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 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
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 A. BRAVE LADY. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 -JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN," 
 
 &c. &c. 
 
 • Be thou faithful unto death." 
 
 / 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 
 
 1870. 
 The right of Translation is reserved.
 
 LONDON ; 
 
 PRINTED BY MACDONALl) AND TUGWELI., BLKNaEIM HOUSE, 
 
 BLENHEIM STREET, OXFORD STREET.
 
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 (To mi) ^lusbanb. 
 
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 552S26 
 
 RESERVE
 
 A r,RAYE LADY. 
 
 THE PROLOGUE. 
 
 TN most, nay, I think in all lives, is some epoch, 
 -*- which, looking back upon, we can perceive 
 has been the turning-point of our existence, — a 
 moment when the imagination first wakes up, 
 the feelings deepen, and vague, general im- 
 pressions settle into principles and convictions ; 
 when, in short, our bias for good or ill is per- 
 manently given. We may not recognise this at 
 the time, but we do afterwards, saying to our- 
 selves, either with thankfulness or regret, " But 
 for such and such a thing, or such and such a 
 person, I should not have been what I am." 
 
 This crisis befel me, Winifred Weston, when 
 I was just entering my sixteenth year. It was 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 not " falling in love," as in most cases it is ; — 
 and rightly, for love is, or ought to be, the 
 strongest thing on earth ; but it was equivalent 
 to it, and upon me and the moulding of my 
 character it had precisely the same effect. Nay, 
 in a sense I did really fall iu love, but it was 
 a very harmless phase of the passion ; for I was 
 a commonplace damsel of sixteen, and the object 
 of my intense admiration — nay, my adoring affec- 
 tion — was an old lady of seventy. 
 
 A young girl in love with an old woman ! 
 "What a ridiculous form of the emotion ! Not 
 so ridiculous, my good friends, as at first ap- 
 pears ; and by no means so uncommon as you 
 suppose. I have known several cases of it be- 
 sides my own : cases in which a great differ- 
 ence in years and character drew out, to a re- 
 markable degree, that ideal worship and pas- 
 sionate devotedness which is at the root of all 
 true love, first love especially. Laugh as you 
 vdW, there is always a spice of nobleness in the 
 boy who falls in love with his " grandmother," 
 and I have often thought that one of the ex-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. o 
 
 tenujiting circumstances in the life of that selfish, 
 pleasure-lovinji;, modern heathen, Goethe, was 
 the fact that in his old age he was so adored by 
 a " child." 
 
 Nor does the character of the feeling alter 
 when it is only a woman's towards a woman. 1 
 have loved a man, thank God, having found a 
 man worth loving ; but he well knows that for a 
 long time he ranked second in my affections to 
 a woman — to this woman, for whom my attach- 
 ment had all the intensity of love itself. 
 
 She was, as I have said, quite old, even at 
 the time when I first beheld her, which happened 
 to be at church. Our pews were alongside of 
 one another, for I sat in the rector's, and she in 
 the one beyond. I was the new curate's daugh- 
 ter, and she was " the lady of the hall," — Brier- 
 ley Hall, the oldest and finest place in the 
 neighbourhood. She entered alone. Many of 
 the fine families of the parish always had a foot- 
 man to carry their prayer-books, but she carried 
 her own ; walked alone, stately and slow, up the 
 aisle, and took her seat in a corner of the large, 
 
 B 2
 
 4 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 musty pew, the cushions and linings of which, 
 once a rich crimson ckith, liad faded with the 
 sunshine of indefinite summers. They contrasted 
 strongly with the black of her garments — black, 
 but not sombre ; her gown being of rich glitter- 
 ing silk, though she still wore a sort of widow's 
 cap over her smooth, soft, white hair. 
 
 Iknew who she was. Though my father and 
 I had only been a week at Brierley, she was of 
 sufficient importance there for us to have already 
 heard about her — at least, as much as the village 
 generally knew. I had been told I should be 
 sure to see her in church, the only place where 
 she ever was seen in public; and she had 
 been described to me so minutely that my 
 excited curiosity could not fail to recognise her 
 at once. 
 
 Even had it been otherwise, I think the result 
 
 would have been all the same. It was to be, 
 
 « 
 
 and it was ; and I could not help it. I, the 
 poor curate's daughter, motherless, romantic, 
 solitary, brought up in tlui strictest seclusion, 
 fell in love, desperately and determinedly, with
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 tins , beautiful old lady — Lady do Bougain- 
 ville. 
 
 It was such a remarkable name too, and so 
 exactly suited to her appearance. Let me de- 
 scribe her if I can. 
 
 She had " high" features, as they are called — 
 that is, her nose was aquiline, and the outline 
 of her cheek and chin sharply and clearly cut ; 
 likewise her mouth, which, though delicate, 
 had much decision in it. It was a sad and firm 
 rather than a sweet mouth ; or rather it seemed 
 as if it had been meant to be sweet, but the ex- 
 perience of life had hardened it. Nevertheless, 
 the old softness could and did at times return ; 
 I saw it afterwards, not then. Sadness also 
 was the characteristic of her eyes — sadness, or 
 at any rate pensiveness. They put me in mind 
 of the sea after a storm, when the waves have 
 calmed down, and the surface has grown smooth, 
 or even broken out again into little necessary 
 ripples : but you know all the while there must 
 be, somewhere or other, many a broken spar 
 floating about ; many a cast-away treasure beat-
 
 6 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 ing against the beach ; many a dead carcase of 
 ancient grief rising up from the depths below. 
 Such did rise — and I fancied I could see them — 
 in the dark eyes of this my beautiful lady — the 
 most beautiful, I still think, that I ever beheld, 
 though she was a septuagenarian. 
 
 Even now, as I vainly try to describe her, I 
 feel my old infatuation return — the delight with 
 which I watched every curve of her features — 
 pale, colourless features — as un-English and 
 peculiar as her eyes ; and admired every fold in 
 her dress, — quite unlike any lady's dress I had 
 ever seen. Her toilette was complete in all its 
 details, as befitted both herself and her station. 
 She was chaussee et gantee (the French best ex- 
 presses what I mean ; we English merely put on 
 gloves and shoes) to perfection ; and she had 
 little hands and little feet — remarkably so for 
 such a tall woman. She lost no inch of her 
 height, and she carried her head like one who 
 has never lowered it in sliame or sycophancy be- 
 fore mortal man. "Aristocratic" undoubtedly 
 would have been the adjective applied to her;
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 7 
 
 but used in its ri^ht sense, as belonging to " tlie 
 best" of the earth. There was nothing hauglity 
 about her, or rcpenent, or scornful — if tliene 
 qualities are supposed to coustitute aristocracy. 
 
 Her eyes and complexion, as I have said, 
 were very un-English ; and when she Ijegan to 
 say the responses, it was with a slight, a very 
 slight accent — French, I thought ; but in notlnng 
 else was she foreign. Her dress was the ordi- 
 nary dress of an English widow, from whose 
 weeds Time has melted away the obnoxious 
 pomposity of crape, and allowed a faint mixture 
 of white and grey vdth the black. But it was 
 black still — no bugles — no trimmings — no orna- 
 mental flipperies, which always seem such a 
 mockery of mourning. Her costume was per- 
 fectly plain, perfectly simple, yet exceedingly 
 rich ; as was justifiable in a lady whose wealth 
 was, people said, very great, and who had not 
 a creature to inherit it after her. 
 
 For Lady de Bougainville was that sad sight, 
 a widowed wife — a mother left childless. In 
 her solitary old age she kept her forlorn state
 
 8 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 in that huge house, which, many years ago, her 
 husband, Sir Edward de Bougainville, had 
 bought, rebuilt, lived in for a short time, and 
 then died. Before then, by a succession of 
 fatalities, her six children had died also. 
 Thenceforward she, too, was as good as dead, 
 socially speaking, to the little world of Brierley. 
 She did not quit the Hall. She kept it up ex- 
 ternally, much as before, — that is, none of the 
 roomswere closed,and there wasasufficient estab- 
 lishment of servants. I>ut she lived in it quite 
 alone, never visited anywhere, nor invited any- 
 body to visit her. So she passed her days, and 
 had passed them — our gossiping landlady told 
 me — for twenty years and more, the wonder and 
 curiosity of the neighbourhood — this poor,lonely, 
 wealthy woman — the envied, pitied, much re- 
 vered, much criticised Lady de Bougainville. 
 
 Those who revered her were the poor, to 
 whom she was unlimitedly charitable : those 
 who criticised her were the rich, the county 
 families with whom she had long ceased to as- 
 sociate, and the new-comers whom she never
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 9 
 
 sougl]t to visit at all. Tliese were naturally in- 
 dignant that Brierlcy Hall yhould be shut up 
 from thora — tliat no dinner-parties should be 
 given in the fine old dining-room where Charles 
 II. was said to have taken a royal refection 
 after hunting in the chase which surrounded 
 the property. The younger generation lilccAvise 
 felt aggrieved that on such a beautiful lawn 
 there should be no archery parties (croquet then 
 was not), and no hope whatever of a ball in the 
 tapestry-chamber, concerning which there were 
 rumours without end ; for none of the present 
 generation had ever seen it. 
 
 Once things had been very different. While 
 Sir Edward was rebuilding the Hall, he inhabited 
 a house near, and lived in a style suitable to his 
 fortune, while his wife and family mingled in 
 all the best society of the neighbourhood. 
 They were exceedingly popular, being a large, 
 merry family — handsome to look at, full of life 
 and strength. Their father was less liked, being 
 " rather queer," people said, somewhat unsocial, 
 and always fancying himself a great invalid.
 
 10 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 But their mother shared in all their youthful 
 enjoyments, and herself shone upon society 
 like a star. — Vanished, too, almost as sudden- 
 ly ; for after a certain grand ball — a house- 
 warming, the splendours of which the elder 
 generation in the village remembered still, 
 the master of Brierley Hall fell really ill of 
 some mysterious ailment. " Something amiss 
 here, folk said," observed my informant, tap- 
 ping her forehead ; and after lingering, unseen 
 by anybody, for many months, died, and was 
 buried in Brierley churchyard. His monument, 
 in plain white marble, without any of the 
 fulsomeness common to ej^itaphs, was over his 
 widow's head every Sunday as she sat in the 
 Hall pew. 
 
 There, too, was a second tablet, equally sim- 
 ple in form and inscription, recording the names, 
 ages, and dates of death of her six children. 
 They had everyone perished, some abroad, some 
 at home, within a comparatively short space of 
 time — dying off, as some families do die off, 
 when all the probabilities seem in favour of
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 11 
 
 their continiuiig to remote generations a pros- 
 perous, healthy, and honourable race. When 
 I read the list of names on the white tablet, 
 and glanced thence at the mother's face, I no 
 longer wondered at its sad expression, orat those 
 "peculiarities," as people called them — which had 
 made her the talk of the village, until it grew 
 weary of talking, and let her alone. 
 
 At first, in the early years of her desolation, 
 her neighbours had made many attempts, some 
 from curiosity, some from pure kindness, to 
 break through her determined seclusion; but they 
 failed. She was neither uncourteous nor un- 
 grateful, but there was about her a silent repel- 
 ling of all sympathy, which frightened the 
 curious and wore out the patience of even the 
 kindest-hearted of these intruders. She let 
 them see, plainly enough, that their visits were 
 an intrusion, and that it was her intention to 
 reappear in society no more. 
 
 She never did. Except at church on Sundays, 
 or driving out along the most unfrequented 
 roads, in her handsome old-fashioned carriage.
 
 12 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 no one saw her beyond the limits of her own 
 grounds. She was as Httle known as the Dalai 
 Lama, and regarded with almost equal awe. 
 Her smallest deeds were noticed, her lightest 
 sayings recorded, and her very name uttered 
 respectfully, as if she were a different person to 
 the rest of the world. 
 
 She was. As I sat gazing at her during the 
 whole of church-time, I felt that I never had 
 seen, never should see, anybody like Lady de 
 Bougainville. 
 
 It so happened that hitherto I had known 
 very few women — that is, gentlewomen — partly 
 becauseinthe far-away parish where we had lived 
 till we came here, there were only farm-houses, 
 except the great house, which my father never 
 let me enter. A certain sad prejudice he had — 
 which I will no further allude to, except to say 
 that, though I was mother-less, my mother was 
 not dead — made him altogether avoid female 
 society. He had brought me up entirely him- 
 self, and more hke a boy than a girl : in my 
 heart I wished I was a boy, and rather despised
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 13 
 
 my o^yn sex, until I saw Lady do Bougainville. 
 
 She, with her noble beauty, not weak, but 
 strong; with her unmistakable motherly air, 
 not the feeble fondness whieh is little bet- 
 ter than an animal instinet, but that large pro- 
 tecting tenderness whieh makes one ready to 
 defend as well as cherish one's offspring : she 
 seemed to me a real woman — a real mother. 
 And all her children were dead ! 
 
 I did not presume to pity her, but my heart 
 was drawn towards her by something deeper 
 than the fascination of the eye. The fancy of 
 sixteen can take a pretty long Queen Mab's 
 gallop in two hours : by the time service was 
 over I seemed to have been " in love " with her 
 for years. 
 
 She walked down the aisle a little before ra- 
 ther than after the rest of the congregation, 
 quitting the church among not the genteel but 
 the poor people, who curtsied to her and were 
 acknowledged by her as she passed, but she 
 made and recei^C^ed no other recognition. Alone 
 as she came she departed, and alone she ascend-
 
 14 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 ed her carriage — one of those chariots swaying 
 about on springs, such as were in fashion thirty 
 . \ years ago, with hammercloth in front and dickey 
 ' behind. Her footman handed her in, and shut 
 the door upon her with a sharp click, and an air 
 as solemnly indifferent as that of the under- 
 taker who closes a coflfin-lid upon some highly 
 respectable corpse whose friends have quitted 
 the house — as I hear in fashionable houses they 
 always do ; and her coachman then drove her 
 off, the sole occupant of this handsome carriage, 
 as slowly as if he were driving a hearse. 
 
 After all there was something pathetically 
 funereal in this state, and I should have hated 
 it, and turned away from it, had I not been 
 so fascinated by Lady de Bougainville her- 
 self. She burst upon my dull wearisome life 
 — an interest so vivid, that it was an ac- 
 tual revelation. I went home to think about 
 her all day, to dream of her at night ; I 
 drew her profile — how perfect it was, even 
 though it was an old woman's face ! — among 
 the suras on my slate, and along the margins of
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 15 
 
 my Latin exercise-book. I kept my mind always 
 on the qui vive, and my ears painfully open, to 
 catch any floating information concerning her; 
 but I was as shy of putting direct questions 
 about her as if I had been a young man and she 
 my first love. Do not laugh at me, you who 
 read this ; it is such a good thing to be " in 
 love " with anybody. ^^' hen we grow older we 
 love in a quieter and more rational way ; but 
 even then we regard tenderly our early idola- 
 tries. 
 
 It seemed a long week till the next Sunday, 
 and then I saw her again. Henceforward, 
 from Sunday to Sunday, I lived in a sort 
 of suppressed longing, — sure to be satisfied 
 then ; for, fair weather or foul, Lady de Bou- 
 gainville was always in her place at church. 
 Only upon Sundays was my fancy "with 
 gazing fed ;" but it fattened so raj^idly upon 
 that maigre diet that ] went through all the 
 preliminary stages of a real love-fever. Most 
 girls have it, or something like it, and it ra- 
 ther does good than harm, especially if the
 
 16 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 object is, as in my case, only a woman. Poor 
 little lamb that she was — silly Winny Weston ! 
 I look back at her now as if she were some other 
 person, and not myself; seeing all her faults, 
 and all her good points too ; and I beg it to be 
 distinctly understood that I am not the least 
 ashamed of her, or of her " first love" either. 
 
 That my idol should ever cast a thought to- 
 wards me was an idea that never entered even my 
 vivid imagination. She cast a glance occasion- 
 ally, — that is, she looked over my head to the 
 opposite wall, but I never suppose she saw me. 
 However, this was of no consequence so long 
 as I could see her, and speculate upon her, 
 weaving long histories of which she was the 
 heroine ; histories over which I afterwards 
 smiled to think how far they were from the 
 truth ! Then, having exhausted the past, I 
 turned to the future and amused myself with* 
 conjuring up endless probabilities and fortuitous 
 circumstances which might cause Lady de Bou- 
 gainville and myself to meet, or enable me to 
 do some heroic action for her, with or without
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 17 
 
 her knowledge — it did not matter nnicli. Some- 
 times I pictured her horses starting oil", and 
 m3'self, little Winny Weston, catching hold of 
 their bridles and preventing a serious accident ; 
 or some night there might arise a sudden gleam 
 of fire among the trees whence peeped the 
 chinmeys of Brierley Hall, which I often watch- 
 ed from my bedroom window in the moonlight ; 
 and I pictured myself giving the alarm, and 
 rushing to the spot just in time to save the 
 house and rescue its aged mistress. Perhaps, 
 atter some such episode, she would just notice 
 ray existence, or if I did anything very grand, 
 would hold out her hand and say — in the same 
 clear voice Av^hich every Sunday besought mercy 
 u^^on us "miserable sinners," as if she could be 
 a miserable sinner ! — " Thank you, U'inifred 
 Weston." Suppose I actually saved her life — 
 who knows? she might do even more — open 
 her arms to my motherless but yearning heart, 
 and whisper, " Winifred, be henceforth my 
 child !" 
 
 All this was very silly and very melodrama- 
 VOL. I. C
 
 18 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 tic : yet it was better for me than many of the 
 follies that one's teens are heir to — better than 
 dancing and flirting into womanhood, buoyed 
 up by the frothy admiration of raw young man- 
 hood. It taught me to love, rather than to 
 crave for being loved ; and it taught me — if only 
 through my inagination — two other things 
 which I think the present generation rather 
 loses sight of — heroism and patience. 
 
 That Lady de Bougainville herself was capa- 
 ble of both, I felt sure from her very face. The 
 better I knew it, the more it fascinated me. 
 It was an ideal face — nay, there was something 
 in it absolutely historical, like one of those old 
 portraits which you are convinced have a story 
 belong-ing to them ; or to which you may affix 
 any story you please. Calm as it was, it was 
 neither a stony nor impassive face. Often, Avhen 
 something in my father's sermon attracted her 
 — ^he preached very good and original ser- 
 mons sometimes — she would brighten up, and 
 fix upon him her dark eyes — keen and clear as 
 if they were twenty-five years old instead of
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 1 
 
 seventy. But ordinarily she sat with them cast 
 down ; not in laziness, or pride, or scorn, but 
 as if they were tired — tired of looking out upon 
 the world for so many years. When lifted they 
 had often a wistftil and abstracted expression, 
 as if she were living in times and places far 
 away. As she said to me, months after, when 
 I ventured to ask her what she did with herself 
 — that is, when her daily work was done : " My 
 dear, T dream. I have nothing to do but 
 to dream." 
 
 What first put it into her mind to notice me 
 I have even now not the slightest idea. 1 sup- 
 pose it was nothing but the impulse of her own 
 kind heart : when, missing me fi-om my seat at 
 church, she inquu-ed about me, and who I was : 
 finally, hearing I was ill — of that most nnpoet- 
 ical complaint the measles — she did as she was 
 in the habit of doing to almost every sick per- 
 son in the village, sent daily to inquire and to 
 offer gifts. Only these gifts came at first rather 
 from the gardens and vineries than the kitchen 
 of Brierley Hall ; until, some little bird having 
 
 C2
 
 20 A BR AYE LADY. 
 
 perhaps whispered to her that a poor curate 
 often feeds not quite so well as a prosperous 
 artisan, there appeared gradually jellies, soups, 
 and other nourishing aliments. When I learnt 
 from -whence they came, I banqueted upon 
 them as if they were the ambrosia of the 
 earth. 
 
 But they did not ctu-e me ; and I had been 
 fully five weeks absent from church, when one 
 Monday morning — oh, that blessed Monday ! — 
 there came a little note to my father — a note 
 on delicate-coloured paper, with a small black 
 seal, in a handwriting diminutive, upright, firm 
 — more like foreign than English caligraphy. I 
 have it still : — 
 
 " Lady de Bougainville presents her compli- 
 ments to the Rev. Henry Weston, and would 
 esteem it a pleasure if he would trust his daugh- 
 ter to her for a week's visit. Brierley Hall was 
 always considered a healthy place, and Lady de 
 Bougainville has seen many sad instances of 
 long ill-health, which a slight cliangc of air at 
 first might have cured. She will take the ut-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 21 
 
 most care of the child" (here " the cliild" was 
 crossed out, and " Miss Weston*' inserted) — " if 
 Mr. Weston will consent to part Avitli lur. Tlie 
 carriage shall fetch her at any hour to-day or 
 to-morrow, so as to avoid all fatigue." 
 
 Most wonderful ! The letter dropped from 
 my trembling hands. Aladdin, Fortunatus, 
 Cinderella — all those lucky youths and maidens 
 befriended by fairies and good genii — were not 
 more intoxicatingly happy than I. 
 
 " Father, you will let me go !" I cried. " Not 
 to-day, perhaps " (for — it was a uatural weak- 
 ness — I suddenly remembered the state of my 
 wardrobe ; a condition not surprising in a poor 
 curate's motherless daughter) ; " but to-mor- 
 row? You will send back word that I shall 
 be ready by — let me see — by noon to-mor- 
 row?" 
 
 I always had everything pretty much my own 
 way ; so it was soon arranged that I should pay 
 this — the fii'st visit I had ever paid from home 
 alone. 
 
 Young people who have many friends, and
 
 22 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 are always interchanging visits, can Lave no 
 idea of the state of excitement I was in. It 
 seemed to rouse me out of invahdism at once. 
 To go anywhere — to anybody, would have been 
 charming ; but to Brierley Hall ! it was ecstacy ! 
 To live under the same roof as my beautiful 
 old lady — to see her every day in ordinary life 
 — to be kindly noticed by her — to be able to 
 render her various small services, such as a 
 young person can so easily pay to an elder one ; 
 the cup of my felicity was full. It was worth 
 being ill — twenty times over. I thought — I 
 think still, and, while laughing at myself, it is 
 with tears in my eyes — that the measles was a 
 special interposition of Providence. Not in any 
 Avorldly point of view. In spite of all my land- 
 lady's respectful and mysterious congratulations, 
 I could see no special advantage likely to ac- 
 crue to me from the visit ; but I accepted it as a 
 present delight ; about which, and my own de- 
 servuigs of it, I did not speculate at all. In fact 
 I took going to the Hall as naturally as I sup-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 23 
 
 pose I shall one day take going to heaven ; — and 
 it felt not unlike it. 
 
 , My clothes were at first a serious weight on 
 my mind ; they were so few, so poor, and — as, 
 alas ! I only now seemed to discover — so untidy. 
 When I thought of Lady de Bougainville, her 
 silks, velvets, and furs, the richness of which 
 was almost forgotten in their exquisite neatness 
 and appropriateness, ray heart failed me. Well, 
 she was rich and I was poor ; but still that need 
 not make such a vital difference. Even poor 
 folk can contrive to keep their garments clean 
 and whole. I must try to turn over a new leaf 
 from this day for Avar d. 
 
 So I mended and arranged, folded and packed, 
 wishing faintly that I could put some womanly 
 orderliness into my too boyish ways ; and this 
 practical occupation kept my head steadily 
 balanced, and levelled a little the heights and 
 depths of excitement, the alternations of eager 
 expectation and shyness almost amounting to 
 fear, which came upon me. Yet the whole of 
 the day I was in a fever of delight. I tried to
 
 24 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 hide it, lest my father should think I was glad 
 to leave him, this first time in my life that I ever 
 had left him. But it was not that at all ; it was 
 no carelessness as to old ties, only the dawning 
 instinct for new ones — the same instinct which 
 prompts the young bird to creep to the edge 
 of even the warmest and safest nest, and peer 
 over into the unknown world beyond. It may 
 be a cold world — a dangerous, fatal world, 
 wherein, many a day yet, we may wander about 
 shivering, and long regretfully for the nest left 
 behind. But for all that we cannot stay in the 
 nest : God gives us wings, and when they grow 
 we must use them ; whatever it costs us, we 
 must learn to fly. 
 
 Nevertheless, when I had bidden my father 
 good-bye — as solemn a good-bye as if I had 
 been bound for the Antipodes — and sat alone in 
 the Hall carriage, my heart failed me a little. 
 Luxury was so new to me, I was half frightened 
 by it. Yet was I not well-born ? Had not my 
 forefathers driven about in carriages quite as 
 grand as this one ? Besides, in my still feeble
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 25 
 
 he;ilth^ the easy equipage, rolling lazily and 
 snioothly along, gave me rather a pleasurable 
 • sensation. After the first minute or two I be- 
 gan to believe in the reality of my felieity ; and 
 Aladdin as he rubbed his lamp, Cinderella as she 
 leaned baek in her pumpkin chariot, were not 
 more full of happy hoj)e than T. 
 
 As we drove through the village, and people 
 stared at the Hall ecpiipage passing at an un- 
 wonted hour, I first sat bolt upright iii it, witli 
 a conscious pleasure that everybody should 
 see me there ; then I scorned myself for the 
 mean vanity. It was better to hide my happi- 
 ness in the deep of my heart, and the darkest 
 corner of the carriage : so I leaned back, saying 
 to myself in proud delight, 
 
 " Nobody knows — nobody knows." 
 
 For it seemed to me that the whole world, if 
 they did know it, would envy me, thus going on 
 a visit to Lady de Bougainville. 
 
 We reached the lodge-gates. I had often 
 peeped through them at the mysterious reg-ion 
 beyond, where the fine red-brick mansion glim-
 
 26 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 mered through the greeu of the long elm- 
 avenue ; and the trees which dotted the park 
 cast then' shadows on the smooth turf — making 
 a picture which sometimes reminded me of the 
 garden of the Hesperides. 
 
 Now, however, the gates flew open, and a very 
 commonplace gardener's wife admitted us into 
 the enchanted ground. It was such — it always 
 will be such to me. As the carriage rolled slowly 
 between those two lines of patriarchal elms, 
 just dressing themselves anew in the soft green 
 of early spring, I felt that the modern villas 
 starting up around us so fatally fast, snug and 
 smug, four-square, Portland cemented, with 
 newly-painted palisades, and araucarias and 
 deodaras stuck here and there in the fresh-made 
 lawn, were no more to compare with Brierley 
 Hall, than were their occupants, fat and well- 
 to-do gentlemen, highly-dressed and highly-re- 
 spectable ladies, with my Lady de Bougainville. 
 
 Could that be herself standing at the door ? 
 No, of course not ; how could I have imagined 
 such a condescension ?
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 27 
 
 Nevertheless, it was a friendly-smiling and 
 pleasant person — a lady's-maid, bnt not the 
 elderly Abigail one might have expected. Curi- 
 ously enough, the domestics at Brierley Hall 
 were, except one, all young servants. 
 
 " My lady says, miss, that I am to take you 
 straight to your bedroom, and see that you lie 
 down and rest there till dinner-time — six o'clock. 
 You shall have a cup of tea directly." 
 
 I often fancy people know not half the mys- 
 teries of personal influence ; and how curiously 
 they themselves are reflected in their servants. 
 This young woman — who was as civil as if I 
 had been the Honourable Winifred Weston, 
 come on a visit with my own maid, and a heap 
 of luggage — took from me my small port- 
 manteau, led the w^ay across a wide hall, of 
 wdiich, in my bewildered nervousness, I only 
 saw a glimmer of painted glass, green marble 
 pillars, and polished oaken floors, up a beauti- 
 ful stau'case, and into a warm, fire-Kt bed- 
 room. 
 
 We all have our ideals, and this will be my
 
 28 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 ideal bed-chamber to tlie end of my days. It 
 was not large, at least not too large to feel 
 cosy ; and it was made still smaller by a subdi- 
 vision : an arch, supported on Corinthian pillars, 
 behind which was the bed and all the toilet ap- 
 paratus, making a clear distinction between the 
 sleeping and the social half of the room. In 
 the latter, collected snugly roinid the hearth, 
 were a sofa, a table, writing materials, books ; 
 a little encampment, on which the fire blazed 
 we] comely, this chilly, grey, spring day. Above 
 it, inserted into the wainscotted wall, was a 
 curious oil painting, half length, life-sized, of 
 some old saint. From tlie unkempt hair and 
 beard, the leathern girdle, and the robe of 
 camel's hair, I concluded it was John the Bap- 
 tist. A strange fancy to have him there, gaz- 
 ing with wan face, and gleaming, reproachful 
 eyes that seemed ever crying " Repent ye," up- 
 on the luxuries of the room. 
 
 It appeared luxurious ,to me, for I had never 
 beheld one anything equal to it. I was half 
 amused, half annoyed, to see how many neces-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 29 
 
 saries of civilized life I bad hitherto done with- 
 out ; toilette appliances of inysteriuiis kind ; 
 endless drawers, closets, and shelves in which 
 to stow away my poor property ; mirrors and 
 hand-glasses, reflecting everywhere my humble 
 person, gaunt with the awkwardness of my age, 
 ill-dressed, unlovely. Then the bed, which was 
 of foreign make, with a graceful canopy, rich 
 damask hangings, and a counterpane of quilted 
 silk. How could I ever go to sleep in it ? 
 
 At first, I own, my novel position quite fright- 
 ened me. But when I had drank my tea, un- 
 packed myself — declining assistance through 
 sheer shame — and arranged my garments as 
 carefully and as wddely as I could upon their 
 numerous receptacles, after having taxed my 
 mother-wit to the utmost in discovering the 
 uses of all these things, so as not to be dis- 
 graced in the eyes of housemaid or lady's- 
 maid, then I took heart of grace. I said to my- 
 self, " Winny Weston, you are a fool. All these 
 things are mere externalities. They could not 
 make you a lady, if you w^ere not one ; and, if
 
 30 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 you are, the lack of them will not unmake you. 
 Pluck up your courage, and do the best you 
 can." 
 
 So I curled myself up comfortably on the 
 sofa, and lay gazing at the delicious fire ! Ah, 
 that luxury, the permanent bed-room fire ! I 
 had never been allowed it yet ; it never would 
 have occurred to me to have it, except in case 
 of illness ; but here it was apparently the cus- 
 tom of the house, and anyone of a solitary, shy 
 nature can best appreciate the intense comfort, 
 the delicious peace, of being able to shut one's 
 door upon all the world, and warm one's soul 
 and body thoroughly at one's own particular 
 bed-room fire. 
 
 Lady de Bougainville had done a kind thing 
 in leaving me to myself until dinner-time. But 
 to " lie down and rest," according to her orders, 
 which the maid had given with an air as if no- 
 body ever was expected to gainsay anything 
 the mistress said — was impossible ; rest is for 
 a later period of life than mine. In an hour I 
 had exhausted all the delights of fireside medi-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 31 
 
 tatioii, ,a\\ the interest of ray room, including 
 the views from my two windows, and was dying 
 with curiosity to penetrate further. 
 
 I opened the door and peeped out, as timidly 
 as a young mouse on her travels. All was si- 
 lent, as silent as Tennyson's Sleeping Palace. 
 Why should I not creep downstairs, just to ex- 
 amine the staircase and hall ? 
 
 I delight in a fine -wide staircase ; it is the lungs 
 of a house. I am sure people Avho plan grand 
 reception rooms wnth uarrow ascents thereto, 
 must have rather narrow minds. The planner 
 of this had not. As I looked over the balustrade 
 of carved oak — garved as beautifully as Grinling 
 Gibbons could have done it — and then upwards 
 to the circular ceiling, over Avhich flying Cupids 
 were hanging wreaths, and downwards to the 
 broad polished stairs, winding step after step in 
 smooth dignified progression — I thought of the 
 lovely ladies passing up and down it with their 
 sweeping trains, their high head-dresses, like 
 that in my great-grandmother's portrait ; es- 
 corted by gentlemen — such gentlemen as were
 
 32 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 Sir Charles Grandison. And I thought then — I 
 fear I think now — that these were far finer 
 specimens of hnraanity, inside and outside, than 
 the young men and women whom I shall meet 
 at the next dinner party I go to, or have to see 
 flirting with my sons and daughters — when old 
 enough — at the next ball. 
 
 Descending, I gazed left and right across the 
 hall, which ran right through the centre of the 
 house from door to door. Great windows lit it 
 at either end, large panes of stained glass, 
 forming shapes not unlike crosses : one red and 
 blue — the sacred colours, such as old painters 
 always gave to their Madonnas — the other 
 violet and green. Supporting the hall in the 
 middle were double pillars of scagliola marble ; 
 its walls were of some soft grey papering, with 
 Porapeian figures grouped here and there ; and 
 across the wide space of its dark oak floor ran 
 rivers of carpeting, cutting it up a little, but 
 just enough to make it safe. Only French feet 
 can glide across those slippery plains of polished 
 wood, beautiful as they are. Mine failed me
 
 A BUAVE LADY. 33 
 
 more than oncu ; and iu the perfect silence and 
 
 # 
 
 soHtude I felt — not altogether comfortable, yet 
 deliciouHly, ecstatically haj)py. 
 
 There is a belief among modern psychoht- 
 gists — one of whom has lately developed it in 
 a novel — that we are none of us wholly indi- 
 vidual or original beings, but made up of our 
 countless antecedents ; whose natures, com- 
 bined or conflicting, we partake, and often feel 
 struggling within us. As if we were not our- 
 selves at all, but somebody else — some far-back 
 progenitor, whose soul was new-born into oiu' 
 infant body, to work us weal or woe, and influ- 
 ence us more or less throughout life ; — a creed 
 not more impossible or ridiculous than many 
 other scientific theories. 
 
 As I stood for the first time in this house, 
 gradually it seemed to become familiar and na- 
 tural. Large and fine as it was, it was a house, 
 not a baronial residence. In it I felt myself a 
 mere drop of water, but it was water conscious 
 of rising to its level. The soul of my great- 
 grandmother seemed to enter into me ; and I 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 thought, in ray silly, childish heart, tliat if I only 
 had a train I could sweep up the beautiful stair- 
 case with as grand an air as she. Ay, and en- 
 joy it, too. So absorbed was I in my foolish 
 dream, that I drew myself up to my full height, 
 and shook out my scanty cotton frock, trying 
 to imagine myself one of those ladies, like my 
 said great-grandmother, whose miniature with 
 the rose in her hair, I knew so well. 
 
 At that luckless moment I heard an outer 
 door open — ^and in walked Lady de Bougain- 
 ville. 
 
 I know it Avas she, though she looked, of 
 course, in her home dress and garden wraps, 
 different from what she looked in church. But 
 she was one of those people who seem to make 
 their costume instead of their costume making 
 them. Whatever she had on, she was sure to 
 be the same. 
 
 I half hoped her eye would not discover me, 
 but I was mistaken. She came forward at 
 once. 
 
 " Is that you, my little visitor ?" and she put
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 35 
 
 out her hand — her old soft hand, tlie softest, I 
 think, I ever felt, though it was withered and 
 thin, so that the jewelled rings hung loosely on 
 every finger — " I thought you were safe resting 
 in your room. What have you been doing? — 
 Where were you going ?" 
 
 Sweet as her voice was — sweet as when ut- 
 tering the responses in church — there was in it 
 the tone of the mistress and mother, accustomed 
 all her life to be answered and obeyed. 
 
 I answered at once — though in a hot agony 
 of confusion, which makes me even now pity 
 myself to remember — 
 
 " I was not going anywhere, my lady." 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 " Don't say ' my lady,' the servants only do 
 that. If you call me ' ma'am ' — as I was taught 
 to say to my elders when I was a giil — it will 
 do quite well." 
 
 " Yes, ma'am." 
 
 " And what shall I call you ? Miss Weston, 
 or simply Winifred ?" 
 
 " Winifred, please, ma'am — nothing but Wini- 
 
 D 2
 
 36 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 fred !" cried I, my delight suddenly making me 
 bold. 
 
 Then I shrank back into myself with a wild 
 collapse of shame. 
 
 She took no notice of it, except just to pat 
 me on the shoulder, saying, 
 
 " Very well, Winifred ;" and then began ask- 
 ing a courteous question or two about my 
 father. 
 
 So my heart, which had at first beat in my 
 bosom like a little steam-engine, slowly quieted 
 itself down, and I recovered sufficiently to be 
 able to look up in my hostess's face, to hear 
 and answer intelligently, and even to take in 
 the minuti^ of her di-ess and appearance. 
 
 What a picture of an old lady she was ! If 
 all old ladies did but know the wisdom of re- 
 cognising the time when a woman should cease 
 following fashion's changes, except in a very 
 modified form, and institute, so far as she can, 
 a permanent costume I Lady de Bougainville's 
 was charming. Not exactly old-fashioned ; nei- 
 ther of this year nor that year, nor the year be-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 37 
 
 f<jre, but suited to all years, and looldng- well at 
 iiU seasous. It was excessively simple, consist- 
 ing only of a black silk gow^n, without trim- 
 mings of any sort, but the material was so rich 
 and good that none were required. It fitted her 
 figure — which Avas slender and straight, ev^eu at 
 seventy years of age ; and she Avas so upright, 
 that walking behind her you miglit have taken 
 her for a woman of thirty. At throat and wrists 
 she had a sort of frill, made of fine cambric and 
 Valenciennes lace. Over her widow's cap was 
 drawn a garden-hood, or capuchoji, such as 
 Frenchwomen wear. A French shawl, of fine soft 
 black merino, fell round her in comfortable folds. 
 Indeed, there was something about her toilette 
 essentially French. We had happened to live 
 three months in that country — my father and I 
 — just before we came to Brierley, so I was able 
 to detect this fact ; and also a small soupgon of 
 an accent which developed itself more the more 
 she spoke, and gave her speech, as a slight 
 foreign accent always gives to otherwise cor- 
 rect English, a certain pretty individuality.
 
 38 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 As she stood before me, and talked to me, in 
 her ordinary home dress, and upon ordinary- 
 subjects, but looking none the less stately and 
 beautiful than she had done in church for Sun- 
 day after Sunday, I felt as bewildered and en- 
 rapt as would a little nun, who suddenly sees 
 the Virgin ]\Iary or St. Catherine step down 
 from her niche, and become every-day woman- 
 hood. 
 
 When I had grown a little less afraid of her, 
 and had succeeded in answering all her ques- 
 tions — very harmless, commonplace questions, 
 about my father's health and my own, but given 
 with a kind of tender graciousness, and an 
 earnestness over the replies, which great people 
 do not always show to little people, — she put to 
 me a second inquiry, or rather a repetition of 
 the first, which frightened me as much as ever. 
 
 For I felt it must be answered, and truly, 
 even if untruth had occurred to me as one way 
 of getting out of the difficulty ; — which it did 
 not. Lying usually springs from cowardice, 
 and, girl as I was, I had never yet been afraid
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 39 
 
 of any mortal soul. So when Lady de Bougaiu- 
 ville asked, with a covert smile, what I was do- 
 ing when she caught sight ot" me, I confessed, 
 silly as I knew the confession must make me 
 appear — 
 
 " I was trying to walk xipstairs as it" 1 had a 
 train. I wanted to tancy myself my great- 
 grandmother." 
 
 "And who was your great-grandmother?" 
 asked she, laughing a Kttle, but not in the way 
 I had expected and feared. 
 
 " A very beautiful woman, I Ijclicve, and very 
 rich." 
 
 " Ah !" drawing back at once, " I thought 
 your family Avas poor?" 
 
 " So it is now, but it was not always." 
 
 And I explained to her one or two traditions 
 of the departed glory of the Westons, on which 
 my imagination had always hung with great 
 delight. To which she listened without com- 
 ment, and apparently without being affected 
 with them in any way ; then asked — 
 
 " And your great-grandmother V
 
 40 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 " She was," I repeated, " a very beautiful 
 woman ; and she lived in a house which I sup- 
 pose must have been like yours. I was wonder- 
 ing how she felt in it." 
 
 " Indeed. Then, Winifred, would you like to 
 be your great-grandmother'?" 
 
 I stopped to consider, for I could not bear to 
 speak inaccurately, even at random. 
 
 " For some things I should, ma'am ; not for 
 all." 
 
 " Why not for all f 
 
 "I have heard she was not a very happy 
 woman." 
 
 •" Few women ever are very happy," said, 
 with a slight sigh, which amazed me as much as 
 her words, Lady de Bougainville. 
 
 Of course, I did not presume to reply ; and 
 immediately afterwards she changed the sub- 
 ject entirely, and began to speak to me about 
 my own health, and the arrangements she had 
 made for me in the house, with a view to my 
 deri\T,ng as much benefit from the change as 
 possible. Her questions, suggestions, and ad-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 41 
 
 vices wevo all cxtroraely practical and minute, 
 even to the most motherly degree. I did not 
 know what motherhood was then — the tie, both 
 ways, from child to mother, and from mother to 
 child, was to me a perfect blank ; hut T had 
 sense enough to have guessed instinctively, 
 even had I not know^n the fact, that she who 
 thus spoke to me had been the mother of many 
 children : and that the heart once opened, in a 
 way that only motherhood does open it, nothing 
 afterwards could altogether close. Her very 
 eyes, as they rested upon me, had a pensive 
 tenderness in them, as if beyond my face they 
 saw anothsr. Some women have that expression 
 whenever thev look at a child ; it reminds them 
 either of the dead or the lost — or, perhaps as 
 sadly, of the never born. 
 
 I answered obediently my hostess's questions, 
 though they surprised me a little. I mean, it was 
 puzzling to find out that my idol was not too 
 ideal to condescend to such ordinary things ; in 
 fact, was much more of a mortal woman than I 
 expected. She appeared to me now not so
 
 42 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 much a medioeval saint as a wise sensible mother 
 of a family, something like that most sensible 
 and capable woman in the Proverbs, whose por- 
 trait, transmitted to us from distant ages, 
 proves that the Hebrews at least had some no- 
 tion of what a woman ought to be, and did not 
 accept as their notion of feminine perfection a 
 charming, amiable, beautiful — fool ! 
 
 Looking closer at Lady de Bougainville, it 
 was easy to detect under all her refinement an 
 amount of strength which circumstances might 
 drive into actual hardness ; while against her 
 high, pure, lofty nature might be laid the charge 
 which inferior natures often do lay, that she 
 could not understand them, and had no pity for 
 them. May be so ! In her clear, bright, honest 
 eyes lurked the possibility of that cutting con- 
 tempt for all things weak, and base, and double- 
 faced, which a mean person would find difficult 
 to meet ; and the delicate line of her lips could 
 settle into a mouth, firm enough to shame all 
 cowards — a mouth like my pet heroine, Cathe- 
 rine Sey ton's, when she put her slender right
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 43 
 
 arm as a .bar through the bolts of the door, to 
 protect those who needed her protection. Lady 
 de Bougainville, I was sure, would luive dune 
 the same any day. 
 
 I was not old enough fully to take in her 
 character then, and I greatly fear that in many 
 things I write about her now, I am giN'ing not 
 so much my impressions of the time as my ol>- 
 servations and convictions of a later period; 
 but, child as I was, I could appreciate that force 
 of nature which was able to deny as well as be- 
 stow, to blame as much as to praise. 
 
 She blamed me unequivocally for having 
 disobeyed her orders, and quitted my room, and 
 and would not listen for a moment to my ex- 
 cuses, which in their earnest honesty seemed to 
 amuse as well as please her : — that I was longing 
 to go all over her beautiful house, the biggest 
 and most beautiful I had ever seen in my life. 
 
 "Indeed. Yours must have been a quiet 
 life, then, child. What sort of home did you 
 live in ?" 
 
 " In no home at all," I said mournfully, " only
 
 44 A BRAYE LADY. 
 
 ill furnished lodgings. And oh, if you did hut 
 know Avhat it is to spend month after month, 
 year after year, in furnished lodgings !" 
 
 She smiled. " Then you have never been 
 anything but poor, my dear ? Is it so f 
 
 " Yes-, ma am. 
 
 " That is an honest answer. Povertv is no 
 shame ; the shame is for those who think this, 
 and fear to acknowledge it. Still it is a hard 
 thing to bear sometimes." 
 
 " Indeed I have found it so," cried I, warmed 
 by such unexpected sympathy. " I don't like it 
 at all, but I bear it." 
 
 Lady de Bougainville laid her hand, her deli- 
 cate dear old hand, upon my head. " Poor 
 little thing," she murmured : '■'■pauvre petite." 
 But the minute she had let fall the latter words, 
 she turned awav from me. I did not know till 
 long afterwards that she had been in the habit 
 of speaking French to her children. 
 
 Presently she addressed me ^^th a sudden 
 and quite uncalled for asperity of tone. 
 
 "So you are poor, Winifred, and you would
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 45 
 
 like to be rich. Do not deny it. I bate pre- 
 varication — I despise sbains. Say outriglit, you 
 fooKsb cbibl, that yon wisli you were in my 
 pkce, and Hvcd in the Ibill. — perbaps even 
 were mistress of it, as I am, and liave been tbese 
 many years. Wbat a fortunate, bappy woman 
 I must be !" 
 
 Tbere was a keen sarcasm in ber voice wbich 
 actually startled me ; but immediately sbe be- 
 came conscious tliat sbe was speaking in a way 
 very unsuitable for a cbild to bear, and in- 
 comprebensible to most cbildren. Only I think 
 that we who have spent our childhood either 
 Avith grown people or quite alone, get a certain 
 precocity of intuition, sharper and more accur- 
 ate than is supposed. I should have been acute 
 enough at guessing much concerning Lady dc 
 Bougainville, bad I not been frightened by her 
 witch-like faculty of divining what was passing 
 in my own mind. For I was painfully cousciout, 
 of baAdng done exactly as she said, and broken 
 the tenth commandment over and over again 
 that mornmg.
 
 46 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 " Do not blush so," she went on. " You have 
 done nothing very heinous, child, even if you 
 have wished to step into ray shoes, or to in- 
 herit my fortune and estate. I should consider 
 such a fancy neither wicked nor unnatural at 
 your age. Only if it really happened I should 
 be very sorry for you." 
 
 " Sorry !" 
 
 Her hand, firmer in its grasp than I could 
 have thought possible to such soft fingers, was 
 pi'cssed on my shoulder ; and her dark eyes, no 
 longer wild, but piercing, penetrated down to 
 the ver}^ depths of mine : 
 
 "Now, child, pay attention to me for a min- 
 ute, that we may begin our acquaintance on a 
 sure footing. You are notliing to me, and I am 
 nothing to you, except that I was sorry for you, 
 as seventy is sorry for sixteen. But I see you 
 are of a very imaginative temperament, as full 
 of romantic notions as any girl of sixteen can 
 be, and 1 know what that is — I was sixteen 
 myself once. But I warn you, AVinifred, build 
 no castles in Spain at Bn'erley Hall. Do not
 
 A BRAVE LADY, 47 
 
 fancy^ because I invited you here to nurse you 
 well again, and send you back home fit to battle 
 Avith life, as is your lot, that I have taken a mys- 
 terious interest in you, and intend to adopt you, 
 and make you my heiress." 
 
 " Ma'am ! Lady de Bougainville !" 
 She had been sitting on one of the hall chairs, 
 and I on the staircase in front of her; but now 
 I started up, and looked her full in the ftice. 
 Child as I was, ray indignation made me a wo- 
 man for the moment — a woman, and her equal. 
 I did not condescend even to rebut her accusa- 
 tion ; I stood a minute, feeling myself grow 
 hot and hotter, to the very roots of my hair, 
 and then I darted away, and rushed ^^olently 
 upstairs. 
 
 "Winifred, child, where are you running to?" 
 
 " To fetch my bonnet. I am going home." 
 
 But in the effort of speech. I broke down, and 
 
 before I reached my room door I had only 
 
 strength to totter in, and bury my head in the 
 
 sofa cushions in a paroxysm of tears. 
 
 How long they lasted I do not know, but my
 
 48 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 first consciousDess was a kind, cool band on my 
 head, and a soft voice calling me by my name. 
 Lady do Bougainville was standing over me, 
 looking grave and grieved, but not displeased 
 at all. Nor amused, as many persons would have 
 been, at this passion of almost ludicrous anger 
 in a young girl, little more than a child. She 
 held out her hand, smiling. 
 
 " I was mistaken, I see. Do not take it so 
 seriously to heart. May not an old woman talk 
 nonsense if she likes 1" 
 
 " It was nonsense, then ? You did not really 
 think I came here with such ideas in my head ? 
 You do not suppose me capable of such mean- 
 ness I I don't say," continued I, for in all my 
 wrath I was still candid ; " I don't say that I 
 should not like to be as rich as you — I should ; 
 and I have thought so many a time this day. But 
 I never wanted youi' riches. Keep them your- 
 self I For me, I despise them." 
 
 " So do I," she said, with an air of gentleness, 
 even sadness, which to me was then wholly un- 
 accountable.
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 49 
 
 She added no other word, but stood Ly rae, 
 firmly holding my hand, and looking down on 
 me with a curious mixture of interest and com- 
 passion, until my sobs abated. But the result 
 of the storm of indignation into which I had 
 thrown myself, was, as might be expected for 
 one just recovering from severe illness, anything 
 but satisfactory. I fell into a sort of hysterical 
 state, which soon made me quite incapable of 
 going downstairs, or even of stu-riug from my 
 sofa. My hostess tended me there, fetching no 
 servant, but taking all the trouble of me upon 
 herself for two or three hours ; — of which I re- 
 member little, except that she seemed to be 
 quite another person than my preconceived idea 
 of her. She soothed me, she scolded me, she 
 made me take food and medicine ; finally she 
 put me to bed like a baby, and sat beside me, 
 ■eading, or pretending to read, till I fell asleep. 
 I did not wake till broad daylight next morn- 
 ing. 
 
 It was a delicious waking — like dawn after a 
 thunder-storm. My window feced the east, and 
 VOL. I. E 
 
 I
 
 50 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 the early sun looked in ; while, without, the 
 birds sang their eheerful songs with the especial 
 loudness that one hears on a spring morning. I 
 felt tired, and not quite myself, but scarcely ill. 
 In truth, I hated to be ill, or to be kept in bed 
 one minute longer than necessary. So before 
 any one could restrain me, I had leaped out, and 
 was already up and dressed when a knock came 
 to my door. It was the maid, entering with 
 my breakfast. 
 
 I was a little disappointed that it was only 
 the maid, but I got a message, at all events. 
 
 " My lady wishes to know if you are better, 
 miss"? and, if you are, she will not disturb 
 you till noon. She herself is always busy of a 
 morning." 
 
 Was it out of consideration for me and my 
 shyness, or had my tender, motherly nurse of 
 the night before changed back into my idol of 
 the church pew — piy noble, stately, reserved, 
 and unapproachable Lady de Bougainville 1 I 
 could not tell, but I accepted my lot, whatever 
 it was. I implicitly obeyed her ; and, though
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 51 
 
 the imprisonment was dreadful, I did not stir 
 from my room until the cuckoo-clock on the 
 chimney-piece — oh, how I love a cuckoo-clock ! 
 — had struck twelve. Then out I darted, to 
 snatch, eager and happy, at the delights that 
 lay before me. 
 
 Not quite happy, though, for it struck me 
 that I had made a goose of myself the previous 
 evening ; but still this little episode, so uncom- 
 fortable and so unexpected, had had one good 
 result — it had broken down the barrier between 
 my idol and me, and taken away my dread of 
 her, and put a certain sympathy between us, in 
 spite of the alarming difference of our years. 
 How or why I did not know, not till long 
 afterwards ; but I felt it was so. Still, when 
 once again I descended the stairs — not making 
 such a Kttle fool of myself as heretofore, but walk- 
 ing sagely and rationally, lil%:e a respectable young 
 lady — and saw, as yesterday, that tall black 
 figure entering in from the garden door, my 
 heart beat a little with the old throb — half plea- 
 sm-e, half awe, but wholly love. I wonder if any 
 
 E 2
 
 52 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 man ever loved the sight of me as I did that of 
 this lovely old woman ? 
 
 She advanced with her smiling welcome, for- 
 mal a little, but always smiling. I came after- 
 wards to know what a better welcome was, to 
 have her arms romid my neck, and her kiss on 
 my cheek ; but I like to remember the earlier 
 welcomes, — just the simple handshake, and the 
 kindly inquiry, written at once on lips and eyes. 
 
 Some people say " How do you do ?" and 
 never wait to hear the answer, which you can 
 omit altogether, if you choose — they will never 
 miss it. But she always looked as if she 
 liked to hear — as if she really was interested in 
 learning how you were, and what you were 
 doing — as if the large sympathy which even 
 seventy years had neither narrowed nor dulled, 
 took an interest in every minute thing you 
 could tell hei', and cared for your fortunes as 
 if they had been her own. 
 
 After an inquiry or two, which she saw rather 
 shamed and confused me, she ceased speaking 
 of the little episode of last night, and took up
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 53 
 
 the thread of our acquaiutance precisely where 
 we had left it yesterday. 
 
 " You were wantiug to see my house ; shall I 
 show it you now? There ^vill be quite time 
 before luncheon." 
 
 " Will it not tire you too much ?" 
 
 For I noticed that she looked extremely pale, 
 and the dark circles under her eyes were deeper, 
 as if she had been awake all night." 
 
 " Are you tired, Winifred ?" 
 
 " Oh ! no, thank you, ma'am." 
 
 " Then never mind me. When I was young, 
 I used to be told I was a Spartan," added she, 
 smiling ; " and I try to be something of a Spar- 
 tan stm, in spite of my age. I could never en- 
 dure to sink into the invalid or doting old wo- 
 man. I hope I shall manage to die like that 
 grand old philosopher who, in his last moment, 
 started up from his arm-chair, and said 'he 
 would die standing.' " 
 
 She would, I thought, as I looked at her, so 
 erect still, with her feet planted firmly, and her 
 eyes flashing bright.
 
 54 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 I said, with a conceited sense of my own 
 erudition, that there was something very fine 
 in dying, like Macbeth, " with harness on one's 
 back." 
 
 Lady de Bougainville looked amused. 
 
 " You read Shakespeare, I see ?" 
 
 " Oh ! I read everything." 
 
 " Everything is a large word. Now, I have 
 not read half enough in my life. I am not at 
 all an educated person." 
 
 I stared in utter amazement. 
 
 " It is quite true, my dear ; or rather, for edu- 
 cated I should have said 'learned,' or 'culti- 
 vated.' We get our education in many other 
 ways besides reading books. But come, you will 
 be more interested in my liouse than in me." 
 
 "Are you not very fond of your house, 
 ma'am f 
 
 " Perhaps I am. I like to have things suit- 
 able and beautiful about me. Pretty things were 
 always good company to me ; now they are the 
 only company I have." 
 
 Then it w^as quite true that she received no
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 55 
 
 one ; that I was the sole guest who had beeu 
 admitted into these precincts for years ? I could 
 hardly credit my own good fortune. And when 
 1 went with her, from room to room, talking 
 familiarly, and hearing her talk — which was the 
 greatest treat of all — I was almost bewildered 
 with my happiness. 
 
 Her home seemed so completely a portion of 
 herself, that in telliug of her I cannot help tell- 
 ing of it likewise, and should like to describe it 
 minutely. 
 
 It was a house such as was used to be built 
 by the landed gentry a century or two ago, just 
 when the type of Elizabethan houses — poetical, 
 but not too comfortable — was merging into that 
 of modern convenience : convenience degenerat- 
 ing into luxury. It was not Gothic at all — had 
 no queer corners — its general plan being four- 
 square; the four reception-rooms making the 
 outside angles, with the large central hall be- 
 tween. Some people might say it was not a 
 picturesque house, but it was what I call an 
 honest house ; in which everything feels real.
 
 56 A BRxWE LADY. 
 
 substantial and sound; avcII .built, well ven- 
 tilated ; watli high ceilings and airy passages, 
 giving one breathing room and walking room ; 
 plenty of windows to see out of, and snug re- 
 cesses to creep into ; warm solid walls, and wide 
 hospitable fireplaces : in short, a house contain- 
 ing every requisite for a home and a family — a 
 large, merry, happy household — contented in 
 itself, and on good terms with the world out- 
 side. And in it Lady de Bougainville lived — all 
 alone. 
 
 She took me from room to room, explaining 
 the plan of the whole house, and showing me 
 the gromid-floor apartments ; drawing-room, 
 dining-room, morning-room, library. All were 
 in perfect order : even the fires laid in the 
 grates, ready to be kindled in a moment, to 
 welcome a large family, or a houseful of guests. 
 And then we went slowly up the beautiful stair- 
 case, and she pointed out the exquisite oak 
 carvings, the painted panels, and highly-decor- 
 ated ceilings ; telling me how they had been 
 found covered up with plaster, whitewash, and
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 57 
 
 other barbarisms of the hist century ; what 
 pains she had taken to disinter them, and restore 
 them to their original state. In describing, she 
 regarded them with a curions tenderness — Hke 
 one who has grown fond of inanimate objects — 
 probably from having long had only inanimate 
 objects to love. 
 
 I ventured no questions; but I must have 
 looked them, for once, turning suddenly to me, 
 she said, 
 
 *' I dare say you think this a large house for 
 one old woman to live in — large and gloomy 
 and empty. But it does not feel empty to me. 
 When one has lived seventy years, one is sm-e 
 to have, whether alone or not, plenty of com- 
 panions; and it depends much upon oneself 
 whether they are pleasant company or not. I 
 am quite content vritlx mine. No, I did not 
 mean ghosts " — (seeing doubtless a shade of 
 slight apprehension on my face, for, like all ima- 
 ginative, solitary children, I had sujffered hor- 
 ribly from supernatural fears.) " I assm-e you, 
 Winifred, my house is not haunted ; I have no
 
 58 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 ghosts ; at least, none that you will see. Be- 
 sides, you are too much of a woman to have a 
 child's sillinesses. How old did you say you 
 were ? I forget." 
 
 I told her, sixteen. 
 
 " I was married the day I was sixteen." 
 
 Then for fifty-four years she must have been 
 Lady de Bougainville. I longed to inquire fur- 
 ther ; to find out what her maiden name was, 
 what her husband had been like, and how they 
 fell in love with one another. They must have 
 been such young lovers, for I had discovered, 
 by arithmetical calculations from the date on 
 his monument, that he was only about five years 
 older than she. How I longed to hear it — this 
 love-story of half a century ago ; interesting 
 and deHcious as all love-stories are to girls of 
 my age, eager to go the way their mothers and 
 grandmothers went, only believing that with 
 themselves the great drama of life would be 
 played out in a far higher manner : as it never 
 has been played before. 
 
 I craved for even a word or two concerning
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 59 
 
 the past to ftill from those lips — what sweet lips 
 they must have been when, at only sixteen, 
 they repeated the marriage-vows ! — but none 
 did fall. The love-story never came. And, 
 kind as she was, there was something about my 
 hostess which at once excited and repressed 
 curiosity. What she chose to reveal, of her own 
 accord, was one thing ; but to attempt to ex- 
 tract it from her was quite another. You felt 
 that at the first daring question she would 
 wither you with her cold rebuke, or in her calm 
 and utterly impassive courtesy speak of some- 
 thing else, as if she had never heard you. The 
 proof-armour of perfect politeness — as smooth 
 and glittering as steel, and almost as invulner- 
 able — was hers, to a degree that I never saw in 
 any other woman. 
 
 Though from the very beginning of our ac- 
 quaintance, either from some instinctive sym- 
 pathy, or from the natural tendency of old age 
 to go back upon its past, especially to the young, 
 with whom it can both reveal and conceal as 
 much as it chooses, Lady de Bougainville often
 
 60 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 let fall fragments of her most private history, 
 which an ingenious fancy could easily put to- 
 gether and fit in, so as to arrive at the truth of 
 thhigs — a much deeper truth than she was 
 aware of having betrayed — still, in all my re- 
 lations towards her I never dared to ask her a 
 direct question. She would have repelled and 
 resented it immediately. 
 
 So, even on this first day, I had the sense to 
 be content with learning no more than she 
 condescended to tell me : in fact I did little else 
 than follow her about the house, and listen while 
 she talked. 
 
 Her conversation at once charmed and puzzled 
 me. It was more " like a book," as the phrase 
 is, than any person's I had ever met ; yet it 
 sounded neither stilted nor affected. It was 
 merely that, from long isolation, she expressed 
 herself more as people write or think than as 
 they talk. This, not because she was very 
 learned — I believe she was quite correct in say- 
 ing she had never been a highly-educated woman 
 — the cleverness in her was not acquired, but
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 61 
 
 origipal; just as her exquisite refinement was 
 not taught, but inborn. Yet these two facts 
 made her society so interesting*. Conversing 
 with her and with every-day people was as dif- 
 ferent as passing from Shakespeare to the daily 
 newspaper. 
 
 It was impossible that such an influence 
 should not affect a gu-1 of my age and dispo- 
 sition — suddenly, decisively, overwhelmingly. 
 I still recall, Avith an intoxication of delight, 
 that soft spring morning, that sunny spring 
 afternoon — for, luncheon over, we went wander- 
 ing about the house again — when I followed 
 her like a dog from room to room, growing 
 every hour more fascinated, and attaching my- 
 self to her with that dog-like faithfulness, which 
 some one (whom I need not now refer to, but 
 who knows me pretty well by this time) says is 
 a part of my natm'e. Well, well, never mind ! 
 It might be better, and it might be worse — for 
 me and for others — that I have this quality. I 
 do not think it w^as the worse, at any rate for 
 her — ^my dear Lady de Bougainville.
 
 62 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 I fancy she rather liked having even a dog- 
 like creature tracking her steps, and looking up 
 in her face, — she had been alone so long. Old 
 as she was, and sad as her life must have been, 
 by nature she was certainly a cheerful-minded 
 person. There was still a curious vitality and 
 elasticity about her, as if in her heart she liked 
 being happy, and seeing other people the same. 
 
 She especially enjoyed my admiration of the 
 tapestry-room, a large salon — the French would 
 call it ; and the word dropped out of her own lips 
 unawares, convincing me more and more of what 
 I did not dare to inquire — her French extraction. 
 She told me, when she first came to Brierley 
 Hall, which had been bought from the Crown, to 
 whom the estate had fallen due, after two cen- 
 turies of wasteful possession by the heirs of some 
 vahant soldier, to whom a grateful monarch had 
 originally presented it, — this room was covered 
 with the commonest papering, until some lucky 
 hole made her discover underneath what looked 
 like tapestry. Further search laid bare six 
 beautiful pieces of work, in perfect preservation.
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 63 
 
 let iuto the wall like pictures ; just as they hung 
 there now, in the soft faded colouring which 
 gives to old tapestry a look at once so beautiful, 
 and tender, and ghostly ; as if one saw hovering 
 over every stitch the shadow of the long-dead 
 fingers that sewed it, 
 
 "How glad you must have been," I said, 
 " when you tore down the horrid papering, and 
 found out all this !" 
 
 " Yes, I was very glad. I liked all old things. 
 Besides," she went on, " the tapestry is fine in it- 
 self; Vandyke even might have designed it. Pos- 
 sibly one of his pupils did : it seems about that 
 period. See, how well they are drawn, these 
 knights and ladies, kings and queens, foresters 
 with their falcons, horsemen wdth their steeds. 
 Such a whirl as it is, such numerous figures, so 
 life-like, and so good !" 
 
 " And what does it all mean, ma'am 1 " 
 
 " Nobody knows ; we have never been able 
 to make out. In some things it might answer 
 to the story of Columbus. Here is a man like 
 him coming before a king and queen — Ferdi-
 
 64 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 nand and Isabella ; they are sitting crowned, 
 you see ; and then this looks like his meeting 
 with them afterwards, laden with the riches of 
 the New World. But all is mere guess-work ; 
 we have no data to go upon. We used to guess 
 endlessly about our new tapestry the first year, 
 then we accepted as it was, and guessed no 
 more. But think — " and she stood gazing 
 dreamily at these faint-coloured, shadowy, life- 
 size figures, which seemed to make the wall alive 
 — " think of all the years it took the artist to 
 design, the sempstresses to complete that tapes- 
 try, and now their very names are forgotten — 
 nay, we cannot even find out what their handi- 
 work meant to portray ! They and it are alike 
 ghosts, as we all shall be soon. ' Man goeth 
 about like a shadow, and disquieteth himself in 
 
 • 'J' 
 vain. 
 
 " Yes," I said ; and with the " priggishness " of 
 youth, being conceited over my knowledge of 
 tlie Bible, I added the remainder of the text : 
 " ' he heapeth up riches, and cannot tell who 
 shall gather them.' "
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 05 
 
 The moment I had uttered the words I felt 
 that I had made a mistake — more than a mis- 
 take, it was an actual cruelty ; one of those 
 chance stabs that we sometimes give to the 
 people we love best, and are most tender over ; 
 — which afterwards we would give the world 
 to recall : and, though it was done most harm- 
 lessly, and in pure ignorance, grieve over and 
 feel as guilty about as if we had committed an 
 actual crime. 
 
 I saw I had somehow unawares struck Lady 
 de Bougainville to the very heart. Not that 
 she showed it much ; she did not speak — no, I 
 forget, I think she did speak, making some com- 
 monplace remark about my familiarity with 
 Scripture ; but there came a grey shadow all 
 over her face, the features quivered visibly, she 
 turned away, and suddenly sat down on the 
 broad window-sill, clasping her arms together 
 on her lap, and looking out at the view ; — then, 
 beyond the view, up to the rosy floating clouds 
 of the spring sunset, mitil gradually its beauty 
 seemed to soothe her, and take away her pain. 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 By-and-by I ventured to ask, (chiefly to break 
 the silence, whether she ever sat m this room. 
 It was a very large room, with six windows, and 
 a good view from each ; but its size and ghostli- 
 ness, and the dim figures on the walls, would 
 make it rather " eerie " to sit in, especially of 
 evenings. 
 
 " Do you think so, child? I do not. I often 
 stay here, quite alone, until bed-time. Would 
 you like to see my bed-room ? Perhaps you 
 will think that a more ' eerie ' place still." 
 
 It certainly was. As large fully as the tapes- 
 try-room, out of which you passed into it by a 
 short flight of stairs. It was divided in the 
 centre by pillars, between which hung heavy 
 curtains, which at pleasure could be made com- 
 pletely to hide the bed. And such a bed 1 — a 
 catafalque rather — raised on a dais, and as- 
 cended by steps. To enter it would have been 
 like going to bed in Westmmster Abbey, and 
 waking up in it one would have felt as if one 
 were a dead hero lying in state. 
 
 What an awful place ! I asked timidly if
 
 A BRAVE LADY. , 67 
 
 she really slept iu that room, and alone 1 
 " Oh ! yes," she answered. " The servants 
 inhabit a different part of the house. Once, 
 when I was ill, this winter, my maid wanted to 
 sleep in a corner there ; she is a good girl, 
 and very fond of me, but I would not let her, 
 I prefer being alone. Seventy, " she added, 
 smiHng, " is not so nearly fearful of solitude as 
 sixteen." 
 
 " And you are really not afi-aid, ma'am ?" 
 " What should I be afraid of? my own com- 
 pany, or the company of those ghosts I spoke 
 off which are very gentle ghosts, and will never 
 come to you, child," and once more she laid 
 her hand upon my head. I think she rather liked 
 my curls ; she said they were *' pretty curls." 
 " Child, when you are as old as I am, you will 
 have found out that after all we must learn to 
 be content with loneliness. For, more or less, 
 we live alone, and assuredly we shall die 
 alone. Who will go with us on that last, 
 last journey? Which of our dear ones have 
 we been able to go with ? We can but take 
 
 F 2
 
 68 ^ A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 them in our arms to the awful shore, see them 
 sHp anchor and sail away — whither ? — We know 
 not." 
 
 " But," 1 whispered, " God knows 1" 
 
 Lady de Bougainville started, as if my simple 
 words had cast a sudden light into her mind. 
 
 " Yes, you are right," she said, " it is good 
 for us always to remember that: we cannot at 
 first, but sometimes we do afterwards. So," — 
 turning her eyes on the great catafalque of a 
 bed, with its massive draperies and nodding 
 plumes — " I lie down every night, and rise up 
 every morning, quite content ; thinking, with 
 equal content, that I shall some day lie down 
 there, to rise up no more." 
 
 I was awed. Not exactly frightened : there 
 was nothing to alarm one in that soft measured 
 voice, talking composedly of things we do not 
 usually talk about, and which to young people 
 seem always so startling — but I was awed. I had 
 never thought much about death; had never come 
 face to face with it. It was still to me the mys- 
 terious secret of the universe, rather beautiful
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 69 
 
 than terrible. My iraagiiiation played with it, 
 often enough, but my heart had never experi- 
 enced it, — not like hers. 
 
 Finding nothing to say that seemed worth 
 saying, I went round the room ; examining the 
 pictures which hung upon its walls. They seemed 
 all portraits, of different sizes and sorts, from cra- 
 yon sketches and black silhouettes to full-length 
 oil paintings — of young people of different ages, 
 from childhood to manhood and womanhood. 
 They had the interest which attaches to all por- 
 traits, bad, good, or indifferent, more than to 
 many grander pictures ; and I stood and looked 
 at them, wondering who they were, but not 
 daring to inquire, until she solved my difficulty 
 by saying, as we went out of the room : 
 
 " These are my childi-eu." Not " these were,"' 
 but " these are." — Her six dead childi'en. 
 
 And their father ? 
 
 I did not ask about him, and there was cer- 
 tainly no portrait in the room which could pos- 
 sibly have been Sir Edward de Bougainville. 
 Once or twice, in showing me the house, she had
 
 70 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 cursorily mentioned his name, " Sir Edward 
 bought this," or " Sir Edward preferred that," but 
 it was always as " Sir Edward," never as *' my 
 husband," — that fond name which many widows 
 always use, as if tenaciously anxious that death 
 itself should not loosen one link of the precious 
 tie. 
 
 Lady de Bougainville retired to dress for din- 
 ner, and I had to do the same. Hurrying over 
 my toilette, and eager to re-examine the house 
 at every available minute, I came ignorantly 
 into the only room where we had not penetrated 
 — the dining-room — and there saw, lit up by the 
 blazing fire, the only picture there — a large por- 
 trait in oils. 
 
 "Who is thatf I took courage presently 
 to ask of the man-servant who was laying the 
 table, with glittering plate and delicate glass, 
 more beautiful than any I had ever seen. 
 
 " It's Sir Edward, miss, — my lady's hus- 
 band." 
 
 " Oh, of course," I said, trying to look uncon- 
 cerned, and speedily quitting the room, for I
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 71 
 
 was c\ little afraid of that most respectable foot- 
 man. 
 
 But, in truth, T never was more astonished 
 than at this discovery. First the portrait was 
 in clerical robes ; and, though I ought to have 
 known it, I certainly did not know that a " Sir " 
 could be also a " Reverend." Then it was such 
 a common face, — good-looking, perhaps, in so 
 far as abundant whiskers, great eyes, rosy 
 cheeks, and a large nose, constitute handsome- 
 ness ; but there was nothing in it, — nothing 
 whatever ! Neither thought, feeling, nor intel- 
 lect, were likelv ever to have existed under 
 those big bones, covered with comfortable flesh 
 and blood. Perhaps this was partly the artist's 
 fault. He must have been a commonplace 
 artist, from the stiff formal attitude in which he 
 had placed his sitter — at a table, with an open 
 book before him, and a crimson curtain behmd. 
 But Titian himself would have struggled vainly 
 to impart interest to that round forehead, long 
 weak chin, and rabbit mouth, with its good-na- 
 tured, self-complacent smile.
 
 72 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 I contrasted the portrait mentally with the 
 li\aug face of Lady de Bougainville, — her sharp- 
 ly-cut, yet mobile features, her firm close lips, 
 her brilliant eyes. Could it be possible that this 
 man was her husband ? Had I, with the imag- 
 inative faculty of youth, constructed a romance 
 which never existed ? Had her life been, to say 
 the least, a great mistake — at any rate, so far as 
 concerned her marriage ? How could she marry 
 a man like that ! I know not whether I most 
 pitied, or may Heaven forgive me my moment- 
 ary harsh judgment, given with the rash re- 
 action peculiar to young people — condemned 
 her. 
 
 Yes, I was hard; to the living and to the 
 dead likewise. The portrait may not have been 
 like the original ; I have seen many a good face 
 so villanously reproduced by an inferior artist, 
 that you would hardly recognise your best 
 friend. But, granting that he was handsome — 
 which from after and circumstantial e\ddence I 
 am pretty sure of^still. Sir Edward de Bou- 
 gainville could never have had either a very
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 73 
 
 clevei: or very pleasant face. Not even in his 
 youth, when the portrait was painted. It was a 
 presentation portrait, in a heavy gilt frame, 
 which bore the motto, " From an admiring Con- 
 gregation," of some church in Dublin. 
 
 Then, had Sir Edward been an Irishman ? It 
 was decidedly an Irish face — not of the broad 
 and flat-nosed, but the dark and good-featured 
 type. De Bougainville was not at all an Irish 
 name ; but I knew there had been a considera- 
 ble influx of French families into Ireland after 
 the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. How I 
 longed to ask questions ! but it was impossible. 
 
 At dinner, my hostess sat with her back to 
 the portrait ; I, directly opposite to it, and her. 
 The candelabra glimmered between us — how I 
 love the delicate pure light of wax candles ! — 
 glimmered on her softly-tinted old face, set off 
 by the white muslin of her v^adow's cap, and the 
 rich lace at her throat and on her bosom ; upon 
 her shining black silk dress, and her numerous 
 rings. As I have said, her appearance was es- 
 sentially aristocratic, but she had come to that
 
 74 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 time of life when only a noble soul will make it 
 so : when the most beantiful woman in the world, 
 if she have only beauty to recommend her, 
 fades into commonplace plainness ; and neither 
 birth nor breeding will supply the want of what 
 includes and outshines them both — the lamp 
 burning iyiside the lovely house ; and so making 
 it lovely even to its latest moment of decay. 
 
 This was exactly what I saw in her, and did 
 not see in Sir Edward de Bougainville. The 
 portrait quite haunted me. I wondered how 
 she could sit underneath it day after day ; whe- 
 ther she liked or disliked to look at it, or whe- 
 ther during long years she had grown so used 
 to it that she scarcely saw it at all. And yet as 
 we rose to retire, those big staring eyes of the 
 dead man seemed to follow her out of the room, 
 as if to inquire, " Have you forgotten me ?" 
 
 Had she? Can a woman, after ever so sad a 
 wedded life, ever so long a widdowhood, quite 
 forget the husband of her youth, the father of 
 her children ? There are circumstances when 
 she might do so — other circumstances when I
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 75 
 
 almost think she ought. Nevertheless, I doubt 
 if she ever can. This, without any sentimental 
 belief in never-dying love — for love can be kill- 
 ed outi-ight ; and when its life has fled, better 
 that its corpse should be buried out of sight : 
 let there be no ridiculous shams kept up, but 
 let a silence complete as that of the grave fall — 
 between even child and parent, husband and 
 wife. Still, as to forgetting? Men may ; I 
 cannot tell ; but we women never forget. 
 
 Lady de Bougainville took my arm — a mere 
 kindliness, as she required no support, and was 
 much taller than I — and we w^ent out of the 
 dining-room through the hall, where, in spite of 
 the lamp, the moonlight lay visibly on the scag- 
 liola pillars, clear and cold. I could not help 
 shivering. She noticed it, and immediately 
 gave orders that instead of the drawing-room 
 we should go and sit in the cedar parlour. 
 
 " It will be warmer and more cheerful for you, 
 Winifred ; and besides, I like my cedar parlour ; 
 it reminds me of my friend. Miss Harriett Byron. 
 You have read ' Su' Charles Grandison V "
 
 76 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 I had, and burst into enthusiasm over the 
 " man of men," doubting if there are ever such 
 men nowadays. 
 
 " No, nor ever were," said, with a sharp ring 
 in her voice, Lady de Bougainville. 
 
 Then, showing me the wainscotting of cedar- 
 wood, she told me how it also had been dis- 
 covered, like the tapestry and the oak carvings, 
 when Brierley Hall was put under repair ; which 
 had occupied a whole year and more after the 
 house was bought. 
 
 " Why did you buy it if it was so dilapidat- 
 ed?" I asked. 
 
 " Because we wanted something old, yet 
 something that would make into a family seat 
 — ^the root of a numerous race. And we re- 
 quired a large house ; there were so many of us 
 then. Now " 
 
 She stopped. Accustomed as she had grown 
 to the past, with much of its pain deadened by 
 the merciful anaesthesia of time and old age, 
 still, talking to me, a stranger, seemed to revive 
 it a little. As she stood by the fire, the light
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 KhiuiDg on her rings — a heap of emeralds and 
 diamonds, almost concealing the wedding-ring, 
 now a mere thread of gold — I could see how she 
 twisted her fingers together, and clasped and 
 unclasped her hands ; physical actions implying 
 sharp mental pain. 
 
 But she said nothing, and after we had had 
 our coJBfee — delicious French cafe-au-lait, served 
 in the most exquisite Sevres chma — she took up 
 a book, and giving me another, we both sat 
 reading quietly, almost without speaking an- 
 other syllable, until my bedtime. 
 
 When I went to bed — early, by her command 
 — she touched both my cheeks, French fashion, 
 with her lips. ]\Iany will laugh at the confession 
 — but that kiss seemed to thrill me all through 
 with a felicity as deep and intense as that of a 
 young knight, who, having won his spurs, re- 
 ceives for the first time the benediction and 
 salutation of his beloved. 
 
 When I entered my room, it was bright with 
 firelight and the glow of scarlet curtains. 
 I revelled in its novel luxuries, as if I had been
 
 78 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 accustomed to them all my days. They grati- 
 fied my taste, my imagiuation, my senses — 
 shall I say my soul ? Yes, a part of one's soul 
 does take pleasure, and has a right to take 
 pleasure, in material comfort and beauty. I had 
 greatly enjoyed wandering over that handsome 
 house, dining at the well-appointed table, spend- 
 ing the evening in the pretty cedar parlour. 
 Now, when 1 retired into my own chamber, into 
 the innermost chamber of my own heart, how 
 fared it with me ? 
 
 Let me tell the truth. I sat awhile wrapped 
 in purely sensuous satisfaction. Then I thought 
 of my poor father, sitting in his cold study ; 
 having none of these luxuries, nor caring for 
 them. An ugly house to him was the same as 
 a pretty one : a blank street wall as a lovely 
 view. Pleasant things were altogether wasted 
 upon him ; nay, he despised them, and would 
 have despised me, I knew, had he seen in me 
 any tendency — alas ! an hereditary tendency — 
 to luxury and selfish extravagance. Yet I had 
 it, or I feared so sometimes ; but perhaps the
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 79 
 
 very fear enabled me to keep it under whole- 
 some control. It sometimes is so. The most 
 strictly truthful person I ever knew, said to me 
 once, " 1 believe I was born a liar, till I found 
 out that lying ran in our blood, and that cured 
 me. 
 
 My cure came in a different way, but not im- 
 mediately. I well recall the bitterness with 
 which, this night, I sat comparing my bedroom 
 in Brierley Hall with the wretched attic which 
 I tried so hard to make tolerably pretty, and 
 could not. Was I destined always to live thus 
 — struggling vainly against natural tastes, 
 which Providence did not choose to gratify? 
 Were they therefore wrong 1 Was it any blame 
 to Lady de Bougainville that in spite of her 
 saying, if I were as rich as she, " she should be 
 very sorry for me," she should be at this minute 
 ascending her beautiful staircase to her stately 
 bedroom — I heard her shut its door — and laying 
 down her lovely hair upon those laced pillows, 
 as she must have done all her life ? She had 
 doubtless been born to all these pleasant ueces-
 
 80 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 saries ; I, if I wanted them, must earn them. 
 Were they wrong in themselves, or only wrong 
 when attained at the sacrifice of higher and 
 better things ? Does a blessing, which, freely 
 bestowed by Heaven, may be as freely and 
 righteously enjoyed, become a sin when, being 
 denied, it is so madly craved after as to corrupt 
 our whole nature ? 
 
 I was sitting thus, trying to solve in my fool- 
 ish childish mind all the puzzles of the universe, 
 with the gaunt, grim, reproachful face of John 
 the Baptist looking down on me from overhead, 
 when a slight knock came to my door — three 
 little knocks indeed. My nerves had been 
 Avound up to such a pitch of excitement that I 
 forgot the simple solution of the mystery — that 
 Lady de Bougainville's room had only a small 
 antechamber between it and mine ; and when 
 the door opened, and a tall figure in a dressing- 
 gown of grey flannel, not unlike a monk or a 
 nun, stood there, I screamed with superstitious 
 terror. 
 
 "Foolish child!" was all she said, and ex-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 81 
 
 plained that she had seen the li^ht shining un- 
 der iny door, and that girls of sixteen ought to 
 have their " beauty sleep " for a full hour before 
 midnight. And then she asked me what 1 was 
 doing ? 
 
 " Nothing, only thinking." 
 
 " What were you thinking about ?" 
 
 From the very first, when she put any ques- 
 tion in that way, I never thought of answering 
 by the slightest prevarication — nothing but the 
 direct, entire truth. Nobody could, to her. 
 
 " I was thinking about earning a fortune ; 
 such a fortune as yours." 
 
 She started, as if someone had touched her 
 with a cold dead hand. 
 
 " What do vou know of mv fortune or of 
 me?" 
 
 " Nothing," I eagerly answered, only adding 
 that I wished I was as rich as she Avas, or could 
 in any Avay get riches — with many other extra- 
 vagant expressions ; for I had worked myself 
 up into a most excited state, and hardly knew 
 what I was saying. 
 
 VOL, I. G
 
 82 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 Lady de Bougainville must have seen this, 
 for, iustead of sending me at once to bed, she 
 sat down beside me, and took my hand. 
 
 " And so you would like to earn a fortune as 
 I earned mine, and to enjoy it as I enjoy 
 mine? Poor child!" She sat thoughtful a 
 little, then suddenly said : " I do not like even 
 a child to deceive herself. Shall I tell you a 
 stoiy '?" 
 
 I expected it would have been the story of 
 her life ; but no, it was only a little fable of a 
 shepherd who, elevated from his sheepfolds to 
 be vizier to a caliph, was accused of appropriat- 
 ing his master's treasures, and hiding them in 
 a wooden box which he always kept beside him. 
 At last, spurred on by the vizier's enemies, the 
 caliph insisted on seeing the contents of the 
 box, and came with all his courtiers to witness 
 its opening. It contained only a ragged woollen 
 coat, shepherd's sandals, and a crook. 
 
 '' And now, Winifred, would you like to play 
 the caliph and the envious courtiers'? Will you 
 come and look at my hidden treasure V
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 83 
 
 She led the way into her bed-room, where the 
 fireliglit shone on masses of damask drapery, and 
 mirrors which at each step reproduced our figures. 
 How noble and stately hers was, even in the grey 
 dressing-g(nvn ! At the foot of the bed, (^ite 
 hidden by a velvet cushion which covered it, lay 
 one of those old-fashioned hair-trunks which 
 were in use about half a century ago. She un- 
 locked it, and therein was — what think you ? 
 
 A gown of white dimity, or what had been 
 white, but was now yellow with lying by, three 
 little girls' frocks, of commonest lilac print, two 
 pairs of boys' shoes, very much woi-n, and, 
 patched all over with the utmost neatness, a 
 pair of threadbare boy's trousers. 
 
 This was all. I looked into the box, as I 
 might have looked into a coffin, but I said not 
 a word ; her face warned me I had better not. 
 Silently she locked up the trunk again ; then, 
 with a tender carefulness, as if she were wrap- 
 ping up a baby, laid the cushions over it, and, 
 taking my hand, led me back to my room. 
 
 g2
 
 84 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 " Now go to bed, and to sleep, Winifred ; but 
 cease dreaming about a fortune, and envy me 
 mine no more."
 
 85 
 
 THE STORY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 T AM going back in my history of Eady de 
 -■- Bougainville nearly fifty years. 
 
 But before taking it up at that far-away 
 period, so long before I knew her, and continuing 
 it down to the time when I did know her — 
 where I have just now let it drop — let me say a 
 few words. 
 
 To give the actual full details of any human 
 life is simply impossible. History cannot do it, 
 nor biography, nor yet autobiography ; for, even 
 if we wished, Ave could not tell the exact truth 
 about ourselves. Paradoxical as it may sound, 
 I have often thought that the nearest approxi- 
 mation to absolute truth is fiction ; because the
 
 86 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 novelist presents, not so much literal facts, 
 which can be twisted and distorted to almost 
 an}^ shape, as the one underlying verity of 
 human nature. Thus, Lady de Bougainville's 
 story, as I have gradually gathered it from her- 
 self and others, afterwards putting together all 
 the data which came into my hands, is given by 
 me probably as near reality as any one not gift- 
 ed with clairvoyance could give it. I believe I 
 have put " the facts of the case " with as much 
 veracity as most historians. Nor am I bolder 
 in discriminating motives and judging actions 
 than many histonans — nay, than we all often 
 assume to be, just as if we were omnipresent 
 and omniscient, towards our poor fellow-worms. 
 But still, any one with common sense and com- 
 mon perception, studying human nature, must 
 see that certain effects must follow certain 
 causes, and produce certain final results, as sure 
 as that the daylight follows the sun. Therefore, 
 when we writers make a story, and our readers 
 speculate about it, and " wonder how it -will 
 end," we rather smile at them. We know that,
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 87 
 
 if it is true to human life, it can end but in one 
 way, — subject to various moditications, but 
 still only in one way. Granting such and such 
 premises, the result must follow, inexorable as 
 fate. 
 
 And so, in course of years, I arrived at Lady 
 de Bougainville's history as accurately as if she 
 herself had written it down : nay, more so, for 
 upon various points of it her tongue was, and 
 ever would have been, firmly sealed, while upon 
 other points circumstances and her own peculiar 
 character made her incompetent to form a judg- 
 ment. But it was easy enough to form my own, 
 less from what she related than by what she 
 unwittingly betrayed, still more by what I 
 learned, — though not till after she was gone, — 
 by the one only person who had known her in 
 her youth, the old Irishwoman, Bridget Halloran, 
 who then lived a peaceful life of busy idleness 
 in Lady de Bougainville's house, and afterwards 
 ended her days as an honoured inmate in mine. 
 
 Bridget, as soon as she knew me, and grew 
 fond of me, had no reserves ; but her mistress
 
 88 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 had many. Never once did she sit down to re- 
 late to me her " history," — people do not do that 
 in real life ; and yet she was for ever letting 
 fall facts and incidents which, put together, 
 made a complete and continuous autobiography. 
 Her mind, ever dwelling on the past, and indif- 
 ferent to, or oblivious of, the present, had ac- 
 quu-ed a vividness and ramuteness of recollec- 
 tion that was quite remarkable. I never ques- 
 tioned her : that was impossible. x-Vt the slight- 
 est indication of impertinent curiosity she would 
 draw in her horns, or retire at once into her 
 shell like any hermit crab, and it was difficult 
 to lure her out again. But generally, by simply 
 listening while she talked, and putting this and 
 that together by the light of what I knew of her 
 character, I arrived at a very fair estimate of 
 the total facts, and the motives which produced 
 them. 
 
 Upon these foundations I have built my story. 
 It is no truer and no falser than our reproduc- 
 tions of human nature, in history, biography, 
 and romance, usually are, and as such I leave
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 89 
 
 it. The relation lianns no one. And it will be 
 something if I can snatch out of the common 
 oblivion of women's lives — I mean women who 
 die the last of their race, " and leave the world 
 no pattern " — the strange, chequered life of my 
 dear Lady de Bougainville. 
 And so to begin : — 
 
 More than half a century ago, the Rev. 
 Edward Scanlan came to be cm-ate of the 
 parish in the small West of England town of 
 Ditchley St. Mary's, commonly called Ditchley 
 only. 
 
 At that time the Establishment — especially 
 as it existed in the pro\*inces — was in a very dif- 
 ferent condition from what it is at present. 
 " Orthodoxy" meant each clergyman doing that 
 which was right in his own eyes, as to rubric, 
 doctrine, or clerical government ; that is, within 
 certain limits of sleepy decorum, and settled 
 common usage. Beyond the pale of the Church 
 there existed a vague dread of the Pope on one 
 side, and Dissent on the other ; and people had
 
 90 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 a general consciousness tliat the Establishment 
 alone was really " respectable " to belong to ; 
 but within its boundary all went smoothly 
 enough. Low Church, High Church, Broad 
 Church, were terms miknown. There was not 
 sufficient earnestness to create schism. One 
 only section of new thinkers had risen up, origi- 
 nating with young Mr. Simeon of Cambridge, 
 who either called themselves or were called, 
 " Evangelicals," and spoke much about " the 
 gospel," which the more ardent of them fancied 
 that they and they alone had received, and were 
 commissioned to preach. This made them a 
 little obnoxious to their old-fashioned brethren ; 
 but still they were undoubtedly a set of very 
 earnest, sincere, and hard-working clergymen, 
 whose influence in the English, and more par- 
 ticularly the Irish Church, was beginning to be 
 clearly felt ; only it did not extend to such re- 
 mote parishes as that of Ditchley. 
 
 The Ditchley rector was a clergyman of the 
 old school entirely : when still a young man he 
 Avas presented to the living through family in-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 91 
 
 fluence, and hafi fulfilled his duties decently, if 
 rather grudgingly, his natiu-al bias being in a 
 contrary direction, and his natural disposition 
 being from tliis or some other reason corre- 
 spondingly soured. He was a man of education 
 and taste ; had travelled much on the Continent 
 when he was only a younger brother, and before 
 it was expected that he would have dropped in, 
 as he did, late in life, for the whole accumulation 
 of the family property ; — alas ! rather too late — 
 for by that time Henry Oldham was a confirmed 
 old bachelor. 
 
 Since then he had crept on peacefully to 
 septuageuarianism, the last of his race. He never 
 went to live at Oldham Court, but let it to 
 strangers, and kept on his modest establishment 
 at the Rectory, which was a very pretty place, 
 having once been a monastery, with a beautiful 
 garden, in which he greatly delighted, and over 
 which he was said to spend extravagant sums. 
 Otherwise he lived carefully, some thought pen- 
 uriously, but he was charitable enough to the 
 poor of his parish ; and he read prayers now and
 
 92 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 then, and preached a sermon, fifteen minutes 
 long, regularly once a month ; which comprised 
 for him the whole duty of a clergyman. 
 
 I have seen Mr. Oldham's portrait, engraved, 
 after his death, by the wish of his parishioners, 
 represented sitting at his library-table, in gown 
 and bands. His sermon lies before him, and he 
 has the open Bible under his right hand, as in 
 the portrait of the Reverend Sir Edward de 
 Bougainville. But he is very unlike that ad- 
 mired individual, being a little spare old man, 
 with a funny scratch wig, and a keen, caustic, 
 though not unkindly exj^ression ; more like a 
 lawyer than a clergyman, and more like a coun- 
 try gentleman than either. 
 
 Except this monthly sermon, and his neces- 
 sary charities, which were no burthen to him, 
 Mr. Oldham being, as has been said, a very 
 wealthy man, though nobody knew the pre- 
 cise amount of his wealth, — the rector left all 
 his parish responsibilities to his curate, whom 
 he had picked up, during one of his rare ab- 
 sences from home, soon after his former as-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 93 
 
 sistant in tho duty — a college cluun nearly as 
 old as himself — died. 
 
 How such a strong contrast as the Reverend 
 Edward Scanlan ever succeeded the Reverend 
 Thomas Heavisides was a standing wonder to 
 Ditchley. He was young, handsome, and an 
 Irishman, belonging to that section of the Irish 
 Church which coincided with the English " Evan- 
 gelicals," except that in Ireland they added poli- 
 tics to religion, and were outrageously and vehe- 
 mently " Orange " — a term of which, merciful- 
 ly, the present generation has almost forgotten 
 the meaning. 
 
 Mr. Scanlan had been, in his native country, 
 as Ditchley soon discovered — for he had no hesi- 
 tation in betraying the fact — a popular preacher. 
 Indeed, his principal piece of furniture in his 
 temporary lodgings was his own portrait in that 
 character, presented to him just before he left 
 Dublin — and he maintained the credit of a po- 
 pular preacher still. On his very first Sunday, 
 he took the parish by storm. He literally 
 " roused " the congregation, who were accus-
 
 94 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 tomed to do nothing but sleep during the ser- 
 mon. But no one could sleep during that of the 
 new curate. He preached extempore, which of 
 itself was a startling novelty, alarming the old 
 people a little, but delighting the young ones. 
 Then his delivery was so loud and energetic ; 
 he beat the pulpit cushion so impressively with 
 his white riuged hand ; and his sentences rolled 
 off with such brilhant fluency. He never paused 
 a moment for a word — ideas nobody asked for ; 
 and his mellifluous Irish accent sounded so origi- 
 nal, so charming. His looks too — his abundance of 
 black hair and large blue-black eyes— Irish eyes — 
 which he knew how to make the very most of. 
 Though he was short of stature and rather 
 stump in figure compared to the well-grown 
 young Saxons about Ditchley, still all the 
 Ditchley ladies at once pronounced him " ex- 
 ceedingly handsome," and disseminated that 
 opinion accordingly. 
 
 On the top of it — perhaps consequent upon 
 it — came, after a Sunday or two, the further 
 opinion, "exceedingly clever." Certainly Air.
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 95 
 
 Scanlari's sermons were very unlike anything 
 ever Ijefore heard in Ditchlcy. He seized upon 
 sacred subjects in a dashing, familiar way — 
 handled them with easy con^posure ; illustrat- 
 ed them with all sorts of poetical similes, 
 taken from everything in heaven and earth ; 
 smothered them up with flowers of imagery — 
 so that the original thought, if there was any 
 at all, became completely hidden in its multi- 
 plicity of adornments. 
 
 Sometimes, in his extreme volubility of 
 speech, Mr. Scanlau used illustrations whose 
 familiarity almost approached the ludicrous, 
 thereby slightly scandalising the sober people 
 of Ditchley. But they soon forgave him ; when 
 a man talks so much and so fast, he must make 
 slips sometimes — and he was so pleasant in his 
 manner, so meekly subservient to criticism, 
 or so calmly indifferent to it, that it soon died 
 away; more especially as the rector himself 
 had the good taste and good feeling never 
 to join in anything that was said either for or 
 against his curate. In which example he was
 
 96 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 followed by the better families of the place — 
 staunch old Tories, with whom a clergyman was 
 a clergyman, and not amenable to the laws 
 which regulate common men. They declared 
 that whoever Mr. Oldham chose was sure to 
 be the right person, and were perfectly satis- 
 fied. 
 
 Mr. Oldham was satisfied too — or at least ap- 
 peared so. He always showed Mr. Scanlan 
 every possible politeness, and professed himself 
 perfectly contented with him, — as he was with 
 most things that saved himself from trouble. He 
 had had in his youth a hard, in his age an easy 
 life ; and if there was one thing he disliked 
 more than another, it was taking trouble. The 
 Irish exuberance of Mr. Scanlan filled up all 
 gaps, socially as well as clerically, and lifted 
 the whole weight of the parish from the old 
 man's shoulders. So, without any foolish 
 jealousy, Mr. Oldham allowed his charming 
 young curate to carry all before him ; and 
 moreover gave him a salary, which, it was 
 whispered, was far more than j\Ir. Heavisides
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 97 
 
 had ever received ; nay, more than was given 
 to any curate in tlie neighbonrhood. But 
 then Mr. Scanlan was so very superior a 
 preacher, and (alas ! for the Ditcliky young 
 ladies when they found it out) Ik- was already a 
 married man. 
 
 This last fact, when it leaked out, which it 
 did not for a week or two, was, it nnist be 
 owned, a considerable blow. The value of the 
 new curate decreased at once. But Ditchley 
 was too dull a place, and the young Irishman 
 too great a novelty, for the reaction to be very 
 serious. 
 
 So, after a few cynical remarks of the sour 
 grape pattern, as to how very early and impru- 
 dently he must have married — the Irish always 
 did — how difficult he would find it to keep a 
 wife and family on a curate's income, and how 
 very inferior a person the lady would probably 
 be — My. Scanlan's star again rose, and he was 
 generally accepted by the little community. 
 
 It is a mistake to suppose that the Irish are 
 unappreciated in England — especially provincial 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 England. Often the slow, bovine, solid Briton 
 is greatly taken by the lively-tempered, easy, 
 mercurial Celt, who both supplies a want, and 
 creates an excitement. A gentlemanly, clever, 
 and attractive young Hibernian will drop sud- 
 denly down upon an old-fashioned English coun- 
 try-town, amuse the men, captivate the women, 
 and end by putting his bridle on the neck of 
 ever so many of these mild stolid agricultural 
 animals — leading them by the nose completely, 
 for a little Avhile — as did the gentleman who 
 had just made his appearance in Ditchley. For 
 weeks nothing was talked of but the Reverend 
 Edward Scanlan— his brilliant preaching — his 
 good looks, his agreeable manners. Every girl 
 in the town would have been in love with him 
 but for that uncomfortable impediment, his wife. 
 Great was the speculation concerning her — 
 what kind of person she was likely to be. Im- 
 agination had full time to develop itself: for 
 the curate occupied his lodgings alone for three 
 months, during which time — as he confidential- 
 ly, and not without much anxious and husband-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 9i) 
 
 like feeling, told the matrons of the place — Mrs. 
 Scanlan was awaiting at his mother's house in 
 Dublin the birth of their second child. 
 
 Then, he had a mother, and she had a house ; 
 — two facts which, in the paucity of information 
 concerning him, were eagerly seized upon, and 
 discussed exhaustively. Indeed, these conjugal 
 confessions seemed to open to the young man 
 all the maternal arms in Ditchley — Ditchley 
 town, that is. The county families still hung 
 back a little, pausing till they could discover 
 something certain about Mr. Scanlan's ante- 
 cedents. 
 
 This was not easy. Fifty years ago London 
 itself was very far off from the West of Eng-- 
 land, and Ireland seemed a terra incognita as dis- 
 tant as the antipodes. Nor, except letting fall 
 in his conversation a good many titled names, 
 which were recognized as belonging to the re- 
 ligious aristocracy of the period, did Mr. Scan- 
 lan say much about his family or connexions. 
 He was apparently that odd mixture of candour 
 and secretiveness which is peculiarly Celtic — 
 
 II 2
 
 100 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 Higlilaud and Irish. While vohible enough 
 concerning himself personally, of his wife, his 
 parents, and his relatives generally — who could 
 not have been numerous, as he was an only 
 child — he said remarkably little. 
 
 It is a curious fact, and a contradiction to 
 certain amusing legal fictions concerning the 
 conjugal estate — that whatever a man may be, 
 and however great a personage theoretically, 
 practically his social status is decided by liis 
 wife. Not so much by her social status or ori- 
 gin, as by the sort of woman she is in herself. 
 King Cophetua may woo the beggar-maid, and 
 if she has a queenly nature she will make an ex- 
 cellent queen ; but if he chooses a beggar in 
 royal robes, they will soon drop off, and the 
 ugly mendicant appear ; — then King Cophetua 
 may turn beggar, but she will never make a 
 queen. 
 
 And so, in every rank of life, unless a man 
 chooses a woman who is caj)able of keeping up 
 at home the dignity which he labours for in the 
 world, he will soon find his own progress in life
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 101 
 
 sorely hampered and impeded, his usefulness nar- 
 rowed, liis honours thrown away. 
 
 Mr. Scanlan Avas no doubt a very charming- 
 man — quite the gentleman, everybody said ; and 
 his tastes and habits were those of a gentleman, 
 — at least of a person who has been well off all 
 his life. Indeed, he everywhere gave the im- 
 pression of having been brought up in great 
 luxury as a child, with ponies to ride, unlimited 
 shooting and fishing, &c. — the sort of life be- 
 fitting a squire's son ; on the strength of which, 
 though a clergyman, he became hand in glove 
 with all the rollicking squires' sons round 
 about. 
 
 Ditchley puzzled itself a little concerning his 
 name. Scanlan did not sound very aristocratic, 
 but then English ears never appreciate Irish pa- 
 tronymics. The only time that anyone in this 
 neighbourhood had ever seen it — (the flict was 
 breathed about tenderly, and never reached ihe 
 curate) — was upon a stray porter bottle — " Scan- 
 lan and Co.'s Dublin stout" — but that might 
 have been a mere coincidence : no doubt there
 
 102 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 were many Scanlans all over Ireland. And even 
 if it were not so — if Mr. Scanlan did really be- 
 long to the " stout " family — what harm was it ? 
 Who had not heard of illustrious brewers? 
 Whitbread in England, Guinness in Ireland, — 
 were they not names high in honour, especially 
 among the religious world of the day — the 
 Evangelical set — which, however, the old-fash- 
 ioned, easy-going church people might differ 
 from it, had undoubtedly begun to work a great 
 revolution in the Establishment ? 
 
 Mr. Scanlan belonged to it, and evidently glo- 
 rified himself much in the fact. It was such an 
 exceedingly respectable section of the commun- 
 ity ; there were so many titled and wealthy 
 names connected with it ; even a poor curate 
 might gather from his alliance therewith a 
 secondary honour. Nevertheless, the county 
 society, which was very select, and not easily 
 approachable, paused in its judgment upon the 
 Reverend Edward Scanlan, until it had seen 
 his wife. Then there was no longer any doubt 
 concerning him.
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 103 
 
 I should tliink not I I could imagine how- 
 she looked the first time she appeared in public, 
 which was at church, for she arrived at Ditch- 
 ley on a Saturda}' — arrived alone with her two 
 little babies — both babies, for one was just eigh- 
 teen months the elder of the other — and their 
 nurse, a thorough Irishwoman, very young, very 
 untidy, very faithful, and very ugly. Well 
 could I picture her as she walked up the church 
 aisle, — though perhaps her noble kind of beauty 
 would at first be hardly perceptible to these 
 good Ditchley people, accustomed to fair Saxon 
 complexions, plump figures, and cheeks rosy and 
 round, whereas hers were pale and thin, and 
 her eyes dark, with heavy circles underneath 
 them. Besides, she was very tall ; and slender, 
 almost to tenuity ; and her early maternity, 
 combined with other cares, had taken from her 
 the first fresh bloom of youth. x\t nineteen she 
 looked rather older than her husband, though 
 he was her senior by some years. " What a 
 pity ! " Ditchley said, in its comments upon 
 her that Sunday ; " why will Irishwomen marry
 
 104 A BRAYE LADY. 
 
 SO young ?" — until they found out she was not 
 an Irishwoman at alh 
 
 What she was, or where she came from, they 
 had at first no means of guessing. She spoke 
 Enghsh perfectly. Nevertheless, as the ladies 
 who called upon her during the ensuing week 
 detected, she had certainly some sort of foreign 
 accent ; but whether French, German, or Span- 
 ish, the untravelled natives of Ditchley were 
 quite unable to discover. And even the boldest 
 and most inquisitive of them found — I can well 
 believe it! — a certain difficulty in putting in- 
 trusive questions, or indeed questions of any 
 kind, to Mrs. Scanlan. They talked about her 
 babies, of whom she seemed irrationally proud ; 
 about her husband, to whose praises she listened 
 with a sweet, calm, appreciative smile ; and then 
 they went away, having found out about her 
 just as much as they knew the week before — 
 viz., that she was Mrs. Scanlan. 
 
 Nevertheless, she burst upon Ditchley like a 
 revelation, — this beautiful, well-bred young 
 woman, who, though only the curate's wife,
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 105 
 
 living ill very comuiou funiislied lodgings, 
 seemed fully the equal of every lady %vlio called 
 upon her. Yet she made nobody uncioudbrtable. 
 Those who came to patronize forgot to do it, 
 that was all ; while the poorer and humbler ones, 
 who, from her looks at church had been at first 
 a little afraid of her — doubting she would be 
 " stand-offish " and disagreeable — found her so 
 pleasant, that they were soon quite at their ease, 
 and went away to trumpet her praises far and 
 near. 
 
 While she — how did she receive this praise, 
 blame, or criticism ? Nobody could find out. 
 She had all the simplicity and naturalness of 
 one who takes no trouble to assert a position 
 which she has had all her life ; is quite indifferent 
 to outside shows of wealth or consequence, pos- 
 sessing that W'ithin which is independent of 
 either ; easily accessible to all comers ; consider- 
 ing neither " What do other people think of 
 you ?" or " I wonder what you are now thinking 
 of me ?" but welcoming each and all with the 
 calm, gentle graciousness of a lady who has
 
 106 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 been, to use the cuvront phrase, " thoroughly 
 accustomed to good society." 
 
 Such was the wife whom, much to their sur- 
 prise after all — for in none of their speculations 
 had they quite reckoned upon such a woman — 
 the new curate introduced to the parish of 
 Ditchley. 
 
 She settled his status there, at once and per- 
 manently. Nay, she did more, for, with her 
 dignified candour, she explained at once the 
 facts which he had hitherto kept concealed ; not 
 ujjon her neighbours' first visit, but as soon as 
 she grew at all into friendliness with them, even 
 expressing some surprise that neither Mr. Scan- 
 Ian nor Mr. Oldham — who treated her Avith 
 great respect, and even had a dinner-party at 
 the Rectory in her honour — should have made 
 public the very simple facts of the Scanlan 
 flimily history. Her Edward's father Avas a 
 wealthy Dublin brewer — the identical '• Scanlan 
 & Co."' — who had brougiit his son up to the 
 Church, and was just (ju the point of buying 
 him a living, when a sudden collapse in trade
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 107 
 
 came, the firm failed, the old man died penniless, 
 leaving his old wile with only her small income 
 to live upon, while the son was driven to main- 
 tain himself as best he conld. Though he was 
 a popular preacher, and very much sought 
 after, still admiration brought no pounds, shil- 
 Hngs, and pence ; — his fine friends slipped from 
 him — no hope of preferment offered itself in Ire- 
 land. At which conjinicture he met Mr. Old- 
 ham, made friends with him, and accepted a fat 
 curacy in the land of the Saxons. 
 
 This was the whole — a very plain statement, 
 involving no mystery of any kind. Nor con- 
 cerning herself was there aught to disguise. 
 When her peculiar accent, and certain foreign 
 ways she had, excited a few harmless wonder- 
 iugs, Mrs. Scanlan satisfied them all in the 
 briefest but most unhesitating way, telling how 
 she was of French extraction, her parents being 
 both of an old Huguenot fiimily, belonging to 
 the ancienne noblesse. This latter fact she did 
 not exactly state, until her visitors noticed a 
 coronet on an old pocket-handkerchief, and then
 
 108 A BR AYE LADY. 
 
 she ans^vered, quite compoKedly, that her late 
 father, a teacher in Dublin, and very poor, was 
 the Vicorate de Bougainville. 
 
 Here at once I give the clue to any small 
 secret which may hitherto have thrown dust in 
 the reader's eyes, but I shall attempt this no 
 more. It must be quite clear to all persons of 
 common penetration who was the lady I am de- 
 scribing. 
 
 Mademoiselle Josephine de Bougainville was 
 the only child of her parents, who had met and 
 married late in life, both being poor emigres be- 
 longing to the same family, driven from France 
 by the first Revolution. The mother was al- 
 ready dead when Josephine was given, at the 
 early age of sixteen, to Edward Scanlan. I 
 think, in spite of many presumptions to the 
 contrary, that undoubtedly she married him 
 from love, as he her. Perhaps, considering her 
 extreme youth and her French bringing up, it 
 was not exactly the right sort of love — not the 
 love which we like to see our English daugh- 
 ters marry witli, quite independent of the
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 109 
 
 desire of parents or friends, trusting to no in- 
 fluence but that of their own honest hearts ; but 
 still it was love, and Edward Scanlan, a good- 
 looking, ardent, impulsive young fellow, was 
 just the sort of luvc-r that wuuld be attractive 
 to sweet sixteen. I believe he fell in love with 
 her at church, violently and desperately ; and 
 his parents, who never said hiin nay in anything, 
 and who had the shrewdness to see that her 
 beauty and her good birth formed an excellent 
 balance to the Scanlan money — nay, would be 
 rather an advantage to the same — instead of 
 resisting, encouraged the marriage. They ap- 
 plied to M. de Bougainville for his daughter's 
 hand, and the poor old Vicomte, starving in his 
 garret, was glad enough to bestow it — to see 
 his child safe settled in a home of her own, and 
 die. 
 
 He might have used some persuasion ; &lie 
 might have thought, French fashion, that it was 
 right to marry whomsoever her father wished, 
 and so bent her will cheerfully to his. But I 
 am sure she did not marry against her vdW, from
 
 110 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 the simple fact that, to a nature like hers, a 
 marriage without love, or for anything except 
 love, would have been, at any age, altogether 
 impossible. Besides, I have stronger evidence 
 still. Once, in discussing, with regard to my- 
 self, this momentous question. Lady de Bougain- 
 ville said to me, very solemnly — so solemnly 
 that I never forgot her words : 
 
 " Remember, Winifred, love alone is not suffi- 
 cient in marriage. But, wanting love, nothing 
 else suffices — no outward suitability, no tie of 
 gratitude or duty. All break like threads be- 
 fore the wrench of the ever-grinding wheel of 
 daily cares. I had a difficult married life, my 
 dear, but it would have been ten times more so 
 if, when I married, I had not loved mv bus- 
 band." 
 
 1 find that, instead of telling a consecutive 
 story, I am mixing up confusedly the near and 
 the far away. But it is nearly impossible to 
 aviod this. Many things, obviously, I have to 
 guess at. Given the two ends of a fact, I must 
 imagine the middle — but I sliall imagine as lit-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 1 1 1 
 
 tie as ever I can. And I have two clacs to 
 guide' me through the labyrinth — clues which 
 have never failed through all those years. 
 
 Ever}^ Saturday night, when her children 
 were in bed, her week's duties done, and her 
 husband arranging his sermon, a task he always 
 put off till the last minute, sitting up late to do 
 it — and she never went to bed until he was 
 gone, and she could sluit up the house herself — 
 this quiet hour ^[vs. Scanlau always devoted to 
 writing a journal. It was in French, not Eng- 
 lish ; and very brief: a record of facts, not feel- 
 ings ; events, not moralizings : but it was kept 
 with great preciseness and accuracy. And, be- 
 ing in French, was private ; since, strange to 
 say, her husband had never taken the trouble to 
 learn the language. 
 
 Secondly, Lady de Bougainville had one 
 curious superstition : she disliked burning even 
 the smallest scrap of paper. Every letter she 
 had ever received, she kept arranged in order, 
 and ticketed with its date of receipt, and the 
 writer's name. Thus, had she been a celebrated
 
 112 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 personage, cursed with a biographer, the said 
 biographer wonki have had no trouble at all in 
 arranging his data, and gathering out of them 
 every possible evidence, — except perhaps the 
 truth, which lies deeper than any external 
 facts. Many a time I laughed at her for this 
 peculiarity of hers ; many a time I declared 
 that were 1 a notable person, I would take 
 care to give those who came after me as much 
 trouble as possible : instituting such periodical 
 incremations as would leave the chronicler of 
 my life with no data to traflSc upon, but keep 
 him in a state of wholesome bewilderment con- 
 cerning me. 
 
 At which Lady de Bougainville only smiled, 
 saying, 
 
 " What does it matter ? ^^^ly need you 
 care V 
 
 It may be so. As we decline towards our 
 end, the projected glory and peace of the life to 
 come may throw into dimness all this present 
 life : we may become indifferent to all that has 
 happened to us, and all that people may say
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 113 
 
 aud think of us after we are gone. She did, I 
 know. And I might feel the same myself, if I 
 had no children. 
 
 These two children of hers, the little girl and 
 boy, were enough of themselves to make life 
 begin brightly for young i\Irs. Scanlan, even in 
 the dull town of Ditchley. And it was the 
 bright time of year, when Ditchley itself caught 
 the reflected glow of the lovely country around 
 it — rich, West of England country ; wide, green, 
 heaving pasture-lands, and lanes full of spring- 
 flowers. The first time her little Cesar came 
 home with his chubby hands holding, or rather 
 dropping, a mass of broken blue hyacinths, his 
 mother snatched him in her arms, and smothered 
 him with kisses. She felt as if her ow^n chikl- 
 hood were come over again in that of her 
 children. 
 
 Besides, the sudden collapse of fortune, which 
 had brought so many changes, brought one bless- 
 ing, which was a very great one to Josephine 
 Scanlan. Hitherto the young couple had never 
 had a separate home. The old couple, consider- 
 
 YOL. I. I
 
 114 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 ing — perhaps not iimvisely — that the Avife was 
 so young, and the husband so thoughtless, and 
 that they themselves had no other children, 
 brought them home to live with them in their 
 grand house ; which combined establishment had 
 lasted until the crash came. 
 
 It could scarcely have been a life altogether 
 to Josephine's taste ; though I believe her father 
 and mother-in-laAV were very worthy people — 
 quite uneducated, having " made themselves," 
 but gentle, kind, and good. If ever she did 
 speak of them, it was always with tenderness. 
 Still, to the poor emigre's daughter, brought up 
 in all the traditions of " blue blood ;" taught to 
 take as her standard of moral excellence the 
 chivalry which holds honour as the highest 
 good, and, socially, to follow that perfect sim- 
 plicity which indicates the truest refinement — 
 to such an one there must always have been 
 something jarring in the rude, lavish luxury of 
 these nouveaux riches, who, being able to get 
 anything through their money, naturally con- 
 cluded that money was everything. Though
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 115 
 
 her fetters were golden, still, fetters they were : 
 and though she must have worn them with a 
 smiHiig, girlish grace, — she was so much of a 
 child, in years and in character — yet 1 have no 
 doubt slie felt them sometimes. When, all in a 
 day, they dropped off like spiders' webs, I am 
 afraid young ]\Irs. Scanlan was not nearly so un- 
 happy as she ought to have been ; nay, was con- 
 scious of a certain sense of relief and exhilira- 
 tion of spirits. It was like passing out of a hot- 
 house into the free, pure air outside ; and, though 
 chilling at first, the change was wonderfully 
 strengthening and refreshing. 
 
 The very first shock of it had nerved the 
 shy, quiet girl into a bright, brave, active wo- 
 man, ready to do all that was required of her, 
 and more ; complaining of nothing, and afraid 
 of nothing. Calmly she had lived on with her 
 mother-in-law, amidst the mockeries of departed 
 wealth, till the house and furniture at Merrion 
 Square could be sold ; as calmly, in a little lodg- 
 ing at Kingstown, had she waited the birth of 
 her second child ; and then, with equal fearless- 
 
 i2
 
 1 1 G A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 ness, had travelled from Ireland with the child- 
 ren and Bridget, alone and unprotected, though 
 it Avas the first time in her life she had ever 
 done snch a thing. But she did it thankfully 
 and haj^pily ; and she was happy and thankful 
 now\ 
 
 True, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Scanlan felt at 
 first the full weight of their changed fortunes. 
 The grand sweep of everything had not been 
 so complete — or else it had been managed so 
 ingeniously, as wide-awake people can manage 
 these little affairs — as to leave them out of the 
 wreck a good many personal luxuries. Bj the 
 time the picturesque little cottage — which, be- 
 ing on the Rector's land, he had put into good 
 repair, and recommended as a suitable habita- 
 tion for his curate — was ready, there arrived by 
 sea, from Dublin, quite enough of furniture — the 
 remnant of old splendours — to make it very 
 comfortable ; nay, almost every lady, in paying 
 the first call upon Mrs. Scaidau, at Wren's Nest, 
 said admiringly, 
 
 " What a pretty home you have got !"
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 1 1 7 
 
 Then when Mrs. Scanlan returned the visits, 
 and, the term of mourning for her parents-in- 
 law having expired, accepted a few invitations 
 round about, she did so in clothes which, if a 
 little unfashionable in Dublin, were regarded as 
 quite modern at Ditchley ; garments so han<l- 
 some, so well arranged, and so gracefully put 
 on, that some of his confidential matron friends 
 said to ]\lr. Scanjan, 
 
 " How charmingly your wife dresses ! Any 
 one could see she was a Frenchwoman by the 
 perfection of her toilette." 
 
 At which Mr. Scanlan was, of course, exces- 
 sively delighted ; and admired his beautiful wife 
 more than ever, because other people admired 
 her so much. 
 
 He, too, was exceedingly "jolly" — only that 
 word had not then got engrafted in the English 
 language — in spite of his loss of fortune. The 
 result of it did not as yet affect him person- 
 ally; none of his comforts were curtailed to 
 any great extent. "Roughing it" in lodg- 
 ings, with every good house in the parish open
 
 118 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 to him whenever he chose to avail himself of the 
 hospitality, had been not such a very hard 
 thing. Nor was "' love in a cottage," in summer- 
 time — with roses and jessamines clustering about 
 the door, and everybody who entered it prais- 
 ing the taste and skill of his wife, within and 
 without the house, and saying how they envied 
 such a scene of rural felicity — by any means an 
 unpleasant thing. 
 
 In truth, the curate sometimes scarcely be- 
 lieved ho was a poor man at all, or in anywise 
 different from the Edward Scanlan, Avith whom 
 everything had gone so smoothly since his 
 cradle ; for his parents, having married late in 
 life, had their struggle over before he was born. 
 He still dressed with his accustomed taste — 
 a little florid, perhaps, but not bad taste ; he 
 had always money in his pocket, which he could 
 spend or give away, and he was equally fond of 
 doing both. lie had not, naturally, the slightest 
 sense of the individual or relative value of either 
 sovereigns or shillings, no more than if they had 
 been dead leaves. This peculiarity had mat-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 11 !• 
 
 tered little once, ^vllon he Avas a rich young 
 fellow ; now, when it did matter, it was diflicult 
 to conquer. 
 
 His mother had said to Josephine on parting 
 — almost the last thing she did say, for the old 
 woman died within the year — 
 
 " Take care of poor PMward, and look after 
 the money yonrsclf, my dear, or it'll burn a hole 
 in his pockets — it always did." 
 
 And Josephine had laughed at the phrase 
 with an almost childish amusement, and total 
 ignorance of what it meant and implied. She 
 understood it too well afterwards. 
 
 But not now. Not in the least during that 
 first sunshiny summer, which made Ditchley so 
 pleasant and dear to her that the charm lasted 
 through many and many a sunless summer and 
 dreary winter. Her husband she had all to her- 
 self, for the first time ; — he was so fond of her 
 — so kind to her ; she went about with him 
 more than she had ev^er been able to do since 
 her marriage; taking rambles to explore the 
 country, paying amusing first visits together, to
 
 120 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 investigate and criticise the Ditchley society ; 
 receiving as much attention as if they were a 
 new married couple ; and even as to themselves, 
 having, as it were, their honeymoon over again, 
 only a great deal more gay and more comfort- 
 able. It was indeed a very happy life for Mr. 
 and Mrs. Scanlan. 
 
 As for the babies, they were in an earthly pa- 
 radise. Wren's Nest was built among the furze 
 bushes of a high common, as a wren's nest 
 should be; and the breezes that swept over 
 were so fresh and pure, that the two little deli- 
 cate faces soon began to grow brown with 
 health — Cesar's especially. The infant, Adrienne, 
 had always been a small fragile thing. But 
 Cesar grew daily into a real boy, big, hearty, 
 and strong ; and Bridget showed him off where- 
 ever she went as one of the finest children of 
 the neighbourhood. 
 
 Thus time went on, marching upon flowers ; 
 still he did march, steadily, remorselessly. But 
 it was not till the fall of the year, when a long 
 succession of wet days and weeks made
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 121 
 
 Wren's Xest look, — as a wren's nest raij^lit be 
 expected to look in wintry weather — that tlie 
 Scalans woke up to the recollection that they 
 were actually " poor " people.
 
 122 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 liniAT are "poor" people? such as I have 
 jnst stated the curate of Ditchley and 
 his wife to be ? 
 
 Few questions can be in ore difficult to an- 
 swer. " Poor " is an adjective of variable value. 
 I compassionate my next neighbour as a 
 " poor " woman, because she lives in a small 
 tumble-down cottage at tlie end of my garden, 
 and has nine children and a sick husband. 
 While my next neighbour but one, who drives 
 about in her carriage and pair, no doubt com- 
 passionates me, because in all weathers I have 
 to go on foot. Often when she sw^eeps past 
 me, trudging along our muddy lanes, and we 
 1 )0w and smile, I can detect a lurking something, 
 half pity — half — no, she is too kind for scorn ! —
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 123 
 
 ill licr face, w1ii(;h exceedingly anmscR me. For 
 I know that if lier carriage meets the little 
 chaise and ponies, driven by the lovely Countess 
 whose seat is four miles off, the said Countess 
 will be greatly envied bj' my Avealthy neigh- 
 bour, whose husband has only one handsome 
 house to live in, while the Earl has six. 
 
 Thus, you see, "poor " is a mere adjective of 
 comparison. 
 
 But when I call the Scanlans "poor," it was 
 because their income was not equal to their al- 
 most inevitable expenditure. Theirs was the 
 sharpest form of poverty, which dare not show 
 itself as such ; which has, or thinks it has, a 
 certain position to keep up, and, therefore, must 
 continually sacrifice inside comforts to outside 
 shows. How far this is necessary or right re- 
 mains an open question — I have my opinion on 
 the subject. But one thing is certain, that a 
 curate, obliged to appear as a gentleman, and 
 mix freely in other gentlemen's society — to say 
 nothing of his having, unfortunately, the tastes 
 and necessities of a gentleman — is in a much
 
 124 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 harder position than any artisan, clerk, or small 
 shopkeeper, who has the same number of pounds 
 a year to live upon. Especially when both have 
 the same ever-increasing family, — only a rather 
 different sort of family, — to bring up upon it. 
 
 When Mr. Scanlan's stock of ready-money — 
 that " running account " in the Ditchley bank, 
 which he had thought so inexhaustible, but 
 which ran away as fast as a centipede before 
 the year was out — when this sum was nearly at 
 an end, the young husband opened his eyes 
 wide with a kind of angry astonishment. His 
 first thought was, that his wife had been spend- 
 ing money a great deal too fast. This was pos- 
 sible, seeing she was still but a novice in house- 
 keeping, and besides she really did not know 
 how much she had to keep house upon. For 
 her husband, proud of his novel dignity as mas- 
 ter of a family, had desired her to " leave every- 
 thing to him — just ask him for what she wanted 
 and he would give it to her : a man should al- 
 ways be left to manage his own affairs." And 
 Josephine, dutifully believing this, had smiled at
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 125 
 
 the recollection of her mother-in-law's caution, 
 thinkiiig how much better a wife knew her hus- 
 band than his own parents ever did, — and cheer- 
 fully assented. Consequently, she made not a 
 single in([uii-y as to how their mcMiey stood, 
 until there was no money left to inipiire after. 
 
 This happened on a certain damp November 
 day — she long remembered the sort of day it 
 was, and the minutiio of all that happened on 
 it; for it was the first slight lifting up of 
 that gulden haze of happiness — the first open- 
 ing of her eyes unto the cokl, cheei'less land 
 that she was entering; the land where girlish 
 dreams and ideal fancies are not, and all the 
 pleasures that exist therein, if existing at all, 
 must be taken after a different fashion, and en- 
 joyed in a different sort of way. 
 
 Mr. Scanlau had gone into Ditchlev in the 
 forenoon, and his wife had been busy making 
 all sorts of domestic arrangements for a chang<' 
 that would rather increase than diminish the 
 family expenditure, and holding a long consul- 
 tation with lier one servant as to a little plan
 
 120 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 she had, which would ligditeu both then- hands, 
 and indeed, seemed, with present prospects, al- 
 most a necessity. 
 
 For, hard-working woman as Bridget was — 
 and when there is found an industrious, con- 
 scientious, tidy Irishwoman, how she will work ! 
 with all her heart in it too — still Wren's Nest in 
 wdnter and Wren's Nest in summer were 
 two very different abodes. You cannot keep a 
 little cottage as warm as a good-sized house, or 
 as neat either, especially when the said little 
 cottage has two little people in it, just of the 
 age wdien rich parents find it convenient to ex- 
 ile theu' children to safe nurseries at the top of 
 the house, to be " out of the w^ay." Wren's 
 Nest, quite large enough when Cesar and Ad- 
 rienne were out on the common from morning 
 till night — became small when the poor little 
 things had to be shut up in it all day long. 
 Their voices — not always sweet — sometimes 
 rang through it in a manner that even their mo- 
 ther found rather trying. As to their father — 
 but Mrs. Scanlan had already begun to guess at
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 127 
 
 one fact, wliicli all young- married women have 
 to discover — that the more Httle children are 
 kept out of their father's way the better for all 
 parties. 
 
 ]\Ioreover, Josephine's husband still enjoyed 
 his wife's company far too well not to grumble 
 a little when she stinted him of it for the sake 
 of her babies. He excessively disliked the idea 
 of her becoming "a family woman," as he called 
 it, swallowed up iji domestic cares. A\ liy not 
 leave all that to the servants ? He still said 
 " servants," forgetting that there was now but 
 one. Often to please him — it was so sweet to 
 please him alw^ays ! — ]\lrs. Scanlan would resign 
 many a necessary duty, or arrange her duties 
 so that she could sit with him alone in the par- 
 lour, listening while he talked or read — listening 
 with one ear w'hile the other was kept open to 
 the sounds in the kitchen, where Bridget might 
 be faintly heard, g<:)ing about her Avork, and 
 crooning the while some Irish ditty ; keeping 
 baby on one arm while she did as much as she 
 could of the household work with the other.
 
 128 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 Poor Bridget I with all her good will, of 
 course, under such circumstances, things were 
 not done as well as they ought to have 
 been, nor were the children taken such care 
 of as their anxious mother thought right. 
 When there was a third child impending, some 
 additional household help became indispensa- 
 ble, and it was on this subject that she and 
 Bridget were laying their heads together — 
 very different heads, certainly, though the two 
 young women — mistress and maid — were nearly 
 the same age. 
 
 Let me pause for a moment to draw Bridget 
 Halloran's portrait — lovingly, for she was a 
 great friend of mine. 
 
 She was very ugly, almost the ugliest woman 
 I ever knew, and she must have been just the 
 same in youth as in age, probably uglier, for 
 time might by then have ironed out some of the 
 small-pox seams which contributed not a little 
 to the general disfigurement of her features. 
 True, she never could have had much features 
 to boast of, hers being the commonest type of
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 121) 
 
 Iiisli faces, flat, broad, round as an apple-durap- 
 ling, with a complexion of the dumpling hue 
 and soddenness. There was a small dough- 
 pinch for the nose, a wide sHt for the mouth, 
 two, beady, black-currants of eyes — and you 
 had Bridget Halloran's face complete. Her 
 figure was short and sturdy, capable of infinite 
 exertion and endurance ; but as for grace and 
 beauty, not even in her teens did it possess 
 one single line. Her sole charm was that pecu- 
 liarly Hibernian one — a great mass of very fine 
 blue-black hair, which she hid under a cap, and 
 nobody ever saw it. 
 
 But nature, which had been so niggardly to 
 this poor woman in outward things, compensat- 
 edfor it by putting into her the brightest, bravest, 
 truest, peasant nature — the nature of the Irish 
 peasant, who, being blessed with a double share 
 of 'both heart and brains, is capable ahke of any- 
 thing good and anything bad. Bridget, no 
 doubt, had her own capacities for the latter, 
 but they had remained undeveloped ; while all 
 the good in her had grown, month by month, 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 and day by day, ever since, at little Cesar's 
 birth, slie came as nursemaid into the service 
 of young Mrs. Scanlan. 
 
 To her mistress she attached herself at once 
 with the passionate admiration that ugliness 
 sometimes conceives for beauty, coarseness for 
 grace and refinement. And, they being thrown 
 much together, as mothers and nursemaids are, 
 or ought to be, this admiration settled into the 
 most faithful devotion that it is possible to hu- 
 man nature. At any time, I think, Bridget 
 would composedly have gone to be hanged for 
 the sake of her mistress ; or rather, dying being 
 a small thing to some people, I think she would 
 have committed for her sake any crime that ne- 
 cessitated hanging. Which is still not saying 
 much, as Bridget's sole consciousness of, and 
 distinction between right and wrong was, whe- 
 ther or not Mrs. Scanlan considered it so. 
 
 But I have said enough to indicate what sort 
 of person this Irish girl was, and explain why 
 the other g-irl — still no more than a girl in years, 
 though she was mistress and mother — held to-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. l;;i 
 
 wards her a rather closer relation than most 
 ladies do with their servants nowadays. Partly, 
 because Bridget was of Irish, and Mrs. Scanlan 
 of French birth, and in both countries the idio- 
 syncrasy of the people makes thu tie between 
 the server and the served a little different from 
 what it is in England. Also, because the enor- 
 mous gulf externally between Josephine Scan- 
 lan n^e de Bougainville, and Bridget Ilalloran, 
 nobody's daughter (being taken from a found- 
 ling hospital), was crossed easier than many 
 lesser distances, especially by that slender, firm, 
 almost invisible but indestructible bond of a 
 common nature — a nature wholly womanly. 
 They understood one another, these two, almost 
 without a word, on the simple ground of wo- 
 manhood. 
 
 They were discussing anxiously the many, 
 and to them momentous arrangements for the 
 winter, or rather early spring — the new-comer 
 being expected with the \'iolets — but both ser- 
 vant and mistress had quite agreed on the ne- 
 cessity of a little twelve-year-old nursemaid, 
 
 K 2
 
 132 A BR AYE LADY. 
 
 and had even decided on the village school-girl 
 whom they thought most suitable for the 
 office. 
 
 And then Bridget, seeing her mistress look 
 excessively tired with all her morning's exer- 
 tions, took the children away into the kitchen, 
 and made their mother lie down on the sofa 
 underneath the window, where she could see the 
 line of road across the common, and watch for 
 IMr. Scanlan's return home. 
 
 She was tired, certainly ; weary with the 
 sacred weakness, mental and bodily, of impend- 
 ing maternity, but she was neither depressed 
 nor dejected. It was not her nature to be 
 either. God had given her not only strength, 
 but great elasticity of temperament ; she had 
 been a very happy-hearted girl, as Josephine 
 de Bougainville, and she was no less so as 
 Josephine Scanlan. She had had a specially 
 happy summer — the happiest, she thought, since 
 she was married : her husband had been so 
 much more her own, and she had enjoyed to 
 the full the pleasure of being sole mistress in
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 133 
 
 her own house, though it was such a httle one. 
 I am afraid, if questioned, she would not for one 
 moment have exchanged Wren's Nest for iler- 
 rion Square. 
 
 Nor — equal delusion ! — would she have ex- 
 changed her own husband, the poor curate of 
 Ditchley, for the richest man alive, or for all the 
 riches he had possessed when slie first knew 
 him. She was very fond of him just as he was. 
 She greatly enjoyed his ha^nug no valet, and 
 requiring her to wait upon him hand and foot ; 
 it was pleasanter to her to walk across country, 
 ever so far, clinging to his arm, than to be 
 driven along in state, sitting beside him in the 
 grand carnage. And beyond expression, sweet 
 to her were the quiet evenings which had come 
 since the winter set in, when no dinner- 
 parties were possible, and after the children 
 were gone to bed the young flither and mo- 
 ther sat over the fire, as close together as 
 lovers, and making love quite as foolishly some- 
 times. 
 
 " I suspect, after all, I was made to be a poor
 
 134 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 man's wife," Josephine would sometimes say to 
 herself, and think over all her duties in that 
 character, and how she could best fulfil them, 
 so that her Edward might not miss his lost 
 riches the least in the world, seeing he had 
 gained, as she had, so much better things. 
 
 She lay thinking of him on this wise, very 
 tenderly, when she saw him come striding up 
 to the garden-gate ; and her heart beat quicker, 
 as it did still — fooHsh, fond creature ! — at the 
 sight of her young husband — her girlhood's 
 love. She made an effort to rise and meet him 
 wth a bright face and open arms. 
 
 But his were closed, and his countenance was 
 dark as night ; a very rare thing for the good- 
 tempered, easy-minded Edward Scanlan. 
 
 " What is the matter, dear "? Are you ill ? 
 Has anything happened ?" 
 
 " Plappened, indeed ! I should think so ! Do 
 you mean to say you don't know — that you 
 never guessed ? Look there !'" 
 
 He threw over to her one of those innocent- 
 looking, terrible little books, called bank-books,
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 135 
 
 and went and flung himself down on the sofa, in 
 exceeding discomposure. 
 
 "What is this?" — opening it with some curi- 
 osity, for she had never seen the volume before 
 — he had kept it in his desk, being one of those 
 matters of business which, he said, " a woman 
 couldnt understand." 
 
 " Nonsense, Josephine ! Of course you 
 knew. 
 
 " What did 1 know r 
 
 " That you have been spending so much 
 money that you have nearly ruined me. Om- 
 account is overdrawn." 
 
 " Our account overdrawn — what does that 
 mean ? " she said : not answering, except by 
 a gentle sort of smile, the first half of his sen- 
 tence. For she could not have been married 
 these five years without learning one small fact 
 — that her Edward sometimes made " large " 
 statements, which had to be received cum grano, 
 as not implying more than half he meant, especi- 
 ally when he was a little vexed. 
 
 " Mean ! It means, my dear, that we have
 
 136 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 not a halfpenny left in the bank, and that we 
 owe the bank two pounds five — no, seven — I 
 never can remember those stupid shilhngs ! — 
 over and above our account." 
 
 « Why did they not tell you before ?" 
 " Of course, they thought it did not matter. 
 A gentleman like me would always keep a 
 banker's account, and could at any time put 
 more money in. But I can't. I have not a 
 penny-piece in the world beside my paltry sal- 
 ary. And it is all your fault — all your fault, 
 Josephine." 
 
 Mrs. Scanlan was startled. Not that it was 
 the first time she had been spoken to cross- 
 ly by her husband : such an idyllic state of con- 
 cord is quite impossible in ordinary married life, 
 and in this work-a-day world, where men's 
 tempers, and women's, too, are rubbed up the 
 wrong way continually ; but he had never 
 spoken to her with such sharp injustice. She 
 felt it acutely ; and then paused to consider 
 whether it were not possible that Edward was 
 less to blame than she. For she loved him ; and,
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 137 
 
 to fond, idealizing love, Avliile the ideal remains 
 unbroken, it is so much easier to accuse oneself 
 than the object beloved. 
 
 " It may be my fault, my friend — " she often 
 called him affectionately *' my friend," as she 
 remembered hearing her mother addi'ess her 
 father as " mon ami" and it was her delight to 
 think that the word was no misnomer — every 
 woman's husband should be, besides all else, 
 her best, and dearest, and closest " friend." 
 " But if it is my fault, I did not mean it, Ed- 
 ward. It was because I did not understand. 
 Sit down here, and try to make me under- 
 stand." 
 
 She spoke quite cheerfully, not in the least 
 comprehending how matters stood, nor how 
 serious was the conjuncture. When it dawned 
 upon her ; for, though so young and inexperi- 
 enced, she had plenty of common sense, and a 
 remarkably clear head at business, — she looked 
 extremely grave. 
 
 " I think I do understand now. You put all 
 the money we had, which was a hundred
 
 138 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 pounds, into the bank, and you have fetched it 
 out for me whenever I asked you for it, or 
 Avhenever you wanted some yourself, without 
 looking how the account stood — the ' balance,' 
 don't you call it? — and when you went to the 
 bank to-day, you found we had spent it all, and 
 there w^as nothing left. Isn't that it f 
 
 " Exactly so. What a sharp little girl you 
 are ; how quickly you have taken it all in !" said 
 he, a little more good-tempered, having got rid 
 of his crossness by the first ebullition, and being 
 relieved to find how readily she forgave it, and 
 how quietly she accepted the whole thing. For 
 he had a lurking consciousness that, on the 
 wdiole, he had been a little " foolish," as he called 
 it, himself, and was not altogether free from 
 blame in the transaction. 
 
 " Yes, I think I have taken it all in," said 
 she, meditatively, and turning a shade paler. 
 " I comprehend that the money I wanted I can- 
 not get ; that we shall be unable to get any 
 more money for anything until Mr. Oldham pays 
 you your next half-yearly salary."
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 139 
 
 " Just SO. But dou't vex yourself, my love. 
 It will not signify. We can live upon credit ; 
 my father lived upon credit for I dou't know 
 how long." 
 
 Josephine was silent — through sheer ignor- 
 ance. Her translation of the word " credit " 
 was moral virtue, universal respect : and she 
 liked to think how deeply her husband was re- 
 spected in the town ; but still she did not under- 
 stand how his good name would suffice to pay 
 his butcher's and baker's bills, and other ex- 
 penses, which seemed to have fallen upon them 
 more heavily than usual this Christmas. To say 
 nothing of another expense — and a strange 
 pang shot through the young mother's heart, to 
 think that it should ever take the shape of a 
 burthen instead of a blessing — the third little 
 olive-branch that was soon to sprout up round 
 that tiny table. 
 
 " Edward," she said, looking at him entreat- 
 ingly — almost tearfully, as if a sudden sense of 
 her weakness had come upon her, and instinct- 
 ively she turned to her husband for help — " Ed-
 
 140 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 ward, tell me, if we can get no money, not till 
 May, from Mr. Oldham, what am I to do — in 
 March V' 
 
 " Bless my soul, I had forgotten that !" and 
 the young man spoke in a tone of extreme an- 
 noyance. " You should have thought of it your- 
 self; indeed, you should have thought of every- 
 thing a little more. March I how very incon- 
 venient ! Well, it can't be helped. You must 
 just manage as well as you can." 
 
 " Manage as well as I can," repeated Jose- 
 phine slowly, and lifted up in his face her great 
 dark, heavy eyes. Perhaps she saw something 
 in that face which she had never seen before, 
 some line which implied it was a weaker face, a 
 shallower face than at first appeared. She had 
 been accustomed to love it without reading it 
 much — certainly without criticising it ; but now 
 her need was hard. Still harder, too, when, 
 wanting it most, to come for comfort, and find 
 none; or, at least so little that it was almost 
 none. " He does not understand," she said to 
 herself, and ceased speaking.
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 141 
 
 " It is very, very provoking, altogether most 
 imfortuiuite," continued the curate. *' But I 
 suppose you can manage, my dear ; labourers' 
 ^vives do, with half the comforts that I hope you 
 vn\\ have. Oh, dear ! a poor curate is much 
 worse off than a day-labourer. But as to the 
 little nursemaid you were speaking to me about 
 this morning, of course you will see at once 
 that such an additional outlay would be quite 
 impossible. She would eat as much as any two 
 of us ; and, hideed, we shall have quite enough 
 mouths to fill — rather too many." 
 
 " Too many !" 
 
 It was but a chance word, but it had stabbed 
 her like a sword — the first actual wound her 
 husband had ever given her. And, by nature, 
 Josephine Scanlan w^as a woman of very acute 
 feelings, sensitive to the slightest wound ; not 
 to her pride, or her self-esteem, but to her afiec- 
 tions and -her strong sense of right and justice. 
 She answered not a syllable ; she turned away 
 quietly — and stood looking out of the w^indow 
 towards where Ditchley church- spire rose
 
 142 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 through the rainy mist. Then she thought, 
 with a sudden, startling fancy, of the church- 
 yard below it, where a grave might open yet, — 
 a grave for both mother and babe — and so save 
 the little household from being " too many." 
 
 It was an idea so dreadful, so wicked, that she 
 thrust it from her in haste and shame, and 
 turned back to her husband, trying to speak in 
 a cheerful voice of other things. 
 
 " But what about the two pounds five, or 
 seven — which is it*? — that you owe the bank? 
 Of course we must pay it?" 
 
 " Oh, no, they will trust me ; they know I am 
 a gentleman." 
 
 " But does not a gentleman always pay ? 
 My father thought so. Whatever comforts we 
 went without, if the landlord came up for our 
 rent, it was ready on the spot. My father used 
 to say ' Noblesse oblige.^ " 
 
 "Your father," began Mr. Scanlan, with a 
 slight sneer in his tone, but stopped. For there 
 stood, opposite to him, looking at him with 
 steadfast eyes, the poor Vicomte's daughter.
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 143 
 
 the bcautilul girl he had married — tlie \v()man 
 who was uow his corapanion for life, iu weal or 
 woe, evil report or good report. She might 
 not have meant it — probably was wholly un- 
 couseious of the fact — but she stood more erect 
 than usual, with all the blood of the De Bou- 
 gainvilles rising in her thin cheeks, and flaming 
 in her sunken eyes. 
 
 " I should not like to ask the bank to trust 
 us, Edward ; and there is no need. I paid all 
 mv bills yesterdav for the month, but there are 
 still three sovereigns left in my purse. You 
 can take them, and pay. Will you ? At 
 once?" 
 
 " There is no necessity. What a terrible 
 hurry you are in ! How you do bother a man ! 
 But give me the money." 
 
 " Edward !" As he snatched at the offered 
 purse, half jest, half earnest, she detained him. 
 " Kiss me ! Don't go away angry ^\'ith me. 
 We are never surely beginning to quarrel ? " 
 
 " Not a bit of it. Only — well, promise to be 
 more careful another time."
 
 144 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 She promised — almost with a sense of con- 
 trition — thon£!;h she did not exactly know what 
 she had to repent of. But when her husband was 
 gone upstairs, and she lay down again, and be- 
 gan calmly thinking the matter over, her sense 
 of justice righted itself, and she saw things 
 clearer — alas ! only too clear. 
 
 She knew she had erred, but not in the way 
 Edward thought : in quite a contrary direction. 
 How could she, a mistress and mother of a family, 
 have been so unwise as to take everything upon 
 trust, live merrily all that summer, supplying 
 both herself and the household with everything 
 they needed, Avithout inquiring a syllable about 
 the money ; where it all came from, how long it 
 would last, and whether she was justified in 
 thus expending it ! 
 
 " Of course, Edward did not think, could not 
 calculate — it was never his way. His j)oor mo- 
 ther was right ; this was my business, and I 
 have neglected it. But I was so ignorant. And 
 so happy — so happy !" 
 
 Her heart seemed to collapse with a strange,
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 14.T 
 
 (:o](l Icar — a forewarning- that henceforward slie 
 might not too often have this excuse of happi- 
 ness. It was with difficulty that she restrained 
 herself before her husband ; and the minute he 
 had left her — which he did rather carelessly, and 
 quite satisfied she was " all right now," — she 
 burst into such hysterical sobbing, that Bridget 
 in the kitchen heard, and came in. 
 
 But when with fond Irish familiarity the girl 
 entreated to know what was the matter, and 
 whether she should run and fetch the master ? 
 Mrs. Scaulan gave a decided negative, which 
 surprised Bridget as much as these hysteiical 
 tears. 
 
 Bridget and her master were not quite upon 
 as good terms as Bridget and her mistress. Mr. 
 Scaulan disliked ugly people ; also he treated 
 servants generally with a certain roughness and 
 lordliness, which some people think it necessary 
 to show, just to prove the great difference be- 
 tween them and their masters — which other- 
 wise might not be sufficiently discernible. 
 
 But when she saw him from the window 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 .stridiDg across the common towards Ditchley, 
 leaving the house, and never looking behind 
 him, thongh he, and he only, must have been 
 the cause of his wife's agitation, either by talking 
 to her in some thoughtless way, or telling her 
 some piece of bad news w^iich he ought to have 
 the sense to keep to himself, Bridget felt ex- 
 tremely angry with Mr. Scanlan. 
 
 However, she was wise enough to hold her 
 tongue, and devote all her efforts to soothe and 
 quiet her mistress, which was finally effected by 
 a most fortunate domestic catastrophe ; Cesar 
 and little Adrienne being found quarrelling over 
 the toasting-fork which Bridget had dropped in 
 lier hurry, and which was so hot in the prongs 
 that both burnt their fingers, and tottered scream- 
 ing to their mother's sofa. This brought Mrs. 
 Scanlan to herself at once. She sat up, cuddled 
 them to her bosom, and began comforting them 
 as mothers can — by which she soon comforted 
 herself likewise. Then she looked up at Bridget, 
 who stood by her, silent and grim — poor Brid- 
 get's i^lain face was always so very grim when
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 147 
 
 she was silent — and made a half excuse or 
 apology. 
 
 " I can't think what made me tm-n so ill, 
 Bridget. I have been doing almost nothing all 
 day." 
 
 " Doing ! No, ma'am, it's not doing, it's talk- 
 ing," replied Bridget, with a severe and impres- 
 sive emphasis, which brought the colour to her 
 mistress's cheeks. " But the master's gone to 
 Ditchley, I think, and he can't be back just yet," 
 she added triumphantly ; as if the master's ab- 
 sence at this crisis, if a discredit to himself, 
 was a decided benefit to the rest of the house- 
 hold. 
 
 "I know. He has gone on business," said 
 Mrs. Scanlan. And then the business he had 
 gone upon came back upon her mind in all its 
 painfulness ; she turned so deadly white once 
 more that Bridget was frightened. 
 
 " Oh, ma'am !" she cried, " what in the world 
 has happened f 
 
 (Here I had better state that I make no at- 
 tempt to give Bridget's brogue. Indeed, when 
 
 l2
 
 148 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 I knew lier she had almost none remaining. 
 She had come so earl 3^ into her mistress's ser- 
 vice, and she had Hved so long in England, that 
 her Hibernicisms of speech and character had 
 gradually dropped off from her ; all ex- 
 cept the Avarm heart and elastic spirit, the 
 shrewd wit and staunch fidelity, which especial-- 
 ly belong to her nation, neutralising many bad 
 qualities, to which miserable experience forces 
 us to give the bitter adjective — so " Irish.") 
 
 "Nothing has happened," said Mrs. Scanlan. 
 " I suppose I am not quite so strong as I ought 
 to be, but I shall soon be all right, I hope. Come, 
 Baby, it's near your bed-time ; my blessing ! 
 don't cry so ! it goes to mother's heart." 
 
 She roused herself, and began walking up and 
 down with Adrienne in her arms, vainly trying 
 to still her cries and hush her to sleep, but look- 
 ing herself so wretched all the time, so feeble, 
 and incapable of effort, that Bridget at last 
 said remonstratively — 
 
 " You're not to do that, ma'am. Indeed, you're 
 not."
 
 A BRAVE LADY. U'J 
 
 " What do you mean," said Mrs. Scanlan, 
 turning quickly round ; " what am I not to 
 do ?" 
 
 "Not to be carrying that heavy child ; about. 
 It isn't your business, ma'am, and you're not 
 fit for it. And I'm not going to let you do it 
 either." 
 
 " I must," said ]\Irs. Scanlan, in a tone so 
 sharp that Bridget quite started. Her mistress 
 was usually excessively gentle in manner and 
 speech — too gentle, Bridget, who had a tongue 
 of her own, and a temper also, sometimes con- 
 sidered. Nevertheless, the sharpness surprised 
 her, but it was away in a minute. 
 
 Mrs. Scanlan turned round with tears in her 
 eyes. 
 
 " I did not mean to be cross, Bridget. I only 
 meant that I must learn to do a great many 
 things that I have not hitherto done." 
 
 What things ? Bridget wanted to know. 
 Because she thought the mistress did quite 
 enough, and too much ; she should be very glad 
 when they had a second servant.
 
 150 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 " No, we shall not have a second servant." 
 
 Bridget stared. 
 
 " It is quite out of the question. We cannot 
 possibly afford it ; Mr. Scanlan says so ; and, of 
 course, he knows." 
 
 Josephine said this with a certain air of digni- 
 ty, by which she wished to put a stop to the 
 " argufying " that she feared ; but Bridget, in- 
 stead, looked so shocked and disconsolate, that 
 her mistress took the other tack, and began to 
 console her. 
 
 " Really, we need not mind much about it. 
 A girl of twelve would have been very ignorant 
 and useless, and perhaps more of a trouble than 
 a help ; and I shall be able to help much more 
 by-and-by, and according as I get used to 
 things. I was so very innocent of all house- 
 affairs when I came here," added she, smiling, 
 " but I think I grow cleverer every day now." 
 
 "Ma'am, you're the cleverest lady I ever 
 knew. And you took to house-keeping like a 
 duck to the water. More's the pity ! you that 
 can play music, and talk foreign tongues, and
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 151 
 
 work beautiful with your fingers — and tliere 
 you are washing dishes, and children's clothes, 
 and children — with those same pretty fingers. 
 I'd like to tie 'em up in a bag." 
 
 "Thank you," said Mrs. Scaulan, laughing 
 outright now : she and Bridget often laughed 
 together, and with their French and Irish light- 
 heartedness, even amidst the hardest work, and 
 the cloudiest days. " But, seriously, think how 
 many mothers have to take care of their own 
 children without any nursemaid — without any 
 help at all — and I have yours. And three will 
 not be much more trouble than two ; indeed, 
 this morning one of my neighbours consoled me 
 by saying that, after two children, even ten did 
 not make much difference." 
 
 " And we may have ten !" said Bridget, with 
 a very long face ; and a grave personal appro- 
 priation of the responsibility, which at first 
 made her mistress laugh again : — then suddenly 
 turn grave, muttering to herself something in 
 French. For the first time it had occurred to 
 Mrs. Scanlan, that circumstances might arise in
 
 1 52 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 which these gifts of God were not altogether 
 blessings. The thought was so painful, so start- 
 ling, that she could not face it. She drove it 
 back, with all the causes which had suggested 
 it, into the innermost corners of her heart. 
 And -sv-ith her heart's vision she utterly refused 
 to see — what to her reason's eves would have 
 been clear enough — that her husband had acted 
 like a child, and been as vexed as a child when 
 his carelessness came to light. Also that the 
 carelessness as to worldly matters, which does 
 not so much signify when a man is a bachelor 
 — and has nobody to harm but himself (if ever 
 such a state of isolation is possible) — becomes 
 an actual sin when he is married and has others 
 depending on him, — others whom his least ac- 
 tions ^must affect vitally, for good or ill. 
 
 But as she walked up and down the room, 
 rocking Edward's child to sleep — Adrienne was 
 the one of her babies most like her father, Cesar 
 being entirely a De Bougainville — Josephine 
 could not think hardly of her Edward. He 
 would grow wiser in time, and meanwhile the
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 1 5'^ 
 
 least said or thouglit of his mistake the better. 
 Nor did she communicate any further of it to 
 Bridget, beyond saying, that, besides omitting 
 the little nursemaid, they would henceforward 
 have to be doubly economical : for Mr. Scanlan 
 and herself had decided they were spending a 
 great deal more money than they ought to spend. 
 
 " Ugh ! " said Bridget, and asked no more 
 questions : for she was a little afraid of even 
 her sweet young mistress when it pleased her 
 to assume that gentle reserve. But the shrewd 
 servant, nevertheless, made up her mind that, by 
 fair means or foul, by du-ect inquiry, or by the 
 exercise of that sharp Irish vnt, in which the girl 
 was by no means deficient — she would find out 
 what had passed between the husband and Avife, 
 to make her mistress so ill. Also, whether there 
 was any real occasion for her master's extraor- 
 dinary stinginess. 
 
 " It's not his way ! quite the contrary, " 
 thought she, when, while j\Irs. Scanlan was 
 hushing baby to sleep, she slipped up and put 
 to rights the one large room which served as
 
 154 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 bed-room for both parents and children ; finding 
 Mr. Scanlan's clothes scattered over Cesar's little 
 bed ; crumpled shirts without end (for he had 
 been dressing to dine out) ; and half-a-dozen 
 pairs of soiled lavender gloves. " What busi- 
 ness has he to Avear lavender kid gloves, I 
 should like to know?" said Bridget to herself, 
 rather severely. "They'd have bought Master 
 Cesar two pairs of boots, or the mistress a new 
 bonnet. Ugh ! men are queer creatures — I'm 
 glad I wasn't a man, anyhow."
 
 155 
 
 CHAPTER ITT. 
 
 A FTER this day, the Curate's family began 
 -^-^ painfully to recognise^ that they were really 
 " poor '" people. 
 
 Not that Mr. Scania n's salary was small ; in- 
 deed, the Rector had been most liberal ; but the . 
 real property of a family consists, not so much 
 in what comes in, as in what goes out. Had 
 they never been richer than now, no doubt they 
 would have considered themselves tolerably 
 well off, and have received smiling even the 
 third little " encumbrance," which ere long made 
 the little cottage too busy and too noisy for Mr. 
 Scanlan to " study " there with any sort of com- 
 fort. Not that he was fond of reading, or ever 
 read very much ; but he liked to have his books 
 about him, especially the Greek and Latin ones :
 
 15(3 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 it " looked well," he said. He had come to Ditch- 
 ley breathing a great aroma of classical learn- 
 ing, and he did not like it to die out : it gave 
 him such an influence in the parish. So he was 
 much annoyed to find that it was now difficult 
 to keep up the appearance of a man of litera- 
 ture ; for instance, his few books had daily to 
 be cleared away that the family might dine upon 
 his study-table — and though that rarely incom- 
 moded him personally, he being so often absen t 
 at the dinner-hour — and invariably on " fast- 
 . days," as Bridget called them, she ha\dng been 
 once a Catholic. She was not one now ; having 
 soon expressed her willingness to turn Protes- 
 tant, or indeed any religion that Mrs. Scanlan 
 chose : she wished to go to heaven with her mis- 
 tress, she said, and how she went, or by what 
 road, w^as of no great consequence. 
 
 These " fast-days " were always made a joke 
 of, by both her, her mistress, and the children, 
 who were brought up to accept them as natural 
 circumstances. But the truth was, the little 
 family did not eat meat every day ; they could
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 157 
 
 not afford it. They always cliose for their 
 maigre dftys, those days when Mr. Scaulan was 
 out — which happened pretty frequently — for he 
 liad all the parochial visiting to do : the parish 
 was large, and the houses scattered. ]\Ioreover, 
 he was so agreeable — had such a deal to say for 
 himself, and such a pleasant Irish way of saying 
 it, that everybody was delighted to see him. His 
 welcome from house to house was universal, 
 and his invitations were endless. At first he 
 used to refuse them, not lildng to go anywhere 
 without his wife ; but when her accompaying him 
 began to grow difficult, nay impossible, he refused 
 less and less. The neighbours were so very 
 pressing, he said, and he could not Avell offend 
 his own parishioners. Gradually, as the summer 
 advanced, their eagerness for his society grew to 
 that pass, that he might have dined away from 
 home every day in the week ; in fact he often 
 was absent three or four days out of the seven. 
 At first, I think his young wife fretted a good 
 deal about this. She did not care to have him 
 stopping at home all day long; the children
 
 158 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 were a weariness and a trouble to him, for there 
 was no nursery to hide them in ; and besides, 
 she could not do her duty properly to them 
 when he was there. Nor to him — as she often 
 vexed herself with thinking — when they, poor 
 little pets I were always wanting her, and al- 
 ways in the way. But she would have preferred 
 to see her husband come regularly home of 
 evenings. She would have liked to sit and 
 watch for him across the common at a certain 
 fixed hour ; to have known that — punctual as 
 the sun — he would have come in and shone upon 
 her ; her sun-rising being at the ordinary sun- 
 setting — the close of the day. It would have 
 been good for her, and sweet to her, she knew, 
 if, though he disliked to be troubled and wor- 
 ried — and she should always avoid that — he had 
 taken a kindly, husbandly interest in things at 
 home. It would have helped her, and made 
 her strong, braver, and fresher to bear the thou- 
 sand little household burthens that are, in the 
 total, so heavy — men have little idea how heavy ! 
 — upon women's weak shoulders. Especially
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 159 
 
 young women — who have yet to learn how God 
 fits the back to the burthen, and how He never 
 suffers the brave heart to fail, however tottering 
 may be the feeble knees. 
 
 But Mr. Scanlan did not seem to understand 
 these little difficulties of his wife, lie was very 
 kind, very affectionate ; but it never occurred 
 to him that she, being young and inexperienced, 
 needed help as well as love, shelter as well as 
 sunshine. Ho was very good when all was 
 smooth and bright, but when any temporary 
 cloud came over Wreu's Nest, as clouds will 
 come — slight sicknesses of the children, or small 
 domestic cares of any kind — he just slipped 
 away, and left her to bear the brunt of the bat- 
 tle. True, when he reappeared, he overwhelmed 
 her with praise for having borne it so exceed- 
 ingly well ; which was most pleasant to his 
 wife's heart — so pleasant that it seldom occur- 
 red to her till afterwards, that the battle might 
 have been easier, had she not been left to fight 
 it single-handed. 
 
 Still, a husband at home all day is a great
 
 160 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 nuisance, especially with a young family ; and 
 she was not always sorry for Mr. Scanlan's ab- 
 sence, particularly at dinner-time. Women can 
 put up with so many things that are intolerable 
 to men. When butcher's meat ran short, Brid- 
 get developed quite a genius for puddings, 
 which delighted the children amazingly. And 
 then their mother tried her delicate hand at 
 various French cookeries which she remembered 
 out of " the days of her youth," as she began to 
 call them now, and especially the pot-au-feu, 
 which her mother used to see when, as the young 
 demoiselle of the chateau, she was taken by her 
 nurse to visit old Norman cottages. She loved 
 to tell about this wonderful Normandy to her 
 little Cesar, who listened eagerly, with the pre- 
 cocity not rare in eldest children, when the cir- 
 cumstances of the household compel them to the 
 lot — often a most happy one — of being con- 
 stantly under the mother's eye, and constituted 
 the mother's principal companion. 
 
 These details I take from the Saturday night's 
 journal, which Mrs. Scaulan kept so scrupul-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. • 161 
 
 ously and for so many yeare. It was, as I have 
 said, written in French, her fontUy-remembered 
 native tongue, but it was not at all French in 
 its style, being (|uite free from that sentimental 
 exaggeration of feeling which makes French 
 journals and letters of the last century or half- 
 century seem so queer and affected to our Brit- 
 ish undemonstrativeness. Hers was as plain, 
 as accurate, as if she had been the " thorough 
 EnglishAvoman " — into Avhich, as their sunnnit 
 of well-meant praise, her neighbous told her she 
 was growing. She records the fact, but makes 
 no comment thereon. 
 
 Nor will I. I believe firmly in the science of 
 anthropology ; that you might as well expect to 
 evolve certain qualities out of certain races, as 
 to grow a rose out of a tulip ; but you can 
 modify both rose and tulip to an almost infinite 
 extent, cultivating their good points, and re- 
 pressing their bad ones ; and to quarrel with a 
 tulip because it is not a rose, is certainly an act 
 of supreme folly, even though one may like* the 
 rose far better. I myself own to having a warm 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 - A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 love for roses, and a strong aversion to tulips ; 
 yet when a certain great and good man once 
 took me to bis favourite tulip-bed, and dilated 
 on its merits, exhibiting with delighted admira- 
 tion the different sorts of blooms, I felt tempted 
 to say within myself, Can I have been mis- 
 taken? is a tulip a desirable, not a detestable, 
 flower after all ? And I was such a tender hy- 
 pocrite to my old friend, that I had not the 
 courage to confess I had detested tulips all my 
 life, but meant henceforward to have a kindly 
 feeling towards them — for his sake. 
 
 So those of my readers who hate French peo- 
 ple and Irish people, with their national char- 
 acteristics, — may be a little lenient to both, as 
 they read on farther in this story. 
 
 j\lrs. Scanlan's neighbours, though they did 
 pay her these doubtful compliments, as to her 
 foreign extraction, were very kind and neigh- 
 bourly. They admired her without being envi- 
 ous of her, for indeed there was no need. She 
 cam'e into competition with none of them. The 
 young ladies, unto whom her beauty might
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 103 
 
 have made her a sore rival, were quite sa'fe — * 
 she was ah'eady married. The matrons, with 
 whom she might otherwise have contested social 
 distinction, were also secure — she never gave 
 entertainments, and competed for thequeenship 
 of society with no one. The one field in Avhich, 
 had she fought, she must certainly have come 
 off victorious, there being no lady for miles 
 round who was her equal in qualities, which I 
 think are more French than English — in the 
 gifts of being a good talker, a better listener ; 
 of making people comfortable together, without 
 knowing why ; and of always looking so sweet, 
 and pleasant, and pleased with everything, that 
 all people were perforce pleased, both with 
 themselves and her ; — from that grand arena 
 Mrs. Scanlan retired : and so soon, that no- 
 body had time to dislike her for succeeding 
 in it. 
 
 She had another quality which made her 
 popular at Ditchley — she always sympathised 
 with her neighbours, and interested herself 
 warmly in their affairs, without ever troubling - 
 
 M 2
 
 1G4 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 them ■svith licr own. I remember a certain Hue 
 out of a once popular ballad, which then struck 
 lue as a very unfair balance of things, but which 
 I have since recognised as the easiest and safest 
 plan after all, with regard to all but the one or 
 two intimate friends that one makes in a life- 
 time — 
 
 " So let us hope the future as the past has been will be ; 
 I will share with thee thy sorrows, and thou thy joys 
 with me." 
 
 It illustrates exactly the unconscious creed and 
 daily practice of Josephine Scanlan. 
 
 Thus, narrow-minded as Ditchley wits in some 
 things — as all country towns necessarily must 
 be, and were then, before the era of railways, 
 much more so than now — it had a warm heart, 
 and kept the warmest side of it to the Curate's 
 wife, a stranger though she was. Of her small 
 outside world, Mrs. Scanlan had nothing to 
 complain. It may have criticised her pretty 
 freely : very likely it did ; but the criticisms 
 fell harmless. She never heard them, or if
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 105 
 
 she had heard, would not liave heeded. She 
 was so entirely free from ill-nature herself, that 
 she never suspected it in others. If people 
 talked about her, what harm did it do her? 
 She was very sure they never said anything 
 unkind. 
 
 And, strange to relate, I believe they never 
 did. She was so entirely simple and straightfor- 
 ward — ay, from the first day when she explain - 
 ed, quite unhesitatingly, the dire m}'stery which 
 had agitated Ditcliley for weeks, the Scaulan 
 & Co. poi'ter bottle ! — that spite laid down its 
 arrows unused, meanness shrank ashamed into 
 its own dark corners, and even malice retired 
 abashed before the innocent brightness of her 
 un(,'on scions face. 
 
 "Everybody likes. me," she said of herself at 
 this time. " I really don't know w^hy they do 
 it, but I am sure they do. And I am so glad. 
 It is such a comfort to me." 
 
 Was she beginning to need comfort — outside 
 comfort — even alreadv ? 
 
 Her outside gaiety was certainly ceasing by
 
 Ull) A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 .slow degrees. She was invited as usual, with 
 her husband ; but gradually it came to be an 
 understood thing that Mr. Scanlan went and 
 Mrs. Scanlan remained at home. 
 
 " She could not leave the baby," -was at first 
 a valid and generally accepted excuse, and by 
 the time it ceased to be available, her absence 
 had become such a matter of habit, that nobody 
 wondered at it. For awhile the " everybody " 
 who liked her so much missed her a little, and 
 even remonstrated with her as to whether she 
 was not sacrificing herself too much to her 
 family, and whether she was not afraid of mak- 
 ing Mr. Scanlan angry, in thus letting him go 
 out alone? 
 
 " Oh, no !" she would reply, with a faint smile, 
 " my husband is not at all angry. He quite 
 understands the state of the case." 
 
 He did understand, after his fashion — that is, 
 he presently discovered that it is somewhat in- 
 convenient to take into society a wife who has 
 no carriage to go out in, but must spoil her ele- 
 gant attire by walking. Or, still worse, who
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 107 
 
 lias no elegant attire at all, and wherever she 
 appears is sure to be dressed more plainly than 
 any lady in the room. 
 
 It may seem ridicnlonsly small, but the sub- 
 ject of clothes was now growing one of the bur- 
 thens of Mrs. iSeanlan's life. She had never 
 thought miuh of dress before her marriage, and 
 afterwards her rich toilette had been accepted 
 by her both pleasantly and naturally. Every- 
 body about her dressed well, and so did she, for 
 her husband liked it. Fortunately her good 
 clothes were so many, that they lasted long 
 after her good days — that is to say, her rich 
 days — were done. 
 
 But now the purple and fine linen began to 
 come to <in end, and were hopeless of replace- 
 ment. The first time she went to Ditchley to 
 buy herself a new dress, which her husband de- 
 clared she must have, she was horrified to find 
 that a gown like one of her old worn-out ones 
 would involve the sacrifice of two months' in- 
 come to the little household at "Wren's Nest. 
 So her dream of a new silk dress vanished ; she
 
 168 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 brongbt home a muslin one, to the extreme in- 
 dignation of Mr. Scanlan. 
 
 Poor man ! he could not understand why 
 clothes should wear out, and as little why they 
 should not be perpetually renewed. He had 
 never seen his mother dress shabbily — why 
 should his wife do so 1 His wife, upon whom 
 his credit rested. If she had only herself to 
 consider, it would not have signified ; but a 
 married lady — the Reverend Edward Scanlan's 
 wife — was quite another thing. He could not 
 see the reason for it : she must be learning slat- 
 ternly ways ; yielding to matronly untidiness, 
 as he saw young mothers sometimes do — which 
 he always thought a great shame, and a great 
 iinkindness to the husband. Which arguments 
 were perfectly true in the main, and Josephine 
 recognised the fact. Yet the last one went ra- 
 ther sharply into the young matron's heart. 
 
 She changed her style of dress altogether. 
 Her costly but no longer fresh silks and satins 
 were put away — indeed, they fell away of them- 
 selves, having been remodelled and altered to
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 1G9 
 
 the last extremity of even French feminine in- 
 genuitj. She now appeared almost exclusive- 
 ly in cotton print of a morning, and white dimi- 
 ty of an afternoon : dresses Avhich Bridget could 
 wash endlessly, and which each week looked 
 fresh and new again. Her cliildren the same. 
 She could not give them a clean frock every day 
 as their father wished — every other child he saw 
 had always a clean frock on, and why not his 
 children? — but she dressed them in neat blue- 
 spotted pinafores — blouses she called them — the 
 familiar French name — with a plain leather belt 
 round the waist — and they looked so pretty, so 
 very pretty! — or she and Bridget thought so 
 many a time. 
 
 It is a curious and sad indication of how 
 things changed after the first sunshiny summer 
 at Wren's Nest, that the mistress and servant 
 seemed to have settled their domestic affairs to- 
 gether, and shared their domestic griefs and 
 joys, very much more than the mistress and 
 master. Whenever there was a sacrifice to be 
 made, or a vexation or fatigue to be endm-ed, it
 
 170 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 was they Avho suffered ; — anyhow not Mr. Scan- 
 Ian. Mrs. Scanlan contrived to shield her hus- 
 band — almost as she did her little children — 
 from any household perplexity or calamity, and 
 especially fVom a certain dim sound heard in the 
 distance, every day approaching nearer and 
 nearer — the howling of that blatant beast, " the 
 wolf at the door." 
 
 " Hardships are so much worse to him than 
 to me," she would reason. " With me, it is but 
 just going back to old times, when I lived at 
 home with my father, and we were so very 
 poor — and so very happy too, I think ; whereas 
 with my husband it is different. He has been 
 rolling in money all his life — poor Edward !" 
 
 No doubt this was true. Nor do I wish to 
 judge the Curate more harshly than his wife 
 judged him. Besides, people are variously con- 
 stituted ; their ideas of happiness are different. 
 I can imagine that when Josephine Scanlan sat 
 in front of her neat cottage — Avith Cesar and 
 Adrienne playing at her feet, and her baby-boy 
 asleep on her lap — sewing hard, for she had
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 1 7 1 
 
 never done sewing — yet stopping a minute now 
 and then to refresh her eyes with the sweet 
 landscape — green low hills, smooth and snnny, 
 which shnt out the not very distant sea, beyond 
 which lay la belle France, which she had always 
 dreamed of, but never beheld, — I can imagine, I 
 say, that it mattered very little to Josephine 
 Scan Ian whether she lived in a great house or a 
 small one ; whether she went clad in satin and 
 velvet; or in the common dimity gown, which 
 Bridget often sat up half the night to wash and 
 iron for Sundays, and in which, as she went to 
 church with a child in either hand, poor Bridget 
 declared, the mistress looked " like an angel 
 just di'opped from the sky." 
 
 Whether the rest of the congregation were of 
 that opinion cannot now be discovered. They 
 still paid occasional visits to Wren's Nest, stop- 
 ping in carriage-and-pair at the garden-gate, 
 and causing Bridget a world of flin-ry to get a 
 clean apron and smoothe her hair before rnsh- 
 ing to open it. But it is a very different thing, 
 paying visits in a carriage after an idle morn-
 
 172 A BRAYE LADY. 
 
 ing, and paying tlicm on foot after a morning's 
 hard work in arranging the house afi'airs, and 
 looking after the chiklren. Mrs. Scanlan had 
 to explain this — which she did, very simply — to 
 such of her husband's parishioners as were 
 especially kind to her, and with whom she would 
 have liked to associate, had fate allowed. Her 
 excuses were readily and graciously accepted ; 
 but, after a time, the natural results of such an 
 unequal balance of things ensued. Her visitors 
 became fewer and fewer : sometimes, in winter, 
 whole weeks passed without a single foot cross- 
 ing the threshold of Wren's Nest. 
 
 Necessarily, too, there came a decline in other 
 branches of parish duty that Mr. Scanlan con- 
 sidered essential, and urged his wife to keep 
 up ; which she did at first to the utmost of her 
 power — Dorcas societies, district visiting, vil- 
 lage school-feasts, and so on ; various forms of 
 benevolence which had lain dormant until the 
 young curate came. Ditchley, having a very 
 small number. of poor, and abounding in wealthy 
 families with nothing to do, soon found charity
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 173 
 
 a charming amusement ; and the different 
 schemes which the new clergyman started fur 
 its administration, made him very popular. 
 
 But ^vith Mrs. Scanlau the case was dif- 
 ferent. 
 
 " I can't sit making clothes for little negroes, 
 and let my own children run ragged," said she 
 once, smiling : and arguing half in earnest, half 
 in jest — for she found that the latter often 
 answered best — with her husband, who had 
 been sharply reproving her. "And, Edward, it 
 is rather hard to sit smilingly distributing fuel 
 and blankets to the ' believing poor,' as you call 
 them, when I remember how thinly-covered is 
 poor Bridget's bed, and how empty our own 
 coal-cellar. Still, I will do my best, since you 
 wish it." 
 
 "Do so — there's a dear girl!" replied he, 
 carelessly kissing her. " Charity looks so well 
 in a clergyman, and a clergyman's wife. And, 
 besides, giving to the poor is lending to the 
 Lord!" 
 
 Mrs. Scanlan cast a keen glance at her hu£-
 
 174 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 band — she always did when he said these sort 
 of things. She had begun to wonder how much 
 they meant — at least how much he meant by 
 them, and whether he really considered their 
 meaning at all. I am afraid, for a clergyman's 
 wife, she was not as religious a woman as she 
 ought to have been ; but she had had too much 
 of religion when she lived in Merrion Square. In 
 that particular set to which her husband be- 
 longed, its cant phraseology had been painfully 
 dinned into her ears. She recognised all the 
 intrinsic goodness of the Evangelical sect, their 
 sincere and earnest piety, but she often wished 
 they could do without a set of stock phrases, 
 such as Edward Scanlan had just used, which 
 gradually came to fall on her ear as mere words, 
 implying nothing. 
 
 " Lending to the Lord !" said she. " Then I 
 wish He would begin to pay back a little that 
 He owes me. I wish He would send me a new 
 pair of shoes for each of the chidren. They want 
 them badly enough." 
 
 At Avhich Mr. Scanlan looked horrified, es-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 175 
 
 pecially as this iinl'oitunatL! speecli had been 
 made' in presence of his rector, ^Ir. Ohlliani, who 
 had just come in lor a call. Possil)!}', he did 
 not hear, being very deaf, and nsing his deaf- 
 ness sometimes both conveniently and cleverly. 
 
 He was the one visitor whose visits never 
 ceased, and Avere always welcome, for they 
 caused no inconvenience. If the mother were 
 busy, he would be quite content to talk to the 
 children ; — who liked him well enough, though 
 they were a little afraid of him, chiefly through 
 their father's always impressing upon them that 
 they must behave so exceedingly well when 
 they went to the Rectory — which was now al- 
 most the only house in the neighbourhood they 
 did go to. 
 
 At first, when Cesar and Adrienne had ac- 
 quii'ed sufficiently walking capabilities and good 
 manners, their father amused himself by taking 
 them about with him pretty often ; but being 
 not angels, only children, they sometimes vexed 
 him considerably. They would get tired and 
 cross ; or, from the great contrast of living at
 
 176 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 homo and abroad, they wouhl be tempted — poor 
 little sonls — to over-eat themselves, which na- 
 tm-ally annoyed the Curate much. By degrees 
 both they and their mother found that going 
 out -w-itli Pa]^^ was not unmixed felicity ; so that 
 Avhen the habit was given up, it was a relief to 
 all parties. 
 
 Gradually, the parents and children seldom 
 appeared in public all together, except when 
 they were invited to the Rectory — as they had 
 been lately — to enjoy a strawberry feast, in 
 the garden of which its oAvner was so justly 
 proud. 
 
 " I am glad you approve of my roses," said 
 Ml'. Oldham, when,, with a half-deprecating, half- 
 threateiiing look at his wife, lest she should 
 make some other unlucky observation, Mr. Scan- 
 Ian had disappeared on important parish busi- 
 ness. " I often think, madame," — (he changed 
 his old-fashioned " madam " into madame, out 
 of compliment to her birth, and because he liked 
 to air his French a little) — " I think, my garden 
 is to me what your children are to you. I only
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 177 
 
 hope it may be equally flourishing, and may re- 
 ward me as well for all my care," 
 
 The Rector was sitting in the porch, his stick 
 between his knees — he always wore breeches, 
 gaiters, a long coat, and a large clerical hat — 
 watching (^esar, who was pulling up weeds in 
 the somewhat neglected borders in front of the 
 garden, but doing labourer's work with the air 
 and mien of a young nobleman in disguise, a 
 real Yicomte de Bougainville. One does see 
 these anomalies sometimes, though I grant not 
 often ; poor gentlefolks' children are often prone 
 to sink to the level of the ordinary poor ; but 
 Josephine had taken great pains in the up- 
 bringing of hers. As her eyes followed the di- 
 rection of Mr. Oldham's, and then both their 
 eyes met, there was in one countenance a touch 
 of envy, in the other of pity, — which accounted 
 for his frequent visits and the kindly welcome 
 which she always gave him. 
 
 That is, of late years. At first, Mrs. Scanlan 
 had been rather shy of her husband's rector, 
 perhaps, like the children, because her husband 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 always impressed upon her the importance of 
 being civil to him. Not until she found this 
 needless — that the little old bachelor exacted 
 nothing from her, and that, moreover, there was 
 nothing to be got out of him — did Josephine 
 become as friendly with Mr. Oldham as she was 
 with her other neighbours. Her coldness seem- 
 ed rather to amuse him ; nor did he ever take 
 offence at it. He admired openly her beauty, 
 her breeding, her good sense ; and with his own 
 pedigree, a yard long, hanging up in his hall, 
 it is probable that he did not think the less of 
 his curate's wife for being descended from so 
 many noble De Bougainvilles. 
 
 What the old Rector thought of his curate, 
 people never quite discovered. He kept his 
 opinion to himself. When the parish went 
 crazy about Mr. Scanlan, his beautiful sermons, 
 his many accomplishments, Mr. Oldham listened, 
 silent ; when, as years ran on, a few holes were 
 picked in the Curate's coat, he listened, equally 
 silent. But he himself always treated Mr. Scan-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 17i) 
 
 Ian with pointed respect, courtesy, and consi- 
 deration. 
 
 He sat watching the cliildren — there were 
 four now, "baby" being exalted into Louis, and 
 another Httle white bundle lying across Mrs. 
 Scanlau's lap, as she sat busy at her ceaseless 
 needle even while she conversed with her 
 guest. 
 
 " Another girl, I understand, for I ara to have 
 the pleasure of christening her next Sunday. 
 Are you offended with me, madame, for declining 
 to be god-father ? As you are aware, your hus- 
 band asked me ?" 
 
 She was not aware, and would have disliked 
 it extremely ; but she would not betray either 
 fact, and therefore only smiled. 
 
 " What do you mean to do with vour eldest 
 son?" pomting to Cesar. "As I was saying to 
 his father, it is high time he went to school. 
 But Scanlan tells me he prefers teaching him 
 himself." 
 
 " Yes," said Josephine briefly, for her visitor 
 had touched upon a sore point. 
 
 n2
 
 180 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 In early days her husband had been very 
 proud of his " son and hen-," who was a fine 
 little fellow, the image of the grandfather whose 
 name he bore — for all the children had French 
 names, Mr. Scanlan not caring to perpetuate 
 the Dennis's and Judiths of his ancestry. He 
 had insisted on educating Cesar himself — who 
 could so well teach a boy as his own father? 
 Only, unfortunately, the father had.no aptitude 
 for teaching, w^as extremely desultory in his ways, 
 and, as he gave the lessons chiefly for his own 
 amusement, took them up and relinquished them 
 whenever it suited him. Consequently things 
 went hard with little Cesar. He w^as a bright, 
 bold, noble lad, but he was not particularly 
 clever nor over-fond of his book. Difficulties 
 ensued. Not that Edward Scanlan "was one of 
 vour brutal fathers : he never lifted his hand to 
 strike his son — I should have liked to have seen 
 the mother's face if he had ! — but he made her 
 perpetually anxious and restless, because " Papa 
 and Cesar did not get on together," and 
 because, in spite of Papa's classical acquirements,
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 181 
 
 her big boy, the pride of her heart, was growing 
 up a 'great dunce. 
 
 Yet when she suggested sending him to 
 school, j\Ir. Scanlan had opened eyes of the 
 widest astonisliment. What necessity was 
 there ? when he could teach him himself at home. 
 Besides, how could they possibly afford the ex- 
 pense of schooling, when only lately she had 
 told him, the father of the family, that he must 
 do without a suit of new clothes for another six 
 mouths'? Differences ensued, which ended in 
 Cesar's remaining another year at home, while 
 his mother learnt Latin in order to teach him 
 herself. And, somehow or other, his father ap- 
 peared at the next visitation in a bran-new suit 
 of best London-made clerical clothes, dined 
 with the Archbishop, and preached a sermon on 
 the text of " Charity suifereth long and is kind ;" 
 which was so much admired that he came home 
 covered with glory, and, except that it was, 
 fortunately, extempore, would have gone to the 
 expense of printing and publishing it imme- 
 diately.
 
 182 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 Thus, when Mr. Oldham spoke, Josephine re- 
 plied Avith that quick " Yes," and over her face 
 came the shadow which he, who had all the quick 
 observation which often belongs to deaf people, 
 detected at once, and changed the conver- 
 sation. 
 
 " I have my newly-married cousin, Lady 
 Emma Lascelles, coming with her husband to 
 dine with me on Thursday ; will you come too ? 
 I asked Mr. Scanlan, and he accepted imme- 
 diately." 
 
 " Oh yes, of course he will be most happy." 
 
 " I should like you to meet Lady Emma," pur- 
 sued the old gentleman ; " she was a nice little 
 girl, and I dare say has grown up a sweet young 
 woman. 8he will be sure to take to you — I 
 mean, you will suit her better than most of the 
 ladies of Ditchley." 
 
 " Indeed !" said the Curate's wife, smiling. 
 
 " You see, they will all stand in such awe of 
 her" — and there was a slight satirical expres- 
 sion on the Rector's thin mouth. " It is not 
 often a 'lady ' in her own right comes our way.
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 18?> 
 
 Thoiigli the most innocent eagle that ever was, 
 Emma will llutter our dovecote, even as C(jrio- 
 lanns ' fluttered the Volsces in Corioli.' You 
 will see I" 
 
 " Shall I ? No ; I fear I shall not. I am sony 
 to decline your kindness, Mr. Oldham, but you 
 know I never go out now. I have not been at 
 a dinner-party for years." 
 
 "So your husband said ; but ho said also that 
 meeting Lady Emma was an exceptional case, 
 and that I was to persuade you to go, as he 
 wished it extremely." 
 
 "Did he? did he really?" said Josephine, 
 with a sudden glow of pleasure ; she had not 
 grown quite insensible to the amusements or 
 life, still less to that keenest enjoyment of them 
 — to a wife — the consciousness that her husband 
 likes to enjoy them with her; that he is proud 
 of her, and admires her himself, besides having 
 a natural satisfaction in seeing other people ad- 
 mire her too. But scarcely had she spoken 
 than the glow faded. " I think you must have 
 mistaken him, ]\lr. Oldham. ]\Iy husband knows
 
 184 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 very well I do not visit. ludeed, I cannot 
 do it." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 The Rector was a daring man to put the 
 question, but he had often wished to get an an- 
 swer to it. Observant as he was, his observa- 
 tion only Avent a certain length ; and intimate 
 as Mrs. Scanlan now was with him, her intimacy 
 had its limits too. So neat was Wren's Nest 
 whenever he called, so great was its mistress's 
 feminine ingenuity in keeping in the back- 
 ground all painful indications of poverty, that 
 the rich man, w^ho had been rich all his days, 
 never guessed but that his curate was exceed- 
 ingly comfortable in his circumstances, indeed 
 rather well-off for a curate. Thus, when he 
 asked, " Why not V he had no idea that he was 
 putting any painful or intrusive question, or 
 saying anything beyond a joke, which, as an 
 old man and a clergyman, he might well ven- 
 ture. 
 
 When he saw Mrs. Scanlan look grave and 
 troubled, he drew back immediately.
 
 A BR .WE LADY. 1S5 
 
 " I beg your pardon. Pray do not answer 
 
 me. 
 
 "No; I think I liad rather answer, once for 
 all," said she, after a pause. " It is but honest, 
 and it will prevent your thinking niu ungrate- 
 ful or rude. I have given up visiting, because, 
 in truth, we cannot afford it." 
 
 "I am aware, madame," said Mr. Oldham, 
 " that fate, which has given you almost every- 
 thing else, has denied you riches ; but I think 
 that should not affect you socially — certainly 
 not in the visits with which you honour my 
 house. Let me hope still to see you on Thurs- 
 day." 
 
 " I cannot," she said, uneasily ; then laughing 
 and blushing, " If there were no other, there 
 is one very ridiculous reason. This is a grand 
 bridal party, and I have no suitable clothes !" 
 
 " Why not come as you are ? This is white," 
 touching, half-reverentially, half-paternally, her 
 dimity dress. " Would not this do ?" 
 
 She shook her head. " I should not mind it ; 
 if 1 were dressed ever so plainly, I should like
 
 186 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 to come. But — mylmsband " She stopped, 
 
 for the same shghtlj satirical expression crossed 
 the old man's mouth. 
 
 " I have no doubt my friend Scanlan has 
 perfect taste ; and, being an old bachelor, I 
 cannot be expected to understand how hus- 
 bands feel on the subject of their wives' dress. 
 Still, if I had a wife, and she looked as charm- 
 ing as madame looks at this moment, whatever 
 
 her costume might be, I should But we 
 
 will not further discuss the subject. Thursday 
 is a good way oif ; before then I shall hope to 
 bring you or your husband, or both, round to 
 my opinion. May I go into the house, Mrs. 
 Scanlan ? for it is growing rather chill outside 
 for an old man like me." 
 
 He went in, and sat an hour or more with 
 her and the children ; but, though he talked on 
 indifferent subjects, and asked no further ques- 
 tions, she could see his sharp eyes wandering 
 here, there, and everywhere, as if a new light 
 had brokeii in upon him, and he was anxious to 
 discover everything he could respecting the
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 1.^7 
 
 internal economy of Wren's Nest. Sncli a 
 shabby little iicst as it was now growing! with 
 carpets weai'ing threadbare and curtains all 
 darned, and furniture AA-liich had to be kept 
 neat and pretty by every conceivable device — 
 all those things which a woman's eye at once 
 discovers, a man's never, unless they are 
 brought pointedly to his notice, or his atten- 
 tion is awakened so that ho begins to hunt 
 them out for himself. 
 
 Mr. Oldham talked a good deal, and looked 
 about him a good deal more ; but not a syllable 
 said he with reference to the matter which, the 
 moment she had referred to it, Josephine could 
 have bit her tongue off for doing so. Not that 
 she was ashamed of her poverty, in itself — she 
 had been brought up in too lofty a school for 
 that — but she was ashamed of the shame her 
 husband felt concerning it. And anything like 
 a betrayal of it before his patron would have 
 seemed like begging for an increase of income, 
 which she knew ]\Ir. Scanlan desired, and 
 thought his just due, and which every half-
 
 188 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 year she had some difficulty to keep liim from 
 applying for. 
 
 Therefore it was a real relief to Josephine 
 when the Rector said not a Avord more of the 
 dinner-party, until, just as he was leaving, he 
 observed — 
 
 " By-the-by, I quite forget I had come to 
 consult you upon whom I should invite to meet 
 Lady Emma." 
 " Me !" 
 
 " Who so fitting ? x\re you not hand-in- 
 glove with all our neighbours? Do they not 
 come to you for advice and sympathy on all 
 occasions ? Is there a birth, or a death, or a 
 wedding in the parish that you don't know all 
 about before it happens ?" 
 
 " It used to be so." she said, half amused, 
 half sadly ; " and if not now, perhaps it is my 
 fault. But tell me whom you mean to invite. 
 I should like to hear all about the entertain- 
 ment, though I do not go. It is such an im- 
 portant event in Ditchley, a dinner-party at the 
 Rectory, and to a young bride."
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 189 
 
 So she took pencil and paper, and made out 
 a list-<Df names, lie dictating tbera — fur tlic old 
 man seemed quite pleased with his little out- 
 bm-st of hospitality — until they came to one at 
 Avhich Mrs. Scanlan stopped. 
 
 " Dr. and 31r.s. Waters. No ; that will be 
 useless. She — she does not go out." 
 
 " Bless my soul ! I had forgotten. How stu- 
 pid of me !" cried Mr. Oldham ; and then he too 
 stopped, and his keen, inquisitive eyes sought 
 Josephine's. But she had dropped them, and 
 was making idle marks upon the paper, to hide 
 a certain awkwardness. They had both e\'i- 
 dentiy hit upon a subject in which each was 
 imcertain how much the other knew. 
 
 " I ought not to have forgotten. My good 
 old friend ! Of course I must ask him, and — 
 his wife." 
 
 " You had better ask him without his wife," 
 said Josephine, quietly, with her eyes still cast 
 down. "If YOU ask her, and she hears of it, 
 she is sure to want to come ; and — she ought 
 not to come."
 
 190 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 " I suppose not. Poor Mrs. Waters ! she is — 
 ahem ! — a great invahd." 
 
 Mrs. Scaulan was silent. 
 
 " I thought," said the Rector, clearing his 
 throat, " that my poor old friend and I had 
 arranged all between us, so that nobody in 
 Ditchley was any the wiser for this — this sad 
 affau". I hate gossip, And gossip about such a 
 painful thing would be hard to bear. Waters 
 and I took every precaution, and his house is a 
 large house, and quite out of the town ; one 
 would have thought a person could be — ill — 
 there wdthout the whole town's knowing." 
 
 " I am not aware that the town does know ; 
 I hardly see how it can," said Josephine gently, 
 for she saw how troubled the Rector- was. She 
 well knew why, only she had not expected so 
 much warm feeling in the cold-mannered, lone- 
 ly old man, who was supposed to care for no- 
 body but himself. 
 
 " But you know V said lie anxiously. " Yes, 
 from your face now T am sure of it. Tell me 
 frankly, how much do you know ?"
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 101 
 
 " Everything-, 1 believe. I found it out by 
 accident." 
 
 " How long since ?" 
 
 " Six months ago." 
 
 " And you have never told — not a creature ? 
 And in the many times that I have spoken to 
 you about the Waters family, you have never 
 once betrayed that you knew auytliing ? "Well, 
 you are a wonderful woman — the only woman 
 I ever knew who could hold her tongue." 
 
 " Am I ?" said Josephine, smiling, half sadly, 
 for she had had a few sharp lessons — conjugal 
 and domestic — before arriving at that height of 
 perfection. 
 
 Still anxious, Mr. Oldham begged she would 
 tell him exactly what she knew ; and there came 
 out one of those terrible domestic tragedies, wliich 
 people always hide if they can, and which had 
 liitherto been successfully hidden even from the 
 gossiping Ditchley. Dr. Waters' ■\^^fe, of whom 
 he was very fond, had suddenly gone mad, and 
 tried to destroy both him and herself. The fit 
 over without harm, she had partially recovered,
 
 192 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 but still required to be kept in strict seclusion 
 as a " great iuvalid," appearing little outside 
 her own house, and then only with her so-called 
 " nurse," — in reality her keeper. This woman, 
 once meeting Mrs. Scanlan when she had lost 
 her mistress on the common, and was frantic- 
 ally searching for her, had betrayed the whole 
 sad truth, imploring her to keep the secret, 
 which she did faithfully. 
 
 " Even from your husband f inquired, rather 
 pointedly, Mr. Oldham. 
 
 "Yes. It did not affect him, nor would he 
 have taken much interest in the matter," she 
 answered, half apologetically. She could not 
 say the other fact — that he would have told it 
 the next day, quite unwittingly, to everybody 
 in Ditchley. " Besides, I had promised, and a 
 promise ought to be kept implicitly." 
 
 " Certainly, my dear madame, certainly !" 
 
 The old man sat rubbing his hands, and look- 
 ing at her with great admiration. 
 
 " A remarkable woman — the most remarkable 
 woman I ever knew !" Then, as a knock came
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 193 
 
 to the door, " There is Scanlau coming home to 
 his tea, and I must go to my diuuer. T Avill just 
 shake hands with him aud depart. Adieu, ma- 
 dame. Au revoir." 
 
 He bowed over her hand — his quaint, formal, 
 little bow — and disappeared. 
 
 But the next day Mrs. Scanlan received by 
 coach, from the largest linen-draper's shop in 
 the county town, a magnificent silk dress, richer 
 than anything ever seen in Ditchley. With it 
 was an envelope, addressed to herself, contain- 
 ing these lines, wi-itten in French, and in the 
 delicate, precise hand, which was at once recog- 
 nisable — 
 
 " From an old man, in token of his respect 
 for a lady who can both keep a promise and 
 hold her tongue." 
 
 Alas ! by this time there was no need for Mrs. 
 Scanlan to hold her tongue any longer. Mrs. 
 Waters had had another "attack," during which 
 she had gone — Ditchley never quite knew how 
 — to that world where she Avould wake up in 
 her right mind, and Heaven would be as tender 
 
 VOL. I. o
 
 194 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 over her as her dearly-loved and loving husband 
 was, to the last, in this. 
 
 There was no dinner-party at whieh to show 
 off the beautiful new gown ; the Rector was 
 too shocked and sad to give any. But Lady 
 Emma came, and Mrs. Scanlan saw her, greatly 
 to Mr. Scaulan's delight. Nay, the bride praised 
 so warmly his Josephine, that he admired her 
 himself more than ever, for at least ten days, 
 and took great interest in the handsome appear- 
 ance she would make in her new silk dress. 
 But Mrs. Scanlan herself had little pleasure in 
 it ; and though she thanked the Rector for it, 
 and accepted it kindly — as indeed the kindness 
 of the gift deserved — she laid it by in a drawer, 
 almost as sadly as if it had been a mourning 
 weed.
 
 195 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 /^N Josephine Scanlan's lovely face a slight 
 ^ shadow was now deepening eveiy year 
 and with every child — for a child came almost 
 every year. Fortunately — or at least so said 
 the neighbours, but did the mother ? — fortu- 
 nately, not all were living ; but ere ten years 
 were past. Wren's Nest contained six little nest- 
 lings, growing up from babies into big boys and 
 girls — Cesar, Adrienne, Louis, Gabrielle, Martin, 
 Catherine. Josephine had insisted on this lat- 
 ter name, in remembrance of her gentle, kindly, 
 vulgar, good old mother-in-laAv, now long gone 
 to her rest. Curiously enough, except Adrienne, 
 who was the plain one of the family, but, as if 
 by tender compensation, the sweetest little soul 
 among them all, the whole of the children were 
 
 02
 
 19»3 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 De Boii^ainvilles — bauclsome,well-grown, grace- 
 ful ; a young tribe that any mother might be 
 proud of. And she was very proud of them, 
 and very happy in them, at times — yet still the 
 shadow in her face grew and grew. 
 
 There is a portrait of her, taken about this 
 time, I believe, by a wandering artist who had 
 settled for the summer at Ditchley, and with 
 whom the Cm-ate struck up one of his sudden 
 friendships. Mr. Summerhayes, attracted' by 
 Mrs. Scanlan's beauty, requested permission to 
 paint her; and afterwards, out of politeness, 
 painted, as a companion-picture, her husband's 
 likewise. 
 
 The two heads are very characteristic. The 
 one is fall of a lovely gravity, nay, something 
 more, for the expression is anxious even to 
 severity; in the other is that careless insouciance 
 which may be charming in itself, but which has 
 the result of creating in other people the very 
 opposite. That painful earnestness about great 
 things and small, that unnatural and exagge- 
 rated " taking thought for the morrow," which
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 197 
 
 sometimes grows to be an actual misfortune, so 
 as to make the misery of to-day — might never 
 have come to Josephine, if her Edward had 
 been blessed mth a little more of these qualities. 
 There is no need to do more than look at the 
 two portraits, speaking so plainly through the 
 silence of years, in order to detect at once the 
 secret of their married life ; how that the bur- 
 then whicli the man shirked and shrunk from, 
 the woman had to take up and bear. Jose- 
 phine Scanlan did this, and did it to the end. 
 
 Without murmuring either, except, perhaps, 
 just at the first. There might have been a 
 season when, like most young wives and many- 
 childed mothers, she had expected to be cher- 
 ished and taken care of; to be protected as 
 well as loved ; helped as well as admired ; but 
 that time had passed by. Not without a strug- 
 gle ; still, it did pass, and she accepted her des- 
 tiny ; accepted it as a fact, nay, more, as a na- 
 tural necessity. She was young and strong ; 
 physically, quite as strong as her husband, deli- 
 cate though her appearance was ; morally, no
 
 198 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 person who was in tlieir company for an hour 
 could have doubted the relative calibre of Mr. 
 and ]\Irs. Scanlan. A man is not necessarily a 
 " man " in the true spiritual sense, because he 
 happens to wear coat and trousers : nor is a 
 woman always of the " weaker sex," because 
 she has a soft voice, a quiet manner, and a 
 feeble and feminine frame. I have seen many 
 and many a couple in which, without any great 
 external show of the thing, Nature seemed to 
 have adapted herself to circumstances, and 
 " turned the tables " in a most wonderful way 
 between husbands and wives, giving to the one 
 wherewithal to supply the other's lack ; and 
 that so gradually, so imperceptibly, that they 
 themselves scarcely recognised how completely 
 they had changed places — the man becoming 
 the woman, and the woman the mau. A sad 
 sight theoretically, but, practically, often not 
 so sad as it seems. 
 
 Possibly, Mrs. Scanlan grew to be dimly con- 
 scious of one fact as concerned herself and her 
 husband, — that, whether or not she was the
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 19i» 
 
 cleverer, lie being always considered such a 
 brilliant and talented young man, — she was 
 certainly the stronger, wiser, more sensible of 
 the two. But at any rate she expeiieuced its 
 results, and accepted them, and the additional 
 duties they involved, with a great, silent cour- 
 age, such as the urgency of the case demanded. 
 For she was a mother, and mothers must never 
 know either despondency or fear. 
 
 If she began to look anxious and careworn, 
 so careworn that it spoiled her beauty, and 
 made her husband gradually become indifterent 
 to whatever sort of dress she wore, it was no 
 wonder. The mere thought of her children 
 was enough to weigh her down night and day ; 
 to say nothing of the incessant physical weari- 
 ness of taking care of so many little folk, bright, 
 loving, mischievous monkeys, who had all the 
 activity of healthy, country-bred children, placed 
 under the very simplest discipline, and a disci- 
 pline that was, of necessity, wholly maternal ; for 
 the father took less and less notice of them every 
 day. •
 
 200 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 She did not spoil thera, I think — at least 
 Bridget protested she never did ; that she al- 
 ways kept a wholesome authority over thera, 
 and never indulged them in any way. Poor 
 little souls ! there was small opportunity for in- 
 didgence in their primitive, all but penurious 
 life ; but she was obliged to see them growing 
 up around her, almost as wild as young colts ; 
 deprived of every advantage which good food, 
 good clothes, good society, and above all good 
 education, give to young people ; that uncon- 
 scious influence of outward things, which affects 
 children, even at that early age, far more than 
 we suspect. 
 
 Their mother saw all this ; knew all that they 
 lacked ; which she would have given anything 
 to provide them -with. Yet here she was, bound 
 hand and foot with the iron bands of poverty ; 
 able to do almost nothing for them, except love 
 them. She did that. God only knoAvs how a 
 mother's heart goes out to her children — with a 
 perfect torrent of passionate devotedness — 
 when in its other channel, deepest and holiest
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 201 
 
 of all, the natural stream is slowly drying up ; 
 or becoming, as Wordsworth mournfully sings 
 of it, no longer a living fountain, but 
 
 " A comfortless and hidden well." 
 
 I have no right to take anything for granted ; 
 but straws show which way the wind blows : 
 and I find in Mrs. Scanlan's journal, hidden 
 under its safe French, many a sentence such as 
 this, which betrays a good deal more than ap- 
 pears on the surface : 
 
 " My poor Adrienne is ailing, which casts a 
 gloom over the whole house, and makes me 
 busier than ever ; for she has grown to be such 
 a help to her mother, dear child! I wish I 
 could take her to the sea, if only for a week ; 
 but how could I leave home ; leave Papa all to 
 himself? Things would be sure to go wrong 
 if I did; and, besides, Edward would be so very 
 uncomfortable. Nor should I like to propose it : 
 for it would cost a deal of money ; nearly as 
 much as that projected journey of his to Lon- 
 don with Mr. Summerhayes, against Avhich I
 
 202 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 have sot my face so firmly, telling him he must 
 give it tip ; we could not possibly afford it. 
 
 " Nor can we. Even with all the lightening 
 of my housekeeping through Mr. Oldham's kind- 
 ness " (the Rector had long ago given the child- 
 ren what he called " a quarter of a cow," name- 
 ly, a can of new milk daily, with eggs and but- 
 ter, fruit and vegetables in unlimited supply, 
 from his own farm and garden) — " even with 
 all this, I shall scarcely succeed in making ends 
 meet this Christmas ; and if we have any ex- 
 traneous expenses out of the house, we shall 
 not be able to pay our Christmas bills. And 
 oh ! what a terrible thing that would be ; sorer 
 than anything which has yet happened to 
 us." 
 
 Sore things had happened them, occasion- 
 ally ; but she rarely noted them down except 
 by implication. This, perhaps, was one of 
 them. 
 
 "Cesar, mon petit Cesar, wearies me to let 
 him learn drawing of Mr. Summerhayes. Not 
 that he has any particular talent for it, but it
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 203 
 
 amuses him, and lie likes it better tliau his 
 book. And it takes him away from home — 
 from our poor little house — going sketching 
 about the country with Papa and ^Ir. Summer- 
 hayes. Not that they do much work ; indeed, 
 I think Mr. Summerhayes has little need to 
 work, he is not a ' poor ' artist apparently ; but 
 it is a lively, wandering, pleasant life, such as 
 most men take to eagerly. I wish Edward did 
 not take to it quite so much ; it does no good, 
 and it is very expensive. I myself have no great 
 faith, nor a very warm interest in this i\Ir. Sum- 
 merhayes. Still, he is a pleasant young fellow 
 enough ; my husband likes him, and so do my 
 children, especially my two eldest. Poor little 
 Adrienne, who, at eleven j^ears old, is twice as 
 clever as her brother in her drawing as in 
 other things, though she is such a tiny dot of a 
 child — Adrienne, I see, quite adores Mr. Sum- 
 merhayes." 
 
 " My " children — alas ! a deep meaning lies 
 under that small word, that unimpressive, appar- 
 ently unimportant " my."
 
 204 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 There came a period iu Mrs. Scanlan's mar- 
 riage — as it does in many a marriage, ■which 
 looks comfortable enough to the world, and jogs 
 on fairly to the last — when the wife was gradu- 
 ally becoming absorbed in the mother. Now, 
 a voice at my elbow, and one I cannot choose 
 but listen to, knowing it is often both wiser 
 and tenderer than my own, whispers that this 
 is a wrong thing, a wdcked thing : that any wo- 
 man who deliberately prefers her children to her 
 husband, is unworthy the name of wife. To 
 which I reply that no man, worthy the name of 
 husband, need ever fear that his wife will love 
 him less than she loves her children — the thing 
 is unnatnral, improbable, impossible. But all 
 the shams in the world will not exalt an un- 
 worthy husband into a position which, even if 
 he had it, he could not keep. He will find his 
 level, and the children will find theirs, in the 
 heart which is never likely to be very false to 
 either. 
 
 But of that mysterious thing, love, it is as 
 true as it is of most other things, what people
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 205 
 
 win they must earn. When Josephine de Bou- 
 gainville raanied Edward Scanlan, she was a 
 mere girl, little beyond a child, and he a grown 
 man, at least he considered himself as such. 
 When she developed into the woman that she 
 was, a creature embodying more than any one 
 I ever knew Wordsworth's pictiu'e of 
 
 " A perfect woman, nobly planned, 
 To warn, to comfort, and command," — 
 
 he remaining still what he was, an average 
 young man, no better than most young men 
 and inferior to many, the difference between 
 the two showed fearfully plain. Less in their 
 mental than in their moral stature : Edward 
 Scanlan w^as a very clever fellow in his way ; 
 brilliant with all Hibernian brilliancy, and the 
 Hibernian aptitude of putting every talent well 
 forward ; so that, like the shops in the Rue de 
 Rivoli and the Palais Royal — all the jewelry 
 was in the wdudows. Of mere brains he had 
 quite as much as she ; or even if he had not, it 
 Avould have mattered little. Many a clever 
 woman loves passionately a not particularly
 
 20(j A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 clever man, when she sees in his nature some- 
 thing which is different from, and nobler than 
 her own. x\nd seeing this she can always place 
 herself, quite naturally, in the inferior attitude, 
 which to all women and wives is at once so de- 
 licious and so indispensable. 
 
 But to wake up from that love-dream and 
 find that its object is quite another sort of per- 
 son from what he was fondly imagined to be ; 
 that her affection towards him must, if it is to 
 continue at all, entirely change its character, 
 and become not a loving up but a loving down 
 — an excusing of weaknesses, a covering over 
 of faults, perhaps a deliberate pardoning of sins 
 — this must be, to any vafe, a most awful blow. 
 Yet it has happened, hundi'eds of times ; and 
 women have survived it, even as they survive 
 love-disappointments, and losses by death, and 
 other agonizing sorrows, by which Heaven 
 teaches us poor mortals that here is not our 
 rest ; and that, deeper than anything stock 
 phraseology can teach, comes back and back 
 upon us the lesson of life — to lay up our trea-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 207 
 
 sure not over-imich in this world, but in that 
 world " where neither moth nor rust doth cor- 
 rupt, and whore thieves do not break through 
 and steal." 
 
 The blow falls, but, happily-, it seldom flills 
 suddenly. And being so utterly irremediable, 
 women, especially those who have cliildren. be- 
 come reconciled to it ; make the best of it ; take 
 it as other women have done before them, and 
 pass gradually out of its first blinding darkness 
 into that t\\nlight stage of much-enduring ma- 
 trimony, which seems to be the lot of so many, 
 and with which so many are apparently quite 
 content. Nevertheless, to those happy wives, 
 w^ho, thank God ! know what it is to live daily 
 and hourly in the full daylight of satisfied love, 
 such a region appears only a better sort of 
 Hades, peopled with the flitting ghosts of de- 
 parted joys. 
 
 Into that silent valley of endless shade the 
 young matron, Josephine Scanlan, had slowly 
 passed. 
 
 I do not allege that her husband was unkind
 
 208 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 to her ; personal unkindness was not in his na- 
 ture ; he was far too easy and good-tempered 
 for that. It would almost have been better if 
 he had been a little unkind sometimes. Many 
 a bad-tempered man is not essentially a bad 
 man, and a woman like Josephine could have 
 borne patiently some small ill-usage, had it 
 come from a husband whom in other things she 
 could deeply respect. I have heard her say 
 sometimes, " that common men break their 
 wives' heads, and gentlemen their hearts : and 
 the former was a less heinous crime than the 
 latter." Be that as it may, I think she herself 
 would have borne any personal wrong easier 
 than to sit still, and endm-e the maddening 
 sight of watching her youth's idol slowly crum- 
 ble down into the very commonest of clay. 
 
 It may be urged, first, why did she set him 
 up as an idol, when he was but an ordinary 
 man ? "Well, that may have been a very silly 
 thing, yet do not all women do it 1 And would 
 theh love be much worth having if they did 
 not do it ? — Secondly, finding him to be what
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 209 
 
 be was, why did she not try to improve liim ? 
 
 It is a melancholy fact that some men cannot 
 be improved. A strong nature, warped to evil, 
 may be gradually bent back again to good ; 
 but over a weak nature no person has any 
 power; there is nothing to catch hold of; it is 
 like throwing out the ship's sheet-anchor into 
 shifting sands. Edward Scaulan's higher im- 
 pulses were as little permanent as his lower 
 ones. " Unstable as water thou shalt not ex- 
 cel," had been his curse through life ; though — 
 so bright and sweet are the self-delusions of 
 youth — it was not for some years that his wife 
 discovered this. 
 
 And, mercifully, Ditchley did not discover it 
 at all — at least, not for a long time. It was 
 one of those failings which do not show out- 
 side. He was still the most interesting of men 
 and of clergymen ; played first fiddle in all so- 
 cieties ; and if he did hang up that invaluable 
 instrument at his own door, why, nobody was 
 any the wiser : his wife never told. Perhaps, 
 indeed, it was rather a comfort to her to have 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 210 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 the fiddling silenced within the house — it would 
 have been such a cruel contrast to the struggle 
 that went on there : the continual battle with 
 toil, poverty, and grinding care. 
 
 The one bit of sunshine at Wren's Nest was 
 undoubtedly the children. Rough as they were, 
 they were very good children, better than 
 many rich men's offspring in their self-denial, 
 self-dependence, and uncomplaining gaiety 
 amidst all deprivations, which they, however, 
 having never known anything better, did not 
 much feel. Here, too, the Irish light-hearted- 
 ness of their faithful Bridget stood them in 
 good stead ; and their mother's French adapt- 
 ability taught them to make the best of things. 
 The little girls began to do house-work, sew, 
 and mind the baby; the little boys to garden 
 and help then- mother in all sorts of domestic 
 ways ; and this at an age when most children 
 are still in a state of nursery helplessness, or 
 worse. The incessant activity of little people, 
 which in well-to-do households finds no outlet 
 but mischievousness, here was always led into
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 211 
 
 a useful channel, and so did good instead of 
 harm. Work became their play, and to " help 
 Mama " their favourite amusement. She has 
 many an entry in her diary concerning them, 
 such as this : — 
 
 " This morning, Adrienne, standing on a stool 
 at my ironing-table, began to iron pocket-hand- 
 kerchiefs, and really, for her first attempt, did 
 it quite beautifully. She was so proud ; she 
 means to iron every Aveek now, and I mean to 
 let her, provided it does not injure her poor 
 back, which not yet is as strong as it should be. 
 I shall not, however, allow her to carry the 
 next baby." Alas ! the " next " baby. 
 
 Or this : — 
 
 "Cesar and Louis went up to the Rectory all 
 by themselves to fetch a great bundle of young 
 cauliflowers, which my childi'en are so fond of, 
 saying, when I cook them French fashion, meat 
 at dinner is quite unnecessary. They planted 
 them all by themselves, too. Papa said he 
 would show them how, but he happened to be 
 
 p2
 
 212 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 (Hit. He takes very little interest in the gar- 
 den ; but my two boys are born gardeners, and 
 love every inch of the ground, and every living 
 thing upon it. I wish they may make it pro- 
 duce more than it does, and then we need not 
 accept so much from the Rectory. It is always 
 a bad thing to be too much dependent upon 
 even the kindliest of neighbours ; and so I often 
 say to the children, telling them they must 
 learn to shift for themselves — as assuredly they 
 Avill have to do — and try and be as independent 
 as possible. 
 
 " I had to tell them yesterday that they must 
 try and do without sugar to their tea — grocery 
 is so very dear now. They pulled a wry face 
 or two at the first cup, but afterwards they did 
 not complain at all, saying ' that what Mama 
 fhd, surely they could do.' My children are 
 such exceedingly good children." 
 
 So it came to pass that, finding, young as 
 they were, she could actually respect and trust 
 them more than she could their father, she gra- 
 dually loved them best. A mournful truth;
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 213 
 
 but does any mother wouder at it ? I, for one, 
 do not. 
 
 No household is very dreary so long; as it has 
 children in it — good children, and merry with 
 all the mirth of youth. The little Scanlans 
 must have had their fill of mirth ; their happi- 
 ness made their mother happy also, in a sort (jf 
 reflected way. She was still young enough to 
 become a child with them, to share in all their 
 holiday frolics, their primrose gatherings, hay- 
 makings, nuttings, skatings, and slidings. All 
 the year round there was something doing, in 
 the endless variety which country children en- 
 joy. But from these festivals the father w^is 
 usually absent. They were " not in his Kne," 
 he said ; and when he did go, he enjoyed him- 
 self so little, that the rest of the young party 
 found in plam language " his room Avas better 
 than his company." That grand and lovely 
 sight — I use advisedly these strong adjectives — 
 of a father taking a 'day's pleasure with all his 
 children round him — stooping from his large 
 worldly pursuits to their small unworldly ones ;
 
 214 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 forgetting himself in the dehght of making 
 them happy, with a happiness which they will 
 remember long after he is laid in dust — this 
 sight was never seen at Ditchley, so far as con- 
 cerned the Scanlan family. If Ditchley ever 
 noticed the fact, reasons for it were never lack- 
 ing. Poor Mr. Scanlan's parish duties were so 
 very heavy; — it was quite sad to think how 
 little he saw of his family — how continually he 
 was obliged to be away from home. 
 
 That was true ; only, strange to say, nobody 
 at home seemed much to miss his absence. 
 Perliaps, unconsciously, the little folks betray- 
 ed this ; and, as they grew up — being remark- 
 ably simple and straightforward children — 
 found it difficult not to let their father see that 
 they had discovercvd certain weak points in his 
 character — inaccuracies and exaggerations of 
 speech, selfishnesses, and injustices of action — 
 ■v^'hich discovery could hardly have been alto- 
 gether pleasant to Mr. Scanlan. He gradually 
 ceased to look oftcner than he could help into 
 Cesar's honest eyes, which sometimes expressed
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 215 
 
 such intense astonishment, to say the least of 
 it, at the father's words and ways ; and he gave 
 lip petting Httle Adrienne, avIio sometimes, 
 when he did something that " grieved Mama," 
 followed him about the house with mute looks 
 of such gentle reproach that he could not stand 
 them. His love of approbation was so strong 
 that he could not bear to be disapproved of. 
 even by a child ; but he did not try to amend 
 matters and win approval; he only got vexed, 
 and took the usual remedy of an uneasy con- 
 science — he ran away. 
 
 Alas for his wife ! the woman who had to ex- 
 cuse him not only to herself but to these others 
 — the quick-sighted little people, whose feelings 
 were so fresh and clear — what must her difficul- 
 ties have been ? And when, all excuses failing 
 before her stern sense of absolute right, — that 
 justice without which mercy is a miserable 
 weakness or a cowardly sham — that duty to- 
 wards God, which is beyond all obedience ta 
 man — she had, as her sole resource, to maintain 
 a dead silence towards her children with re-
 
 216 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 g-arcl to their father — how terrible her trial ! 
 
 The only comfort was, that nobody knew it. 
 Ditchley pitied the Curate's wife for many 
 things ; because she had such narrow means 
 and such a large family ; because, being such a 
 charming, elegant, and accomplished woman, 
 she was only a curate's wife, doomed to have her 
 light hidden under a bushel all her days. But 
 it never thought of pitying her for the one only 
 thing for which she would have pitied herself — 
 the blank in her heart where an idol should 
 have been — the sad silence there instead of 
 singing — the dull patience and forbearance 
 which had taken the place of joy and love. 
 
 No wonder that her beauty began to fade, 
 that her cheerfulness declined, or was only pro- 
 minent in her intercourse with children — her 
 own and other people's. Grown-up people she 
 rather avoided; her neighbours, with whom she 
 had been so popular once, said among them- 
 selves that Mrs. Scanlan was not "quite so plea- 
 sant as she used to be ; was overridden by do- 
 mestic cares, and growing rather unsocial, hard,
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 217 
 
 and cold. Nay, some of them sympathised with 
 lier husband in having so little of a companion 
 in his wife, and quite understood how it was he 
 went out so much, and alone ; one or two mar- 
 ried ladies, who were very well off and had no 
 children, blamed her openly for this ; and said 
 it was " all her fault if ]\lr. Scanlan went too 
 much into society." 
 
 Mrs. Scanlan heard it, of course. Birds of the 
 air always carry such a matter. She heard, and 
 set her lips together in that stern hard line 
 which was becoming natural to them, — but she 
 said not a word. She never defended herself 
 at all, either then or afterwards. So, by degrees, 
 the kindliest of the Ditchley ladies left her to 
 herself, to carry out her lonely life at Wren's 
 Nest, which was a good mile away from the 
 town and its prying gossip. Often she pass- 
 ed days and weeks without receiving a 
 single visitor, and then the visiting was confin- 
 ed to an exchange of calls, at long intervals, 
 kept up, Ditchley owned, for civility's sake, 
 and chiefly out of respect to Mr. Scanlan. He
 
 218 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 was popular enough ; not run after quite as 
 much as at first, perhaps, yet still very well 
 liked in the neighbourhood, and always welcome 
 in any society. But it was such exceedingly up- 
 hill work keef)iDg up acquaintance with Mrs. 
 Scanlan. 
 
 One person, however, maintained towards her 
 a firm fidelity, and that was the Rector. Not 
 that he showed it in any strongly demonstra- 
 tive way — he was by no means a demonstrative 
 man — but he always spoke of her in the highest 
 terms, as " a first-rate woman," and specially 
 " a woman who could hold her tongue." And 
 though, from something she let fall in thanking 
 him for her silk dress, he delicately forbore mak- 
 ing her any more personal presents, his thought- 
 ful kindness with regarcf to the children was 
 continual. 
 
 He did not raise his curate's salary, in spite 
 of many a broad hint from that gentleman ; but 
 he helped the household in many a quiet way, 
 often obvious to no one but the mistress of it — 
 and to Bridget, who had a very great respect for
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 2U> 
 
 Mr. Oldham — at least, so far as was consistent 
 with her evident and outspoken disapproba- 
 tion of men as a race, and especially as 
 clergymen, 
 
 " I'd like to put my missis in the pulpit," said 
 this excellent woman, who lived before the 
 great question of woman's rights was broached. 
 "I wonder what she'd say? Anyhow, she'd 
 say it better than most men ; and she'd act up 
 to it too, which isn't always the way with your 
 parsons. Their religion's in their head and in 
 their mouths ; I'd like to sec it a bit plainer in 
 their lives." 
 
 This may show that the Curate's was not ex- 
 actly a " religious " family. They kept up all 
 the forms of piety ; had prayers twice a day, 
 and so on ; the Bible, lying always open on Mr. 
 Scanlan's desk, and tossing about in his coat- 
 pockets, was read aloud enough, especially the 
 Epistles, for all the household to know it by heart. 
 But Bridget once told me, her mistress had con- 
 fessed that, for years, to hear certain portions 
 of the Bible read actually turned her sick, un-
 
 220 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 til she had laid it aside long enough to come to 
 it with a tVesh and understanding soul, free 
 from all the painful associations of the past. 
 
 And so the Scanlan household struggled on, 
 living " from hand to mouth" — with often a wide 
 space between the hand and the mouth ; while 
 many a time it needed all Josephine's vigilance 
 to take care that even the hand which led to the 
 mouth — those poor hungry mouths of her dear 
 children ! — should be strictly an honest hand. 
 For that creed of the De Bougainvilles, " No- 
 blesse oblige," which held that a gentleman may 
 starve, but he must neither beg nor borrow — 
 this creed was not the creed of the Scanlan 
 family. It was Mrs. Scanlan's hardest trial to 
 keep sternly before her children's eyes that code 
 of honour which her husband talked about, but 
 neither practised nor believed iu. And when 
 at last the climax came — when their " difficul- 
 ties " increased so much that it was obvious 
 the year's income could not possibly meet the 
 year's expenses — then she recognised fully 
 what a deathblow it is to all conjugal peace
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 221 
 
 and domestic union, \vlien the husband holds 
 one standard of right and the wife another ; or 
 rather, when it is the Avife only who has any- 
 fixed standard of right at all. 
 
 As usual, the collapse came suddenly, that is, 
 the discovery of it ; for Mr. Scanlan would go 
 on for days and weeks playing on the brink of 
 the precipice, rather than acknowledge it was 
 a precipice, or speak of it as such. He disliked 
 even to open his lips on what he called " unplea- 
 sant subjects." He left all these to his wife. 
 "Do you manage it, my dear," he would say; 
 " you manage so beautifully." The little flat- 
 tery only now awoke in her a passing smile, but 
 she managed the troubles for all that. 
 
 At length a day came when she could not 
 manage them any longer ; when she was 
 obhged to insist upon her husband's speaking 
 out his mind to her upon the critical position of 
 their affairs. 
 
 Very much astonished was poor Mr. Scanlan ! 
 Surely this pressure must be all a mistake, 
 springing from his wife's overweening anxiety
 
 222 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 about money matters ; an anxiety common to 
 all mothers, he tliought, 
 
 " It is not a mistake," said she calmly, though 
 with a hot cheek. " See here !" 
 
 And she laid before him, written out, in plain 
 black and white, all the sums they owed and all 
 the money they had in hand to meet them. It 
 Avas a heavy deficit. 
 
 Mr, Scanlan took up the paper carelessly. 
 " How neatly you have set it all down, and what 
 capital arithmetic I Really, Josephine, you 
 ought to apply for a situation as clerk and book- 
 keeper somewhere." 
 
 " I wish I could !" said she beneath her 
 breath ; but her husband either did not or would 
 not hear. Still he looked a little vexed. 
 
 " You should have told me this before, my 
 dear!" 
 
 " I have told you, but you said it did not mat- 
 ter, and that I was not to trouble you with it. 
 Nor would I have done so till the last extre- 
 mity." 
 
 " I can't conceive what you mean by the last
 
 A BRAVTi: LADY. 223 
 
 extremity. And how has it all come about? 
 It must be your fault, for you manage every- 
 thing, and spend everything." 
 
 " Not quite," said she, and put before him a 
 second list of figures, in two lines, headed sever- 
 ally " House expenses," and " Papa's expenses." 
 It was remarkable how equal the sum total of 
 each was ; and, naturally, this fact made papa 
 very angry. He burst out into some very bit- 
 ter words, which his wife received in stolid si- 
 lence. 
 
 I do not here praise Josepliine Scanlan ; I 
 think she must have gradually got into a hard 
 way of saying and doing thmgs, which, no 
 doubt, was very aggravating to the impulsive 
 Irish nature of her husband. He was fond of 
 her still, in his sort of selfish way, and he liked 
 to have her love and her approbation. He 
 would have been much better pleased, no doubt, 
 had she put her arms about his neck with 
 " Never mind, dearest Edward I" and passed 
 the whole thing over, instead of standing in 
 front of him thus — the embodiment of moral
 
 224 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 right — a sort of domestic Themis, pointing with 
 cue hand to those terrible lines of figures, and 
 pressing the other tightly upon her heart, the 
 agitated beating of which he did not know. 
 But she stood quite still, betraying no weak- 
 2iess. The thing had to be done, and she did 
 it, in what seemed to her the best and only 
 way. There might have been another, a gentler 
 Avay, but I do not know. Alas ! that one un- 
 failing strength of a wife, the power of appeal 
 to her husband's conscience, certain that even 
 if he has erred a little, his sense of duty will 
 soon right itself; this engine of righteous power 
 was wanting to poor Mrs. Scanlan. She had 
 tried it so often and found it fail, that now she 
 never tried it any more. 
 
 She stood in dead silence, waiting until his 
 torrent of words had expended itself; then she 
 said, 
 
 " Now, without more talking, we had better 
 see what is best to be done." 
 
 "Done? Why, what can we do? Where 
 was the use of your coming to me about all
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 225 
 
 this ? I'm not Midas ; I can't tin-n pebbles into 
 pounds I" And even in the midst of his annoy- 
 ance Mr. Scanlan smiled at his own apt illus- 
 tration. 
 
 His wife might have replied, that to throw 
 away pounds like pebbles was more in his line ; 
 but she checked the sharp answer, and made 
 none at all. 
 
 "I cannot imagine what is to be done," he 
 continued. "If we had any relatives, any 
 friends to whom I could have applied " 
 
 " We have none, happily." 
 
 " ^^'^hy do you say happily ? But I know 
 your crotchets on this head. You are totally 
 mistaken, Josephine. Friends ought to help 
 one another. Does not Scripture itself say, 
 ' Give to him that asketh, and fi-om him that 
 would borrow of thee, turn not thou away.' " 
 
 " But Scripture does not say, ' Go a borrow- 
 ing, knowing all the while that you never can 
 pay.' " 
 
 " Nonsense ! We should pay in course of 
 time." 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 " We might, but I should be sorry to risk the 
 experiment. No : fortunately for them and us, 
 we have no friends." 
 
 She spoke in such a measured, impassive 
 voice, that Mr. Scanlan looked at her, uncertain 
 whether she were in jest or earnest, pleased or 
 vexed. 
 
 " You are an odd kind of woman, Josephine ; 
 much more so than you used to be. I can't 
 understand you at all. But come, since my 
 idea is scouted, what plan do you propose ? I 
 leave it all to you, for I am sick of the whole 
 matter." And he threw himself on the sofa 
 with a weary and much injured air. 
 
 She sat down by him, and suggested a very 
 simple scheme — selling some of her jewelry, 
 which was valuable, and almost useless to her 
 now. But she had reckoned without her host. 
 The sacrifice which to Mrs. Scanlan had seem- 
 ed trifling, to Mr. Scanlan appeared quite dread- 
 ful. 
 
 " What ! part with these lovely emeralds and 
 diamonds, which have been so much admired.
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 227 
 
 and which make you look well-dressed, however 
 careless you are in other ways ? And sell them 
 in Ditchley, that some neighbour may parade 
 them before your very face, and proclaim to all 
 the world how poor we are "? Intolerable I T 
 will never allow it ; you must not think of such 
 a thing." 
 
 But finding she still did think of it, he took 
 another tack, and appealed to her feelings. 
 
 " I wonder at you ! To sell my gifts, and 
 my poor father's and mother's — the pretty 
 tilings you used to look so sweet in when we 
 were first married ! Josephine, you must have 
 the heart of a stone !" 
 
 " Have I V cried she. " I almost wish I 
 had." 
 
 And as her husband put his arm round her, 
 she burst into tears ; upon which he began to 
 caress and coax her, and she to excuse liim : 
 thinking, after all, it was loving of him to wish 
 not to part mth these mementoes of old 
 days. 
 
 " Oh ! Edward," she said, leaning her head 
 
 q2
 
 228 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 against his shoulder, " we used to be so fond of 
 one another." 
 
 " Used to be ! I hope we are stilL You are 
 a very good wife to me, and I am sure I try to 
 be a good husband to you. We should never 
 have these differences at all, if you would only 
 mind what I say, and not hold to your own 
 opinion so firmly. Remember, the husband is 
 head of the wife, and she must obey him." 
 
 Here Edward Scanlan assumed rather a 
 lordly air, which he usually did when his Jose- 
 phine was particularly humble. Like most 
 men of his character, he resembled that cele- 
 brated nettle which, if you " tenderly touch it," 
 
 " stings you for your pains ; 
 But be like a man of mettle, and it soft as silk remains." 
 
 " It is no use, my dear," continued he ; " you 
 must give in to me a little more. The root of 
 all our miseries is our being so poor, which we 
 always shall be while we stick in the mud of 
 Ditchley — this wretched country town, where 
 I am not half appreciated. As I have so often 
 said, we must remove to London."
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 229 
 
 Mrs. Scanlan drew back from him, turning so 
 white that he was frightened. 
 
 " My dear, you are ill. Have a glass of wine, 
 l^ridget ! Here, Bridget 1" 
 
 " Don't call her. 1 need it not. And, be- 
 sides, there is no wine in the house." 
 
 " Then there ought to be," returned Mr. Scan- 
 lan, angrily : for this too was a sore subject. 
 He had been brought up in the old-fashioned 
 school of considering stimulants a necessity. 
 Old Mr. Scanlan used to imbibe liis bottle of 
 port a day, and young Mr. Scanlan liis three or 
 four glasses: which habit Josepliine, accustomed 
 to her father's French abstinence, had greatly 
 disliked, and succeeded in breaking him off 
 from just in time, before their changed cu-cum- 
 stances requked him to do so as a point of 
 economy. He did it cheerfully enough, for he 
 was no drunkard ; still, he sometimes went back 
 to the old leaven, enjoyed and envied the vane 
 at other men's tables, and grumbled sorely at 
 the want of it at his own. 
 
 " I tell you what, Josephine, I won't stand
 
 230 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 this miserable penury any longer. That a man 
 like me should be hidden in this hole of a place, 
 deprived of every comfort of life, and hindered 
 from taking his rightful position in the world, 
 is a very great shame. It must be somebody's 
 fault or other." 
 
 " Whose r 
 
 At the flash of her eyes his own fell. 
 
 " Not yours, my dear ; I never meant to ac- 
 cuse you of it. Nor the children's — though it 
 is an uncomfortable fact that a man with a 
 family is much more hampered, and kept back 
 in the world, than a man who has none. Still, 
 they can't help it, poor little things! But I 
 am sure it would be a great deal better for them, 
 and even for you, if Ave had a wider sphere. We 
 must go and live in London." 
 
 But he said " must " very doiibtfally, being 
 aware of his wife's mind on the subject. 
 
 This bone of contention had been thrown be- 
 tween the husband and wife by Mr. Summer- 
 hayes, the artist. He had persuaded Edward 
 Scanlan, who was easily enough persuaded by
 
 A BRAVE LAPY. 281 
 
 anybody, that his great talents for preaching 
 were entirely wasted in the provinces ; that if 
 he came to the metropolis, and rented a propri- 
 etary chapel, crowds would flock to hear liiin : 
 Irish eloquence being so highly appreciated. He 
 would soon become as popular in London as he 
 had been in Dublin, and derive a large income 
 from his pew-rents, besides being in a much 
 more independent position as preacher in a 
 licensed Church of England chapel, than as 
 curate of a country parish. At the time, Jose- 
 phine had been able to reason the scheme out of 
 his head, showing him that the whole thing 
 was a matter of chance, built upon premises 
 which probably did not exist, and running cer- 
 tain risks for very uncertain benefits. Her ar- 
 guments were so strong that, with his usual 
 habit of agreeing with the last speaker, her hus- 
 band had agreed with her — at first : still he 
 went back and back upon the project : and 
 whenever he was restless, or sick, or dissatisfied, 
 brought it up again — using all the old complain- 
 ings, and old inducements, just as if she had
 
 232 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 never set them aside ; proving, with that clear 
 common sense of hers, that such a project was 
 worse than imprudent — all but insane. Still, 
 by this time she had ceased to argue ; she 
 simply held her peace — and her own opinion. 
 
 "We must 7iot go to London, Edward. It 
 would be utter ruin to both me, the children, 
 and yourself." 
 
 " Ay, there it is," returned he, bitterly ; "'me ' 
 first, the children second, your husband last — 
 always last." 
 
 This form of her speech had been purely acci- 
 dental, and if it sprung from an underlying 
 truth, that truth was unrecognised by herself. 
 So, naturally, her whole soul sprang up indig- 
 nant at her husband's injustice. 
 
 "I do not think of myself first ; that is not my 
 way — not any mother's way. My whole life 
 is spent for you and the children, and you know 
 it. I am right in what I say. And I will not 
 have my poor lambs carried away from here, 
 where at least we have bread to eat, and one 
 or two people who care for us, and taken up
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 233 
 
 to London to starve. I loill not, Edward." 
 
 She spoke so loudly that Adrienne put her 
 little anxious face in at the parlour-door, asking 
 " if Mama called l " 
 
 Then the mother came to her right senses at 
 once. 
 
 "No, my darling," she whispered, putting the 
 child out, and shutting the door after her. 
 " Run away ; Papa and I are busy talking." 
 
 Then she turned, saying gently, 
 
 " Husband, I beg your pardon." 
 
 " You have need," said he, grimly. 
 
 But he was not of a grim nature, and when 
 she fiu-ther made concessions, he soon came 
 round. 
 
 "Nevertheless," she said, when they were 
 quite reconciled. " I hold to my point. I can- 
 not consent to this scheme of yours, or rather 
 of Mr. Summerhayes'." 
 
 " You are very unjust — you always were — to 
 my fi'iend Summerhayes. He is a capital fellow, 
 worth any number of the stupid folk of Ditch- 
 ley — associations quite unfitted for a man like
 
 234 A BRAYE LADY. 
 
 ine. But if you will have me thrown away — 
 bury your husband all his life down here, like a 
 diamond in a dung-hill — why, take your way ! 
 Only you must also take the consequences." 
 
 " I will !" she said. 
 
 And then her heart smote her once more. 
 She had been so fm-ious, Edward so good-tem- 
 pered, and he had yielded to her so completely, 
 that her generous nature recoiled from accept- 
 ing what seemed such a sacrifice from him to 
 her. She could not have done it, were there only 
 herself to think of. But — those six children ! 
 And a \asion rose up before her of London as 
 she had seen it, only once in her life — passing 
 through from Ireland to Ditchley ; — ghastly 
 London, where, in the midst of splendour, peo- 
 ple can so easily die of want. As, supposing 
 her husband were unsuccessful, her poor little 
 children might die. No, she could not consent. 
 Besides, what use would it be if she did ? They 
 had no money whatsoever, not even enough to 
 pay the expenses of the journey. 
 
 Still, remorse for her hardness towards him
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 235 
 
 made her listen patiently to another scheme of 
 Mr. Scanlau's, which many a time he had tried 
 vainly to persuade her to ; namely, asking Mv. 
 Oldham for an increase of salary. 
 
 " I quite deserve it," said the Curate. " I 
 do all the work, and he has all the pay. ^ly in- 
 come is hundreds to his thousands. I wonder 
 by the way how large his income is, and who 
 will drop in for it ? His property is consider- 
 able ; but he is as stingy as all rich men are. Ho 
 wovild drive a bargain, and stick to it to the 
 very last." 
 
 " I see no harm in sticking to a bargain, if it 
 is not an unfair one," said Josephine, smiling. 
 "Nor do I think Mr. Oldham so very stingy. 
 Think how kind he is to the children." 
 
 " The children, pooh ! Has he ever been 
 kind to me ? Has he ever faii'ly appreciated my 
 abilities, and the sacrifice I make in continuing 
 
 to be his curate, when I might so easily 
 
 But I won't vex you, my dear ; I'll never refer 
 to that subject again." 
 
 Nevertheless he did ; being one of those peo-
 
 236 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 pie who cannot take " No " for an answer, or 
 believe that " Yes " implies a decision ; but are 
 always trusting to the chance of other people 
 being as weak and undecided as themselves. 
 
 At last, partly in a kind of despair, and partly 
 because she really saw some justice in the thing, 
 Mrs. Scanlan consented that the Rector should 
 be appealed to for more salary. 
 
 But who should " bell the cat ?" a rather un- 
 pleasant business. 
 
 " I think you would do it best, my dear ; wo- 
 men are cleverer at these things than men, and 
 you are such an extraordinarily clever woman." 
 
 Josephine smiled at the "blarney," which she 
 was not quite deaf to yet; seeing it was the 
 blarney of affection. And her husband did 
 feel great affection for her at that minute. She 
 had saved him from a difficulty ; she had con- 
 sented to what he wanted, and he was really 
 grateful to her, with that shallow gratitude for 
 small mercies and deep sensibility to temporary 
 reliefs, which formed part of his insouciant dis- 
 position.
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 2;'>7 
 
 And then she paused to think the matter 
 over. It was not her business certainly, but her 
 husband's ; still, as he said, she would probably 
 manage it best. Mr. Oldham was rather diffi- 
 cult to deal with ; Edward might vex him and 
 spoil all. At any rate, he disliked the burthen 
 of doing it ; and most of his burthens had gradu- 
 ally fallen upon her, till her delicate shoulders 
 had grown hardened to the weight. How 
 many another woman has been driven to the 
 same lot, and then blamed for tacitly accepting 
 it; ridiculed as masculine, strong-minded — the 
 " grey mare," which is called contemptuously 
 the " better horse." And why ? Because she 
 is the better horse. 
 
 (While I say this, a firm arm holds me, and a 
 tender voice suggests that I am talking non- 
 sense. But I cannot be calmly judicial on this 
 head. I know, and he who holds me knows 
 too, that it is the truth I speak ; forced on me 
 by the remembrance of the sad Hfe of my dear 
 Lady de Bougainville.) 
 
 " Come, my darling," said Edward Scanlan,
 
 238 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 caressingly. " Please go to the Rectory and do 
 this difficult business. You will do it so beauti- 
 fully — a thousand times better than I. For you 
 have a way of doing and saying anything so 
 as to offend nobody. Never was there a truer 
 proverb : ' One man may steal a sheep while 
 another mayn't look over the hedge.' " 
 
 " And so you want me to go and steal your 
 sheep for you f ' said Josephine, laughing, and 
 clinging to her husband fondly, in that vain 
 hoping against hope which had so often be- 
 guiled her — that if he were a richer he would 
 be both a happier and a better man ; and that, 
 whether or no, her continuing to love him 
 would help him to become all she wished him to 
 be. " Well, I will try to get you out of this 
 difficulty, and, perhaps, things may be easier 
 for the future. I will go and speak to Mr. Old- 
 ham to-morrow."
 
 23y 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 rpHAT to-morrow, of which Josephine iScanlau 
 ^ spoke 80 calmly, turned out to be the crisis 
 of her life. 
 
 To make up her miud to this visit to the 
 Rectory, cost some pain. It was like assuming 
 her husband's duty ; doing for him what he was 
 too weak to do for himself; and, though many 
 a woman is compelled to do this, still it is only 
 a mean sort of woman who enjoys the doing of 
 it, or likes being made perforce a heroine because 
 her husband is a coward. 
 
 Ay, that was the key-note of Edward Scan- 
 lan's nature. He was a moral coward. Physi- 
 cally, perhaps, he had the bravery of most 
 Irishmen ; would have faced the cannon's mouth ; 
 indeed, it was always his regret that he had not
 
 240 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 been a soldier instead of a clergyman. But to 
 say No to an evil or nuwortby request ; to enter 
 an elegant drawiug-room in a shabby coat ; in 
 short, to do anything awkward, unpleasant, or 
 painful, was to him quite impossible — as impos- 
 sible as it would have been to his wife to go 
 away and leave it undone. 
 
 She knew this well ; it had heen forced upon 
 her through years of bitter experience, and, 
 therefore, she nerved herself to undergo her 
 double humiliation : that of asking a favour 
 which might not be granted, and of reading, in 
 the Rector's shrewd eyes, though he might be 
 too courteous to say it, the knowledge that her 
 husband, and not she, was the person who ought 
 to have come and asked it. She knew, too, that 
 all sorts of common-sense questions might be 
 put to her. Why could they not make ends 
 meet 1 — other people did, who were no better 
 off than they, and had as many children. Per- 
 haps, too, even Mr. Oldham would side with 
 the opinions of the other two men — Mr. Scan- 
 Ian and Mr. Summerhayes — against her, only a
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 241 
 
 woman ! and recommend that thoy Bliould try 
 to better themselves by seeking their fortune in 
 London. 
 
 Seeking one's fortune ! A bright, bold, happy 
 thing to do — for a young woman with lier 
 young husband, in whom she has full faith, and 
 for whom she is ready to give up everything 
 and follow him cheerfully, in weal or woe, 
 throughout the world. Ten years ago, Jose- 
 phine Scanlan would have done it gladly, with 
 the Edward Scanlan whom she then believed 
 in. Now ? 
 
 She could not do it ; she dared not. With 
 those six little ones entrusted to her charge ; 
 sent to her by God himself, to be her crown of 
 comfort, to keep her heart warm, and open a 
 dim vista of joy in the heavy future, which 
 otherwise might have closed blankly upon her 
 like the dead wall of a cave — no, it was im- 
 possible. 
 
 The thought of them, and this only alterna- 
 tive of saving them from Avhat she felt would 
 be utter ruin, beat down the cruel feeling of 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 242 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 shame which came upon her whenever she con- 
 siderecl how she should speak to Mr. Oldham — 
 into what words she should put the blunt re- 
 quest, " Give me some more money? " 
 
 For she knew that, in degree, her husband 
 was right ; the Rector was rather hard in the 
 matter of money. That is, where he did give, 
 he gave liberally enough, but he disliked being 
 encroached upon, or applied to unnecessarily ; 
 and he was so exceedingly accurate himself in 
 all his pecuniary affairs that he had a great 
 contempt for inaccuracy in others. He had, 
 too, on occasion, the power of making people a 
 little afraid of him ; and, brave woman as she was, 
 I think ]\Irs. Scanlan must have been slightly 
 afraid, too — conscious of that sensation which 
 children call " their courage slipping down to the 
 heels of their shoes" — as she sat, lacing her 
 poor, half-worn, nay, shabby boots, on her deli- 
 cate feet, the morning she had to walk down to 
 the Rectory. 
 
 It was a burning hot morning in the middle 
 of June. I can picture her, for I know exactly
 
 A BRA\Ti: LADY. 243 
 
 how she was dressed. She had on lior usual 
 priut gown, A\ath a tippet of nankeen, and a 
 gipsy hat, such as was then the foshion, of 
 coarse black and white straw. She used to 
 plait this straw herself, and make it into hats 
 for her own use and for tlie children — large, 
 shady, and comfortable, tied across the crown 
 and under the chin with green riband. Her 
 costume was, perhaps, not quite matronly 
 enough, but it suited her circumstances ; the 
 lilac print gown washed for ever ; the hat was 
 much more convenient than the gigantic bon- 
 nets, heavy with feathers and flowers, which 
 were then in vogue, and much more economical 
 besides. With her stately gait and still slender 
 g-irlish figure, upon which almost anything 
 looked well, I have httle doubt, though the 
 Ditchley ladies who met her that day might 
 have set her down as dressed rather oddly and 
 unfashiouably, there was something about Mrs. 
 Scanlan's appearance Avhich marked her immis- 
 takeably as " the gentlewoman." 
 
 R 2
 
 244 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 She walked quickly across the common, and 
 through the town, for she wanted to get rid of 
 some ugly thoughts which oppressed her ; and 
 besides, whenever a difficulty had to be met,. it 
 was her natm-e to meet it as soon as possible. 
 " If 1 had to be hanged," she would say, " I 
 would rather be hanged at once. Reprieves 
 are intolerable." 
 
 It was not often she quitted her own house 
 for other people's now. For months she had 
 not been inside the pretty Rectory, and the 
 sight of it in all its summer beauty aroused old 
 remembrances and vain desires. Desires, not 
 for herself, but for those belonging to her. 
 Had she been alone, she almost thought she 
 would have lived on for ever at Wren's Nest, 
 dilapidated and dreary though it was growing. 
 But — her children. It was now most difficult 
 to stow them all away within those narrow 
 walls ; and as for making them really comfort- 
 able there, the thing could not be done at all. 
 
 She counted them over, her pretty flock : — 
 manly Cusar, delicate Adrienne, Louis, who
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 245 
 
 bade fair to be the cleverest of the tribe, Ga- 
 brielle growing up with all the health ami 
 beauty that her elder sister lacked ; ^lartiu and 
 Catherine, baby nonentities still, but fast turn- 
 ing into individuahties, like the rest, for the 
 mother's character had impressed itself upon 
 every one of her children. They were not 
 commonplace at all, but had each strong wills 
 and decided tastes. Poor little souls! How 
 hard it would be to repress their dawning 
 talents and aspirations, to bring them up little 
 better than labourers' children, for so it must 
 be — how could it be different? She did not 
 know where even food and clothing were to 
 come from, to say nothing of education. Oh ! 
 if she only had a little money; merely the 
 crumbs from the rich man's table — the merest 
 tithe of that wealth which Mr. Oldham spent 
 so carelessly upon this his garden, his conser- 
 vatories, his beautiful and tasteful house. 
 
 She began to think that after all her husband 
 was right in his complaints against fate ; that 
 blessings were very unfairly divided, especially
 
 24(5 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 money ; and that it was hard this childless old 
 bachelor should have so much, and she and her 
 poor young tribe so little. Did the good God 
 look with equal eyes on all ? Did He see how 
 she suffered ? Was it any use to call upon 
 Him, and ask Him to help her ? Not in one of 
 those voluminous and voluble prayers which 
 her husband poured out night and morning, to 
 the phraseology of which she had grown so ac- 
 customed, that now it all went in at one ear 
 and out at the other. She either never listened 
 at all, or listened with a slight curl of the lip, 
 incredulous both as to the prayer itself, and, 
 God help her, to the Hearer of it also. 
 
 Blameworthy she might be — ay, she was. 
 She ought to have been Christian enough to 
 judge between the sham and the reality ; wise 
 enough to know that all the musty human cur- 
 tains hung between may darken the soul's day- 
 light, but can never blot out the existence of 
 the sun, the great Sun of Righteousness, who 
 shines for ever above and upon us all. But she 
 was also deeply to be pitied ; for the man who
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 247 
 
 made this woman half an iiiibeHevcr, stood to 
 her in the closest relation that one human being 
 can stand to another, the ruler of her life, the 
 centre of her world, her priest, her lord, her 
 husband. 
 
 Usually she was too busy, from hour to hour, 
 and from niinute to minute, for these ill thoughts 
 to come ; thoughts which, beginning in lack of 
 ftiith in man, ended in lack of faith towards 
 God : but to-day, in her long, lonely, fatiguing 
 walk, the devil had had full opportunity to 
 attack her. She felt his cruel black wings 
 flapping behind her at every step she took, and 
 she flung the Rectory gate after her with a 
 clang, hoping in that pleasant, peaceful garden 
 to shut him out, but he would come in. He 
 seemed to jeer at her from under tlie faded la- 
 burnums, and behind the syringa bushes — those 
 mock orange-blossoms, with their faint, sickly 
 smell, sweet at first, but afterwards growing 
 painful to the sense. They reminded her of 
 many mai'riages, which begin so bright at first, 
 and end, God knows how ! Marriages in which
 
 248 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 nobody is particularly to blame, and of wliicb 
 the only thing to be said is that they were al- 
 together a mistake — a sad mistake. 
 
 " But nobody knows it, and nobody ought to 
 know," said to herself this thirteen-years' wife 
 — apropos of nothing external, as she walked 
 on in her rare solitude, thinking she would give 
 herself and the devil no more opportunities of 
 the same sort again, and forcibly tm-ning her 
 mind away from other things to the special 
 thing she had that morning to do. 
 
 She found Mr. Oldham, not in his study, as 
 she expected, but sitting in his verandah. The 
 day was so hot, and his book so uninteresting, 
 that he had fallen asleep in his arm-chair. As 
 she came suddenly upon him thus, he looked so 
 withered and wasted, such a forlorn specimen 
 of a solitary old bachelor, with not a creature 
 to care for him, not a soul to heed whether he 
 was alive or dead, that the wife and mother, 
 Avho a moment before had been bitterly envy- 
 ing him, now felt a sensation of pity. Her own 
 full, bright home, alive with little voices, and
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 249 
 
 this lonely house and silent garden, where the 
 bees and the birds went on with their humming 
 and singing, as heedless of the old man as if 
 he were not asleep, but dead — struck her with 
 forcible contrast, and reproached her unconsci- 
 ously for all she had been thinking of so bit- 
 terly. 
 
 She had no time to think more, for Mr. Old- 
 ham woke ; and apologised, in some confusion, 
 for being so discovered. 
 
 " But I really do not believe I was asleep, 
 madame ; I was only meditating. At my age 
 one has plenty of time for meditation. You, I 
 suppose, have very little ?" 
 
 " None at all." And the idea of her sitting 
 down only for ten minutes idle with a book in 
 her hand quite amused Mrs. Scanlan. 
 
 The old man seemed much pleased to see 
 her, brought her an arm-chau- as comfortable as 
 his o^\Ti, and thanked her warmly for taking 
 such a long, hot walk, just to pay him a neigh- 
 bourly visit. 
 
 " It is very kind of you — very kind indeed ;
 
 250 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 and you are most welcome too. I am so much 
 alone." 
 
 His courteous gratitude smote her conscience 
 painfully. Colouring, almost with shame, she 
 said at once, blurting it out in a confused way, 
 very unlike her ordinary sweet and stately 
 manner, — 
 
 " You must not thank me too much, Mr. Old- 
 ham, or I shall feel quite a hypocrite. I am 
 afi-aid my \dsit te-day was not at all disinter- 
 ested, in the sense you jjut it. I had some- 
 thing which I particularly wished to speak to 
 you about." 
 
 , " I shall be most happy," returned the Rec- 
 tor ; and then, noticing how far from happy his 
 visitor still looked, he added, " My dear lady, 
 make yourself quite at ease. I like your plain- 
 speaking, even though it does take down an old 
 man's vanity a little. Howcould I expect you, a 
 busy mother of a family, to waste your valuable 
 time in inquiring after the health of a stupid old 
 bachelor like me ? " 
 
 " Have you been ill I I did not know."
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 251 
 
 " Nobody did, except Waters ; I bate to be 
 gossipped about, as yoa are aware. I tbink, 
 Mrs. Scanlan, you and I understand one an- 
 other pretty well by this time V 
 
 " I hope so," she said, smiling, and taking the 
 hint, asked no more questions about his illness. 
 
 She noticed that he looked a little worn, and 
 his hands were " shaky," but he was as polite 
 and kind as usual — rather more so, indeed. 
 
 " Come, then, we will sit and talk here, and 
 afterwards we will go and look at my roses. I 
 have the finest Banksia you ever saw, just com- 
 ing into flower." 
 
 Banksia roses ! and the bitter business that 
 she had to speak about ! It was a hard con- 
 trast for the Curate's wife ; but she made a vio- 
 lent effort, and began. Once begun, it was less 
 difficult to get through with ; the Rector helping 
 her by his perfect, yet com-teous silence ; never 
 interrupting her by word or look till she got to 
 the end of her tale, and had made, in as brief 
 language as she could put it, her humiliating 
 request.
 
 20'2 A BRAYE LADY. 
 
 Then he raised his eyes and looked at her — 
 inquiringlY, as it seemed, but satisfied ; looked 
 away again — and sat drawing patterns on the 
 gravel-walk with his stick. 
 
 " What you tell me, Mrs. Scanlan, you pro- 
 bably thiuk I was unacquainted with, but I am 
 not. Your husband has broached the matter to 
 me several times ; he did it a week ago, and I 
 gave him an answer — a direct refusal." 
 
 " A direct refusal ! And he never told me ! 
 He allowed me to come and ask you again !" 
 
 For a moment Josephine's indignation had 
 got the better of her prudence. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, Mr. Oldham," added 
 she, rising at once. " I perceive I ought not 
 to have come here at all. But Mr. Scanlan 
 said " 
 
 She stopped. It was not always safe to repeat 
 what Mr. Scanlan said, without some confirma- 
 tory or secondary evidence. 
 
 " Mr. Scanlan probably said a great many un- 
 necessary things, as a man does when he is an- 
 noyed — and I fear I annoyed him very much
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 253 
 
 that day. But _\ou must pardon me, madarae. 
 Your husbaud iy a young mau, and he ought to 
 put up a Kttle with an old man like rae. So 
 ought you. My dear lady, Avill you not sit 
 down again, and let us talk the matter quietly 
 over f ' 
 
 She obeyed, though it went against her grain, 
 sorely. But the Rector was, as he said, an old 
 man, and he had been very kind to her and her 
 children. She believed him to be really her 
 friend — in fact, the only friend she had ; since 
 forlorn waves, whom the world supposes well 
 protected, are, consequently, the most friend- 
 less women alive. Their one stay failing them, 
 they can have no substitute ; they must acquire 
 strength enough to stand alone — or drop. 
 
 " Mr. Scanlan told me, of course, of the alter- 
 native — the fatal alternative, for me " — (here it 
 was difficult to distinguish whether i\lr. Oldham 
 meant truth or satire) — " that if his income were 
 not increased he would have to go at once to 
 reside in London. It seems he has admirable 
 prospects there ?"
 
 254 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 This last sentence, -which, though stated as a 
 fact, sounded more like a query, was met by Mrs. 
 Scanlan with a dead silence. In truth, she was 
 so surprised at finding all these things, upon 
 which her husband had bound her to secrecy, 
 di\mlged by him to the very last person she ex- 
 pected he would have told them to, that she 
 could not find a word to say. 
 
 " Or else," pursued Mr. Oldham, " he thinks 
 he has great prospects, which, in a person of 
 my friend Scanlan's enthusiastic temperament, 
 comes to the same thing. But in such import- 
 ant matters, I always prefer having the lady's 
 opinion likewise. What do you say ? Is it your 
 wish to leave Ditchley ?" 
 
 " No. Decidedly no." 
 
 The old man looked pleased. 
 
 " I am glad of that. I should be sorry, ma- 
 dame, if after all these years you liked us so 
 little that you were glad to run away. And 
 besides, I cannot feel that there are such vital 
 objections to Ditchley. It is a pretty neighbour- 
 hood, with good society, a healthy place for
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 255 
 
 children, aud all that. Why should you go to 
 London f 
 
 " My husband wishes it." 
 
 " Yes, I remember he said he would be better 
 appreciated there ; would attract large congre- 
 gations ; get into the aristocratic evangelical set, 
 and so on. He might ; he is a clever man, and 
 a most — ahem ! — most popular preacher. But 
 at the same time, he might not. As I told him, 
 it is just a chance ; and if the chance fails, 
 where is he? Also, where are you and the 
 children ?" 
 
 Mr. Oldham spoke in such a practical, kindly, 
 common-sense way, having evidently taken in 
 the position and thought it over, in a way that 
 people seldom trouble themselves to think over 
 their friends' afFau's — that Mrs. Scanlan was a 
 little relieved. He had not been offended evi- 
 dently, whatever unpleasant talk had passed 
 between him and her husband. She felt ex- 
 tremely grateful to the old man, and expressed 
 her gratitude warmly. 
 
 " No, no. You have nothing to thank me
 
 25(3 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 for ; it is quite the other way. And I looked for- 
 ward to having the pleasure of your society, and 
 my friend Scanlau's, for some years — in fact till 
 my years are done. It would be a great regret 
 to me if you had to leave Ditchley." 
 
 " And to me also. In which," added she, re- 
 collecting herself, " I am sure my husband would 
 join. He would hesitate very much at giving 
 up his curacy. But necessity has no law." 
 For it seemed as if the object of her visit were 
 slipping away, so she forcibly brought herself 
 back to the point. " It all comes to this, Mr. 
 Oldham : we cannot live upon the income we 
 have from you, and we have no other, not a 
 halfpenny but what you give us." 
 
 " Indeed ? I feared so, but I never was quite 
 sure of it. You must have a sore pull some- 
 times. Poor lady !" 
 
 He just touched her hand, with which she had 
 grasped the arm of his chair. What a thin hand 
 it was I and marked with traces of toil, not usu- 
 ally seen on a lady's hand. 
 
 Mrs. Scanlan drew it away at once.
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 257 
 
 " I do not complain," she said, rather proud- 
 ly. " I shall make ends meet if I can, but just 
 this year I have been unable to do it, and I feel 
 quite miserable. Do you know, we actually 
 owe fifteen pounds !" 
 
 " Fifteen pounds ; what an alarming sum !" 
 said the Rector, smiling. 
 
 " Not to you, perhaps ; but to me it is alarm- 
 ing. It makes me shrink from going through 
 Ditchley High Street. I think all men's eyes 
 must be Tipon me. ' There is the clergyman's 
 wife, she owes money, and she can't pay, or 
 won't pay :' for how do they know which it is ? 
 Oh ! My. Oldham, you may think lightly of it, 
 but to me it is dreadful — intolerable !" 
 
 She spoke earnestly ; almost with the tears in 
 her eyes. It was so long since her heart had 
 been opened to anybody, that once beginning 
 to speak, she could not stop herself. 
 
 " You see, I never was used to this sort of 
 thing. My father, — ah ! if you had known my 
 father ! He would have gone hungry — many a 
 time we have both gone hungry — but to go into 
 
 VOL. I. S
 
 258 A BRAVE hXDY. 
 
 debt ! we would have shuddered at such a thing. 
 Yes, you should have known my father," she 
 repeated, and her tears began to start. 
 
 "I have never named the circumstance to 
 you, madame, because it was not necessary," 
 said Mr. Oldham gently ; " but once in Paris, at 
 the marriage of Mademoiselle his sister, whom 
 I had met before, and much admired, I had the 
 honour of seeing, for five minutes only. Monsieur 
 le Vicomte de Bougainville." 
 
 Greatly astonished, but still unwilling to put 
 questions which Mr. Oldham had evidently no 
 intention of answering — indeed he seemed ex- 
 ceedingly to dislike the subject — Mrs. Scanlan 
 sat silent ; and the next moment the butler ap- 
 peared, announcing lunch. 
 
 " You will allow me?" said the Rector, oifer- 
 ing her his arm. " After luncheon we shall 
 have an opportunity of talking over our little 
 business." 
 
 The Curate's wife roused herself to necessary 
 courtesy, and her courage, which had been 
 slowly ebbing away, faintly revived. During
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 259 
 
 the meal, she and Mr. Oldham conversed toge- 
 ther in their usual pleasant way : on his favour- 
 ite hobbies, his garden, and so on ; nay, he paid 
 her every attention that he could think of, even 
 sending for a bottle of his most precious Bur- 
 gundy, in celebration, he said, of the rare hon- 
 our of having her for his guest. Ilis kindness 
 comforted her even more than his wine. 
 
 Besides — alas ! for poor mortality — to her, 
 faint from her hot walk, this plentiful meal, 
 more luxurious than any dinner she had had for 
 months ; and the peaceful eating of it, sur- 
 rounded by the quiet atmosphere of wealthy 
 ease, affected her with a sensation of imaccus- 
 tomed pleasantness. She had never cared for 
 luxuries when she had them : but now, in her 
 long lack of them, they seemed to have acquired 
 an adventitious value. She almost wished she 
 had a beggar's wallet, and a beggar's cool 
 effrontery, that she might take a portion of the 
 delicatelv-cooked dinner home to her children, 
 especially her sickly Adrienne ; and she gazed 
 
 s2
 
 260 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 round the large, cool, airy dining-room with an 
 unconscious sigh. 
 
 " You seem to admire this room," said Mr. 
 Oldham, smiling. 
 
 " Yes, I always did, you know. The Rectory 
 is, to my mind, the prettiest house in Ditchley. 
 And I have a weakness for all pretty things." 
 
 " So have I. And sometimes I think I might 
 indulge it even more than I do ; in collect- 
 ing pictures, for instance. But where w^ould be 
 the good of this ? to an old bachelor like me, 
 who cannot, at best, enjoy them long; and at 
 my death they would be all dispersed. No, 
 no ; I have made up my mind to keep to my 
 old plain ways, and leave extravagance for 
 those that will come after me." 
 
 It was the first time Mr. Oldham had ever 
 openly reverted to his heir or heirs. Of course 
 they existed : rich men have always a tribe of 
 seventeenth cousins and so on, eager to drop in 
 for what may be left them ; but none such had 
 ever appeared at Ditchley. The town and 
 neighbourhood seemed as ignorant on the sub-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 2G1 
 
 ject as Mrs. Scanlaii ; in fact, the general opin- 
 ion was, that Mr. Oldham meant to leave all his 
 money to some charitable institution, llu Avas, 
 she knew, the last of his family — a sad thing in 
 itself, and not a pleasant topic to speak npon 
 with him ; so she tried to turn the current of 
 conversation by some common-place remark ; 
 hoping that " those which came after him " 
 would long be kept out of their inheritance. 
 
 " Thank you. However, when they do come 
 into it, they will find it safe and sure. I take 
 a good Avhile to make up my mind, but having 
 once made it up, I rarely change it. My heirs 
 may count securely upon their property." 
 
 It was an odd remark, and Josephine was 
 puzzled how to reply to it. Of course, it show- 
 ed Mr. Oldham's friendly spirit towards herself 
 and her interest in his aifairs, thus to speak of 
 them to her; but her own business was too 
 near her heart, and she was pardonably indiffer- 
 ent as to who might or might not inherit ]Mr. 
 Oldham's money. The humble fortmies of her- 
 self and her family were of much more import-
 
 262 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 auce to her just then. Still, she would not 
 force the conversation ; but she waited with 
 nervous impatience for her host to quit the din- 
 ing-room, and lead the way into his study. 
 
 He did so at length ; though even when there 
 he settled himself in his chair, and pointed to 
 her to take another, without testifying any im- 
 mediate intention of beginning the subject 
 which lay so close to her heart. 
 
 " Do you ever think of dying, Mrs. Scan- 
 Ian?" 
 
 It was an odd question, odd even to ludi- 
 crousness, but she restrained her inclination to 
 see it in that light, and said gravely — 
 
 " In a religious point of view, do you mean, 
 Mr. Oldham ?" 
 
 " No ; a worldly one. Do you consider your- 
 self likely to have a long life?" 
 
 " i\Iy family were all long-lived, and I am 
 myself, so far as I know, a very healthy person. 
 Yes ; I hope I shall live to see all my children 
 grown up. God grant it !" 
 
 She slightly sighed. For, when in her last
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 263 
 
 crisis of motherhood she liad a nearer risk of 
 her Hfe than ordinary, it had struck her — what 
 if she were to die, leaving those poor little ones 
 of hers with no shelter, no protection against 
 the hard world, except their ftither ? And since 
 that time she had taken especial care of her 
 own health, and striven hard against a weary- 
 longing for rest that sometimes came over her, 
 praying that she might be forgiven for it, and 
 not allowed to die until she was quite an old 
 woman, or until her children needed her no 
 more. 
 
 "My life is in God's hands," she resumed, 
 " but, humanly speaking, I see no reason why 
 it should not be a long one. I trust it will be, 
 for my children's sake, and my husband's." 
 
 " Yoiu' husband is less strong than you ; at 
 least, he always tells me so. When he gets 
 into a melancholy mood, he says he shall never 
 live to be my age." 
 
 " I think he will, though," replied ^Irs, Scan- 
 Ian cheerfully, " especially if he has no very 
 hard work, and resides always in the country.
 
 2G4 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 Which is one of ray strong reasons for disliking- 
 to remove to London." 
 
 " Stay : we will enter npon that matter pre- 
 sently. Just now I wish to speak to you about 
 — what I did not at first mean to tell you, but 
 have decided that it is better I should — some 
 private affairs of my own. A secret, in short. 
 I know that you can keep a secret." 
 
 Mrs. Scanlan bent her head assentingly, won- 
 dering what on earth was coming next. Surely, 
 she thought, it is not possible that the old man 
 is going to be married ! He was seventy-five, 
 at least; yet such things do happen, even to 
 septuagenarians. But his next sentence re- 
 moved this doubt. 
 
 " It is a secret that you will have to keep 
 for some time — possibly several years. And 
 you must keep it implicitly and entirely. You 
 must not even tell it to your husband." 
 
 " Not tell my husband !" cried Josephine, 
 drawing back. " Then I think, Mr. Oldham, 
 you had better not confide it to me at all. It 
 is exceedingly difficult — not to enter upon the
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 265 
 
 question of whether it is right or wrong — for 
 any wife to keep a secret from her husband." 
 
 " May be ; I have never had the advantage 
 of being married, and am certainly not likely 
 now to risk the experiment. But still, in the 
 matter of Mrs. Waters you did not tell your 
 liusband." 
 
 " That was different," said she, hesitating. 
 
 " Nevertheless — here the case stands. Either 
 you must promise not to comnmnicate this fact 
 to your husband, or I cannot confide it to you. 
 And it is important — indeed, of the most vital 
 importance — that you should know it." 
 
 The Rector spoke decidedly, with that deci- 
 sion which, Avhenever he chose to exercise it, 
 she was aware was inflexible. He did not care 
 to fight about small things, but in great ones, 
 when his mind was made up, you might as well 
 attept to move a mountain as Mr. Oldham. 
 
 " It is a secret," continued he, " which is ex- 
 clusively mine; which would do Scanlan no 
 good to learn, and might do him considerable 
 harm. The greatest kindness I can show him,
 
 2^56 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 I honestly believe, is to keep it from him." 
 
 " Then why tell it to me V 
 
 " Because you are another sort of a person. 
 It could not possibly harm you, and might be 
 useful to you in some degree — you and the 
 children. I advise you to hear it, if only for 
 the sake of the children." 
 
 " I hate mysteries, " said Mrs. Scanlan un- 
 easily, and turning over in her mind what this 
 secret of the Rector's could possibly be ; was it 
 any difficulty between him and his bishop, in 
 which Mr. Scanlan was also concerned? Or 
 was it — this suggestion occurred to her as most 
 probable — something relating to Mr. Scanlan's 
 future ; perhaps his chance of the next presenta- 
 tion to the living of Ditchley, on Mr. Oldham's 
 decease? The Rector's next words confirmed 
 her in this idea. 
 
 " I hate mysteries, too, madame, unless they 
 are quite unavoidable, as this is. I ask from 
 you a plain Yes or No ; nor can I give you any 
 more information to influence you on the mat- 
 ter, except that when you know my secret, I
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 2G7 
 
 believe, I am almost sure, tliat you will not 
 think it necessary to go and live in London." 
 
 The temptation was sore. "Oh! Mr. Old- 
 ham," she said piteously, " why do you try me 
 so hard?" 
 
 " I do it for your own good. Do you think 
 1 don't feel for you, my poor girl ?" and his tone 
 was almost paternal in its kindness. " But the 
 circumstances of the case are quite inevitable. 
 Either you must accept my secret, and keep it 
 from your husband, and from every human 
 being during my lifetime, or I shall consider 
 the conditions void ; and all things shall be as 
 if they had never been." 
 
 " I do not understand " 
 
 " There is no necessity that you should un- 
 derstand. Only, will you trust me? Have I 
 not always been a good friend to you? Can 
 you not believe that I shall remain so to the 
 last ? And I give you my honour — the honour 
 of the last of the Oldhams" — added he with a 
 sort of proud pathos, that went right to the 
 heart of this mother of a rising race, " that what
 
 268 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 1 ask of you will never trouble you, or grieve 
 you, or compromise you in the smallest degree. 
 It is my secret. 1 might have kept it from you 
 to the last, only," with an air of amused bene- 
 volence, "1 think you will be the better for 
 hearing it. I think, too, that Scanlan himself 
 would urge you to accept my conditions, if he 
 knew." 
 
 " Let me tell him," pleaded the wife. " Let 
 me just tell my husband that there is a secret, 
 which he must allow me to keep, even from 
 himself, for the present." 
 
 Mr. Oldham shook his head. " You Quixotic 
 woman ! You are like Charity, that ' believeth 
 all things, hopeth all things.' But I know bet- 
 ter. No, no. Don't mistake me. I like Scan- 
 lan very much. He is a clever fellow ; a plea- 
 sant fellow ; he suits me as a curate. I never 
 wish to part from him. Still, my dear lady, 
 you do not requu-e me to tell you that — that — " 
 he hesitated, " Mrs. Scanlan is a very superior 
 person to her husband." 
 
 Poor Mr. Oldham ! in his ignorant bachelor-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 260 
 
 liood, he bad not a suspicion of the effect his 
 compliment would produce. 
 
 The blood rushed violently into Josephine's 
 face ; she drew herself up Avitb a haughtiness 
 which he bad never before seen. 
 
 " Sir ! — Mr. Oldham I — you cannot surely 
 mean what you are saying. Let us dismiss 
 this subject, and confine ourselves entirely to 
 the matter in hand — the matter my husband 
 sent me to discuss with you. ]\Iay w^e enter 
 upon it at once ? for I must go home to my 
 children." 
 
 Mr. Oldham regarded her a moment, and then 
 held out his hand almost humbly. 
 
 " Pardon, madame. I was forgetting myself, 
 and speaking to you as if you were my daugh- 
 ter. You almost might have been. I was once 
 in love with a lady very like you." 
 
 There was a slight twitch in the withered 
 face, and the momentary emotion passed. Who 
 the " lady" was, Mrs. Scanlan did not, of course, 
 ask liim. Years afterwards she had reason to 
 think it might have been her aunt, that beautiful
 
 270 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 Mademoiselle Josephine de Bougainville who 
 died young, soon after her marriage, which had 
 been a marriage de convenance ; but the real 
 facts, buried far back in long forgotten years, 
 Josephine never inquired into, and never learnt. 
 
 " The matter in hand, as you termed it," re- 
 sumed Mr. Oldham, " is easily settled. I like 
 you, I like your husband. I wish him to remain 
 my curate as long as I live. Therefore, tell me 
 how much income you think necessary for your 
 comfort, and you shall have it. Give me my 
 cheque-book there, state your sum, and we will 
 arrange the matter at once. And now, may I 
 tell you my secret "?" 
 
 Mrs. Scanlan had listened in wondering thank- 
 fulness, too great for words ; but now she re- 
 coiled. Evidently the old man was bent upon 
 his point, and upon exacting his conditions to 
 the letter. Her strait was very hard. The 
 simple duty of a wife — to hide nothing fi-om 
 her husband; to hear nothing that she will 
 require to hide — Josephine never doubted for a 
 moment ; but hers was an exceptional case.
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 271 
 
 She knew well enough, and was convinced 
 the Rector knew, that Edward Scanlan was the 
 last man in the world to be trusted ^vith a 
 secret. At least, so she should have said to 
 him had he been any other man than her hus- 
 band — and did his being her husband alter the 
 facts of the case, or her judgment upon it ? We 
 may be silent concernuig the weak points of 
 our nearest and dearest ; but to ignore them, to 
 be wilfully blind to them, to refuse to guard 
 against them, is, to any prudent and conscien- 
 tiously-minded person, clearly impossible. 
 
 Could it be that in refusing the Rector's con»- 
 ditions, which her judgment told her he, who 
 knew her husband's character as well as she 
 did, was warranted in exacting, she was strain- 
 ing at gnats and swallowing camels ? setting up 
 a sham eidolon of wifely duty, and sacrificing 
 to it the interests of her whole family, including 
 her husband's ? 
 
 " Are you sure it will never harm him ; that 
 he will never blame me for doing this ?" 
 
 " Scanlan blame you ? Oh I no. Quite im-
 
 272 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 possible," answered the Rector, with a slight 
 curl of the lip. " I assure you, you may quiet 
 all apprehensions on that score. He will con- 
 sider it the best thing that you could possibly 
 do for him." 
 
 Yet still poor Josephine hesitated. That 
 clear sense of the right, which had always 
 burnt in her heart with a steady flame, seemed 
 flickering to and fro, turned and twisted by 
 side winds of expediency. The motto of the 
 De Bougainville family, " Fais ce que tu dois, 
 advienne que pourra" rung in her ears with a 
 mocking iteration. In her girlhood she had 
 obeyed it always, had dared everything, doubt- 
 ed nothing. Could wifehood and motherhood 
 have made her less honourable, less brave? 
 
 " Come," said Mr. Oldham, " this is too im- 
 portant a matter for you to give, or me to take, 
 a rash answer. There is a blank cheque, fill it 
 up as you think ftiir. And meantime go into 
 the garden and look at my roses, just for a 
 quarter of an hour." 
 
 With gentle force he led her to the French
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 273 
 
 window of his study, iKUidcd her through and 
 closed it behind her, shutting her out alone in 
 the sunshiny garden. 
 
 Therein she wandered about for fully the pre- 
 scribed time. What inward struggle she went 
 through, who can know ? \\'hether she was 
 able to satisfy herself that she was doing right; 
 that circumstances justified what, in most other 
 women's case, would actually be wrong, and 
 she would have been the first to pronounce 
 wrong — who can tell? Or, perhaps, goaded 
 on by the necessities of her hard lot, she de- 
 liberately set aside the question of whether her 
 act was right or wrong, and was determined to 
 do it — for her children's sake. If anything 
 could turn a woman into a thief, a murderess, a 
 sinner of any sort, I think it would be for the 
 love of, or the terror for, her children. 
 
 I do not plead for Josephine Scanlan, 1 only 
 pity her. And I feel — ay, I feel it even with 
 my own husband's honest eyes looking into 
 mine — that, had my lot been hers, I should have 
 acted exactly the same. 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 She came back to Mr. Oldham. 
 
 " Well, my dear lady, have you decided ? '' 
 
 " Yes. You may tell me anything you like, 
 and so long as you live I will keep your secret 
 faithfully." 
 
 " As you did Mrs. Waters's ? " 
 
 " That was a different matter ; but I will keep 
 your secret too — even from my husband." 
 
 " Thank you." And Mr. Oldham shook her 
 hand warmly. " You shall never regret the — 
 the sacrifice." 
 
 But now that he had her promise, he seemed 
 in no hurry to claim it. He finished writing 
 out a cheque, putting in a sum a little beyond 
 that which she had named, and then taking up 
 his hat and stick, composedly accompanied her 
 round the garden, pointing out his favourite 
 flowers and his various improvements. 
 
 " That Banksia rose, is it not fine 1 I shall 
 train it all over the verandah. Indeed, I have 
 thought of making a proper rosery, or rose- 
 arium ; but it would be expensive, and is hardly 
 worth while, since the Rectory comes into other
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 275 
 
 hands at mj death. Oldham Court, however, 
 will bo the property of my successor — and a 
 very fine property it is — quite unencumbered. 
 My heirs might run through it in no time ; how- 
 ever I shall take care to prevent that. My 
 fiiend and executor, Dr. Waters, and ray lawyer, 
 are both remarkably acute, firm, and honourable 
 men." 
 
 " Oh yes," replied poor Josephine, answering 
 at random, for her patience was at its last gasp. 
 But still Mr. Oldham went on talking — she 
 scarcely heard what — about everything except 
 the important secret ; and not until the very 
 last minute, when he had let her out at the 
 gate and stood leaning against it, still conversing 
 with her, and regarding her in a tender, wistful 
 sort of way, did he refer to what he had to 
 tell. 
 
 " I am lapng on you a heavy burthen, you 
 think, Mrs. Scanlan? Perhaps it is so. But 
 be easy, you may not have to bear it very long. 
 Only during my lifetime." 
 
 " That may be, I trust, many years." 
 
 T 2
 
 276 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 " And possibly not one year. I had a slight 
 seizure the other day, which made me arrange 
 all my afiairs. But do not speak of this. It is 
 of no consequence. Go home now, and mind, 
 what I have to tell you must make no dif- 
 ference there ; everything must go on as here- 
 tofore. Only you need not come to me again 
 looking the picture of despair, as you did 
 to-day." 
 
 " Well, I do not return in despair, thanks to 
 your kindness. And on my next visit I will 
 take care to put on my best looks, and bring 
 a child or two with me to amuse myself and 
 you. Shall I?" 
 
 "Certainly. Yours are charming children, 
 and — " he added, becoming suddenly grave, 
 '• do not torment yourself any more about their 
 future ; it is not necessary. This is my secret 
 — a very simple one. Yesterday I made my 
 will, and I left you my heiress. Not a word. 
 Adieu !" 
 
 He turned, and walked quickly back into his 
 garden. Mrs. Scanlan stood, transfixed with
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 277 
 
 astonishment, at the Rectory gate ; and then, 
 there being nothing else left for her to do, she 
 also turned and walked home.
 
 278 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 TOSEPHINE SCANLAN walked home from 
 ^ the Rectory that afternoon, feeling like a 
 woman in a dream. 
 
 At first she was so stunned by the tidings 
 she had received that she did not realise her 
 position. How strange I — how very strange ! 
 — to be the heiress of a man who in the 
 course of nature could not possibly live many 
 years, and might pass away any day — leaving 
 behind him, for her and hers, at the least a very 
 handsome competence, probably considerable 
 wealth, — wealth enough to make her mind en- 
 tirely at ease concerning the future of her chil- 
 dren. Her bright, bold Cesar, her sensitive 
 Adrienne, and all her other darlings, loved, 
 each as they came, with the infinitely divisible,
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 270 
 
 yet undivided love of a raotlier, — tlioy Avould 
 never have to suffer as she bad suffered. Thank 
 God! 
 
 This was her prominent thouglit. It came 
 upon her gradually, deliciously, on leaving the 
 garden-gate, where, quite overcome, she had 
 stood ever so long under shelter of the great 
 whitethorn tree : for years the sight and smell 
 of the faint pinky blossoms of the fading may 
 reminded her of the emotions of that hoiu*. 
 Slowly her confused mind settled into calm- 
 ness, and she took in the full extent of all that 
 had happened to her since morning, and the 
 total cbauge that had come to her lot. 
 
 Not externallv. It was obvious that Mr. 
 Oldham meant to make no public acknowledg- 
 ment of his intentions with regard to her. 
 Also, he was leaving his property to herself-, he 
 had said distinctly " my heiress," never naming 
 her husband. These two facts startled her. 
 The Rector, with all his reticent politeness, Avas 
 then an acuter man than she supposed, and had 
 seen further than she thought he had into the
 
 280 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 secrets of her married life, and the inner mys- 
 teries of her household. He had his own rea- 
 sons — and her unwarped judgment told her 
 they were natural and good ones — for exact- 
 ing from her this promise, and requiring that 
 the daily existence of the little family at 
 Wren's Nest should go on as heretofore, and 
 that Edward Scanlan should be told nothing 
 whatever of the change that was likely to take 
 place in his fortunes. It was best so. Edward 
 Scanlan's wife knew that, fully as well as Mr. 
 Oldham did. 
 
 Some may hold that she erred here in seeing 
 with such clear vision her husband's faults. 
 Can it be that in any relation of life, conjugal 
 or otherwise, it is one's duty to shut one's eyes 
 to facts, and do one's best to believe a lie ? I 
 think not. I think all righteous love partakes 
 in this of the love of God — that it can "hate 
 the sin and love the sinner ;" that without de- 
 ceiving itself for a moment as to the weak 
 points of the object beloved, it can love on in 
 spite of them ; up to a certain limit, often a
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 281 
 
 very large limit, of endurance ; and that when 
 love fails, this endurance still remains. Besides, 
 mercifully, love gets into a habit of loving, not 
 easily broken through. And Josephine had 
 been married thirteen years. 
 
 In all those thirteen years she had never car- 
 ried a lighter heart than that which seemed to 
 leap in her bosom, as gradually she recognised 
 the change that those few words of Mr. Old- 
 ham's had wrought in her thoughts, hopes, and 
 plans, though all must necessarily be kept to 
 herself, and not allowed to influence her out- 
 side life. Still, this was not so hard as it might 
 once have been: she had been gradually forced 
 into keeping many things to herself : it was 
 useless, worse than useless, to speak of them to 
 her husband. She always intuitively kept from 
 him perplexing and vexatious things ; it would 
 not be much more difficult to keep from him this 
 good thing. Only for the present too : he would 
 one day enjoy it all. And even now she brought 
 back to him the welcome news of an addition 
 to his salary ; large enough, she fondly be-
 
 282 A BRAVE LADY, 
 
 lieved, to make liim fully satisfied and content. 
 
 She was qnite content. Before she had walk- 
 ed half a mile, the morning's events had grown 
 to her an unmixed good, in which she rejoiced 
 without a single drawback. She had no hesita- 
 tion whatever in accepting the unexpected heir- 
 ship. Mr. Oldham had no near kindred who 
 could look for anything from him ; and, even if 
 he had, could he not do as he liked with his 
 own! He was an old bachelor: no one had 
 any claims uppn him ; he was free to leave his 
 property as he chose. Nor in her maternal 
 vanity did ]\Irs. Scanlan much wonder at his 
 choice. She herself was of course merely no- 
 minal. She might be quite elderly before the 
 fortune came to her, but it would assuredly 
 come to her children ; and who that looked 
 at her* Cesar, her Louis, would not be glad to 
 leave a fortune to such boys ? In her heart, the 
 mother considered Mr. Oldham a wise man as 
 well as a generous. 
 
 After taking a slight circuit by the river-side, 
 just to compose her mind, she walked through
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 283 
 
 Ditcliley town : walked with an erect bearing, 
 afraid of meeting nobody. For was not the 
 cheque in her pocket, and her future safe and 
 sure ? No such Innniliation as had happened 
 lately would ever happen to her again. Had 
 not the cheque been made out to her husband, 
 and requiring his endorsement, she would have 
 paid great part of it away on the spot — this 
 "painfully honest" woman, as Mr. Scanlan 
 sometimes called her. In the meantime, she 
 went into every shop as she passed, and collect- 
 ed all her bills, saying she should go round and 
 pay them early next morning. 
 
 Then she walked gaily across the common 
 with her heart full of gratitude to both God and 
 man. She felt kindly towards every creature 
 living. A beggar whom she chanced to meet, 
 she relieved with silver instead of copper, this 
 time. And every neighbour she saw, instead 
 of slipping away from, she stopped to speak to ; 
 gave and accepted several invitations ; and talk- 
 ed and smiled so brightly, that more than one 
 person told her how very well she was looking.
 
 284 A BRAVE LADY, 
 
 At which she did not wonder much : she felt 
 as if henceforward she should always be well ; 
 as if her dark days were gone by for ever. We 
 all have such seasons, and wonder at them 
 when the dark days return again, as return 
 they must: but they are very blessed at the 
 time, and they leave a dim odour of happiness 
 behind them which refreshes us more than we 
 know. 
 
 When Mrs. Scanlan came to the door of her 
 house — that small house in which she had lived 
 so long, and might have to Hve — how much 
 longer '? — the first that ran out to meet her was 
 her little daughter. 
 
 " Mamma, you bring good news 1" cried the 
 child, who was a wise child, and could already 
 read, plain as a book, every expression of her 
 mother's face. 
 
 And then the mother recognised, for a mo- 
 ment like the touch of a thorn on her hand, the 
 burthen which had been laid upon her, or rather 
 which she had deliberately laid upon herself, 
 in accepting Mr. Oldham's secret and its condi-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 285 
 
 tioiis. She did bring good news ; yet, for the 
 first time, she could not tell them, could not 
 ask her family to rejoice Avith her, except to a 
 very limited extent. For the first time she was 
 obliged to prevaricate ; to drop her conscious 
 eyes before those of her own child — so clear, so 
 earnest in their sympathy. 
 
 " Yes, my darling, I do bring good news. ^Ir. 
 Oldham has been exceedingly kind. He has 
 done what I wanted. We shall be quite rich 
 now." 
 
 For of course Adrienne knew of all of their 
 troubles — so did Bridget — so did the whole 
 family. They were troubles of a kind not 
 easily disguised : and, besides, ]\Ir. Scanlan was 
 so incautious and careless in his talk before 
 both servant and children, that to keep things 
 concealed from either was nearly impossible. 
 ]\Irs. Scanlan had tried to do it as much as she 
 could, especially when Cesar and Adrienne, 
 growing up a big boy and girl, began to enter 
 into their mother's cares "with a precocious anx- 
 iety painful to witness ; but at last she gave up
 
 286 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 the attempt in despair, and let matters take 
 their chance. Better they should know every- 
 thing than take garbled statements or false and 
 foolish notions into their little heads. Were 
 not the children's souls in the mother's hand ? — 
 she believed so. 
 
 " Yes, Adrienne, my pet, you need not fret 
 any more. Mr. Oldham has increased Papa's 
 salary : we must all be grateful to him, and do 
 as much as ever we can for him to the end of 
 his days." 
 
 " Must we 1 Oh of course we will ! But, 
 mamma, if, as Papa has just been telling me, 
 the Rector has paid him far too little, why need 
 we be so exceedingly grateful! It is but 
 fair." 
 
 Mrs. Scanlan made no reply. Again the 
 thorn pressed, and another, a much sharper 
 pricking thorn, which wounded her sometimes. 
 When the father could get no better company, 
 he used to talk to the children, particularly to 
 Adrienne, and often put into the Httle innocent 
 minds ideas and feelings which took the mother
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 287 
 
 days and weeks to eradicate. She could not 
 say plainly, " Your fothcr has been telling you 
 what is not true," or " Papa takes quite a mis- 
 taken idea of the matter, which is in reality so 
 and so :" and all she could do Avas to trust to 
 her own strong influence, and that of time, in 
 silently working things round. That darmgly 
 self-reliant, and yet pathetic motto of Philip II., 
 " Time and I against any two," often rung in 
 the head of this poor, brave, lonely woman — 
 forced into unnatural unwomanlintss, until some- 
 times she almost hated herself, and thought, 
 could she meet herself like any other person, 
 Josephine Scanlan would have been the last 
 person she would have cared to know I 
 
 " Adrienne, we will not discuss the question of 
 fairness just now. Enough that Mr. Oldham is 
 a very good man, whom both Papa and I ex- 
 ceedingly respect and like." 
 
 " I don't think Papa likes him ; for he is al- 
 ways laughing at him and his oddities." 
 
 " We often laugh at people for whom we feel 
 most kindly," said Mrs. Scanlan, formally, as if
 
 288 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 enunciating a moral axiom ; — and then, while 
 drawing the little tliin arms round her neck, 
 and noticing the prematurely eager and anx- 
 ious face, the thought that her frail delicate 
 flower would never be broken by the sharp 
 blasts of poverty, came with such a tide of 
 thankfulness that Josephine felt she could bear 
 any other trouble now. Ay, even the difficult 
 task of meeting her husband, and telling him 
 only half that was in her mind : of having after- 
 wards, for an indefinite time, to go on walk- 
 ing and talking, eating and sleeping beside him, 
 carrying on their ordinary daily life, conscious 
 every instant of the secret so momentous, which 
 she dared not in the smallest degree betray. 
 
 Yet she was on the point of betraying it 
 within the first half-hour. 
 
 Edward Scanlau had seized upon the cheque 
 with the eagerness of a boy. One of the excuses 
 his wife often made for him was, that in many 
 things he was so very boy-like still : and could 
 not be judged by the laws which regulate duty 
 to a man, now considerably past thirty, a bus-
 
 A BRAVE LADY, 289 
 
 band and the father of a family, — for he seemed 
 as if he had never been born to earry the 
 weight of these " encumbrances." Delightedly 
 ho looked at the simi, which represented to his 
 sanguine mind an income of unlimited capacity. 
 He began reckoning up all he wanted — for him- 
 self and the household ; and had spent half the 
 money already in imagination, while his wife 
 was telling him how she had obtained it. 
 
 On this head, however, he was not inquisi- 
 tive. It was obtained, and that was enough. 
 He never noticed the blanks in her story, her 
 many hesitations, her sad shamefacedness, and 
 her occasional caresses, as if she Avished to atone 
 for some unconscious wrong done towards him, 
 which her tender conscience could not help 
 grieving for, even though he himself might 
 neither feel it nor know it. 
 
 But when she told him of all she had done in 
 Ditchley as she passed, and of the large sum 
 she was to pay away the following morning, 
 Mr. Scanlan was exceedingly displeased. 
 
 " What a ridiculous hurry you are in ! As if 
 
 VOL. I. U
 
 290 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 those impertinent fellows could not wait a lit- 
 tle, after having bothered us so much. I've a 
 great mind not to pay them for ever so long, 
 only that would look so odd in a clergy- 
 man." 
 
 " Or in any man," said the wife quietly. 
 " Here is the list of what we owe ; we must 
 think twice, you see, before we lay out the re- 
 mainder." 
 
 " What, are you going to pay away all that 
 money at once ? Why, you might as well have 
 brought me home nothing at all ! We shall be 
 none the better for Oldham's ' generosity,' as 
 you call it. Generosity, indeed! When you 
 were at it, Josephine, and he allowed you carte 
 blanche, why in the world didn't you ask him 
 for a little more f 
 
 Josephine rose in warm indignation. " Ask 
 him for more, when he has already given us so 
 much ? When he is going to give us " 
 
 Everything, she was about to say, but stopped 
 herself just in time. Not, however, before Ed- 
 ward's sharp ears — I have already said he was
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 291 
 
 at once careless and cunning in money matters 
 — had caught the word. 
 
 " Given us what I More silk gowns, or books 
 for the children, or garden-stuff for the house ? 
 These are his principal sort of gifts — mere rub- 
 bish ! He never gives anything to rae : never 
 seems to consider the sacrifice I am making 
 every day I stay on in stupid Ditchley. And 
 yet he must know my value, or he never would 
 have increased ray salary as he has done to- 
 day. It is just a conscience twinge, or because 
 he knows he could not get anybody else to do 
 my work for the money." 
 
 " You know he could, Edward. He told me 
 plainly that for half your salary he could get 
 twenty curates to-morrow." 
 
 "But not a curate like me?" 
 
 Mrs. Scanlan looked silentlv at her husband. 
 Perhaps she was taking liis measure ; perhaps 
 she had taken it long ago ; and accepted the 
 fact that, whatever he was, he was her husband 
 — possessed of certain qualities which he could 
 
 u2
 
 292 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 no more help tliau be could the colour of his 
 hair ; a rather lofty estimate of the individual 
 called Edward Scanlan was one of them. 
 
 "Don't you think, Edward, that instead of 
 arguing about our blessings in this way, we 
 had better accept them, and be thankful for 
 them ? I am, I know." 
 
 But no, the mean soul is never thankful. 
 Into its capacious maw endless benefits from 
 heaven and from man — that is, from heaven 
 through man — may be poured, and still the cry 
 is continually, " Give, give !" and the moment 
 the gifts stop, the murmurs begin again. 
 
 Before Edward Scanlan had ended his first 
 live minutes of rejoicing over his unexpectedly 
 large cheque, he began to feel annoyed that it 
 was not larger. It was not until his wife, 
 watching him with those clear, righteous eyes 
 of hers, made him feel a little ashamed of him- 
 self, that he vouchsafed to own she had " done 
 pretty well " in her mission of the morning, 
 
 " A hard day's work, too, it was, my dear ; a 
 long walk and a good deal of talking. You
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 293 
 
 are a very good Avife to me, and I owe you 
 ranch." 
 
 Josephine smiled. Yes, it had been a hard 
 day's work to her, and lie did owe her much ; 
 rather more than he knew. It is astonish- 
 ing how often people apologise for errors 
 never committed, and wrongs never perceived ; 
 while the real errors, the most cruel wi'ongs, 
 are not even guessed at by the parties concern- 
 ed in the infliction of them. 
 
 While Mrs. Scanlan busied herself in prepar- 
 ing the tea, or in holding baby Catherine while 
 Bridget laid the cloth — Bridget, who, of course, 
 had quickly learned everything, and hovered 
 about her mistress with eyes of raptiu-ous con- 
 gratulation and admiration, — it did occur to 
 her that there must be something a little wrong 
 somewhere ; that there was an incongruousness, 
 almost amounting to the ludicrous, in the Rec- 
 tor's future heiress doing all these menial 
 duties. But the idea amused more than per- 
 plexed her : and ere many hours had passed 
 the whole thmg seemed to grow so unreal, that
 
 294 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 next morning when she woke up she almost 
 imagined she had dreamt it alh 
 
 When, a few days after, Mr. Oldham paid his 
 customary visit to Wren's Nest, she took an op- 
 portunity of expressing her gratitude for all his 
 kindness, and slightly reverted to his last 
 words over the garden-gate : but he stopped 
 her at once. 
 
 " Never refer to that again. Perhaps I was 
 a fool to tell you, but it's done now. Only 
 mind, let all be as if I never had told you." 
 
 " I am sorry — if your reasons " 
 
 " My reasons are, that few men like to be re- 
 minded of their own death ; I don't. I shall 
 keep to my bargain, Mrs. Scanlan ; but if you 
 ever name it again, to me or to any other crea- 
 ture, it is cancelled. Remember, a will can be 
 burnt as easily as made." 
 
 "Certainly," replied Josephine, though with 
 a sense of humiliation that was almost agony. 
 Mingled with it came a sudden fear, the faint 
 cold fear of the shipwrecked sailor who has 
 seen a speck on the horizon which looks like a
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 295 
 
 sail, and may turn out to be no sail at all, or 
 else drifts away from him — and then? Never- 
 theless, she had self-control enough to say 
 calmly, " I quite understand you, ]\Ir. Oldham, 
 and I should wish you always to do exactly 
 what you think right." 
 
 " I believe that, madame, and I am accord- 
 ingly doing it," said the old man, with a return 
 to his ordinary suave politeness, and calling 
 one of the children in to the conference, so that 
 it could not possibly be continued. 
 
 It never was either contmued or revived. 
 The Rector's silence on the subject was so com- 
 plete, that oftentimes during the long months 
 and years which follow-ed, Josephine could 
 scarcely force herself to believe there was any 
 truth in what he had told her, or that it was 
 not entirely the product of her own \avid ima- 
 gination. 
 
 But, at first, she accepted her good fortune 
 with fulness of faith, and rejoiced in it unlimit- 
 edly. It was such an innocent rejoicing, too ; 
 it harmed nobody : took away from nobody's
 
 29G A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 blessings. The fortune must come to some 
 one ; the good old man could not carry it away 
 with him : he would enjoy it to the full as long 
 as he Hved, and by the time death touched him, 
 he Avould just drop off like the last leaf from 
 the bough, perhaps not sorry to go, and glad- 
 dened in his final hour by the feeling that his 
 death would benefit other lives, young and 
 bright, ready to take up the ended hope, and 
 carry it triumphantly on to future generations. 
 
 That desire of founding a family, of living 
 again in her posterity, was, I think, peculiarly 
 strong in Josephine Scanlan. The passionate 
 instinct of motherhood— perhaps the deepest 
 instinct women have — (and God knows they 
 need to have it to help them along that thorny 
 path which every mother has trod since mother 
 Kve) — in her, did not end with her own child- 
 ren. She sometimes sat and dreamed of her 
 future race, the new generations that should be 
 born of her, impressed with her soul and body 
 — for she rather admired her bodily self, it was 
 so like her father, — dreamed of them as poets
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 297 
 
 dream of fame and conquerors of glory. She 
 often looked at her Cesar, — who, after the 
 hiw by whicli nature so often reproduces the 
 father in the daughter, and again in the daugh- 
 ter's son, was an ahnost startling likeness of 
 the old Vicomte de Bougainville, — and thought, 
 ■with a joy she could scarcely repress, of the old 
 race revived, though the name was gone ; of 
 her boy inheriting fortune and position enough 
 to maintain the dignity of that race before all 
 the world. 
 
 And then Cesar was such a good boy, simple- 
 minded, dutiful ; chivalric and honourable in all 
 his feelings ; so exactly after the old type of the 
 De Bougainvilles, who had once fought for 
 their country as bravely as at last for religion's 
 sake they fled from it ; sustaining through all 
 reverses the true nobility, which found its out- 
 let in the old Vicomte's fevourite motto, " No- 
 blesse obhge." Josephine watched the lad 
 growing taller and handsomer, bolder and 
 stronger, month by month and year by year, 
 much as Sarah must have watched Isaac ; see-
 
 298 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 ing in him not only Isaac her son, but Isaac 
 the cliild of promise, and the father of unborn 
 milHons. 
 
 I think Mrs. Scanlan must have been very 
 happy about this time. Her worldly load was 
 temporarily taken off her shoulders. She had 
 enoug4i and to spare. She could pay all her 
 debts, and give her children many comforts 
 that had long been lacking. She had not the 
 sharp sense of angry pain which she used to 
 experience, ever and anon, when, after waiting 
 week after week till she could fairly afford Ad- 
 rienne a uew warm cloak, or Cesar a pair of 
 winter boots, their father would come in quite 
 cheeiily, and claim her admiration for a heap of 
 musty volumes ; valuable and expensive theolo- 
 gical works which he had just purchased : not 
 that he wanted to read them, he was no great 
 reader at any time, but " they looked so well 
 for a clergyman to have in his library." And 
 when she remonstrated, he would argue how 
 much better food for the mind was than clothes 
 for the body ; and how a good wife ought al-
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 299 
 
 ways to prefer her husband's tastes to her chil- 
 dren's. And it was so easy to talk, and Ed- 
 ward Scanlan's arguments were so volumin- 
 ous, that sometimes he half convinced his wife 
 she was in the wrong; till, left alone, her hon- 
 est conscience went back with a bound, like a 
 half-strung bow, to the old conviction. She 
 knew not how to say it, but somehow she felt 
 it, and all the eloquence in the world could not 
 convince her that black was white, or perhaps 
 only grey, — very delicately and faintly grey. 
 
 But now, the sunshine of hope which had 
 fallen across her path, or still more her future 
 path, seemed to warm Josephine's nature 
 through and through, and make her more 
 lenient towards everyone, especially her hus- 
 band. She felt drawn to him by a reviving 
 tenderness, which he might have a little missed 
 of late had he been a sensitive man : but he was 
 not. His wrongs and unhappiuesses were 
 more of the material than spmtual kind — more 
 for himself than for other people. He regretted 
 extremely his children's shabby clothes, but it
 
 300 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 never struck liira to be anxious because their 
 minds were growing up more ill-clad than their 
 bodies. For they had little or no education ; 
 and for society, scarcely any beyond Bridget's 
 and their mother's. They might have had 
 worse — at any rate. 
 
 Mr. Scanlan was exceedingly troubled about 
 the present, because the luxuries of life were so 
 terribly wanting at Wren's Nest : but he rarely 
 perplexed himself about the future of his family. 
 Whatever pleased him at the time, he did, and 
 was satisfied with doing : he never looked 
 ahead, not for a single day. "Take no thought 
 for the morrow" was a favourite text of his 
 whenever his wife expressed any anxiety. 
 What on earth could she find to be anxious 
 about? — she was not the bread-winner of the 
 family. It was he who had to bear all these 
 burthens, and very sincerely he pitied himself; 
 so much so, that at times his wife pitied him 
 too, believing him, not untruly, to be one of 
 those characters whose worst faults are elimi- 
 nated by adversity. For the fact that
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 301 
 
 " Satan now is wiser than of yore, 
 And tempts by making rich, not making poor," 
 
 was not then credited by Josephine Scanlan. 
 She still felt that the man of Uz was supreme in 
 his afflictions ; and often she read the Book of 
 Job with a strange sort of sympathy. True, 
 she did not understand half Job's trials — " her 
 children were with her in the house ;" her 
 " candle " was still " in its place " — that bright 
 light of contentment which illiuiiined all the 
 poverty of Wren's Nest. Health was there too : 
 for the lightly-fed and hardly- worked enjoy 
 oftentimes a wonderful immunity from sickness. 
 But still it seemed to her that these blessings 
 were not so very blessed, or lack of money neu- 
 tralised them all, at least with regard to her 
 husband. 
 
 His complainings, she fondly hoped, would 
 be quieted by prosperity : when they had a larger 
 house, and she could get the children out of 
 his way in some distant nvirsery ; when he had 
 more servants to wait upon him, more luxuries to 
 gratify him, and fewer opportunities of growing
 
 302 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 discontented by the daily contrast between his 
 neighbours' wealth and his own poverty. For, 
 unfortunately, there was not many " poor " 
 people in Ditchley — society being composed of 
 the county families, the well-off townsfolk, and 
 the working-classes. And Mr. Scanlan was 
 always more prone to compare himself with 
 those above him than those below him, wonder- 
 ing why Providence had not more equally 
 balanced things, and why those stupid squires 
 and contented shopkeepers should have so much 
 money to do what they liked with, and he so 
 little — he whose likings were of such a refined 
 and superior order, that it seemed a sin and 
 shame they should be denied gratification. 
 
 For, as he reasoned, and his wife tried to 
 reason too, his pleasures were all so harmless. 
 He was no drunkard — though he liked a glass 
 of wine well enough ; he seldom philandered 
 with young ladies, except in the mildest clerical 
 way ; was never long absent from home ; and, 
 as for liis extraordinary talent for getting rid of 
 money, he got rid of it certainly in no wicked
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 303 
 
 way ; but scattered it about more with the in- 
 nocent recklessness of a child than the delibe- 
 rate extravagance of a man. It was hard to 
 stint him : still harder to blame him : much 
 easier to blame " circumstances " — which made 
 all the difference between a harmless amuse- 
 ment and a serious error. When he was a rich 
 man he would be quite different. 
 
 At least so thought his wife, and tried to ex- 
 cuse him, and make the best of him, and believe 
 in all his possible capacities for good ; also in 
 the actual good there was in him, which might 
 have satisfied some people, who are content to 
 accept as virtue the mere negation of vice, or 
 to rule their affections by the safe law which I 
 have heard enuuciated by mediocre goodness 
 concerning absolute badness : " Why should I 
 dislike the man who has never harmed me?" 
 But to a woman whose standard of right was 
 distinct from any personal benefit received by 
 her, or personal injury done to her ; who loved 
 for love's sake, and hated only where she de- 
 spised ; who had begun life with a high ideal,
 
 304 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 and a passionate necessity for its realization in 
 all her dear ones, especially the dearest and 
 closest of all, her husband, — to such an one, 
 what must this kind of married life have 
 been? 
 
 Still, her heart grew tenderer over the father 
 of her children. She saw him, and all he did — 
 or rather all he left undone — in the fairest light. 
 When he grumbled, she took it very patiently, 
 more patiently than usual : thinking with satis- 
 faction of her comfortable secret ; how all these 
 annoyances were only temporary ; how he 
 would bj^-aud-by become a rich man, able to 
 indulge himself as he chose. For in her heart 
 she liked to see her husband happy — liked to 
 give him any lawful pleasures ; and minister 
 even to his whims and vagaries, when this 
 could be done conscientiously, without her 
 having the pang of knowing that every selfish 
 luxury of the father's was taking the very bread 
 out of the mouths of the children. Not that he 
 did this intentionally ; but he did do it : because 
 the even balance and necessity of things was a
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 305 
 
 matter Edward Scanlan could never be taught 
 to understand. 
 
 Still, lie was very good, on the whole, for 
 some time after he received this addition to his 
 income. It allowed him more pleasures ; it les- 
 sened his wife's cares, and made her less ob- 
 liged to contradict him. She grew softer in 
 her manner to him — and Edward Scanlan was 
 one who thought much about outside manner, 
 without troubling himself to investigate what 
 feelings lay beneath. In their mutual relief of 
 mind, the husband and wife drew nearer to- 
 gether — dangerously so, for the preservation of 
 Mr. Oldham's secret. 
 
 Righteous hypocrite as she fully believed she 
 was, Mrs. Scanlan often felt herself to be a ter- 
 rible hypocrite after all. Twenty times a day 
 she longed to throw her arms round her hus- 
 band's neck, and whisper that she had a secret 
 — though one which did not injure him, quite 
 the contrary ! Whenever he was vexed about 
 little things, she thirsted to tell him that his 
 poverty days would not last for ever — that she 
 
 VOL. T. X
 
 306 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 would by-and by be a rich heiress, able to give 
 hiui all he wanted, and rejoice in the giving. 
 That keenest joy of wealth — to lavish it upon 
 others — flashed out sometimes from the distant 
 future, with a glow that lightened for her many 
 a present gloom. 
 
 Still, things were hard now and then, and she 
 had many a twinge of conscience as to how far 
 she was doing right, and what her husband 
 would think of her when he really knew all, as 
 he necessarily must, some day. More than 
 once she definitively resolved to go and speak to 
 the Rector, whether he liked it or not ; unbur- 
 then herself of all her doubts, and implore him 
 to free her from her promise, and take away this 
 load from her heart ; a load heavier than he, as 
 a bachelor, could comprehend. Little he knew 
 how fatal to happiness is any concealment be- 
 tween married people, whose chief strength and 
 surest consolation lies in being, for good and ill, 
 absolutely and perfectly one. 
 
 With this intent Josephine had actually one day 
 put on her bonnet, meaning to go to pay a visit
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 307 
 
 to the Rectory, ostensibly to excuse herself and 
 the children from a tea-party there — a feast on 
 the lawn — the year had again come round to 
 the time of open-air delights — when her husband 
 entered the room, and asked her where she was 
 going. 
 
 Her answer was, of course, the truth, though 
 not, alas ! the whole truth. 
 
 " Excuse yourself from the Eectory feast '? 
 What a ridiculous thing ! To decline Mr. Old- 
 ham's invitation, because the children had an 
 engagement elsewhere — at a common farmhouse, 
 too !" 
 
 Still, Josephine reasoned, it was a prior en- 
 gagement ; and the people at the farm had been 
 very kind to the children. 
 
 " But they are such unimportant people. 
 Annoying them does not matter ; now annoying- 
 Mr. Oldham does. I never noticed the thing- 
 much till lately, wdien some neighboiu' or other 
 put it into my head ; but Oldham does seem 
 to have taken an extraordinary fancy for our 
 children."
 
 308 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 '^^ They are very good children," said the mo- 
 ther, Trith a slight trembling of the voice. 
 
 " Oh ! yes, of course. And pretty, too, some 
 of them. Don't be up in arms on their account. 
 Mamma, as if I were always crying them down. 
 I see their good points just as much as you do. 
 And if the old fellow really has taken a liking 
 to them, I'm sure I don't object to your culti- 
 vatins: him as much as ever you Kke." 
 
 " Cultivating him ! "" 
 
 "I mean, with an eye to his leaving them 
 something. He cant live for ever ; and when 
 he dies, some small sum — even a hundred or 
 two, would be a great help to us." 
 
 Josephine stood dumb. Oh I if she had had 
 the free, clear conscience of a year ago, how 
 indignantly she would have repudiated such a 
 motive I as she used to do all other similar mo- 
 tives of self-interest or expediency, which her 
 husband occasionally suggested to her. For 
 this lavish, frank-spoken, open-hearted young 
 Celt had also the true Celtic characteristic of 
 never being blind to his own interests.
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 300 
 
 (JavoleHS ;iR lio waK, lie know quite well on 
 which side hiw bread waH Initteicd ; and imdei- 
 all his reckless generosity lay a stratum of 
 meanness: which indeed is f^enerally fbnri<l a ne- 
 cessary adjunct to tiie aforesaid (juuiitios. 
 
 lie noticed his wife's silence ; at whicli his 
 sensitive love oi' approbation — to call it by a 
 lij^hter name than vanity — immediately took 
 offence. 
 
 " You think that was a wrong thing (jf me to 
 say? But you always do find fault with any 
 new ideas of mine. You would like everything 
 to originate with yourself?" 
 
 Josephine answered only the first half of his 
 sentence. 
 
 " I think it wrong to ' cultivate ' anybody for 
 the sake of what you can get out of him. And 
 you know the proverb, ' It's ill waiting for dead 
 men's shoes.' " 
 
 "But how can one help it, when one has to 
 go barefoot ?" 
 
 " Which is not exactlv our case, Edward. 
 We have as much as we require ; and we need
 
 o 
 
 10 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 not be beholden to any man, thank God ! " 
 " We are thankful for small mercies," said 
 Edward Scanlan, bitterly, very bitterly for a 
 clergyman. "But, putting aside the future, 
 don't you think Mr. Oldham might do some- 
 thing for us at present, if he knew we wanted 
 help ? For instance, last Sunday, in the vestry, 
 he was preaching to me a little extra sermon 
 about Cesar, noticing what a big boy he w^as 
 growing, and asking me what I intended to do 
 w^ith him — when he was to go to school, and 
 where? Rather impertinent interference, I 
 thought," 
 
 " He meant it "well," said Mrs. Scanlan, hum- 
 bly, and with averted eyes : afraid of betraying 
 in any way the comfort it was to find out that 
 the Rector w^as not indifferent to a fact which 
 had haunted herself for many cruel weeks — 
 how her handsome, manly Cesar was growing 
 np ill a state of rough ignorance, lamentable 
 in any gentleman's son, and especially to be 
 deplored in one who might have to fill a 
 good position in society, where he would one
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 311 
 
 day bitterly feel every defect in education. 
 
 " Meant well ? Oli, of course a rector is al- 
 ways supposed to mean well towards a curate, 
 or the poor curate is obliged to take it so, as I 
 shall. But my idea was this : that since he is 
 so anxious that the lad should be well educated 
 — which we cannot possibly afford — perhaps, if 
 the matter were cleverly put before him, and 
 you have such a clever way of doing things, 
 dearest, Mr. Oldham might send Cesar to school 
 himself." 
 
 Josephine started. 
 
 " I do not quite understand you," she said. 
 
 No, sometimes she really did not imderstand 
 her husband. She found herself making egregi- 
 ous mistakes concerning him and his motives. To 
 put a most sad thing in a ludicrous light (as 
 how often do we not do in this world ?), her 
 position was like that of the great cat trying to 
 get through the little cat's hole : her large na- 
 ture was perpetually at fault in calculating the 
 smallness of his. 
 
 "Not understand! Why, Josephine, the
 
 312 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 thing is as plain as a pikestaff. Don't you see 
 how mnch we should save if Mr. Oldham could 
 be induced to send Cesar to school at his own 
 expense ? It is no uncommon thing. Many a 
 rich man has done it for a poor man's son, who 
 turned out a credit to him afterwards : as Cesar 
 might, and then the obligation would be rather 
 on Mr. Oldham's side, in my having consented 
 to the thing. Indeed," growing warmer as 
 he argued, " it would be a very good thing on 
 both sides. And I could then afford to pay that 
 visit to London which Summerhayes is always 
 bothering me about, and considers would be 
 such an advantage to myself and the family." 
 
 Still Josephine was silent ; but her face cloud- 
 ed over and hardened into the expression which 
 her husband knew well enough, and was in his 
 secret heart a little afraid of. He was thus far 
 a good fellow — he respected and loved his good 
 wife very sincerely. 
 
 " I see you don't like either of these notions 
 of mine, my dear, especially about Cesar. You 
 know Mr. Oldham pretty well, even better than
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 313 
 
 I do. If you think he would take offence at 
 such a hint " 
 
 " I should never dream of hinting anything 
 to Mr. Oldham. If I wanted to ask of him 
 a kindness, I should ask it direct, and I be- 
 lieve he would grant it. But to beg from him 
 indirectly the help which we do not really 
 need " 
 
 " We do need it. Cesar must go to school. 
 I want to go to London. And we can't do 
 l)oth, vou sav." 
 
 " No, we cannot. It is impossible. But it is 
 equally impossible for us to accept favours, or 
 beg for any, from Mr. Oldham." 
 
 " So you say, but I entirely differ from you. 
 It is no favour ; the labourer is worthy of his 
 hire." 
 
 " And the beggar is worthy of both his kicks 
 and his half-pence. But, Edward, I will take 
 neither. You know my mind. Many a free, 
 honest, honourable kindness may one man have 
 to owe to another, and both be benefited there- 
 by ; but to ask from another anything that by
 
 314 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 any amount of personal sacrifice one could do 
 for oneself, is a meanness 1 have not been used 
 to. My father never would stoop to it, nor shall 
 my son." 
 
 Quietly as she said them, they were stinging 
 words : such as she could use on occasions. She 
 was not a stupid woman, nor a tame woman ; 
 and in her youth the " soft answer," which is 
 often woman's best strength, did not always 
 come. She was fierce against wrong rather 
 than patient with it — outraged and indignant 
 where it might have been wiser to be quietly 
 brave. Though not too thin-skinned, ordmarily, 
 to-day her husband winced as if she had been 
 whipping him with nettles. For he knew what 
 an idol Josej)hine's father had been to her, and 
 how well the noble old nobleman had deserved 
 that worship.* Poor Edward Scanlan was a little 
 cowed even before the dim ghost of the dead 
 Vicomte de Bougainville. 
 
 " Your father — yonr sou. Then your hus- 
 band may do anything he chooses ? You won't 
 care. He, of course, is quite an inferior being."
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 315 
 
 " Edward, hush ! The child !" 
 
 For Adrienne had put her tiny pale face in 
 at the bedroom door, outside which she often 
 hovered like an anxious spirit when her father 
 and mother were talking. 
 
 " The child may hear it all," said Mr. Scanlan, 
 glad to escape from a difficulty. " Look here, 
 Adrienne, the difference between your mother 
 and me is this : I want you to go to the Rectory 
 to-morrow — she wishes to take you to the farm 
 — which should you like best V 
 
 The perplexed child looked from one parent 
 to the other. 
 
 "1 thought, papa, you did not care for Mr. 
 Oldham : you are always finding fault with him, 
 or laughing at him." 
 
 " What a sharp child it is !" said Mr. Scanlan, 
 extremely amused. "Never mind, Adrienne, 
 wdiether I like Mr. Oldham or not ; I wish you 
 to go and see him whenever he asks you : and 
 always be sure to pay him particular attention, 
 for he may be very useful to both me and my 
 family."
 
 316 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 " Yes, papa," replied innocent Adrienne, 
 though not without a shy glance at her mother 
 for assent and approval. 
 
 The mother stepped forward, pale and firm, 
 but with a fierce light glittering in her eyes : 
 
 " Yes, Adrienne, I too wish you to pay Mr. 
 Oldham all proper attention, because he is a 
 good man, who has heaped us all with kind- 
 nesses ; because, though we will never ask any 
 more from him, we cannot show sufficient grati- 
 tude for those we have already received. 
 Therefore, since papa particularly desires it, we 
 will give up the farm and go the Rectory." 
 
 " Thank you, my dearest, you are very good," 
 said Edward Scanlan, quite satisfied and molli- 
 fied; and on leaving the room he went over to 
 his Avife and kissed her. She received the kiss, 
 but let him depart without a word. 
 
 Then, taking off her bonnet, Josephine put it 
 by, mechanically rolling up the strings, a habit 
 she had to make them last the longer — and did 
 various other things about her drawers in an 
 absent sort of way — never noticing the childish
 
 A BRAVE LADY. 317 
 
 eyes which followed her every motion. But al- 
 ways silently — Adrienne was such a very quiet 
 child. 
 
 Not until the mother sat down on the bed- 
 side, and put her hands over her dry, hot eyes, 
 with a heavy sigh, did she feel her little daugh- 
 ter creeping behind her, to clasp around her 
 neck cool, soft arms. 
 
 " Maman, maman," — the French version of 
 the word — with the slight French accentuation 
 of the first syllable, such as her children gene- 
 rally used when they petted her. 
 
 Mrs. Scaulan turned round and laid her fore- 
 head on the little bosom — leaving a wet place 
 where her eyes had lain, on the coarse blue pina- 
 fore. 
 
 She said nothing to Adrienne, of course ; and 
 henceforth she carefully avoided naming to her 
 husband the subject of Cesar's going to school. 
 But she made up her mind when it should be 
 done, and how, during those ten silent minutes 
 in her bedroom. And from that day the idea 
 of asking Mr. Oldham's permission to tell her
 
 318 A BRAVE LADY. 
 
 husband of their future prospects altogether 
 passed from her mmd. No ; the Rector was 
 right in his judgment: she herself was the only- 
 safe depositary of the secret. She locked it 
 closer than ever in her heart, and returned to 
 her old solitude of spirit ; the worst of all soli- 
 tudes, that which does not appear outside. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 LONDON: PRINTED BY MACDONALD AND TUGWELL, BLENHEIM HOUSE.
 
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