. It would be a great 
 pleasure to be able to contribute to the comfort of Robert Drum- 
 mond's family, poor fellow. But I dare not. I know the 
 arrangement would no sooner be made than the world would 
 say all sorts of things. How old is Mrs. Drummond 1 She 
 was under twenty when they were married, I know — and poor 
 Drummond was about my own age. That is, let me see, Ijiow 
 long ago) Norah is about eighteen, between eighteen knd 
 nineteen. Her mother must be nearly, if not quite, forty, I 
 should think " 
 
 " Then, my dear Henry " began the old lady. 
 
 " Why, here th ' are ! " he said rushing to the window. 
 But it was only a ». o next door, or over the way. He went 
 back to his position, with a little flush upon his middle-aged 
 countenance. " My dear aunt," he resumed, with a slight tre- 
 mor in his voice, " it is not a matter that can be discussed, I 
 assure you. I know what would happen ; and I know that 
 poor Helen — I mean Mrs. Drummond — would never submit to 
 anything that would compromise her as Norah's mother. Even 
 if she were not very sensitive on her own account, as women 
 generally are, as Norah's mother, of course, she requires to be 
 doubly careful. And here am I, the oldest friend they have, 
 as fond of that child as if she were my own, and prevented 
 by an absurd punctilio from taking them into my house, and 
 doing my best to make her happy ! As I said before, the 
 relations between men and women are the most ridiculous 
 things in the world." 
 
 " But I do think, Henry, you make too much of the diffi- 
 culties," said the old aunt, busying herself with her work, and 
 not venturing to say more. 
 
 " You must allow me to be the best judge," he said, with a 
 mixture of irritation and superiority. ** You may know the 
 
 t \ 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 341 
 
 gossip of the drawing-rooms^ which is bad enough, I don't 
 doubt ; but I know what men say." 
 
 " Oh, then, indeed, my poor Henry," said the old lady, with 
 vivacity, eagerly seizing the opportunity to have one shot on 
 her own side, " I can only pray, Good Lord deliver you ; for 
 evervbody knows there never was a bad piece of scandal yet, 
 but it was a man that set it on foot." 
 
 Aunt Mary thus had the last word, and retired with flying 
 colours, and in very high feather from the conflict ; for at this 
 moment the Drummonds arrived, and Dr. Maurice rushed 
 down-stairs to meet them. The old aunt was a personage very 
 well worth knowing, though she has very little to do with this 
 history, and it was with mingled curiosity and amusement that 
 she watched for the entrance of Mrs. Drummond and her 
 daughter. It would be a very wise step for him anyhow to 
 marry, she thought. The Maurice family were very well off", 
 and there were not many young offshoots of the race to con- 
 tend for the doctor's money. Was he contemplating the 
 idea of a wife young enough to be his daughter ] or had he 
 really the good sense to think of a woman about his own age 1 
 Aunt Mary, though she was a woman herself, and quite ready 
 to stand up for her own side, considered Helen Drummond, 
 under forty, as about his own age, though he was over fifty. 
 But as the question went through her mind, she shook her 
 head. She knew a great many men who had made fools of 
 themselves by marrying, or wishing to marry, the girl young 
 enough to be their daughter ; but the other class, who had the 
 good sense, &c., were very rare indeed. 
 
 There was, however, very little light thrown upon the sub- 
 ject by Aunt Mary's observations that evening. Mrs. Drum- 
 mond was very grave, almost sad ; for the associations of the 
 house were all melancholy ones, and her last visit to it came 
 back very closely into her memory as she entered one room — 
 the great old gloomy dining-room — where Norah, a child, had 
 been placed by Dr. Maurice's side at table on that memorable 
 occasion, while she, unable even to make a pretence of eating, 
 sat and looked on. She could not go back now into the state 
 which her mind had been in on that occasion. Everything 
 was calmed and stilled, nay, chilled by this long interval. She 
 could think of her Bobert without the sinking of the heart — 
 
342 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 ii-Jt 
 
 !(l':i 
 
 the sense of hopeless loneliness — which had moved her then. 
 The wound had closed up : the blank, if it had not closed up, 
 had acquired all the calmness of a long-recognised £Eu:t. She 
 had made up her mind long since, that the happiness which 
 she could not then consent to part with, was over for her. 
 That is the great secret of what is called resignation : to con- 
 sent and agree that what you have been in the habit of calling 
 happiness is done with ; that you must be content to fill its 
 place with something else, something less. Helen had come to 
 this. She no longer looked for it — no longer thought of it. 
 It was over for her, as her youth was over. Her heart was 
 tried, not by active sorrow, but by a heavy sense of past pain; 
 but that did not hinder her from taking her part in the conver- 
 sation — from smiling at Norah's sallies, at her enthusiasm, at 
 all the height of her delight in the pleasure Dr. Maurice pro- 
 mised her. Norah was the principal figure in the scene. She 
 was surrounded on every side by that atmosphere of fond par- 
 tiality in which the flowers of youth are most ready to unfold 
 themselves. Dr. Maurice was even fonder than her mother, 
 and more indulgent; for Helen had the jealous eye which 
 marks imperfections, and that intolerant and sovereign love 
 which cannot put up with a flaw or a speck in those it cherish- 
 es. To Dr. Maurice the specks and flaws were beauties. No- 
 rah led the conversation, was gay for every one, talked for 
 every ore. And the old aunt laughed within herself, and 
 shook her head : '' He cannot keep his eyes off her ; he cannot 
 see anything but perfection in her, — but she is a mere excited 
 child, and her mother is p. beautiful woman," said Aunt Mary 
 to herself; ''man's taste and woman's, it is to be supposed, will 
 be different to the end of time." But after she had made this 
 observation, the old lady was struck by the caressing, fatherly 
 ways of her nephew towards this child. He would smooth 
 her hair when he passed by her ; would take her hand into his, 
 unconsciously, and pat it ; would lay his hand upon her shoul- 
 der ; none of which things he would have ventured to do had 
 he meant to present himself to Norah as her lovey. He even 
 kissed her cheek, when she said good-night, with uncontrollable 
 fondness, yet unmistakable composure. What did the man 
 mean ) 
 
 He had sketched out a very pretty programme for them 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 343 
 
 for their three daya. Next evening they were to eo to 
 the theatre ; the next again, to an opera. Norah could not 
 walk, she danced as she went up-stairs. " The only thing is, 
 will my dress do V* she said, as she hung about her mother in 
 the pretty fresh room, new prepared, and hung with bright 
 chintz, in which Mrs. Drummoud was lodged. Could it have 
 been done on purpose 1 For certainly the other rooms in the 
 house still retained their dark old furniture ; dark-coloured, 
 highly-polished mahogany, with deep red and green damask 
 curtains — centuries old, as Norah thought. Mrs. Drummond 
 was surprised, too, at the aspect of this room. She was more 
 than surprised, she was almost offended, by the presence of the 
 old aunt as chaperon. " Does the man think I am such a fool 
 as to be afraid of him 1" she wondered, with a frown and a 
 smile, but gave herself up to Norah's pleasure, rejoicing to see 
 that the theatre and the opera were strong enough to defeat for 
 the moment and drive from the field both Cyril and Ned. And 
 the next day, and the next, passed like days of paradise to 
 Norah. She drove about in Dr. Maurice's carriage, and laughed 
 at her own grandour, and enjoyed it. She called perpetually 
 to her mother to notice ladies walking who were like themselves. 
 
 " That is what you and I should be doing, if it were not for 
 this old darling of a doctor ! trudging along in the sun, getting 
 hot and red " 
 
 " But think, you little sybarite, that is what we shall be 
 doing to-morrow," cried Helen, half amused and half afraid. 
 
 " No, the day after to-morrow," said Norah, " and then it 
 will be delightful. We can look at the people in the carriages, 
 and say, * We are as good as you ; — we looked down upon you 
 yesterday.' And mamma, we are going to the opera to-night !" 
 
 " You silly child," Helen said. But to eyes that danced so, 
 and cheeks that glowed so, what could any mother say ? 
 
 It was the after-piece after that opera, however, which was 
 what neither mother nor daughter had calculated upon, but 
 which, no doubt, was the special cause of their invitation, and 
 of the new chintz in the bedrooms, and of all the expense Dr. 
 Maurice had be^n at. Norah was tired when they got home. 
 She had almost over-enjoyed herself. She chatted so that no 
 one could say a word. Her cheeks were blazing with excite- 
 ment. When the two elder people could get a hearing, they 
 
WW ' 
 
 344 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 sent her off to bed, though she protested she had not said half 
 she had to say. " Save it up for to-morrow," said Dr. Maurice 
 " and run off and put yourself to bed, or I shall have you ill on 
 my hands. Mrs. Brummond, send her away." 
 
 " Go Norah, dear, you are tired," said Helen. 
 
 Norah stood protesting, with her pretty white cloak hansing 
 about her ; her rose-ribbons a little in disorder ; her eyes like 
 two sunbeams. How fondly her old friend looked at her ; with 
 what proud, tender, adoring, fatherly admiration) If Aunt 
 Mary had not been away in bed, then at least she must have 
 divined. Dr. Maurice lit her candle and took her to the door. 
 He stooped down suddenly to her ear and whispered, " I have 
 something to say to your mother." Norah could not have ex- 
 plained the sensation that came over her. She grew chill to 
 her very finger's ends, and gave a wondering glance at him, then 
 accepted the candle without a word, and went away. The 
 wonder was still in her eyes when she got up-stairs, and looked 
 at herself in the glass. Instead of throwing off her cloak to see 
 how she looked, as is a girl's first impulse, she stared blankly 
 into the glass, and could see nothing but that surprise. What 
 could he be going to talk about? What would her mother 
 say? 
 
 Helen had risen to follow her daughter, but Dr. Maurice 
 came back, having closed the door carefully, and placed a chair 
 for her. ** Mrs. Drummond, can you give me len minutes 1 I 
 have something to say to you," he said. 
 
 *^ Surely, said Helen ; and she took her seat, somewhat sur- 
 prised ; but not half so much surprised as Norah was, nor, 
 indeed, so much as Dr. Maurice was, now that matters had 
 finally come to a crisis, to find himself in such an extraordinary 
 position. Helen ran lightly over in her mind a number of sub- 
 jects on which he might be going to speak to her ; but the real 
 subject never entered her thoughts. He did not sit down, 
 though he had given her a chair. He moved about uneasily 
 before her, changing his attitude a dozen times in a minute, and 
 clearing his throat. " He is going to offer me money for 
 Norah," was Helen's thought. 
 
 " Mrs. Drummond," he said — and his beginning confirmed 
 her in her idea — " I am not a — ^marrying man, as you know. 
 I am — past the age — ^when men think of such things. I am on 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 345 
 
 the shady side of fifty, though not very far gone; and you are 
 — about forty, I suppose 1" 
 
 " Thirty-nine," said Helen, with more and more surprise, and 
 yet with the natural reluctance of a woman to have a year 
 unjustly added to her age. 
 
 " Well, well, it is very much the same thing. I never was 
 in love that I know of, at least not since ; — and — and — that 
 sort of thing, of course, is over for — ^you." 
 
 " Dr. Maurice, what do you mean f cried Helen in dismay. 
 
 " Well, it is not very hard to guess," he saiJ doggedly. " I 
 mean that you are past the lo\ ^-business, yo) know, and I — 
 never came to it, so to speak. Look herr, Helen Drummond, 
 why shouldn't you and I, if it comes to that — marry ? If I 
 durst do it I'd ask you to come and live here, and let Norah be 
 child to both of us, without any nonsense botw en you and me 
 But that can't be done, as you will easily per t ive. Now I am 
 sure we could put up with one another ap well a^ most p*^ )ple. and 
 we have one strong bond between us in Norah — anu -I could 
 give her everything she wishes for. 1 could and I would pro- 
 vide for her when I die. You are not one to want pretence tb 
 made to you, or think much of a sacrifice for your child's sake. 
 I am not so vain but to allow that it might be a sacrifice — to us 
 both." 
 
 " Dr. Maurice." said Helen, half laughing, half sobbing, " if 
 this is a joke " 
 
 " Joke ! am I in the way of making such jokes ? Why, it 
 has cost me six months to think this joke out. There is no 
 relaxation of the necessary ^onds that I would not be ready to 
 allow. You know the hovLuc ad my position, and ever3rthing I 
 could offer. As for settlements, and all business of that 
 kind " 
 
 " Hush," she said. *' Stop !" She rose up and held out her 
 hand to him. There were tears in her eyes ; but there was 
 also a smile on her face, and a blush which went and came as she 
 spoke. " Di'; Maurice," she said, " don't think that I cannot 
 appreciate the pure and true friendship for Robert and 
 me " 
 
 " Just so, -just so !" he interposed, nodding his head; he put 
 his other hand on hers, and patted it as he had patted Norah's, 
 but he did not again look her in the face. The elderly bachelor 
 
 fiH^auf^j^i, 
 
346 
 
 AT His GATES. 
 
 
 ■'■', ;i , ■ 
 
 1.1 
 
 i 
 
 had grown shy — he did not know why; the most curious 
 sensation, a feeling quite unknown to him was creeping ahout 
 the region of his heart. 
 
 " AjQd the love for Norah " resumed Helen. 
 
 " Just so, just so." 
 
 " Which have made you think of this. But — ^but — ^but " 
 
 She stopped ; she had been running to the side of tears, when 
 suddenly she changed her mind. " But I think it is all a mis- 
 take ! I am quite ready to come and stay with you, to keep 
 house for you, to let you have Norah's company, when you like 
 to ask. I don't want any chaperon. Your poor, dear, good 
 aunt ! Dr. Maurice," cried Helen, her voice rising into a hyste- 
 rical laugh, " I assure you it is all a mistake." 
 
 He let her hand drop out of his. He turned away from her 
 with a shrug of his shoulders. He walked to the table and 
 screwed up the moderator lamp, which had run down. Then 
 he came back to his former position and said, " I am much 
 more in the world than you are ; you will permit ma to con- 
 sider myself the best judge in this case. It is not a mistake. 
 And I have no answer from you to my proposal as yet." 
 
 Then Helen's strength gave way. The more serious view 
 which she had thrust from her, which she had rejected as too 
 solemn, came back. The blush vanished from her face, and so 
 did the smile. " You were his friend," she said with quiver- 
 ing lips. " You loved him as much as any one could, except 
 me. Have you forgotten you are speaking to — Robert's 
 wife." 
 
 " Good Lord !" cried Dr. Maurice with sudden terror ; " but 
 he is dead." 
 
 " Yes, he is dead ; but I do not see what difference that 
 makes ; when a woman has once been a man's wife, she is so 
 always. If there is any other world at all, she must be so al- 
 ways. I hate the very name of widow ! " cried Helen vehe- 
 mently, with the l;ears glittering in her eyes. "I abhor it ; I 
 don't believe in it I am his wife ! " 
 
 Dr. Maurice was a man who had always held himself to be 
 invincible to romantic or high-flown feelings. But somehow 
 he was startled by this view of the question. It had not 
 occurred to him before ; for the moment it staggered him, so that 
 he had to pause and think it over. Then he said, '^Non- 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 347 
 
 sense ! " abruptly. " Mrs. Drummond, I cannot think that 
 such a view as this is worth a moment's consideration ; it is 
 against both reason and common sense." 
 
 She did not make any reply ; she made a movement of her 
 hand, deprecating, expostulating, but she would not say any 
 more. 
 
 " And Scripture too," said Dr. Maurice triumphantly, " it is 
 quite against Scripture." Then he remembered that this was 
 not simply an argument in which he was getting the better, 
 but a most practical question. " If it is disagreeable to you, 
 it is a different matter," he said ; " but I had hoped, with all 
 the allowances I was ready to make, and for Norah's sake " 
 
 " It is not disagreeable. Dr. Maurice ; it is simply imposible, 
 and must always be so," she said. 
 
 Then there was another silence, and the two stood opposite 
 to each other, not looking at each other, longing both for some- 
 thing to free them. " In that case, I suppose there had better 
 be no more words on the subject," he said turning half away. 
 
 " Except thanks," she cried ; thanks for the most generous 
 thoughts, the truest friendship. I will never forget " 
 
 " I do not know how far it was generous," he said moodily, 
 and he got another candle and lighted it for her, as he had 
 done for Norah ; " and the sooner you forget the better. Good 
 night." 
 
 Good night ! When he looked round the vacant room a 
 moment after, and felt himself alone, it seemed to Dr. Maurice 
 as if he had been dreaming. He must have fallen down sud- 
 denly from some height or other — fallen heavily and bruised 
 himself, he thought — and so woke up out of an odd delusion quite 
 unlike him, which had arisen he could not tell how. It was a 
 very curious sensation. He felt sore and downcast, sadly dis- 
 appointed and humbled in his own conceit. It had not even 
 occurred to him that the matter might end in this way. He 
 gave a long sigh, and said aloud, " Perhaps it is quite as well 
 it has ended so. Probably we should not have liked it had we 
 tried it," and then went up to his lonely chamber, hearing, as 
 he thought, his step echo over all the vacant house. Yes, it 
 was a vacant house. He had chosen that it should be years 
 ago, and yet the feeling now was dreary to him, and it would 
 never be anything but vacant for all the rest of his life. 
 
 !? 
 
 "3 
 
A 
 
 M;- 
 
 S48 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 ,T was difficult for the two who had thus parted at night to 
 meet again at the breakfast-table next morning without 
 any sign of that encounter, before the sharp eyes of Aunt 
 Mary, and Norah's youthful, vivacious powers of observation. 
 Dr. Maurice was the one who found the ordeal most hard. 
 He was sullen and had a headache, and talked very little, not 
 feeling able for it. " You are bilious, Henry ; that is what it 
 is," the aunt said. For though he was over fifty, and prided 
 himself on his now utterly prosaic character, the doctor felt 
 wounded by such an explanation. He did not venture to 
 glance at Helen, even when he shook hands with her ; though 
 he had a lurking curiosity within him to see how she looked 
 whether triumphant or sympathetic. He knew that he ought 
 to have been gay and full of talk, to put the best face possible 
 upon his downfall ; but he did not feel able to do it ; not to 
 feel sore, not to feel small, and miserable, and disappointed, 
 was beyond his powers. Helen was not gay either, nor at all 
 triumphant ; she felt the embarrassment of the position as 
 much as he did ; but in these cases it is the woman who, gene- 
 rally, has her wits most about her ; and Mrs. Drummond, who 
 was conscious of the child's jealous inspection, talked rather 
 more than usual. Norah had demanded to know what the 
 doctor had to say on the previous night ; a certain dread was 
 in her mind. She had felt that something was coming, some- 
 thing that threatened the peace of the world. "What did he 
 say to you, mamma 1 " she had asked anxiously. *' Nothing 
 of importance," Helen had replied But Norah knew better; and 
 all that bright May morning, while the sunshine shone out of 
 doors, even though it was in London, and tempted the country 
 girl abroad, she kept by her mother's side and watched her with 
 suspicious eyes. Had Norah known the real state of affairs, 
 her shame and indignation would have known no bounds ; but 
 Helen made so great an effort to dismiss all consciousness from 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 349 
 
 her face and tone, that the child was balked at last, and retired 
 from the field. Aunt Mary, who had experience to hack 
 her, saw more clearly. Whatever had been going to happen 
 had happened, she perceived, and had not been successful. 
 Thus they all breakfasted, watching each other, Helen being 
 the only one who knew everything and betrayed nothing. 
 After breakfast they were going to the Exhibition. It had. 
 been deferred to this day, which was to be their last. 
 
 " I do not think I will go," said Dr. Maurice : and then he 
 caught Norah's look full of disappointment, which was sweet 
 to him. *' You want me, do you, child ? " he asked. There 
 was a certain ludicrous pathos in the emphasis which was al- 
 most too much for Helen's gravity, though, indeed, laughter 
 was little in her thoughts. 
 
 " Of course I want you," said Norah ; " and so does mamma. 
 Fancy sending us away to wander about London by ourselves ! 
 That was not what you invited us for, surely. Dr. Maurice 1 
 And then after the pictures, let us have another splendid drive 
 in the carriage, and despise all the people who are walking ! 
 It will be the last time. You rich people, you have not half 
 the pleasure you might have in being rich. I suppose, now 
 when you see out of the carriage window somebody you know 
 walking, it does not make you proud 1 " 
 
 " I don't think it does," said the doctor with a smile. 
 
 "That is because you are hardened to it," said Norah. 
 " You can have it whenever you please ; but as for me, I am 
 as proud " 
 
 " I wish you had it always, my dear," said Dr. Maurice ; 
 and this time his tone was almost lachrymose. It was so 
 hard-hearted of Helen to deny her child these pleasures and 
 advantages, aU to be purchased at the rate of a small personal 
 sacrifice on her part — a sacrifice such as he himself was quite 
 ready to make. 
 
 " Oh, I should not mind that, " cried Norah ; " if I had it 
 always, I should get hardened to it too. I should not mind ; 
 most likely then I should prefer walking, and think carriages 
 only fit for old ladies. Didn't you say that one meets every- 
 body at the Academy, mamma ? " 
 
 " A great many people, Norah." 
 
 " I wonder whom we shall meet," said the girl ; and a sud- 
 
 ^f i .ii. W i ^ at^t 
 
 mifKffBirtmmmimm 
 
i^i 
 
 lii 
 
 M 
 
 350 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 den blush floated over her face. Helen looked at her with 
 some anxiety. She did not know what impression Cjnril Rivers 
 might have made on Norah's heart. Was it him she was 
 thinking of "? Mrs. Drummend herself wondered, too, a little. 
 She was half afraid of the old friends she might see there. But 
 then she reflected to herself dreamily, :hat life goes very quickly 
 in London, that six years was a long time, and that her old 
 friends might have forgotten her. H* w changed her own feel- 
 ings were ! She had never been fon< of painters, her hus- 
 band's brothers-in-arms. Now the let st notable of them, the 
 most painty, the most slovenly, would look somehow like a 
 shadow of Robert. Should she see any of those old faces 1 
 Whom should she meet ? Norah's light question moved many 
 echoes of which the child knew nothing; and it was to be an- 
 swered in a way of which neither of them dreamed. 
 
 The mere entrance into those well-known rooms had an in- 
 describable effect upon Helen. How it all rushed back upon her, 
 the old life! The pilgrimages up those steps, the progress through 
 the crowd to that special spot where one picture was hung ; the 
 anxiety to see how it looked — ^if there was anything near it that 
 " killed " it in colour, or threw it into the shade in power ; 
 her own private hope, never expressed to any one, that it 
 might " come better " in the new place. Dr. Maurice stalked 
 along by her side, but he did not say anything to her ; and for 
 her part, «?he could not speak — her heart and her eyes were 
 full. She could only see the other people's pictures glimmer- 
 ing as through a mist. It seemed so strange to her, almost 
 humiliating, that there was nothing of her own to go to — no- 
 thing to make a centre to this gallery, which had relapsed into 
 pure art., without any personal interest in it. By-and-'jy, when 
 the first shock had worn off, she began to be able to see what 
 was on the walls, and to come back to her present circum- 
 stances. So many names were new to her in those six years : 
 so many that she once knew had crept out of sight into comers 
 and behind doorways. She had begun to get absorbed in the 
 sight, which was so much more to her than to most people, when 
 Mr. Rivers came up to them. He had known they were to be 
 in town ; he had seen them at the opera on the previous night, 
 and had found out a good deal about their plans. But London 
 was different from Dura : and he had not ventured to offer his 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 351 
 
 attentions before the eyes of all the world, and all the cousins 
 and connections and friends who might have come to a know- 
 ledge of the fact that an unknown pretty face had attracted 
 his homage. But of a morning, at the Royal Academy, he felt 
 himself pretty saf " ^ there every one is liable to meet some 
 friend from the country, and the most watchful eyes of society 
 are not on the alert at early hours. He came to them now with 
 eager salutations. 
 
 '* I tried hard to get at you at the opera last night," he aaidy 
 putting himself by Norah's side ; " but I was with my own 
 people, and I could not get away." 
 
 "Were you at the opera last night T' said Norah, with not 
 half the surprise he anticipated ; for she was not aware of the 
 facilities of locomotion in such places, nor that he might have 
 gone to her had he so desired ; and besides, she had seen no 
 one, being intent upon the stage. Yet there was a furtive look 
 about him now, a glance round now and then, to see who was 
 near them, which startled her. She could not make out ^hat 
 it meant. 
 
 " Come, and I will show you the best pictures," he said ; 
 and he took her catalogue from her hand and pointed out to 
 her which must be looked at first. 
 
 They made a pretty group as they stood thus, — Norah look- 
 ing up with her sunshiny eyes, and he stooping over her, bend- 
 ing down till his silky black beard almost touched her hair.. 
 She little, and he tall — she full of vivacity, light, and sunshine ;; 
 he somewhat quiet, languishing, Byronic in his beauty. Norah 
 was not such a perfect contrast to him as Clara was — the 
 Rhubens to the Byron ; but her naturalness, the bright, glow- 
 ing intelligence and spirit about her — the daylight sweetness 
 of her face, with which soul had as much to do as feature, 
 contrasted still more distinctly with the semi-artificiality of the 
 hero. For even granting that he was a little artificial, he was 
 a real hero all the same ; his handsomeness and air of good 
 society were unmistakable, his conversation was passable ; he 
 knew the thousand things which people in society know, and 
 which, whether they understand them or not, they are in the 
 habit of hearing talked about. All these remarks were made, 
 not by Norah, nor by Norah's mother, but by Dr. Maurice, who 
 stood by and did not pretend to have any interest in the pictures. 
 
 m 
 
352 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 And this young fellow was the Honourable Cyril, and would 
 be Lord Rivers. Dr. Maurice, kept an eye upon him, wonder- 
 ing, as Helen had done : Did he mean anything 1 what did he 
 mean 1 
 
 " But there is one above all which I must show you— every 
 one is talking of it," said Mr. Rivers. " Come this way. Miss 
 Drummond. It is not easy to reach it ; there is always such a 
 crowd round it. Dr. Maurice, bring Mrs. Drummond; it is in 
 the next room. Come this way." 
 
 Norah followed him, thinking of nothing but the pictures ; 
 and her mother and Dr. Maurice wont after them slowly, say- 
 ing nothing to each other. They had entered the great room, 
 following the younger pair, when some one stepped out of the 
 crowd and came forward to Helen. He took off his hat and 
 called her by her name — at first doubtfully, then with assur- 
 ance. 
 
 " I thought I could not be mistaken," he cried, "and yet it 
 is so long since you have been seen here." 
 
 "I am living in the country," said Helen. Once more the 
 room swam round her. The new-comer's voice and aspect 
 carried her back, with all the freshness of the first impression, 
 to the studio and its visitors again. 
 
 " And you had just been in my mind," said the painter. 
 " There is a picture here which reminds us all so strongly of 
 poor dear Dnimmond. Will y ju let me take you to it ? It is 
 exactly his style, his best style, with all that tenderness of 
 feeling — It has set us all talking of you and him. Indeed, 
 none of his old friends have forgotten him ; and this is so 
 strangely like his work " 
 
 " Where is it ? — one of his pupils, perhaps," said Helen. 
 She tried to be very composed, and to show no emotion; but it 
 was so long since she had heard his name, so long since he had 
 been spoken of before her ! She felt grateful, as if they had 
 done her a personal service, to think that they talked of Rob- 
 ert still. 
 
 " This way," said the painter ; and just then Norah met her, 
 flying back with her eyes shining, her ribbons flying, wonder 
 and excitement in her face. 
 
 Norah seized her moth er by the hands, gasping in her haste 
 and emotion. " Oh, mam ma, come ; it is our picture," she cried. 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 353 
 
 Wondering, Helen went forward. It was the upper end of the 
 room, the place of honour. Whether it was that so many people 
 around her carried her on like a body-guard making her a way 
 through the crowd, or that the crowd itself, moved by that subtle 
 sympathy which sometimes communicates itself to the mass more 
 easily than to individuals, melted before her, as if feeling she had 
 the best right to be there, I cannot tell. But all at once Helen 
 found herself close to the crimson cord which the pressure of 
 the throng had almost broken down, standing before a picture. 
 One picture — was there any other in the place 1 It was the 
 picture of a face looking up, with two upward reaching hands, 
 from the bottom of an abyss, full of whirling clouds and var 
 pour. High above this was a bank of heavenly blue, and a 
 white cloud of faintly indistinct spectators, pitiful angel forms, 
 and one visionary figure, as of a woman gazing down. But it was 
 the form below in which the interest lay. It was worn and 
 pale, with the redness of tears about the eyes, the lips pressed 
 closely together, the hands only appealing, held up in a passion- 
 ate silence. Helen stood still, wi^h eyes that would not believe 
 what they saw. She became unconscious of everything about 
 her though the people thronged upon her, supporting her, 
 though she did not know. Then she held out her hands wild- 
 ly, with a cry which rang through the rooms and penetrated 
 every one in them — " Robert 1 " — and fell at the foot of the 
 picture, which was called " Dives " — the first work of a name- 
 less painter whom nobody knew. 
 
 It would be impossible to describe the tumult and commo- 
 tion which rose in the room to which everybody hastened from 
 every comer of the exhibition, thronging the doorways and 
 and every available corner, and making it impossible for some 
 minutes to remove her. " A lady fainted ! Is that all ) " the 
 disappointed spectators cried. They had expected something 
 more exciting than so common, so trifling an occurrence. 
 " Fortunately," the newspapers said who related the incident, 
 " a medical man was present ; " and when Helen came to her- 
 self, she found Dr. Maurice standing over her, with his finger 
 on her pulse. " It is the heat, and the fatigue— and all that," 
 he said ; and all through the rooms people repeated to each 
 other that it was the heat and the dust and the crowd, and 
 that there was nothing so fatiguing as looking at pictures. 
 w 
 
 ' tUW - l.'.. U-,..! WtilJfekjtl l J ^ 
 
354 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 ''Both body and mind are kept on the strain, you know," 
 they said, and immediately thought of luncheon. But Dr. 
 Maurice thoueht of something very different He did not un* 
 derstand all this commotion about a picture ; if his good heart 
 would have let him, he would have tried to think that Helen 
 was " making a fuss." As it was he laid this misfortune to the 
 door of women generally, whom there was no understanding ; 
 aud then, in a parenthesis, allowed that he might himself be 
 to blame. He should not have agitated her, he thought ; but 
 added, " Good Lord, what are women good for, if they have 
 to be kept in a glass-house, and never spoken to 1 The best 
 thing is to be rid of them, after all." 
 
 I will not attempt to describe what Helen's thoughts were 
 when she came to herself. She would not, dared not betray 
 to any one the impression, which was more than an impression 
 — the conviction that had suddenly come to her. She put up 
 her hand, and silenced Norah, who was beginning, open- 
 mouthed, " Oh, mamma 1 " She called the old friend to her, 
 who had attended the group down into the vestibule, and beg- 
 ged him to find out for her exactly who the painter was, and 
 where he was to be heard of ; and there she sat, still abstract- 
 ed with a singing in her ears, which she thought was only the 
 rustle of the thoughts that hurried through her brain, until 
 she should be able to go home. It was while they were wait- 
 ing thus, standing round her, that another event occurred, of 
 which Helen was too much absorbed to take any but the 
 slightest cognizance. She was seated on a bench, still very 
 pale, and unable to move. Dr. Maurice was mounting guard 
 over her. Norah stood talking to Mr. Rivers on the other 
 side ; while, meanwhile, the stream of the public was flowing 
 past, and new arrivals entering every moment by the swinging 
 doors. Norah had grown very earnest in her talk. " We have 
 the very same subject at home, the same picture," she was say- 
 ing ; her eyelashes were dewy with tears, her whole face full 
 of emotion. Her colour went and came as she spoke ; she 
 stood looking up to him with a thrill of feeling and meaning 
 about her, such as touch the heart more than beauty. And 
 yet there was no lack of beauty. A lady who had just come 
 in, paused, having her attention attracted to the group, and 
 looked at them all, as she thought she had a right to do. '' The 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 355 
 
 know," 
 But Dr. 
 not un- 
 )d heart 
 kt Helen 
 .6 to the 
 anding ; 
 Mself be 
 ;ht J but 
 ley have 
 Ihe best 
 
 hts were 
 3t betray 
 ipreasion 
 le put up 
 ig, open- 
 id to her, 
 and beg- 
 was, and 
 abstract- 
 only the 
 in, until 
 ire wait- 
 lurred, of 
 but the 
 itill very 
 Lg guard 
 ihe other 
 flowing 
 Iswinging 
 IWe have 
 1 was say- 
 face full 
 )ke ; she 
 I meaning 
 ty. And 
 lust come 
 loup, and 
 '♦The 
 
 poor lady who faintad," she heard some one say. But this girl 
 who stood in front had no appearance of fainting. She was all 
 life and tenderness and fire. The woman who looked on ad- 
 mired her fresh, sweet youthfulness, her face, which, in its 
 changing colour, was like a flower. She admired all these, and 
 made out, with a quick observant eye, that the girl was the 
 daughter of the pale, beautiful woman by the wall, and not un- 
 worthy of her. And then suddenly, without a pause, she 
 called out, " Cyril ! " Young Rivers started as if a shot had 
 struck him. He rushed to her with tremulous haste. " Mother! 
 you don't mean to say that you have come here alone 1 " 
 
 " But I do mean it, and I want you to take care of me,*' she 
 said taking his arm at once. " I meant to come early. We 
 have no time to lose." 
 
 Norah stood surprised, looking at the woman who was Cyril's 
 mother ; in a pretty pause of expectation, the blush coming and 
 going on her face, her hand ready to be timidly put out in 
 greeting, her pretty mouth half smiling already, her eyes watch- 
 ing with an interest of which she was not ashamed. Why 
 should she be ashamed of being interested in Cyril's mother ) 
 She waited for the approach, the introduction — most likely the 
 elder woman's gracious greeting. " For she must have heard 
 of me too," Norah thought. She cast down her eyes, pleasantly 
 abashed ; for Lady Rivers was certainly looking at her. When 
 she looked up again, in wonder that she was not spoken to, 
 Cyril was on the stair with his mother, going up. He was 
 looking back anxiously, waving his hand to her from behind 
 Lady Rivers. He had a beseeching look in his eyes, his face 
 looked miserable across his mother's shoulders, but — ^he was 
 gone. Norah looked round her stupefied. Had anything hap- 
 pened? — was she dreaming ? And then the blood rushed to 
 her face in a crimson flush of pride and shame. 
 
 She bore this blow alone, without even her mother to share 
 and soften it ; and the child staggered under it for the moment. 
 She grew as pale as Helen herself after that one flash. When 
 the carriage came to the door, two women, marble- white, stepped 
 into it. Dr. Maurice had not the heart to go with them ; he 
 would walk home, he said. And Norah looked out of the win- 
 dow, as she had so joyfully anticipated doing in her happiness 
 and levity, but not -to despise the people who walked. The 
 
356 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 *^;> 
 
 
 only thought of which she was capable waa — Is everybody like 
 that) Do people behave so naturally 1 Is it the way of the 
 world f 
 
 This is what they met at the Academy, where they went so 
 lightly, not knowing. The name of the painter of the " Dives " 
 reached them that same night ; it was not in the catalogue. 
 His name was John Sinclair, Thirty-fifth Avenue, New York. 
 
 liili 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 367 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 OU must be dreaming," cried Dr. Maurice with energy. 
 " You must be <]r« -iming ! With my— foUv — and other 
 things — you have got into a nervous state. 
 
 " I am not dreaming," she said very quietly. There was no 
 appearance of excitement about her. She sat with her hands 
 clasped tightly together, and her eyes wandering into the un- 
 known, into the vacant air before her. And her mind had got 
 possession of one burden, and went over and over it, repeating 
 within herself, " John Sinclair, Thirty-fifth Avenue, New York. 
 
 " I will show you the same picture," she went on. " The 
 very same, line for line. It was the last he ever did. And in 
 
 his letter he spoke of Dives looking up . John Sinclair, 
 
 Thirty-fifth Avenue, New York !" 
 
 " Helen, Helen ? " said Dr. Maurice with a look of pity. He 
 had never called her anything but Mrs. Drummond till the 
 evening before, and now the other seemed so natural ; for, in 
 fact, she did not even notice what he called her. " How easy 
 it is to account for all this ! Some one else must have seen 
 the sketch, who was impressed by it as much as you were, and 
 who knew the artist was dead, and could never claim his pro- 
 perty. How easy to see how it may have been done, especially 
 by a smart Yankee abroad." 
 
 . She shook her head without a word, with a faint smile ; ar- 
 gument made no difference to her. She was sure ; and what 
 did it matter what any one said 1 
 
 " Then I will tell you what I will do," he said. " I have 
 some friends in New York. I will have inquiries made in- 
 stantly about John Sinclair. Indeed it is quite possible some 
 one may know him here. I shall set every kind of inquiry on 
 foot to-morrow, to satisfy you. I warn you nothing will come 
 of it — nothing would make me believe such a thin^' ; but still, 
 to prevent you taking any rash steps " 
 
 " I will take no rash steps," she said. " I will do nothing. 
 I will wait till— I hear." 
 
 
 njinuLU . 1 1 ■ ' llJl i ^iu i H WiWPIIimiqjIWWWWff^JWW'IWW 
 
'. Uh. 
 
 S58 
 
 AT HIS GATtL 
 
 " Why this is madness," he said. And then all at once a 
 cold shudder passed over him, and he said to himself, " Good 
 God ! what if she had not refused last night ! " 
 
 But the very fact that she had refused was a kind of guaran- 
 tee that there was nothing in this wild idea of hers. Had there 
 been anything in it, of course she would have accepted, and all 
 sorts of horrors would have ensued. Such was Dr. Maurice's 
 opinion of Providence, and the opinion of many other judicious 
 people. The fact that a sudden reappearance would do no 
 harm made it so much less likely that there would be any re- 
 appearance. He tried hard to dismiss the idea altogether from 
 his mind. It was not a comfortable idea. It is against all the 
 traditions, all the prejudices of life, that a man should come 
 back from the dead. A wild, despairing Dives might wish for 
 it, or a mourner half frantic with excess of sorrow; but to the 
 ordinary looker-on the idea is so strange as to be painful. Dr. 
 Maurice had a true affection for Robert Drummond ; but he 
 could not help feeling that it would be out of all character, out 
 of harmony, almost an offence upon decency that he should not 
 be dead. 
 
 It was curious, however, what an e£fect this fancy of Helen's 
 had in clearing away the all cloud of embarrassment which had 
 naturally fallen between her and him. All that produced that 
 cloud had evidently disappeared from her mind. She remem- 
 bered it no more. It was not that she had thrust it away of 
 set will and purpose, but that without any effort it had disap- 
 peared. This was, it is true, somewhat humiliating to Dr. 
 Maurice ; but it was very convenient for all the purposes of 
 life that it should be so. And she sat with him now and dis- 
 cussed the matter, abstracted in the greieit excitement which had 
 taken possession of her, yet calmed by it, without a recollection 
 that anything had ever passed between them which could con- 
 fuse their intercourse. This unconsciousness, I say, was humil- 
 iating in one sense, though in another it was relief to the man 
 who did not forget ; but it confused him while it set Helen at 
 her ease. It was so extraordinary to realize what was the state 
 of affairs yesterday, and what to-day — to enter into so new and 
 wonderful a region of possibilities, after having lived so long 
 in quite another ; for, to be sure, Helen had only known of 
 Dr. Maurice's project as regarded herself since last night j 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 359 
 
 whereas, he had known it for six months, and during all that 
 time had been accustoming himself to it, and now had to make 
 a mental spring as far away from it as possible — a kind of gym- 
 nastic exercise which has a very bewildering effect upon an or- 
 dinary mind. 
 
 It was a relief to all the party when the Drummonds went 
 home next morning ; except, perhaps, to the old aunt, who had 
 grown interested in the human drama thus unexpectedly pro- 
 duced before her, and who would have liked to see it out. The 
 mother and daughter were glad to go home ; and yet how life 
 had changed to them in these three days ! It had given to 
 Helen the glow of a wild incomprehensible hope, a something 
 supernatural, mixed with terror and wonder, and a hundred 
 conflicting emotions ; while to Norah it had taken the romance 
 out of life. To contemplate life without romance is hard upon 
 a girl ; to have a peep, as it were, behind the scenes, and see 
 the gold of fairy -land corroding itself into slates, and the beauty 
 into dust and ashes. Such a revolution chills one to the very 
 soul. It is almost worse than the positive heartbreak of disap- 
 pointed love, for that has a warm admixture of excitement, and 
 is supported by the very sharpness of its own suflFering ; where- 
 as in Norah's pain there was but disenchantment and angry 
 humiliation, and that horrible sense that the new light was 
 true and the other false, which takes all courage from the heart 
 She had told her mother, and Helen had been very indignant, 
 but not so wroth as her daughter. " Lady Rivers might have 
 no time to wait — she might have wanted him for something 
 urgent — there might be something to explain," Helen said; but 
 as for Norah, she felt that no explanation was possible. For 
 months past this man had been making a show of his devotion 
 to her. He had done everything except ask her in words to 
 be his wife. He had been as her shadow, whenever he could 
 come to Dura, and his visits had been so frequent that it was 
 very evident he had seized every opportunity to come ; yet the 
 moment his mother appeared on the scene, the woman whom 
 in all the world he ought to have most wished to attach to the 
 girl whom he loved, he had left her with shame and embarrass- 
 ment — escaped from her without even the politeness of a leave- 
 taking. Norah had wondered whether she cared for him in 
 the old days ; she had asked herself shyly, as girls do, whether 
 
 
 Wi 
 
 M 
 
 'III 
 
 •I 
 
 ^ii 
 
 ',;'. 
 
 i 
 
SbO 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 the little flutter of her heart at his appearance could possibly 
 mean that sacredest, most wonderful and fascinating of my«i- 
 teries — ;love t Sometimes she had been disposed to believe it 
 dl'l : and then again she had surprised herseff in the midst of a 
 sudden longing for poor Ned with his big nose, and had blushed 
 and asked herself angrily, was the one compatible with the 
 other. In short, she had not known what to make of her own 
 feelings ; for she was not expeiienced enough to be able to tell 
 the diiSterence — a difference which sometimes puzzles the wisest 
 —between the effect produced by gratified vanity, and pleasure 
 in the love of another, and that which springs from love itself. 
 But she wss in no doubt about the anger, the mortification, the 
 indignant shame with which her whole nature rose up against 
 the man who had dai^d to be ashamed of her. Of this there 
 could be no explanation. She said to herself that she hoped 
 he would ncc come again or attempt to make any explanation, 
 and then she resented bitterly the fact that he did not come. 
 She had made up her mind what she would say, how she would 
 crush him with quiet scorn, and wonder at his apologies. 
 " Why should you apologize, Mr. Eivers 1 I had no wish to be 
 introduced to your mother." she meant to say ; but as day af- 
 ter day passed, and he gavo her no opportunity of saying this, 
 Norah's thoughts grew more bitter, more fiery than ever. And 
 life was dull without this excitement in it. The weather was 
 bright, and the season sweet, and I suppose she had her share 
 of rational pleasure as in other seasons ; but to her own con- 
 sciousness Norah was bitterly ill-used, insomuch as she had not 
 an opportunity to tell, or at least to show, Cyril Fivers what 
 she thought of him. I^; had been an immediate com^ jrt to her 
 after the affront he had put upon her, that she would have this 
 in her power. 
 
 The change that had come upon the lives of the two Ldies 
 in the Gatehouse was, however, scarcely apparent to their little 
 world. Norah was a little out of temper, fitful, and ready to 
 take offence, the Daltons at the Eectory thought ; and Mrs. 
 Brummond was more silent than usual, and had an absorbed 
 look in her eyes, a look of abstraction for which it was difficult 
 to account. But this was all that was apparent outside. Per 
 haps Mr. Bivers was a little longer than usual in visiting Dura ; 
 he had not been there for ten days, and Katie Dal ton won- 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 361 
 
 dered audibly what had become of him. Biit nobody except 
 Norah supposed for a moment that his connection with Dura 
 was to be broken off in this sudden way. And eyer3rthing 
 else went on as usual. If Mrs. Drummoud was less frequently 
 visible, no one remarked it much. Norah would run over and 
 ask Katie to walk with her, on the plea that " mamma has a 
 headache," and Mrs. Dalton would gather her work together, 
 and cross the road in the sunshine and ** sit with" the sufferer. 
 But the only consequence of this visit would be that the 
 blinds would be drawn down over the three windows in front, 
 Mrs. Dalton having an idea that light was bad for a headache, 
 and that when she returned she would tell her eldest daughter 
 that poor dear Mrs. Drummond was very poorly and very 
 anxious for news of a friend whom she had not heard of for 
 years. 
 
 And the picture of Dives, which had been hung in a sacred 
 corner, where Helen said her prayers, was brought out, and 
 placed in the full light of day. It was even for a time 
 brought down-stairs, while the first glow of novel hope 
 and wonder lasted, and placed in the drawing-room, where 
 ever}^body who saw it wondered at it. It was not so well paint- 
 ed as the great picture in the Academy. It was even different 
 in many of its details. There was no hope in the face of this, 
 but only a haggard passionate despair, while the look of the 
 other was concentrated into such an agony of appealing as 
 cannot exist where there is no hope. Dr. Maurice even, when 
 he came down, declared forcibly that it was difficult for him 
 to trace the resemblance. Perhaps the leading idea was the 
 same, but then it was so differently worked out. He looked 
 at the picture in every possible light, and this was the conclu- 
 sion he came to ; — No ; no particular resemblance, a coinci- 
 dence, that was all. And John Sinclair was a perfectly well- 
 known painter, residing in New York, a man known to Dr. 
 Maurice's friends there. Why there was no nane to the pic- 
 ture in the catalogue nobody could tell. It was some absurd 
 mistake or other; but John Sinclair, the painter, was a man 
 who had been known in New York for years. " Depend upon 
 it, it is only a coincidence," Dr. Maurice said. After that visit, 
 from what feeling I cannot say, the picture was taken back up- 
 
 K»ii«*»Jw.««6W«is(* 
 
 9m»^sMm^m0^mmmmKHmm 
 
362 
 
 AT HIS GATES, 
 
 ■'* 
 
 h»f" M 
 
 V % 
 
 stairs. Not that Mrs. Drummond was convinced, but that she 
 shrank from further discussion of a matter on which she felt so 
 deeply She would sit before it for hours, gazing at it, care- 
 less of everything else ; and if I were to reproduce all the 
 thoughts that coursed through Helen's mind, I should do her 
 injury with the reader, who, no doubt, believes that the feelings 
 in a wife's mind, when such a hope entered it, could only be 
 those of half a delirious joy. But He ]#^n*« thoughts were not 
 wildJy joyful. She had been hardly and painfully trained to 
 do without him, to p«t him out of her life. Her soul had slid 
 into new ways, changed meanings ; and in that time what 
 change of meaning what difference of nature might have come 
 to a man who had returned from death and the grave ? 
 Could it all be undone ? Could it float away like a tale that 
 is told, that tale of seven long years 1 Would the old assim- 
 ilate with the new, and the widow become a wife again without 
 some wrench, some convulsion of nature 1 Not long before 
 she had denounced the name vehemently, crying out against it, 
 declaring that she did not believe in it : but now, when per- 
 haps it might turn out that her widowhood had been indeed a 
 fiction and unreal — now ! How was she to be a wife again ; 
 how her existence was to suffer a new change, and return into 
 its old channel, Helen could not tell. And yet that Robert 
 should live again, that he should receive some recompense for 
 all his sufferings ; that even she who had been in her way so 
 cruel to him, should be able to make up for it — for that, Helen 
 would have given her life. The news about John Sinclair was 
 a discouragement, but still it did not touch her faith. She 
 carried her picture up-stairs again, and put it reverently, not 
 in its old corner, but where the sunshine would fall upon it 
 and the full light of day. The fancifulness of this proceeding 
 did not occur to her, for grief and hope, and all the deeper 
 emotions of the heart, are always fanciful : and in this time of 
 suspense, when she could do nothing, when she was waiting, 
 listening for indications of what was coming, that silent idol- 
 worship which no one knew of, did her good. 
 
 Meanwhile Dura went on blazing with lights, and sweet with 
 music, making every day a holiday. Mrs. Burton did not 
 walk so much as she used to do, but drove about, giving her 
 orders, paying her visits, with beautiful horses which half the 
 
 ) v 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 363 
 
 county envied, and toilettes which would have been remarked 
 even in the park. " That little woman is losing her head, 
 the Bector said, as he looked at an invitation his vnfe had just 
 received for a fete which was to eclipse all the others, and 
 which was given in celebration of Clara's birthday. It was 
 fixed for the 6th of July, and people were coming to it from far 
 and near. There was to be a garden party first, a sumptuous 
 so-called breakfast, and ball at night. The whole neighbour- 
 hood was agitated by the preparations for this solemnity. It wag 
 said that Ned, poor Ned, whose disappearance was now an old 
 story, was to be disinherited, and that Clara was to be the heir- 
 ess of all. The importance thus given to her birthday gave a 
 certain colour to the suggestion ; it was like a coming of age, 
 people said, and replaced the festivities which ought to have 
 taken place on the day when Ned completed his twenty-first 
 year, a day which had passed very quietly a few weekfi before, 
 noted by none. But to Clara's birthday feast everybody was 
 invited. The great county people, the Merewethers them- 
 selves, were coming, and in consideration of Clara's possible 
 iieiress-ship, it was whispered that the Marchioness had 
 tf//ught8 of making her son a candidate for the place deserted 
 by Cyril Rivers. Cyril, too, moreover, was among the guests: 
 he was on€ of a large party which was coming from |own ; 
 and the village people wen asked, the Daltonsand the Drum- 
 monds, beside all the lesFe;' gentry of the neighbourhood. It 
 was to Katie Dalton's impoifcunate beseechings, seconded, no 
 doubt, by her own heart, t L (h had begun to tire of seclusion 
 and long for a little pleaf nre, that Norah relinquished her first 
 proud determination net to go ; t'ld Dr. Maurice had just sent 
 a box from town containing two drest^es, one for the evening, 
 and one for out-of-doors, T/hich it was beyond the powers of 
 any girl of nineteen to refuse the opportunity of wearing. 
 When Norah had made up her owa raind to this effort, she 
 addressed herself to the task of overcoming her mother's reluc- 
 tance ; and after much labour, succeeded so far that a compro- 
 mise was effected. Nor?.h went to llie out-door fete, under the 
 charge of Mrs. Dalton, and Helen with a sigh took out her 
 black silk gown once more, and prepared to go with her child 
 in the evening. The Daltons were always there, good neigh- 
 bours to support and help her ; and, seated by Mrs. Dalton's 
 
 . ii."#s»i*-f--ia»wa5tss 
 
 ^^tm^rmmfimii^Mrm 
 
 frngmf^^m 
 
364 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 ride, who knew something of her anxiety about that friend 
 whom she had not heard of for years, Mrs. Drummond felt 
 herself sustained. When Norah returned with the Daltons 
 from the garden party, Mr. Bivers accompanied the girls. He 
 came with them to the door of the Gatehouse, where Katie, 
 secretly held fast by Norah, accompanied her friend. He 
 lingered on the white steps, waiting to be asked ii: ; but Norah 
 gave no such invitation. She went back to her mother tri- 
 umphant, full of angry delight. 
 
 " I have been perfectly civil to him, mamma ! I have taken 
 the greatest care — I have not avoided him, nor been stiff to him, 
 nor anything. And he has tried so very hard, to have an expla- 
 nation. Very likely ! as if I would listen to any explanation." 
 
 " How did you avoid it, Norah, if you were neither angry nor 
 stiff r 
 
 " Katie, mamma, always Katie ! I put her between him and 
 me wherever we went. It was fun," cried Norah, with eyes 
 that sparkled with revengeful satisfaction. Her spirits had 
 risen to the highest point. She had regained her position ; she 
 had got the upper hand, which Norah loved. The prospect of 
 the evening which was still before her, in which she should 
 wear that prettiest ball-dress, which surely had been made by 
 the fairies, and drag Cyril Rivers at her chariot-wheels, and 
 show him triumphantly how little it mattered to her, made 
 Norah radiant. She rushed in to the Haldanes' side of the 
 house to show herself, in the wildest spirits. Mrs. Haldane 
 and Miss Jane— wonder of wonders — were going too ; every- 
 body was to be there. The humble people were asked to 
 behold and ratify the triumph, as well as the fine people to 
 make it. As for Mrs. Haldane, she disapproved, and was a 
 great deal more grim than ordinary ; but, for once in a way, 
 because it would be a great thing to see, and because Mr. Bald- 
 win and his sisters were to be there too, — " as much out of 
 their proper place as we," she said, shaking her head — she had 
 allowed herself to be persuaded. Miss Jane required no per- 
 suading. She was honestly delighted to have a chance of 
 seeing anything — the dresses and the diamonds, and Norah 
 dancing with all the grandees. When Norah came in, all in a 
 cloud of tulle and lace. Miss Jane fairly screamed with delight. 
 *♦ I am quite happy to think I shall see the child have one 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 365 
 
 good ," she said, walking round and round the fairy 
 
 princ " "Were you fond of dancing yourself, Miss Jane 1" 
 
 said X . orah, not without the laugh of youth over so droll an 
 idea. But it was not droll to Miss Jane ; she put her hands, 
 which were clothed in black with mittens, on the child's 
 shoulders, and gave her a kiss, and answered not a word. 
 And Stephen looked on from that immovable silent post of his, 
 and saw them both, and thought of the past and the present, 
 and all the shadowy uncertain days that were to come. How 
 strange to think of the time when Miss Jane, so grave and 
 prosaic in her old-maidish gown, had been like Norah ! How 
 wonderful to think that Norah one day might be as Miss Jane ! 
 And so they all went away to the ball together, and Stephen in 
 his chair immovable till his nurses came back, and Susan bust- 
 ling about in the kitchen, were left in the house alone. 
 
 One ball is like another ; and except that the Dura ball was 
 more splendid, more profuse in ornament, gayer in banks of 
 flowers, richer in beautiful dresses and finery, more ambitious 
 in music than any ball ever known before in the county, there 
 is little that could be said of it to distinguish it from all others, 
 except, perhaps, the curious fact that the master of the house 
 was not present. He had not been visible all day. He had 
 been telegraphed for to go to town that morning and had not 
 returned; but then Mr. Golden, who was a far more useful man 
 in a ball-room than the master of the house, was present, and 
 was doing all thai, became a man to make everything go oflF 
 brilliantly. He was the slave of the young heroine of the feast to 
 whom everybody was paying homage ; and it was remarked 
 by a great many people, that even when going on the arm of 
 Lord Merewether to open the ball, Clara had a suggestion to 
 whisper to this amateur major-domo. " He is such an old friend, 
 lie is just the same as papa," she said to her partner with a pass- 
 ing blush ; but then Clara was in uncommonly brilliant looks 
 that evening, even for her. Her beautiful colour kept coming 
 and going ; there was an air of emotion, and almost agitation 
 about her, which gave a charm to her usually unemotional style 
 of beauty. Lord Merewether, who was under his mother's 
 orders to be " very attentive," almost fell in love with Clara, in 
 excess of his instructions, when he noticed this unusual fluctua- 
 tion of colour and tone. It supplied just what she wanted, and 
 
dee 
 
 AT HtS GATES. 
 
 ''.til.: %.\1 
 
 made the Rubens into a goddess — or so at least this young man 
 thought: 'i 
 
 But Helen had not been above an hour in this gay scene when 
 a strange restlessness seized upon her. She did her best to 
 struggle against it ; she tried hard to represent to herself that 
 nothing could have happened at home, no post could have come 
 in nnce she left it, and that Norah needed her there. She saw 
 Mr. Rivers hovering about with his explanation on his lips try- 
 ing to get at her, since Norah would have nothing to say to 
 him ; and felt that it was her duty to remain by her child at 
 such a moment But, after a while, her nerves, or her imagina- 
 tion, or some incomprehensible influence was too much for her. 
 " You look as if you would laint," Mrs. Dalton, whispered to 
 her, " Let Mr. Dalton take you to the air— let Charlie get you 
 something ; I am sure you .are ill/' \ 
 
 " I am not ill ; but I must get home. I am wanted at 
 home," said H?len with her brain swimming. How it was 
 that she did it, she never could tell afterwards ; but she 
 managed to retain command of herself, to recommend Norah to 
 Mrs. Dalton's care, and finally to steal out ; no one noticing 
 her in the commotion and movement that were always going 
 on. When she got into the open air with her shawl wrapped 
 about her, her semies came back. It was foolish, it was absurd 
 •^but the deed was done ; and though her restlessness calmed 
 down when she stepped out into the calm of the summer night 
 it was easier then to go on than to go back ; and Norah was in 
 safe hands. It was a moonlight night, as is indispensable for 
 any great gathering in the country. To be sure it was July, 
 and before the guests went home, the short night would be 
 over ; but still according to habit, a moonlight night had been 
 selected . Is was soft and warm, and hazy — the light very 
 mellow, and not over bright, — the scent of the flowers and the 
 glitter of the dew filling the air. There was so much moon, 
 and so much light from the house, that Helen was not afraid of 
 the dark avenue. She went on, relieved of her anxiety, feeling 
 refreshed and eased, she could not tell how, by the blowing of 
 the scented night-air in her face. But before she reached the 
 shade of the avenue, some one rushed across the lawn after her. 
 She turned half round to see who it was, thinking that perhaps 
 Charlie or Mr. Dalton had hurried after her to accompany her 
 
AT HIS QATEd. 
 
 3«7 
 
 home. The figure, however, was not that of either. The man 
 came hurriedly up to her, saying, in a low but earnest tone, 
 " Mrs. Burton, don't take any rash step," when she, as well as 
 he, suddenly started. The voice informed her who spoke, and 
 the sight of her upturned face in the moonlight informed him 
 who listened, '' Mrs. Drummond !" he exclaimed. They had 
 not met face to face, nor exchanged words since the time when 
 she denounced him in the presence of Cyril Rivers in St Mary's 
 Road. " Mrs. Drummond," he repeated, with an uneasy laugh ; 
 " of all times in the world for you and me to meet !" 
 
 " I hope there is no reason why we should meet," said Helen 
 impetuously. " I am going away. There can be nothing that 
 wants saying between you and me." 
 
 " But, by Jove, there is though," he said ; " there is reason 
 enough, I can tell you — such news as will make the hair stand 
 upright on your head. Ah ! they say revenge is sweet. I shall 
 leave you to find it out to-morrow when everybody knows." 
 
 " What is it 1 " she asked breathlessly, and then stopped, 
 and went on a few steps, horrified at the thought of thus asking 
 information from the man she hated most. He went on along* 
 with her, saying nothing. He had no hat on, and the rose 
 
 in 
 
 his coat showed a little gleam of colour in the whitening of the 
 light. 
 
 " You ought to ask me, Mrs. Drummond," he said, " for re- 
 venge, they say, is sweet, and you would be glad to hear." 
 
 " I want no revenge," she said hurriedly ; and they entered 
 the gloom and the avenue side by side, the strangest pair. Her 
 heart began to beat and flutter — she could not tell why ; for she 
 feared nothing from him ; and all at once there rose up a gleam 
 of secret triumph in her. This man believed that Robert 
 Drummond was dead, knew no better. What did she care for 
 his news 1 if indeed she were to tell him hers ! 
 
 " Well," hu said, nftui' an interval, " I see you are resolved 
 not to ask, so 1 will tell you. I have my revenge in it too, 
 Mrs. Druuimond ; this night, when they are all dancing, Burton 
 is oiF, with the police after him. It will be known to all the 
 world to-morrow. You ought to be grateful to me for telling 
 you that." 
 
 " Burton is off I — the police — after him !" She did not take 
 in the meaning of the words. 
 
 tjs^'^mgimmmmimsmmiemms*. 
 
368 
 
 AT HIS OATBS. 
 
 ** You don't believe me, perhaps — neither did his wife just 
 now ; or at least so she pretended ; but it is true. There was a 
 time when he left me to bear the brunt, now it is his turn; and 
 there is a ball at his house the same night 1" 
 
 She interrupted him hurriedly, " I don't know what you 
 mean. I cannot believe you. What has he done 1" she said. 
 
 Mr. Golden laughed ; and in the stillness his laugh sounded 
 strangely echoins among the trees. He turned round on his 
 heel, waving his hand to her. ** Only what all the rest of us 
 have done," he said. " Good night ; I am wanted at the ball. 
 I have a great deal to do to-night." 
 
 She stood for a moment where he had left her, wondering, 
 half paralyzed. And then she turned and went slowly down 
 the avenue. She felt herself shake and tremble — she could not 
 teU why. Was it this man's voice 1 was it his laugh ithat 
 sounded like something infernal? And what did it all meian 1 
 Helen who was a brave woman by nature, felt a flutter of fear 
 as she quickened her steps and went on. A ball at his 
 house — ^the police after him. What did it mean ? The silence 
 of the long leafy road was so strange and deep after all the 
 sound and movements ; the music pursued her from behind, 
 growing fainter and fainter as she went on ; the world seemed 
 to be all asleep, except that part of it which was making merry, 
 dancing, and rejoicing at Dura. And now the eagerness to get 
 home suddenly seized upon her again, — something must have 
 happened since she left; some letter; perhaps — some one — 
 come back. 
 
 When she got within sight of the Gatehouse, the moon was 
 shining right down the village street as it did when it was at the 
 full All was quiet, silent, asleep. No, not all. Opposite her 
 house, against the Bectory gates, two men were standing. As 
 she went up into the shadow of the lime-trees, and rang the 
 bell at her own door, one of them crossed the road, and came 
 up to her, touching his hat " Asking your pardon, ma'am," 
 he said, " there is some one in your house, if you're the lady of 
 this house, as onerhtn't to be there." 
 
 A thrill of great terror took possession of Helen. Her heart 
 leapt to her mouth. "I don't understand you. Who are 
 you 1 And what do you want 1 " she asked, almost gasping 
 for breath. 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 369 
 
 " I'm a member of the detective force. I ain't ashamed 0£ 
 my business/' said the man. " We seen him go in, me and 
 my mate. With your permission, ma'am, we'd like to go 
 through the house." 
 
 '' Go through my house at this hour ! " cried Helen. She 
 heard the door opened behind her, but did not turn round. 
 She was the guardian of the house, she alone, and of all who 
 were in it, be they who they might. Her wits seemed to come 
 to her all at once, as if she found them groping in the dark. 
 " Have you any authority to go into my house ? Am I obliged 
 to let you in 1 Have you a warrant ? ' 
 
 " They've been a worriting already, ma'am, and you out," 
 said Susan's voice from behind. " What business have they, 
 I'd like to know, in a lady's house at this hour of the night 1 " 
 
 '' Has any one come, Susan ) " Helen said. 
 
 "Not a soul." 
 
 She was standing with a candle in her hand, holding the 
 door half open. The night air puffed the flame ; and perhaps 
 it was that too that made the shadow of Susan's cap tremble 
 upon the panel of the door. ^ 
 
 "I cannot possibly admit you at this hour," said Mrs. 
 Drummond. "To-morrow, if you come with any authority ; 
 but not to-night." 
 
 She went into her own house, and closed the door. How 
 still it was and dark, with Susan's candle only flickering 
 through the gloom ! And then Susan made a sudden clutch 
 at her mistress's arm. She held the candle down to Helen's 
 face, and peered into it, " I've atook him into my own room," 
 she said. 
 
 asmmtmimsii': .Is 
 
370 
 
 AT HIS OATKS. 
 
 iiJi: 'v' ' 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 I HE Gatehouse was full of long, rambling, dark passages 
 with mysterious closets at oach elbow of them, or curi- 
 ous little unused rooms — passages which had struck ter- 
 ror into Norah's soul when she was a child, and which even 
 now she thought it expedient to run through as speedily as pos- 
 sible, never feeling sure that she might not be caught by some 
 ghostly intruder behind the half-shut doors. Mrs. Drummond 
 followed Susan through one of these intricate winding ways. 
 It led to a comer room looking out upon the garden, and close 
 to the kitchen, which was Susan's bedchamber. For some for- 
 gotten reason or other there was a sort of window, three or 
 four broad panes of glass let into the partition wall high up be- 
 tween this room and the kitchen, the consequence of which waa 
 that Susan's room always showed a faint light to the garden. 
 This was her reason for taking it as the hiding-place for the 
 strange euest. 
 
 Mrs. Drummond went down the dark passage, feeling her- 
 self incapable of speech and almost of thought ; a vague won- 
 der why he should be so hotly pursued, and how it was that 
 Susan should have known this and taken it upon herself to re- 
 ceive and shelter one who was a stranger to her, passed through 
 Helen's mind. Both these things were strange and must be 
 inquired into hereafter, but in the meantime her heart was 
 beating too high with personal emotion to be able to think of 
 anything else. Was it possible that thus strangely, thus sud- 
 denly, she was to meet him again from whom she had been so 
 long parted! Their last inverview rushed back upon her 
 mind, and his appearance then. Seven years ago ! — and a man 
 changes altogether, becomes, people say, another being in seven 
 years. This thought quivered vaguely through Helen's mind. 
 So many thoughts went pursuing each other, swift and noise- 
 less as ghosts. It was not above two minutes from the time she 
 came into the hall until she stood at the threshold of Susan's 
 room ; but a whole world of questions, of reflections had hurried 
 
AT HIS OATES. 
 
 371 
 
 through her thoughts. She trembled by intervals with a nervous 
 shiver. Her heart beat so violently that it seemed at once to 
 choke and to paralyze her. To see him again — to stand face 
 to face with him who had come back out of the grave — to 
 change her whole being — to be no more herself, no more 
 Norah's mother, but Robert's wife again ! Her whole frame 
 began to shake as with one great pulse. It was not joy, it 
 was not fear ; it was the wonder of it, the miracle, the stranjiw, 
 strange incomprehensible, incredible — Could he be there ^— 
 nothing more between the two who had been parted by d' ath 
 and silence but that < '^ed door. 
 
 Susan turned roun on her just before they reached it. 
 Susan, too, hard, bo. , woman, little given to emotion, was 
 trembling. She wiped her eyes with her apron and gave a 
 sniff that was almost a groan, and thrust the candle into Helen's 
 hand. 
 
 " Oh, don't you be hard upon him. Miss Helen as was ! " 
 cried Susan with a sob ; and turned and fled into her kitchen. 
 
 Helen stopped for a moment to steady herself — to steady 
 the light of the poor candle which, held by such agitated, un- 
 steady hands, was flickering wildly in her grasp. And then 
 she opened the door. 
 
 Some one started and rose up suddenly with a movement 
 which had at once fear and watchfulness in it. Her agitation 
 blinded her so that she could not see. She held up the light. 
 If her misty eyes could have made him out — and then all at 
 once there came a voice which made her nerves steady in a mo- 
 ment, calmed down her pulses, restored to her self-command. 
 
 " Helen, is it you 1 1 thought it must be my wife." 
 
 The blood rushed back to Helen's heart with an ebb as sud- 
 den as the flow had been, making her faint and sick. But the 
 revulsion of feeling was as strong, and gave her strength. The 
 light gave a leap in her hand as she steadied herself, and threw 
 a wild broken gleam upon him. 
 
 " Mr. Burton," she said, " what are you doing here 1 " 
 
 " Then the news had not come," he cried, with a certain re- 
 lief ; " nobody knows as yetl Well, well, tl 'ngs are not so 
 bad, then, as I thought." 
 
 She put the candle on the table and looked at him. He 
 was dressed in his morning clothes, those light- coloured sum- 
 
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372 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 mer garments, which made his full person fuller, but i^hich at 
 this hour, and after the scene from which she had just come, 
 looked strangely disorderly and out of place. His linen was 
 crished and soiled, and his coat, which was of a colour and 
 material which showed specks and wrinkles as much asawoman's 
 dress, had the look of having been worn for a week night and 
 day. The air of the vagabond, which comes so rapidly to a 
 hunted man had come to him already, and mixed with his ha- 
 bitual air of respectability, of wealth and self-importance, in 
 the most curious, almost pitiful way. 
 
 *^ Tell me," she said, repeating her question almost without 
 knowing what she said, " why are you here 1 " 
 
 He did not answer immediately. He made an effort to put 
 on his usual jaunty look, to speak with his usual jocular supe- 
 riority. But something — ^whether it was the flickering feeble 
 light of the candle which showed him her face, or some instinct 
 of his own, which necessity had quickened into life — ^made him 
 aware all at once that the woman by his side was in a whirl of 
 mental indecision, that she was wavering between two resolves, 
 and that this was no time to trifle with her. In such circum- 
 stances sometimes a man will seize upon the best argument 
 which skill could select, but sometimes also in his haste and 
 excitement he snatches at the one which makes most against 
 him. He said — 
 
 " I will tell you plainly, Helen. I am as your husband was 
 when he went down to the river — that night." 
 
 She gave a strange and sudden cry, and turning round made 
 one quick step to the door. If she had not seen that Dives in 
 the exhibition, if she had not been in the grip of wild hope 
 and expectation, I think she would have gone straightway, 
 driven by that sudden probing of the old wound, and given 
 him up to his pursuers. At least that would have been her 
 first impulse ; but something turned her back. She turned to 
 him again with a sudden fire kindled in her eyes. 
 
 " It was you who drove him there," she said. 
 
 He made a little deprecating gesture with his hands, but he 
 did not say anything. He saw in a moment that he had made 
 a mistake. 
 
 " You drove him there," she repeated, " you, — and that 
 man ; and now you come to me and think 1 will save you — to 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 373 
 
 me, his wife. You drove him to despair, to ruin, and you 
 think I am to save you. Why should 1 1 What have 
 you done that I should help you ) You had no pity on 
 him ; you let him perish, you let him die. You injured me 
 and mine heyond the reach of recovery ; and now you put 
 3fOurself into my hands — with your enemies outside." 
 
 He gave a shudder, and looked at the window as if with a 
 thought of escape ; and then he turned round upon her, stand- 
 ing at bay. 
 
 " Well," he said, " you have your revenge : I am ruined too. 
 I don't pretend to hide it from you ; but I have no river at 
 hand to escape into to hide all my troubles in — but only a wo- 
 man to taunt me that I have tried to be kind to — and my wife 
 and my child dancing away close by. Listen ; that is what you 
 call comfort to a ruined man, is it ^ot ? '' 
 
 He pointed towards Dura as he spoke. Just then a gust of 
 the soft night-wind brought with it the sound of the music 
 from the great house, that house ablaze with gaiety, with 
 splendour, and light, where Clara Burton all jewelled and 
 crowned with flowers was dancing at this moment, while her 
 mother led the way to the gorgeous table where princes might 
 have sat down. No doubt the whole scene rose before his ima- 
 gination as it did before Helen's. He sat down upon Susan's 
 rush-bottomed chair with a short laugh. One candle flickering 
 in the dim place revealing all the homely furniture of the ser- 
 vant's bedroom. What a contrast ! what a fate ! Helen felt 
 as every generous mind feels, humbled before the presence of 
 the immediate sufferer. He had injured her, and she, per 
 haps, had suffered more deeply than Reginald Burton was ca- 
 pable of suffering ; but it was his turn now ; he had the first 
 place. The sorrow was his before which even kings must 
 bow. 
 
 While she stood there with pity stealing into her heart, he 
 put down his head into his hands with a gesture of utter weari- 
 ness. 
 
 " Whatever you are going to do," he said faintly, " let 
 Susan give me something to eat first. I have had nothing to 
 eat all day." 
 
 This appeal made an end of all Helen's enmity. It had 
 been deep and hot, and bitter when all was well with him — 
 
374 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 but the first taste of revenge which Ned's disappearance gave 
 her had appeased Mrs. Drummond. It had been bitter, not 
 sweet. And now this appeal overcame all her defences. If he 
 had asked her to aid in his escape she might have resisted still. 
 But he asked her for a meal. Tears of humiliation, of pitying 
 shame, almost of a kind tenderness came into her eyes. God 
 help the man ! Had it come to this ) 
 
 She turned into the kitchen, where Susan sat bolt upright 
 in a hard wooden chair before the fire, with her arms folded, 
 the mbst watchful of sentinels. They had a momentary dis- 
 cussion what there was to set before him, and where it was to 
 be served. Susan's opinion was very strongly in favour of the 
 kitchen. 
 
 " Those villians 'ud see the lights to the front," said Susan. 
 "And then Miss Norah, she'll becoming home, and folks with 
 her. Them p-licemen is up to everything. The shutters dbn't 
 close up to the very top ; and if they was to climb into one o' 
 the trees ! And besides, there's a fire here." 
 
 " It is too warm for a fire, Susan." 
 
 " Not for theid as is in trouble," said the woman ; and she 
 had her way. 
 
 Helen arranged the table with her own hands, while Susan 
 made up with her best skill an impromptu meal — not of the 
 richest or choicest, for the larder at the Gatehouse was poorly 
 enough supplied; but fortunately there had been something 
 provided for next day's dinner which was available. And 
 when the fugitive came into the warm kitchen — he who the 
 day before had made all the household miserable in Dura over 
 the failure of a salmi — he warmed his hands with a shiver of 
 returning comfort, and sniffed the poor cutlet as it cooked, and 
 made a wretched attempt at a joke in the sudden sense of ease 
 and solace that had come to him. 
 
 " He was always one for his joke, was Mr. Reginald," Susan 
 said with a sob ; and as for Helen, this poor pleasantry com- 
 pleted her prostration. The sight of him warming himself on 
 this July night, eating so eagerly, like a man famished, filled 
 her with an indescribable pity. It was not so much magnani- 
 mity on her part as utter failure on his. How could she lay 
 sins to this man's charge, who was not great enough in himself 
 to frighten a fly 1 The pity in her heart hurt her like an ache, 
 and she was ashamed. 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 375 
 
 But what was to be done t She went softly, almost stealthily 
 (with the strange feeling that they might hear her out of doors, 
 of which she was not herself aware), up to her bed room, which 
 was over the drawing-room, and looked out into the moonlight, 
 The men still kept their place opposite at the Rectory gate — 
 aiid now a third man, one of the Dura police, with his lantern 
 in his hand, joined them. Helen was a woman full of all the 
 natural prejudices and susceptibilities. Her pride received 
 such a wound by the appearance of this policeman as it would 
 be difficult to describe. Reginald Burton was her enemy, her 
 antagonist ; and yet now she remembered her cousin. The 
 Burtons had been of unblemished good fame in all their 
 branches till now. The shame which had been momentarily 
 thrown upon her husband had been connected with so much 
 anguish that Helen's pride had not been called uppermost. 
 But now it seized upon her. The moment the Dura police- 
 man appeared, it became evident to her that all the world 
 knew, and' the pang ran through her proud heart like a sudden 
 arrow. Her kindred were disgraced, her own blood, the hon- 
 est, good people in their graves; and Ned — poor, innocent Ned ! 
 — at the other end of the world. The pang was so sharp that 
 it forced tears from !ier, though she was not given to weeping. 
 A policeman ! as if the man was a thief who was her own cou- 
 sin, of her own blood ! And then the question returned. What 
 was to be done 1 I don't know what horrible vision of the 
 culprit dragged through the street, with his ignominy visible 
 to the whole world, rose before Helen's imagmation. It did 
 not occur to her that such a capture might be very decorously, 
 very quietly made. She could think of nothing but the poor 
 ragged wretch whom she had once seen handcuffed, his clothes 
 all muddy with the falls he had got in struggling for his liberty, 
 and a policeman on either side of him. This was the only 
 form in which she could realise an arrest by the hands of jus- 
 tice. And to see the master of Dura thus dragged through 
 the village, with all the people around, once so obsequious, 
 staring with stupid, impudent wonder f Anything, anything 
 rather than that ! Helen ran down-stairs again, startling her- 
 self with the sound she made. In the quiet she could hear 
 the knife and fork which were still busy in the kitchen, and 
 the broken talk with Susan which the fugitive kept up. She 
 
 ■m 
 m 
 
376 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 heard him laugh, and it made her heart sick. This time she 
 turned to the other side, to the long passage opposite to that 
 which led to the kitchen, which was the way of communication 
 with the apartments of the Haldanes. The door there, which 
 was generally fastened, was open to-night, and the light was 
 still m Stephen's window, and he himself, for the first time for 
 years, had been left to this late hour in his chair. He was 
 seated there, very still and motionless, when Helen entered. 
 He had dropped asleep in his loneliness. The candles on the 
 table , before him threw a strange light upon the pallor of his 
 face, upon the closed eyes, and head thrown back. His hair 
 had grown grey in these seven years ; his face had refined and 
 softened in the long suffering, in the patient, still, leaden days 
 which he had lived through, making no complaint He looked 
 like an apostle in this awful yet gentle stillness — and he locked 
 as if he were dead. V 
 
 But even Mrs. Drummond's entrance was enough to rouse 
 him — the rustle of her dress, or perhaps even the mere sense 
 that there was some one near him. He opened his eyes 
 dreamily. , 
 
 " Well, mother, I hope you have enjoyed it," he said with a 
 smile. Then suddenly becoming aware who his companion was, 
 " Mrs. Drummond ! I beg your pardon. What has happened V 
 
 She came and stood by him, holding out her hand, which he 
 took and held between his. There was a mutual pity between 
 these two — a sympathy which was almost tenderness. They 
 were so sorry for each other — so destitute of any power to help 
 each other 1 Most touching and close of bonds ! 
 
 *' Something has happened," she said. *'Mr. Haldane, I 
 have come to you for your advice." 
 
 He looked up at her anxiously. 
 
 " Not Norah — not — ^any one arrived ** 
 
 " Oh, no, no ; something shameful, painful, terrible. You 
 know what is going on at the great house. Mr. Haldane, Eeg- 
 inald Burton is here in Susan's kitchen, hidden, and men watch- 
 ing for him outside. Men — policemen! Thatis^what Imean. 
 And oh I what am I to do Y" 
 
 He held her hand still, and his touch kept her calm. He did 
 not say anything for a minute, except one low exclamation un- 
 der his breath. 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 377 
 
 " Sit down," he said. " You are worn out It is very 
 late 1" 
 
 "Past midnight. By-and-by your mother will be back. 
 Tell me first, while we are alone and can speak freely, what can 
 I dol" 
 
 " He is hiding here,'' said Stephen, " and policemen outside ? 
 Then he is ruined, and found out. That is what you mean. 
 Compose yourself, and tell me, if you can, what you know, 
 and what you tuish to do." 
 
 " Oh, what does my wish matter 1 " she cried. " I am ask- 
 ing you what is possible. I know little more than I tell you. 
 He is here, worn-out, miserable, ruined, and the men watching 
 to take him. I don't know how it has happened, why he came, 
 or how they found it out ; but so it is. They are there now in 
 front of the house. How am I to get him out 1 " 
 
 " Is that the only question 1 " Stephen asked. 
 
 She looked at him with an impatience she could not res- 
 train. 
 
 " What other question can there be, Mr. Haldane 1 In a few 
 minutes they will be back." 
 
 " But there is another question," he said. "I believe this 
 man has been our ruin — yours and mine — ^yours, Mrs. Drura- 
 mond, more fatally than mine. Golden was but one of hid in- 
 struments, I believe — as guilty, but not more so. He has 
 ruined us, and more than us " 
 
 She wrung her hands in her impatience. 
 
 " Mr. Haldane, I hear steps. We may but have a moment 
 more." 
 
 He put his hand upon her arm. 
 
 " Think ! " he cried. " Are we to let him go — to save him 
 that he may ruin others ) Is it just 9 Think what he has 
 made us all suffer. Is there to be no punishment for him ? " 
 
 " Oh, punishment ! " she cried. " Do you know what pun- 
 ishment means, when you make yourself the instrument of it 1 
 It means revenge ; and there is nothing so bitter, nothing so 
 terrible, as to see your own handiwork, and to think, * It was 
 not God that did this ; it was me.' " 
 
 " How can you tell ] " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I can tell. There was his son. I thought it was 
 a just return for all the harm he had done when his poor boy 
 
378 
 
 AT HIS OAT£S. 
 
 I 
 
 I' 
 
 I, ' 
 
 ^But Ned went away, and left everything. It was not my 
 
 fault ; it was not Norah's fault. Yet she had done it, and I 
 had wished she might. No ; no more revenge. How can I 
 get him away?" 
 
 " I am not so forgiving as you," he said. 
 
 Helen could not rest. She rose up from the jeat she had 
 drawn to his side, and went to the window. There were steps 
 that frightened her moving about outside, and then there was 
 the sound of voices. 
 
 " Come in and go over the house ! Come in at this hour of 
 the night ! " said a voice. It was Miss Jane's voice, brisk and 
 alert as usual. Helen hurried into the hall, to the door, where 
 she could hear what was said. 
 
 " But Jane, Jane, if anyone has got in ? A thief — ^perhaps 
 a murderer ! Oh, my poor Stephen ! " \\ 
 
 " Nonsense, mother ! If you like to stay outside therfe, I'll 
 go over all the house with Susan, and let you know. Why, 
 Mrs. Drummond ! Here are some men who want to come in 
 to search for some one at this time of night." 
 
 " I have told them already they should not come in," said 
 Helen. 
 
 She had opened the door, and stood in front' of it with a 
 temerity which she scarcely felt justified in ; for how did she 
 know they might not rush past her, and get in before she could 
 stop them ? Such was her idea — such was the idea of all the 
 innocent people in the house. The Dura policeman was stand 
 ing by with his truncheon and his lantern. 
 
 " I've told 'em, mum, as it's a mistake," said that function- 
 ary; "and that tliis 'ere is the quietest, most respectablest 
 Wse— " 
 ""- « Thanks, Wilkins," said Helen. 
 
 It was a positive comfort to her, and did her good, this sim- 
 ple testimony. And to think that Wilkins knew no better 
 than that ! 
 
 "Will you keep near the house ? " she said, turning to him, 
 with that feeling that he was " on our side " which had once 
 preposessed Norah in favour of Mr. Rivers. " My daughter will 
 be coming back presently, and I don't want to have her an- 
 noyed or frightened with this story. No one except the people 
 who belong to it shall enter this house to-night." 
 
AT 0IB GATES. 
 
 379 
 
 ** As you please, ma'am ; but I hope you knows the penalty/' 
 said the detective. 
 
 Helen did not know of any penalty, nor did she care. She 
 was wound up to so hish a strain of excitement, that had she 
 been called upon to put ner arm in the place of the bolt, or do 
 any other futile heroic piece of resistance, she would not have 
 hesitated. She closed the door upon Mrs. Haldane and her 
 daughter, one of whom was frightened and the other excited 
 As they all came into the hall, Susan became visible, with her 
 candle in her hand, defending the passage to the kitchen. 
 Something ludicrous, something pathetic and tragic and terrible 
 was in the aspect of the house, and its guardians — ^had one 
 been wise enough to perceive what it meant. 
 
 " If Susan will come with me," said Miss Jane briskly, " after 
 that idiot of a man's romance, my mother will think we are all 
 going to be murdered in our beds. If Susan will come with 
 me, I'll go over all the house." 
 
 " We have examined ours." said Helen. " Susan, go with 
 Miss Jane. Mrs. Haldane, Mr. Stephen is tired, I think." 
 
 " Stephen must not be alarmed," said Mrs. Haldane with hesi- 
 tation. " But are you sure it is safe 1 Do you really think it 
 is safe ? You see, after all, when our door is open it is one 
 house. A man might run from one room to another. Oh, 
 Jane— Mrs. Dnimmond — if you will believe me, I can see a 
 shadpw down that passage ! Oh, my dear, you are young and 
 rash ! The men will know better ; let them com« in." 
 
 " I cannot allow them to come in. There is no .>iie, I assure 
 you, except your son, who wants your help." 
 
 " You ai^e like Jane," said the old lady ; " you are so bold 
 and rash. Oh, I wish I had begged them to stay all night. I 
 wouldn't mind giving a shilling or two. Think if Stephen 
 should be frightened ! Oh, yes, I am going ; but don't leave 
 me, dear. I couldn't be alone ; I shall be frightened of my 
 life." 
 
 This was how it was that Helen was in Stephen's room again 
 when Miss Jane came down, bustling and satisfied. 
 
 " You may make yourself perfectly easy, mother. We have 
 gone over. all the rooms — looked under the beds and in the 
 cup-boards, and there is not a ghost of anything. Poor Susan 
 is tired sitting up for us all ; I told her I'd wait up for Norah. 
 
380 
 
 AT HIS OATE& 
 
 Well, now you don't ask »n^ news of the ball, Stephen. Norah 
 has danced the whole evening ; I have never seen her sitting 
 down once. Her dress is beautiful ; and as, for herself, my 
 dear 1 But everybody was looking their best. I don't admire 
 Clara Burton in a general way ; but really Clara Burton was 
 something splendid — ^Yes, yes, mother; of course w&must get 
 Stephen to bed." 
 
 ** Good- niffht," said Helen, going up to him. She looked in 
 his face wistmlly ; but now the opportunity was over, and what 
 could he say ? He held her hand a moment, feeling the tremor 
 in it. 
 
 ** Good-night," he said ; and then veiy low he added hur- 
 riedly, " The gate into the Dura woods — the garden door." 
 
 " Thanks," she said, with a loud throb of her heart 
 
 The excitement, the suspense, were carrying Helen fa^ be- 
 yond her will or intention. She had been censible of a struggle 
 at first whether she would not betray the fugitive. Now Her 
 thoughts had progressed so fast and far, that she would have 
 fought for him, putting even her slight strength in the way to 
 defend him or protect his retreat He was a man whom she 
 almost hated ; and yet all her thoughts were with him, won- 
 dering was he safe by himself, and what could be done to make 
 him safer still She left the Haldane's side of the house eagerly, 
 and hurried down the passage to the kitchen. Ho was there, 
 in Susan's armchair before the fire. His meal was over, and 
 he had turned to the fire again, and fallen into a doze. While 
 she was moving about in a fever of anxiety, he himself, with 
 his head sunk on his breast, was unconscious of his own dan- 
 ger. Helen, who felt incapable of either resting or sleep, stood 
 still and looked at him in a sort of stupor. 
 
 ** Poor dear, poor dear ! " said Susan, holding up her hand in 
 warning, " he's been worrited and worn out, and he's dozed off 
 — ^the best thing he could do." 
 
 He mif^ht rest, but she could not. She went down a few 
 steps to the garden, and stole out into the night, cautiously 
 opening and closing the door. The garden wa^ walled all 
 round. It was a productive, wealthy garden, which, even when 
 the Gatehouse had been empty, was worth keeping up, and its 
 doors and fastenings were all in good order. There was no 
 chance of any one getting in by uiat side. Mrs. Drummond 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 381 
 
 stole out into the white moonlight, which suddenly surged upon 
 her figure, and blazoned it all over with silver, and crept round, 
 tremUing at every pebble she disturbed, to the unused door 
 which opened into the Dura woods. It had been made that 
 there might be a rapid means of communication between the 
 Gatehouse and the mansion, but it had never been used since 
 the Drummonds came. She had forgotten this door until 
 Stephen reminded her of its existence. It was partially hid 
 behmd a thicket of raspberry-bushes, which had ^own high 
 and strong in front. Fortunately, a rusty key was in the lock. 
 With the greatest difficulty Helen turned it, feeling as if the 
 sound, as it grated and resisted, raised whirlwinds of echoes all 
 round her, and must betrav what she was doing. Even when 
 it was unlocked, it took all her strength to pull it open, for she 
 could do no more. For one moment she pressed out into the 
 dark, rustling woods. Through the foliage she could see the 
 glance of the lights from the house and the moving flicker of 
 carriage-lamps going down the avenue. The music came upon 
 her with a sudden burst like an insult. Oh, heaven ! to think 
 that all this should be going on, the dancing and laughter, and 
 him dozing there by Susan's kitchen fire ! 
 
 She paused a little in the garden, in the stillniess — not for 
 rest, but that she might arrange her thoughts without interrup- 
 tion. But there was no stillness there that night. The music 
 came to her on the soft wind, now lower, now louder ; the 
 sound of the carriage-wheels coming and going kept up a low, 
 continuous roll ; now and then there would come the sound of 
 a voice. It was still early ; only a few timid guests who feared 
 late hours, old people and spectators like the Haldanes, were 
 leaving the ball. It was in full career. The very sky seemed 
 flushed over Dura House, with its numberless lights. 
 
 Helen formed her plan as she crept about the garden in the 
 moonlight. Oh, if some kindly cloud would but rise, and veU 
 for a little this poor earth with its mysteries ! But all was 
 clear, well seen, visible ; the clear night and the blue heavens 
 were not pitiful, like Helen. Man is often hard upon man^ 
 heaven knows, yet it is man only who can feel fox the troubles 
 of mankind. 
 
382 
 
 AT IIIU OATJ£H. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 . <i 
 
 HILE her mother was thus occupied, Norah was tak- 
 ing her fill of pleasure. She "danced every dance," 
 beatific fulfilment of every girlish wish in respect 
 to a ball. She was so young and so fresh, that this per- 
 petual motion filled up the measure of her desires, and left 
 ner little time to think. To be sure, once or twice it had come 
 over her that Ned, poor Ned, was not here to share in all this 
 delight ; and if Norah had been destitute of partners, or less 
 sou^t than she thought her due, no doubt her heart would 
 have been very heavy on account of Ned. But she haU as 
 many partners as any girl could desire, and she had no time to 
 think. She was as happy as the nieht was long. The danc- 
 ine was delightful to her for itself the music was delight- 
 ful, and the " kindness " of everybody, which was Norah's 
 modest, pretty synonym for the admiration she received ; and 
 she asked no more of heaven than this, which she was receiv- 
 ing such full measure. To be sure, her mother's disappear- 
 ance disturbed her for the moment. But when Mrs. Dalton 
 had sworn by all her gods that Mrs Drummond was not ill, 
 Norah resigned herself once more to her happy fate. 
 
 There was, at the same time, a special point which exhilar- 
 ated Norah, satisfied her pride, and raised her spirits. During 
 all the festivities of the afternoon she had kept Cyril Kivers at 
 arm's length. Perhaps if he had not shown so much anxiety 
 to approach nearer, Norah would not have felt the. same satis- 
 faction in this — ^but his explanation, it was evident, was hanging 
 on his very lips, and she had triumphantly kept him from 
 making it. The same process was repeated in the evening. 
 She had rushed into a perfect crowd oi engagements in order 
 to escape him. Poor Charlie Dalton, whom Clara had no 
 longer any thought of, and who, for the frreater part of the even- 
 ing had been standing about, dolefully gazing after her, was 
 pressed ceremoniously into Norah's service. Once when she 
 happened to be disengaged and saw Rivers approaching, she 
 
 • A 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 833 
 
 was so lost to all sense of shame as to seize him breathlessly by 
 the arm. ** Dance this dance with me, Charlie," she whisper- 
 ed impatiently. 
 
 " Why must I dance 1" said the poor boy, who had no heart 
 for it. 
 
 ''Because I am determined not to dance with him," said 
 Norah, energetically leading off her captive. And thus she kept 
 the other at a distance, though perhaps she would have been 
 less rigid in evasion had he been more indifferent to the oppor- 
 tunity. It was late in the night, after supper, when he secured 
 her at last. 
 
 " Miss Drummond, you have avoided me all night " 
 
 " I ! " cried Norah, " but that is ridiculous. Why should I 
 avoid you, Mr. Rivers ] Indeed I am sure I have spoken to you 
 at least a dozen times this evening. It is not one's own fault 
 when one is engaged." 
 
 *' And I have been so anxious to see you — to explain to 
 you," he cried, his eagerness, and the long tantalizing delay, 
 having overcome his wisdom. "I have been quite miserable." 
 
 " About what, Mr. Rivers 1 " 
 
 " About what you must have thought very abominable be- 
 haviour — ^that day at the pictures ; fancy, it is two months 
 since, and you have never allowed mc a moment in which I could 
 say it till now ! " 
 
 " At the pictures ? " said Norah, feigning surprise. " I 
 don't think we have seen you very often lately, and two months 
 is a long time to remember. Oh, I recollect ! you left us in a 
 hurry." 
 
 " My mother had come to look for me — there was some 
 business in hand that I had to be consulted about. I cannot 
 tell you what a wretched ass I felt myself, dragged away with- 
 out a moment to explain — without even time to say, * This is 
 my mother.' " 
 
 " Mr. Rivers," said Norah, drawing her small person to its 
 full height, and loosing her hold of his arm. '' I think it would 
 have been good taste not to say anything about* this. When 
 we did not remark upon it, why should you ? I am only a girl, 
 I am nineteen and I never disobeyed mamma that I know of ; 
 but still, do you think I should have let her carry me off like a 
 from my friends whom I cared for, without a word % 
 
384 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 There are some things that one ought not to be asked to believe. 
 You were not obliged to say anything « t all about it. I should 
 like to be polite, but I can't make mjbalf a fool to please you. 
 And, on the other hand, you know Lady Rivers is nothing to 
 us. I did not ask to be introduced to her, and poor mamma 
 was too ill even to know. Please don't say any more about it. 
 It would have been much better not to have mentioned it at 
 aU." 
 
 "But, Miss Drummond ! " 
 
 "Yes, I know. You wanted to be polite. But never 
 raind. I am quite, quite satisfied," said Norah with a 
 gleam of triumph. " Look here ! Let us have Katie for our 
 m-Orvis. 'Don't you think Clara Burton is looking quite beau 
 tiful to-night 1" 
 
 Mr. Rivers did not reply. He said to himself that he had 
 never been so completely snubbed in his life. He had itever 
 felt so small, so cowed, and that is not pleasant to a man. Her 
 very pardon, her condonation of his offence, was humbling to 
 him. Had she resented it, he had a hundred weapons with 
 which to meet her resentment ; but he had not one to oppose 
 to her frank indignation, and her pardon. And yet, with 
 carious perversity, never before had Norah seemed so sweet to 
 him. He had felt the wildest jealousy of poor Charlie during 
 that dance, which he went through so unwillingly ; and but for 
 the cheerful strains of the Lancers, which commenced at this 
 point, and set them all — so many who enjoyed it, so many who 
 did not enjoy it — in motion, it was in his mind to commit him- 
 self as he had never yet done, to throw himself upon 
 her mercy. This thought gave to his handsome face a look 
 which Norah in her triumph secretly enjoyed, and called 
 " sentimental." "But I am not one of those girls that fall 
 down and worship a man, and think him a demigod," Norah 
 said to herself. "He is no demigod ! he has not so much 
 courage as I have. He is frightened of — ^me ! Oh, if Ned 
 were but here ! " This last little private exclamation was ac- 
 companied with the very ghost of a sigh — half of a quarter of 
 a si^h, Norah would have said, had she described it — Ned was 
 afraid of her too, and' was not the least like a demigod. I do 
 not defend Norah for her sauciness, nor do I blame her ; for, 
 after all, the young men of the present day are very unlike de- 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 385 
 
 migods; and there are some honest girls in the world capable of 
 loving a man as his wife ought, without worshipping him as his 
 slave, and without even bowing herself down in delicious infe- 
 riority before him, grovelling as so many heroines do. Norah 
 was incapable of grovelling under any circumstances ; but then 
 she had been brought up by her mother, in the traditions of 
 womanly training such as they used to be in a world, which we 
 are told is past. 'i 
 
 This is the very worst place in the world for a digression, 
 I allow ; it is to permit of the dancing of that figure which 
 they were just about to commence. Clara Burton was dancing 
 in the same set, with Mr. Golden. And as her own partner after 
 this little episode was for some time anything but lively, Norah 
 gave her mind to the observation of Clara. Clara and Mr. 
 Golden were great friends. She had said to Lord Merewether 
 that he was like papa, but it may be doubted whether papas 
 generally, even when most indulgent, are looked up to by their 
 children as Clara looked up to her father's friend. All Dura 
 had remarked upon it before now ; all Dura had wondered, did 
 the parents see it 1 "What did Mrs. Burton mean by permitting 
 it ? But it never once entered iato Mrs Burton's cool, clever 
 Httle head to fancy it possible that the attractions of such a 
 man could move her child. Every body in the neighbourhood, 
 except those most concerned, had seen Clara wandering with 
 this man, who was nearly as old as her father, through the 
 Dura woods. Everybody had seen the flushed, eager, tender 
 way in which she hung upon him, and looked up to him ; 
 and his constant devotion to her. " If I were you I should 
 speak to Mr. Burton about it," the rector's wife had said half a 
 dozen times over ; but the rector had that constitutional dislike 
 to interfere in anything, which is peculiar to Englishmen. That 
 night Clara was beautiful, as Norah had said ; she was full of 
 agitation and excitement—even of something which looked like 
 feeling ; her colour was splendid, her blue eyes as blue as the 
 sea when it is stirred, her hair like masses of living gold, her 
 complexion like the flushings of the sunset upon snow. As for 
 her partner, a certain air of warning mingled in his assiduity. 
 Once Norah saw him hold up his finger, as if in remonstrance. 
 He was wary, watchful, observant of the glances round him ; 
 but Clara, who never restrained herself, put on no trammels to- 
 
386 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 night. She stood looking up at him, talking to him incessant- 
 ly* forgetting the dance, and, when she was compelled to re- 
 member it, hurrying through the figure that she might resume 
 the intermitted conversation. Gradually the attention of the 
 other dancers became concentrated on her. It was her moment 
 of triumph, no doubt — ^her birthday, her coming of«,ge as it 
 were, though she was but eighteen — her entry, many people 
 thought, into the glory of heiress-ship. But all this was not 
 enough to account for the intoxication of excitement, the pas- 
 sion that blazed in Clara's eyes. What did it mean ? When 
 the dance was over, the majority of the dancers made their way 
 into the coolness of the conservatory, which was lighted with 
 soft lamps. Mr. Rivers took Norah back to Mrs. Dalton. 
 His dark eyes had grown larger, his air more sentimental than 
 ever. He withdrew a little way apart, and folded his arms, (and 
 stood gazing at her, just, Norah reflected with impatience, &s a 
 man would do who was the hero in a novel. But very different 
 ideas were in Norah's mind. She seized upon Charlie once 
 more, who was sentimental too. " Come out on the terrace 
 with me. I want to speak to Clara," she said. They were 
 stopped just inside the open window by a stream of people com- 
 ing in for the next dance. Norah had been pushed close to the 
 window, half in half out, by the throng. This was how she 
 happened to hear the whispered talk of a pair outside, who 
 were close by her without knowing it, and whom nobody else 
 oould hear. 
 
 " At the top of the avenue, at three o'clock. Wrap a cloak 
 round you, my darling. In the string of carriages ours will 
 never be noticed. It is the best plan." 
 
 f^ " And everything is ready 1" asked another voice, which was 
 Clara's. 
 
 " Everything, my love ! In an hour and a half " 
 
 " For you ! I could do it only for you !" 
 
 In a minute after the two came in, pushing past Norai. and 
 her companion, who, both pale as statues, let them pass. The 
 others were not pale. Clara's face was dyed with* vivid colour, 
 and Mr. Golden, bending over her, looked almost young in the 
 glow of animation and admiration with which he gazed at her. 
 Charlie Dalton had not heard the scrap of dialogue, which 
 meant so mnoh \ but he ground his teeth and stared at las sup- 
 
 M. 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 387 
 
 to re- 
 esume 
 of the 
 loment 
 re as it 
 people 
 vas not 
 hepas- 
 
 When 
 eir way 
 jd with 
 Dalton. 
 }al than 
 [ns,\and 
 [ce, ^ a 
 lifferent 
 Lie once 
 
 terrace 
 ley were 
 
 ►le com- 
 to the 
 how she 
 de, who 
 lody else 
 
 ) a cloak 
 )ur8 will 
 
 hich was 
 >» 
 
 planter, and crushed Norah's hand which held his arm. " That 
 fellow !"■ Charlie said between his teeth. " Had it been some 
 one else, I could have borne it." 
 
 " Oh, Charlie, take me back to your mother," cried Norah. 
 Her thoughts went like the wind ; already she had made out 
 her plan — bnt what was the use of saying anything to him, 
 poor simpleton, to make him more unhappy 1 Norah went 
 back, and placed herself by Mrs. Dalton's side. "I do not 
 mean to dance any more. I am tired," she said ; and, though 
 the music tempted her, and her poor little feet danced in spite 
 of her, keeping time on the floor, she did not change her resolu- 
 tion. Mr. Rivers came, finding the opportunity he sou&;ht ; 
 but Norah paid no heed to him. The men whose names were 
 written upon her card came too, in anxiety and dismay. " But 
 to all, she had the same answer. *' I am tired. I shall dance 
 no more to-night." 
 
 " Let me look at you, child," said kind Mrs. Dalton ; " in- 
 deed you look tired — you look as if you had seen a ghost." 
 
 " And so I have," said Norah. She felt as if she must cry ; 
 Clara Burton had been her playfellow, almost her sister, as 
 near to her as Katie, and as much beloved. What was it Clara 
 was going to do 1 The child shivered in her terror. When 
 the dancers were all in full career once more, Norah put her 
 mouth close to Mrs. Daiton's ear and whispered forth her story. 
 " What can we do t What shall we do ?" she asked. It 
 would be impossible to describe Mrs. Dalton's consternation. 
 She remonstrated, struggled against the idea, protested that 
 there must be some mistake. But still Norah asked, " What 
 can we do 1 what can we do ?" 
 
 " My dear Norah ! see, they are not near each other — they 
 are not looking at each other. You have made a mistake." 
 
 " Why should they look at each other 1 Everything is ar- 
 ranged and settled," said Norah. " Mrs. Dalton, if you will 
 not come with me, I will go myself. Clara must not be allowed 
 to go. Oh, only think of it ! Clara, one of us ! I have made 
 up my plan ; and if you will not come, I will go myself." 
 
 " Norah, where will you go ? What can you do~a child 1 
 And, oh, how can I go after Clara and leave the girls 1 replied 
 Mrs. Dalton in her distress. 
 
 You can leave them with Charlie," said Norah, It had 
 
 (( 
 
388 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 struck two before this explanation was made, and already a 
 few additional guests had begun to depart. There was very 
 little time to lose. Before Mrs. Dalton was aware she fotind 
 herself hurried into the cloak- room, wrapped in some wrap 
 which was not hers, and out under the moonlight again, 
 scarcely knowing how she got there. 
 
 " This is not my cloak, Norah," she said piteously ; " my 
 cloak was white." 
 
 " Never mind, dear Mrs. Dalton ; white would have been 
 seen," said Norah, who was far too much excited to think of 
 larceny. And then, impetuous as a little sprite, she led her 
 friend round the farther side of the lawn, and placed her under 
 the shadow of a clump of evergreens. " There is a brougham 
 standing there which never budges," whispered Norah, " With 
 a white horse. I have seen him driving a white horse. Now 
 stand very still. Oh, do stand still, please !" ^ 
 
 " But, Norah I see no one. It is Mrs. Ashurst's old white 
 horse j it is the fly from the Inn. Norah, it is very cold. 
 Our carraige will be coming. If it comes while we are 
 gone- " 
 
 Norah grasped her tremulous companion by the arm. " You 
 would go barefoot from here to London," she said in her ear, 
 with a voice which was husky with excitement. " To save 
 anyone, you know you would ; and this is Clara — Clara !" 
 
 Some one came rapidly across the grass — a dark, veiled, 
 hooded figure, keeping in the shadow. The morning was 
 breaking in the east and mingled mysteriously with the moon- 
 light, making a i/veird paleness all about among the dark trees 
 and bushes. There was such a noise and ceaseless roll of car- 
 riages passing, of servants waiting about, of impatient horses, 
 pawing and tossing their heads, that the very air was full of 
 confusion. Mrs. Dalton s alarm was undescribable. She held 
 back the impetuous girl by her side, who was rushing upon 
 that new-comer. " Norah ! it is some lady looking for her 
 carriage. Norah ! " 
 
 Norah paid no heed ; she rushed forward, and laid hold 
 upon the lon^ grey cloak in which the new-comer was muffled. 
 " Clara !" she cried. ** Oh, Clara ! stop, stop ! and come 
 back." 
 
 At this moment there suddenly appeared among .them 
 
 ( «. 
 
AT HIS OATE& 
 
 389 
 
 another figure, in an overcoat, with ^ soft felt hat slouched 
 over his face, who took Clara hy the hand and whispered, 
 " Quick ! there is not a moment to lose.'' 
 
 " Is it you, Norah V said Clara from under her cloak. 
 " You spy ! you prying inquisitive — 1 Go back yourself. 
 You have nothing to do with me." 
 
 " Oh, Clara !" cried the other girl, clasping her hands ; 
 " don't go away like this. It is almost morning. They will 
 see you — ^in your ball dress. Clara, Clara, dear ! Hate me if 
 you like — only, for heaven's sake, come back," 
 
 And now Mrs. Dalton crept out from the shadow of the 
 bushes. " Mr. Golden, leave her. Let her go. How dare 
 you over persuade a child like that 1 Let her go, or I will 
 call out to stop you. Clara !" . 
 
 He pushed them apart— one to one side, one to the other. 
 *' Quick !" he cried with a low call to a servant who stood 
 close by. " Quick, Clara ! don't lose a moment." he had 
 pushed them aside roughly, and stood guarding her retreat, 
 facing round upon them. " What is it to you," he said, "If 
 I am employed to take Miss Burton to her father 1 You may 
 call any one you please — you may go and tell her mother. I 
 am coming — now, for your life !" 
 
 The brougham dashed off with dangerous speed, charging, as 
 it seemed, into the mass of carriages. There was a tumult and 
 trampling of horses, a cry as of some one hurt ; but all that the 
 two terrified woman on the lawn saw was Clara's face looking 
 back at them from the carriage window, with an insolent 
 triumphant look. She had partially thrown off her cloak, and 
 appeared from under it in her white dress, a beautiful, 
 strange vision — and then there came the sound of the collision 
 and conflict, and the struggles of horses, and the cry. But 
 whoever was wounded, it was not anybody belonging to that 
 equipage. The white horse could be traced down the avenue 
 like a long, lessening streak of light. So far, at least, the 
 scheme, had been successful. They were gone. 
 
 Norah could not speak ; she walked about upon the lawn, 
 
 among the servants, wringing her hands. The morning dew, 
 
 which was begining to fall, shone wet upon her hair. " What 
 
 can we do — what can we do V she cried, 
 
 " My dear child, we have done all we can. Oh, that foolish, 
 
390 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 foolish girl I Norah, your feet must be wet, and so I am sure 
 are mine ; and your pretty white tarlatan all spoiled. Oh, 
 heaven help us ! is this what it has all come to 1 I dare not 
 
 send Charlie after them. Norah run and call Mr. Dalton. He 
 might go, perhaps. Norah, oh, you must not go alone," cried 
 the rector's wife. 
 
 But Norah was gone. She rushed into the house, through 
 all the depaiting guests, her cloak and her hair all wet with 
 dew. She made her way into the ball-room in that plight, and 
 rushed up to Mr. Dalton, and led him alarmed out into the hall. 
 Mrs. Dalton had followed, and was slowly gathering up her 
 dress. Her heart was full of dismay and trouble j that Clara 
 should thus destroy herself — break her parents* hearts ! and 
 Norah must certainly have spoilt her pretty new dress. " One 
 would not have minded, had it done any good," she murmul*ed 
 within herself. When they met the rector in the hall, a 
 hurried consultation ensued. 
 
 " Take our fly, George," said Mrs. Dalton heroically. " We 
 can get home somehow. Take it ! They cannot be very far 
 gone — you may overtake them yet." 
 
 " Overtake them ! though I don't even know which way 
 they have gone," said the rector, fretful with this strange mis- 
 sion. But, all the same, he went off, and hunted out the fly, 
 and offered the driver half a sovereign if he could overtake the 
 brougham with a white horse. But everything retarded Mr. 
 Dalton. His horse was but a fly-horse, not the most lively of 
 his kind. The man had been drinking Miss Burton's health, 
 and was more disposed to continue that exercise than to gallop 
 vaguely about the roads, even with the promise of an additional 
 half sovereign ; Mrs. Dalton, in the meanwhile, threw off her 
 borrowed cloak, and went into the almost deserted ball-room 
 in search of the mistress of the house ; and Mary and Katie, 
 wondering and shivering, standing close to Charlie, who was 
 their protector for the moment, made a group round Norah in 
 the hall, with the daylight every moment brightening over their 
 faces, weariness stealing over them, and mystery ^^oppressing 
 them, and no appearance of either father or mother, or the fly ! 
 
 Norah leant against Katie's shoulder and cried. After all her 
 impetuous exertions the reaction was sharp. She wouldn't give 
 any explanation, but leant on her friend, and cried, and shivered. 
 
AT HtS OATEd. 
 
 891 
 
 " Oh, where can mamma be 1 Where is the fly 1 Oh, Norah, 
 have my cloak too ; I don't want it. How cold you are ! 
 Charlie, run and look for the fly," cried Katie. They stood all 
 clinging together, while the people streamed past, getting into 
 their carriages, going away. The d-iylight grew clearer, the 
 sun began to rise, while still they stood there forlorn. And 
 what with weariness, what with wonder and anxiety and vexa- 
 tion, Mary and Katie were almost crying too. 
 
 Finally Mrs. Dalton appeared, when almost all the guests were 
 gone, with a flush on her kind face, and an energy which triumph- 
 ed over her weariness. " Come, children, we must pluck up our 
 courage and walk," «he gaid. "Take up your dresses, girls, and 
 help Norah with hers. Poor child, perhaps the walk will be 
 the best thing for her. It is of no use waiting for the fly." 
 
 Here Charlie came back to report that the fly was nowhere 
 visible, but that some one who had been knocked down by a 
 runaway horse was being carried up to the house, much in- 
 jured. " A white horse in a brougham. They say it took 
 fright, and dashed down the avenue ; and they are afraid the 
 man is badly hurt," said Charlie. The ladies shuddered as the 
 poor fellow was carried past them, his head bound round with 
 a handkerchief stained with blood. They were the last to 
 leave, and came down the steps just as this figure was being 
 carried in. It was broad daylight now, and they all felt guilty 
 and miserable in their ball dresses. This was how the last 
 ball ended which was given by the Burtons in Dura House. 
 
 They walked down weary, feeling some weight upon them 
 which the majority of the party did not understand, all the 
 length of the leafy avenue, where the birds were singing, and 
 the new morning sending arrows of gold. The fly, with Mr. 
 Dalton in it, very tired and fretful, met them at the gate. He 
 had not so much as come within sight of the brougham with 
 the white horse. But yet he was ready to go up to the ^eat 
 house as duty demanded, to put himself at the service of its 
 mistress. Charlie, enlightened all in a moment as to the mean- 
 ing of the night's proceedings, went with him, like a ghost of 
 misery and wrath. The girls and the mother went home alone 
 through th« sunshine. And the echoes grew still about that 
 centre of tumult and rejoicing. The rejoicing had ended now ; 
 and, with that feast, the reign of the Burtons at Dura had come 
 to an end. 
 
392 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 SUMMER night passes quickly to those who have need 
 of darkness for their movements. When Mrs. Drum- 
 moud found herself at liberty to carry out the plan she 
 had formed, the time before her was very short. She went 
 back to the kitchen, and called Susan to her. Mr. Burton 
 woke up as she came in, and they had a hurried consultation ; 
 the consequence of which was that Susan was sent to the sta- 
 bles, which were not very far from the garden door of the 
 Gatehouse, to order a carriage to be dispatched instantly to 
 pick up Mr. Burton at the North-gate, two miles off, in l^he 
 opposite direction from the village. He could walk thus 
 through the grounds by paths he was familiar with, and drive 
 to a station five miles further off on another railway. So 
 readily do even innocence and ignorance fall into the shifty 
 ways of guilt that this was Helen's plan. He was to wait here 
 till Susan returned, and the experiment of her going would be 
 a proof if the way was quite safe for him. When Susan was 
 gone Mrs. Drummond returned alone to where her guest sat 
 before the kitchen fire. She had her blotting book under her 
 arm, and an inkstand in her hand. ** Before you go," she said 
 in a low voice, " I want you to do something for me." 
 
 " I will do anything for you," he cried — " anything 1 Helen, 
 I have not deserved it. You might have treated me very dif- 
 ferently. You have been my salvation." 
 
 " Hush ! " she said. His thanks recalled her old feelings of 
 distrust and dislike rather than the new ones of pity. She 
 put down [her writing things on the table. I have my condi- 
 tions as well as other people," she said. ** I want now to know 
 the truth." 
 
 "What truth?" ^ 
 
 " About Rivers's," she said. 
 
 "Helen!" 
 
 " It is useless for you to resist or deny me," she replied, 
 " you are in my power. I am willing to do everything to serve 
 
▲T Bis OATfi& 
 
 dds 
 
 you, but I will have a full explanation. Write it how you 
 please — ^but you shall not leave this place till you have given me 
 the means, when I please and how I please, of proving the 
 truth." 
 
 *^What is the truth, as you call it?" he said sullenly; 
 " what have I to do with it 1 Drummond and the rest went 
 into it with their eyes open ; all the accounts of the concern 
 were open to them." 
 
 ** I do not pretend to understand it/' said Helen. ** But 
 you do. Here are pens and paper. I insist upon a full expla- 
 nation — how it was that so flourishing a business perished in 
 three years ; where those books went to, which Robert was so 
 falsely accused of destroying. Oh, are you not afraid to tire 
 out my patience ? Do you know that you are in my power % ** 
 
 He gave an alarmed look at her. He had foreotten everything 
 but those fables about feminine weakness which are current 
 among such men, and had half laughed in his sleeve half an 
 hour before at her readiness to help and serve him. But now 
 all at once he perceived that laughter was out of place, and 
 there was no time to lose. The reflection that ran through his 
 mind was— All must come out in a week or two — it will do 
 her no good ; but it can do me no harm. " If I am to give an 
 account of the whole histoiy it will take me hours," he said. 
 " I may as well give up all thought of getting awav to-night." 
 But he drew the blottmg-book towards him. Helen did not 
 relax nor falter. She lighted another, candle ; she left him to 
 himself with a serious belief in his good faith which startled 
 him. She moved about the kitchen while he wrote, filling a 
 small flask with wine out of the solitary bottle which had been 
 brought out for his refreshment, and which represented the en- 
 tire cellar of the Gratehouse — even brushing the coat which he 
 had thrown aside, that it might be ready for him. The man 
 watched her with the wonder of an inferior nature. He had 
 loved her once, and it had given him a true pleasure to humble 
 her when the moment came. But now the ascendancy had re- 
 turned into her hands. Had he been in her place how he would 
 have triumphed ! But Helen did not triumph. His misery 
 did not please, it bowed her down to the ground. She was sad 
 — suffering for him, ashamed, anxious. He did not understand 
 it. Gradually, he could not have told how, her look affected 
 
394 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 him. He tore up the first statement he had cotntnenced, d, 
 florid, apologetic narrative. He tore up the second, in which 
 he threw the blame upon the ignorance of business of poor 
 Drummond and his fellow-directors. Finally he was moved so 
 strangely out of himself that he wrote the simple truth, and 
 no more, without a word of apology or explanation. * Half-a- 
 dozen lines were enough- for that. The apology would, as he 
 said have taken hours. 
 
 And then Susan came back. By this time he had written 
 not only the explanation required of him, but a letter to his 
 wife, and was ready to try his fate once more. Helen herself 
 went with him to the garden door; the path through the 
 woods was dark, hidden from the moonlight by the close copses 
 and high fenc^, which it skirted for many a mile. And there 
 would not be daylight to betray him for at least an hour. He 
 stood on the verge of the dark wood, and took her halnd. 
 ** Helen, you have saved me ; God bless you," he said. And 
 in a moment this strange episode was over, as though it had 
 never been. She stood under the rustling trees, and listened 
 to his footsteps. The night wind blew chill in her face, the 
 dark boughs swayed round her as if catching at her garments. 
 A hundred little crackling sounds, echoes, movemetits among 
 the copse, all the jars and broken tones of nature that startle 
 the fugitive, made her heart beat with terror. If she had felt 
 a hand on her shoulder, seizing her instead of him, Helen 
 would not have been surprised. But while she stood and lis- 
 tened all the sounds seemed to die away in the stillness of the 
 night. And the broad moonlight shone, silvering the black 
 trees, out of which all individuality had fled, and the music 
 from Dura came back in b^ gust, and the roll of the carriages 
 slowly moving about the avenue, waiting for the dancers. And 
 but that Helen stood in so unusual a spot, with that garden 
 dooi" half open behind her, and the big key in her hand, she 
 might have thought that all this Was nothing more than a 
 dream. 
 
 She went in, and locked the door ; and then Returned to 
 Susan's kitchen. It was her turn now to feel the cold, after 
 her excitement was over ; she went in shivering, and drew 
 close to the fire. She put her head down into her hands. The 
 tears came to her eyes unawares ; weariness had come upon 
 
AT HIS 0ATB8. 
 
 398' 
 
 her all at once, when the necessity of exertion was over. She 
 held in her hand the paper she had made Burton write, hut she 
 had not energy enough to look at it. Would it ever be of any 
 use to hcrf Would he whom it concerned ever return) 
 Or was all this — the picture, the visit to the Exhibition, the 
 sudden conviction which had seized upon her — were these all 
 so many delusions in her dream ? After a while Miss Jane, all 
 unconscious, excited with her unusual pleasure, and full of 
 everything she had seen, came and sat by her and talked. " I 
 told Susan to go to bed," said Miss Jane ; " and I wish you 
 would go too, Mrs. Drummond. I will sit up for Norah. Oh, 
 how proud I was of that child to-night I I suppose it's very 
 wrong, you know — so my mother says — but I can't help it. It 
 is just as well I am a single woman, and have no children of 
 my own; for I should have been a fool about them. The 
 worst of all is that we shan't keep her long. She will many, 
 and then what shall we do ? I am sure to lose her would 
 break Stephen's heart." 
 
 " She is very young," said Helen, who answered for civility's 
 sake alone, and who with all the heavy thoughts in her heart 
 and apprehensions for the fugitive, would have given much to 
 be left to herself. 
 
 " Yei^, she is young ; but not too young to do a great deal of 
 mischief. When I saw all those men on their knees before 
 her ! " cried Miss Jane, with a laugh of triumph. She had 
 never been an object of much admiration or homage herself; 
 men had not gone on their knees to her, though no doubt she 
 was more worthy than many of the foolish creatures who have 
 been so worshipped ; but the result of this was that MiBS Jane 
 enjoyed heartily the revenge which other women had it in 
 their power to take for all the slights and scorns to which she 
 and her homely sisters had been subjected. She liked to see 
 " them " punished, though " they " were an innocent, new 
 generation, blameless, so far as she was concerned. She would 
 not have injured a fly ; but her face beamed all over with de- 
 light at the thought that it was Norah's mission to break 
 hearts. 
 
 Thus the good soul sat and talked, while Helen listened to 
 every sound, and wondered where he was now ? what might 
 be happening 1 She did not even hear what was being said 
 
896 
 
 ▲T HIS 0ATS8. 
 
 to her until Miss Jane fellinto a moralisins vein. ** The Bur- 
 tons are at the height of their splendour now/' she said. " I never 
 saw anything so grand as it was. I don't think anything could 
 bo grander. But oh, Mrs. Drummond, people's sins find them 
 out. ' There's Olara getting bewitched by that man ; everybody 
 could see it. A man old enough to be her father, without a 
 scrap of character, and no money even, I suppose. Think of 
 that I and oh, what will all their grandeur do for them, with 
 Ned at the other end of the world, and Clara throwing herself 
 away 1 '' 
 
 '*0h, hush, hush 1" cried Helen. "Don't prophesy any more 
 misfortune ; there is enough without that." 
 
 And five minutes after i^orah came to the door, surrounded 
 by the party from the Kectory, all pale and terror-stricken, 
 with the news which they felt to be so terrible. '* Olara ^ 
 gone away ! " They stood at the door and told this tale, hud- 
 dled together in the fresh sunshine, the eirls crying, the elder 
 women asking each other, *<what would the Burtons do)" 
 " She was almost rude to me. She sent me away," Mrs. Dal- 
 ton said, ** or I should have stayed with her. And Mr. Burton 
 is not there 1 What will she do 1" They could scarcely make 
 up their minds to separate, worn out ana miserable as they all 
 were. And, opposite, in the morning sunshine, two men still 
 watched the Gatehouse, as they had watched it all through the 
 night. 
 
 These miseries all ended in a misery which was comic, had 
 any of them had heart enough left to laugh. While she helped 
 to undress Norah, Miss Jane suddenly uttered a scream, which 
 made Helen tremble from head to foot. She had caught in 
 her hands the pretty flounces of that white dress, that lovely 
 dress. Dr. Maunce's present, which had turned poor little Cin- 
 derella-Norah — ^into an enchanted princess ; but now, alas, all 
 limp, damp, ruined ! even stained with the dewy grass and 
 gravel across which it had come. Miss Jane could have cried 
 with vexation and dismay. This was the climax of all the 
 agonies of that wonderful night ; but, fortunately, \t was not 
 so hopeless as the others. An hour later, when the house was 
 all silent, and even Helen lay with her eyes shut, longing to 
 sleep. Miss Jane stole down stairs again, carrying this melan- 
 choly garment on her arm. She went to Susan's kitchen, where 
 
IT HIS GATES. 
 
 897 
 
 the fire was still burning, and spreading it oat upon the big 
 table, took it to pieces to see what could be done. And then 
 she made a discovery which drew from her a cry of joy. The 
 dress was grenadine^ not tarlatan ! Dear, ignorant reader, per- 
 haps you do not know what this means ) but well did Miss Jane 
 understand. " Grenadine will wash ! "she said to hei'self tri- 
 umphantly. She was a clever woman, and she was not uncon- 
 scious of the fact. She could wash and starch with any pro- 
 fessional. Accordingly, she set to work with scissors and soap 
 and starch and hot irons; but, above all, with love — ^love 
 which makes the fingers cunning and the courage strong. 
 
 Mr. Burton made his escape safely. He had reached the 
 North-gate before the dog-cart did, which came up for him just 
 as the morning was breaking. With this delav it so happened 
 that when he reached the station to which he was bound, a 
 brougham with a white horse appeared in sight behind, and 
 gave him a thrill of terror; it was not a likely vehicle certainly 
 for his pursuers ; but still it was possible that they might have 
 found nothing more suitable had they got scent of him at Dura. 
 He sprang out of the dog-cart accordingly, and took refuge in 
 one of the comers of the station. It was a junction, and two 
 early morning trains, one up and one down, passed between 
 four and five o'clock. Both parties accordingly had some time 
 to wait. Mr. Burton skulking behind anything that would 
 shelter him, made out, to his great amazement, that the other 
 traveller waiting about was his friend Golden, accompanied by 
 a cloaked and veiled woman. The fugitive grinned in ghastly 
 satisfaction when he saw it. He had no desire just then to 
 encounter Golden, and in such companionship he was safe. It 
 was a lovely morning, fresh and soft, cooler than July usually 
 is, and the pair on the platform walked about in the sun, bask- 
 ing in it. He watched them from behind a line of empty car- 
 riages. The woman, whoever she was, clung close to her com- 
 panion, holding his arm clasped with both her hands ; while 
 Golden bent over her, with his face close to her veil. ** I won- 
 der who she is 1 I wonder what they are doing here at this 
 hour ] I wonder if he has been to Dura i And, by Jove, to 
 think of his going in for that sort of thing, as if he were tive- 
 and-twenty ! Mr. Burton said to himself. He was full of 
 curiosity, almost to amazement, and be longed to go and sun 
 
^8 
 
 AT HIS OATSS. 
 
 )iimself on that same platform too ; but he was a fugitive, and 
 he dared not. How could he tell who might be about, or what 
 Golden's feelings were towards him 1 They had been very 
 good friends onoe ; but Burton had stood by Golden but feebly 
 at the time of the trial about Rivers's, and Golden had not 
 stood by Burton warmly during the time of difficulty which 
 had culminated in ruin. He watched them with growing curi- 
 osity, with a kind of interest which he could not understand — 
 with — ^yes, hd could not deny it, with a curious wistfulness and 
 envy. He supposed the fallow was happy like that, now? 
 And as for himself, he was not happy — he was cold, weary, 
 anxious, afraid. He had a prison before him, perhaps a fel- 
 on's sentence — anyhow, at the least, a loud, hoarse roar of 
 English society and the newspapers. If he could but succeed 
 in putting the Channel between him and them ! and there was 
 that other man, as guilty as himself, perhaps more guilty (Mfor 
 he had not my temptations," Mr. Burton said to himself ; '' he 
 had not a position to keep up, an expensive establishment, a 
 family") sunning himself in the full morning light, waiting for 
 his train in the eye of day, not afraid of anybody — ^nay, pro- 
 bably at the height of pleasure and success, enjoying himself as 
 a young man enjoys himself ! When the pair approached a 
 little closer to his hiding-place than they had yet done. Burton, 
 in his haste to get out of the way, slipped his foot, and fell 
 upon the cold iron rails. He rose with a curse in his heart, 
 the poignancy of the contrast was too much for him. Had he 
 but knoAvn that his appearance would have confounded his old 
 IHend, and set all his plans to nought ! Could he but have 
 imagined who it was that clung to Golden's arm ! 
 
 But he did not. He saw the up-train arrive, and the two 
 
 Set into it. He had meant to go that way himself, feeling Lon- 
 on, of all refuges, the most safe ; but he had not courage to 
 venture now. He waited for the other train going down into 
 the country. He made a rapid calculation how ho could shape 
 his course to the sea, and get off, if not as directly, perhaps 
 more securely. He had found a dark overcoat in tjie dog-cart, 
 which was a boon to him ; he had poor Helen's flask of wine 
 in his ppcket. And as he got into the train, and dashed away 
 out of the station and over the silent, sunshiny country, 
 where safety lay, Golden and Golden's companion went out of 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 399 
 
 Mr. Burton's mind. He had a hundred tbines to think of, an4 
 yet a hundred more. Why should he trouble himself about 
 that? 
 
 Thus the night disappeared like a mist from the face of the 
 world; and the 7th of July, an ordinary working day like the 
 others, Saturday the end of a common week — rose up business- 
 like and usual upon a host of toiling folk, to whom the sight of 
 it was sweet for the sake of the resting day that came after it. 
 Old Ann from Dura Den, drove her cart with the vegetables, 
 and the big posy for the sick gentleman, under Stephen's 
 window, and wondered that it should still be closed, though it 
 was ten o'clock. Susan, very heavy-eyed and pale, was cleans- 
 ing and whitening her steps, upon which there had been so 
 many footsteps last night. 
 
 " Well, Susan, you are late," said old Ann." 
 
 " Our folks were all at that ball last night," said Susan, 
 " keeping a body up, awaiting for 'em till morning light." 
 
 "Well, well, young folks must have their diversions. We 
 was fond of 'em oursels once on a day," said the charitable old 
 woman. 
 
 Across the road the blinds were still down in the Kectory. 
 the young people were all asleep ; and even the elder people 
 had been overcome with weariness and the excitement through 
 which, more or less, all of them had gone. Before old Ann's 
 cart resumed its progress, however, Stephen's window had been 
 opened, and signs of life began to appear. About eleven Mrs. 
 Drummond came down-stairs. She had slept for an hour, and 
 on waking had felt assured that she must have been dreaming, 
 and that all her vision of the night was a delusion ; but her 
 head ached so, and her face was so pale when she looked at 
 herself in the glass, that Helen trembled and asked herself if 
 this was the beginning of a fever. Something must have hap- 
 pened — it could not all be a dream. She knelt down to saj[ 
 her prayers in front of the table, where her picture, her idol) 
 was. And then she saw a paper, placed upright beneath it, as 
 flowers might be put at a shrine. She read it then, for the 
 first time, on her knees. It was the paper that Reginald Bur- 
 ton had written, which she had taken from him in her weari- 
 ness without being able to read it. Half-a-dozen lines, no 
 more. She did not understand it now \ but it was enough, it, 
 
400 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 was final. No one, after this could throw reproach or scorn 
 upon her Robert's name. 
 
 Eobert ! This night had been like a year, like a lifetime. 
 It had made her forget Now she knelt there, and everything 
 came back to her. She did not say her prayers ; the attitude 
 sometimes is all that the heavy laden are capable of ; of itself 
 that attitude is an appeal to God, such as a child might make 
 who plucked at its mother's dress to attract her notice, and look- 
 ed up to her, though it could find no words to say. Not a word 
 came to Helen's lips. She knelt and recollected, and thought 
 — ^her inind was in a whirl, yet it was silent; not even forming 
 a wish. It was as if she held her breath and gazed upon some- 
 thins which had taken place before her, something with which 
 she had no connection. " I have seen the wicKed great in 
 power, like a green bay-tree ; and I passed again, and lo : he 
 was not." Was that the story, written in ruin, written in 
 tears t And Robert ! Where was he — he who^ had stretched 
 out his hands to her in the depths of despair, from hell, from 
 across the Atlantic, from — where 1 
 
 Helen rose up piteously, and that suspense which had been 
 momentarily dispossessed by the urgency of more immediate 
 claims upon her attention, came back again, and tore her heart 
 in twain. Oh, they might think her foolish who did not know ! 
 but who else except Robert could have seized her very heart 
 with those two up-stretched hands of Dives, hands that could 
 have drawn her down, had she been there, out of the hishest 
 heaven? She could trust no longer, she thought, to the luke- 
 warm interest of friends — to men who did not understand. 
 She must bestir herself to find out. She must find out if she 
 should die. 
 
 Thus, with dry, bright eyes, and a fire new-lit in her heart 
 which burned and scorched her, she went down-stairs into the 
 common world. " I will bring your breakfast directly, 'm," 
 said Susan, meeting her in the passage, and Helen went in to 
 the old, ghostly drawing-room, the place which had grown so 
 familiar to her, almost dear. 
 
 Was it the old drawing-room she had lived in yesterday 1 
 or what strange vision was it that came across her of another 
 room, far different, a summer evening as this was a summer 
 
AT HIS GATEa. 
 
 401 
 
 morning, a child who cried " Mamma, here is a letter ! '* 
 Nothing — nothing ! only a mere association, one of the tricks 
 fancy plays us. This feverish start, this sudden swimming of 
 the head, and wild question whether she was back in St. Mary's 
 Koad, or where she was, arose from the sight of ^a letter which 
 lay awaiting her, on the centre of a little round table. It lay 
 as that letter had lain some years ago, in which he took his 
 leave of her — as a hundred letters must have lain since. A 
 common letter, thrown down carelessly, without any meaning. 
 Oh, fool, fool that she was ! 
 
 iy, m,' 
 
 i; jixi DiUi (L'.ii '..uii ,uTO<» t-uiii. f.i, 
 
 .:i;frihfit Jort mow ,'irr(i[o'.> "to ?rAi{n(\ jimilml cfi^'rrp fii bogriirriJ! «'[>'> 
 
402 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 RS. BURTON was alone in her deserted house. The 
 house was not deserted in the common sense of the 
 word. Up-stairs at this very momen,t it was buzzing 
 with life and movement ; and at least the young men in the 
 smoking room — men who had come from town, from their du- 
 ties and their pleasures, expressly for the ball — were comment- 
 ing to each other carelessly upon the absence of their host. 
 " Young Burton has been off for six months on a wandering fit, 
 and old Burton is up to the eyes in business, as usual," Cyril 
 Rivers explained, who was not unfriendly to his entertainers ; 
 while the Marchioness, with Lady Florizel in the room of state 
 up-stairs, was commenting upon Clara's behaviour, and declaring 
 her intention to leave next morning. "Fortunately, Mere- 
 wether has not committed himself," the Marchioness was say- 
 ing. In another room of the house, Mrs Burton's two aunts, 
 supported by their two maids, were shaking their heads to- 
 gether in mingled sorrow and anger. " Depend upon it, 
 something will come of all this," Mrs. Everest said, as she put 
 on her night-cap ; and Aunt Louisa cried, and exclaimed 
 that when Clara entered on such an extravagant course, she 
 always knew that some chastisement must come. " I would 
 shut that child up, and feed her on bread and water," cried the 
 stronger-minded sister ; and so said the maids, who thought 
 Miss Clara wats bewitched — and with such a man ! 
 
 While all this was going on, little Mrs. Burton was alone in 
 the ball-room, which was still blazing with lights. She was 
 seated wearily in a big chair at one end. But for her diamonds, 
 which sought the light, and made a blaze of radiance round 
 about her, like the aureole of a saint, she would have been 
 invisible in the great, spacious, empty room. A deserted ball- 
 room has been so often described, that I will not repeat the un- 
 necessary picture. This ball-room, however, had not a dismal 
 aspect ; everything was too well managed for that. The flow- 
 ers arranged in great brilliant banks of colour, were not fading, 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 403 
 
 but looked as brilliant as ever ; the lights shone as brightly. 
 Except for some flowers dropped about from the bouquets of the 
 dancers, some shreds of lace and tulle torn from their dresses, it 
 might have been before instead of after the ball. Mrs. Burton 
 was seated at the further end. She sat quite motionless, her 
 hands crossed in her lap, her diamonds reflecting the light* 
 What a night this had been for her 1 The other parties con- 
 cerned had each had their share — her husband his ruin, her 
 child her elopement ; but this small woman with her hands 
 clasped, with this crowded house to regulate and manage, with 
 her part still to play in the world around her, knew all and had 
 all to bear. She sat thus among the ruins, nothing hid from 
 her, nothing postponed. Through her slight little frame there 
 was a dull throbbing of pain ; but her head was clear, and did 
 not lose a jot of all that fate had done, of all it had in store. 
 She did not complain. She had foreseen much ; she had gone 
 forward with her eyes open ; she had even said that were her 
 husband to be bankrupt in two days, she would give a ball on 
 the intermediate night. If it was a brag, she had excelled that 
 brag ; she had given her greatest ball, and reached her apoth- 
 eosis, on the very night when he was flying from justice. And 
 no good angel had interfered to soften to her the news of these 
 successive blows. She had herself opened the ball with old 
 Lord Bobadil— the man of highest rank present ; and it was 
 when she had resumed her seat, after that solemn ceremonial, 
 that Golden, whom she hated, approached her, and whispered 
 in her ear the news of her husband's ruin. She had been pre- 
 pared for the news, but not then, nor at such a moment ; never- 
 theless, she stood up and received the blow without a cry, with- 
 out a moment's failure of her desperate courage. And every- 
 thing had gone on. She was always pale, so that there was 
 nothing to betray her so far as that went, and her cares as hos- 
 tess never relaxed. She went from side to side, dispensing her 
 attentions, looking after everybody's comfort as if she had been 
 a queen, and all the time asking herself had he been taken ? 
 was he a prisoner 1 how much shame should she have to bear 1 
 Then, when the slow hours had gone on, and the insupportable 
 din aJdout her seemed as if it must soon come to an end, there 
 arrived that other message of woe, poor kind Mrs. Dalton; with 
 tears in her eyes, and a voice which faltered. "The rector ha9 
 
 ill 
 
 i:.i--'i!i'i*i^mmmm._ii- 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 fone after them. Oh, will you let me stay with you 1 Can 
 be of any use to you V* Mrs. Dalton had sobbed, attract- 
 ing, as the other woman — the real sufferer— knew, the atten- 
 tion of those groups about, who had no right to know anything 
 of her private sorrows. " It is not necessary. My father is 
 here, and my aunts. I can have every thing done that is 
 wanted," Mrs. Burton replied : and she had turned round to 
 show some one who came to ask her where the basket was 
 with all the ribbons, and flowers, and pretty toys for the cotil- 
 lion. Through all this she had stood her ground. She had 
 shaken hands with the last of her guests and had seen the 
 visitors to their rooms before she gave in ; and even now she 
 was not giving in. Had any one entered the empty room, 
 Mrs. Burton would have proved equal to the occasion ; she 
 would have risen to meet them — have talked on any sulj)ject 
 with perfect self command. But fortunately, no one came, i 
 
 Poor old Mr. Baldwin had arrived at Dura only that night. 
 He had heard a great many disquieting rumours, and he was 
 very unhappy about his son-in-law's position, and about the 
 way in which his daughter took it. Even the fact that she had 
 her settlement scarcely consoled him ; for he said to himself 
 that the creditors would " reflect " upon all this extravagance, 
 and that even about the settlement itself a great deal would be 
 said. He had hovered about her all the evening, looking wist- 
 fully at her, inviting her confidence ; but Mrs. Burton had not 
 said a word to him, even of her daughter's disappearance. She 
 had felt no impulse to do anything about Clara. Whether it 
 was that all her energy was required to bear up against those 
 successive blows, or if her pride shrank from informing even 
 her own friends, or finally, if she felt it useless, and knew that 
 now no power on earth could compel the self-willed girl to re- 
 turn, it is certain that Mrs. Burton had " taken no steps." 
 Even now she did not think of taking any steps. She allowed 
 her father and her aunts to go to bed without a word. She 
 sat and pondered, and did nothing. Alone in that great blaz- 
 ing deserted room — alone in the house — alone in tht^ world: 
 this was what she felt. Out of doors the birds were singing 
 and the sun shining ; but the closed windows admitted only 
 the palest gleam of the daylight. When the servants came to 
 tell her that Mr. Dalton was at the door, asking to see her, she 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 405 
 
 sent him a civil message. " Many thanks ; but her father was 
 with her, and could do all she wanted." Then her maid came 
 to ask if Mrs. Burton did not want anything, and was sent 
 away with a wave of her hand. Then the butler came timidly 
 to ask should they shub up ? was master to be expected 1 At 
 that summons Mrs. Burton rose. 
 
 ** I am tired," she said, putting on her company calm ; for 
 Simmons the butler was as important in his way as old Lord 
 Bobadil. " I was glad to rest a little after all the worry. Yes, 
 certainly, shut up, and let everybody go to bed. I do not ex- 
 pect your master to-night." 
 
 " If I might be so bold, madam," said Simmons, " Tom the 
 groom have just been in to say as orders was took to the sta- 
 bles to send the dog-cart for master to the north gate, and aa 
 he took him up there and drove him to Turley station, and as 
 he gave him this note, and said as it was all right." 
 
 " All right ! " She repeated the words, looking at him with 
 a ghastly bewilderment which frightened the man. And then 
 she recovered herself, and resumed her former composure. 
 " That will do, Simmons. Your master had a — journey — to 
 make. I was not aware he would start so — soon. Have every- 
 thing shut up as quickly as possible, and let all the servants 
 go to bed." 
 
 She went up-stairs, emerging all at once into the full morn- 
 ing sunshine in the hall, which dazzled and appalled her. The 
 light dazzled her eyes, but not her jewels, which woke at its 
 touch, and blazed about her with living, many-coloured radi- 
 ance. A little rainbow seemed to form round her as she went 
 up-stairs; How her temples throbbed ! What a dull aching 
 was in every limb, in every pulse ! She went into Clara's room 
 first. ShiB was not a very tender mother, and never had been ; 
 yet almost every night for seventeen years she had gone into 
 that room before retiring to her own. Clara's maid was seated, 
 fast asleep, before a table on which a candle was burning piti- 
 fully in the full daylight. The room looked trim and still as 
 a room does which has not been occupied in that early bright- 
 ness. The maid woke with a shiver as Mrs. Burton entered. 
 " Oh, Miss Clara, I beg your pardon ! " she said. 
 "It is no matter. My daughter will not want you to-night. 
 Go to bed, Jane," said Mrs. Burton. ** And you can tell Barnes 
 
 
 ^'T-M^ . W'- 
 
406 
 
 AT HIS GAT£S. 
 
 to eo to bed. Neither of you will be wanted. Go at once." 
 'When she was left alone, ^e cast a glance round to see if 
 there was any letter. There was a little three-cornered note 
 fastened on the pincushion. She took that into her hand along 
 with her husband's note, which she held there, but did not at- 
 tempt to read either. With a quick eye she noted that Clara's 
 jewel-case and all the presents which had been showered upon 
 her that morning — her eighteenth birthday — had gone. A 
 faint, mechanical smile came upon her face, and then she locked 
 the door, and went to her own room. 
 
 There she sat down again to think, with the diamonds still 
 upon her and all her ornaments, and the two letters in her 
 hand. Why should she read them 1 She knew exactly what 
 they would be. The one she did open after a long pause was 
 Clary's. The other — had she any interest in it 1 it gave her a 
 sensation of disgust rather : she tossed it on the table. Clary's 
 note was very short. It ran thus : — 
 
 " Dear Mamma, — Feeling sure you never would consent, and 
 as we both know we could not live without each other, I have 
 made up my mind to leave you. I shall be Mrs. Golden when 
 you get this, for he has prepared everything. We start imme- 
 diately for the Lakes, and I will write you from there. Of 
 course it would have been nicer to have been Lady Somebody; 
 but then I never saw any one who was half so nice as he is ; 
 and he hopes, and so do I, that you will soon make up your 
 mind to it, and forgive us. 
 
 " Your affectionate 
 
 "Clary. 
 
 ** He bids me say it is to be at St. James's, Piccadilly, and 
 that if you inquire, you will find everything quite right." 
 
 Mrs. Burton tossed this from her too on to the same table 
 where the father's letter lay unopened. The scorn with which 
 they filled her stopped for a moment the movement of that 
 wonderful machine for thinking which nothing had yet arrested. 
 It was " human nature " pur et simple. Clara had taken her 
 jewels, had made sure it was " all right " about the wedding : 
 and the father had sent the same message — "all-right." All 
 right ! A smile flitted across the pale, almost sterii, little face 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 407 
 
 of the woman who was left to bear all this, and to bear it 
 alone. Most other woman would have made some f tionate 
 attempt to do something — to pursue the one or the otner — to 
 go to their succour. Mrs. Burton had no such impulse. She 
 was like a soldier who has fought to the last gasp ; she stood 
 still upon her span of soil, her sword broken, her banner taken 
 from her ; nothing to fight for any longer, yet still, with the 
 instinct of battle, holding out, and standing firm. So long as 
 there was any excuse for keeping up the conflict, bhe would 
 have borne every blow like a stoic ; what she could not bear 
 was the thought of giving in ; and the hour for giving in had 
 come. 
 
 Must it be told 1 Must she acknowledge before the world 
 that all had been in vain ] that her husband was a fugitive, her 
 daughter the victim of a scoundrel, her family for ever crushed 
 down and trampled in the dust ? To everything else she could 
 have wound up her high courage. This was the only thing 
 that was really hard for her, and this was what she had to do. 
 How much, she wondered, would she have to suffer 1 Pro- 
 bably Mr. Burton would be taken, tried, share the fate which 
 various men whose names she knew had already borne. Should 
 she have to go to him ! to visit him in his prison ? to read her 
 own name in the papers — "Mrs. Burton spent an hour with 
 the prisoner," " His wife was present ! " She clasped her 
 small, thin hands together. For a long time she had wondered 
 whether, when it came, she would feel it. She could have answered 
 her own question now. Buin, shame, public comment, sudden 
 descent from her high estate, humiliation, sympathy, even pity 
 — all these were before her ; and it would have been hard for 
 her to say which was the worst. 
 
 The young men roused her with their voices as they came 
 up stairs. It was not worth while going to bed, she heard one 
 say ; a bath, and then a long walk somewhere before breakfast 
 was the only thing possible. This called her attention to the 
 clock striking on the mantelpiece. Six o'clock ! No longer 
 night, but day ! She rose, and took off her jewels and her 
 evening dress. It troubled and tired, and irritated her to do 
 all this for herself ; but she succeeded at last. A nightly vigil, 
 and even all the emotion through which she had passed did not 
 make the same difference to her colourless countenance which 
 
 n 
 
408 
 
 J 
 
 T HIS GATES. 
 
 it would have done to a more blooming woman. When she 
 
 knocked ;it her father's door, and went in to his bedside to 
 speak to him, he thought her looking very much as usual. He 
 tnought he must have overslept himself, which was likely 
 enough, considering how late he had been last night ; and that 
 she had come to call him and have a chat with him before all 
 her fine people came down to breakfast. It was kind of Clara. 
 It showed, what he had sometimes doubted, that she was still 
 capable of recollecting that she was his child. 
 
 " I have come to tell you of some things that have happened," 
 she said, sitting down in the big chair by the bed, " and to ask 
 your advice and help. Some strange things have happened to- 
 night. In the first place, papa, you were a true prophet. Mr. 
 Burton has been obliged to go away." 
 
 " To go away ?" 
 
 " Yes, to escape, to fly — whatever you call it. He is — 
 ruined. I suppose he must be worse than ruined," she aoded 
 quietly ; " for — I hear — the police " 
 
 ** Oh, Clara ! Oh, my poor, poor child !" 
 
 " Don't be sorry for me, papa. Let us look at it calmly. I 
 am not one to cry, you know, and get over it in that way. So 
 far as I have heard yet, he has got off : he reached Turley 
 station this morning, I suppose in time for the train. Most 
 likely he has money, as he has not asked for any, and he may 
 get safely off. Stop, papa ; that is not all I have to tell you. 
 There is something more." 
 
 " Clara, my own poor girl ! there can be nothing so bad." 
 
 worse," she said. *^ Papa, 
 can help. Clara has — eloped. 
 She has gone off with Mr. Golden, whom you all forgave, whom 
 I hated, who was — her father's friend." 
 
 The old man gave a great cry. Clary was his grandchild, 
 whom he adored. He loved her with that fond, caressing, 
 irresponsible love which is sometimes sweeter than even a 
 parent's love for his own child. It was for others to find fault 
 with, to correct her ; the grandfather had nothing to do but 
 admire, and pet, and praise. " Clary !" it was but the other 
 day that he told her stories as she sat on his knee ! 
 
 " Yes, Clary. Here is her note, and here is — Mr. Burton's. 
 They are both gone. All this has happened since last night," 
 
 ** CJara, what o'clock is it now ?" 
 
 " Some people would think it 
 don't say anymore than you 
 
AT HIS 
 
 "Half-past six," she said, mechanically taking out ner wai 
 ** and, fortunately, nobody will be stirring for some time at 
 least. Papa, what are you going to do V 
 
 " I am going to get up," he said. " Clara, there is still time. 
 If I can get up to town by the first train, I may be in time to 
 stop it yet." 
 
 " To stop— what ?" 
 
 ** The marriage, child, the marriage ! Clary's destruction I 
 Go away, my dear, and let me get up." 
 
 " It would be of no use," she said. " Papa, when Clary has 
 made up her mind, nothing that we can say would stop her. 
 You might do it by law, perhaps ; but she w^ill never come 
 home again — never hear reason. I know 'her better. There 
 were a great many things I wanted to ask about " 
 
 " Leave me just now, for heaven's sake, Clara ! 1 must try 
 at least, to save the child." 
 
 She rose without another word, and went away. A smile 
 once more stole upon her face, and stayed there, rigid and fixed. 
 He might have been of a little help to herself ; but he thousht 
 of Clary first — Clary, who was obstinate, and whom nothms 
 could move — who was coaxing and winning to those who loved 
 her, and would pursuade the old man to anything. Well, Mrs. 
 Burton said to herself, she had hoped for his help for a moment; 
 but now it was clear that she must do everything for herselfl 
 
 She went downstairs, and took down a cloak which hung in 
 the hall, and wrapping it about her, stepped out into the fresh 
 air. That, at least, might help her, though nothing else would. 
 She walked down to the avenue, to the skirt of the woods. 
 Like a cordial the soft air breathed about her, and gave her a 
 certain strength. She was not a woman who cared about the 
 meaner delights of wealth ; all these she would have given up 
 without a pang. But to exchange this large, free, lofty life 
 which she had been leading for the restrained and limited exis* 
 tence of her father's house — to be no longer entire mistress of her 
 own actions, but to be bound by her father's antiquated notions, 
 by what Aunt Everest and Aunt Louisa thought proper — that 
 would be hard to bend her mind to. To give up Dura for 
 Clapham ! Even that she could do stoically, and no one would 
 ever be the wiser. But to bear all the shame, all the com- 
 ments, a husband in prison, a story of romance of real life, ruin 
 
 itm 
 
 '».r!V"!g'J!W?fe*S» 
 
 '<'(*?J"'"S'^!"N!SS1 
 
410 
 
 ▲T HIS GATES. 
 
 of the father, elopement of the daiiffhter, in the newspapers ! 
 Mrs. Burton gave no outward si^n of the struggle thai went on 
 within her, but she clasped her little thin white hands together, 
 and she recognised at once, wholly and clearly, without any 
 8elf-decei>tion, what she would have to bear. 
 
 She waited there till her father came up to his on her wav 
 to the station. He stopped and told her he would come back 
 as soon as he could. 
 
 ** Most likely I will take Olary to Clapham first," he said, 
 '' Better than here, don't you think 1 She might be frightened 
 to face you after her folly. My dear, take a little courage if 
 you can. The innocent child has given us all clue that is 
 necessary — St. James's, Piccadilly. No marriage could take 
 place before eight o'clock, and I shall reach there soon after — 
 in time to prevent that, at least. I will take her to Clapham, 
 and then, my dear, I will come straight back to you." ' 
 
 " Very well, papa," she said. 
 
 In her heart she wondered at his simplicity, at the folly of 
 his hopes ; but what was the use of saying anything 1 If it 
 
 I)lea8ed him to do this, if this was what he thought best, why, 
 et him do it. Let every one act as it seemed good in his own 
 eyes. 
 
 " And by-the-bye, Clara, one thing more," he said — " Ned's 
 address. Where is he nowl I must telegraph at once for 
 him." 
 
 - Then some faint semblance of the tigeress guarding her young 
 appeared In Mrs. Burton. 
 
 " Ned ! Why should Ned be brought home 1 Why should 
 he be involved in trouble he has nothing to do with 1 He is 
 out of it ; he, at least, is safe. No, papa ; I will not have him 
 brought back." 
 
 ** Clara, you are mad, you are incomprehensible !" cried her 
 father. " Give me the boy's address." 
 
 " I will not," she answered' looking at him. 
 
 The woman had come to light in her at last — the woman 
 and something of the mother. As a daughter she had 
 neglected none of the observances of respect. She had been 
 dutiful, though she had long been an independent agent, and 
 had forgotten the very idea of obedienee. But never had she 
 defied her father before. She did it now calmly, as she. did 
 
 «< 
 
AT HIS 0ATE8. 
 
 411 
 
 everything. She had upheld her family and its importance as 
 long as mortal strength could do it ; and nov^ when that had 
 failed, she could at least defend her boy. 
 
 ** Clara, yoi astonish me. I could not have believed it of 
 you," said her father severely. 
 
 But he had no time to remonstrate or to command. He had 
 to hurry away for his train. And she stood and looked after 
 him, her breath for the first time quickened with excitement, 
 her resolution brindng a certain colour to her cheek. Ned was 
 safe, and out of all this trouble. It was the only gleam of 
 comfort in her clouded sky. He who should bring her boy 
 back to undergo all this shame and suffering was her enemy, 
 though it were done on the specious pretence of serving her. 
 To bring her son back to support and help her would be to do 
 her the last and cruellest wrong. She could do without the 
 help and support. She was ready to bear anything, since it 
 must be borne. What relief could it afford her to know that 
 another suffered too, and that other her son 1 She went back 
 to the house with quickened steps under the sway of the 
 thought, that Ned, at least, was sapfe and out of it. She was 
 not the kind of w oman who would complain of bearing any- 
 thing alone. 
 
 Breakfast was a very late and straggling meal that day at 
 Dura ; but Mrs. Burton was the first at the table — before 
 even the young man who had proposed a bath and a walk instead 
 of sleep. The breakfast was as sumj tuous, as well served, as 
 usual, and there were the same number of servants about, the 
 do^s, as usual, on the lawn, the man with the post-bags, as usual, 
 visible coming up the avenue. The ordinary eye would have 
 seen no indication of any change. But Mrs. Burton made a 
 calm little speech to every new group, which had the most curi- 
 ously disconcerting effect upon her guests. She said to them that 
 family circumstances compelled her to make preperations at 
 .once for leaving Dura ; that some things had happened which 
 she need not tell them of — family events — which had changed 
 all her arrangements. She hoped, under these circumstances, 
 they would pardon her, if she said plainly 
 
 " Oh, yes, certainly. Not another word," the visitors cried, 
 dismayed. They all gazed at each other, and whispered over 
 their tea-cups when her back was turned. They heard her say 
 
 i,:! I, 
 
412 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 the same thing to one party after another — even to the Mar- 
 chioness herself, who had come down fully primed, meaning to 
 overwhelm Mrs. Burtoi with a theatrical leavetaking. 
 
 " Why, why, why !" she cried in her wrath, " you mean that 
 you want to— get rid of us, Mrs. Burton !" and her hair stood 
 on end upon her nohle head. 
 
 ** I am afraid, without making any mystery of it, that is 
 what I do mean. Lady Upshire," said the woman who was only 
 the wife of a rich City man — a parvenvs, one of the nouveaux 
 riches— ^xing her blue eyes calmly upon her splendid guest. 
 ' " What pluck she has !" the young men said to themselves. 
 They almost cheered her for her dauntless front. And they 
 were all gone by two o'clock — marchioness and maid, guards- 
 man and public servant — every visitor, gentle and simple. 
 They disappeared as if by magic. What questions they ae^ked 
 each other, what speculations they entertained among them- 
 selves, Mrs. Burton neither knew nor cared. The first thing 
 was to be free of them ; and when the afternoon came, she was 
 alone with the startled servants and her two aunts, to whom as 
 yet she had given no explanations, and whose private opinion 
 stated a hundred times that morning, was, that at last, beyond 
 all controversy, Clara must be mad. 
 
AT HtS GAteS. 
 
 41d 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 K. BALDWIN came back to Dura in the afternoon, 
 worn out and disappointed — foiled by the simple fact, 
 which had never occurred to the old man as possible, 
 that Clary— his innocent Clary — had wittingly or unwittingly 
 given a false indication, and that St. James's, Piccadilly, knew 
 nothing of any such marriage. Mr Baldwin drove to all the 
 hotels, to all the churches, he could think of, from St. James's, 
 Camberwell, to St. James's, Kentish Town, but in vain. Just 
 when it was too late to follow them further, he discovered an 
 anonymous little chapel which he must have passed a dozen 
 times in his journeys, where the ceremony had actually taken 
 place. Charles Golden to Clara Burton. Then he had gone 
 to the Northern Railway Station, and discovered they had left 
 by the eleven o'clock train. All he had done had been to 
 verify their movements. The poor old man aged ten years 
 during this running to and fro. He went back to his daughter 
 worn out and miserable. Little Clary, the pride of the family, 
 with all her beauty, her youth, and the possibilities that lay 
 before her ! " Now I know that we may go too far in carry- 
 ing out the precepts of Christianity," he groaned, when his 
 sympathetic sisters came to console him. "We thought he 
 had repented, and we took him back to our hearts." In this, 
 however, poor Mr. Baldwin deceived himself. Golden had 
 been received back into their hearts, not because he had repent- 
 ed, but because the scandal against him had died into oblivion, 
 and because in their souls even the honest men admired the 
 consummate cleverness of the rogue. And in this point, at 
 least, Mr. Golden had not been mercenary ; he had actually 
 fallen in love with Clara Burton, knowing the desperate state of 
 her father's affairs — affairs which were so desperate, when he was 
 called on to help in regulating them, that he had been " oblig- 
 ed to decline " the task. Golden had a little Sybarite " place " 
 of his own on the shores of the Mediterranean. So many 
 scraps of money had adhered to his fingers in his various com- 
 
 ii'l 
 
 
 Hi" 
 
 if'-. 
 
 
M 
 
 AT HtS OATfiS. 
 
 mercial adventures, though these adventures were always un- 
 fortunate, that he could afiford himself that crowning luxury of 
 a beautiful wife ; and then Mr. Baldwin was a rich man and a 
 doating grandfather, who after a while would be sure to for- 
 give. 
 
 As for Mrs. Burton, she had expected her father's failure, 
 and was not surprised or disappointed. She had given her 
 up, not with any vindictive or revengeful intention, but simply 
 as a matter of fact. " Oh, don't curse her, Clara ! " Aunt 
 Louisa sobbed in the midst of her tears. And then indeed 
 Mrs. Burton was surprised. " Curse her ! I have no inten- 
 tion of cursing her," she said. Clary had taken her own way ; 
 she had pleased herself. What she had done was quite easily 
 to be accounted for ; it was human nature. Mrs. Burton was 
 not subject to passions herself, but she recognised them as a 
 motive-power ; and though perhaps in her inmost heart there 
 was a sense of shame that her child should be violently moved 
 by those lowest, almost brutal, forces (for so she deemed them), 
 yet her intelligence understood and allowed the possibility. 
 Clara had acted according to her nature ; that was all that was 
 to be said. She had laid an additional burden upon her family 
 — or rather upon her mother, the only one of the family left 
 to bear it ; but then it was not natural to Clary to take ac- 
 count of what other people might have to bear. Thus Mrs. 
 Burton accepted it, making no complaint If it . gave her any 
 additional individual pan^ for itself, and not merely as part of 
 the whole, she at least said little about it, and made no indi- 
 vidual complaint. 
 
 But there came a moment when actual feeling, emotion not 
 to be disguised, broke foith in this self-possessed woman. She 
 had decided to remain at Dura till further news, and until her 
 l^usband's affairs could be fully examined into ; and though her 
 aunts went home, her father remained with her. Two long 
 clays passed over without news. On the third, Tuesday, Mr. 
 Baldwin went to town to make what inquiries were possible. 
 As yet there had been but vague hints in the newspapers — 
 rumours of changes affecting " a well-known name in the City" 
 *— an4 the old man had hesitated to show himself, to ask any 
 questions which might, as he said, " precipitate matters." 
 While we are in ignorance, quiet is best," he had said ; but 
 
 <t 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 415 
 
 when the third day arrived, though Mrs. Burton still bore the 
 suspense like a stoic, Mr. Baldwin could not bear it any longer. 
 When he was gone, she showed no signs of impatience ; she 
 went about her business as usual, and she had a great deal to 
 do. She had begun at once to wind up the accounts of the 
 house, to arrange with her servants, to whom she was a just 
 and not ungenerous mistress, when they should go and what 
 would be done to find them places. But when the languid 
 afternoon came, her energy flagged a little. She did not 
 allow, even to herself, that she was anxious. She went into 
 the great drawing-room, and sat down near a window from 
 which she could see the avenue. Perhaps for the first time, 
 the impulse came into her mind to prefer a smaller room, to 
 take refuge somewhere else than in this waste of <damask and 
 gilding ; but if such was the case, she restrained and condemned 
 the thought. She was herself so small, almost invisible, in 
 the great, silent place, full of those mirrors which reflected no- 
 thing, those chairs where no one sat, no marble statue, with a 
 finger on its lip was ever so complete an embodiment of silence 
 as she, seated there all alone, motionless, looking out upon the 
 road. It might have been hours before any one came. A sum- 
 mer afternoon, slovr, languid, endless, one vast blank of drowsy 
 calm and blazing sunshine, the wind too listless to blow, the 
 leaves too heavy to wave, everything still, even the birds. But 
 at last, at last some one came — not Mr. Baldwin's slow, heavy 
 old steps, but rapid young ones, light and impatient. She 
 gazed at the speck as it gradually approached, and became re^ 
 cognisable. Then her heart gave a great unexpected, painful 
 throb. Ned ! Her last little gleam of satisfaction, her last 
 comfort, then, was not to be. He was not out of it, safe, as 
 she had hoped, but here to bear all the brunt, to share all the 
 shame. She tried to get up, to go and meet him, but sank 
 back, faint and incapable, in her chair, trembling, sick to the 
 heart ; overwhelmed for the first time. 
 
 He came in, bringing a gust of fresh air (it seemed) with him 
 He was dusty, and pale, and eager. 
 
 " Mother," he cried, as he came up to her. 
 
 She held up her hand with a gesture which was almost pasr 
 
 sionate,xepelunghini, li , M?aTf 
 
 I *^ Oh, Ned, Ned I why have you come here 1 " 
 
 "Don't you want me, mamma ) 
 
 m 
 
 
 
 ft 
 
 •■>7»-««8»iiiBeEi%gKWf.i«ffiiB<^ 
 
416 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 He kissed her as he spoke, and put his arm round her. If 
 •be had been another kind of woman, he would have sobbed 
 on her breast, for the lad's heart was very sore. 
 
 ; "No, I do not want you," she said. " I thought you were 
 safe. I thought you were out of it all. I was ready to bear 
 anything — it cannot hurt me — any more. But you, a boy, a 
 lad, with all your life to come ! Oh, Ned, Ned, why have you 
 come here 1 " She had never done it before in all her life. She 
 did not embrace him, but clutched at his arm with her two 
 hands, and shed passionate, hot tears. "I do not want you ! 
 I do not want you ! " she cried, and clung to him. " I wish 
 you were at the end of the world." 
 
 " Oh, mother ! " cried the boy. 
 
 He was fOnd of her, though perhaps she had never done any 
 thing to deserve it. And she-gloved him. Yes. All at pnce 
 she found it out, with a mother's passion. Loved him so that 
 she would have been glad never to see him again ; glad to be 
 cut in pieces for him; glad to suffer shame, and pain, and 
 misery, and ruin alone, that he might be out of it. This, which 
 she had scarcely suspected, she found out at last. 
 
 But when this moment was over, and the fact that he had 
 come was indisputable, and had to be made the best of, Mrs. 
 Burton recovered her usual calm. She was ashamed of herself 
 for having " broken down." She said it was fatigue and want 
 of sleep which had made her weak, and then she told him all 
 the circumstrnces dispassionately, as was natural to her. He 
 himself had been summoned by a telegram from Golden. He 
 had been at Dresden when he received it, and he had travelled 
 night and day. But why from Golden, he asked, a man whom 
 he hated 1 " Your mother wants you here. There has been a 
 gfeat smash, and your presence is indispensable," was what the 
 telegram had said. But I will not attempt to describe how the 
 little, pale, dispassionate mother told the tale, nor how the young 
 son, full of youthful passion, indignation, rage, and grief, heard 
 of his family's downfall, and the ruin of all its prospects and 
 hopes. 
 
 When Mr. Baldwin came back, he brought news still more 
 overwfadming. The fact which had made further concealment 
 impossible, and had driven Burton tp fligbl5;;^'ttC^MaiW^^ 
 up of a trust account for wlU^lf M¥rfd«n ^^oMl€^.7jhe 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 417 
 
 more 
 Iment 
 
 property had been invested by him, and he had paid the interest 
 regularly ; but it was found that not a penny of the original ca- 
 pital remained ; he had appropriated all. When it was known 
 that he had disappeared, other inquiries had been at once set 
 on foot, but kept carefully out of the papers, lest his escape 
 might be facilitated ; and then such disclosures were made as 
 Mr. Baldwin could only repeat bit by bit, as his strength per- 
 mitted. The old man cried like a child ; he was utterly broken 
 down. It had even come out about Rivers's, he said. One of 
 the missing books, which poor Drummond had been accused of 
 destroying, had been found in a private safe, along with other 
 damning accounts, which the unhappy man had not been able 
 to destroy or conceal, so quickly did his fate overtake him. 
 The unhappy man I Both Mr. Baldwin and Mrs. Burton re- 
 membered the time when Robert Drummond had been thus 
 described — when all the newspapers had preached little ser- 
 mons about him, with many a repetition of this title — articles 
 which Burton had read, and shaken his head over, and declared 
 were as good as sermons, warning the ignorant. This flashed 
 upon Mrs. Burton's mind, and it came more dimly to her 
 father. Fortunately, Ned's misery was not complicated by 
 such recollections ; he had enough without that. 
 
 " But the general impression is that he has escaped," said 
 Mr. Baldwin ; and he repeated to them the vague account 
 which had been given to him of the two futile detectives, who 
 had watched the fugitive into a house, and kept in front of it, 
 putting the inhabitants on their guard, while he was smuggled 
 out by a side-door. No doubt he had escaped. And it was 
 known that he had money ; for he had drawn a large sum out 
 of the bank the day before. 
 
 "I am glad you have come back, Ned," the grandfather 
 added. "It is you who ought to manage this, and not your 
 mother. Of course she has her settlement, which nobody can 
 touch. And I think now, my deJir, that you should leave Dura, 
 and come with me to Clapham. You will have your aunts* 
 society to make up a little, and it will be more convenient for 
 Ned." 
 
 Mrs. Burton looked at her son almost wistfully. 
 
 " Ned, is there any sacrifice I can make that will induce you 
 to go away ^ " 
 AA 
 
418 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 " None, mother," he said, " nohe. I will do anything else 
 that you ask me. But here I must have a will of my own. I 
 cannot go away." 
 
 " Go away ! " said Mr. Baldwin. " I don't know how he 
 has got here ; for your mother would not let me send for you, 
 Ned ; but of course this is your proper place. It will be very 
 painful — very painful," said the old man. " But you have your 
 settlement, Clara ; and we must hope everything will turn out 
 for the best." 
 
 ** My mother will give up her settlement, sir, of course," 
 said Ned. "After what has happened, she could not — it 
 would be impossible — What ! you don't see it 1 Must not 
 those suffer who have done the wrong 1 " 
 
 " Ned, you are a fool," said Mr. Baldwin, " a hot-headed 
 young fool. I see your sense now, Clara. That scoundrel. 
 Golden, has sent for him only to increase our vexation. Give 
 up her settlement I Then pray how is she to live ] " 
 
 " With me," said Ned, rising up, and standing behind his 
 mother's chair. He would have taken her hand to sustain him, 
 if he could ; but she did not give him her hand. He put his 
 on the back of her chair. That, at least was something to give 
 him strength. 
 
 "With you ! " Mr. Baldwin was moved by this absurdity to 
 something of his former vigour. " It would be satisfactory, in- 
 deed, trusting her to you. I will have no Quixotical nonsense 
 brought in. This is my affair. I am the proper person to 
 look after my daughter's settlement. It is the only comfort in 
 a bad business. Don't let me hear any more of such childish 
 folly." 
 
 " It is not folly," said Ned firmly, though his voice trembled. 
 " I am sure my mother feels like me. \Ve have no right to 
 keep anything while my father has been spending other peo- 
 ple's money ; or if we have a right in law " 
 
 Mrs. Burton put up her hand to stop him. It was the first 
 time in her life that she had allowed herself to be discussed, 
 what she should or would do, without taking any share in it. 
 The fact was, the question was a new one — the problem quite 
 strange to her. She had considered it as certain up to this 
 moment that her settlement belonged to her absolutely, and 
 that her husband's conduct one way or other could have no 
 
At Htd OAtES. 
 
 419 
 
 effect upon her undoubted right. The problem was altogether 
 new. She put up her hand to interrupt the discussion. 
 
 " I have not thought of this," she said. " Ned, say no more* 
 I want time to think. 1 shall tell you to-morrow what I will 
 do." 
 
 Against this decision there was not a word to say. The old 
 man and the boy gave up their discussion as suddenly as they 
 had begun it. Let them argue as they would, it was she who 
 must settle the question ; and just then the great bell rang — 
 the bell which regulated the clock in the village, and warned 
 all the countryside when the great people at the great house 
 were going to dine. The ears which were accustomed to it 
 scarcely noted the sound ; but Ned, to whom it had become a 
 novelty, aud as great a mockery as a novelty, started violently, 
 put up his hands to his ears, and rushed out into the hall, 
 where Simmons stood in all the splendour of his evening dress. 
 
 " Stop that infernal noise ! " cried poor Ned, in a sudden 
 outburst of rage and humiliation. He felt tempted to knock 
 down the solemn spy before him, who already, he saw, had 
 noted his dusty dress, his agitated face. 
 
 " Happy to see you home, sir," said Simmons. " Did you 
 speak, sir 1 Is there anything as I can do for you ? " 
 
 " The bell is not to be rung any more," said Ned, walking 
 gloomily off to his room. It was the first sign to the general 
 world that the grandeur of Dura had come to an end. 
 . A mournful dinner followed, carefully cooked, carefully 
 served, an assiduous silent servant behind each chair, and eaten' 
 as with ashes, and bitterness, and tears, a few faint remarks 
 now and then, a feeble attempt, " for the sake of the servants," 
 to look as if nothing was the matter. It was Mr. Baldwin 
 chiefly, a man who never could make up his mind that all was 
 over, who made these attempts. Mrs. Burton, for her part, 
 was above all pretences. Her long stand against approaching 
 ruin was over ; she had laid down her arms, and she no longer 
 cared who knew it. And as for Ned, he was too miserable, 
 too heart-broken, to look anything but overwhelmed with sor- 
 row and shame, afi he was. 
 
 In the evening he strolled out, feeling the air of the house 
 insupportable. His mother had gone to her room with her 
 new problem which she had to solve, and Mr. Baldwin was 
 
m 
 
 At HtS <3At£S. 
 
 tired, and fretful, and anxious to get to bed early, feeling that 
 there was a certain virtue in that fact of going early to bed 
 which might redeem the unusually disturbed, excited life he 
 was leading — a life in which he had been fatally entangled with 
 ruins, and elopements, and sitting up half the night. Ned, 
 who had no mind for sleep, and no power of thinking which 
 could have been of any service to him in the circumstances, 
 went out disconsolately, saying to himself that a stroll in the 
 woods might do him good. But when he had reached the top 
 of the avenue, where the path diverged into the woods, some 
 "spirit in his feet " led him straight on. Why, ho asked him- 
 self, should he go to the village 1 why should he go to the Gate- 
 house ) Yes, that was where he wanted to go — where his 
 foolish heart had gone before him, courting slight and scorn. 
 Why should he go 1 If she had sent him away then with Con- 
 tumely, how much more now ? At that time, if she had but 
 looked upon him kindly, he had thought he had something to 
 offer her worthy her acceptance. Now he had nothing, and 
 less than nothing — an empty purse and a dishonoured name. 
 Ned slouched his hat over his eyes. He would go and look at 
 the house, look at her window. If he might see her face again, 
 that would be more than he hoped for. Norah could be noth- 
 ing — ^nothing to him now. 
 
 So saying, he wandered down the leafy, shadowy way. The 
 sun had set, the grey of the evening had come on ; the moon 
 was past the full, and rose late ; it was one of those soft, tran- 
 quil, mournful summer evenings which fill the heart with wist- 
 fulness and longings. The water came unbidden into poor 
 Ned's eyes. Oh, what ruin, what destruction had overwhelmed 
 him and his since last he walked down that path ! Then every- 
 thing that life could offer to make up for the want of Norah 
 (though that was nothing) lay within his grasp. Now*, though 
 Norah was clearly lost, everything else was lost with her. He 
 saw no hope before him ; his very heart was crushed ; a beg- 
 gar, and more than a beggar ; a man who did not know how 
 to dig or how to work ; the son of a father who was disgraced. 
 These were miserable thoughts to pour through the mind of a 
 young man of twenty-one. There have been others who have 
 had as much to bear ; but they, perhaps, had no Norah to com- 
 plicate and increase the burden. As he drew near the Gate- 
 
AT HIS OATBS. 
 
 421 
 
 house, his heart began to beat louder. Probably she would 
 not care to speak to him at all, he thought ; how quickly she 
 had dismissed him last time, when he had no stains upon him, 
 as he had now ! 
 
 He drew his hat still more over his brows. He walked 
 quickly past the Gatehouse. The windows were all open, and 
 Stephen Haldane sat within, in an interior faintly lighted up 
 by the candles which Miss Jane had just set down upon the 
 table. 
 
 " Don't shut my window yet," he heard the invalid say. 
 " My poor window I My chief pleasure ! " 
 
 It was strange to Ned to hear those words, which seemed to 
 let him into the very secret of the sick man's life. 
 
 " And a capital window it has been too," said Miss Jane 
 briskly, thinking of the book, and the money it had brought in. 
 
 Ned slackened his steps when he had passed. There had 
 been something at one of the windows on the other side — 
 something, a shadow, a passing gleam, as of a pale face pillowed 
 upon two arms. The poor boy turned, and went back this 
 time more slowly. Yes, surely there was a face at the window. 
 The arms were withdrawn now ; there was no light inside to 
 reveal who it was ; only a something — a pale little face looking 
 out 
 
 Back again — just once more, once more — to have a last look. 
 He would never see her again; most likely. As far away as if 
 she were a star in heaven would she be henceforward. He 
 would pass a little more slowly this time ; there was no one 
 about to see him. The road was quieter than usual ; no one 
 in sight ; and with his hat so over his eyes, who could recog- 
 nize him 1 He went very softly, lingering over every step, 
 She was still there, looking out, and in the dark with no one 
 near her ! Oh, Norah I If she could but know how his heart 
 was pulling at him, forcing him towards that door ! 
 
 He thought he heard some sound in the silence as of an ex- 
 clamation, and the face disappeared from the window. A mo- 
 ment after the door opened suddenly, and a little figure rushed 
 out. 
 
 "Ned 1" it said, "Ned! Is it possible 1 Can it be youl 
 And, oh, what do you mean walking about out@ide like that, a^ 
 if you knew nobody here ? " 
 
422 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 " Oh, Norah ! I did not know if I might come,'* said ab- 
 ject Ned. 
 
 " Of course you may come. Why shouldn't you come 1 Oh, 
 Ned, I was so lonely ! I am so glad to see you ! I did not 
 know what to do with myself. Susan would not bring in the 
 lamp, and I am so afraid of this room when it is dark !' 
 
 ** How you once frightened me about it ! " he said, as he 
 went in with her. 
 
 His heart felt so much lighter, he could not tell how. In- 
 sensibly his spirit rose, and with a sense of infinite refresh- 
 ment, and even of having escaped from something, he went 
 back to the recollections of his youth. Such an innocent, 
 simple recollection, belonging to the time when all was plea- 
 sure, when there was no pain. 
 
 " Did I ? But never mind. Oh, Ned ! poor Ned ! have they 
 brought you here because bf all this trouble ? I have so rriuch 
 to say to you. My heart is breaking for you. Oh, you poor, 
 poor, dear boy ! " 
 
 This was not how he had expected to be spoken to. He 
 could scarcely see her face, it was so dark, what with the cur- 
 tains at the windows and the shadows of the lime-leaves ; but 
 she had put her hand into his to comfo.^t him. He did not 
 know wha*^: to say ; his heart was torn in twain, between mis- 
 ery and joy. It was so hard to let any gleam of light into 
 that desperate darkness ; and yet it was so hard to keep his 
 heart from dancing at the sound of her soft, tender voice. 
 
 " Norah," he said, " Oh, Norah ! it will not be so very bad 
 if you are sorry for me. You would not speak to me last time. 
 I thought I might, perhaps, never see you again." 
 
 " Oh, Ned ! I was only a child. How foolish I was ! I 
 hoped you would look back ; but you never looked back ; and 
 we who have been brought up together, who have always been 
 — fond of each other ! " 
 
 " Do you ? do you ? Oh, Norah ! not just because you are 
 sorry ? Do you care — a little for me 1 Speak the truth." 
 
 " Ned, Ned 1 — I care for you more than anybody — except 
 mamma." 
 
 There was a little silence after this. They were like two 
 children in the simplicity of their youth ; their hearts beat to- 
 gether, their burdens — and both the young shoulders were 
 
AT HIS QAT£S. 
 
 423 
 
 but 
 
 weighed down by premature burdens — were somehow lightened, 
 they could not tell how. 
 
 After a while, Norah, nestling like a little bird, said softly, 
 " Do you mind sitting without the lamp 1 " and Ned answered, 
 " No." They sat down together, holding each other's hands ; 
 they were not afraid of the dark. They poured out their hearts 
 to each other. All his sorrows, all his difficulties, Ned poured 
 into Norah's sympathetic bosom ; and she cried, and he con- 
 soled her ; and she patted his hand or his sleeve, and said, 
 " Poor boy 1 Poor, dear Ned ! " It was not much. She had 
 no advice to give him, not many words of wisdom ; but what 
 she did say was as healing as the leaves of that tree in Para- 
 dise. Her touch stanched all his wounds. 
 
 " I have something to tell you too," she said, trembling a 
 little, when all his tale had been told. " Ned, you have heard 
 of poor papa, my father, who died before we came here 1 Oh, 
 Ned ! listen. Stoop down, and let me whisper. Ned, he did 
 not die " 
 
 "Nc»ah!" 
 
 " Hush. Yes ; it is quite true. Oh, don't be frightened. I 
 can't help being frighteaed staying here alone. Mamma went 
 to him yesterday. Oh, Ned ! after seven years ! Was there 
 ever anything so strange 1 " 
 
 " Poor Mrs. Drummond ! " said Ned. " Oh, Norah, thank 
 God ! My father has not done so much harm as I thought. 
 Are you all alone, my own darling ) I suppose she was happy 
 to go." 
 
 He said this with a strange accent of blame in his voice. 
 " For her own selfish happiness she could leave Norah — my 
 Norah — all alone 1 " This was what the young man, in his 
 haste, thought. 
 
 " I think she was frightened too," said Norah, under her 
 breath. " She did not understand it; It is as if he had been 
 really dead, and come alive again. Mamma did not say any- 
 thing ; but I know she was frightened too." 
 
 " Norah, most likely he hates us. If he should try to keep 
 you from me " 
 
 " Oh, Ned, do yv>u mean that this means anything ? Do you 
 think it is right ? We are all in such trouble, not knowing 
 what may happen. Do you mean," said Norah, faltering and 
 
 m 
 
 m 
 
 m 
 
 ?..-,iB 
 
 ' W 
 1 ^:. 
 
424 
 
 AT HIS GATES. * 
 
 trembling, " do you mean that this means — Is it — being en- 
 gaged?" 
 
 "Doesn't it, dear? Oh, Norah, what could it mean else 1 
 You would never have the heart to cast me oflf now 1 " 
 
 " Cast you off I Oh, no, Ned ! Oh, never, Nedl But then 
 that is different. We are so dreadfully young. We have no 
 money. We are in such trouble. Ohl do you think it is 
 right 1 " 
 
 " It can't be wrong to be fond of each other, Norah ; and 
 you said you were — a little." 
 
 " Yes ; oh, yes I Oh, Ned t do be satisfied. Isn't it enough 
 for us to care for each other — to be the very best, dearest 
 friends 1 " 
 
 " It is not enough for me," he said, turning his head aside, 
 and speaking sternly in the dark. 
 
 " Isn't it, Ned 1 " said Norah timidly. " Ned, I wish I coiild 
 see your face. You are not ancry 1 You poor, dear boy ! Ohl 
 you don't think I could have the heart to cross you 1 and you 
 in such trouble. Ned, what must we do 1 " 
 
 " You must promise me, Norah, on your true and faithful 
 word, that you will marry me as soon as we can, whatever any- 
 body may say." 
 
 Norah in her alarm seized at the saving clause which staved 
 off all immediate terrors. 
 
 " When we caUy Ned." 
 
 " Yes, my own darling. You promise ] I shall not mind 
 what happens if I have your promise — your faithful promise, 
 Norah." 
 
 " I promise you faithfully, Ned — faithfully, dear Ned 1 — 
 when we can — if it should not be for years." 
 
 " But it shall be ! " he cried ; and then they kissed each 
 other, poor children ! and Norah was sitting by herself crying 
 when Susan brought in the lamp. 
 
 first 
 
▲T HIS GATES. 
 
 425 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 RS. BURTON took her new problem away with her 
 into the quiet of her room. It was a question 
 which had never occurred to her before. Some few 
 first principles even an enquiring mind like hers must take for 
 granted, and this had been one of them. She had no love for 
 money, and no contempt for it — it was a mere commonplace 
 necessity, not a thing to be discussed ; and though she had a 
 high natural sense of honour and honesty, in her own person, 
 it had not occurred to her to consider that in such a matter she 
 had anything to do but to accept the arrangement which was 
 according to law and common custom, an arrangement which, 
 of course, had been made (theoretically) in vi«w of a calamity 
 such as had just happened. It was the intention of her settle- 
 ment, and of all settlements, she said to herself, to secure a wo- 
 man against the chances of her husband's ruin. She, in most 
 cases, was entirely irresponsible for that ruin. She had no- 
 thing to do with it, and was unable to prevent it. She had 
 married with the belief that she herself and her children would 
 be provided for, and the first duty of her friends was to make 
 sure that it should be so. Up to this point there was no flaw 
 in the argument. Mrs. Burton knew that she had brought her 
 husband a good fortune ; and her future had been secured as 
 an equivalent. It was like buying a commission — it was like 
 making an investment. She had put in so much, she had a 
 right to secure to herself absolutely the power of taking it out 
 again, or recovering what had been hers. Mr. Burton had not 
 incurred his liabilities with her knowledge or consent ; he had 
 never consulted her on the matter. He had never said or even 
 hinted to her that her expenditure was too great, that he could 
 not afford it. True, it was possible that fastidious persons 
 might blame her for proceeding so long on her splendid course, 
 after hints and rumours had reached her about her husband's 
 position ; but these were nothing more than rumours. She 
 {lad no sort o^cial information^ nothing really to justify her iu 
 
 .r.H 
 
 -IF 
 
426 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 making a sudden change in her household, which probably 
 would have affected Mr. Burton's credit more than her extrava- 
 gance. She was in no way responsible. She had even 
 protested against the re-introduction of Golden into his affairs. 
 She could not blame herself for anything she had done ; she 
 had always been ready to hear, always willing to give him her 
 advice, to second him in any scheme he propounded to her. 
 She put herself at the bar, and produced all the evidence 
 she knew of, on both sides of the question, arid acquitted her- 
 self. The money she could have saved by economy was not 
 worth considering in the magnitude of Mr. Burton's affairs. 
 She had done nothing which she could feel had made her his 
 accomplice in his wrong-doing. 
 
 And she had no right to balk her father in his care for her — 
 to establish a bad precedent in regard to the security of 
 marriage settlements — to put it in the power of any set of 
 creditors to upbraid some other woman whose view of her 
 duty might be different. She had no right to do it. She had 
 to think not of herself only but of all the married women who 
 slept serenely in the assurance that, whatever happened, their 
 children's bread was secure. She reflected that such a step 
 would put an end to all security — that no woman would venture 
 to marry, that no father would venture to give his child to 
 a man in business, if this safeguard were broken down. It 
 would be impossible. It would be a blow aimed at the consti- 
 tution of the country — at the best bulwark of families ; it 
 would be an injustice. Of all a commercial man's creditors 
 surely his wife was the one claimant who had most right 
 to come first. Others might be partially involved ; she had 
 put everything in his hands. "Without this safeguard she 
 would not have married him ; she would not have been per- 
 mitted to marry him. Going over the question carefully, Mrs. 
 Burton felt, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she had right on 
 her side. 
 
 She had right on her side— but she had not Ned. This was 
 a very different matter — an argument such as she had scarcely 
 ever taken into consideration before. Mrs. Burton did not 
 disdain the personal argument. She knew that, in the confused 
 state of human affairs, in the intricate range of human thoughts, 
 it wa^ often impossible to go upon pure reason^ and that per< 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 427 
 
 sonal pleas had to be admitted. But she had never consciously 
 done this before. She was almost scornful of her own weak- 
 ness now. But she could not help herself. She had to suffer 
 the eAtrance of this great personal argument, if with a mental 
 pang yet without resistance. She loved her son. All that 
 reason could do for her, all the approbation of her own judg- 
 ment, the sense of right, the feeling that her position was 
 logically inassailable, would not be enough to console her for 
 the illogical, unreasoning <lisapproval of her boy. For the first 
 time in her life, with a great surprise this certainty seized upon 
 her. Up to this time she had gone her own way, she had 
 satisfied herself that she was right according to her own stan- 
 dard, and she had not cured what any one said or thought. 
 But now all at once, with wonder, almost with shame, she 
 found that she had descended from this high eminence. A 
 whole host of foolish, childish, unreasonable principles of action, 
 inconsequences, and stupidities were suddenly imported into her 
 mental world by this apparition of Ned. Not the most certain 
 sense of right that reasoning creature ever had, would neutra- 
 lize, she felt, that pained and wondering look in her son's eyes. 
 If he disapproved it would be a cold comfort to her that reason 
 was on her side. If this indignant, impatient, foolish young 
 soul protested against her that what she did would not bear 
 comparing with some fantastic visionary standard which he 
 called honour, what would it avail her that by her own just 
 standard of weight and measure she was not found wanting 1 
 Thus all Mrs. Burton's principles and habits, her ways of 
 thinking, the long-exercised solitary irresponsible power of her 
 intelligence, which had guided her through life for forty y^ars, 
 were all at once brought to a sudden standstill by the touch, by 
 the breath of that thing called Love, which, she knew not how 
 had suddenly come in upon her like a giant. This new influence 
 paralyzed the fine, delicate, exquisite machinery by which 
 hitherto all her problems had been worked out. She tried to 
 struggle against it, but the struggle was ineffectual. It was 
 the first time she had felt herself, acknowledged herself, to be 
 acting like a fool ! What then ? She could not help it. Even 
 in the clear, cold daylight of her mind the entrance of this new 
 force, all shadowy, mysterious, wonderful, could not be con- 
 tested, She threw down her arms once more, She had been 
 
 ifei 
 
428 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 beaten terribly, miserably, in the battle of her life — she was 
 beaten sweetly, wonderfully now, in a way which melted her 
 hardness and made the disused heart beat and tremble strangely 
 within her, in the other world where reason hitherto had 
 reigned supreme. 
 
 But nothing more was said on the subject for some time. 
 Next morning brought letters, which roused the little party 
 once more into excitement. There was one from Mr. Burton, 
 informing his wife that he had got safely to France by a way 
 little u^ed, and was now in the small seaport of St. Servan, 
 awaiting letters from his family, and their advice as to what 
 was best. He had not meant to go there, but a chance en- 
 counter with Golden at the station had driven him to take the 
 down-train instead of the up-train. He would remain there if 
 he could, he added, until he heard from home ; but if ^ny 
 alarm came would hasten across the country to Brest, from 
 whence he could get off to America. Mr. Burton did not say 
 a word of apology or explanation, but he begged to have news, 
 " of all," to be told " how people were taking it," and to have 
 the newspapers sent him. He added in a P. S. the following 
 question : " By the way, what could Golden be doing at Turley 
 Station, seven miles from Dura, at four o'clock in the morning ) 
 And who could the lady be who was with him 1 If you hear 
 anything on this subject, let me know." 
 
 Clara's letter was from Windermere. It was full of effusive- 
 ness and enthusiasm, hoping that dearest mamma would forgive 
 them. Papa, Charles had told her, was not likely to be in a 
 position to forgive any one, but would want it himself, which 
 was very dreadful ; but was it not beautiful of Charles, and 
 showed how generous and how true he was, that papa's ruin 
 made no difference to his feelings 1 This reflection, Clara said, 
 made her so happy, that she felt as if she could even forgive papa 
 — for, if he had not been so rash and so wicked, she never would 
 ir£ve known how much her dear Charles loved her. They 
 were coming back to London in a fortnight from thib heavenly 
 lake, and would start then on a roundabout journey to Charles's 
 delightful " place " on the Mediterranean. And, oh i Clara 
 hoped with effusion dearest mamma would see them, and for- 
 give them, and believe that she had never been so happy in her 
 Ufe ^ wben she signed herself de^ iQ^nims^'s ever »ffection{^te 
 
 rot 
 sht 
 I 
 
 asked 
 thed 
 this t 
 
AT HIS GATES). 
 
 429 
 
 Clara Golden. These were the letters that came to the little 
 party at Dura on the morning after Ned's arrival. They were 
 received with very diflferent feelings by the three. Mr. Bald- 
 win, on the whole, was pleased, He was pleased with the 
 " love to grandpapa," with which Clary wound up her letter ; 
 and he was glad the child was happy at least. *• What is done 
 cannot be undone," he said ; ** and that is quite true about 
 there being nothing mercenary in it, you know." Mrs. Burton 
 gave a faint smile as she laid the letters down one after 
 another. They were just such letters as she expected. Had 
 she been alone, perhaps she would have tossed them from her 
 with scorn, as she had done with the previous notes ; but that 
 had been in a moment of strong excitement, when she was not 
 full mistress of herself ; and what was the good, Mrs. Burton 
 thought, of quarrelling with your own whom you cannot alter, 
 or of expecting sense and good taste where such qualities did 
 rot xist 1 From these two, her husband and her daughter, 
 sbt i lot expect any more. 
 
 1 u. t>oor iMed was utterly cast down by these epistles. He 
 asked himself, as Norah had done when Mr. Rivers left her at 
 the door of the Academy's Exhibition, was this natural ? was 
 this the way of the world ? and, like Norah, felt his own dis- 
 tress doubled by the horrible thought that to think of your own 
 comfort first and above all, and to be utterly unmoved by the 
 reflection that you have caused untold misery to others, is the 
 natural impulse of humanity. He was so sad, and looked 'io 
 humbled, that his mother's heart was penetrated in her new 
 enlightenment by a strange perception of how he was feeling. 
 She was not so feeling herself. The sight of selfishness, even 
 on so grand a scale, did not surprise nor shock her ; but she 
 felt what he was feeling, which was as strange to her as a new 
 revelation! The family at Dura during these days were like a 
 beleaguered city — thay lived encircled in a close round, if not 
 of enemies, yet of observant, watchful spectators, who might 
 become enemies at any moment, who might note even the post- 
 mark on their letters, and use that against them. Whenever 
 a step was heard approaching the door, a little thrill went 
 through them. It might be some one coming to announce deeper 
 misfortune still. It might be some one who dared to bo 
 insolent, some one who had a right to curse and denounce. 
 
 
4>86 
 
 At BtS Qitfili 
 
 The tension of their nerves was terrible, the strain of watchful- 
 ness — and the pain of standing secretly and always on their 
 defence. 
 
 " Let us go, let us go, Clara, I cannot stay here any longer ; 
 now that we know where to write to them, let us go," cried 
 Mr. Baldwin, after the letters had been read and discussed ; 
 and then the old man went out to take a melancholy walk, 
 and ponder what it would be best to do. Should they go back 
 to Olapham '? or should he take his poor child away some- 
 where for change of air ? " If ever any one wanted change of 
 air, surely Clara must. 
 
 " Ned, come here," said Mrs, Burton, when they were left 
 alone. He went and sat down by her, listless, with his hands 
 in his pockets. Notwithstanding the joy of last night, the 
 letters, the shame and ruin and misery, had overwhelmed 
 Ned. \. 
 
 " I have been thinking over what you said yesterday about 
 my settlement," said his mother. * " Ned, in one way your 
 grandfather was right. It is the equivalent to my fortune. It 
 was the foundation of our family life- -without that I should 
 not have been permitted to marry ; I should not probably have 
 chosen to marry. To give up that is to make an end of all the 
 securities of life — I speak as arguing the question." 
 
 "How can we argue the question'?" cried Ned. "What 
 have the securities of life mattered to the others, who had no 
 connection with — with my father ? He was nothing to them 
 but a man of business. They trusted him, and they have no- 
 thing left." 
 
 " Yes, Ned, but if one of them had been a secured creditor, 
 as it is called, you would not have expected him to give up his 
 security, in order to place himself on an equal level with the 
 others. The most visionary standard of honour would never 
 demand that." 
 
 " We are not secured creditors. We are part of him, shar- 
 ing his responsibility," cried Ned bitterly, " sharing his 
 shame." 
 
 " But we are the first of all his creditors, all th^ same, in 
 justice ; and our debt is secured. Ned, I do not say this is 
 what I am going to do ; but I think, according to my judg- 
 ment, your grandfather is right." 
 
 any 
 her 
 
AT HtS OATtSS. 
 
 m 
 
 " Then mother- 
 
 -" He had risen up, his face had grown 
 very pale, his nostrils dilated, his eyes shining. She who had 
 never been afraid for anything in her life was afraid of her son 
 — of his indignation, of his wrath. She put out her hand, half 
 appealing, half commanding, to stop him. She caught at him, 
 as it were, before he could say another word. 
 
 ** Ned, hear me out first ! I approve of it as a matter of 
 justice. I think we have no right to set up a new standard to 
 make a rule for other women in my position. There will al- 
 ways be such, I suppose. The settlement itself was simply a 
 precaution against this possible thing — which has happened. 
 But I do not say I mean to act according to my opinion. That 
 is diflferent. I have — thought it over, Ned." 
 
 " Mother," he said, melting almost into tears, and taking her 
 hand into his, *' mother you who are so much wiser than I am 
 — you are going to let yourself be guided by me 1 " 
 
 " Yes." she said. " I don't quite make myself out, Ned. I 
 have always taken my own way. Mine is the right way, the 
 just way ; but perhaps yours is the best" 
 
 " Mother, mother dear 1 I am awfully miserable, but I feel 
 as if I could tell you how happy I am, now." 
 
 And, without another word of preface, without a pause to 
 hear her out, without even observing the jjewildered look as of 
 one stopped in mid-career with which she regarded him, Ned 
 dashed into the story of his own love, of his despair and his 
 joy. She listened to him with her blue eyes dilating, looking 
 out of her pale face like stars out of a winter sky — suddenly 
 stiffened back into a little silent stone-woman. She was be- 
 wildered at first and thrown off her balance. And then gradu- 
 ally, slowly, the new impatience and faith that had been borne 
 of love died in her, and the old, cold, patient toleration, the 
 faint smile, came back. It was natural. His own affairs, of 
 course, were the closest to him. He thought of his private 
 story first, not of hers. She had never subjected herself to 
 such a shock before, aad did not know how hard it was to 
 bear. Well ! but what of that ? That was her own folly not 
 any one else's. She had put aside her armour, thrown open 
 her breast for the first time ; and if an arrow, barbed and 
 sharp, was the first thing that came to it, that was but natural 
 — ^it was her own fault. She sat, therefore, and listened with 
 
 «*.. 
 
 I 
 
 ill 
 
432 
 
 AT HIS O TES. 
 
 the faint smile even now stealing a> 3ut her lips — a smile that 
 was half at herself, half at human nature, thus once more, once 
 again, proving itself And Ned, who had felt so bitterly the 
 absorption of his father and sister in their own affairs, their in- 
 difference to the feelings of others — Ned did the same. He 
 slurred over the sacrifice which his mother, at no small cost, 
 was bending her own will to make, and rewarded her with the 
 story of his own boyish happiness — how Norah had cast him off 
 once, how she loved him now. This was the best, the only re- 
 turn he could make to her. From her own serious, weighty 
 purpose, which involved (she felt) so much, he led her aside to 
 his love-tale, of which, for the moment at least, it was madness 
 to expect that anything could come. 
 
 " But you don't say anything 1 " he said at last, half offend- 
 ed, when he had done — or rather when her failure of response 
 had stopped the fulness of his speech. \\ 
 
 " I don't know what I can say," she answered, with a cold- 
 ness which he felt at once. " This seems scarcely the time — 
 scarcely the moment^ " 
 
 " Of course," he said hurriedly, "I do not expect or hope 
 that it can be very soon." 
 
 "No one, I should think, would be so mad as to expect 
 that," said his mother ; " and these long, aimless engagements, 
 without any visible end -" 
 
 " I do not see how my engagement can be thought aimless," 
 he said, growing hot. 
 
 " Not in your own mind. I suppose ; but so far as anything 
 like marriage is concerned, considering the state of affairs gene- 
 rally, I do not see much meaning in it," said Mrs. Burton cold- 
 ly. Your prospects are not brilliant. It was only last night, 
 for instance, that you proposed to burden yourself with me." 
 
 "Mother!" 
 
 " It is quite true. In answer to your grandfather's sensible 
 question how I was to live, you answered : with you. Did 
 you mean upon some hypothetical engagement, whatever you 
 may happen to get to support a wife — and me 1 " 
 
 He made no answer. A hot flush of mingled anger and pain 
 oame over him ; he was wrons somehow ; he did not quite see 
 how. He had missed the right way of making his announce- 
 ment, but still it was not his fault. He could not see how he 
 was to blame. 
 
 not 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 433 
 
 n 
 
 "Tou must not be surprised in these circumstances if I can- 
 not make any very warm congratulations," she added, *' Make 
 your mind easy, however, Ned. I never intended to be a bur- 
 den on you ; but even without that " 
 
 ** What have I done, mother, that you should speak to me 
 so ? " he cried. "You were so different just now. It is not for 
 Norah's sake ? No ono could dislike Norah. What have I 
 done ? " 
 
 " Nothing," r^ ^ t \ and then, wit^ *hat faintest smile, 
 "you have actea »*ccorc-.g to your natui , xsed — like the rest. 
 I have no reason to complain." 
 
 Then there was a pause. He was a generous, tender- 
 hearted boy, full of love and sympathy ; but he never so much 
 as imagined, could not imagine, the state of feeling his mother 
 had been in — and, accordingly, could not understand where he 
 was wrong. Wrong somehow, unknowingly, unintentionally 
 — puzzled, affronted, sore at heart — he went away from her. 
 Was it mere caprice on her part ) What was it ? So it hap- 
 pened that the boy put his foot upon his mother's very heart ; 
 and then strained all his faculties, anxiously, affectionately, to 
 find out what had made her countenance change, and could not, 
 with all his efforts, discover what it was. 
 
 The smile remained on Mrs. Burton's face when she was left 
 alone. He had declined to hear her decision about the settle- 
 ment. Was it not natural that she should reconsider it, now 
 that she found how little interest he took in the matter 1 But it 
 is easier to let that intruder Love, who disorders reason, into a 
 woman's heart than to turn him out again. She did again 
 another novel thing ; she made a compromise. She sent for 
 her father at once, and entered into the matter with him. "I 
 allow that all you say is perfectly just," she said ; " but this is, 
 partly, a matter of feeling, papa." She siuiled at herself as 
 she said it, but yet did say it without flinching. " I will keep 
 a portion of my settlement — say half. It is, as you said, the 
 only thing I have to depend on." 
 
 " My dear," said poor Mr. Baldwin, " of course you have 
 always me to depend on. You are my only child. What I 
 have must come to you, Clara." 
 
 " But I don't want it to come to me, papa.'* 
 ** No, that I am sure you don't \ but what is the use of 
 BB 
 
434 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 money to me, but to make my child and her children comfort- 
 able — that is excepting, Clara — alvvays excepting what I feel 
 bound to do— what I have always done — in the cause of — God. 
 But, all the same, I cannot approve of any sacrifice of your 
 rights." 
 
 " I would rather not say any mor"« about it," she said. 
 
 And thus for the moment the discussion terminated. Ned 
 went down to the village again, and was made happy, almost 
 quite happy, by a talk with Norah ; and they went over to- 
 gether to the Bectory, and told Mrs. Dalton, as a substitute 
 for the absent mother, and were very wretched and very happy 
 together over their miserable prospects and their rapture of 
 early love. Norah, however, was sorry that he had told his 
 mother so prematurely. " She will think it heartless of us, 
 Ned, to think of being happy when she must be so miserable. Oh, 
 I would have broken it to her very gently. I would have iold 
 her how it happened — by accident — that we did not mean any- 
 thing. Oh, Ned, boys are always so awkward. You have 
 gone and made her think ! " 
 
 *• If you were to come and talk to her, Norah — " 
 
 " No, indeed. "What am I to er 1 A little upstart thing, 
 thrusting myself in, taking aw,/ her son. Oh, Ned, how 
 could you ? Go and give her a kiss, and say we never meant it. 
 Say 1 would never, never think of such a thing while everybody 
 is in such trouble. Say we are so sorry — Oh, Ned ! how can 
 you, you who are only a boy, be half sorry enough 1 " 
 
 With which salutary bringing down Ned went home, and 
 was very humble to his mother and very anxious to v in back 
 her confidence — an attempt in which he partly succeeded ; for, 
 having once begun to open her heart, she could not altogether 
 close it ; and a new necessity, a new want, had developed in 
 her. But he never made his way back entirely into that place 
 which had been his for a moment, and which he had forfeited 
 by his own folly. He never quite brought back the state of 
 mind in which she had considered that matter of the settle- 
 ment first. Next day Mrs. Burton left Dura with her father, 
 " on a visit," it was said ; and Ned went to town, " try see after" 
 his father's affairs. Poor boy I there was not much that he 
 could see after. He worked hard and laboriously, under his 
 grandfather's directions and under the orders of the people 
 
'at his gates. 
 
 4d6 
 
 who had the winding-up of Mr. Burton's concerns in hand ; but 
 he had not experience enough to do much out of his own head ; 
 and it was in this melancholy way that his knowledge of busi> 
 ness began. 
 
 And poor little Norah, alone in the Gatehouse, went and 
 poured out her heart to Mr. Stephen, who listened to her with 
 a heart which throbbed to every woe of hers. A great woe 
 was hanging over the Haldanes, atrouble which as yet they 
 but dimly foresaw. Burton had ruined them in his prosperity, 
 and now, in his downfall, was about to drag them still lower. 
 Already the estate of Dura was in the mancet, with its man- 
 sion and grounds and woods and farms — and the Gatehouse. 
 They had got to feel that the Gatehouse was their home, and 
 all Stephen's happiness was connected with that window, with 
 the tailor and shoemaker who took their evening walks on the 
 other side of the way, with the rector and his morning discus- 
 sions, even with old Ann in her market cart. Ard how was 
 he now to go away and seek another refuge 1 Heavy were the 
 hearts in the Gatehouse. Norah, when Ned had gone, was 
 overwhelmed by terrors. Fears lest her mother should not ap- 
 prove, wondering questions about her unknown father, doubts 
 of Mrs. Burton, fears of Ned and for Ned, came upon her like 
 a host, and made her miserable. And then Mr. Rivers came 
 down, who had already made several attempts to see her, and 
 this time made her wretched by succeeding and telling her 
 another love tale, to which she could make no reply. But for 
 that incident at the Exhibition, and the pain it had brought 
 about, things might have ended otherwise. Had Cyril Rivers 
 made up his mind in May instead of delaying till July, the 
 chances were that Norah, flattered, pleased, and not unwilling 
 to suppose that she might perhaps love him in time, would 
 have given a very different answer. And then she asked her- 
 self in dismay, what would have happened when poor Ned 
 came 1 So that, on the whole, it was for the best, as people 
 say. The pain and shock of that discovery which she had 
 made when Lady Rivers drew her son away — and he went — 
 had been for the best ; though it would be hard to believe that 
 Cyril thought so, as he went back mortified to town, feeling 
 that it had cost him a great deal to make this sacrifice, and that 
 his sacrifice had been in vain. 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
486 
 
 AT HIS GATEa 
 
 Thus Dura changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an 
 eye. The great house was empty and desolate ; the great bell 
 pealed no more through all the echoes ; the noisy comings and 
 goings of the Burtons, the sound of them as they moved about, 
 the dash of Mr. Burton's phaeton and his wife's fine horses, 
 had all died out into the silence. Miss Jane plodded wearily 
 about the village, trying to find seme cheap cottage where 
 Stephen could find refuge when the property was sold. And 
 Norah, anxious and pale, and full of many terrors, lived alone 
 in her end of the house, and watched for the postman every 
 morning, and wondered, wondered, till her heart grew sick, why 
 no letters came. 
 
 Where was Helen 1 She had disappeared from them into 
 the unknown, as her husband had done. Was it into Hades, 
 into the everlasting darkness, that she had followed her lost, 
 as Orpheus followed Eurydice 1 A week passed, and the silent 
 days crept on, and no one could tell. 
 
 its roc 
 little 
 boats 
 been 
 
 I 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 437 
 
 ; of an 
 >at bell 
 igs and 
 1 about, 
 horses, 
 wearily 
 B where 
 . And 
 id alone 
 a every 
 ck, why 
 
 im into 
 > Hades, 
 ler lost, 
 iie silent 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 ELEN DRUMMOND had a tedious voyage from South- 
 ampton to St. Malo. She was not a good sailor, nor 
 indeed a good traveller in any way. She was not 
 rich enough to procure for herself those ameliorations of the 
 weariness of journeys which are within the reach of every- 
 body who has money. She had to consult cheapness more 
 than comfort, and when she arrived at last in the bay, with all 
 its rocky islets rising out of the blue, beautiful sea, and the 
 little fortress city reigning over it, and all the white-sailed 
 boats skimming about like so many sea-birds, she would have 
 been unable to observe the beauty of the scene from sheer 
 weariness, if anxiety had net already banished from her every 
 thought but one. 
 
 Where was he 1 how should she find him ? was it real 1 was 
 it possible 1 could it be true ? 
 
 The boat was late of arriving ; it had been delayed, and was 
 not expected at the moment when the passengers were ready 
 to land. Helen looked, with a beating heart, upon all the 
 loungers on shore, wondering could he be among them ; but it 
 was not till almost all her fellow-passengers had left the vessel 
 that a tattered, grinning commissionaire came up to her, and 
 asked if she were Madame Drummond. When she answered, 
 a voluble explanation followed, which Helen, in her agitation, 
 and with ears unaccustomed to the voluble Breton-French 
 mixed with scraps of still less comprehensible English, under- 
 stood with great difficulty. Monsieur had been on the pier 
 half the ni^ht ; he had been assured by all the officials that the 
 boat could not arrive till noon. Monsieur had charged him- 
 self, Frangois, to be en the watch, and bring him news as soon 
 as the steamer was in sight ; iu pi ace of which he, the delighted 
 Francois, would have the gratification of leading Madame to 
 Monsieur. Half dead with excitement and fatigue, Helen fol- 
 lowed her guide. He led her along the rocky shore to where 
 a little steam ferry-boat puffed and snorted. Then she had to 
 
 I If 
 
 v!' 
 
488 
 
 AT BIS OATEa 
 
 embark agaiu for a five minutes' passage across the bay. She 
 landed on the other side, so stupified with suspense, and with 
 the accumulated excitement which was now coming to a climax, 
 that she felt incapable of uttering a word. Her body was all 
 one pulse, throbbing wildly ; a crimson flush alternated with 
 dead pallor in her face ; her heart choked her, palpitating in 
 her throat. Whom was she going to meet 1 What manner of 
 man was it who said he was her Robert, who wrote as Kobert 
 wrote, who had called her to him, with the force of absolute 
 right 1 For was not Robert dead, dead, buried under the cold 
 river,, seven years ago 1 She was not happy, she was fright- 
 ened, as Norah said. Her position was incomprehensible to 
 her. She, Robert's spotless wife, his faithful widow — to whom 
 was she going 1 She did not know what the words meant that 
 were being poured into her ears. The figures she met whirled 
 past her like monsters in a dream. Her own weary feet obeyed 
 her mechanically ; she moved and breathed, and kept com- 
 mand of herself, she knew not how. 
 
 There is a little cottage on the very edge of the cliff, in that 
 village of Dinard on the Breton coast, which looks across the 
 bay into which the Ranee rushes impetuously meeting the great 
 sea-tides — ^and from which St. Servan opposite, St Malo with 
 its walls and towers, all the lip of the bay lined with houses, 
 with fortifications, with bristling masts and sails, show fair in 
 the sunshine. Coming into it from the dusty road, so small is 
 ic, so light, so close to the water, the traveller feels that he 
 must have come suddenly into the light poop cabin of some big 
 ship, lifting its breast high from the sea. 
 
 Here it was that Helen came in, her frame all one tremble, 
 breathless, stupified, carried along in the wild whirl of some 
 dream. She saw some one get up with a great cry — ^^and then 
 • — she saw nothing more. The excitement, the weariness, the 
 strangeness and terror that possessed her, were more than she 
 could bear. She fell down at Robert's feet, as she had done at 
 the, foot of the picture in the exhibition. It was perhaps the 
 easiest, gentlest way of getting over the great shock and con- 
 vulsions of the new life that had now to begin. 
 
 Helen was conscious after a while of a voice, of two voices 
 talking vaguely over her, one which she did not know, 
 one ^ At the sound of that her brain tried to rally ; she 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 489' 
 
 voices 
 know, 
 ; she 
 
 tried to recollect. Where was she 7 — in St. Mary's Boad, in 
 the old days before the studio was built 1 that was what it felt 
 like. She could not see anything ; a whirling, revclving cloud 
 of darkuess went round and n und, swallowing her up. She 
 tried to raise her hand to grasp at something. Kow she was 
 sinking, sinking into that sea which had gleamed upon her for 
 a moment, through the window — a sea lull of ships, yet with 
 no saviour for her. If she could only move her hand, raise her 
 head, see something besides this blinding blackness. And then 
 again that voice ! She had fallen, fallen somewhere, and some- 
 thing buzzed loud in her ears, something ccmine th^t was 
 about to crush her — on the steps at St. l^Vary's Eohd. 
 
 " Helen I don't you know me 1 Look at me, if you can, my 
 own love I " 
 
 She gave a long, sobbing cry. She opened her .yes he . ,ily. 
 " Yes, Robert," she said. The wonder and the terror hnii ^one 
 away in her faint, with the seven years that created them. 
 When the soul loses the common thread of tim.: ..nd place it 
 comes back to its primal elements, to the thing, in it that are 
 everlasting. She answered out of her unconsciousness as (God 
 send itl) we shall answer our friends in heaven out of the 
 death-trance, not wondering — restoied to the unity of love 
 which is for ever and ever, not for a time. 
 
 She was lying on a little sofa, that window on one side of 
 her, with its glorious sea and sky and sunshine. On the other, 
 a man, with hair as white as snow, with ^'orah's eyes, looking 
 at her in an agony of tenderness, with a face worn and lined by 
 sufieriug and toil. The sight of him startled her so that she 
 came to herself in a moment. It st>>vi I'od her into the con- 
 sciousness that she was his wife, and lu a manner responsible 
 for him, for his well-being and comfort. She started up, won- 
 dering how she could think of herAf, indignant at herself for 
 taking up the foreground for a moment. " Oh, my dear, my 
 dear ! " she cried. " W hat. have they done to you, Robert ? " 
 and drew him to her, taking him into her arms. 
 
 Not frightened now, not wondering, not strange at all. The 
 strangeness was that he had been kept away from her so long, 
 cruelly kept away, to make him like this, whitened, worn, 
 old. AH at once strength and calm and self-command came 
 back to Helen. Except for his looks, the harm some one had 
 
 
 If 
 I \ 
 
 ' 1 
 
 I"' :>,« 
 
 i'l 1 
 
440 
 
 AT BIS GATES. 
 
 done to him, this interval crumpled away like a burnt paper, 
 and disappeared, and was as if it had never been. She put 
 her arms round him, drew him to her with an indignant love 
 and tenderness. "My poor Robert I my poor Robert 1 how 
 you have wanted me," she said, with the tears in her eyes. 
 
 " Ah ! wanted you 1 " he cried ; and he too gave in to this 
 impulse of nature. He was not an impatient man claiming his 
 own, but a weary one come back to his natural rest. He put 
 his white head down upon hers, and in the relief and sudden 
 ease and consolation, wept like a child. It was more than joy ; 
 terrible fears had come to him at the last, terrors that his ap- 
 peal might be unwelcome — that his recollections might have 
 died out of her heart. He knew that she was in the sight of 
 the world faithful to him ; but whether her heart was true, 
 whether the surprise would be a joy, he did not know. 
 
 Let us leave them to tell their mutual story. The reader 
 knows one side of it. The other had come about thus. It 
 took a long time to tell it so as to satisfy Helen ; but it may 
 be put here into fewer words. 
 
 On the night when Robert, as he said, died, he had been 
 picked up by a tug steam-boat, which was on its way down 
 stream to take a vessel going to America down to the sea. He 
 had been all but dead, and with the addition of the care, dis- 
 tress, and anxiety through which he had passed before, partial 
 drowning was no joke to him. How it was that he managed 
 to get transferred from the little steamer into the ship, he had 
 never very clearly discovered. Whether he had passionately 
 entreated to be taken on board, or whether he had dashed him- 
 self once more into the river and been rescued this time by 
 the sea going vessel, he could not tell. But, anyhow, he had 
 been taken on the American ; and there, amid all the discom- 
 forts of a merchant ship, where there was no room for passen- 
 gers, and where his presence was most unwelcome, he had an 
 niness, which made his slow pa&«age across the Atlantic look 
 like a feverish dream to him. He knew nothing about it, ex- 
 cept as a horror and misery which had been. When the s^ ip 
 arrived, he had been transferred to an hospital, whe)re he lin- 
 gered until all hope of life had gone out of him, if indeed any 
 ever existed. And then, all at once, and unaccountably, he 
 had got well again, as people do over whom no anxious nurses 
 
AT HIS QATES. 
 
 441 
 
 ex- 
 ,'ip 
 lin- 
 any 
 he 
 irses 
 
 watch, who are of importance to no one. When he came to 
 life again he was one of the poorest of the poor, unknown, pen- 
 niless, an object of charity. In that position he could never 
 go home, never make himself known to those whom (he felt) 
 he had ruined, whom he had already made up his mind to leave 
 free at the cost of his life. Forlorn, hopeless, and miserable, 
 poor Robert had still the necessity upon him of maintaining 
 the worthless life which Providence had, as it were, thrust back 
 upon his hands. He went to the studio of a painter in New 
 York — that same John Sinclair whose name had been attached 
 to the " Dives." He had told his story fully and truly. When 
 a man asserts in a painter's studio that he is himself a painter, 
 the means are at hand for the verification of his assertion ; and 
 when Robert took the palette in his hand, Mr. Sinclair believed 
 his story. He had begun humbly, under this kind stranger's 
 help ; he had become a portrait painter, a branch of art which, 
 iu his youth, he had followed for the sake of bread and butter, 
 as so many do. But Robert, friendless and hopeless, driven 
 out of everything but art, had, by a mere instinct of self-pre- 
 servation, to keep himself alive, taken to his work in a way 
 which made it a very different thing from the paint which is 
 done for bread and butter. A very little bread and butter 
 sufficed him. But man does not live by bread alone ; and all 
 the better aliment, the food of his soul, he had to get somehow 
 out of his portraits. The consequence of this was, that gradu- 
 ally these portraits became things to talk of, things that people 
 went far to see, and competed to have. He cared so little for 
 it — ^was that why the stream of fortune came to him ? But 
 when his languid soul awoke after a while to a sense of the 
 work he was doing, Robert ceased to care little for it. He be- 
 gan to care much ; and as his portraits kept their populari1r|r 
 his gains increased. He became hungry for gain ; he grew a 
 miser, and overv/orked himself, thinking of his wife, thinking 
 of the child to whom he was dead. He managed to get some news 
 of them incidentally through his friend and former patron Sin- 
 clair ; he heard where they were, and that they were well. At 
 length, when he had scraped so much money together that he 
 thought he might venture upon some communication, his heart 
 went back to the agony of his parting, and the subject of his 
 last sketch returned to him. Ah 1 was he not Dives now, 
 
 n 
 
 
 
 lib 
 
442 
 
 AT HIS OATSS. 
 
 stretching out vain hands, not daring to cry ! He could not 
 summon courage enough to write, but he could paint — he could 
 put all his despairing soul, which yet had a faint hope in it, 
 into that imploring face, those beseeching hands. He worked 
 at it night and day, throwing his whole heart and soul into the 
 canvas. And, with a heart trembling at his own temerity, 
 after he sent his picture to England he himself had come back, 
 bjflt not to England — he had not courage for that ; he was not 
 even sufficiently instructed to know whether it would be safe 
 for him to go back — whether he might bring the law upon hina 
 with fresh bugbears and troubles in its train — but he went to 
 France. He had come to Brest, and he had wandered to this 
 the nearest point from which communication with England Wos 
 easy. He had arrived at St. Malo in May, at the very ti^e 
 when Helen saw the picture in the Exhibition, and received its 
 message into her very heart. But he had not ventured to seil^d 
 his letter till months after — not till now. 
 
 " Helen ! " he said, trembling ; " will you stay with me 
 here 1 will you go with me, back to New York 1 What shall 
 we do?" 
 
 " Robert, let us go home." 
 
 " Can I go home ? I do not think so. I have a little 
 money for the child and you. I made it hardly — after I died. 
 I should not like to give it, once again to satisfy people who 
 suffered no more than we did." 
 
 " Oh, Robert," she said. " I have my story to tell you 
 too." And her story took as long in telling as his did ; for it 
 was difficult to her to remember that he knew nothing— that 
 he did not know what he had been accused of ; as difficult as it 
 was for him to understand the allusions she made to the lost 
 books and the censure which had been passed upon his name. 
 He would stop her and say, " What does that mean ?" a dozen 
 times in a single sentence. And then, as the story advanced 
 to its climax, impatience seized him, and a growing excitement. 
 He got up from bis seat beside her, and paced about the little 
 room. Then she saw, for the first time, that he was lame. 
 How he had suffered ! The seven years laa I not made much 
 difference to her ; her peaceful life had smoothed out the lines 
 which sorrow had made in her face. There was not a white 
 thread in her brown hair ; she had almost grown younger in- 
 
At HtS GATES. 
 
 44d 
 
 stead of older^ having upon her wherever she went a reflection 
 of Norah's youth, which somehow she shared. But Robert was 
 lame, and walked with difficulty, a consequence of his almost 
 suicide ; he was old, thin, white-haired, with furrows of anx- 
 iety and longing and heart-hunger in his face. , All this had 
 been done by the man who had beguiled him into the doomed 
 bank, who had looked on calmly at his ruin, who had willingly 
 countenanced the destruction of his good name. Mrs. Drum- 
 mond had lived through it all, had got over her hot fits of 
 rage and indignation, and at this moment had her heart softened 
 towards Reginald Burton, whom she had saved. She was 
 not prepared for the excitement, the suppressed fury, the pas- 
 sionate indignation of her husband, to whom all this was new. 
 She told him of the paper she had extorted from her cousin 
 that last night, " which clears you entirely — " she said. 
 
 " Clears me ! " he cried, gnashing his teeth. " My God ! 
 clears me ! I who have done nothing but suffer by him. Clears 
 me/" 
 
 " I do not quite mean that, Robert. You were cleared be- 
 fore. No one believed it. But we thought Golden only was 
 to blame. Now this paper is formal, and explains everything. 
 It makes it all easy for you." 
 
 He did not stop, as if this was anything consolatoty ; he 
 kept moving up and down, painfully, with his lameness. " And 
 that scoundrel has got off," he cried between his teeth — "got 
 off ! and has the audacity to clear me." 
 
 Poor Helen was disconcerted. She had forgotten her own fury 
 . of indignation when she first saw the accusation against him. 
 She had long, long grown used to all that, and used to the re- 
 flection that nobody believed it whose opinion was worth any- 
 thing. She had insisted upon Burton's confession and explana- 
 tion, she scarcely knew why — more as a punishment to him 
 than as a vindication of Robert. She was confused about it 
 altogether, not quite knowing what she meant. And now, in 
 the light of his indignation, she felt almost as if she had done 
 her husband an injury — insulted him. She faltered, and looked 
 at him wistfully, and did not know what to say. She had not 
 lost the habit of love, lut she had lost the habit of companion- 
 ship ; she had told her story wrongly, she did not know how to 
 bring him to her state of feeling, or to transport herself into 
 
 
 i^ 
 
 I 
 
444 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 his. And this too was the fault of the man who had driven 
 Bohert to despair — the man whom she had saved. 
 
 "He has got off," she said humhly, "by my means. Bobert, 
 I tried revenge once, but I will never try it again. I could 
 not give him up, however bad he had been; when he was in my 
 power." 
 
 The sound of trembling in her voice went to his heari '* My 
 poor Helen I my sweet Helen ! " he cried, coming o her. 
 " Do you think I blame you ? You could not have doni other- 
 wise. For you there was but one course — ^but if I had the chance 
 now — " 
 
 Just then there was a commotion at the door, and sounds of 
 many voices. A great many exclamations in French, with one 
 or two broken questions in English, came to their years. " You 
 has you papiers, Domm you papiers. You say you is Jean-^ i 
 Jean Smiff, et pas " \ 
 
 '* Je me fie i monsieur ici. Monsieur est-il chez lui ? O'est 
 un Anglais. II nous expliquera tout 9a," said another voice. 
 It was the Toice of the maire, whom Robert had made friends 
 with in his hunger for human companionship. The parley at 
 the door went on for a few minutes longer, and then there en> 
 tered a band of exoited Frenchmen. One, a gendarme from St. 
 Malo, carried an open telegram in his hand ; another, in a 
 blouse, kept his hand upon the shoulder of a burly Fnglisfaman 
 in a light coat. The maire brought up the rear. They seemed 
 such a crowd of people as they entered the little, light 
 room, that it was some moments before the three English peo- 
 ple thus brought face to face recognised each other. Helen 
 with difficulty suppressed a cry. Bobert stood confronting the 
 party with the flush of his indignation not yet subsided, with a 
 wonder beyond words in his eyes. As for the other, he showed 
 no sign of surprise. He was driven back to his last strong- 
 hold, forced to use all his strength to keep himself up and 
 maintain his courage. His eye dilated and gave a flutter of 
 wonder at the sight of Helen. It was evident that he did not 
 recognise her companion. He kept his arms folded, as if for 
 self-preservation, to keep within him all the warmth, all the 
 courage possible, physically to keep up and support himself. 
 
 The three men rushed into explanation all at once. A tele- 
 gram had been received at St. Malo, describing an Englishman 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 445 
 
 who was supposed to have gone there, and whose description, 
 which the gendarme held out, in the telegram, corresponded 
 exactly with that of the prisoner. Thejprisoner, however, called 
 himself Smith. Smiff — or Smitt, as his pursuers pronoun- 
 ced it — and produced pa^ fs which were en rhgle ; but he could 
 not explain what he was djing here ; he showed no inclination 
 to be taken to the English consul. On the contrary, he had 
 crossed to Dinard as soon [as he heard that inquiries had 
 been made about him at his hotel. While all this was being 
 told the stranger stood immovable, with his arms folded ; he 
 did not understand half of it. His French was as deficient as 
 , the French of untravelled Englishmen usually is, and the tumult 
 around him, at the same time, confused his mind and quickened 
 his outward senses. He could not make out what his chances 
 of liberation were ; but his eyes were open to any possibility 
 of escape. They were bloodshot and strained those eyes ; now 
 and then that flutter of wonder, of excitement, of watchfulness, 
 came into them, but he showed no other sign of emotion. At 
 such a terrible crisis all secondary sensations perish ; he had 
 no time to wonder what Helen, whom he had left behind him 
 in England, should be doing here. Eather it was natural that 
 everybody connected with his fate should be here, gathering 
 round him silently to see the end. 
 
 Thus this encounter had but little effect upon Burton ; but 
 it would be impossible to describe the effect it had upon the 
 m&n who stood opposite to him, whom he had not recognised. 
 Robert Drummond had suffered as few men ever suffered. He 
 had died — he had come alive again — he had lived two separate 
 lives. For some years up to this day his existence had been 
 that of a man deprived of all the hopes and consolations of life 
 — ^a man miserably {ylone, dead to every one belonging to him. 
 Even the return to life which he had tried to realise this 
 morning was no more than an experiment. He might never 
 be able to conquer, to forget those seven ghosts which stood 
 between him and his wife and child. He could not take up 
 his life again where he left it — that was impossible. And all 
 this had been done by the influence of the man before him, who 
 was ia his power, whom he might if he would give over to pri- 
 son and trial and punishment A gleam of fiercoi joy shot 
 through PruQiQioiid's heart, and then — ~* 
 
 
 
 i 1 
 
 i I 
 I ill 
 
446 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 They stood facing each other, with the Frenchmen grouped 
 about them. But Burton had not, beyond the first glance, 
 looked at his judge. His face confronted him, but his eyes did 
 not ; he had escaped as yet the knowledge who it was. 
 
 A thousand and a thousand thoughts whirled through Drum- 
 mond's mind ; he had only a moment to decide in ; he had the 
 past to satisfy, and the burning, fiery indignation of tlie pre- 
 sent moment, in which for the first time he had identified and 
 comprehended the past. Give him up ! punish him ! Should 
 such a bcoundrel get off, when innocent men had so bitterly 
 suffered 1 Let him fall, and bring down in his train all who 
 were concerned — all who made a prey of the ignorant and the 
 poor ! This wave of thought possessed him with a whirl and 
 sweep like thcf rushing tide — and then there came the interval 
 of silence, the moment when the waters fell back and all was 
 
 still. . *: 
 
 ** Bevenge ! I tried revenge once, but I will never try It 
 again ! " Who was it that had thus said this close to him, so 
 that the very air repeated and repeated it, whispering it in his 
 ear 1 He had himself been dead, and he had come alive again. 
 His new life, which had commerced this morning, was spotless 
 as yet. He had to decide, decide, decide in a moment how it 
 should be inaugurated, by mercy or by judgment — by the sin 
 (was it not a sm ?) of helping the escape of a criminal, or by 
 the righteous deed (where was it said that this might be a sin 
 too?) of handing him over to punishment. How his soul was 
 toss^ upon these waves ! He stood as in the midst of a great 
 battle, which raged round him. Fierce arrows tore his heart, 
 coming from one side and another, he could not tell how. 
 Give up the accursed thing— punish the unworthy soul — be just! 
 be just ! But then that other, ** Neither have I condemned 
 them ; go and sin no more." And all had to be d<)ne in a 
 minute, while those voluble explanations interlaced each other, 
 and each man expounded his case. Drummond glanced at his 
 wife for help, but she dared not look at him. She sat on the 
 sofa against the light, with her hands tightly clasped in her 
 lap. Was she praying 1 For so long, out of the depths of his 
 hell. Dives, poor Dives, had not dared to pray. 
 
 He did not know what he said Wl en at length he spoke ; it 
 was some commonplace, some nothing. But it attracted at 
 
 go- 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 447 
 
 once the attention of the prisoner. Burton turned round, and 
 gazed at the man whom he thought dead. He did not recog- 
 nize the voice, except that it was a voice he knew ; he did not 
 even recognize the face, which had grown prematurely old, 
 framed in its white hair, at the first glance ; but there crept 
 over him a shudder of enlightenment, a gleam of perception. 
 His senses were quickened by his own position. He shook 
 where he stood as if with cold or pa'sy. He looked at Helen, 
 he looked at the man by her side. Then an inarticulate cry 
 came from him ; terror of he knew not what, deprived him, 
 fortunately, of all power of speech. He fell back in his fear, 
 and his attendants thought he meant to escape. They threw 
 themselves between him and the door. It was then that Drum- 
 mond spoke in his haste, scarcely knowing what he said. 
 
 " I know him," he said in French. " It is a long time since 
 we have met, and he has just recognized me, you perceive. We 
 are not friends, so you may trust me. His papers are quite 
 right, and it is a mistake about the telegram. Look here ; this 
 is not his description. * Nez ordinaire ;* why, he has a long 
 nose. ' Teint brun ;' he is quite fresh-coloured, and his hair is 
 This is a great mistake. Monsieur le Maire, 1 know this 
 and I will be responsible for him. You must let him 
 
 grey, 
 man, 
 
 go 
 
 <( 
 
 thought so," said the maire, pleased with his own discrim- 
 ination. **Je I'ai dit. Monsieur nous expliquera tout qa., 
 Voilg.ce que j'ai dit." 
 
 ** Mais, monsieur " began the gendarme. 
 
 Helen sat ag >inst the light, seeing nothing, and closed her 
 eyes, and clasped her hands in her lap. Burton, bewildered 
 and terror-stricken, looked on without showing any emotion, 
 perhaps the passiveness of his face was his best safeguaitl. 
 Five minutes of expostulation and explanation followed, tfnd 
 then gradually the frenchmen edged themselves out of the 
 room. Fortunately, Morsieur le Maire had taken this view 
 from the beginning ; he had been sure it was a mistake. When 
 they were got rid of at last, the three who were left behind 
 looked at each other in a silence which was more significant 
 than words. Burton dropped into a chair j he was not able to 
 stand nor to speak, but kept gazing at Drummond with a piti- 
 ful wonder and terror. At last — 
 
.w 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 " Are you Bobert Drummond f " he asked hoarsely. ** Have 
 you come back from your grave " 
 
 *' I am Robert Drummond/' said the other ; " and you are— 
 John Smith, who must be got out of here as soon as possible. 
 Have you money 1 " 
 
 "Yes." 
 . "Then I advise you to go away at once. Go up t# Pinan 
 by the rivernude, or walk to St. Brieuc to get the train. In 
 the one case you are on your way to Brest, where there are 
 ships always sailing ; by the other you can get to Paris or 
 wherever you please. You may wait here till the evening, if 
 you chdose ; but then go." 
 
 " I will go to Brest," he said humbly. 
 
 "I would rather not know where you went ; but go you 
 must My wife and I met to-day for the first time for seven 
 years ; we do not wish for company, you may suppose." i 
 
 Drummond's voice was very stem. He had no compassibn 
 for the man who stood thus humbled and miserable before 
 him ; not for him had he done this. And Burton was too much 
 stupified, too much bewildered, to make any direct reply, lie 
 looked at Helen with dull wonder, and asked under his oreath-r- 
 
 " Did you know 1" 
 
 " No," she said. " It came upon me almost as suddenly as 
 upon youi" 
 
 Then he pulled some papers out of his pocket. 
 
 " These are English papers. I don't know if it is long since 
 you have left. But you might like to see them." When he 
 had done this, he made a few steps towards the door, where 
 the old French bonne was waiting to show him where to go. 
 Then he paused, and turned round again, facing them. " What 
 a man says in my position is very Uttle to anybody," he said ; 
 " but — ^I want to say to you. Forgive me. I have helped to do 
 you dreadful harm ; but I — I did not mean it. I never meant 
 it. I meant to get gain myself; but I never wished to harm 
 you." 
 
 And then he disappeared, saved again, saved at his utmost 
 need — surely this time finally saved — and by those .whom he, 
 had injured the most. When he reached the clean little room 
 where he was to stay all day, it appeared to Reginald. Burton 
 that he must be in a dream. The same feeling had been in hia 
 
 mind 
 
 him; 
 
 comm 
 
 of cir( 
 
 derme 
 
 first b 
 
 at a m 
 
 Tha 
 
 walke( 
 
 arrivec 
 
 for An 
 
 immed 
 
 conseqi 
 
 weary 
 
 over am 
 
 world 
 
 ^ith hi 
 
 He had 
 
 poverty 
 
 whethe. 
 
 work, p 
 
AT HIS QATEa 
 
 44i» 
 
 mind ever since he escaped from England. All was strange to 
 him ; and strangest of all was the fact that he could no longer 
 command or regulate matters by his own will, but was thesport 
 of circumstances, driven about he knew not how. His bewil- 
 derment was so great that he was not able to think. Saved 
 first by a helpless woman, whose powera he would have laughed 
 at a month ago ; saved now by a ghost out of the grave ! 
 
 That night he left Dinard under cover of the darkness, and 
 walked to St. Brieuc, where he got the train for Brest He 
 arrived there in time to get on board of a vessel about to sMl 
 for America. And thus Beginald Burton escaped from the 
 immediate penal consequences of his sins. From the other 
 consequences no man ever escapes. The prison, the trial, the 
 weary round of punishment he had eluded; but his life was 
 over and ended, and everything that was worth having in the 
 world had abandoned him. Love was not his to carry away 
 \f ith him ; reputation, honour, wealth, even comfort were gone. 
 He had to make a miserable new beginning, to shrink into 
 poverty, obscurity, and dependence. It would be hard to say 
 whethe. these were more or less easy to bear than the prison 
 work, prison life, prison garb from which he had escaped. 
 
 CO 
 
450 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 '0 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 I HIS was the end of Mr. Burton, of Dura — Mr. Burton, 
 of the great City firm, he who had been known as one 
 of the greatest of commercial magnitudes, he who had 
 ruined as many people as if he had been an emperor. For 
 some time there was a very r i <at deal about it in the newspa- 
 pers, and his concerns were exposed to the light of day. He 
 involved many others with him in his downfall, and some in 
 his shame. If he had been taken, he would have joined in 
 prison those men whom in our own day we have seen degraded 
 from a high position in society down to the picking of oakum 
 in gaol — men whom we all pour our loathing upon at the fo- 
 ment of their discovery, but of whom we say " poor souls ! " a 
 few months after, when some clever newspaper correspondent 
 has a peep at them, disguised in the prison garb, and known as 
 numbers 300 and 301. Burton missed the prison and the pity ; 
 but he did not miss the punishment. In spite of various at- 
 tempts that were made to stop it, the investigation of his affairs 
 was very full and clear. It became apparent from his own pri- 
 vate books, and that one of Rivers's which had been found in 
 bis safe, that the bank had been in reality all but ruined when 
 it was made into a joint-stock company. Burton and his col- 
 league had guaranteed the debts, and put the best face possible 
 upon things generally ; and Mr. Golden's management, and an 
 unexpected run of good luck, had all but carried the labouring 
 concern into clear water. It was at this period that Burton, 
 thanking his stars or his gods, withdrew from the share in the 
 management which he had held nominally, and left it to Golden 
 to complete the triumph of daring and good fortune. How 
 this failed is already known to the reader. The mystery of the 
 lost books was never cleared up ; for Golden was out of the 
 way, enjoying his honeymoon, when the private affairs of the 
 other conspirator were thus thrown open to the light of day. 
 But there was enough in the one book found among Mr. Bur- 
 Eton's to show how very inconvenient to him the finding uf the 
 
 had 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 451 
 
 others would have been. Thus daylisht blazed upon all those 
 tortuous, gloomy paths, and showed now the desire of self-in- 
 terest guided the man through them, with an absolute indiffer* 
 ence to the interests of others. He had not meant any harm, 
 as he said ; he had meant his own gain in the first place, hif 
 own recovery M'hen his position was threatened, his own safety 
 when danger came. He had not set out with a deliberate in- 
 tention of ruining others ; but this is a thing which nobody 
 ever does ; and he had not cared &fU wards how many were 
 ruined, so that he could hold on his way. Such cases happen 
 now and then, and human justice cannot touch them ; but most 
 generally Nemesis comes sooner or later. Even at the worst, 
 however, his material punishment was never so hard as that of 
 some of his victims. The loss of the trust-money, which had 
 been the immediate cause of his ruin, took the very bread out 
 of the mouths of a family of orphans ; but Mr. Burton, at the 
 lowest depths of his humiliation, had always bread enough, 
 and to spare. He was never even thrown into such mental 
 anxiety, such stress of painful calculation, as that into which 
 the inhabitants of the Gatehouse were cast by his downfall. 
 Miss Jane went painfully all over Dura, looking at the cottages, 
 to see if by any means something could be found or contrived 
 to suit Stephen ; and her heart sank withinher as she inspected 
 the damp, low-roofed places, which were so very diflferent from 
 the warm old wainscoted rooms, the comfort of the Gatehouse. 
 When the property was sold, however, it was found that the 
 Gatehouse had been made into a separate lot, and had been 
 bought, not by the rich descendant of the old Harcourts who 
 had got I Jura, but by some one whose name was unknown. 
 
 " Somebody who is going to live in the house himself, no 
 doubt," Miss Jane said, with a very long face ; and I am sure 
 I wish him well in it, whoever ho iriay be," she added, with a 
 struggle. " But oh, Norah ! what a thing it will be for us to 
 go away !" 
 
 " If I knew him, I would go to him, and beg for your rooms 
 for you. He never would have the heart to turn you out, if he 
 was a good man," cried Norah. " For us it does not master ; 
 but oh, Miss Jane, for you !" 
 
 "It cannot be helped, my dear," said Miss Jane drying her 
 eyes. " We have no right to it, you know. It does seem 
 
 f fmmi - 
 
/ 
 
 f 52 AT HIB GATES. 
 
 hard that we should be ruined by his prosperity, and then, as 
 it were, ruined again by his downfall It seems hard ; but it is 
 not anybody's fault. Of course when we accepted it we khew 
 the penalty. He might have turned us out at any time. No, 
 Norah ; we have no reason to complain." 
 
 " That makes it worse," cried impulsive Norah. " It is al- 
 ways a comfort when one can think it is somebody's fault. 
 And so it is — Mr. Burton's fault. Oh, how much harm he has 
 done 1 Oh, what a destroyer he has been ! He has done as 
 much h&rm as a war or a pestilence," cried Norah. " Think of 
 poor — papa ! " 
 
 She had always to make a pause before that name, not believ- 
 ing in it somehow, feeling it hurt her. By this time she had 
 heard all about the meeting between her father and mother, 
 and the day had been fixed when she was to join them ; but 
 still she had a sore, wounding, jealous sense that the new 
 father was her rival — that he might be almost her enemy. 
 Fathers, on the whole, seemed but an equivocal advantage to 
 Norah. There was Mr. Burton, who had ruined and shamed 
 every one connected with him ; and there was poor— papa, 
 who might, for anything she knew, ti^e all the gladness out of 
 her own life. 
 
 " Oh, hush my dear ! " said Miss Jane. "Mr. Burton has 
 been a bitter acquaintance to us ; but he is Ned's father, and 
 we must not complain." 
 
 Just then there was a knock at the door, and Ned himself 
 came in. He came from town, as he did often, to spend the 
 evening with his betrothed. Their days were runnmg very 
 short now, and their prospects were not encouraging. He had 
 not even time to look for any emplovment forhimseu, so much 
 was he occupied with his father's affairs ; and Norah was going 
 away, and when dhould they meet again 1 These evenings 
 which they spent together were very sweet ; but they were 
 growing daily sadder as they approached more closely to the 
 shadow of the farewell. But this time Ned came in with a 
 flush of pleasure in his face. His eyes were so brightened by 
 it, and his colour so much improved, that he looked ** quite 
 handsome," Miss Jane thought j and he walked in with some- 
 thing of the impulsive satisfaction of old days. 
 
 "My grandfather is a brick," he said, " after all. He has 
 
 di 
 
AT HIS OATEH. 
 
 458 
 
 fiven me my fortune. He has helped me to do something I 
 ad set my heart on. Miss Jane, don't think any more of 
 leaving the Gatehouse. So long as I live nobody can turn you 
 out." 
 
 " What do you mean, Ned 1 " 
 
 " I mean that dear old grandpapa has been awfully ^ood to 
 me," said Ned ** and the Gatehouse is mine. I love it, Miss 
 Jane. Don't you say anything. You may think it will be bit- 
 ter for me to come here after lul that has passed ; but I love it. 
 Since ever I was a boy, T have thought this room the dearest 
 place in the world — ever since Norim sat and talked rubbish, 
 and frightened me out of my life. How well I remember that ! 
 She has forgotten years ago ; but I shall never forget. What 
 are you cijing about, Miss Jane ? Now this is verv hard upon 
 a fellow, 1 must say. I thought it was ^ood news. 
 
 " And so it is — blessed news, you dear, dear kind boy ! " 
 cried Miss Jane. " Oh, children ! what can I say to you f 
 God bless you ! And God will bless you for thinking of the 
 afSicted first, before yourselves." 
 
 I had nothing to do with it — I knew nothing about it," cried 
 Norah proudly ; and all at once, without any warning, she 
 threw herself upon Ned, and gave him a sUdden kiss on his 
 brown cheek. For five minutes after none of the three were 
 very coherent ; for to do a good action when you are young 
 makes you feel very foolish, and ready to cry with anyone who 
 cares to cry. Ned told them all about it between laughing 
 and sobbing — how his grandfather had given him his portion, 
 and how it was the best possible investment to buy the Gate- 
 house. " For you see," said Ned, " when Norah makes up her 
 mind to marry, we shall have a house already. As for every- 
 body here knowing what has happened, everybody all over the 
 country knows," he added with a hot flush on his cheek ; " and 
 at Dura people like me — a little, and would not be unkind as in 
 other places. And how could I let the place Norah had been 
 brought up in — ^the place I love — go to other people ? So, 
 Miss Jane, be happy and set your brothtjr's mind at rest. No- 
 body shall disturb you here as long as I live ; and if I should 
 die, it would go to Norah." 
 
 " Oh, Ned, hush i " cried Norah, putting up her hand to his 
 lips. 
 
454 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 ^\iid when they went out into the garden, and wandered 
 about and talked. Nothhig but this innocent and close associa- 
 tion, with no one to think it might be improper or to call themto 
 account, could have made exactly such a bond as that which 
 existed between these two innocent young souls. They were 
 lovers, and yet they were half brother and sister. They, talked 
 of their plans with the wistful certainty and uncertainty of 
 those M'ho feel that another villi may come in to .shatter all 
 their purposes, though in themselves they are so unalterable 
 and sure. There was this always hanging over them, like the 
 sword iit the fable, of which they were conscious, though they 
 would not say a word about it. To-night their spirits were 
 raised. The facts that th.h familiar place was theirs^ that Ned 
 was actually its master, that here they might spend their days 
 together as man and wife, exhilarated them into childish delight. 
 
 '* I always think of you 03 in that room," he said to her, 
 "when I picture my Norah to myself ; and there is never half 
 an hour all day long that I don't do that. I always see the 
 old curtains and the funny old furniture. And to think it is 
 ours, Norah, and that we shall grow old here, too ! " 
 
 "I never mean to grow old," said Norah. "Fancy Ned, 
 mamma h not old, and she is nineteen years older than me. 
 Nineteen years — twenty years ! It is as good as a century ; 
 it will never come to an end ! " 
 
 end," said wu 
 years' additional 
 
 Ned, in the ad- 
 
 age, " at least we 
 
 "Or if it does come to an 
 ditional discretion of two 
 shall have had our day." 
 
 With this chastened yet delightful consciousness of the life 
 before them they parted that evening. But next time they 
 met Ned was not equally bright. He had been very sorely 
 tried by the newspapers, by the shame he had to bear, by the 
 looks askance which were bestowed on " JBurton's son.'* 
 
 " I shall never be able to stay there," he said, pouring out 
 his troubled heart to Norah. " I cannot bear it. Fancy hav- 
 ing to hear one's father insulted, and not being able to say ^ 
 word. I cannot do it ; oh, Norah, I cannot ! We must give 
 «p the thought of living here. I must go abroad." 
 
 "Where Ned ? " 
 
 "Oh, I don't know. America, Australia — anywhere. I can- 
 not stay here, Anywhere that I can earn my bread." 
 
AT HIS OATES. 
 
 4d5 
 
 ** Ned/' said Norah, her happy voice all tuned to tones o^ 
 creeping. "Remember I am mamma's only child, ^he has got 
 -> some one else now ; but, after all I am her only child." 
 
 " Do you think I forget that ?" he said. " It is because I am 
 afraid, because I feel, they will never, never trust you to me — 
 so useless as I am — my father's son. Oh, Norah, when I think 
 it all over, my heart is like to break ! " 
 
 " But, Ned, you were in such good spirits last night." 
 
 " Ah but last night was different. My own Norah ! if they 
 said no, dear, if they were angry — Oh, Norah ! don't hate me 
 for saying it — what would you do ? " 
 
 " What could I do 1 " she said, with her blown eyes blazing, 
 half in indignation, half in resolution. "And what do you 
 think they are made, of Ned, to dare to say such a thing to mel 
 Was mamma ever cruel 1 I would do just what I will do now ; 
 I would say, * Ned, please don't! dear Ned, don't !' But if you 
 would, notwithstanding all I said to you, of course I must 
 go too." 
 
 " My own Norah ! But now they are going to take you 
 away from me, and when, when shall I see you again % " 
 
 " People go to St. Malo by the boat," said Norah demurely. 
 " It sails from Southampton, and it gets there in I don't re- 
 member how many hours. There is nothing against people 
 going to St. Malo that want to go." 
 
 And thus once more the evening had a more cheerful ter- 
 mination. But none of the party were cheerful when Norah 
 picked up all her little belongings, and went up to town to Dr. 
 Maurice, who was to be her escort. Probably, of all the party, 
 she herself was the most cheerful; for she was the one who 
 was going away to novelties which could not but be more or 
 less agreeable to her imagination, while the others, in the 
 blank of their daily unchanging existence, were left behind. 
 Miss Jane cried over her, Mrs. Haldane bade God bless her, 
 and as for Stephen, he drew her close to him, and could nc t 
 •peak. 
 
 " I don't know what life will be worth, Norah, without your 
 mother and you," he said, looking up to her at last with the 
 pt^t,lent smile he had worn since ever Norah could remember — 
 the one thing in the world which was more pathetic than sor- 
 row itself ; for he loved Helen, and missed her to the bottom 
 
 mn 
 
456 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 of his heart — ^loved her as a disabled , shipwrecked man may 
 love a woman altogether out of his reach, most purely, most 
 truly, without thought or hope of any return — ^but as no man 
 may justly love a woman who has a husband by her side. 
 This visionary difference, which is yet so real, Stephen felt, 
 and it made him very sad ; and the loss of the child gave him 
 full warrant to look as sad as he felt. 
 
 " But, oh, Stephen ! let us not complain,*' said Mrs. Haldane 
 ** for has it not been shown to us beyond all question that 
 everything is for the best." 
 
 All for the best ! All that had happened — Mr. Burton's. 
 1 un, the tragical overthrow of kin family, the destruction of 
 poor Ned's hopes and prospects, the shame and humiliation and 
 misery — had all been so " overruled," as Mrs. Haldane would 
 have said, that their house was more firmly secured to them 
 than ever, and was theirs, most likely, as long as Stephen 
 lived ! It was a small matter to be procured at such a cost ; 
 but yet ix> was a satisfaction to her to feel that so many laws 
 had been overthrown on her account, and that all was for the 
 best. 
 
 As for Ned's parting with Norah, it is a thing which must 
 not be spoken of. It took place in the cab in which her young 
 lover conveyed her from the station to Dr. Maurice's door. 
 Ah, what rending of the young hearts there was as they tore 
 themselves asunder ! What big, hollow eyes, with the tears 
 forced back from them, what gulps of choking sorrow swallowed 
 down, as Ned, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, 
 stalked away from Dr. Maurice's door. 
 
 To tell the truth. Dr. Maurice himself was not very com- 
 fortable either. He had got a great fright, and he had not 
 recovered it. His brain was still confused ; he felt as if he 
 had been beaten about the head ; a dull, hot colour dwelt 
 upon his cheeks. He tried to explain to himself that he was 
 feverish ; but he was not feverish — or at least it was only his 
 mind, not his body, which was so. It was partly wonder, but 
 chiefly it was fright, on account of his own hair-breadth escape. 
 At the time when he had made that proposal to Helen, he be- 
 lieved, as she did, and everybody else, that her husband had 
 died years ago. And good heavens ! what if she had not 
 refused ? Dr. Maurice grew hot and cold all over, he actually 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 45? 
 
 .__>^ 
 
 shuddered, at the supposition. And yet such a thing might 
 have happened. He went reluctantly, yet with curiosity, to 
 see his old friend. He wondered with a confused and troubled 
 mind whether Helen would have said anything about it — 
 whether Drummond would take any notice of it. The doctor 
 was impatient with Drummond, and dissatisfied altogether as to 
 his conduct. A man, he reflected, cannot do that sort of thing 
 with impunity To be for seven years as though he had never 
 been and then to come to life again and interfere with every- 
 body's affairs ! It was hard. Drummond had eot his full share 
 of sympathy ; he had turned his whole world upside down. 
 Seven years ago he had been mourned for as few men are 
 mourned ; and now it was a mistake, it was almost an imperti- 
 nence that he should come to life again, as if nothing had happen- 
 ed But nevertheless Dr. Maurice volunteered to take Norah to 
 M, Mak). He was glad to do it — to rub out the recollection of 
 that ^Is^ »tep of his — to show that he bore no malice, and that 
 no fcho*ight8 were in his mind which were inconsistent with his 
 old frien'lship for Robert and respect for Robert's wife. 
 
 Robert* wife ' She had called herself so when she was but 
 Robert's widow. But nobody understood, nobody thought, 
 what a change it was to Helen to fish up her old existence 
 again, and resume its habits as if there had been no break in it. 
 Love had conquered the strangeness at first ; but th^re were so 
 many strangenesses to be conquere<] . She had fallen into so 
 different a channel from that ip\.o wt (chliis thoughts had been 
 diverted. They were both unchar ^^ed in their affections ; but 
 how different in everything el&e ! They v/ere each other's 
 nearest, closest, dearest ; and } ot they had to nake acquain- 
 tance with each other over agrin. Nothing car be more strange 
 than such a close union, accompanied by such a total ignorance. 
 It was not even as if Helen had remained as he had known her 
 — had received no new influen. ^ into her lif Both had an 
 existence unknown to the other. Robert in the joy of his re- 
 covered identity, in the happiness of finding that there was 
 still love and companionship for him in the world, took the 
 reunion more simply than Helen did, and i^ijuoied its difficulties 
 or did not feel them. He had always taken tilings more simply 
 than she. His absolute faith in her, his simple delight in find- 
 ing her, his fond admiration of her, revived in Helen some of 
 
 I'll 
 
 I 
 
458 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 her old feelings of suppressed wonder and half doubt. But that 
 doubt was hurible? nc y than it had been once. In the old 
 life a ghost of impatience had been in her ; she had doubted 
 his powers, and chafed at his failures. Now she began to doubt 
 whether she had ever und( rstood him — whether she had done 
 him justice. For once, at least, Robert had risen to that 
 height of power which passion sometimes forces almost beyond 
 the reach of genius. He had made alive and put upon a dead 
 piece of canvas, for all the world to see, one face which was a 
 revelation out of the worlds unknown. Helen's heart had 
 never wanted any additional bond to the husband whom she 
 had chosen and clung to through good and evil ; but her mind 
 had wanted something more than his easy talent, his exquisite 
 skill, the gentle, modest pitch of imagination which was all that 
 common life moved him to. But on that point she was satisfied, 
 now. The only drawback was, she was no longer sure that it 
 was Robert. He was himself and yet another. He was her 
 own by a hundred tender signs and sureties ; and yet he was 
 strange to her — strange ! 
 
 And it was thus, with a suppressed excitement, which 
 neither told, that the reunited pair awaited their child's coming. 
 She breathless with curiosity and anxiety to know what Norah 
 would think of her unknown father ; he eager to make acquan- 
 tance with the new creature whom he knew only as a child. 
 " The child " he called her, till Helen smiled at his pertinacity, 
 and ceased to remind him that Norah was no longer a child. 
 Their excitement rose very high when the steamboat came in. 
 Helen's feelings were, as usual, by far the most complicated. 
 Norah was her own creation, if we may say so, framed by her, 
 cultivated by her — not only flesh of her flesh, but heart of her 
 heart, and mind of her mind ; yet the influence of Norah's 
 opinions, Norah's ways of thinking, was strong upon her 
 mother, almost more strong than Helen's were on Norah ; for 
 the latter had all the confidence of youth, the former all the 
 hesitation of middle age. What if Norah should not " take to" 
 the new father — the stranger who yet was so truly her own 
 Robert of old 1 Neither the one nor the other even so much 
 as recollected Dr. Maurice — the poor man who was bracing up 
 his courage to meet them, wondering what they might think. 
 JLnd they thought of him simply not at all. 
 
 ab 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 45a 
 
 And Norah a Hed that rocky shore with an unconceal- 
 
 able, almost av( jealousy of her father. A shade of that 
 
 emotion, half si .0, half pain, with which a young woman re- 
 gards her mother's second marriage was in her mind. It waa 
 a partial desecration of her idea of her mother, and she was 
 jealous of the new companion who naturally must be more to 
 Helen than even she herself could be. She was jealous, though 
 she had long given her mother a rival more dangerous still in 
 Ned ; but in such feelings no cue is reasonable. Dr. Maurice 
 had stolen into her confidence, she knew not how, and, partly 
 out of pure perversity, was very strenuous in Ned's favour, and 
 had promised to plead his cause. The wretched man was al- 
 7i..ost glad that there should be this new complication coming 
 along with Norah, to perplex from the very beginning her 
 father's relations with her. Had things been as he once hoped 
 — had he been able to make Norah his own child, as ho had 
 tried to do — then he would have resisted Ned to his last gasp ; 
 but as she vcas not his, he was wickedly glad that she should 
 not be altogether Robert's, but that from the first his should 
 be but a divided proprietorship. 
 
 " I will do what I can to make things easy for you, Norah," 
 he said, as they drew near St. Malo, half out of love, half out 
 of spite. " I will give you wliat I meant to leave you, and 
 that should get over part of the difl&culty." 
 
 "Oh, Dr. Maurice, you have always been so good to me ! " 
 cried heedless Norah. "If it had been you instead of 
 papa " 
 
 Blie was angry with herself whan she had made that foolish, 
 hasty speech ; but, oh ! how sweet it was to her companion ! 
 What baiin it shed upon those awkward sorenesses of his ! He 
 drew her hand through his arm, and bent over her with the 
 tenderest looks. 
 
 " It would be strange if I did not do my best for my little 
 Norah," he said, with something like a tear in his eye. Hypo- 
 crite ! If she hr.d been his little Norah, then heaven have 
 mercy upon poor Ned ! 
 
 They landed, and there was all the flutter and agitation 
 of meeting, which was more confusing, more agitating, than 
 meetings generally aie though these are always hard enough 
 to manage. They went together across the bay to the little 
 
 K'^mmmmmm 
 
460 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 cottage on tb« cliff. They took a long time to settle down. 
 Robert hung about his child as if she had been a new toy, un- 
 able to keep from gazing at her, touching her, recalling what 
 she used to be, glorying and rejoicing over the possession of 
 her ; while Helen, on ner side, watched too with a painful 
 closeness, reading the thoughts in Norah's eyes before they had 
 come. Sh« wanted to jump into certainty at once. But they 
 had to eat, and drink, and rest ; they had to talk of all that 
 had happened — of all that might yet happen. And so the first 
 days passed, and the family unconsciously reunited itself, and 
 the pytraordinary sank, no one knowing how, into the blessed 
 Cf'lrn of every day. 
 
 -\iid then there occurred an event which took all the com- 
 pv^vy by surpiise : Norah fell in love with her father. She 
 " tt ok to" him as a girl might be expected to take to a man 
 whcge image she was. She was more like him a great deal 
 thfta -he was like her motlwr. Her hasty, impulsive ways, her 
 frcsli simplicity of soul, were all his. She had been thought to 
 resemble her mother before ; but when she was by her father's 
 side, it was apparent in a moment whom she most resembled. 
 She discovered it herself with a glow of delight. " Why, 
 mamma, he is like me ! " she cried, with a delightful youthful 
 reversal of the fact. And poor Helen did not quite like it. 
 It is terrible, but it is true — for the first moment it gave her 
 a pang. The child had been all hers ; she had almost ceased 
 to remember that there could be any sharing of her. She had 
 been anxious about Norah's reception of her father ; but she 
 was not quite prepared for this. Dr. Maurice, for his part, 
 was simply furious, and went as near to hating Robert Drum- 
 mond as it was possible to do ; but then, of course, that feeling 
 on Maurice's part was ! imply ludicrous, and deserved nothing 
 but to be laughed at. This curious event made the most tragi- 
 comic convulsion in the cottage on the cliff. 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 m 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 ND now all the threads are shortening in the shuttle, 
 and the web is nearly woven out. If any one has ever 
 supposed for a moment that Robert Drummond and 
 his wife would make a last appearance as cruel parents, inter- 
 fering with their daughter's happiness, it does not say much 
 for the historian's success in elucidating their characters. If 
 Norah had wanted to marry a bad man, they would no doubt 
 have made a terrible stand, and made themselves very un- 
 happy ; but when it was only their own prejudices, and poverty, 
 and other external disadvantages that had to be taken into ac- 
 count, nothing but the forecasting imagination of two timid 
 lovers could have feared for the result. When two people have 
 themselves married upon nothing, it is so much more easy for 
 them to see how that can be managed over asain ; and, heaven 
 save you, good people 1 so many of us used to marry upon 
 nothing in the old days. 
 
 But a great deal had to happen before this could come 
 to pass. The Drummonds went home to England late in the 
 autumn, and Robert was received back by the world with such 
 acclamations as perhaps have not greeted a man of his profes- 
 sion in England for ages. Of itself the picture of " Dives " had 
 made a great impression upon the general mind : but when his 
 strange story became pub)ic, and it was known that the picture 
 of the year nad been painted by a man risen, as it were, out of 
 the grave, wanner still became the interest in it. The largest 
 sum which had been given for a picture for years was offered 
 for this to tlio resuaoitated paintor. Helen, alwavs visionary, 
 revolted from tiie very thought of selling this picture, which 
 had been the link between herself and her husband, and which 
 had so many associations to them both ; but Robert had too 
 much practical good sense to yield to this romantic diflSculty. 
 " I am no longer Dives," he said, m he drew his wife's arm 
 through his own, and took her out with him to conclude the 
 bargain. It increased the income which Robert's American 
 
 m 
 
 ►"^»«i«SSi;.T;»»r 
 
 ^^'- 
 
w 
 
 462 
 
 AT BIS GATES. 
 
 gains brought him, and made them a great deal more comfort- 
 able. But Helen would never visit at the great house where 
 ** Dives " was, and she would have given half her living to have 
 possessed the greatest work her husband ever produced — the 
 only one by which, all the critics said, he would be known to 
 
 Eosterity. This was one of the disappointments of her new 
 fe, and it was without doubt an unreasonable disappointment, 
 as so many are that sting us most deeply. The Dnimmonds 
 were so fortunate, after some waiting and bargaining, as to se- 
 cure their old house in St. Mary's Road, with the studio in 
 which such happy and such terrible houra had been passed. It 
 was beyond their means ; but yet they made an efPort to pur- 
 chase this pleasure for themselves. And here for two years 
 the family lived together unbroken. Now and then they went 
 to the Gatehouse, and made the hearts of the Ualdanes gjlad. 
 And painters would throng about the studio, and the old life 
 came back as if it had never had a break. By times Helen 
 would sit in the familiar room, and ask herself was it now — the 
 present — or was it the past which had come back ? The differ- 
 ence was, there was no child curled against the window, with 
 brown hair about her shoulders, and a book in her arms, but 
 only that slim, fair, brown-eyed maiden, who wore a ring of 
 betrothal upon her finger, and had thoughts which travelled 
 far by times after her distant lover ; and that the master of 
 the house, when he came into the room, was not the light- 
 footed, youthful-browed Robert of old, but a white-haired man, 
 growing old before his time. These were the changes ; but 
 everything else was unchanged. 
 
 Robert Drummond, however, never painted another picture 
 like that " Dives ; " it was the one passion flower, the single 
 great blossom of his life. He painted other pictures as he 
 used to do, which were good Drummonds, specimens of that 
 master which the picture-dealers were very willing to have and 
 collectors to add to their treasures, but which belonged to a 
 world altogether distinct from the other. This Helen felt too 
 with a gentle pang, but not as she had felt it of old. Once he 
 had risen above that pleasant, charming level of beautiful 
 mediocrity ; once he had painted, not in common pigments, 
 but in colours mixed with tears and life-blood. At such a cost 
 even she was glad that no more great works should be pro- 
 
comfoii- 
 se where 
 : to have 
 sed — the 
 nown to 
 her new 
 ntmenti 
 nmonds 
 
 18 to 80- 
 
 udio in 
 
 ised. It 
 
 to pur- 
 
 years 
 5y went 
 es gnlad. 
 old life 
 
 Helen 
 w—the 
 i differ- 
 V, with 
 US, but 
 ring of 
 availed 
 ster of 
 
 light- 
 
 1 uaaUf 
 s; but 
 
 >icture 
 single 
 
 as he 
 •f that 
 'G and 
 1 to a 
 'It too 
 ice he 
 utiful 
 lents, 
 % cost 
 
 pro- 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 463 
 
 daced. She was satisfied ; her craving for genius and fame 
 had once been fed, almost at the cost of their lives ; and now 
 she was content to descend to the gentler, lower work — ^the 
 work by which men earn their daily bread. 
 
 Ah ! but even then, even now, had it been — ^not Raphael, 
 perhaps, who was one of the Shaksperian men, without passion, 
 who do the work of gods as if they were the humanest, com- 
 monest of labourers — but such a fiery soul as that of Michel 
 Angelo whom this woman had mated ! But it was not so. She 
 could have understood the imperfection which is full of genius ; 
 what she was slow to understand was the perfection in which 
 no genius was. But she was calmed and changed by all she 
 had gone through, and had learned how dearly such excellence 
 may be bought, and that life is too feeble to bear so vast a 
 strain. Accordindy, fortified and consoled by the one gleam 
 of glory which had crowned his brows, Helen smiled upon her 
 painter, and took pleasure in his work, even when it ceased to 
 oe glorious. That was over ; but the dear common life — the 
 quiet, blessed routine of every day — that ordinary existence, 
 with love to lighten it, and work to burden it, and care and 
 pleasure intermingled, which, apart from the great bursts of 
 passion and sorrow and delight that come in from time to time, 
 18 the best blessing God gives to man — that had come back, 
 and was here in all its fulness, in perfect fellowship and con- 
 tent. 
 
 Norah lived at home with her parents for two years — the 
 reason of which was, not that they objected to poor Ned, but 
 that Ned was so sick at heart with all that he had suffered, 
 that he was not capable of settling down to such work as could 
 be procured for him in England. He was " Burton's son ; ** 
 and though even the people who looked cold at him on account 
 of his parentage would soon have forgotten it, Ned himself 
 could not forget. There was even a moment of despair in 
 which he had declared that he would not share his disgrace 
 with the girl he loved, but would carry it with him to his grave 
 as soon as might be, and trouble no one any more. This state 
 of mind alarmed Norah dreadfully, but it did not alarm the 
 more experienced persons, who were aware that the mind at 
 one-and-twenty has a great many vagaries, and is not always 
 to be taken at his word. The despair came to a sudden end 
 
464 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 * \ 
 
 when Ned found himself suddenly appointed to a vice-consulship 
 in an Italian seaport, where his chief made him do all the work, 
 and where he received very little of the p;y. When this 
 serious moment came, and life had to be fairjy looked in the 
 facei Ned came to himself— he became a reasonable cnature. 
 Of course, after his despair, his firtit idea was to be iviarried in- 
 stantly ; but finally he consented to wait until something bet- 
 ter — something they could live on — could be piocured for him. 
 He bore his banishment valiantly, and so did Norah. And it 
 did him good ; he began to forget that he was " Burton's son ;" 
 the whole terrible story began to steal out of his mind with 
 that blessed facility which belongs to youth. His sky bright- 
 ened from those early clouds ; his mind, which was very 
 good, clear, capable intelligence, developed and strengthened ; 
 and finally, the exertions of his mother and grandfather, and 
 those of Drummond, who had some influence too among great 
 people who were lovers of art, procured him an appointment 
 at home. Ned would have nothing to do with business ; he 
 shuddered at the very name of it, and rejected the plans his 
 kind grandfather had formed for him with a repugnance which 
 was almost horror. Mr. Baldwin did not understand how the 
 boy t ould be so foolish ; but his mother understood, and sub- 
 <lued all opposition. Instead of taking his chance, therefore, 
 of commerce, with the hope of becoming in his turn a million- 
 aire, Ned made himself very happy in the public service on a 
 few hundreds.a year. If he lived long enough, and nobody 
 was promoted over him, and nothing happened to him or the 
 office, the chances were that after thirty years or so he might 
 find himself in enjoyment of a thousand a year. And all the 
 family said to each other, " That is very good, you know, for a. 
 voung man without much interest," and congratulated Ned as 
 if he had a thousand a year already which was thirty years off, 
 and subject to all the chances of good and evil fortune, of 
 economical ministers, and those public crises which demand the 
 sacrifice of junior clerks. But notwithstanding all these draw- 
 backs, Ned was very happy in his new appointn^ent, and his 
 marriage day drew nigh. 
 
 Mrs. Burton had lived for some time with her father and her 
 aunts at Olapham — ab long, indeed, as she could bear it ; then 
 she took a little house in town. She had given up half of her 
 
AT HIS GATES. 
 
 465 
 
 riee-consulsbip 
 ,0 all the work, 
 . When this 
 looked in the 
 able cruature. 
 be married in- 
 lomething bet- 
 )cured for him. 
 orah. And it 
 Burton's son ;" 
 lis mind with 
 [is sky bright- 
 lich was very 
 strengthened ; 
 andfather, and 
 10 among great 
 1 appointment 
 I business; he 
 the plans his 
 ugnance which 
 stand how the 
 tood, and sub- 
 nce, therefore, 
 turn a million- 
 ic service on a 
 I, and nobody 
 to him or the 
 or so he might 
 And all the 
 ou know, for a. 
 bulated Ned as 
 ihirty years off, 
 evil fortune, of 
 ich demand the 
 all these draw- 
 lUjient, and his 
 
 father and her 
 1 bear it; then 
 up half of her 
 
 settlement to her husband's creditors ; and whether she meas- 
 ured her sacrifice by her own knowledge of human nature, or 
 did it simply in the revulsion of her heart, after Ned's careless 
 reception of the larger offering which she was willing to have 
 made for him — certain it is that she got much more honour 
 from her public renunciation of the half than she would have 
 done had she let the whole go as she once intended. Her mag- 
 nanimity was in all the papers, and everybody commended the 
 modest, unexaggerated sacrifice. Ana she had still a veir 
 
 food income of Tier own, dt^rive 1 from the half she retained. 
 ler life in London, she thought ashappier than at Glapham. 
 Yet, perhaps, a doubt may be c 'ined on this .subject ; for 
 a life 80 limited was hard to her, iiowever luxurous it might be. 
 She did not care for luxuries ; but she did care tu watch the 
 secret movements of life, to penetrate the secrets of human 
 machinery, to note how men met the different emergencies of 
 their existence. She gathered a little society round her who 
 were as fond of this pursuit as herself ; but unless they could 
 have provided themselves with cases on which to operate, this 
 association could not do them much good, and it was dry fare 
 to be driven to scrutinizing each other. She thought she was 
 happier in her tiny house in Mayfair where she kept three 
 maids and a man ; and was extremely comfortable ; but I be- 
 lieve that in reality her time of highest enjoyment was also her 
 time of greatest suffering, when she was ruling her own little 
 world at Dura, and seeing her house tumble to pieces, and hold- 
 ing out against fate. She had had a chance for a moment of a 
 better life when her son came back, and touched with a care- 
 less, passing hand those chords of her heart which had never 
 vibrated before. But the touch was careless, momentary. Be- 
 fore that vibration had done more than thrill through her, the 
 thoughtless hand was lifted, and the opportunity over, and Mrs. 
 Burton, with her soft cynic smile, her perfect toleration for the 
 wants and weaknesses of humanity, her self-contained and self- 
 sufficing character, had returned to herself. She was proud, 
 very proud, in her way, and she was never betrayed into such 
 weakness again. Which was to blame, the mother or the son, 
 it would be hard to say ; and yet Ned could hardly be blamed for 
 failing to perceive an opportunity which he never guessed at 
 nor dreamed of. Some exceptionally sympathetic natures 
 
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 466 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 might perhaps hy in8tmctthaye''felt the power that had been 
 
 gut into their hands ; but it is impossible to say that he was to 
 lame for not feeling it. Of all human creatures in this chilly 
 universe, Ned remained the one who most deeply interested his 
 mother. She made no opposition to his marriage; she even 
 made a distinct effort to like and to attract Norah, who on her 
 side did her best to be affectionate and filial to the woman 
 whose cold gentleness and softness of manner were so unlike 
 her own. It was an experiment which mutually could not be 
 said to have failed. They were always, as people say, on the 
 best of terms ; but so far as any real rapprochement went, it 
 cannot be said that it succeeded. Ned's life, however, such as 
 it was, was the one point in her family to which Mrs. Burton 
 could turn without that emotion of calmly-observant contempt 
 — if the sentiment could be described as anything so decided 
 or warm as contempt — with which she regarded human nature 
 in general. Her husband, when he reached America, at once 
 wrote home to claim a share in the income secured by her set- 
 tlement, which she accorded him without hesitation, moved by 
 a certain gentle, unexpressed disdain. He received his allow- 
 ance, as she termed it, or his share, as he called it, with unfail- 
 ing regularity, and made a hundred ventures with it in the new 
 field of speculation he had entered on with varying success. 
 He gained money and he lost it as he moved about from one 
 town to another ; and sometimes in his letters he would tell 
 her of his successes— successes which made her smile. It was 
 his nature, just as it was Mr. Baldwin's nature to take the chair 
 at meetings, to devote himself to the interests of the denom- 
 ination. The one tendency was no more elevated than the 
 other, when you came to look into them, the student of human 
 nature thought. Perhaps, on the whole, the commercial gamb- 
 ling on a small scale which now occupied the ruined merchant 
 was more honest than the other ; for Burton thought of noth- 
 ing but his own profit or gain, whereas Mr. Baldwin thought 
 he was doing God a service. But tLis was not a comparison 
 for a daughter, for a wife, to make. 
 
 And then Clara came back from her southern villa, a young 
 mother, with a husband who was no longer her lover, and of 
 whom she had become aware that he was growing old.. The 
 villa was situated on the shores of the loveliest sea,' in the 
 
 he 
 th< 
 
AT HIS OATIS. 
 
 467 
 
 had been 
 he was to 
 ihis chilly 
 rested his 
 she even 
 ho on her 
 le woman 
 so unlike 
 Id not be 
 y, on the 
 t went, it 
 T, such as 
 s. Burton 
 ; contempt 
 decided 
 lan nature 
 a, at once 
 )y her set- 
 moved by 
 his allow- 
 ith unfail- 
 rn the new 
 g success, 
 from one 
 vould tell 
 8. It was 
 e the chair 
 le denom- 
 
 than the 
 , of human 
 cial gamb- 
 
 merchant 
 t of noth- 
 n thought 
 omparison 
 
 t, a young 
 jr, and of 
 old.. The 
 sea,* in the 
 
 most beautiful climate in the world ; but Clara tired of it, 
 and found it dull, and with her dulness bored her husband so 
 that his life became a burden to him. He brought her home 
 at her urgent desire, with her baby, and they lived about in 
 London for a short time, now in an hotel, now in a lodging, 
 till it occurred to Clara that it was her duty to go and live 
 near " dear grandpapa," and delight his old age with the fourth 
 generation of his descendants. It suited her very well for a 
 time. " Dear grandpapa " was abject to her ; her aunts be- 
 came slaves to herself and her baby ; she became the centre of 
 all their thoughts and plans. Clary, who loved all pleasant 
 things, and to whom luxury and ease were life, made herself 
 at home at Clapham ; and Mr. Golden relieved her of his pres- 
 ence, paid visits here and there, lived at his club — which, 
 strangely enough, had not expelled him — and returned to all 
 the delights of his old bachelor life. What was to be the final 
 end of it it was hard to prophesy ; but already Clary had be- 
 gun to be bored at Clapham, and to make scenes with her hus- 
 band when he paid her his unfrequent visits. And this wais 
 the love-match so romantically made ! Clary, amid all her 
 jealousies and all her dulness, kept so firm a hold upon the 
 rich old people who could not live forever, and who could re- 
 store her at their death, if they so pleased, to much of her old 
 splendour, that her mother derived a certain painful amuse- 
 ment from this new manifestation of her life. Amusement, I 
 cannot deny — ^and painful, I hope ; seeing that the creature 
 who thus showed forth to her once again the poor motives and 
 self-seeking of humanity was her only daughter. But with 
 such evidences before her eyes of what human nature could be, 
 was it wonderful that Mrs. Burton should stand more and 
 more by herself, and harden day by day into a colder tolera- 
 tion, a more disdainful acquiescence in the evils she could not 
 fight against. What was the good of fighting against them ? 
 What could she do but render herself extremely unhappy, and 
 spoil the comfort of others without doing them any good 1 It 
 was not their fault ; they were acting according to their na- 
 ture. Thus Mrs. Burton's philosophy grew, and thus she spent 
 her diminished life. 
 
 It was in the midst of all these varied circumstances that 
 the joy-bells rang for Norah's wedding. Mrs. Burton did not 
 
1 1 
 
 468 
 
 AT ^th GATES. 
 
 ' t 
 
 Si; for even her philosophy was Hoi equal to the sight of 
 ura» where, according to the wish of both brid^ and bride- 
 ffroom, the bridal was ; but Oara, eager in the dulness of Olap- 
 ham for any chauige, was present in a toilet which filled her 
 aunts with compunction, yet admiration, and which ohe of them 
 had been wheedled into giving her. Clara took great state up- 
 on her as the matron, the omy one of the party who had at- 
 tained that glory, though she was the youngest), as she reminded 
 them^all. " But if I don't do better than Clary has done, I 
 hope i shall never marry at all," Katie Dalton cried with na- 
 tural indignation. The pretty procession went out of the 
 Gatehouse on foot to the church behind the trees, where Norah, 
 as she said, had been " brought up,"* and where Mr. Dalton 
 blessed the young pair, while his kind wife atood holding 
 Helen's hand and crying softly^ as it were, under her bi^th. 
 Helen herself did not cry ; and Norah's tears came amid such 
 an April shining of happiness, that no one could object to 
 them. The whole village came out to watch the pair whom 
 the whole village knew. A certain tenderness of respect, such 
 as the crowd seldom shows, was in the salutations Dura gave 
 to the son of the ruined man who had so long reigned among 
 them. No one could remember, not the most tenacious rural 
 memory, an unkind act of Ned's ; and the people were so sorry 
 for him, that their pleasure in his joy was half pathetic. " Poor 
 lad ! " they said ; " poor fellow ! And it was none of his 
 fault." And the friendliness that brought him back to hold 
 his high festival and morning joy of youth among them touched 
 the kindly folks, and went to their hearts. Stephen Haldane sat 
 at his window, and watched the bride come and go. Tears came 
 into his eyes, and a pathetic mixture of gladness and sorrow 
 to his heart. He watched the procession go out, and in his 
 ' loneliness folded his hands and prayed for them whUe they were 
 in church. It was summer once more, and the blossomed limes 
 were Ml of bees, and all the air sweet with scent and sound. 
 While all the goodly company walked together to the kirk, 
 Stephen, who could not go with them, sat there in the sunshine 
 with his folded hands. What thoughts were in his mind ! 
 What broken lights of God's meaning and ways gleamed about 
 him ! What strange clouds passed over him through 'the sun- 
 shine — recollections of his own life, hopes for theirs ! And when 
 
^ i 
 
 AT HIS GATES. 
 
 469 
 
 ight of 
 I bride- 
 of OUp- 
 led her 
 of them 
 itate np- 
 had at- 
 emmded 
 done, I 
 with na- 
 of the 
 ■eNorah, 
 Dalton 
 holding 
 r bi^th. 
 mid such 
 >bject to 
 air whom 
 )ect, such 
 Wa gave 
 ed among 
 ious rural 
 e so sorry 
 ic. "Poor 
 ine of his 
 k to hold 
 m touched 
 aldane sat 
 rears came 
 ind sorrow 
 md in his 
 I they were 
 »mea limes 
 a.nd sound. 
 the kirk, 
 le sunshine 
 his mind ! 
 imed about 
 h 'the sun- 
 And when 
 
 the bride went away from the door, away into the world with 
 her husband — in that all-effectual separation from her father's 
 house which may be but for a few days, but which is more or 
 less for ever, Stephen once more looked out upon them from 
 his window. And by his side stood Helen, escaped there to 
 command herself and console him. The father leaned out of 
 the window, waving his hand ; but the mother stood behind 
 with her hand upon the arm of the invalid's chair. When Robert 
 turned round, it was with wonder that he perceived in Stephen's 
 eyes a deeper feeling, a more penetrating emotion, than he him- 
 self felt, or had any thought of. He held oat his hand to his 
 friend and he put his arm round his wife. 
 
 " Well, Helen," he said, with his cheery voice. ** She is 
 gone as you went from your mother ; and there are two of us 
 still, whatever life may have in store." 
 
 " If there had not been t«^o of us," the mother cried, with 
 momentary passion, '' I think I should have died !" 
 
 Stephen Haldane took her hand in his, in sign of his sym- 
 pathy. He held it tightly, swaying for a moment in his chair. 
 And he said nothing, for there was no one whose ear was his, 
 to whom his words were precious. But in his heart he mur- 
 mured, God hearing him, " There is but one of me; and I never 
 die."