The Old Order Changes
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
 
 LONDON
 
 AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS. 
 From a sketch by the Earl of 'Mount- Edgcumbe.
 
 The Old Order Changes 
 
 3 liovei 
 
 BY 
 
 W. H. MALLOCK 
 
 AUTHOR OF IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? SOCIAL EQUALITY ETC. 
 
 'Cette importune cconomie politique se glisse partout et se mSle 
 a tout, et je crois vraiment que c'est elle qui a dit, nihil hitmani a 
 me aliennm />uto' — Bastiat 
 
 
 '"■' -T 
 
 LONDON 
 
 IPublis^ers in ©rbinarn to SJcr jUtwjtstij the Conceit 
 
 1887 
 
 53506 
 
 All rig/its reserved
 
 
 :.::
 
 PR 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 i HAPTEK PAGE 
 
 I. AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS I 
 
 II. THE OLD ORDER 10 
 
 III. A PAGE OF ROMANCE REOPENED 19 
 
 IV. A SHADOW FROM THE PAST 27 
 
 V. THE SPHINX OF THE MODERN WORLD . . . -34 
 
 \ VI. A CHILD OF THE OLD ORDER 4.2 
 
 N ^ J 
 
 ^ VII. SIBYL AND SIREN 52 
 
 > V VIII. A CONFESSION 64 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 I. AN ENCHANTED CHATEAU 75 
 
 £1 II. 6 RICHARD, 6 MON ROI ! 83 
 
 ^ III. PRESENT AND PAS1 g r 
 
 IV. THE PAST JUDGES THE PRESENT IOO 
 
 V. THE RIDDLE OF LIFE BY MOONLIGHT . . . 105 
 
 VI. THE RIDDLE OF LIFE ISY DAYLIGHT H3 
 
 VII. A MAN WITH A NEW ANSWER I2 5 
 
 VIII. THE PROPHET RESTRAINS HIMSELF I3O 
 
 IX. THE PROPHET'S FIRST THUNDERS j -56 
 
 X. THE GOSPEL OF REVOLUTION I46 
 
 XL PONDERING IN HER HEART 174 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 I. A SEEKER FOR TRUTH SHIPWRECKED . . . 1S9 
 
 II. A SIREN 202 
 
 III. THE GATES OT' DREAMLAND 208
 
 VI THE OLD ORDER CHANGES 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 IV. 'MY HAND IS ON THY BROW ' 2l6 
 
 V. THE SIREN'S PRELUDE 219 
 
 VI. DISCORDS 226 
 
 VII. THE SIREN'S SPELL 235 
 
 VIII. A STRUGGLE IN SLEEP 242 
 
 IX. THE SPELL WORKS 249 
 
 X. THE BEGINNING OF FEVER 256 
 
 XI. THE FEVER CONQUERS ....... 26l 
 
 XII. A CRISIS 267 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 I. A RETURN FROM DREAMLAND ...... 273 
 
 II. REALITIES REAPPEARING 279 
 
 III. MORE REALITIES 294 
 
 IV. AN ECHO FROM DREAMLAND 302 
 
 V. AN UNEXPECTED MONITOR 308 
 
 VI. ROUSED AT LAST 315 
 
 VII. AN OLD ROAD REOPENING 318 
 
 BOOK V. 
 
 I. THE PROMISED LAND 327 
 
 II. ON THE BRINK OF JORDAN 
 
 III. UNABLE TO CROSS OVER 
 
 IV. A PRISONER OF THE PAST 
 
 V. A GUIDE THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN .... 
 
 VI. AN ARBITRESS 
 
 VII. WAITING FOR JUDGMENT 
 
 VIII. THE GOSPEL OF RENOVATION 
 
 IX. WHOSO LOSES HIS LIFE 
 
 X. THE CHAINS OF THE PAST LOOSENED. 
 
 XI. THE FUTURE OPENS 
 
 338 
 
 345 
 35o 
 357 
 365 
 379 
 382 
 
 399 
 
 406 
 
 418
 
 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS. 
 
 ' Mr. Carew, tell me. Do we ever meet without getting 
 on this question? We discussed it the night before you 
 left London. I only came across you again yesterday after- 
 noon ; and see, already we are once more in the middle of it.' 
 
 ' It is the only question,' said Carew, ' that to me has 
 any practical interest. If our old landed aristocracy ever 
 come to an end, my England will have come to an end also ; 
 and I shall buy a chateau in some Hungarian forest. I 
 should not be leaving my country : my country would have 
 left me. You don't understand me — perhaps I shall never 
 make you. In these social discussions what stands in our 
 way is this : there are so many things which it is very vul- 
 gar to say, and which yet at the same time it is vulgar not to 
 feel. However, Mrs. Harley, at a more convenient season, 
 vulgar or not vulgar, I shall come back to my point.' 
 
 ' Very well,' she answered, as she looked at him with a 
 smile of amusement. ' But never — I tell you beforehand — 
 you will never make me a convert. I'm sure,' she went on 
 as the idea suddenly struck her, ' if a stranger overheard us 
 discussing vulgarity here, he would think the subject of our 
 conversation a little out of keeping with the scene of it.' 
 
 B
 
 2 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES eook i. 
 
 This observation was certainly not unjustified. They 
 were standing by the side of a lofty mountain road, with a 
 bank of savage rocks abruptly rising behind them, and a 
 weather-stained crucifix, almost lost in the gathering 
 shadows, was stretching its arms over them with a cold 
 forlorn solemnity. 
 
 The lady was a handsome woman in the girlhood of 
 middle age. The man was apparently some few years 
 younger ; if not handsome, he had a certain air of distinc- 
 tion ; and his face was shadowed, if not lit up, by thought. 
 A few paces away from them two other men were standing ; 
 and the pair of disputants, as they brought their discussion 
 to a close, by common consent moved forward and joined 
 their companions. One of these last, so far as appearances 
 went, was remarkable chiefly for the extreme shabbiness of 
 his dress, coupled somewhat incongruously with a look of the 
 completest self-satisfaction. The other, on the contrary, 
 was the very picture of neatness, from his well-trimmed 
 beard to his hand with its sapphire ring. It was at once 
 evident that he was the lady's husband. 
 
 ' Listen, George,' she said, laying her hand on his arm. 
 ' As the carriage is so long in coming, I shall go back and 
 sit in it till the coachman sees fit to start ; and you, gen- 
 tlemen, I shall leave you here to look at the view until I 
 pick you up. No, don't stir, any one of you ; I would 
 rather go alone. If you must know the truth, I am the 
 least bit sleepy, and shall do my best to close my eyes for 
 a minute.' And with a slight but decided wave of the 
 hand, she moved away from them with a firm and elastic 
 step, and was presently lost to view behind an angle of 
 the descending road. 
 
 The three men who were thus left to themselves did as 
 they had been told to do, and inspected the view in silence. 
 It was certainly worth the trouble. On either side, and 
 below them, forests of pine and olive fell like a silent cata- 
 ract over the enormous slopes of the mountains, and, rising 
 again from innumerable dells and gorges, seemed to pour
 
 chap. i. AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS 3 
 
 themselves over pigmy promontories into the faint sea 
 below. Meanwhile the sky overhead was clear, and was 
 already pierced by one or two keen stars, and leagues of a 
 red sunset were lying along the aerial sea-line. It was a 
 scene which at any time would have been striking enough 
 to the imagination, and it was doubly striking now in this 
 soft and deepening twilight. But what mainly gave it its 
 peculiar and romantic character was one solitary object 
 which appeared to dominate everything, as it faced the road 
 from the opposite side of a hollow. This was an isolated 
 and precipitous rock which, rising abruptly out of a sea of 
 foliage, lifted high into the air a dim cluster of buildings. 
 A stranger might have been tempted to ask whether such a 
 seemingly inaccessible eagle's nest could be in reality a col- 
 lection of human structures at all, and whether what looked 
 like houses, towers, and ramparts were more than spikes of 
 crag or scars on the bare cliff. The questioner, however, 
 had he cared to look steadily, would have at once been 
 answered by some wreaths of ascending smoke ; and still 
 more conclusively by the sudden note of the Angelus ; 
 which in a few moments vibrated from a domed belfry. 
 It was a singular cracked sound, but it was not unmusical ; 
 rather it was like music in ruins, and it filled the mind with 
 a vague sense of remoteness— a remoteness both of time 
 and place. 
 
 'I expect,' said Carew, in a tone of dreamy soliloquy, as 
 if it had acted on him like a kind of mental tuning-fork — 
 ' 1 expect that a stranger of any kind is a rare apparition 
 here, and, judging from the road, a carriage one rarer still. 
 Look at these loose stones. They tell their own tale plainly 
 enough. Little disturbs them from year's end to year's end 
 but the peasants' boots and the hoofs of the peasants' mules. 
 Listen: at this moment there are mule-bells tinkling some- 
 where, and here come some of the very peasants themselves.' 
 As he s])oke a procession of sombre figures, in clusters 
 twos and threes, slowly emerged out of the twilight, and 
 defiled past them towards the foot of the old town. They 
 
 1; 2
 
 4 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 were men with slouch hats and shy glancing eyes. Some 
 of them bore on their backs burdens of some kind ; others 
 were driving by their side a fantastic shaggy goat ; and pre- 
 sently those descending were met by another procession— a 
 small caravan of heavily laden mules with their conductors. 
 Carew stared at these visions as they gradually melted out 
 of sight ; and then with a smile, turning round to his friends, 
 ' Are they really men,' he said, ' or ghosts out of the middle 
 ages ? ' 
 
 ' Upon my word,' said Harley, ' one does in a place like 
 this very nearly forget in what century one is living. Rail- 
 ways and intelligent voters seem little more than a dream. 
 The old town on the hill, as we see it now against the sky, 
 is just like a single huge castle the stronghold of some robber 
 baron. There is only one thing wanting to make the effect 
 complete, and that is for the baron himself to suddenly 
 appear with his men, seize on our friend Stonehouse here, 
 and send us two back for the ransom.' 
 
 The shabby man, who had hitherto remained perfectly 
 silent, being thus alluded to, took a glance at his threadbare 
 waistcoat, and plucking out a button that was hanging on 
 by a thread, jerked it away with a smile of amused indiffer- 
 ence. ' I am afraid,' he said, ' that the robber baron would 
 find a very poor capture in me. I have, unless I happen 
 to have dropped it, exactly four francs and fifteen centimes 
 in my pocket ; and Carew's scarf-pin or our excellent Har- 
 ley's watch-chain would buy me up as I stand ten times 
 over. My dear fellows, I am the happy vacuus viator; and 
 as I intend to walk part of the way back, you will no doubt 
 think it lucky for me that I am. But, bless my soul,' he 
 exclaimed, suddenly facing round with a small prim smile 
 of minute but condescending interest, ' what the deuce can 
 be coming now ? I doubt if we have this seclusion so com- 
 pletely to ourselves as we thought we had.' 
 
 What had caught his attention, and that of the two 
 others also, was a sound of wheels and horses, evidently 
 approaching them— not up the hill, as their own carriage
 
 chap. i. AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS 5 
 
 would have clone, but clown it ; and in another moment a 
 j^ight presented itself which, considering the place and hour, 
 might well cause some surprise in them. This was a large 
 open landau, with a servant on the box by the coachman, 
 which was descending the road slowly with a lumbering 
 and uneasy caution, and the body of which, to make 
 matters the more strange, was seen, as it passed, to be 
 altogether empty. There were, however, a number of wraps 
 and cloaks dimly visible upon the cushions, and amongst 
 them, in particular, the glimmer of a white shawl. The 
 three men watched it go by in silence, and then broke 
 out together into expressions of conjecture and astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 Presently the shabby man, with a gesture of grave face- 
 tiousness, exclaimed, 'Of course — I know what it is exactly. 
 It is the chariot of some milor who is making the grand 
 tour. We shall very soon see another carriage following it, 
 with the baggage, the lady's-maid, the valet, the courier, 
 and the blunderbuss. My dear Harley, you are perfectly 
 right. One could almost fancy one was onus own great- 
 grandfather.' 
 
 'Carew,'said Harley, 'devoutly wishes he was. Look 
 at him ! His eves have gone back again to the old town 
 and its battlements ; and he is meditating over those coats 
 of arms which he found above the castle gateway.' 
 
 The shabby man turned to Carew with a lazy stare of 
 amusement, which, though peifectly good-natured, was only 
 not impertinent because it happened to be not fixed on a 
 stranger. ' Are you a herald,' he said, ' amongst your other 
 many accomplishments? How droll now ! How excessively 
 droll ! ' 
 
 'I am a herald only,' said Carew, with a slight dryness 
 of manner, ' in matters of family history. With the shields 
 of which Harley speaks I was interested for a peculiar 
 reason. We, in the seventeenth century, were connected 
 by a marriage with the Lascaris, who were once seigneurs in 
 this part of the country ; and I was pleased to find above
 
 6 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 one of those mouldering arches two of the quarterings 
 which are above our own lodge gates at Otterton to- 
 day.' 
 
 ' Indeed ! ' said Harley. ' Otterton is a very fine old 
 place, isn't it ? ' 
 
 ' It is,' said Carew ; ' only two thirds of it are in ruins.' 
 
 'This,' went on Harley, 'about the coats of arms is 
 really extremely interesting ' 
 
 The shabby man, however, did not appear to think so, 
 and ignoring the information as though it were some unsuc- 
 cessful joke, he placidly interposed with an air of subdued 
 banter : — 
 
 ' My dear Carew, now can you tell me what a chevron 
 is, or a pellet? I am really immensely anxious to know 
 something about a pellet.' 
 
 ' Carew,' said Harley, in his turn ignoring the interrup- 
 tion, ' is exceedingly fortunate in his number of foreign re- 
 lations. There are his Milanese cousins, who have offered 
 him, during the spring, their beautiful island villa on the 
 Lago Maggiore ; and his French cousins, who have actually 
 lent him the chateau where he is now.' 
 
 'A chateau ! ' exclaimed the shabby man, at once show- 
 ing a little attention. ' You don't mean to say that you are 
 living in a chateau ? ' 
 
 ' Didn't you know ? ' said Harley. ' This lucky Carew 
 has a castle amongst the mountains, lent him for the winter 
 by his relation, the Comte de Courbon-Loubet. It's a 
 genuine castle, with ramparts, tower, and scutcheons, and 
 Heaven knows what else ; and it has a bed in it in which 
 Francis the First slept. So at least I discover in Murray's 
 Guide Book.' 
 
 The smile of the shabby man by a subtle change now 
 turned into one of more or less serious interest. ' A chateau 
 in France ! ' he exclaimed, ' and a villa on an Italian lake ! 
 Upon my word, it's a finer thing than I thought to have a 
 French count and an Italian marquis for one's cousins. 
 But I only hope,' he added with a little inward chuckle,
 
 ghap. i. AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS 7 
 
 ' that you won't be getting into trouble with any more 
 French countesses.' 
 
 Whatever this allusion may have meant, Carew did not 
 seem much pleased with it, and contracted his brows slightly. 
 The shabby man, whose eyes were sharp as a needle, de- 
 tected this at once ; and in a tone of voice that was some- 
 what like a slight pat on the shoulder, said, changing the 
 subject, ' My dear Carew, one of these fine mornings I 
 must drive over and breakfast with you.' 
 
 ' Do,' said Carew ; and he was beginning some further 
 civility, when the sound of wheels and horses was once more 
 audible, coming this time up the hill and not down it. 
 
 'Here,' exclaimed the shabby man, with an almost 
 childish satisfaction — ' here is our carriage at last ! I was 
 beginning to get a little bit in a fidget about the time ; 
 and — let me breathe it in your ear — I am also positively 
 ravenous.' 
 
 His satisfaction, however, proved to be premature. A 
 carriage indeed it was which was now ascending ; but it was 
 not their own : it was the other which had just passed them, 
 and which was now returning, by the way it came, with its 
 company. This proved to consist of an elderly gentleman, 
 seated with his back to the horses, and two ladies opposite 
 to him, one of whom seemed to be about the same age as 
 himself, whilst the other was so muffled to the eyes in a soft 
 white shawl that it was difficult, at a first glance, to form any 
 conjecture about her. But, as she gradually drew nearer to 
 the group at the roadside, above the cloud of the soft white 
 shawl there became distinguishable a cloud of soft fair hair, 
 and also a delicate hand that held the shawl against her lips. 
 This became distinguishable, and something more than this 
 — the glance of a pair of eyes, which at once, in spite of the 
 twilight, sent a curious thrill through at least one of the 
 party before he was clearly aware what it was that had 
 caused it. 
 
 Carew — for it was he who had found himself thus sus- 
 ceptible — had just become conscious of this singular and
 
 8 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 unexpected excitement, when, as the carriage was in the act 
 of passing him, some light object fell from it, dropped by 
 one of the occupants. In an instant he had stepped for- 
 ward and rescued it, and, with his hand on the door, was 
 presenting it— it was a fan— to whoever might be the owner. 
 A word of pleasure in English escaped from the elder lady, 
 who then proceeded to tender her thanks in French. The 
 former, however, was plainly her own language ; and Carew 
 was pleased to show her he was a fellow-countryman as he 
 expressed a hope that the fan had not been broken. Mean- 
 while his eyes, under the kindly cover of the twilight, had 
 sought those of her companion, and had not sought them 
 in vain. He was one of those happy men who can look at 
 a woman fixedly without the least air of impertinence ; and 
 the woman he was looking at now seemed possessed of the 
 yet rarer faculty, that of returning such a look without the 
 least air of immodesty. In her eyes, as they fixed on his with 
 all their soft fulness, there was not only an abandonment 
 to the impressions and feelings of the moment, but mixed 
 with the tenderness of a woman there was the steadfast 
 frankness of a child. 
 
 Such a silent conversation between the two perfect 
 strangers could, of course, under the circumstances, last a 
 few moments only ; but by the time the carriage had again 
 moved on Carew could have imagined that it had been an 
 affair of hours. He felt as if he had been having some new 
 experience, as if he had suddenly had a vision of some 
 enchanting country in May — a land blooming with lilacs and 
 hawthorns, its air breathing with all the longing of spring 
 — a land of promise which filled him with the desire of ex- 
 ploring it. In an instant he was sunk deep in a reverie ; 
 and so strangely jealous had he unconsciously become of 
 the subject of it, that he felt, and even showed, some slight 
 irritation when Harley remarked to him, ' What a handsome 
 girl that was ! ' To this he replied with little more than 
 a grunt, and was then suffered to enjoy a brief respite of 
 silence ; but before many minutes his thoughts were again
 
 chap. i. AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS 9 
 
 distracted, and for the time being their train was finally 
 broken, by a sharp crunching sound of something being 
 cracked close to him. This sound proved to proceed from 
 the shabby man, who was beguiling the time and taking the 
 edge off his appetite by eating a gingerbread nut. A few 
 brown crumbs were still clinging to his lips, and as soon as 
 he saw that Carew had noticed him, he produced another 
 from amongst the folds of his pocket-handkerchief, and 
 holding it out, said, with his mouth full, ' Have one ? ' 
 
 The offer being declined, he bit a large crescent out of 
 it himself, and then went back to a point he had before 
 touched upon — the lateness of the carriage and his own 
 impatience in consequence. He was at last relieving his 
 feelings by saying to Harley, ' I am afraid that this robber 
 baron we have all heard so much about has seized on it and 
 carried it off — it, with your wife into the bargain,' when both 
 made their appearance, and set his agitation at rest. 
 
 As soon as the party were settled, and had begun to 
 move on, Carew asked Mrs. Harley if she had seen the 
 interesting strangers. Mrs. Harley had ; but she had not 
 much to tell him about them, except that their carriage had 
 met them at the foot of the old town, and that they must 
 have walked down to it from the road above, through the 
 olive woods. The conversation then turned to the old town 
 itself; and Harley alluded to Carew's curious discovery — 
 that of a ' family scutcheon,' he said, ' under the marquis's 
 coronet on the gateway.' The shabby man, meanwhile, had 
 been sunk in a placid silence, but this last remark suddenly 
 roused his attention ; and with an animation surprising in 
 one who professed such an ignorance of heraldry, ' My dear 
 Harley,' he said, ' that was not a marquis's coronet at all ; it 
 was the coronet of a French vicomte, which is a very different 
 thing.' This was all he said till the rough road they had 
 been ascending at last joined a magnificent beaten highway ; 
 and here, as the horses were just quickening their pace, he 
 startled the coachman with a sudden call to stop. 
 
 '\Yhatonearthis the matter?' Mrs. Harley inquired of him.
 
 IO THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 ' Well,' he said, ' muck as I dislike to leave this exceed- 
 ingly pleasant carriage, I am obliged to get out here, and 
 walk down by a mule path, through these terrific forests, to 
 the little railway station which lies directly under us. I shall 
 just catch the train, and my servant will meet me with a 
 portmanteau. I arrive in that way forty minutes sooner than 
 I should if I allowed myself the pleasure of being driven to 
 Nice by you.' 
 
 Mrs. Harley was full of surprised remonstrances. 
 ' Surely,' she ended by saying, ' you can't be in such a hurry 
 as all that ? ' 
 
 ' The truth is,' said the other, who was by this time in the 
 road, ' I am engaged to dine to-night with my friend the 
 Grand Duke at Mentone ; and as to time, upon these occa- 
 sions I am always most punctilious. Besides,' he added 
 just as he was saying good-bye, 'besides' — and he laid his 
 finger on his nose with a kind of solemn waggery — ■' you will 
 observe that I save seventy-five centimes on my railway- 
 ticket.' 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE OLD ORDER. 
 
 ' Who,' exclaimed Mrs. Harley, as the figure of the shabby 
 man disappeared from them, ' would take him for the heir 
 to one of the richest dukedoms in England ? ' 
 
 ' Stonehouse,' said her husband, smiling, 'always amuses 
 me. Life in general he seems to regard as a kind of vulgar 
 joke, which assumes a classical character when embodied in 
 a great magnate like himself.' 
 
 ' I,' said Carew, ' should be the last person to abuse him ; 
 for on one occasion, with his shrewdness, he was an excellent 
 friend to me. You remember, Mrs. Harley, the trouble I 
 had with my uncle when he took it into his head I was going 
 to marry that French lady. It was Stonehouse entirely who
 
 chap. n. THE OLD ORDER I I 
 
 managed to put things right for me. Still I must say this of 
 him, and I don't mean it for a compliment. Though he 
 may not look to a stranger like the typical heir to a duke- 
 dom, to all who know him he is the very type of a modern 
 Whig — I mean,' Carew added, ' a Whig who is shrewd 
 enough to see his position, and has no desire to hide what 
 he sees from his friends.' 
 
 ' I'm sure,' said Mrs. Harley, 'you, with your strong feel- 
 ings about family, ought to find in Lord Stonehouse a man 
 after your own heart. No one has those feelings more 
 strongly than a genuine Whig.' 
 
 'There,' said Carew, 'is the very point where you miss 
 my meaning. It is perfectly true that, as his father's heir no 
 one sets a higher, though a less imaginative, value on him- 
 self than does Stonehouse ; but of family feeling, in my sense 
 of the words, he has nothing, or next to nothing. His 
 family is for him not so much a family as a firm, which has 
 been established so many years, and has so many millions 
 of capital. I was amused just now to discover this in him 
 —his knowledge of heraldry ends with the shape of his own 
 coronet ; and by the way, Harley, he was perfectly wrong 
 when he tried to correct you about the coronet on the castle 
 gate. That was the coronet, not of a French vicomte, but 
 of a marechal of France, which, seen at a distance, is very 
 like that of a marquis. It has eight parsley leaves with a 
 pearl between each, whereas the other is simply charged 
 with four large pearls. 1 think it is four ' 
 
 'Really, Mr. Carew,' broke in Mrs. Harley, 'you remind 
 me of a treatise on heraldry there used to be in my father's 
 library, which began by saying that hardly a subject existed 
 more worthy of the attention of princes and of gentlemen than 
 the origin of those titles and dignities which distinguish them 
 from the rest of mankind* 
 
 Carew laughed good-naturedly. ' My dear Mrs. I larky,' 
 he said, ' I'm not quite such a fool about these things as you 
 think me. I may be prejudiced, but I don't think I'm insane. 
 As for heraldic signs, of course they are signs merely. Is
 
 12 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 our national flag more? That, in itself, is merely a rag .of 
 canvas. You may call it a scarecrow, or you may die for it. 
 A coat of arms — I don't mean one supplied by the coach- 
 maker — is for each family which is worth calling a family, 
 the Union Jack of its own past : and what I am saying of 
 Stonehouse and Whigs like him is, that for their past, as 
 their past, they have no feeling whatever.' 
 
 ' My dear Mr. Carew,' interposed Mrs. Harley, ' what is 
 it but their past which keeps men like Lord Stonehouse 
 from going over to the Conservatives ? ' 
 
 'They merely feel,' said Carew, 'like a true trading firm, 
 that they would lose, if they did, the good-will of their poli- 
 tical business ; as a grocer would if he suddenly turned 
 shoemaker. No doubt the Whigs value their past in one 
 way. They know that it has a power over the opinions of 
 others, and that it helps to surround them with a certain 
 ready-made deference. Of course in this way it adds to 
 their own self-importance, but only as might the possession 
 of some remote ancestral castle, which they like to possess 
 but have no inclination to visit. They are proud to think 
 of it as a celebrated show-place which oppresses the imagi- 
 nation of the tourist, but which never elevates the imagina- 
 tion of the owner. It speaks for them, but it does not 
 speak to them. They don't listen for the voice which 
 haunts, if they would only hear it, every mouldering turret 
 and every gnarled oak-tree ; the voice which whispers to 
 them that they are different from the rest of the world, not 
 because they are rich, but that they are rich (if they happen 
 to be so) because they are different from the rest of the 
 world. It is only people to whom the past conveys this 
 feeling who really know the meaning of the words Noblesse 
 oblige? 
 
 ' If you are talking about Lord Stonehouse,' said Mrs. 
 Harley, ' you are very possibly right. You know him far 
 better than I do. But about the Whigs in general I am 
 
 quite sure you are wrong. Look at the 's, look at the 
 
 's, look at the 's. No one — not the most bigoted
 
 chap. ii. THE OLD ORDER 1 3 
 
 Tory in England —for bad and for good both, is more 
 closely wedded than they are to this gratifying feeling you 
 speak of.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Carew, with a certain vindictive energy, 'if 
 they are wedded to it, they keep their wife locked up ; and 
 they never speak in public without denying the marriage. 
 However,' he went on, ' as I said just now, we will have all 
 this out more fully some day. It shall be when you come 
 to see me at my castle among the mountains. I am longing 
 to show you that. Everything about us will be on my side 
 there, and will explain my meaning, and I think make you 
 agree with it — at all events partly. The old village still 
 clings to the shelter of the feudal ramparts. In the valley 
 below you look down on the lord's mill, whose black wheel 
 still turns in the blue-green snow-water. The villagers all 
 touch their hats to you and seem proud of your presence. 
 For miles round every hectare belongs to the House of 
 Courbon-Loubet. The concierge delights in pointing out to 
 a stranger certain of the scutcheons in the courtyard, and 
 telling him that Monsieur le Comte has Bourbon blood in 
 his veins ; and there is a huge five-sided tower, that still 
 stands erect and stares at the landscape with all its old 
 effrontery. Indeed, if it were not for a glimpse of the 
 railway which that tower gives you, you could fancy that 
 you were living before the French Revolution. Now, Mrs. 
 Harley, when are you coming to see me, and leave the epoch 
 of progress and the sovereign people behind you ? 'Will you 
 come next week ? Do ! I am expecting some friends then. 
 You probably know them all ; and I am quite sure you will 
 like them.' 
 
 Mrs. Harley's eyes had been watching Carew curiouslv, 
 with a mixed expression of interest, of dissent, and of 
 amusement ; and gradually, though there was still a serious 
 meaning left in them, they began to sparkle with an irre- 
 pressible wish to tease. 
 
 ' I'm afraid, Mr. Carew,' she said, ' your friends would 
 be a great deal too smart for me. You know that is a point
 
 14 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 on which we agree to differ. I don't like smart people, 
 whether they are Whigs or Tories. I'm never at home or 
 at my ease with them. I like the other people far better.' 
 
 Her words produced the exact effect she intended, and 
 Carew's voice when he answered her had a trace in it of 
 annoyed incredulity. 'I know/ he said, 'who you mean by 
 the other people. You don't mean people who are something 
 besides smart : you mean people who are something opposed 
 to smart. You mean lions and celebrities, who are nothing 
 but lions and celebrities, who have odd hair and vague 
 wives and daughters, and who not only are cleverer than 
 average people of fashion, but express their cleverness in 
 a different social language. Now these people, if you wish 
 to consult them on their own special subjects, are no doubt 
 most interesting to meet, and it may be curious to watch 
 their characteristics. But you surely — come, Mrs. Harley, 
 be honest — you surely don't prefer them as friends, as daily 
 companions? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Mrs. Harley, ' I do. I prefer them as friends, 
 and as daily companions.' 
 
 ' I,' Carew retorted, 'agree with De Tocqueville, and I 
 tnink it the profoundest saying in his whole book on 
 Democracy, that a man, if necessary, can learn to put up 
 with anything except with the manners of some other class 
 than his own. Of course I prefer just as you do a clever 
 man to a fool ; but certainly, in a friend, the first thing I 
 should look to would be, not that he should be fond of the 
 same books that I am, but that he should look at society 
 with the same inherited prejudices. However, happily, one 
 can find friends who do both. There are surely plenty of 
 people who are clever and smart as well.' 
 
 ' Yes, clever, no doubt,' said Mrs. Harley. ' But to 
 what use do they put their cleverness? What do they talk 
 about ? What do they think about ? By what standard do 
 they measure themselves and you? They are the smart 
 set ; that is their great notion ; and if you don't belong to 
 that, they think you are nothing and nowhere. And as for
 
 chap. n. THE OLD ORDER 1 5 
 
 manners — well, I can tell you this : I have seen worse 
 manners amongst these same smart people than I have ever 
 seen elsewhere in any class of society.' 
 
 ' Stop,' interposed Carew. ' We are talking of different 
 things. You have run away with the word smart, which I 
 merely used as a piece of convenient slang. You are talking 
 about one small clique, the personnel of which is changing 
 every season. You are talking about a clique ; I am talk- 
 ing about a class, or, if you like it better, a caste. That 
 particular clique maybe as little in my line as in yours ; but 
 surely in the class of which it is proud to form a part — and 
 of which, by the way, some of its members do not form a 
 part — you will find as much culture and intellect as you will 
 find anywhere else, with social qualities in addition which 
 you will find nowhere else.' 
 
 ' I don't deny for a moment,' said Mrs. Harley, ' that 
 there's a sort of glamour about it all. There is. And 
 besides, it is what oneself one was born amongst and bred 
 up to. Even the people 1 was abusing just now — the clique 
 as you call it — and it is a clique — through all their bad 
 manners you can see that they are ladies and gentlemen.' 
 
 ' Exactly,' said Carew ; ' they possess the very thing 
 which your other people are, in spite of their talents, distin- 
 guished by not possessing. The difference need not always 
 be grotesque or glaring ; but, in so far as it exists, you surely 
 must feel it a barrier between yourself and them. It is not 
 merely a question of how to come into a room. It is a 
 question of the whole perspective of life.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Mrs. Harley, 'and the people I call my 
 friends arc the people, I think, who see life most truly. I like 
 them because they embody the real meaning, the real life 
 of the time— its thought, its science, its art, its politics, even 
 its dreams and its impossible aspirations.' 
 
 Carew paused for a moment, and then said abruptly, 
 ' Well, what do you say of our old Catholic families, and 
 the circle within a circle formed by them ? Is no meaning 
 embodied there, or, if you like to call it so, no impossible
 
 1 6 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 dream? As to politics, you are partly right about that, 
 more's the pity : it's your other people, no doubt, who make 
 the Radical thunderstorm. And yet, on second thoughts, 
 if you stick to polite society, you can see the sheet lightning 
 in the faces of Whigs like Stonehouse. Anyhow, Mrs. 
 Harley, you must admit this : that, given what you require 
 in the way of aspiration and intellect, this is seen to its best 
 advantage, and is most congenial to yourself, when you find 
 it in the world to which you yourself belong.' 
 
 ' No,' said Mrs.. Harley ; ' speaking honestly, I do ?iot 
 think so. I think that the polish and charm which charac- 
 terise the world you speak of, and which I feel just as fully 
 as you do ; I think that the unexpressed sympathy which 
 exists between its members, and which forms so subtle and 
 pleasant a link between them — I think that all this implies 
 and is founded upon a set of beliefs and assumptions with 
 regard to an aristocracy which, even if true once, are cer- 
 tainly true no longer. Once, no doubt, aristocracies did 
 lead. Of whatever life there was in the world they were 
 the centre. But things are changed. The centre is shifted 
 now. Not only does the life of the world no longer centre 
 in them ; it is not even what it was till very lately, a tune 
 that is played under their windows. My dear Mr. Carew, 
 there is no use in disguising the fact. Aristocracy as a 
 genuine power, as a visible fact in the world, may not yet 
 be buried, perhaps ; but it is dead.' 
 
 'Then, in that case,' said Carew, 'let me die with it. 
 I am only thirty-five, but I have outlived my time, and few 
 and evil have been the days of my pilgrimage. There are 
 other things,' he added presently — ' there are other things 
 in my mind besides London drawing-rooms — the winter 
 sunsets beyond the park ; the noise of rooks in the elm-trees 
 over the graves of those who are nearest to me ; old ser- 
 vants ; the tower of the village church ; and the welcome 
 once ready for me in every cottage in the village.' 
 
 He spoke with so much feeling that Mrs. Harley was 
 anxious not to jar upon it.
 
 chap. it. THE OLD ORDER 1 7 
 
 1 In one thing at least,' she said, 'I think you are right. 
 Amongst the old Catholic families of England, and amongst 
 the converts who have been absorbed into them, there is an 
 ideal, there is an aspiration to live for ; and I respect those 
 who live for it, though with it itself I have no sympathy 
 whatsoever. And yet,' she went on reflectively, ' even as 
 Catholics their position narrows their views. I have seen 
 it, I have felt it ; I have known and stayed with so many of 
 them. There are my cousins the Burtons— a typical case if 
 there is one. You know how those girls — no longer girls 
 now, poor things ! — were brought up. You know what 
 Burton was in the old Lord's time. I often think of poor 
 Charley, with the three Italian priests who were his tutors ; 
 the retainers, born on the property — you could hardly call 
 them servants — that the whole place was swarming with ; 
 the endless horses in the stables ; the constant coming and 
 going ; the meets, the scarlet coats, and the foreign ecclesi- 
 astics — any number of them — gliding quietly up and down 
 the huge passages. It was one of the last of the really great 
 households in England. Well, and what has been the result 
 in this generation on those who were brought up in it and 
 amongst the ideas embodied in it ? As for Charley, well, we 
 won't say much of him ; but his sisters — they are really noble, 
 high-minded women, full of intelligence, and anxious to do 
 their work in the world ; but of the world they are so anxious 
 to work in they know about as much as Don Quixote. They 
 have just the same mixture in them that their parents had, 
 of the intensest pride and the intensest humility. Each of 
 these feelings is equally antiquated and equally genuine. 
 They support each other like two cards in a card-house, and 
 are about as fit as a card-house is to endure the weather of 
 the century.' 
 
 ' About the elder ones,' said Carew, 'that maybe quite 
 true. I do not know them well. 1 hit you can't say the same 
 about their half-sister, Miss Consuelo.' 
 
 ' No,' said Mrs. Harley, with a sudden access of animation. 
 ' In her, I admit, you come to a totally different thing. She 
 
 C
 
 1 8 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 is like the others in some ways, certainly. She has all those 
 prejudices for which you feel so much sympathy ; but there 
 is a passion, and an energy, in her nature which cannot be 
 satisfied with worn-out ways of showing themselves. She 
 doesn't hear much of any new ideas, it is true ; but what 
 she does hear of she drinks in, as a traveller in the desert would 
 drink in drops of water. There is a hunger in her eyes, you 
 can hardly tell for what — whether for a man to love or for 
 some great duty to do — perhaps for both. I often think 
 that, could she only find the conditions of life that would 
 suit her — could she only find a husband who could really 
 understand and help her — she would be the most interesting 
 and the most remarkable woman I know. Have you seen her ? ' 
 'Seen her?' saidCarew, half absently. 'Why, I know her !' 
 ' I mean, have you seen her since she has been out here?' 
 ' Out here ? Out where? I don't quite understand you.' 
 ' Did you not know,' said Mrs. Harley, ' they have been 
 here for the last fortnight — she and two of her sisters ? They 
 are in the hotel next to ours. Lord Stonehouse is there also, 
 and takes excellent care of them. I must say, whatever his 
 faults may be, he's most kind to his own relations.' 
 
 Carew, for a moment, looked as if he were going to speak. 
 There was a light in his eye, a moment's surprise and start ; 
 but his words died on his lips, and, leaning back in his seat, 
 he stared absently at the view, as if he considered the con- 
 versation ended. Silence is nowhere so catching as in a 
 carriage, and his two companions became silent also. Mean- 
 while, the road had begun descending. It no longer skirted 
 the bare heights of the mountains, but was sweeping down- 
 wards in a series of curves and slopes. Above and under it 
 were frequent masses of foliage. On either side of it, alter- 
 nately, as it turned and circled, expanding inland landscapes 
 showed themselves to the eyes of the travellers, glimmering 
 far under the rapidly brightening moon ; and at last, like 
 a large irregular crescent of stars, the lights of some large 
 town were seen clustering along the sea, below them. 
 
 At this sight Carew suddenly roused himself, and said
 
 chap. ii. THE OLD ORDER 1 9 
 
 abruptly : ' I shall sleep at Nice to-night. I told my servants 
 I should very possibly do so.' 
 
 Mrs. Harley gave a faintly perceptible smile. ' Of course,' 
 she said, ' you are going to dine with us ? We were counting 
 on that in any case. If you like it, I will send over and ask 
 the Burtons to meet you.' 
 
 Carew murmured an answer of acquiescence. Then 
 again there was silence ; and hardly a word further was 
 spoken till the wall of a villa garden made a white glare along 
 the road-side, in the light of a gas lamp opposite, and they 
 saw they were approaching the town, and that their day's 
 expedition was ended. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A PAGE OF ROMANCE REOPENED. 
 
 The sense of the town roused them. In another moment 
 they passed a suburban tramcar. The world they had just 
 left, of forests, of laden mules, and of mouldering mountain 
 strongholds, lay like a dream behind them. They were once 
 again in the glare and rattle of to-day. 
 
 'Mrs. Harley,' said Carew, waking up into matter-of- 
 fact alertness, 'you must really consider when you will let 
 me expect you. Think over your plans this evening, and 
 you shall tell me to-morrow before I go back to the 
 chateau.' 
 
 ' We have nothing to do next week, that I know of,' said 
 Harley, turning to his wife; 'and if Mr. Carew would 
 
 really like to have us then To be sure, I forgot one 
 
 thing. There is that poor invalid, to whom we promised 
 to show the country.' 
 
 'Hush!' said Mrs. Harley. 'Not another word about 
 him. Mr. Carew would never speak again to us if he knew 
 who this poor invalid was.' 
 
 I lad the invalid been a woman, it is possible that Carew 
 might have been curious. As it was merely a man he let 
 
 c 2
 
 20 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 the allusion pass. 'Perhaps,' he said, with a slight accent of 
 consciousness, 'I might get the Burtons to join our party 
 also.' 
 
 Mrs. Harley shook her head. ' I'm afraid not,' she said. 
 'What do you think, George? Elfrida and Mildred have 
 still their little doubts about Mr. Carew.' 
 
 'You mean,' said Carew, not wholly without embarrass- 
 ment — 'you mean that I am not a Catholic?' 
 
 'Yes, that,' said Mrs. Harley, 'and one or two other little 
 things besides.' 
 
 ' What ? ' said Carew. ' Do you mean that ridiculous 
 story which so frightened my Uncle Horace, and which our 
 good friend Stonehouse was kind enough to set him right 
 about ? ' 
 
 ' Well, yes,' said Mrs. Harley. ' More or less I mean 
 that. I don't say that Elfrida and Mildred still think you 
 were in love with the lady, but they certainly once did enter- 
 tain the suspicion : and, poor dear souls, good and amiable 
 as they are, although the suspicion is quite cleared away, it 
 has left a little sediment in their minds of naive unworldly 
 shyness. They are frightened of you, not because you 
 justified the suspicion, but because you suggested it.' 
 
 'The real fact is,' said her husband, laughing, 'they 
 think him so good they can't forgive him for not being 
 better ; and to them he seems far more immoral, because 
 they compare him with what they wish him to be, than 
 numbers of men far worse, on whom they waste no wishes 
 whatever. But I don't see,' he added, half seriously, ' why, 
 if you were to take charge of her, they shouldn't allow Miss 
 Consuelo to come without them. She, I am sure, would 
 only be too delighted.' 
 
 'That,' said Mrs. Harley, 'would be luck indeed for 
 hec. Doesn't Consuelo wish she may get it, poor child ! 
 Besides, my dear George, we two are in rather bad odour 
 with Elfrida and Mildred ourselves. They will never, 
 I think, get over the shock of having seen that poor man 
 in our rooms. By the way, Mr. Carew, as I warned you
 
 chap. in. A PAGE OF ROMANCE REOPENED 21 
 
 just now, had you been there you would have been horrified 
 just as they were.' 
 
 'Who on earth,' said Carew, 'can this mysterious person 
 be? Is it the invalid you spoke of? Is your invalid so 
 very alarming? ' 
 
 'Tell me, George,' said Mrs. Harley, 'shall we confess it 
 to him ? He is sure to find it out for himself, and after all 
 he will perhaps forgive us. Mr. Carew, our invalid is Mr. 
 Foreman.' 
 
 'Foreman!' exclaimed Carew, with a genuine start of 
 aversion. 'Do you mean Foreman the agitator? Do you 
 mean the Socialist ? Do you mean that lying egotistical 
 scoundrel, half dunce and half madman, who is going about 
 London haranguing the unemployed workmen — poor crea- 
 tures, whom hunger has made at once savage and credulous 
 — and trying to rouse in them every contemptible quality 
 that can unfit them for any human society — the passions of 
 wild beasts and the hopes of gaping children ? Is that 
 really the man you mean ? ' 
 
 ' Poor Foreman ! ' said Harley, with a smile of benign 
 indifference, ' I think society is safe enough as long as we 
 have only him to attack it.' 
 
 ' I don't know,' Mrs. Harley retorted. ' In times of dis- 
 tress like these, especially on the eve of a general election, 
 a man like that can do an endless amount of mischief. You 
 know, George, don't you, that in a number of constituencies 
 he and his friends are going to run Socialist candidates ? ' 
 
 'And yet,' exclaimed Carew, 'you are a friend of this 
 creature — you countenance him? Good God! I can't 
 understand it ! I would as soon be friends with a forger. 
 I'.esides, what has he, who says that all riches are robbery — 
 what has he to do with a leisurely winter on the Riviera, 
 especially at Nice, that playground of the idle and the 
 profligate ? ' 
 
 ' Poor Foreman,' said Mrs. Harley, 'is no doubt mistaken, 
 terribly mistaken, in a great number of ways. But he is 
 entirely unselfish, entirely honest in his opinions '
 
 22 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 'Begging your pardon,' interposed Carew, 'that is just 
 what I say he is not. He may be fool enough to be honest 
 in his Socialistic theories ; but he cannot be honest in the 
 way he denounces classes, who are no more to blame for 
 having been born rich than he is to blame for having been 
 born a biped.' 
 
 'I can tell you,' said Mrs. Harley, 'he has done one 
 thing, in which we might all of us take a lesson from him. 
 He has made himself familiar with the actual face of poverty. 
 Day by day he has sought out and examined the squalor, 
 the destitution, the hopelessness that exist at our very doors 
 almost. No wonder, when his mind is so full of the thoughts 
 of misery, that he feels indignant at us and at all our luxury- 
 I confess I sympathise with him. Often and often after he 
 has been talking to me, I have felt that every superfluous 
 morsel I ate would choke me. I know he is a visionary 
 about the methods of curing the evil ; but he is certainly 
 no visionary about the evil that wants curing, or about the 
 sullen and restless sense of it that is spreading amongst its 
 victims. Yes, Mr. Carew, you may talk as much as you like 
 about aristocracies, but the great question of the future is 
 the condition of the labouring multitude.' 
 
 ' And so,' said Carew, ' Mr. Foreman is one of your other 
 people, is he ? — one of the people who embody the real life 
 of the time ? ' 
 
 'Yes,' said Mrs. Harley, again relapsing into a smile. 
 ' Mr. Foreman is one of my other people. You asked just 
 now what he could be doing at Nice. He is here by his 
 doctor's orders. He is broken with over-work. His chest 
 is affected ; he is suffering from the results of a chill, which 
 he caught when addressing a meeting of dock-labourers. 
 However, Mr. Carew, we won't inflict him at dinner on you. 
 If I can manage it, you shall have your aristocratic Burtons 
 instead. By the way, it occurs to me now, from something 
 you said this morning, that the hotel where you left your 
 portmanteau, and where I conclude you intend to sleep, is 
 the very hotel where the Burtons themselves are. Here,'
 
 chap, in. A PAGE OF ROMANCE REOPENED 23 
 
 she continued, for the carriage was now stopping — ' here is 
 ours, so you are only a few yards off; and if you don't mind 
 waiting whilst I write it, I will give you a note for Elfrida, 
 to ask them to come this evening. I shall tell them eight. 
 It is now a little past seven.' 
 
 The note in question was soon in Carew's hand, and he 
 turned towards his own hotel with a pleasant feeling of 
 expectation. When he pushed open the heavy plate-glass 
 doors, the large hall was alive with groups of loiterers ; 
 most of them, so it seemed, fresh from the table d'hote, and 
 about to separate in quest of their various dissipations. 
 Taken as a whole, it was not an attractive company. The 
 men looked, to use Cardinal Newman's phrase, like 'bad 
 imitations of polished ungodliness,' whilst the ladies sug- 
 gested the class which polished ungodliness imitates. What, 
 then, was Carew's surprise when, amongst a medley of toilettes 
 unmistakably fresh from Paris, he at once caught sight of 
 two singularly plain black dresses, and was aware in an 
 instant that the eldest Miss Burtons were before him ! Sur- 
 prise, however, was not his only emotion. He became con- 
 scious of a sudden sense of embarrassment, the causes of which 
 he had not then time to analyse. He felt it impossible to go 
 up to them and give them Mrs. Harley's note in person ; 
 and slipping into the bureau, in order to avoid their notice, 
 he determined to wait until they should go upstairs, intending 
 as soon as they did so to send it up to them by a waiter. 
 
 Unseen himself, he had now an excellent view of them : 
 they were, indeed, but a few yards away from him, and he 
 could also see something of what kept them in a scene so 
 incongruous. A middle-aged man, with his back to Carew, 
 was apparently holding them in conversation ; but the chilly 
 smile with which they both heard and answered him, and 
 the constant way in which their glances wandered, showed 
 plainly enough that they were waiting for some one else, and 
 that in attending to him at all they were simply the victims 
 of their civility. Carew had no intention of playing the 
 eavesdropper ; but the gentleman had a trick of occasionally
 
 24 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 raising his voice, and as he did so, reducing the pace of his 
 syllables, which forced what he then said on the ears of every- 
 one in his neighbourhood. Nearly every time that this 
 occurred, Carew caught the name of some person of high 
 distinction ; and had he been half asleep in an arm-chair, 
 his impression would have been that somebody was reciting 
 a page out of the ' Peerage.' ' Lady Something did this,' and 
 ' Lord Something did that,' formed apparently the jewels of 
 the speaker's conversation, to which all the rest of it was 
 nothing more than the setting. The Miss Burtons listened 
 with a kind of patient apathy, and seemed to be giving him 
 as little encouragement to continue as one human being 
 could possibly give another ; when a statement he made 
 about a certain well-known duchess at last roused the elder 
 of them into a moment's passing animation. 
 
 ' What a charming woman that is ! ' he said. ' I travelled 
 down with her from Paris only a fortnight since.' 
 
 ' Really ! ' exclaimed Miss Burton. ' How odd that we 
 didn't see you ; for we were with her ourselves, and we 
 shared a coupe between us.' 
 
 ' Well,' he said, somewhat taken aback, ' I couldn't 
 exactly get a seat in the same train ; but I came by the very 
 next one, and I took charge of her white dog for her. I 
 preferred to wait and get a whole coupe salon to myself. But 
 here,' he added, as if glad to change the subject — ' here is 
 your servant looking for you. Ah ! he sees you now, I 
 think. Ici, man — Venez — this way — iaV 
 
 The servant approached, and Carew could plainly hear 
 him as he spoke. 
 
 ' Miss Consuelo, ma'am,' he said, ' is with her maid, in 
 Galignani's Library, and she orders me to say that she will 
 be in, in another five minutes.' 
 
 ' Then send Louise to me,' said Miss Burton, ' and we 
 will dine in half an hour. And, Eugene, go to the office 
 and ask if there are any letters or parcels.' 
 
 Both she and her sister immediately turned towards the 
 staircase, and with a slight bow, as they did so, to the
 
 chap. in. A PAGE OF ROMANCE REOPENED 25 
 
 Duchess's late companion, left him staring after them in an 
 attitude of despondent meditation. 
 
 An irrepressible smile, meamvhile, had been growing on 
 Carew's lips, for it had dawned on him some moments ago 
 who this fine gentleman was. ' Of course,' he murmured, 
 ' it is Inigo. It can surely be no one else ; ' and if the 
 smallest doubt had still remained as to the matter it was 
 presently set at rest by Mr. Inigo himself, who strolled into 
 the bureau with an air of solemn abstraction ; and finding 
 the clerk absent, and not seeing Carew, instinctively betook 
 himself to the book in which the names of visitors were 
 recorded. 
 
 Mr. Inigo was a man who, by long and laborious effort, 
 had lately arrived, in the social world of London, at just 
 enough celebrity for his presence to excite a smile. His 
 origin, thanks to his own diplomatic adroitness, was veiled 
 in profound obscurity. He was content to regard him- 
 self, and he hoped he was regarded by others, as having • 
 entered the life of fashion by a kind of spontaneous 
 generation. 
 
 ' I must say,' he muttered aloud to himself, as he stooped 
 down to pour over the book he had opened ' I must say 
 these two ladies have not much manners. And yet, I should 
 like to know, what right have they to be rude ? They were 
 not at one— I know it for a fact not at one of the really 
 smart balls last season. I mean the very, very smart ones/ 
 A moment later he closed the page contemptuously. 
 1 Pooh ! ' he exclaimed, ' there's nobody that's much good 
 there ! ' and was turning to walk away when the clerk re- 
 turned, and with him the Burtons' servant, who was inquir- 
 ing after his mistress's letters. 'Here is one,' said Carew. 
 ' Will you be kind enough to deliver it at once. It is from 
 Mrs. Harley, and wants an immediate answer.' The mo- 
 ment he spoke he felt that Mr. Inigo's eyes were fixed on 
 him ; and when he had finished some directions to the clerk 
 about a bedroom, Mr. Inigo still was there, in readiness to 
 claim his acquaintance. Carew recognised that there was
 
 26 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 no chance of escape ; so he submitted to a meeting which 
 he would have gone many yards to avoid. 
 
 ' I'd no notion,' said Mr. Inigo, ' that you were in these 
 parts. You'll not stay long — I can venture to predict that' 
 
 'On the contrary,' said Carew, 'I mean to remain till 
 Easter.' 
 
 ' Oh,' said Mr. Inigo, ' there's nobody here this winter one 
 ever heard of before ; in fact, till the Darlingtons came I 
 had hardly a soul to speak to. Lady Darlington, Stone- 
 house, I, and a few more of us make up a party now and then 
 to the Opera or to Monte Carlo ; but as for me,' said Mr. 
 Inigo, looking round in the vain hope of an audience, 'the 
 sole reason why I'm here is that the poor Grand Duke is 
 expected back from Mentone ; and when his cough is bad, 
 I amuse him with my stories in the evening. But, by the 
 way, tell me. A moment ago you mentioned Mrs. Harley. 
 Is she our Mrs. Harley — the Mrs. Harley we all know? And 
 is she in Nice now ? ' 
 
 'She is,' said Carew, drily, 'and as I am going to dine 
 with her, I fear I must leave you and go upstairs to prepare 
 myself.' 
 
 ' Dear me,' said Mr. Inigo, ' I must go and call to-morrow. 
 
 I shall ' and he wagged his head knowingly — 'I shall get 
 
 into dreadful hot water if I don't pay my respects to her. 
 Perhaps,' he continued as Carew was moving off — 'perhaps, 
 if I came, I should find her at home this evening ? ' 
 
 ' Certainly,' said Carew, looking back, ' she will be in 
 her own rooms ; but her servants will tell you better than I 
 can if she intends to receive company.' 
 
 Whilst he spoke he had his foot on the first step of the 
 staircase ; and just as he turned to mount, he became aware 
 that a female figure had passed him. It had moved, it had 
 almost darted, with a noiseless graceful rapidity, something 
 like the flight of a bird, and had nearly, by this time, arrived 
 at the first landing. But Carew's eyes and mind compre- 
 hended the whole vision in an instant. A knot of hair 
 arranged with exquisite neatness ; a hand in a grey glove for
 
 chap. in. A PAGE OF ROMANCE REOPENED 2"J 
 
 a moment laid on the banister ; a jacket whose fit any of 
 the ladies in the hall might have envied ; but with all this 
 a proud refinement and dignity which seemed to pervade 
 their possessor, and to linger in her wake like a perfume. 
 A second more and she was on the landing. Carew was 
 not far behind her ; her eye, as she turned, inevitably en- 
 countered his ; and he saw what he had felt, but what he had 
 not distinctly expressed to himself— that it was Miss Consuelo 
 Ihirton. 
 
 It was more than a year since they had met last ; and 
 when they had parted, it had been with some circumstances 
 of embarrassment. The girl's face and movements be- 
 trayed that she was conscious of this. At the first moment 
 of recognition she stopped short suddenly ; a deep colour 
 flushed up into her cheek, and her dark eyes seemed to ex- 
 pand as they fixed on him ; but he had hardly uttered the 
 most commonplace words of greeting, and she replied to 
 them in a manner equally commonplace, when her check 
 grew pale again, she smiled quickly and nervously, and 
 saying, in a constrained voice, ' I am in a hurry— my sisters 
 are waiting for me,' with another of her bird-like darts, she 
 was gone before he had time to recover himself. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A SHADOW FROM THE PAST. 
 
 Carew, as he was dressing, restlessly paced his bedroom, 
 ^itated and plunged in rellection. Some eighteen months 
 ago, during part of one London season, he had been by her 
 side at nearly every party ; and whatever might have been 
 his own hojies or intentions, he had taught her eyes to 
 brighten the moment she saw him approaching her. Her 
 sisters, with whom vigilance took the place of acuteness, 
 quickly detected this ; and, for a week or tun, they were not 
 displeased at it. They knew that Carew belonged to one of 
 the oldest families in the kingdom j they understood that
 
 28 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 he was the heir to sufficient, if moderate, property ; and 
 they hoped, from the gossip of many of their own circle, 
 that he would be shortly received into the bosom of the 
 Catholic Church. Gossip, however, and their own obser- 
 vations as directed by it, soon added other and very dif- 
 ferent details about him. There was nothing definitely 
 scandalous in anything they either heard or saw ; but there 
 was much by which, to their minds, scandal was vaguely 
 suggested. They were warned that he was well known for 
 his levity in his conduct to women ; and though by no 
 means willing to believe these warnings justified, they soon 
 saw enough to convince them, as regarded their sister, that 
 she was but one amongst many objects of his similar and 
 habitual attentions. 
 
 Finally something happened that was even more serious. 
 During the past year a certain Comtesse de Saint Valery, 
 divorced, it was said, from her husband, who was supposed 
 vaguely to be in St. Petersburg, had been glittering before 
 the eyes of the fashionable world, in that social penumbra 
 by which the fashionable world is surrounded. She was 
 a woman of much education and many accomplishments. 
 She had eyes like a Magdalen and a voice like a sorrowing 
 angel. Numbers of eminent men, it was rumoured, had 
 been in love with her ; and she had saved a child from 
 drowning in the waters of the Lago Maggiore. That in- 
 cident, which was certainly no mere rumour, had made her 
 acquainted with Carew, who was staying in his cousin's villa 
 at the time. He had indeed himself been present at the 
 scene of the accident, having just arrived in time to render 
 some help with a boat ; and when she appeared in London 
 some months afterwards, he renewed his acquaintance with 
 her — his acquaintance, or rather his friendship. So marked, 
 indeed, did this friendship seem to the small circle which 
 had opportunities of observing it, that a muffled report 
 reached the ears of one of his uncles that he was actually 
 intending to marry this fair foreign adventuress. A family 
 scene ensued, which involved certain unpleasantness ; and
 
 chap. iv. A SHADOW FROM THE PAST 29 
 
 the consequences to Carew might have been really serious 
 if Lord Stonehouse had not, by means of a certain accident, 
 been able to set the mind of the uncle in question at rest. 
 What happened was this. A first cousin of Lord Stone- 
 house's, and a second cousin of the Burtons' — a man well 
 known in the laxer sets of society — dismayed his relations 
 and excited his friends by eloping with the lady, and carry- 
 ing her off to the Continent. Till this event, the Miss 
 Burtons had hardly heard of her ; still less did they know 
 that she had any acquaintance with Carew. Nor was this 
 surprising. She had indeed collected round her a little 
 private clique ot her own ; she had been constantly at- 
 tended by a number of well-known men, and caressed by a 
 few ladies who were known but no longer countenanced ; 
 she had been the observed of all observers in the Park, 
 at Sandown, and at Hurlingham ; but she had never once 
 appeared at any recognised ball or party. It was at Hur- 
 lingham, indeed, that she and her lover had been dining, 
 with a number of friends, the very night before their elope- 
 ment ; and of these friends it chanced that Carew was one. 
 He seemed — so rumour was exceedingly careful to add — 
 by no means indifferent to the fair delinquent himself; and 
 the rest of those present were precisely the kind of people 
 who would pardon her delinquency, even if they did not 
 actually emulate it. It was then that the Miss Burtons 
 heard for the first time Carew's name spoken of in this 
 connection ; and they now heard it so spoken of frequently. 
 This brought their changed opinion of him to a crisis. 
 They were fair enough to recognise that he had not been 
 convicted of anything definitely — not even of trifling with 
 the feelings of their sister ; but they felt that he certainly 
 could not be, what they had at first thought him, a very 
 good man ; and as he consorted with bad men, lie might 
 possibly be even a very bad man. Anyhow, as to their 
 sister they came to this conclusion, that from her acquaint- 
 ance with him she was running a double risk ; that if he 
 were trilling with her she might have a broken heart, or a
 
 3<D THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 husband with a doubtful character and an unavowed 
 religion, if he were serious. 
 
 Carew, meanwhile, was perfectly unaware of the way in 
 which his merits were being sifted. It is true that he gra- 
 dually became conscious that he saw less of Miss Consuelo 
 than formerly, and that her sisters' manner had something 
 stiff and cold in it ; but what the change meant, or that it 
 was really more than his fancy, was not brought home to 
 him till a single incident revealed it. At a brilliant evening 
 party which enlivened the decline of the season he had 
 looked for the Burtons everywhere, but had been unable to 
 find them. At last, when the whole world was going, he 
 came upon them downstairs in a corridor, evidently waiting 
 for their carriage. He offered to call it ; but Miss Burton 
 told him drily that some one else had done so. The some 
 one else — a grey-haired gentleman — reappeared at the 
 same instant, urging them to hurry themselves if they would 
 not lose their opportunity. Still unaware that he had 
 suffered any repulse, Carew offered his arm to Miss Consuelo. 
 She took it ; but presently, when her sisters were a few 
 paces in front of her, looking him straight in the face, and 
 speaking low and rapidly, 'My relations,' she said, 'don't 
 wish me to know you ; and so — for the present — if we meet 
 again, I must ask you not to come up to me or to talk to 
 me.' Then relinquishing his arm, she hastily held her hand 
 out to him, and saying ' Good-bye ! ' in a voice that had a 
 little quiver in it, in another second she was again close to 
 her sisters. 
 
 Carew was so super-sensitive as to his own shortcomings, 
 and, despite his genealogical pride, thought so meanly of 
 his marriageable qualifications, that it was his first impulse 
 to think that he really deserved this treatment ; and he 
 walked home that night with the feelings of a dreaming 
 criminal, conscious of his guilt, and yet unable to recollect 
 the nature of it. 
 
 Gradually reflection brought him to a juster condition of 
 mind. He believed himself repulsed because he was mis-
 
 chap. iv. A SHADOW FROM THE PAST 5 1 
 
 understood ; and he knew the elder Miss Burtons quite 
 well enough to realise that, in their eyes, appearances might 
 easily be against him. But still the uncertainty rankled in 
 his heart ; and a sense of desolation he was not in the least 
 prepared for filled his heart at this sudden and unexplained 
 separation. He felt that for him Miss Consuelo Burton 
 was dead ; and he longed that she would come back to 
 him but for one moment from the grave, to tell him dis- 
 tinctly what had taken her away from him. He might have 
 written and asked her without her sisters' suspecting it ; 
 sometimes he thought of doing so : but the thought, when- 
 ever it rose, was instantly checked by a feeling as strong and 
 as strange as the sense of desolation itself. He felt that he 
 would sooner lose her acquaintance for ever than keep it 
 by tempting her to a single clandestine action. 
 
 He was not long, however, a passive prey to dejection. 
 By-and-by, as the weeks went on, old cares of a more im- 
 personal nature, which, for some time past, he had forgotten, 
 and had ceased to trouble him, came back again, like re- 
 turning bailiffs, and again took possession of the chief rooms 
 of his mind. The effect on his thoughts about Miss 
 Consuelo Burton was this. Though not obliterated they 
 were gradually pushed aside ; and in their retirement they 
 quietly and gradually changed themselves. First, though still 
 regretting her, he grew resigned to her loss ; and he ceased 
 to speculate on the chances of any renewal of their inter- 
 course. Then, the facts involved seemed slowly to change 
 their proportions. Whatever the reasons might be which 
 had prejudiced her guardians against him, they probably, 
 after all, might not be so very serious ; and finally an im- 
 pression grew upon him, though it was not untroubled with 
 diffidence, that should he and the Burtons be ever again 
 thrown together, he would find himself sufficiently white- 
 washed in the eyes of his late censors, perhaps by their 
 better judgment, perhaps even by their forgetfulness. 
 
 The strength of this impression had been now just put 
 to the test ; and the sense of shyness which he had been
 
 32 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 unable to conceal from himself at once convinced him that 
 it was not quite so strong as he had thought it was. One 
 thing, however, he found was stronger, and that was the 
 attraction which Miss Consuelo Burton had for him. He 
 had come to wonder at times whether the place she held in 
 his heart were not less due to herself than to his own re- 
 gretful imagination ; and he was startled to realise, in their 
 late momentary meeting, not only that her charm was an 
 actual and undeniable fact, but that it was — as far as he 
 could judge — even greater now than formerly. 
 
 Pondering these matters as he went through the process 
 of dressing, he became aware that, without having thought 
 why, he was doing his best to make himself as late as pos- 
 sible. His watch told him that it was nearly dinner-time ; 
 but he was still lingering over his shirt-studs and his neck- 
 tie. Why was he doing so ? He at last put the question to 
 himself ; and his heart at once made him a very complete 
 confession. He distrusted his position with the elder 
 Miss Burtons, regarded merely in the light of common 
 acquaintances ; but his main reason for avoiding them had 
 been the far more practical fear that they might suspect he 
 would be dining with Mrs. Harley, and might decline her 
 invitation in consequence. As it was, he never doubted 
 that they would accept it ; and he was anxious, he dis- 
 covered, that they should precede him by some minutes, in 
 order that when he arrived he should find them prepared to 
 meet him. He felt sure that at first the elder ones would 
 feel some displeasure at the prospect ; he felt sure, also, 
 that Mrs. Harley would notice this. He counted, then, on 
 having his character rapidly canvassed ; on Mrs. Harley 
 putting it in the most favourable and friendly light ; on the 
 elder Miss Burtons feeling that perhaps they had judged 
 him wrongly ; and on entering the room himself, if not 
 restored to their favour, at least with a chance of winning 
 his way back to it. 
 
 These reflections very likely evinced no very great sub- 
 tlety ; but they were better than subtle, for they happened
 
 chap. iv. A SHADOW FROM THE PAST 33 
 
 to be substantially true. The Miss Burtons arrived at 
 Mrs. Harley's before Carew. The news that he was coming 
 embarrassed the younger, and caused a shock of surprised 
 annoyance to the elder. 
 
 ' We used to meet,' said Miss Elfrida drily, ' but we 
 have seen nothing at all of him now for a very long time.' 
 
 'Last season,' said Mrs. Harley, 'he was hardly ever in 
 London.' 
 
 ' Really,' said Miss Elfrida, ' I have not followed his 
 movements. But I'm surprised that so gay a gentleman 
 could tear himself away from his dissipations.' 
 
 ' He stayed in the country,' said Mrs. Harley, ' for his 
 mother's sake, who is an old lady. There was nothing to be 
 alarmed at in her condition, except the natural weakness of 
 age ; but he fancied he detected a wish in her that he should 
 not leave her that summer, and, however he might like his 
 dissipations, he did, you see, tear himself away from them.' 
 
 'Really,' said Miss Burton, in a tone that was somewhat 
 softened, ' I should never have thought that of him.' And 
 she looked down gently, as if lost in reflection. Her host, 
 however, would not leave her in silence. 
 
 'I always thought,' she said, 'that there was nothing, in 
 your opinion, too good for Mr. Carew to have done — Mr. 
 Carew, who is so great a friend of your Cardinal's. Surely 
 you must admire the man who, though merely a wretched 
 heretic, is yet asked by the Cardinal to breakfast three times 
 in a fortnight.' 
 
 Miss Burton's look and manner grew, for an instant, cold 
 again. 
 
 ' I'm afraid,' she said, ' that acquaintance is a thing of 
 the past now. There are other friends Mr. Carew has found 
 more congenial.' 
 
 'Well,' interposed Mrs. Harley, 'we shall see what he 
 finds us ; for, my dear Elfrida, he is outside the door this 
 moment.' 
 
 Had she said 'inside,' she would, perhaps, have been 
 more accurate, for the servant had announced him almost 
 
 1)
 
 34 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 before she had done speaking. On first entering, it was 
 evident that he was somewhat shy. This, however, did him 
 no disservice. For, as in his boldness there was nothing 
 impertinent, so in his shyness there was something graceful 
 and dignified. The reserved courtesy with which he greeted 
 the elder Miss Burtons, and which, though reserved, was 
 perfectly unresentful, pleaded at once for him with their 
 generous and delicate instincts ; nor was the impression 
 altered when they saw at a single glance the slightly different 
 manner in which he approached their sister. In his short 
 greeting nothing of his demeanour was lost on them ; and 
 they realised, by a process more rapid than conscious reason- 
 ing, that if he met them with reserve he was meeting her 
 with reverence. Carew himself, by a somewhat similar pro- 
 cess, realised, for his part, what was passing in their minds 
 about him ; and though he did not flatter himself that he 
 was not still looked askance at, he felt as if at least he were 
 to be granted a new trial. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE SPHINX OF THE MODERN WORLD. 
 
 He found at dinner that every circumstance favoured him. 
 The elder Miss Burtons, however they might differ from 
 him on some points, agreed with him at least on one — his 
 attachment to anything which suggested the prae-popular 
 epoch ; and when Mrs. Hariey began about the old town 
 amongst the mountains, their usual cheerful gravity was at 
 once roused to interest. Their faces brightened, and they 
 asked enthusiastic questions. Carew, at first, was content 
 to say very little ; and he merely answered Mrs. Hariey 
 about some facts as to which she appealed to him. Pre- 
 sently, however, seeing that he was treated as an authority, 
 the Miss Burtons began to look at him when he spoke, and 
 both by their words and eyes to put their questions to him 
 for themselves. As for their sister, her feelings were less
 
 chap. v. THE SPHINX OF THE MODERN WORLD 35 
 
 evident. She hardly opened her lips ; she listened to Carew 
 with intentness, and whenever his face was averted her eyes 
 were gravely fixed on him. But the interest he excited in 
 her seemed to be hardly due so much to what he said, as to 
 the fact that he was saying it. 
 
 From the old town the conversation, by easy steps, 
 wandered away to other antiquities of the neighbourhood, 
 to similar towns, to old villas and chateaux, and at last to 
 the chateau which Carew was himself inhabiting. This at 
 once seemed to captivate the eldest Miss Burton's imagina- 
 tion, and now for the first time Carew and she found them- 
 selves beginning a direct conversation with each other. 
 
 ' It's a place,' said Carew, ' as I was telling Mrs. Harley, 
 where one fancies, except for a distant glimpse of the rail- 
 way, that one is actually living before the French Revolution. 
 Do you know the feeling, after having been long separated 
 from some one, and having almost come to think you would 
 never see them again, of once again feeling yourself all alone 
 with them— securely and in peace, face to face, and heart 
 to heart? I have just the same feeling when living at 
 Courbon-Loubet. Imagine the delight, as you look on the 
 wide landscape, of knowing that you are in an Eden where 
 there are no political meetings, and where a creature like 
 Mr. Snapper is as unknown as a zebra ! ' 
 
 Mr. Japhet Snapper was an opulent Member of Parlia- 
 ment, who at that time was pushing himself fast into notice, 
 and struggling to be recognised as a leader of the Radical 
 parly. The moment his name was mentioned a rapid look 
 of disgust passed over the faces of both the elder Miss 
 Burtons. It seemed to affect them as if it were some 
 disagreeable smell. 
 
 'That man!' exclaimed Miss Mildred. 'One can 
 hardly bear to think of him. 5 
 
 Mrs. Harley, however, was by no means of this opinion. 
 'I'm afraid,' she said, laughing, 'that you and 1 and all of 
 us shall be obliged to think of him soon. Mr. Snapper, 
 Mildred, is the future Prime Minister of I 1 ' ind.' 
 
 D 2
 
 36 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 ' Never ! ' said Miss Elfrida, with a quiet but contemp- 
 tuous gravit)'. ' We have sunk low enough, but we have 
 hardly come yet to that. Fancy a man who, in public, lives 
 by denouncing gentlemen, and in private does nothing but 
 vainly, struggle to imitate them ! ' 
 
 'I,' said Mrs. Harley, with her eyes gleaming mis- 
 chievously, ' find Mr. Snapper charming. So would you, 
 Elfrida, if you would only consent to meet him. What fun 
 it would be to see him taking you down to dinner ! George, 
 next season we must manage that, mustn't we ? ' 
 
 ' I think,' interposed Miss Mildred, ' that we know him 
 better than you do. Part of Consuelo's little property is 
 in the town where he makes his money ; so we have had 
 some opportunity of looking behind the scenes and learning 
 the way in which he behaves to those dependent on him. 
 I can only say that to me it is incomprehensible how a man 
 who is as brutal to them as he is in private can have the 
 face to pretend in public that he is their friend and 
 champion.' 
 
 'Of course,' said Miss Elfrida, 'the man is not a 
 gentleman.' 
 
 'You speak,' said Mrs. Harley, 'as if a man's not being 
 a gentleman explained every sin, and at the same time 
 excused none.' 
 
 ' So it does,' said Carew, ' with sins of a certain kind. It 
 does so with the sins of selfish schemers in politics. There 
 are certain forms of political dishonesty which are possible 
 only to people of Snapper's kind. A gentleman could not 
 commit them, let him be as scheming and as selfish as you 
 please, because a gentleman lacks the sense by which the 
 temptation to commit them is appreciated. A gentleman 
 may forget the people, or offer them stones for bread. It is 
 only men like Snapper who will attempt to coax them with 
 poison.' 
 
 Here, for the first time during dinner, Miss Consuelo 
 looked straight at Carew, and said, a little abruptly, ' What 
 do you mean by poison ? '
 
 chap. v. THE SPHINX OF THE MODERN WORLD 2>7 
 
 ' 1 mean,' said Carew, ' the poison of hopes which he 
 knows can never be realised, and of anger at conditions of 
 life which he knows can never be altered.' 
 
 ' Come, come,' said Mrs. Harley, ' I really must stick up 
 for my friends. I don't know why you should assume that 
 Mr. Snapper is dishonest. My own belief is that, as regards 
 the poor, he does genuinely feel what he says, and that he 
 is genuinely anxious to remove or to lessen their troubles. 
 For, my dear Elfrida, the poor have troubles. Even you 
 and Mr. Carew, I think, must admit that.' 
 
 ' They have,' said Miss Elfrida ; ' no one knows it better 
 than I do. They have many. But if you look at the few 
 which Mr. Snapper chooses to harangue about, you will find 
 that he chooses them for an exceedingly obvious reason — 
 not because they are those most distressing to the poor, but 
 because he can manage most easily to lay them to the charge 
 of the rich.' 
 
 'You forget,' said Mrs. Harley, 'he is a very rich man 
 himself. He has, I can assure you, no objection to riches.' 
 
 ' I believe you there,' Miss Elfrida retorted. ' I should 
 have said gentlemen, the upper classes, the aristocracy. He 
 hates them far more than he loves the poor. Come, my 
 dear Evelyn, even you can't deny his bitterness.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Mrs. Harley, ' he is bitter — no doubt he is ; 
 and I confess that I don't wonder at it. After all, he is 
 only human. My dear Elfrida, if you had seen him, as I 
 have done, biting his lip at dinner, and wincing at the way 
 in which he was — well, treated by some people as if he were 
 
 one of the footmen ' 
 
 'My dear Evelyn,' interposed Miss Mildred, with a little 
 good-natured gurgle, 'and what docs the man want? One 
 human being, he says, is just as good as another. Why 
 should he wish to be treated better than footmen are ? No, 
 no ; I've positively no patience with him. As you yourself 
 admit, he thinks lords and ladies such wonderful people, 
 that he is mad with wretchedness if they don't civilly notice 
 him ; and then, to revenge himself, he goes and shrieks in 
 
 533*
 
 38 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book r. 
 
 his speeches that they are so silly and wicked, that they 
 ought to be noticed by nobody. Besides,' she went on, ' in 
 spite of his denunciations of landlords, he has, I am told, 
 been thinking of setting up as a squire himself, and has 
 been looking about for an estate with a fine park belonging 
 to it. I hear from our agent that he has his eye upon 
 several in the West of England — in your part of the world, 
 Mr. Carew.' 
 
 ' I assure you, Evelyn,' said Miss Elfrida, with a more 
 subdued intonation, ' Mildred is quite right in all she says. 
 She is an excellent woman of business, and knows thoroughly 
 well what she is talking about.' 
 
 'Will nobody,' Miss Mildred continued — 'will nobody 
 show him up? Will none of the people themselves lift a 
 voice against him? There would be no need whatever to 
 abuse the man. Nothing would be wanted but simply to 
 state facts. I wonder that this is not done by the gentlemen 
 of even his own party.' 
 
 ' I don't care,' said Miss Elfrida, 'who it is who exposes 
 him — gentleman or no gentleman. Indeed, I have often 
 thought that a man who was not a gentleman could do it 
 better than a man who was. If one of us were to attack 
 him, it might seem that we did so in our own interests. If 
 some one else did it, every one could see that it was done in 
 the interests of sincerity.' 
 
 ' My dear Elfrida,' said Mrs. Harley, ' and you too, 
 Mildred, I am in great doubt whether I shall tell you some- 
 thing or whether I shall not tell you. I am considering how 
 you would both take it.' 
 
 ' Tell us,' said both of them, with a smile of almost 
 childish curiosity. 
 
 ' Well,' said Mrs. Harley, ' if I do, you must not be 
 horrified. Do you remember a certain man — a poor inva- 
 lided creature — whom you were shocked the other day to 
 meet here, calling upon me?' 
 
 'What !' exclaimed Miss Elfrida, 'do you mean that 
 dreadful Mr. Foreman ? I can promise you, my dear Evelyn,
 
 chap. v. THE SPHINX OF THE MODERN WORLD 39 
 
 I shall never get over that. Why, he is ten times worse than 
 Mr. Snapper himself. Mr. Snapper would only pick the 
 landlord's pockets. This man would murder every one who 
 has a decent coat on his back. Mr. Snapper, too, whatever 
 he believes or disbelieves, never openly insults the Church ; 
 but this man is an avowed Atheist, who utters his blasphe- 
 mies in the parks and the public streets. He even ridicules 
 marriage, and advocates everything that is horrible. I only 
 speak from what you yourself have told me.' 
 
 ' And now,' said Mrs. Harley, ' I am going to tell you 
 something more. You were wishing for somebody to de- 
 nounce and to expose Mr. Snapper. In Mr. Foreman you 
 have the very thing you were wishing for.' 
 
 ' Mr. Foreman ! ' exclaimed Miss Elfrida. ' He de- 
 nounce Mr. Snapper ! He is far more likely to egg him 
 on than denounce him. They are both of the same party, 
 only one is more extreme than the other. A Socialist hates 
 the upper classes even more than a Radical does.' 
 
 ' No,' said Carew, ' I think you are wrong there. What 
 a Socialist hates is the middle classes. No doubt lie thinks 
 landlords very bad indeed; but he thinks them good when 
 compared with a Radical manufacturer, and if he seems to 
 agree with the Radical in so far as he thinks them bad, the 
 two come to this conclusion for exactly opposite reasons. 
 The Radical hates landlords because he thinks they differ 
 from tradesmen ; the Socialist hates them because he thinks 
 they resemble tradesmen.' 
 
 ' You see, Elfrida,' said Mrs. Harley, 'you and Mr. Fore- 
 man will agree on this point to perfection. Come, tell me : 
 are you prepared to meet him ? ' 
 
 Miss Elfrida and Miss Mildred had, both of them, till 
 now been listening with a patient, if somewhat puzzled, at- 
 tention ; but at this last question, put, so it seemed, quite 
 seriously, their faces assumed a look of surprised reproach, 
 and they drew themselves up with the slightest indication of 
 hauteur. Mrs. Harley, however, went on placidly with her 
 suggestion.
 
 40 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 ' If you like it,' she added, ' I will ask him to come in 
 after dinner. He is staying in the hotel.' 
 
 Had Mr. Foreman been the plague or the cholera per- 
 sonified, the two elder Miss Burtons could hardly have 
 started more. 
 
 ' In this hotel ! ' they gasped, as soon as they had re- 
 covered their voices. ' I hope and trust, Evelyn, you will 
 not ask him to do anything of the kind.' 
 
 ' I,' said Carew, 'quite agree with the Miss Burtons. I 
 have no wish to meet one scoundrel simply because he 
 exposes another. All the same, I believe Foreman to be 
 far more honest than Mr. Snapper.' 
 
 ' If,' said Miss Elfrida, having apparently reflected a little, 
 ' he were not so horrid in other things than his politics, I 
 might perhaps bring myself to see him, and to talk to him. 
 We might — who knows ? — make him useful, and perhaps put 
 him right in some ways. But a complete unbeliever — a 
 man who insults the name of Almighty God in public, and 
 who glories in despising every rule of morality ' 
 
 Miss Elfrida stopped. Her feelings were too strong for 
 utterance. 
 
 ' Of course,' said Mrs. Harley, ' that side of him is very 
 shocking; but you are quite wrong — you think that he has no 
 morals at all. On the contrary, he has a code of the strict- 
 est and most difficult kind ; and the first law in it is the law 
 of justice with regard to property, and the material means of 
 living a decent life. Without such justice he thinks every 
 other virtue is a mockery ; and justice with him means not 
 only talk about the poor, but it means exceedingly real and 
 exceedingly rude self-sacrifice for them.' 
 
 ' I think,' said Miss Elfrida, ' the Church could have 
 taught him this without his taking the trouble to think it out 
 for himself. The Church has taught charity to the poor for 
 some eighteen hundred years : and Mr. Foreman's charity 
 ends with their bodies — for you cannot imagine that he has 
 any care for their souls.' 
 
 'What Mr. Foreman thinks,' said Mrs. Harley, 'is this.
 
 CHAr. v. THE SPHINX OF THE MODERN WORLD 4 1 
 
 He thinks that so long as their bodies are treated as they at 
 present are, to work for their souls is a hopeless, is even a 
 ridiculous task. How, he asks, shall they be pure and tem- 
 perate, how shall they have any of the virtues which good 
 Christians prize, so long as they are housed like pigs and fed 
 worse than pigs — so long as they have no knowledge, and 
 no leisure, and nothing from their childhood that so much 
 as suggests happiness, except drink, and things worse than 
 drink? How shall we tell them to be clean when they have 
 only sewage to wash in ? ' 
 
 ' Surely,' said Miss Mildred, ' it is the mission of the 
 Church to bring them water. Its first message is to those 
 in want and misery ; its chief work lies among them. It 
 enjoins the rich to relieve wretchedness, and it helps the 
 wretched to bear it.' 
 
 'Think,' Miss Elfrida added, 'of the monastic orders. 
 In some the work is harder than that of any labourer ; in 
 others the food is coarser and more meagre. In this way 
 they are perpetually teaching the poor that there is nothing 
 necessarily degrading either in constant toil or in privation.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Mrs. Harley, ' but the hushed asceticism of 
 the monastery or of the convent is a very different thing 
 from the brutal starvation of the streets. Mr. Foreman's 
 ideal of duty differs from yours in this. You look on poverty 
 as a thing that must be endured or at best palliated ; he 
 looks on it as a thing that must be utterly done away with. 
 Your notion is that the rich ought to help the poor. His 
 notion is that there should be no poor to help. Please don't 
 think that I agree with him in all his views ; still less do I 
 think him right in the ways he takes to disseminate them. 
 But I want to show you that he is something quite different 
 from what you imagine him — a cross between a libertine 
 and a criminal lunatic. Whatever may be your opinions of 
 Mr. Snapper's zeal for the poor, Mr. Foreman is perfectly 
 genuine. You, George, though you don't think much of 
 him, will at least answer for that.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Harley, in a genial tone of amusement, 'he
 
 42 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 is a genuine zealot ; no one can doubt that who knows him ; 
 and if you compare him with Snapper, there is something 
 almost grotesque in the contrast. What is genuine in 
 Snapper is his hatred of the aristocracy ; what is genuine 
 in Foreman is his feeling for the labouring classes. Fore- 
 man only denounces the rich as a means of rousing the 
 poor ; Snapper only rouses the poor as a means of attack- 
 ing a certain section of the rich.' 
 
 During all this conversation Miss Consuelo had re- 
 mained silent ; but though silent she had been not inat- 
 tentive. On the contrary, her attention had been increasing. 
 She looked first at one speaker, then at another, in particular 
 at Mrs. Harley ; and seemed several times to have been on 
 the point of asking a question, if the presence of her sisters 
 had not for some reason embarrassed her. At last she 
 began, just as the ladies were rising, ' I have heard the 
 Cardinal speak about Mr. Foreman ' 
 
 ' My dear Consuelo,' exclaimed Miss Mildred, ' what 
 can the Cardinal have possibly said about Mr. Foreman to 
 you? ' 
 
 'He was not talking to me — he was talking to some one 
 else ; and there was much about Mr. Foreman with which 
 he said he sympathised.' 
 
 'My dear child,' said Miss Mildred, 'you must have 
 misunderstood the Cardinal' 
 
 ' Indeed,' said Carew, ' I venture to think not. The day 
 before I left England, I spent an entire evening with him, 
 and he happened to say the very same thing to me. Of 
 Foreman, personally, he knows nothing, nor of the infamous 
 falsehoods employed by him to further his cause ; else I am 
 sure his opinion would be very much modified. He did know, 
 however, that Foreman was a complete atheist ; and yet, in 
 spite of that, he distinctly told me of him, that there was 
 much in his social views, and much in his efforts to spread 
 them, with which, as a Catholic, he himself agreed.' 
 
 The effect of this speech on the elder Miss Burtons was 
 considerable. It did not, indeed, seem to alter their views
 
 chap. v. THE SPHINX OF THE MODERN WORLD 43 
 
 about Mr. Foreman ; for Miss Elfrida merely remarked 
 quietly, ' We all know that the Cardinal's a bit of a Radical.' 
 But the fact that the Cardinal was still intimate with Carew 
 worked wonders for the latter in restoring him to their good 
 opinion ; and in the way they looked at him, as he held the 
 door open for them, there was a returning gleam of their 
 original frank friendliness. Miss Consuelo, too, as she 
 passed, for a moment raised her eyes to him. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A CHILD OF THE OLD ORDER. 
 
 When the two gentlemen rejoined the rest of their party, 
 the first sound that greeted Carew's ears was his own name 
 being uttered by Mrs. Harley. 
 
 ' Did you hear us,' she said, ' taking your name in vain ? 
 We were not abusing you much, so you need not discom- 
 pose yourself. We have been talking again about the 
 wonders of Courbon-Loubet ; and I have been telling the 
 Miss Burtons the reasons why you like it. You like it, I 
 was saying, for just the same reasons that the ostrich likes 
 to hide his head in the sand. You lose sight there of the 
 progress of the sacred democracy, and you think, accord- 
 ingly, that the democracy has ceased progressing.' 
 
 Carew chanced at the moment to be standing close to 
 Miss Consuelo. 
 
 ' Perhaps,' she said to him, speaking low and quickly, 
 ' you think, also, that the poor have ceased suffering? ' 
 
 There was a vacant chair beside her, and he sat down 
 on it. Diffident, however, of even seeming to engross her, 
 he hardly did more than glance at her ; and with a laugh 
 of forced indifference he addressed himself to the party 
 generally. 
 
 'If we were inclined to forget democratic progress,' he 
 said, ' some of us here, before dinner, had an excellent 
 reminder of its reality, in the presence of— come, Mrs.
 
 44 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 Harley, whom do you think ? — a most eminent man, and a 
 very dear friend of yours.' 
 
 ' Of mine ! ' said Mrs. Harley. ' Do you mean 
 Mr. **** ? ' and she named a distinguished statesman. 
 ' He, I know, is expected here.' 
 
 'No,' said Carew; 'I mean — I mean — guess once more! 
 — Mr. Inigo.' 
 
 The elder Miss Burtons broke into a hearty laugh. 
 
 'What?' they exclaimed. 'And have you seen him too?' 
 
 'That man !' said Mrs. Harley. 'You don't mean to 
 say that he's here ! He is no friend of mine. I have never 
 allowed him to be introduced to me.' 
 
 'In that case,' said Carew, 'he must be in a very forlorn 
 condition ; for he assured me just now that you were the 
 best friend he possessed.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Mrs. Harley, ' now I come to think of it, I 
 believe that one night he did see me to my carriage — yes, 
 and ever since he has been constantly leaving cards on me.' 
 
 ' My dear Evelyn,' said Miss Elfrida, ' I can tell you he's 
 a very grand gentleman. Mildred and I felt quite frumps 
 by comparison.' And she began a description of their 
 encounter with Mr. Inigo in the hall. 
 
 Carew now turned to Miss Consuelo ; and, for the first 
 time addressing himself to her exclusively, ' You have 
 never,' he asked, ' met Mr. Foreman, have you ? ' 
 
 ' No,' she said ; ' but I am not like you, and I think I 
 should like to do so. I often feel about the poor — often, 
 perhaps always — just, as I gather, he feels. I could never 
 forget them because I saw none of them suffering near me.' 
 
 ' Neither do I,' said Carew gravely. ' If you go merely 
 by what I have just been saying, you will be doing me the 
 greatest injustice — much more than you think. But I do 
 agree with your sisters, that you, with a religion like yours, 
 may find all the assistance and sympathy you can ever re- 
 quire in it, without going to a soured and unscrupulous 
 enthusiast like Foreman.' 
 
 'If you,' said Miss Consuelo, 'had been brought up as
 
 chap. vi. A CHILD OF THE OLD ORDER 45 
 
 I have been, you would not perhaps think my religion so 
 sufficient as you do now. And yet, no ! ' she exclaimed, 
 ' why have I said that ? It is not what I mean. I don't 
 know how to express myself. Of course the Church 
 possesses all the teaching and all the sympathy you speak 
 of somewhere — but where ? No, I can't go on ; you would 
 not be able to understand me.' 
 
 ' Try,' said Carew, ' and see. I think I should.' 
 
 There was a pause of a moment or two, and then she 
 broke out abruptly, ' Look at my two sisters. They are far 
 better people than I am. The aim of their lives is to be 
 and to do good ; and yet I always feel them to be aiming 
 wide of the mark. They are constantly thinking of the 
 poor, and, as they imagine, working for the poor ; but — ■ 
 well, to me it all seems like weeding a flower-garden instead 
 of ploughing a field. Mildred, whilst I am under age, 
 manages my affairs for me. She is practical and business- 
 like enough, and has done much to improve some bad 
 cottages and houses. Still, to hear her talk, one would 
 think that bad cottages and houses were sent into the world 
 that we might do ourselves good by improving them ; and, 
 as for Elfrida, she is far more pleased at seeing two hundred 
 people in one chapel than she is pained at seeing twenty 
 families in one house. Sometimes, when I watch her 
 trotting off to Mass in the morning, looking as if she were 
 doing the whole duty of woman, I feel as if, myself, I 
 should never be religious again.' 
 
 She spoke low, but with strong and evident feeling. 
 There was a flush in her cheeks ; her eyes were fixed on 
 her lap, and she was trifling nervously with the crimson 
 feathers of her fan. 
 
 ' You know,' she went on presently, with the rapid frank- 
 ness that sometimes springs from shyness ' you know how 
 my sisters keep guard over me — over the parties I go to, 
 over the men I dance with or speak to. You know that, 
 Mr. Carew, don't you ? No one knows it better than you 
 do.'
 
 46 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 ' Yes,' said Carew ; ( no one better than I.' 
 
 ' What care,' she resumed, 'they think necessary to keep 
 me from doing something dreadful ! Perhaps they are right,' 
 and she gave a slight ironical laugh. ' But if we, in our 
 class, can be so easily demoralised by our surroundings, if 
 goodness is a flower that must be so very carefully nursed, 
 what must be the case with the great majority of our poor ? 
 I think I am a standing proof that wickedness must be the 
 fruit of circumstances, and that men like Mr. Foreman are 
 the only men who are right when they tell us we must begin 
 by attacking the circumstances first.' 
 
 Carew raised his eyes, and saw that the eldest Miss 
 Burton was watching him. Having observed this, he in- 
 stinctively raised his voice, and addressed his answer to the 
 company in general rather than to Miss Consuelo. 
 
 'My quarrel with Foreman,' he said, 'is not that he 
 wishes to alleviate misery, but that, as a matter of fact, he 
 adds to it. As a preliminary to satisfying the natural wants 
 of the poor, he thinks he must madden them with wants 
 that are exotic and unnatural. To the pangs of poverty he 
 must add the pangs of envy ; and this you may take for 
 granted— if poverty is the parent of some sins, envy is the 
 parent of more ; and the wants of poverty can be appeased, 
 but the wants of envy are insatiable. Poverty is the thirst 
 of a man on earth ; envy is the thirst of a man in hell.' 
 
 ' My dear Mr. Carew,' Mrs. Harley here interposed, 'do 
 you think for one instant that, were there no Mr. Foreman 
 in existence, the people could possibly rest content in the 
 state in which they are now? Do you think that sooner 
 or later they will not insist on a change ? ' 
 
 ' They have taken,' said Carew, ' a good many thousand 
 years to think about it ; and they are no worse off now than 
 they have been in other ages. Suffering and want there 
 have always been in the world. No one can deplore this 
 more than I do ; but to exaggerate the fact is even more 
 mischievous than to neglect it. Multitudes of the poor, so 
 far as happiness goes, enjoy practically as good a chance as
 
 chap. vr. A CHILD OF THE OLD ORDER 47 
 
 the rich, until the agitator comes like the harpy, to ruin their 
 simple banquet.' 
 
 ' It's all very well,' retorted Mrs. Harley, ' for us to sit 
 still and say misery has always existed, and the people have 
 always borne it ; but in the first place, we must remember 
 that by this time we have educated them. We have made 
 their skins tender and sensitive, and they are now maddened 
 by things which they hardly felt before.' 
 
 'I admit,' said Carew drily, 'that education, as the 
 Radicals conceive it, is a crueller engine of torture than was 
 ever dreamed of by Nero.' 
 
 ' Oh, but,' said Mrs. Harley, her manner growing more 
 and more earnest, ' the hardest and cruellest evils are those 
 which, unhappily, it needs no education to point out to us ; 
 and these, in our great cities at least, certainly are increasing. 
 Think of these terrible periods, which people now call 
 crises, when men by thousands, with wives and children 
 dependent on them — strong men, men willing to work — 
 rise up in the morning without any certainty at all that 
 they will be able to earn so much as a crust of bread 
 by the evening.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Carew ; ' but be fair as well as compassionate. 
 There arc crises now ; in old days there were famines.' 
 
 'Think,' Mrs. Harley went on, ' of the mothers who see 
 their children dying simply for the want of a breath of 
 wholesome air ; and they know all the while what wealth is 
 being wasted round them. It is a hard life, and it is a. bitter 
 life. It is hard enough when trade is good ; but when 
 trade is depressed, as it is now, no one can conceive it who 
 has not looked close at it.' 
 
 'Things,' said Carew, ' have been often as bad before.' 
 
 ' It seems,' said Mrs. Harley, ' that the people them- 
 selves don't think so. Anyhow, even if their burdens have 
 not increased, what has increased is their own impatience 
 of bearing them. Have you ever looked into the faces of 
 an East End mob? Have you ever realised what an ap- 
 palling sight they are ? The French Ambassador has several
 
 48 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 times said to me that he thinks things in England in a most 
 critical and dangerous condition, and that the savage and 
 sullen spirit fermenting throughout the country now is just 
 what there was in Paris before the Great Revolution. And 
 at this moment, to add to it, there is all the wild excitement 
 of a general election, which will largely be managed by 
 agitators. Nothing would surprise me less, if we have 
 hard weather this spring, and the misery of cold is added 
 to the misery of hunger, than to hear of serious troubles and 
 outbreaks in London, and elsewhere also. Did you read 
 the accounts of what was said and what happened at Fore- 
 man's street meetings some two months ago ? He is going 
 to repeat them as soon as ever he can get home again.' 
 
 Mrs. Harley was here interrupted by a loud rap at the 
 door. Throughout the room there was a startled sense of 
 expectation, broken only by Mrs. Harley's faint ' Come in.' 
 Then the door was thrown open wide by a waiter, and there, 
 framed in the doorway, was the figure of Mr. Inigo. One 
 of those sudden silences fell on the whole party which, so 
 far as their meaning goes, are a kind of congealed laugh, 
 and which fill a room with an atmosphere of slightly dis- 
 pleased surprise. This, however, gave Mr. Inigo no distress 
 whatever. It seemed, on the contrary, to be his native 
 element, and he entered it as naturally as a duck takes to 
 the water. The punctilious but blank politeness of Mr. 
 and Mrs. Harley, and the slight bows of the Miss Burtons, 
 did nothing to disturb his usual solemn smile and his odd 
 composite air of determined yet apologetic assurance. 
 Indeed, in little more than a minute he was sipping a cup 
 of coffee ; and, unconscious of having silenced one conver- 
 sation by his entrance, to make up for it he was already 
 leading another. Oddly enough, too, he commanded an 
 attentive hearing. 
 
 ' I confess,' he said to Mrs. Harley, ' considering all 
 the things that probably will be happening at home, I am 
 surprised at your spending the whole winter abroad. I 
 shall be back in London by the week after next, at farthest.
 
 chap. vi. A CHILD OF THE OLD ORDER 49 
 
 And you, Miss Burton — do you mean to tell me actually 
 that you will be away also ? ' 
 
 Mr. Inigo's voice grew very grave and impressive. ' I 
 think it's a pity,' he said. ' We may expect many things to 
 be happening soon in London — several of them very im- 
 portant — which will practically change the whole aspect of 
 society. Nobody ought to miss them.' 
 
 If Mr. Inigo had startled his hearers at first, he startled 
 them now still more. They were filled with a double 
 wonder — first at his train of thought being so nearly the 
 same as their own, and secondly at his being capable of 
 such a train of thought at all. ' And pray how,' said Mrs. 
 Harley, with an odd puzzled expression — ' pray how, Mr. 
 Inigo, do you get this gift of prophecy ? ' 
 
 Mr. Inigo eyed the company one by one, the light of 
 suppressed knowledge sparkling in each pupil ; and at last 
 he gave utterance to this astonishing answer. ' Ah,' he said 
 — ' ah — a little bird has told me.' 
 
 If he liked attention, he certainly had it now, for every 
 one stared blankly at him. 
 
 ' You certainly,' said Mrs. Harley, ' take the matter 
 very philosophically.' 
 
 ' Oh,' said Mr. Inigo, ' as for me, I shall be back in a 
 fortnight, so I shall come in for everything, and nothing 
 will have begun before then. It will be three weeks, in 
 fact, before the real movement is perceptible ; not that even 
 now there are not premonitory symptoms. For instance,' 
 he continued, ' take my own case. The week after next I 
 have three dinners in London already, and I think probably 
 a funeral — poor Lord Layham's. A very smart — I mean to 
 say, a very sad affair that will be. Every one about the Court 
 will of course have to be there. Gull, I am told, gives him 
 only ten days more. It's very sad. He was a dear, dear 
 friend of mine. He used to ask me to luncheon three 
 times every season. However,' Mr. Inigo continued, sup- 
 pressing an elaborate sigh, 'what I was going to tell you is 
 this. The week after, the little bird I spoke of has told 
 
 E
 
 50 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 me that there will be a fancy ball in a house we all know ot 
 at one corner of Grosvenor Square ; and another, two days 
 later — I am not at liberty to say where ; and in all proba- 
 bility there will be three Royalties at it. Now these are 
 specimens, but they are specimens only, of all the things we 
 may very soon be expecting. Why, there's been nothing 
 like it, out of June and July, before.' 
 
 Mr. Inigo's news was received in discreet silence, which 
 seemed to him to argue absorbed attention ; and presently 
 turning from the social future in England, he proceeded 
 to discuss the social present on the Riviera. He gave a 
 brief analysis of the Visitors' List at Cannes, from which it 
 appeared that, of the villas let for the winter, two only had 
 been taken by English peers. ' In fact,' he concluded, 
 'the whole place is going to the dogs.' Then, like a bird 
 winging its way back to its young ones, he returned to the 
 subject of his own engagements in London ; and he might 
 have gone on for some indefinite time discussing them, if it 
 had not been for an accidental remark of Carew's. 
 
 A pause occurring in Mr. Inigo's list of gaieties, Carew 
 said, with a smile : ' I suppose you never honour with your 
 company Mr. Foreman's al fresco entertainments ? ' 
 
 It was an unambitious joke, and the company received 
 it as such — all except Mr. Inigo. He certainly had not a 
 reputation for being sensitive ; but for some unaccountable 
 reason this piece of banter seemed to offend and stagger 
 him. He stared at Carew in silence, the smile died from 
 his lips, and at last he said, ' I beg your pardon,' in a 
 manner which, had he ever ventured to let his words go out 
 of a walk, would have plainly expressed a mixture of sur- 
 prise, suspicion, and ferocity. Mrs. Harley concluded that 
 he thought he was being laughed at ; and, though not in 
 her heart at all sorry that he should think so, she civilly 
 tried to set matters right again. ' We have been talking,' 
 she explained, ' about socialism in the East End, and Mr. 
 Foreman's street meetings. But that, I suppose, has very 
 little interest for you.'
 
 chap. vi. A CHILD OF THE OLD ORDER 5 1 
 
 Mr. Inigo saw that she wished to please him. His 
 smile, like a sun through clouds, made fitful struggles to 
 shine out again. But his spirits flagged; his air of triumph 
 was gone ; he was no longer jubilant in the memory of 
 having had twelve invitations for a single night last season ; 
 and before long he rose and took his departure. ' I must 
 go,' he said, nerving himself to retire with honour, 'and see 
 if a telegram has come for me from the Grand Duke about 
 to-morrow. Poor old boy, I'm afraid he's getting very shaky.' 
 
 He closed the door, and descended the stairs slowly. 
 There were no listeners, but had there been any, and had 
 their ears been sharp enough, they might have overheard 
 him muttering, in a tone of anger and perplexity, ' I wonder 
 if that fellow Carew could have meant any impertinence 
 by that which he said just now. Let me catch him spreading 
 any absurd stories about me, and I little know myself if 
 I am not even with him some day ! ' 
 
 The Miss Burtons presently rose to depart also, and 
 they accepted with a very good grace, and without any air 
 of distance, Carew's natural offer to see them back to their 
 hotel. He told the Harleys, as he said good-night to 
 them, that he would call the following morning, before he 
 went back to the chateau, to know on what day he might 
 expect them to come to him ; and he even ventured, during 
 his short walk with the Miss Burtons, on a diffident sug- 
 gestion that they too should drive over and lunch there. 
 Miss Elfrida's answer, however, though good-natured, was 
 not altogether encouraging. 
 
 ' Thank you,' she said, with a little nervous laugh. ' The 
 expedition would, I am sure, be most interesting.' But she 
 immediately added that they were leaving Nice soon, and 
 that, for the next few days, their time was already occupied. 
 This statement brought them to the portico of the hotel ; 
 and as she at once followed it by an abrupt though friendly 
 good-night, Carew felt that even yet he was but half restored 
 to their confidence. The next instant, however, there was 
 some compensation for him ; and this was the glance that 
 
 1 j
 
 52 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 Miss Consuelo gave him as she and her sisters were dis- 
 appearing through the folding-doors. Carew did not follow 
 them. He felt no inclination as yet to retire to rest, and he 
 remained meditating outside in the moonlight. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SIBYL AND SIREN. 
 
 The hotel was one which opened on the Promenade des 
 Anglais ; and before Carew's eyes, as he stood silent and 
 solitary, there rose and fell the mysterious flash of the Medi- 
 terranean. In his state of mind at the moment, the sight had a 
 special charm for him. The air, too, was warm as the air of a 
 summer evening ; and far and faint, from an undistinguishable 
 quarter, there came to his ears for an instant a vague sound 
 of music, floating and dying away like a wandering scent of 
 flowers. He looked at his watch. It was far earlier than he 
 had thought it was. It was only half-past ten. He lighted 
 a cigarette ; and, obeying some restless impulse, he crossed 
 the road to the side nearest the sea. 
 
 He stood for some moments, leaning on his stick, and 
 taking the scene in. The moon was shining brilliantly, and 
 right away from him, following the long curve of the coast, 
 the broad esplanade, with its fringe of gas-lamps, seemed to 
 stretch itself out into the heart of some unknown solitude. 
 On one side of it was the sea, on the other its succession of 
 houses, blanched like a row of lilies — lodging-houses, villas, 
 hotels, and, conspicuous at a certain distance, the lighted 
 blinds and windows of the sreat Cerde de la Mediterranee. 
 In those windows there was a certain strange suggestiveness. 
 They gave to the moonlight a sense of passion and reckless- 
 ness, which was presently added to by the bells of a smart- 
 looking Russian carriage, as it rattled by, with two men in 
 sables in it, and left in its wake a faint smell of cigarette- 
 smoke. Meanwhile, far off on the horizon the lighthouse 
 of the Cap d'Antibes was shining with its steadfast eye ;
 
 chap. vn. SIBYL AND SIREN 53 
 
 and near at hand some vessels were lying black in the 
 moon-track, whose coloured lights, as they moved almost 
 imperceptibly, gleamed like rubies and emeralds, floating 
 on the breast of the pale waters. 
 
 The hour and the scene were full of hints and whisper- 
 ings, as various as the thoughts by which Carew was already 
 agitated ; and his mind began to work as if under some new 
 stimulus. He was conscious of a sense not of happiness but 
 of exaltation. He was not happy ; on the contrary, he was 
 perplexed and anxious : but all his feelings and perceptions, 
 whether of trouble or of pleasure, seemed to him to be quick- 
 ened, and, somehow, to move to music. This was the case 
 even with his sense of the ridiculous, as he almost directly 
 realised ; for in another moment, on the opposite side of the 
 road, he caught sight of the figure of Mr. Inigo posting off 
 in the direction of the Cerde, and intent, as Carew divined, 
 on finding some fashionable acquaintance, open to being 
 victimised into what might be called a friend. Carew began 
 moving in the same direction also, with no other purpose 
 than to prolong the grotesque amusement he was aware of 
 in watching the other. Having, however, been once set 
 walking, it was not long before he quickened his pace, and 
 was soon lost in thoughts with which Mr. Inigo had but little 
 connection. 
 
 At first they were far from pleasing. He knew that he 
 had carried away from Mrs. Harley's some secret discontent 
 with himself. Now this discontent began to disclose its 
 nature. The part he had taken in the evening's conversation 
 came back to him ; and certain of his sentences, like accusing 
 spirits, began to say themselves over and over again to him. 
 They were not sentences that he had uttered to Miss 
 Consuelo Burton. They had nothing to do directly either 
 with her or her sisters ; though with her, no doubt, indirectly 
 they had to do. What they referred to was the poor in the 
 modern world — the great industrial masses ; and the claims 
 and struggles which Mrs. Harley said would be made by 
 them.
 
 54 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES hook i. 
 
 'And I,' he began murmuring, 'have done nothing but 
 meet these claims with a sneer. I set them aside this 
 evening with a bitter and contemptuous flippancy, as if they 
 were nothing but the cant of a sect, or of some scheming 
 radical faction. And all the while I myself believe in them, 
 with a belief that is always at my heart like a dull physical 
 pain. For the past two years what have I thought of else ? 
 All the future is contained in them — in these hopes and 
 claims of the people — the duties, the hopes, the fears, the 
 whole life of the world. And we' — his reflections here grew 
 less distinct again — 'and we, what will be our part? Is 
 our world — the world of us who are made of different 
 clay from the others, of us who inherit all the traditions of 
 centuries — is that world to dissolve like a dream, and leave 
 no trace behind it? Or shall we find that still we have a 
 place amongst the leaders left to us ? ' 
 
 Presently, into thoughts like these a new image intruded 
 itself, and this was the image of Miss Consuelo Burton. It 
 seemed to come to him like an answer to his vague ques- 
 tions. The feminine charms of her smile, her face, her 
 figure, all came back to him, making a vivid picture ; but it 
 was not this that at the present moment appealed to him. 
 What appealed to him was the pride that betrayed itself in her 
 every movement, the self-possession underlying every sign 
 of embarrassment ; and, above all, a look that he had seen 
 in her eyes that evening — a look of want and inquiry, of 
 desolation and vivid expectancy — a look in whose beauty 
 there was nothing to flatter his vanity, but which made 
 him exclaim half aloud to himself at the thought of it, 
 ' She too watches, as I watch, but she can see farther. She 
 asks for an answer. She must and she will command one. 
 If ever a woman's face meant anything, hers this evening 
 meant, "Show me the face of Duty."' 
 
 His thoughts were moving something like clouds in 
 moonlight, not disconnected in any abrupt way, but con- 
 stantly dissolving and shifting into new and changing shapes. 
 Often, so far as his own consciousness went, he was little
 
 chap. vii. SIBYL AND SIREN 55 
 
 more than a passive, and even an absent spectator of them ; 
 but now and again they would, as it were, arrest him ; and, 
 with his whole intention, he would take an active part in 
 them. It was thus that his thoughts behaved with regard to 
 Miss Consuelo Burton. ' Show me the face of Duty.' He 
 said this to himself several times over, as if it gradually 
 merged into a personal ejaculation of his own ; and then, 
 after some minutes of wandering and indistinct meditation, 
 he caught himself once more murmuring in articulate and 
 coherent words. 
 
 ' Different ! ' he said. ' I should think she was different ! 
 Nothing could produce her but a race separate from the rest 
 of the world — separate from them and above them. No- 
 thing could produce her but that which has produced her — 
 the old aristocracy of an old country such as ours. Yes, we 
 are different,' and as he said this his pace grew quicker, and 
 his steps as they beat the pavement took something of the 
 emphasis of his thoughts, ' we who can look back through 
 the vistas of centuries, and hear the past speak to us, in our 
 own private language, of our birthright of rule and leader- 
 ship. Through the avenues of the past voices come echo- 
 ing down to us, which the people can never hear. They 
 place us for ever on a different level from theirs ; they make 
 for us, if we only choose to listen to them, a second con- 
 science, an added moral faculty ' 
 
 Here, both in his thoughts and his walk, he stopped 
 short suddenly, interrupting himself with a low ironical 
 laugh. ' And much good,' he exclaimed, ' this faculty does 
 us ! How does it advise us to exert ourselves ? And how 
 do we try to exert ourselves ? ' And like many other men 
 perplexed with moral problems, he forgot his laughter, and 
 looked up at the stars. One or two of the constellations he 
 instantly put a name to ; and he then began idly reflecting 
 how completely he had forgotten the others. Presently, by 
 one of those whimsical caprices with which our thoughts so 
 often startle and entertain us, he found himself dwelling on 
 the image of an old reflecting telescope, once the toy of his
 
 56 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 boyhood on many a summer night. A moment more, and, 
 like a figure in a shaken kaleidoscope, that image was gone, 
 and in place of it was the face of Miss Consuelo Burton. 
 ' Her eyes,' he said, ' to me are like the astronomer's specu- 
 lum, in which I see the star that my naked eye cannot see — the 
 star of duty and labour, that shines over the gate of heaven. 
 The dreams of passion— is this a time for these, when the 
 world is full of trouble, and change, and danger ? My star 
 is the star not of passion, but of sacrifice.' 
 
 Occupied still with reflections of this kind — with that 
 unwritten poetry which at times visits nearly all of us, and 
 which lifts the minds of the most prosaic to higher levels on 
 the storm of its ' unheard melodies ' — he gradually became 
 aware of some external influence by which his mood under- 
 went an unbidden change ; and the dreams of passion, which 
 were a moment ago so distant, invaded him, like music, 
 with a tender and yet tumultuous sadness. He started as 
 he realised what the external influence was. It actually was 
 music in the literal sense of the word ; and he felt con- 
 vinced, though he hardly knew why, that it was the same 
 which had fallen on his ears as he was quitting the portico 
 of the hotel. He had not even asked himself then what it 
 was that produced it. He now felt certain that it was a 
 woman's voice. 
 
 He listened intently. For a moment it became inaudible. 
 He waited, and then again there swelled another passionate 
 cadence. Faint and far off as it seemed, he could not mis- 
 take its meaning. He moved slowly in the direction from 
 which he judged it proceeded, keeping his eyes fixed on the 
 windows of the houses opposite him. Here and there, 
 through blinds or transparent curtains, was a glow of yellow 
 lamplight; but in most cases the Venetian shutters were 
 closed, with the moonlight lying white on them. The voice 
 had now ceased. There was no one stirring. The whole 
 promenade was silent. Presently, as he was beginning to 
 think that his search would prove useless, he heard — and 
 now not very far off from him — the clear notes of a piano.
 
 chap. vii. SIBYL AND SIREN 57 
 
 His eye instinctively fixed on a semi-detached villa, stand- 
 ing back from the road, with a raised garden in front of it. 
 The ground-floor windows were almost concealed from view ; 
 but the upper part of them could be seen from the pavement 
 opposite ; and Carew perceived that a bright light was 
 shining from them, and that one of them was wide open. 
 He had found the house at last ; this was at once plain to 
 him ; and, conscious of a pleasant, half-boyish expectancy, 
 he sat down on a seat which opportunely tempted him, 
 and watched and waited for the song which he divined was 
 imminent. 
 
 A few more chords, struck, it seemed, almost at random, 
 came sounding across to him, rich and deep and vibrating, 
 and above them the brilliant ripple of a few notes in the 
 treble ; but they suggested no air — nothing but the touch 
 of a musician. All of a sudden, however, he felt them 
 change their character, and appeal to a something deep 
 down in his memory. They suggested something he was 
 certain he had heard before. But when, and where ? he 
 asked. In a moment the doubt was answered. In a 
 moment, to his surprise, the following song broke on him 
 It was not sung loudly, but with a liquid and mournful soft- 
 ness ; yet every word was distinct, for his memory now 
 assisted his hearing. 
 
 ' Oh, World! whose days like sunlit waters glide, 
 Whose music links the midnight with the morrow, 
 
 Who for thine 0701 has/ Beauty, Power, and Pride — 
 Oh, World, what art thou ? ' And the 11 orld replied, 
 ' A husk of pleasure round a heart of sorrow.'' 
 
 1 Oh, Child of God I thou who hast sought thy way 
 
 Where all this music sounds, this sunlight gleams, 
 Mid Pride, and Power, and Beauty day by day — 
 And what art thou ? ' I heard my own soul say, 
 'A wandering sorrow in a world of dreams.' 
 
 That song Carew had heard once before, and he had 
 heard it once only; and the memory of the woman who 
 then sang it to him breathed from the air and verses as if it
 
 58 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 had been some perfume they were full of. ' Could it be she 
 who was now singing it?' he at once began to ask himself. 
 There were many reasons for rejecting the idea as fantastic : 
 yet there in the moonlight he could not resist playing with 
 it ; and he remained, when the song had ceased, still sitting 
 and still watching the villa. There was no more music; 
 but presently he heard, or thought he heard, the voice of 
 a woman talking; and then another sound which, though 
 faint, was quite unmistakable — the rattle of an electric bell. 
 Then, a second or two later, he saw the top of one of the 
 open window sashes move a little ; he heard a light sound 
 of gravel crunching under footsteps, and became aware that 
 some one was approaching the end of the garden. 
 
 Half ashamed of being caught there listening, and yet 
 still more ashamed of letting such a feeling betray itself, he 
 kept his position with what he hoped was an air of indiffer- 
 ence, pretending to be occupied for the moment with a 
 cigarette and a matchbox. Meanwhile he was conscious 
 that a female figure had advanced to the balustrade, and 
 was leaning her arms on it, as she stood between two 
 palm-plants. 
 
 A vague impression was conveyed to him of colour, and 
 silk, and glitter ; but it was some moments before he col- 
 lected courage to raise his eyes and look at the apparition 
 directly. The moment he did so he sat upright with a start. 
 The woman he saw before him was so singular and so 
 brilliant in her aspect, that she might well have arrested the 
 attention of any one ; though had it not been for an air of 
 sadness and refinement about her, she would hardly have 
 suggested to the moralist a world he would call respectable. 
 She was closely enveloped in a light blue opera-cloak 
 bordered with white fur and gorgeous with gold embroideries. 
 On her arms, which were partly visible, and were of dazzling 
 whiteness, was a gleam and a flash of diamonds ; whilst her 
 hair, of the palest flaxen, with a few starry blossoms in it, 
 shone over her forehead like a tissue of woven moonbeams. 
 
 She must have seen Carew ; but she was not looking at
 
 chap. vii. SIBYL AND SIREN 59 
 
 or attending to him. Her lips were parted, as if with a 
 soundless sigh ; and her eyes seemed to be gazing far away 
 upon the sea. She might have passed for a siren taken 
 from her native element, and longing for the oblivion to 
 which she had once tempted others. 
 
 If she, however, was not noticing Carew, Carew, for 
 his part, was intently staring at her; and a full minute 
 had hardly elapsed since her appearance, when he rose 
 from his seat, walked straight across the road to her, and, 
 raising his hat as he did so, exclaimed, ' Madame de Saint 
 Valery ! ' 
 
 She started at first, with a start of alarm and wonder ; 
 for though she had been aware of a figure seated on the 
 bench opposite her, she had given it no attention : but 
 before Carew had reached the pavement under her, she had 
 divined who he was, and with a gasp had pronounced his 
 name. 
 
 ' You here ! ' she said. ' And to think of you here ! ' 
 
 'Why not?' he replied. 'This is surely a place of 
 meetings. It is I, rather, who should be surprised at the 
 sight of you. When last I heard of you, I heard you were 
 in South America.' 
 
 ' You 'have heard much about me probably that had 
 very little truth in it. Some of your friends may even have 
 told you I was enjoying myself. But answer me this — if 
 you did not know I was here, how is it that I find you 
 watching my windows?' 
 
 'Your song brought me,' he said. 'I came to it like a 
 moth to a candle. Do you remember the time when I 
 heard you sing it first? Until to-night I have never heard 
 it since.' 
 
 'Since then,' she murmured, 'many tilings have hap- 
 pened to me.' 
 
 Carew bent his head, and said in a low tone, ' What 
 things ? ' 
 
 ' I have eaten the fruit that you urged me not to cat.' 
 
 'Well,' said Carew, with his head still bent, 'and was
 
 60 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 the fruit good for food? What have you found life since 
 then?' 
 
 ' Listen,' she said, and she leaned forward and looked 
 down on him, ' shall I tell you what I have found life since 
 then — yes, and before then ? ' 
 
 'Tell me,' he answered. 
 
 She paused till he raised his eyes to her ; and then, in a 
 low voice that was almost as musical as her singing, said 
 slowly : — 
 
 '"A husk of pleasure round a heart of sorrow."' 
 
 Carew looked at her with an odd sensation of wonder. 
 There was something in her radiant aspect, touched as it 
 was with melancholy, which made it seem as though some 
 unreal light was playing on her, and produced a feeling in 
 him that he was going through a scene in an opera, rather 
 than one in actual life. He was not pleased at the meet- 
 ing. He was not pleased with the memories awakened by 
 it. He had long ceased to think Madame de Saint Valery 
 worthy of the interest he had once felt in her, and the 
 trouble he had taken to advise her and guide her prudently. 
 Yet all the same, as he heard her voice and looked at her, 
 he began to understand again a thing which he had almost 
 forgotten — how that interest which he had once felt had 
 been excited by her. Presently, however, his attention was 
 suddenly diverted ; she too, at the same moment, turned 
 her head rapidly ; and there, standing close beside her, was 
 another female form, as beautiful or even more beautiful 
 than her own. The hair was slightly darker, the dress 
 was far simpler, and there was something childlike in the 
 unabashed soft eyes. 
 
 Madame de Saint Valery exhibited no confusion on see- 
 ing her. ' Violet,' she said, ' here is an old friend of mine, 
 Mr. Carew. Mr. Carew, I think you have never met my 
 cousin, Miss Capel.' 
 
 On Miss Capel's eyes Carew's were fixed intently, and 
 hers met his without any sign of flinching. 
 
 'Yes,' he said, 'I think I have met her — and so few
 
 chap. vii. SIBYL AND SIREN 6 1 
 
 hours ago, that I hope she has not forgotten it. I had 
 the good luck to prevent her losing her fan. It was you, 
 wasn't it?' he went on, addressing the fair stranger directly. 
 ' Indeed, if I am not mistaken, there is that very fan in your 
 hand now. Let me look at it — will you ? — and I then shall 
 be quite sure.' 
 
 She made no movement whatever to do as Carew asked 
 her ; but she looked at him fixedly as if he had been some 
 inanimate object, and a grave tantalising smile became 
 slowly visible on her face. Then, by way of answer, she 
 opened the fan wide, and with a little abrupt gesture pressed 
 it against her breast. Carew, as he watched her standing in 
 this attitude, was conscious of precisely the same impression 
 as that which her presence had produced on him at their 
 first meeting amongst the mountains. Again it was as if 
 some new country were opening out before him, all its ways 
 blossoming with lilacs and hawthorns, full of the scents and 
 the alluring air of spring, and yet sad, like spring, with a 
 longing for something that is yet to come. This state of 
 mind, however, was almost in an instant disturbed by the 
 appearance of a servant, who spoke to Madame de Saint 
 Valery ; and Carew gathered from what the man said that 
 there was a carriage at the door to take Miss Capel away. 
 
 'And so,' he said, 'you are not living with your cousin?' 
 
 'No,' she replied, with an accent of slight displeasure at 
 the question. ' I am with my parents. They have been to- 
 night to the theatre, and I must be back by the same time 
 that they are.' 
 
 'Indeed you must,' said Madame de Saint Valery. 
 'This young lady is kept in the very greatest order. It is 
 only by way of a treat that I have been allowed to have her 
 this evening. Violet, come, it is late ; your maid is waiting 
 for you, and we must bid Mr. Carew good-night. Perhaps, 
 if he is staying long here, he will come and see me some 
 day.' 
 
 Carew, left once more to himself, remained for a few 
 moments eyeing the villa abstractedly ; and then turned to
 
 62 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book r. 
 
 resume his walk along the Promenade des Anglais. It was 
 perfectly quiet. Two men, indeed, just as he was in the 
 act of turning, were visible at a short distance, strolling 
 slowly arm-in-arm together ; but they disappeared presently 
 down a side street, and except for Carew himself, there was 
 not a creature stirring. 
 
 Stimulated by the solitude, his meditations became as 
 busy as ever again. He was not sorry to have escaped from 
 Madame de Saint Valery ; still he could not help thinking 
 about her, and wondering what kind of life she was leading. 
 He soon found, however, that his thoughts persisted in 
 dwelling on her, less on her own account than on account 
 of her relationship to the girl — to the strange magnetic 
 presence, who was with her. That soft regard, which was 
 at once earnest and languid, passionate and yet ingenuous, 
 mature and yet childlike, haunted his memory as though it 
 were still present. Then the image recurred to him of Miss 
 Consuelo Burton, and he broke for a moment into a low laugh 
 of amusement at the fickleness and agility with which his 
 sentiments changed their object. But the sense of amusement 
 presently died away ; and though these two female figures 
 still held their ground in his consciousness, he ceased to 
 regard the fact in a grotesque or ludicrous light. On the 
 contrary, as he pursued his walk, it assumed a meaning that 
 grew in depth and in suggestiveness, until two ways of life 
 seemed opening out before him ; and one of these figures 
 urged him to tread the one, and the other allured and 
 pleaded with him to be her companion on the other. They 
 were two ways, leading to two different worlds. 
 
 One was the world of love, and passion, and poetry, 
 where the hidden prizes of life seemed to be sleeping in the 
 heart, as the rose in the unfolded bud, or the statue in the 
 unhewn marble. The other was a world of ever-widening 
 duties, where love was not absent, but by itself never could 
 satisfy. It was a world where lovers looked beyond their 
 own circle of bliss, and felt that there could be no rest for 
 the soul but in suffering for those that suffer and labouring
 
 chaf. tii. SIBYL AND SIREN 63 
 
 for those whose lot their labour could make lighter, and 
 where their deepest union was not when their eyes met, but 
 when side by side they were fixed on a common altar of 
 sacrifice. 
 
 ' Once,' he said, ' it was enough to work out one's own 
 salvation — to see that the blossom of one's own heart ex- 
 panded, and that the dew of the spirit was lying clear upon 
 it ; but now — is not the world changing? Is it any longer 
 enough if my rose blossoms whilst a million rose-trees round 
 me are leafless and have only thorns ? Can I,' and he 
 seemed to see the eyes of Miss Consuelo Burton looking 
 not at but away from him — ' can I forget that the poor are 
 suffering, merely because I may see none suffering round 
 me?' 
 
 The current of these reflections was here suddenly 
 broken by a hand laid on his arm, and a man's voice at his 
 ear. He started and looked round, and there at his side 
 was Mr. Inigo. Whether Mr. Inigo's resentment, whatever 
 its cause, had actually evaporated or no, there was at all 
 events no trace of it in either his look or manner. On the 
 contrary, his eyes gleamed with an expression of intimate 
 knowingncss, and, fixing them on Carew, as if they were a 
 couple of gimlets, he said, after a moment's pause : — 
 
 ' Upon my word, you're a pretty fellow, you are ! We 
 saw you just now — the Prince and I, as we were passing — 
 going through a charming little scene with Madame de 
 Saint Valery — something quite in the style of Romeo and 
 Juliet. I can tell you that there's been a regular sensation 
 about her at Nice this winter.' 
 
 Carew stared at Mr. Inigo witli a frigid air of surprise. 
 
 'There has been,' he said, 'as you amusingly suggest, 
 an impromptu play. It seems that, also, there has been an 
 impromptu audience.' 
 
 Mr. Inigo winced slightly, as if he had been accused of 
 eavesdropping ; and then, in a voice of calm and lofty ex- 
 planation, 'I passed you,' he said, 'just now, as I was seeing 
 Prince Olgourki home. I went back with him from the
 
 64 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 Ccrck, as far as his own door.' He seemed as he spoke to 
 be buoyed up above the levels of criticism ; and presently 
 with a sigh of proud and privileged sorrow, ' By the way,' he 
 added, 'the beggar — he's just won twelve hundred francs 
 from me— bad luck to him ! ' 
 
 By this time they were close to their hotel, and Carew, 
 acknowledging the information with distant but scrupulous 
 politeness, bade Mr. Inigo good-night and made an instant 
 escape from him. 
 
 Mr. Inigo stood for a moment motionless, staring at the 
 door by which Carew had entered. ' Confound the fellow ! ' 
 he muttered. ' Who is he, I should like to know, that he 
 should give himself these deuced airs with me? If he did 
 
 mean anything by that which he said just now — if 
 
 Well, trust me for being even with him, that's all ! ' 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A CONFESSION. 
 
 Carew the following evening was once more in his chateau. 
 He had gone early in the day to Mrs. Harley's hotel, but 
 had not at once paid his respects to her. He had found 
 some mysterious business there, of which he told her 
 nothing. Having transacted this, he had then spent half 
 an hour with her, and finally made an arrangement that she 
 and her husband should come to him three days later, 
 which would give him time to communicate with the other 
 friends he was expecting. He was now sitting in solitude 
 at his writing-table, and before he went to bed he had 
 finished the following letter. It was a letter to Mrs. Harley. 
 ' Since,' it began, ' I am so soon to see you again, you 
 will wonder, on receiving this, what on earth I can have to 
 say to you. Well, first of all, I am going to say something 
 which certainly sounds most inhospitable. Glad as I am 
 that you are coming, I am glad you are not coming till 
 Thursday. I will now tell you my reason. There are
 
 chap. vin. A CONFESSION 65 
 
 one or two things as to which I wish to explain myself; I 
 should like to do so before we meet again ; and I can do 
 so better by writing than I could by word of mouth. In a 
 moment you will see my meaning. 
 
 'Whenever we meet, as you truly said yesterday, we 
 have always, for some time past, got on the same subjects 
 — subjects so near to the daily lives of all of us, but which 
 people in our class are accustomed to think so little about. 
 You know, of course, what I am speaking of: not of the 
 incidents of mere party politics, but of something compared 
 to which these are merely bubbles on the surface. I am 
 speaking of our existing social civilisation, and our own 
 class in particular, with the future that lies before it — of 
 wealth and poverty, of privilege, and of popular power. 
 We get on these subjects because we both feel their import- 
 ance — because we both feel that the history of our own 
 coming years is involved in them. I know, for my part, 
 that I think about little else. Night and day they disturb 
 and occupy me, haunting my mind as rooks haunt a rookery. 
 The noise of society may for a time frighten them away, but 
 they come back again the moment the noise ceases, and all 
 the boughs are black with them. I say they are like rooks. 
 So they are, but with a difference. They have the habits of 
 rooks, but they have the voices of ravens. 
 
 ' However, let that pass. The practical point is this. 
 When you come here next Friday, we shall no doubt begin 
 about them again ; and I want first to say one or two things 
 to you, which will help you to see clearly what my own 
 position is. You know how your views on some social 
 points surprise me. You know, in fact, how — not to mince 
 matters — I can hardly believe that you are quite as sincere 
 in them as you fancy. You, a woman of old and distin- 
 guished family, bred in the very heart of an aristocratic 
 society, with the tastes of an aristocracy visible in every 
 one of your surroundings, and the manners of an aristocracy 
 visible in every instinctive movement — in the way you carry 
 your head, in the little things you laugh at — it is impossible 
 
 F
 
 66 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES hook i. 
 
 for me to believe that you can really ignore the difference 
 between yourself and — well, how shall I best describe them ? 
 — those excellent people we were talking about yesterday, 
 who, however great they may be in point of talent, have 
 not the advantages of the same social history. I am not 
 talking of the qualities which distinguish you as an indivi- 
 dual. I am talking of those which distinguish you as be- 
 longing to a certain class. For social purposes, individual 
 qualities are very little more than the strings are in a violin ; 
 but that class which you belong to, with its natural position, 
 with its memories, with its historic consciousness, is the 
 body of the violin itself. And think what a structure this 
 violin is ! All the centuries of our country's life are em- 
 bodied in it. It is as subtle a piece of work as any master- 
 piece of Stradivarius ; and suppose it destroyed, before we 
 could reproduce it we should have to reproduce a thousand 
 years of history. Think what you mean yourself by high- 
 bred ladies and gentlemen. Think of the social tone that 
 prevails amongst them. You will realise as fully as I do that 
 its ease combined with courtesy, its grace without affectation, 
 is possible only amongst a privileged circle of people with a 
 special present position which reposes on a special past. 
 
 ' Have I said one word in which you do not agree with 
 me? In spite of all your fondness for the " other people " 
 who amuse you so much, I am perfectly confident that you 
 must agree with me thus far. Now, however, I am going to 
 part company with you, and soar into the regions of what 
 you would call the ridiculous. I'm not at all certain that I 
 don't myself agree with you. But I can't help it. What I 
 feel I feel. Do you know old Lady Mangotsfield ? Just 
 before I left London I dined with her, and during dinner the 
 conversation turned upon heraldry. "My dear," she said to 
 me, " we have none of us our right number of quarterings ; 
 our shocking system of marriage has always prevented that. 
 You and I ought both of us to have a hundred and twenty- 
 eight. We are the only people in England they would not 
 be thrown away upon." Well, so far as I am concerned,
 
 CHAP. VIII. 
 
 A CONFESSION 6? 
 
 Lady Mangotsfield was perfectly right. As for a hundred 
 and twenty- eight, I won't speak about that. I will content 
 myself with sixty-four ; and I can honestly tell you that, 
 were such a bargain possible, I would, for the power to prove 
 my own sixty-four quarterings, pay a good third of the 
 income that will be probably mine some day. In the male 
 line, as you know, we go straight back to the Conquest ; 
 and we have married into some of the very noblest families, 
 not only of England, but of France and Italy also. But — 
 there is always a but somewhere — we have married into 
 other families as well ; and if, in such a place as the old 
 hall at Otterton — the old hall which it has always been my 
 dream to restore — I were to prepare places for the sixty-four 
 shields I speak of, twenty of them at least would be blanks. 
 Each of the blanks, every time I looked at it, would be a 
 blow to me. Can you imagine anything sillier? I doubt if 
 I can ; and the logic of my prejudices is, in actual life, con- 
 stantly melted or blown to the winds by friendship. But, 
 particular cases apart, the prejudice still exists in me. It is 
 deep in my heart ; I can't get rid of it. My feelings as to 
 this matter are Austrian far more than English ; and when I 
 hear it discussed whether such and such a man is a gentle- 
 man, I long to put the question in the simpler language of 
 the Continent, and ask to be told whether or no he is noble. 
 
 'There's one side of me ; and I think I have drawn it 
 plainly enough. I now come to the other ; and it is this 
 other side which I am most anxious to show you. During 
 the last three or four years — the very years during which 
 my class prejudices have been strengthening — I have been 
 setting myself to do something which I never did before. 
 I have been studying the condition, the sorrows, the claimsj 
 and the hopes of the poor. I have been studying the 
 classes who live by manual labour — those on whose shoulders 
 all civilisation rests. 
 
 ' How many of us die, having known that these classes 
 exist, and yet having never, in any vital way, realised it ! 
 I have realised it at last; the idea of them and their lot 
 
 F 2
 
 68 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 has become constantly present to me, and I have been 
 affected by it very much in the same way as a man who has 
 passed his whole life by a duck-pond is affected by the sight 
 of the seashore and of the Atlantic. 
 
 ' I said just now, in speaking of social tone, in speaking 
 of certain commanding and graceful qualities, that the in- 
 dividual as an individual was nothing more than a violin 
 string, whilst the body of the violin, on which the tone 
 depended, was an historical and hereditary aristocracy. Let 
 me use the same comparison again, but with a deeper 
 meaning. If an historical aristocracy is the body of the 
 social violin, the People is the body of the moral violoncello. 
 The vibrations of our moral existence become music only 
 through their relations to that, and through the resonance 
 it gives them. 
 
 'Are you not astonished to hear me speak like this, 
 especially considering the way in which I was speaking only 
 last night, and the wonderful confessions with which I began 
 this letter? Perhaps you will think that my popular sym- 
 pathies are merely a piece of sentiment with which I idly 
 like to amuse myself in a seclusion, where I have given 
 myself no chance of ever putting them into practice. That, 
 however, is certainly not the case. I love this castle, these 
 walls and towers, these painted ceilings, these carved and 
 emblazoned chimney-pieces, for the same reason that I love 
 these old mediaeval towns. I love them because they are 
 to my mind like a mirror in which the past is reflected, 
 when Radicals were not, and equality was not dreamed of — ■ 
 the past when men recognised their superiors, and ordered 
 themselves reverently, with no sense of humiliation. But I 
 am here, usually alone, not for the sake merely of flattering 
 my own prejudices ; I am here to continue a study of things 
 which are essentially modern. I am here to study that 
 greatest of modern questions — not how to reconcile the 
 People with their present lot, but how to make their lot one 
 with which they shall be willing to be reconciled.
 
 CHAP. VIII. 
 
 A CONFESSION 69 
 
 ' No doubt you will wonder what I can mean by all this. 
 When you come, I will show you. 
 
 'Anyhow, as for my views, here is an honest sketch of 
 them. I wonder if you agree with them. There is one 
 person, at any rate, who, I think, does ; and that is Miss 
 Consuelo Burton. I wish you could have brought her here 
 with you. Unless I misunderstand her on the point I have 
 just alluded to, she would have added much to the interest 
 of the party. But I fear that her coming is quite out of the 
 question. You shall judge for yourself, however. You saw 
 that her sisters were very fairly civil to me, especially when 
 they found that I was still friends with their Cardinal. But 
 I did venture last night to suggest to them an expedition 
 here, and I saw plainly that they were not anxious to come. 
 It is hardly likely, therefore, that they would let her come 
 without them. Still, if your diplomacy could manage the 
 matter, you know what will please me ; and, now I think 
 of it, you might mention to them, what is quite true, that 
 I am expecting amongst my visitors two most excellent 
 Catholics, Lady Chislehurst and a genuine live priest. 
 
 'You told me yesterday that my friends would be too 
 smart for you. But my priest — will he be too smart ? You 
 won't say so, I think, when you have seen him. I have 
 mentioned him particularly, not merely as a bait to catch 
 Miss Consuelo with, but also because a little tale hangs on 
 his visit to me ; and I have confessed to you already so 
 many of my own follies, that I am going to venture to add 
 this to their number. 
 
 ' Well, in spite of my idle life and many faults, some of 
 which have been real enough, some only invented for me, 
 you give me, I know, credit for having at least enough 
 notion of duty to make me unhappy— I don't say at not 
 doing it, but at not even seeing clearly what ought to be 
 done. You know how widespread is the sense of doubt and 
 bewilderment amongst all classes, and specially amongst our 
 own, as to what we should do with ourselves, not only as
 
 70 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 
 
 moral beings, but also as people inheriting a particular place 
 in society. And I can tell you honestly, and without any 
 exaggeration, that, for my own part, unless I am to loathe 
 my very existence, some clear notion of duty I must possess 
 or struggle for ; and if other people are to inspire me with 
 any real interest, the same want must be in their natures 
 too. 
 
 ' Such being the case, towards the end of the London 
 season, when many things had gone wrong with me, and all 
 the preceding weeks stared me in the face — a cluster of 
 wasted days — I was sitting one morning in the park, and 
 thinking, with a sense of rest, of making a retreat to my 
 cousin's beautiful villa, with its fountains, its terraces, and 
 its oleanders, on the breast of the Lago Maggiore. I was 
 thinking of this, when the idea suddenly flashed upon me of 
 getting together a small informal society, whose members 
 were to be bound together only by the four following links. 
 They were all of them to have this same sense I speak of — 
 that we each of us have some duty, could we only find it 
 out; and that, having no duty, we simply are beasts and 
 fools : and they were all to appreciate the changing state of 
 society, sufficiently to see that our duty was no longer clear 
 to us. Secondly, they were all of them, I do not say to be 
 Christians, but at least to regard Christianity with minds 
 open to conviction, and take at their true worth the maudlin 
 inanities of the Humanitarians. Thirdly, as to their per- 
 sonal conduct, there were to be no severe requirements. A 
 member, for instance, would not be expelled even supposing 
 he had run away with another man's wife ; though naturally 
 he would not be allowed to bring the lady to our meetings. 
 He would be expelled for one thing only — namely, if, having 
 run away with her, or made himself too agreeable to her, 
 he accommodated his theories to suit his practice, and, by 
 persuading himself that his conduct was right, deliberately 
 closed his ears to the religion which would pronounce it 
 wrong. The last qualification of the members was, that 
 they were all to be ladies and gentlemen ; and, considering
 
 chap. vin. A CONFESSION 7 1 
 
 the remarks with which I began this letter, you will know 
 well enough what I mean by that. 
 
 1 And now you will ask, What was this society to do ? 
 With what object was it to be got together ? The question, 
 I confess, is a little hard to answer. That object, when I 
 try to describe it in words, seems to shrivel up or vanish 
 directly the words touch it ; or, at least, to become so slight 
 and trivial as to look like a quaint fancy strayed into the 
 daylight from a dream. But, if your imagination and 
 sympathy will meet me half-way, you will see, perhaps, that 
 my words suggest more than they actually describe. Well, 
 what the society was to do was this. Its members were 
 simply to meet each other at certain intervals, at various 
 country houses belonging to one or other of them, and such 
 meetings would constitute a kind of informal retreat. Yes, 
 you say, but what then ? When these good people met, 
 what was to be their programme ? Were they to read 
 papers, or to have formal discussions, as if they were 
 members of a Social Science Congress? Nothing of the 
 kind. There was to be no programme whatever ; nothing 
 out of the common was to be expected of them. They 
 were to be free, if they liked, to behave themselves as idly 
 and as pleasantly as they would if they were paying any 
 ordinary country visit. How, then, you may ask, would 
 such meetings differ from such a visit ? They would differ, 
 I hoped, in this way : not in what those concerned would 
 be required to do, but in what they naturally would do. 
 Naturally, easily, without any stiffness or formality, some 
 talk would arise, some exchange of ideas, with regard to 
 those subjects which were the basis of their association. 
 Sometimes it would be cynical, sometimes flippant ; some- 
 times it would be earnest and serious ; sometimes it would 
 deal with the subjects in question directly ; sometimes 
 merely by implication, the immediate subject being, perhaps, 
 a piece of gossip. Its tone would vary, and I should ex- 
 pect it to vary. Sometimes there would be little of it, and 
 sometimes much. But I am persuaded that, could my
 
 72 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book r. 
 
 idea ever be carried into execution — and I have by no 
 means given it up — the members would, when such a meet- 
 ing was over, carry away from it some idea or experience 
 which would make life certainly richer, possibly more clear, 
 and which, even if it did not make them practically more 
 useful, would at any rate sharpen their moral sight suf- 
 ficiently to make their uselessness a deeper and more un- 
 pardonable sin. 
 
 ' Well, such was my scheme. I conceived it, as I told 
 you, in a moment of depression and perplexity, when I felt 
 the want of some sense of companionship ; and though I 
 cannot say that, as yet, my society is actually formed, I 
 have one or two friends who already understand me, and 
 are willing, when the occasion comes, to be members of it. 
 One of them is the Catholic priest I spoke of. The other 
 is Lord Aiden. These are not all, but I mention them 
 specially now, because they will both, I hope, be here during 
 your visit. 
 
 ' Lord Aiden you know ; so I needn't say much about 
 him. But think of him for a moment, and I am quite sure 
 you will agree with me that he is the very man cut out to 
 be a brother of our order. No doubt he is not one who 
 directly would guide or strengthen us. He wants a new 
 gospel ; he certainly has not got one, and even as for his 
 wants, he takes them rather lazily ; but his presence always 
 seems to fill a room with suggestion. Think how many of 
 the fruits of life he has tasted. He has written poetry 
 which is read all over Europe ; all over Europe women 
 have fallen in love with him : at the same time, he has 
 been an astute man of affairs, and has occupied one of the 
 most splendid and brilliant posts which a public career can 
 offer a British subject. And yet he has not found the pearl 
 of price. He is old enough to know that he has not found 
 it. He is not so old that he has lost the desire to find it. 
 
 ' " Yes," you will say, " Lord Aiden is all very well ; but 
 what possible place in your society can there be for a 
 Catholic priest? Whether he is right or wrong in his idea
 
 chaf. viii. A CONFESSION J$ 
 
 of duty, what duty is must, for him, be beyond question. He 
 has got his pearl, or what he thinks his pearl, and he must 
 stick to it. : ' I expect you will say that ; it is a very natural 
 thought ; but wait till you see him, and then you will think 
 differently. You don't like Papists, I know ; but you won't 
 object to this one. I don't mean to tell you that he is not 
 perfectly orthodox ; and he's just as intolerant as most 
 intellectual Catholics are — that is to say, for a man who has 
 any convictions, he is certainly one of the most tolerant 
 men imaginable. He is also a perfect man of the world. 
 He was once in the Guards, once he stood for Parliament, 
 and he once had a confidential appointment under a Con- 
 servative Home Secretary. If it were not for his dress, you 
 would not on first meeting him suspect him to be a priest. 
 You would only, perhaps, wonder at two things — the 
 shadow on his face as of premature old age, and the know- 
 ledge of the world stamped on it, with the absence of any 
 taint of the world. Also, unless the conversation were to 
 turn directly on religion, you might talk for days to him 
 without knowing what his religion was. I say you might ; 
 but there I am wrong, and I retract the word. You would, 
 I think, in time detect the truth ; but this would not be 
 because he flashed his spiritual lamp into your eyes, but 
 because, though the lamp was hidden, you would recognise 
 the light that fell from it on all the secular subjects which 
 have been for years past engrossing him. What these 
 subjects are you will discover when you come here ; and I 
 think the discovery will be very interesting and wholesome 
 for you. 
 
 ' There is nothing in him that could offend, there is 
 nothing in him that could even annoy you ; but there is, on 
 the other hand, much — yes, I must say this again — that will 
 interest, astonish, and be good for you. You will see that, 
 fixed though his religious views are, the problems presented 
 to him by this epoch of change we live in are to him as 
 perplexing and real as they are to you and me, and that his 
 ears are as open as ours can be to the cry that is rising around
 
 74 
 
 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book x. 
 
 us for some new moral revelation. Of course, the Church 
 is always, according to his view, the same ; but the world is 
 always changing, and its needs are always changing, and 
 there is always in this way something new for the Church to 
 discover. "The Catholic Church," he once said to me, "is 
 the Columbus of modern society who will guide us eventually 
 to the new moral continent which other explorers are trying 
 to reach in vain." 
 
 ' However, there is no occasion for me to go on describ- 
 ing him. When you come here, you will be able to judge 
 of him for yourself. He was the first person to whom I 
 spoke about my projected society, and he is the person who 
 has best understood my idea and most fully sympathised 
 with it. He approves thoroughly of my rules, even my 
 moral ones, and especially those relating to our social qualifi- 
 cations and fastidiousness. 
 
 ' I tell you all this because I have some hope it may 
 interest you. But do not alarm yourself with the thought 
 that when you arrive next Thursday you will find the society 
 in conclave, and be asked to take part in its deliberations. 
 My society, as I tell you, is as yet not even formed ; it pos- 
 sibly never will be. Our party here will be nothing but an 
 ordinary meeting of friends : I venture to hope, a pleasant 
 one. 
 
 ' I have one other scheme — I might almost say plot — in 
 my head, with regard to one other person ; but it is so 
 daring and requires so much resolution to bring about, that 
 I must tantalise you for the present by observing a discreet 
 silence about it. If it comes to anything, you will find it 
 out quite soon enough. Meanwhile, it may amuse you to 
 puzzle over it. 
 
 ' I wait for Thursday with impatience. I am longing to 
 show the chateau to you. Good-night. The clock in the 
 tower, which is striking half-past eleven, was given to a 
 Courbon-Loubet by Henri Quatre.'
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 AN ENCHANTED CHATEAU. 
 
 The inland district which lies between Nice and Cannes can 
 be reached by carriage with perfect ease from either place ; 
 but to the average visitor who frequents these towns in the 
 winter, it is a district practically as strange and as far off as 
 Siberia. Of course, from the railway he has general hasty 
 views of it. He is familiar enough with the shapes of its 
 distant mountains, and the white and sparkling dots which 
 he knows must be mountain villages. He is aware also of 
 the vast intervening landscape ; and he constantly looks 
 towards its soft, bewildering ranges, expecting them to 
 yield to the atmosphere some new surprise of colour. But 
 of these ranges as objects of local knowledge, with a local 
 civilisation lurking in their folded hollows, he thinks no more 
 than he does of the clouds that surround a sunset. He never 
 asks why this variety of colour visits them — why some are a 
 pearly grey, and why others are fledged with purple. He never 
 dreams that here are fields of violets, and here terraced vine- 
 yards, and here romantic regions of unconjectured pine- 
 forests. Still less does he dream of the people by whom the 
 district is inhabited ; of the embattled ramparts that their 
 villages are still surrounded by ; of the streets and fountains 
 that have been unchanged for centuries ; of the vaulted 
 smithies, the old echoing drinking-shops, which are the same 
 as they were in the days of the seigneurs ; of the feudal mills 
 and farmhouses, still used and tenanted ; and of the roofless 
 castles that on many a hidden eminence still rear their towers, 
 with hardly a sign of ruin.
 
 y6 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ii. 
 
 Certainly these sights and scenes were entirely new to 
 Mrs. Harley, as with two companions— her husband and 
 another lady— she was passing through them on her journey 
 to Courbon-Loubet, in a huge old-fashioned travelling 
 carriage which Carew had sent for them. For the first half- 
 hour or so they had rumbled through the suburbs of Nice. 
 The express from Paris had been sweeping by with its 
 sleeping-cars, and the walls on each side of the road were 
 red and blue with advertisements. An hour later, and the 
 stamping horses were dragging them over rough mediseval 
 paving-stones, through a street where the newest and 
 gaudiest-looking house had been last re-decorated before 
 the First Revolution ; where the old women sat at their 
 doors spinning, with hats like those of witches and with 
 distaffs worthy of the Fates ; where brown shy faces peered 
 at them through grated windows, or from under mysterious 
 arches, out of wells of darkness ; and where every head, as 
 the carriage passed, was raised and bent with a mixture of 
 grave respect and of frankness. All seemed to belong to an 
 epoch not the present, from the fantastic beggar with his fur 
 cap held out to them, to the old coachman, gaudy in faded 
 livery, and the arms and coronet repeated on every panel. 
 
 ' In fact,' said Mrs. Harley, when they were once more 
 in the country, and were entering a road that led through 
 a wild pine-forest, ' Mr. Carew was perfectly right in telling 
 us that a visit to him would be an excursion into the last 
 century. Of course,' she added, 'he can know nothing 
 except the surface of things — no more do we. But so far 
 as the surface goes, I must say the illusion is perfect. It's 
 quite as good as a scene at a first-rate theatre.' 
 
 Presently there was visible through a sudden opening 
 of the trees a far-off village perched on the side of an Alpine 
 precipice ; and the coachman, gathering from their exclama- 
 tions what it was that had attracted them, turned round and 
 said in a grave whisper that it was a village of bad repute, 
 and that all the women in it were sorceresses. 
 
 'Better and better still,' exclaimed Harley, in high good
 
 chap. i. AN ENCHANTED CHATEAU 77 
 
 humour. ' Let us hope, however, that the Republic does 
 not burn them. Look, what a forest this is ! It covers the 
 whole ridge, and here we are about to toil to the top of it. 
 The very place for the witches to have a midnight picnic 
 with the Devil in ! I shouldn't wonder if it were the be<nn- 
 
 O 
 
 ning of the domain of Courbon-Loubet ; and I am every 
 moment expecting to catch some glimpse of the chateau 
 frowning down at us over these savage pine-trees.' 
 
 They all looked about them with a growing sense ot 
 excitement, prepared to be startled at every fresh opening 
 with a vision of roofs and turrets. They were, however, 
 doomed to be disappointed. Time went on ; the forest was 
 left behind them ; and not a sign of a chateau was to be 
 seen anywhere. Harley suggested that they should make 
 an inquiry of the coachman. The two ladies, however, 
 would by no means assent to this. It would be, they said, 
 like looking at the end of a novel ; and whatever the end 
 might prove in the present case, they wished their uncer- 
 tainty to be kept up till the last. 
 
 Meanwhile they were descending the hill on the other 
 side, into a richer but far tamer region. In place of the 
 wild pine-forest there were soft groves of olives, and below 
 were winding meadows kept green by sparkling watercourses. 
 Here they would pass a field of as yet bloomless roses; here 
 another that was mottled with purple violets, and made all 
 the air fragrant. Presently tufted palms began to be not 
 infrequent ; an occasional row of geraniums made a rude 
 hedge along the roadside ; and in another moment they 
 were in a land of orange- trees, that reminded them too 
 strongly of the well-known suburbs of Nice. They could 
 trace for some distance the course of the road ahead of 
 them. They could see how it wound round the base of a 
 wooded knoll ; how it passed an antique oil-mill, roofed 
 with rugged tiles ; how it mounted a stone bridge with 
 quaint irregular arches, and then lay like a ribbon between 
 a curving line of poplars. 
 
 There was something in the whole scene eminently
 
 78 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES hook it. 
 
 warm and southern — too much so, indeed, to entirely please 
 the travellers. 
 
 'I declare,' said Mrs. Harley, 'we have been taken in 
 after all. This is like Italy far more than feudal France. 
 It is a country for villas, not a country for castles. See ! ' 
 she went on, when they had proceeded somewhat farther, 
 and were skirting a hill crowded with luxuriant foliage, 'the 
 very forests here are like gardens more than forests ! Look 
 at these trees, George — neat to the very sky-line ! ' 
 
 But before Harley could make any response to his wife, 
 they were both startled by a sudden exclamation from their 
 companion. ' Look ! ' she said, ' look — not at the trees, but 
 above them ! What is that brown thing rising up in the air 
 there ? ' 
 
 They looked, and sure enough they perceived the object 
 in question. It was tall and straight, but otherwise of 
 uncertain figure ; and at first, except for its singularity, 
 conveyed no impression to any one. In another moment, 
 however, Harley had solved the enigma. ' It is the five- 
 sided tower,' he said, 'of the Chateau de Courbon-Loubet, 
 and the seigneur's flag, as large as life, on the top of it.' 
 
 He was still speaking when the carriage turned sharply 
 round, and, meeting a side road, which had not till then been 
 visible, paused presently before some rusty iron gates. They 
 were gates adorned with twisted ciphers and coronets, and 
 were hung on two stately but now crumbling pillars. At 
 one side was a lodge, with a defaced cipher upon it also ; 
 and opposite this, and looking equally uncared for, was a 
 gaunt wooden crucifix, its base covered with brambles. A 
 whistle from the coachman brought out an old tottering 
 man, scrambling into a coat that had been once part of a 
 livery. He raised his hat with an almost religious reverence ; 
 the gates were opened, and the carriage plunged forward. 
 The travellers found themselves entering a long shadowy 
 carriage drive, which wound gradually upwards round the 
 sides of the wooded hill. Above and below them were 
 banks of mossy turf, and here and there a small lawny
 
 chap. I. AN ENCHANTED CHATEAU 79 
 
 opening ; but whichever direction the eye took the view was 
 bounded by a network of trees or shrubs. The approach 
 seemed endless, as they still kept mounting higher; and 
 nothing more had as yet been seen of the chateau. By-and- 
 by, however, the forest trees became fewer, and the shrubs 
 larger and more closely massed together, the sunlight fell 
 on the golden globes of oranges, and walls of dipt myrtle, 
 tier above tier, were discernible. At last, rising bright over 
 one of these green ramparts, Mrs. Harley's eyes caught 
 sight of a fountain of white camellia blossoms ; and at the 
 same time a wall with a succession of low towers was seen 
 through the screen of leaves to be beetling directly over 
 them. A moment later every screen had vanished ; they 
 had emerged on an open platform, from which, for miles 
 and miles, they could see the country like a luminous map 
 below them — -village and mountain, gardens, fields, and 
 vineyards, and farther away still the shining hyacinth of the 
 sea. But the revelation was instantaneous only. They had 
 hardly had time to realise it when it was again hidden from 
 them, and they were passing in darkness under the arch of 
 a sombre gateway. Then the hoofs of the horses stamped 
 on a wooden drawbridge ; the carriage again swept out into 
 the daylight ; and now, for the first time, with all its details 
 distinct to them, before their eyes was the Chateau de 
 Courbon-Loubet. 
 
 It was a large building, in shape an irregular square, 
 with the tower which they had seen already standing at one 
 end of it, and here and there a turret, of the same height as 
 the walls, breaking their monotonous surface with a bulging 
 semicircle. It was certainly different from what the party 
 had pictured to themselves. Architecturally it had no 
 beautiful feature. The many windows, disposed at uneven 
 heights, were mere square apertures, and were flanked with 
 Venetian shutters; and the pile, from roof to basement, was 
 covered with clingy stucco. But in spite of this, it had an 
 air of dejected dignity; the stucco itself must have been 
 more than a century old, and have expressed the taste of a
 
 So THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book it. 
 
 man who wore a periwig ; whilst here and there, where a 
 piece chanced to have fallen, a glimpse could be caught of 
 the mediaeval masonry. The arched entrance at which the 
 carriage drew up presented several sights that were even 
 more pleasing to the imagination. Amongst them was an 
 enormous scutcheon and coronet, which had been only so 
 much damaged by the popular zeal of the Revolutionists as 
 to give to its survival an air of tranquil defiance. But other 
 things struck the travellers, of equal or even greater interest. 
 Two carriages, very much like their own, only older, dustier, 
 and under the charge of postillions, were being emptied of 
 portmanteaus and boxes by a mixed group of domestics, 
 mostly French, but with a few maids and footmen unmis- 
 takably English amongst them. 
 
 ' Here's grandeur !' said Mrs. Harley. 'Maids, cockades, 
 footmen, and gentlemen's gentlemen ! We little knew what 
 our friend was letting us in for.' 
 
 The carriage had stopped just as she was in the act of 
 speaking, and Harley's valet, directed by the coachman, had 
 already tugged at a dangling iron bell-pull, and elicited a 
 clang that would have done honour to Westminster Abbey. 
 But its summons was hardly necessary. A liveried concierge, 
 gaudy and faded as the coachman, with armorial buttons as 
 big as a five-franc piece, was already descending the steps, 
 slow with age and dignity, and was receiving the arrivals as 
 if they had been all of the blood royal. Meanwhile, at a 
 moment's notice, he had been reinforced by a tribe of other 
 retainers — odd-looking footmen whose clothes were a trifle 
 smarter, and a brisk butler with a grin of delighted welcome, 
 who, to judge by his looks, had probably come from Paris, 
 and alone of all his surroundings suggested the civilisation 
 of to-day. 
 
 Under his guidance the party passed through the arch- 
 way, and found themselves in an open court which occupied 
 the centre of the building, and which, to their surprise, they 
 found was alive with people. Here the impression that 
 they had dived into another age became, if possible, more
 
 chap. i. AN ENCHANTED CHATEAU 8 1 
 
 complete than ever. There were many more traces of early 
 architectural detail. Over every door was some shield or 
 monogram ; there was a curious well in the middle, railed 
 round with ironwork. But it was the human element that 
 contributed to the effect most. Close to the well were loi- 
 tering several green-coated chasseurs, with their guns slung 
 over their shoulders and their powder-horns at their sides ; 
 whilst slowly moving past them a body of swarthy peasants 
 were pushing a rude truck, with the carcass of a wild boar 
 on it, towards a smoky door which suggested the regions of 
 the kitchen. To crown all, high overhead the great flag was 
 fluttering on the top of the tall tower, and Mrs. Harley, for 
 a moment looking up at it, was startled to see that it bore 
 on it no private blazon, but that it was neither more nor 
 less than the royal banner of France. Presently there was 
 observed a general slight commotion : there was a touching 
 of hats, men were moving aside, and Carew the next instant 
 was advancing to meet his visitors. 
 
 'The others,' he said to Mrs. Harley, as he was escorting 
 them into the house, ' have not arrived yet, but will be here 
 before dinner, and their luggage has come before them. 
 And so you have actually been able to bring your companion 
 with you ! You may imagine my pleasure when I got your 
 note this morning.' 
 
 Their arrival was well-timed. The warmth and the bril- 
 liance of the afternoon were ending just as they had driven 
 up to the chateau ; and by the time they had got rid of the 
 dust of travel, and had met in a small saloon round a quaint 
 cluster of tea-cups, the west had begun to flush with the first 
 colours of the sunset. They were full of the glimpses they 
 had already had of the interior— the narrow crooked cor- 
 ridors, pale with Italian frescoes ; the wide oak staircase, 
 hung with dingy portraits; the size of their bedrooms, and 
 the stately canopies of their beds ; whilst the white-and-gold 
 wainscot which now surrounded them would have made the 
 heart of a Bond Street decorator flutter. 
 
 'I have,' said Mrs. Harley, 'already remarked during 
 
 G
 
 82 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book 11. 
 
 our drive here that our whole adventures to-day seem 
 exactly like a scene out of a play ; and the boar in the court- 
 yard and the royal flag on the tower — they, Mr. Carew, 
 make the impression almost complete. Nothing is wanting 
 now but a chorus of virtuous peasants to dance on the green 
 — if you have a green — by moonlight.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Carew, smiling, and yet with an air of gravity, 
 ' I shouldn't be surprised if we did manage something of 
 that kind.' 
 
 His manner was such as to make Mrs. Harley stare at 
 him. 'My dear Mr. Carew,' she said, 'what have you been 
 getting up to amuse us ? ' 
 
 'Perhaps,' said Carew presently, after a little more 
 catechising, ' I had better tell you at ohce what is in the 
 wind for this evening. To-day is the birthday of a certain 
 distinguished personage, who would, if he had his rights, be 
 now on the throne of France ; and my cousin, Gaston de 
 Courbon-Loubet, whether he has been here or not, has 
 always had the day kept as a fete at the chateau. After to- 
 night our party will be only a small one ; but, for to-night, a 
 few people are coming over from Cannes, and in Gaston's 
 place we must do our best to entertain them.' 
 
 ' Who are they? ' said Mrs. Harley. ' Please let us know 
 whom we are to meet.' 
 
 'Our own party, as I call it,' said Carew, 'consists of 
 Frederic Stanley ; of Lady Chislehurst, who will arrive to- 
 morrow; of Lord Aiden, who arrives this evening — he 
 ought to be here now ' 
 
 ' Hark ! ' interposed Harley ; ' did not you hear a bell ? ' 
 
 ' I did,' said his wife ; ' it is certainly some one coming.' 
 And she begged Carew, both for herself and her young 
 companion, that they might make their escape upstairs to 
 rest themselves, before the appearance of any fresh arrivals. 
 
 Seated at her window, in an old brocaded chair, with a 
 faint smell of antiquity breathing from the hangings close 
 to her, Mrs. Harley leaned on her hand reflectively, and 
 watched the change outside that was stealing over the wide
 
 chap. i. AN ENCHANTED CHATEAU 83 
 
 landscape. The sun had already sunk ; the twilight had 
 lost its clearness ; colour after colour was fading from cloud 
 and mountain ; and presently all was grey but one long tract 
 of primrose, and the far-off Esterels cutting it with their 
 peaks of violet. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 6 RICHARD, 6 MON ROI ! 
 
 There are few moments, during a visit to a country house, 
 of such general interest to the whole party assembled as the 
 first meeting before the first dinner ; and in the present 
 case, to Mrs. Harley at least, this interest was even keener 
 than usual. All the conditions were so much out of the 
 common, she was in a pleasing uncertainty as to what to 
 expect next : and whilst she was dressing the passage out- 
 side was constantly creaking with the hurry of unknown 
 footsteps. Everything, indeed, was suggestive of coming 
 surprise. 
 
 Her first surprise was the room in which the meeting 
 took place. Mrs. Harley, on entering it, found herself in 
 such a blaze of candle-light, glittering everywhere from 
 chandeliers and sconces, that her dazzled eyes could hardly 
 realise where she was ; but when she recovered herself, the 
 first impression produced on her was that she had been 
 suddenly transported into some antique Italian palace. The 
 mosaic floor, the gorgeous painted ceiling, on which Phaeton 
 was seen in the act of falling from his chariot, the damask 
 walls, and the heavy gilded furniture, all suggested Genoa 
 of two centuries back. It was indeed the work of a re- 
 nowned Genoese artist, and in old times it was celebrated 
 as one of the wonders of Provence. 
 
 What struck the Harleys, however, both wife and hus- 
 band too, was not the room only, but the company that was 
 already assembled there. There were a number of ladies, 
 
 G 2
 
 84 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ii. 
 
 certainly not English, some of whom — one in particular — 
 glittered with pearls and diamonds, whilst those others who 
 were anything less than splendid were almost more impos- 
 ing by their semi-religious dowdiness. There were men, as 
 certainly not English, also, amongst whom were a couple of 
 rosy priests, and several pairs of languid eyes and mous- 
 taches, the vision of which made Harley's insular mind at 
 once frame to itself the ungenerous word ' Puppies ! ' 
 
 He and his wife were receiving this general but confused 
 impression, when Carew came forward to meet them, and a 
 distinguished-looking man with a star and a blue ribbon 
 along with him. The latter, to judge by appearances, was 
 probably about eight-and-forty ; but appearances in his case 
 were, in one way, oddly ambiguous. His thoughtful and 
 piercing eyes were at once alert and dreamy ; his dress sug- 
 gested at once fashion and negligence ; and altogether he 
 produced a mixed impression, as of a younger man than he 
 was, with the burdens of one far older. 
 
 He greeted the Harleys in an almost caressing manner, 
 and Mrs. Harley had just begun a sentence, ' My dear Lord 
 
 Aiden ' when she was aware that some one had slowly 
 
 approached the group — another man, of a very different 
 character — and that Carew was waiting to introduce him. 
 A glance at his face was enough to show that he was 
 a cleric ; a glance at his dress enough to show that he was 
 a Catholic priest. But his type was very different from that 
 of the two French abbes ; and Mrs. Harley, even before his 
 name was mentioned, felt sure that she was in the presence 
 of Mr. Stanley. 
 
 1 And now,' said Carew presently, ' you must know some 
 of the others.' He hastily pointed out to her several French 
 ladies of distinction — ornaments of the Faubourg Saint 
 Germain ; and one princess — the most gorgeous person 
 present, who had reigned as a beauty under the Second 
 Empire. He then added a word or two with respect to the 
 men ; and in another moment she and her husband also 
 were being made acquainted with various vicomtes and
 
 chap. it. 6 RICHARD, MON ROI ! 85 
 
 duchesses, whose family titles, if not their personal names, are 
 part of the history and part of the fame of France. Presently 
 Mrs. Harley, amongst the murmur of strange voices, heard 
 herself being addressed, with an air of command, in English. 
 Turning round, she was conscious of the light tap of a fan, 
 and there, with a cold shoulder given to the Princess and 
 her diamonds, and a smile almost of deference to a lady in 
 black next her, herself even blacker and dowdier, was sitting 
 Lady Mangotsfield. There she was, the greatest of great 
 ladies, the finest specimen of the fossil Tory in existence, 
 whose political principles had been so firmly fixed in her 
 childhood, that they were the one thing in England which 
 time had been unable to change, and were still just what 
 they had been before the first Reform Pill. 
 
 Mrs. Harley, no doubt, was a little bit afraid of her ; 
 and, thinking her in London, was taken aback at seeing her. 
 When, therefore, a greeting had passed between them, she 
 was somewhat relieved at being again addressed by Carew, 
 who began to speak to her in a low tone of voice. ' Every 
 one is here,' he said — ' every one but your protegee.'' 
 
 ' To be sure,' said Mrs. Harley. ' It's the very thing I 
 was thinking of. Had I known there would have been all 
 these people, I would have waited and come down with her. 
 She's a bit late, for she has only my maid to dress her. If 
 you will allow me, I will go up and fetch her.' 
 
 Carew assented, and she was preparing to do so when, 
 turning towards the door, she saw that it was opening ; and 
 a moment after, in an exquisite white dress, a bunch of 
 scarlet berries at her breast, and another cluster of them in 
 her hair, tugging a little impatiently at one long gant de 
 Suede, and a little embarrassed with the other glove and her 
 fan, Mrs. Hzrlcy's protegee entered — Miss Consuelo Purton. 
 
 The eyes of the younger Frenchmen were in an instant 
 fixed on her ; an old and portly due raised his eyeglass with 
 interest ; and Lord Aiden, laying his hand on Carew's 
 shoulder, gently murmured, ' My dear fellow, who is this 
 beautiful creature ? '
 
 86 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book it. 
 
 'She is the person,' said Carew, 'who will be one of 
 your neighbours at dinner. You will have to take in the old 
 Duchesse de — — ; and ask her to show you the locket she 
 has on, with the most beautiful picture imaginable of Marie 
 Antoinette in it.' 
 
 He had hardly done speaking before the announcement 
 was made to him — the solemn announcement — that Mon- 
 sieur's dinner was served. Two tapestry curtains at the end 
 of the room parted ; two gilded doors were slowly flung 
 open ; another constellation of lights was seen shining 
 beyond ; and to this the company, between two lines of 
 domestics, were presently moving — a stately and bright 
 procession. 
 
 ' Magnificent ! splendid ! ' murmured Lord Aiden 
 dreamily, as his eyes wandered over the plate and china 
 on the table. ' This is altogether a wreck saved from the 
 past. Those dishes are all of the finest Sevres.' 
 
 'Yes,' said the old duchesse next him. 'And there's 
 hardly a thing here which has not some history — you may 
 be perfectly sure of that. The Courbon-Loubets once 
 were one of the greatest houses in France ; and amongst 
 the old houses they are still one of the richest.' 
 
 Soon, however, their attention was taken from plate and 
 china by a sound of political discussion, which had sprung 
 up round the table. The politics discussed, for the most 
 part, were French, not English ; and this was perhaps 
 natural ; for not only amongst the company were the French 
 in a large majority, but whilst England was on the eve of an 
 election, France was actually in the middle of one ; and 
 strong hopes were entertained all over the country that the 
 world was about to witness in it a Conservative and a 
 Royalist reaction. 
 
 ' I think I should die happy,' said Carew, towards the 
 end of dinner, ' if I could see the time when the Parisian 
 gravers would once more, in humility, be dedicating their 
 engravings "to the King."' His nearest neighbour smiled, 
 and received this speech with sympathy ; and Carew, having
 
 chap. ii. 6 RICHARD, 6 MON ROI ! 8y 
 
 turned for a moment to whisper something to a servant, 
 added, 'And I should die even happier if I could know 
 that Paris had once more a Bastille.' 
 
 ' And we,' said an old marquis, with a look in his worn 
 face half of melancholy, half of past dissipation, ' should 
 have something fit to live for if we had only a king to die 
 for.' 
 
 Carew glanced from him to one or two of the younger 
 dandies, with a feeling, if not an expression, of something 
 like contempt. Then he cast a hasty look behind him, as if 
 to see whether some order was being executed. 
 
 The old marquis, who had been intently watching him, 
 seemed to divine his thoughts, and said, with a glance at the 
 younger dandies also, 'They, too, would die, as their fathers 
 died before them.' 
 
 At that instant the conversation stopped suddenly, and 
 all the company started. Suddenly the room had been filled 
 with a burst of orchestral music ; and it was then perceived 
 that at one end of it was a musicians' gallery, almost lost in 
 the shadow, and that now this was occupied by a band, and 
 glimmering with shaded lights. By the time the surprise of 
 the sound and the discovery had subsided, the company 
 found they were listening to an air which, for them at least, 
 was charged beyond all others with meaning, with hope, 
 with memories. It was 'O Richard, 6 raon Roi, l'univers 
 t'abandonne ' ; and for a moment it almost seemed to them 
 that the dining-room of Courbon-Loubet had become trans- 
 formed into the memorable Hall of the Opera. 
 
 Other airs followed, various and more lively ; and the 
 excellence of the performers having attracted general com- 
 ment, Carew informed his friends that he had had them 
 over from Nice, and that one or two of them had been 
 members of the orchestra at Monte Carlo. 
 
 At last the time came when the company rose ; and the 
 ladies and gentlemen, following the French fashion, left the 
 room together. The drawing-room presented a scene not 
 more brilliant, but more animated, than it had done before
 
 88 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ii. 
 
 dinner. Lady Mangotsfield was enthroned on a comfort- 
 less Louis Quinze sofa, with a Legitimist due on one side 
 and a Legitimist duc/iesse on the other ; and the three were 
 quietly rejoicing in the complete concord of their prejudices. 
 Lady Mangotsfield differed from her friends upon two points 
 only. She could never forgive the society of some sixty 
 years back in Vienna for presuming to think that Lady 
 
 S V was not a suitable match for Prince E or 
 
 for any man : and also the Pope and all his works were 
 things she could not abide. The first sore point, however, 
 there was now no call to touch upon; and as to the second, 
 in spite of her sound Protestantism, though fasting and the 
 Mass did little good to the soul, she considered them as ex- 
 cellent protests against Republican principles. 
 
 Meanwhile from the younger Frenchmen Miss Consuelo 
 Burton was receiving a great deal of attention — in especial 
 from one, who was a great admirer of England, and whose 
 English, if not so correct, was as fluent and as impertinent as 
 his French. There were two people who were not quite 
 pleased at this spectacle. One was the Princess; but she was 
 partially consoled by Lord Aiden, with whom she discussed 
 many curious scenes at the Tuileries. The other was Carew, 
 who had no consolation of that kind, but before long found 
 one when, on receiving a message from a servant, he begged 
 the company to come all of them to the windows ; or, if they 
 were not afraid of the air, to go outside on to the ramparts. 
 There was at once a general movement, and a general sense 
 of expectation. The elderly ladies presently had all of them 
 their faces at the panes ; the others, the night being mild, 
 were already in the open air, and Carew, through the exer- 
 cise of a little social diplomacy, contrived to find himself 
 close to Mrs. Harley and Miss Consuelo Burton. 
 
 The ramparts on which they were standing commanded 
 a deep valley, with the huddling roofs of the village almost 
 directly under them, and on the opposite side a succession 
 of wooded hills. In a moment or two Mrs. Harley became 
 aware of a noise like that of a crowd hoarsely murmuring
 
 chap. ii. 6 RICHARD, 6 MON ROI ! 89 
 
 somewhere ; and looking over the parapet, she saw that 
 some fifty feet below her was an open space, completely 
 filled with people. 
 
 'You see,' said Carew, 'there are our virtuous peasants 
 — the one thing which, according to you, was wanting.' 
 
 A cry of surprise here broke from every one. There 
 sounded through the night the clear notes of a bugle, and 
 suddenly, from point after point on the hills opposite, and 
 again from the brushwood deep down in the valley, there 
 burst forth a succession of coloured fires — blue, green, 
 purple, gold, and crimson — growing, tremulously fading, 
 and then again growing, palpitating like enchanted glow- 
 worms. They burnt for a minute or two, and then showed 
 signs of dying ; but before they were out the horn again 
 sounded, and high into the air, with its long trail, sang a 
 rocket, and then broke noiselessly into a falling flock of 
 stars. Another followed, and another, in brisk succession. 
 Then a glow was perceived in a different quarter, and, at 
 various spots on the ground below and opposite, cascades 
 and wheels of fire began to revolve and glitter. These, 
 though pretty enough, were in themselves not out of the 
 common ; but when at last they had come to an end, 
 and there had been a dull interval of a moment or two, 
 fresh sparks simultaneously were struck in a number of 
 places, and, the second after, the whole of the sloping 
 woodland became a glittering garden of white and quivering 
 fleur de lys. A shout rose from the whole assembly below, 
 which was echoed in milder tones by those above them on 
 the ramparts. The royal flowers remained for some time 
 bright and steadfast ; then at last they too became visibly 
 fainter. But they were not yet out, or at least only a few 
 of them, when a central glow, brighter than any of its pre- 
 decessors, gathered to itself the whole attention of every- 
 body. Its shape and meaning were for a few seconds un- 
 certain. Then, clear and shining in each minutest detail, 
 there burst on the spectators the likeness of a colossal 
 crown. It remained for a second only— only long enough
 
 90 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ii. 
 
 to be distinguished by them — and then, as it faded, up from 
 the very same spot a bouquet of rockets rose, so brilliant 
 and numerous that the whole prospect was nothing but a 
 vision of soaring fire. Then that too subsided; the dark 
 sky had its own again; the shouts of the villagers hoarsely 
 sank into silence, and the party on the ramparts returned 
 regretfully to the drawing-room. 
 
 Regret, however, was almost directly banished. One 
 distraction had ended only to make room for another. A 
 pair of folding doors were already standing open, giving 
 access to a small saloon beyond ; and Carew was already 
 leading the way into it. Some of the younger men had in- 
 stant visions of dancing ; but very few moments sufficed to 
 dispel these. The saloon, which in shape was circular, was 
 not only small, but was more than half filled with a number 
 of gilded chairs ; and without delay or question the docile 
 company seated themselves. They then perceived that 
 facing them was a rich but faded curtain of pale blue bro- 
 cade, festooned gracefully with tarnished gold tassels ; and 
 they were hardly settled into the first stage of expectancy, 
 when a lively strain of music broke from an unseen 
 orchestra ; two footmen went round distributing pro- 
 grammes, and the curtain presently rose, disclosing a small 
 stage, on which a troupe of really excellent artists, from Nice, 
 gave a representation of Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme. 
 
 Every one present had a delightful sense of the malicious 
 applicability of the play to our own times, and the actors 
 met with an applause even beyond what they themselves 
 could account for. After the performance, some of the 
 spectators mounted on the stage out of curiosity. Amongst 
 the last to do so was Miss Consuelo Burton, and she still 
 chanced to be standing there after the others had descended. 
 The footlights shone on her delicate white dress and her 
 bunches of scarlet berries. She made, as she stood there, 
 with her dark eyes glittering, a beautiful but unconscious 
 picture. Almost immediately the young Frenchman, who 
 had been so voluble and attentive to her before, joined her
 
 chap. ii. 6 RICHARD, 6 MON ROl ! 9 1 
 
 at one bound, and, placing himself beside her, called out to 
 Carew, ' Come, let us have some tableaux. Mademoiselle 
 Burton shall be the Maid of Orleans, and the Princesse, 
 Agnes Sorel.' Miss Consuelo Burton at first turned and 
 stared at him with an expression of tranquil and yet half- 
 contemptuous wonder ; and then, with a smile just sufficient 
 for civility, dropped her eyes, and quietly stepped down 
 again amongst the spectators. 
 
 'Ah,' said the Princess, with a clear metallic laugh, to 
 the Frenchman, ' you will not, mon cher, have any tableaux 
 to-night.' 
 
 ' We have seen,' said Lord Aiden, in a murmur to Lady 
 Mangotsfield, ' many interesting and many charming things; 
 but Miss Consuelo Burton is the most charming and inter- 
 esting of them all, and embodies as much as any of them 
 the best of what the world is losing. There's enough high 
 breeding in the mere way in which she carries her head to 
 turn the blood of a whole Radical meeting into gall' 
 
 ' I don't,' said Lady Mangotsfield, ' think much of that 
 young vicomtc. His father was a gentleman, but his mother 
 was a notary's daughter. Consuelo don't like him either. 
 Of course one could see that ; but she shows her dislike 
 without any blushing or gaue/ierie.' 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PRESENT AXI) PAST. 
 
 The following morning, till close upon midday, quiet pos- 
 sessed the chateau, but about that time the bustle of life 
 began again ; and by half past twelve the whole of the dis- 
 tinguished company, from the youngest Frenchman to the 
 oldest of the abbes and duc/iesses, with all the English party, 
 except Lady Mangotsfield, were gathered together in a 
 voluble circle round the breakfast-table. The French con- 
 tingent had come for the night only, and were to start for
 
 92 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ii. 
 
 Cannes betimes in the afternoon. Having celebrated last 
 night their attachment to the Monarchical cause, to-night 
 they were most of them about to forget the Republic at a 
 fancy ball given by a charming American. It was therefore 
 important to them, to the younger men especially, that they 
 should be back in time for a final inspection of their 
 dresses ; and their carriages accordingly were to be ready 
 for them as soon as breakfast was over. 
 
 At the last moment, however, Carew had a parting sur- 
 prise for them. He and his English friends would accom- 
 pany them half the way, and arrangements had been made 
 for tea in a certain forest, at a beautiful spot which lay not 
 far from the road. Secretly one or two were a little uneasy 
 at the delay ; but on reaching the spot in question, they felt 
 well repaid for their patience. Every preparation, they 
 found, had been made already. In a green glade there was 
 pitched a pretty pavilion, gaily fluttering with pink bows and 
 ribands, and above it, moving on a lazily moving flag, they 
 once more beheld the royal lilies of France. The grass in 
 front was spread with scarlet blankets ; a little fire made a 
 blue smoke in the background ; cups of tea and chocolate 
 were presently handed round, with cakes and sweetmeats 
 piled up in wicker baskets. Nor was this all ; for three boy 
 musicians — one fiddler, and two who performed on clari- 
 nets — emerged from behind the pavilion as soon as the 
 company were seated, and played a succession of touching 
 and simple airs with a sweetness and feeling that charmed 
 even the most fastidious. 
 
 ' Watteau,' said Mrs. Harley to Carew, when the French 
 guests had departed, and the others, in a large wagonette, 
 were on their way back to the chateau — ' Watteau himself 
 never painted a scene of more delightful and of more unreal 
 simplicity. But it is impossible to tell you at once all I 
 think of your entertainment. It must dribble out bit by 
 bit.' 
 
 'Well,' said Carew, 'you may speak your mind quite 
 freely. The entertainment was not mine, it was really my
 
 chap. in. PRESENT AND PAST 93 
 
 cousin Gaston's. He pays for it. He has something like 
 it every year, only it happened that this time it fell to my 
 lot to manage it. What brought me to Nice the other 
 day, when I first met you, was something I had to settle 
 with the actors and the firework man. However, it's all 
 finished now except the pleasantest part of it, and that is 
 the talking it over amongst ourselves this evening.' 
 
 ' Nothing,' said Lord Aiden, ' is so depressing as to be 
 left with oneself by one's friends ; nothing is so charming 
 as to be left with one's friends by one's acquaintances.' 
 
 'And,' said Carew, 'even to-night we shall not be with- 
 out an excitement. Not only shall we see Lady Mangots- 
 field, who has been keeping her room all day, but there 
 is to be another arrival, whom I hope you have not for- 
 gotten.' 
 
 ' Who ? ' said Mrs. Harley. 
 
 ' Surely,' said Carew, ' I told you. No less a person 
 than Lady Chislehurst.' 
 
 At the mention of this name Mr. Stanley's eye lit up for 
 an instant with a faint twinkle of humour. ' That,' he said, 
 ' will indeed be a treat for all of us.' And his tone was one 
 of sincerity, just touched with genial sarcasm. 
 
 Now Lady Chislehurst was nothing if not Catholic. 
 Her zeal was a proverb ; her name was international 
 property : and Mrs. Harley, who had caught the priest's 
 expression, felt him at once rise many degrees in her estima- 
 tion. She herself, too, had been reminded of a treat await- 
 ing her, which perhaps she regarded with a temper akin to 
 his— the company of Lady Mangotsfield, and most likely a 
 lecture from her. They had returned to the chateau, how- 
 ever, and were assembled for dinner ; dinner at last was 
 announced, and the dining-room door flung open ; yet 
 neither Lady Mangotsfield nor Lady Chislehurst had put in 
 an appearance. Mrs. Harley was conscious of two distinct 
 sensations — one of relief, the other of disappointment ; 
 when Carew, as he gave his arm to her, at once cured her
 
 94 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ii. 
 
 of both. 'Lady Mangotsfield,' he said, 'will not come 
 down till afterwards, and Lady Chislehurst, who has only 
 just arrived, sent a special message to beg that we would 
 not wait for her.' 
 
 The table, in spite of the diminished size of the party, 
 was, in the matter of plate and china, as interesting as it 
 had been yesterday. 
 
 ' What a magnificent fellow,' said Harley, ' Carew's cousin 
 is ! This chateau of his must be a complete museum.' 
 
 Lord Aiden, who again had been fascinated by the 
 Sevres china, looked up, and said with a look of dreamy 
 wonder, ' Do you mean to say that he gives you carte blanche 
 to use all this ? ' 
 
 'It is hard to tell you,' said Carew, 'where my carte 
 blanche ends. Look at this table ; look at these lights, these 
 servants ; think of the whole of this large house kept going. 
 I pay for the food we eat certainly ; but everything else is 
 done by my cousin Gaston ; and as for yesterday, Gaston 
 paid for the food too — actors, dinner, fireworks, fiddlers, 
 all. When I tell it you first it sounds just like a fairy-tale ; 
 but the real history of it is this. Gaston is a widower, and 
 is childless. He had two children once ; but they both 
 died here of diphtheria, and since that time he has never 
 revisited the place. But it is the oldest possession of his 
 family. It is, moreover, one of the very few chateaux that 
 were practically untouched by the Revolution. The old 
 life has gone on without a break in it, and though he him- 
 self may never again inhabit it, he means that the full house- 
 hold shall be still maintained to the last. He used to keep 
 a white horse in the stables, on which he hoped that the 
 King would one day ride into Paris. For four or five 
 winters he has lent this house to his mother-in-law, but this 
 year she is gone to Madeira, and knowing I was coming 
 south, he was good enough to offer it to me.' 
 
 'But what do you mean,' said Mrs. Harley, 'by the 
 household being maintained to the last ? And what is this 
 last which you speak of in so melancholy a manner ? '
 
 chap. in. PRESENT AND PAST 95 
 
 'The family,' said Carew, 'were so popular in this 
 neighbourhood that during the Revolution their house was 
 hardly injured ; but that which escaped the violence of the 
 Revolution will perish in the next generation under the blight 
 of the Code Napoleon. The estate will be divided, and this 
 place will be sold.' 
 
 ' Mr. Carew, I am so glad that you did not wait for me ! ' 
 The voice that uttered the words was like a clear ripple of 
 music, with a rustle of silk for a soft but rapid accompani- 
 ment ; and all were at once aware of the advent of Lady 
 Chislehurst. Her handsome face wore its most benignant 
 of smiles ; the very sound of her dress seemed somehow 
 an ecclesiastical benediction, and her eyes were like the 
 sun : they shone on the just and unjust. She called Miss 
 Consuelo 'her darling'; she asked her how were Elfrida 
 and Mildred ; and, taking the seat left for her by the side 
 of Mr. Stanley, slipped into his hand a letter, which, she 
 said, she had been keeping to show him. ' I want you,' she 
 murmured, ' to see there the account of the Holy Father.' 
 Then with a brisker and more mundane accent, ' I knew,' 
 she said, ' I should be late ; and it turns out that I am 
 even later than I thought I should be. The fact is, Mr. 
 Carew, I found out that you have a chapel here, and there 
 has been no mass said in it for over seven years. You must 
 allow me to-morrow to do something to the altar ; and, if it 
 can be managed, to have my Mass there on Sunday. Mr. 
 Stanley and I will talk about that— won't we ? ' 
 
 Carew could not help glancing across the table to Miss 
 Consuelo, and she acknowledged a community of thought 
 by a little momentary nioue. The Church, however, having 
 had its share of attention, Lady Chislehurst now turned to 
 the world ; and no one certainly gave to general conversa- 
 tion an easier flow or a more varied interest than she. She 
 had thought much, she had read much, she had seen much 
 of life. She had sought, and she had made, the acquaint- 
 ance of nearly every one to whom she saw any chance of 
 being cither a friend or benefactress, and she thus had a
 
 g6 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ii. 
 
 wide experience of all ranks except the middle. The gossip 
 of Mayfair and the wants of the crowded alley — she thought 
 most of the last, but she was equally familiar with both. If 
 she could be said in society to have any fault at all, it was a 
 slight tendency to group her ideas round one out of two 
 centres — herself or the Catholic Church. And yet, if she 
 sometimes irritated as well as amused her friends, she could 
 say of them truly what can be said truly by few : none of 
 them whenever she was present could bring themselves to 
 desire her absence. 
 
 Certainly to-night at dinner no one was even tempted 
 to do so — not even Mrs. Harley, though her back did go 
 up for a moment, when she heard what to her was a respect- 
 able but indifferent superstition talked of as ' The Faith,' 
 without a single word of apology. That, however, went for 
 nothing ; and putting that aside, there was but one other 
 jar on the religious feelings of anybody ; and this was ex- 
 perienced by Lady Chislehurst herself. It, too, was slight, 
 and it was occasioned merely by the thought that in the 
 drawing-room she was presently to encounter Lady Mangots- 
 field. As a great lady, Lady Mangotsfield commanded her 
 highest opinion ; but Lady Mangotsfield was the most un- 
 bending of Protestants, and her embodiment of pure Chris- 
 tianity was a Prince Bishop of Durham. Lady Chislehurst, 
 however, was not in a mood to be ruffled. Two words were 
 enough to express and relieve her feelings. Smiling her 
 sweetest, she whispered to Mr. Stanley, ' Old cat ! ' and she 
 then went on eating her dinner, prepared for, and resigned 
 to, the situation. 
 
 She had every reason to be in a good humour ; for she 
 at once gave to the party a life that before was wanting. 
 She was beset with questions as to public feeling at home, 
 the preparations for the impending elections, and the pro- 
 spects of the various candidates. She had only left England 
 five or six days ago, so she had much to say that was not by 
 this time old. The week before last she had been in the 
 East End of London, and had found herself in the middle
 
 chap. in. PRESENT AND PAST 97 
 
 of a mob of Social Democrats. They had just been listen- 
 ing, she said, to one of their newest leaders — a soured un- 
 successful man, once an officer in the army, who had been 
 suggesting, amongst shouts of applause, as the most useful 
 measure for themselves, that they should cut the throats of 
 every one who was rich enough to pay income-tax. What 
 would have happened to her she was quite unable to tell, if 
 three men, each of whom she had tended during an illness, 
 had not suddenly appeared, and secured an escape for her 
 carriage. On the evening of the same day she had dined 
 with the Liberal Prime Minister, who, though aware of 
 misery as a permanent factor in politics, had not been 
 informed that at the present moment it had any detailed 
 existence anywhere out of Ireland. A day or two later 
 she had been in one of the Midland counties, canvassing 
 rural voters on behalf of her Tory nephew ; and the last 
 few days she had devoted to going to church from the 
 most dignified mansion in the whole Faubourg Saint 
 Germain. 
 
 This last piece of news at once turned the conversation 
 to the previous night's festivities, and all that Lady Chisle- 
 hurst had lost. Lady Chislehurst already knew she had lost 
 something ; but she had not realised how much till now. 
 On hearing the names of the French ladies who had been 
 present, she found that she had known all the eldest ones 
 from her infancy. It even appeared she had received pre- 
 sents from all of them, beginning with a rattle and ending 
 with a book of devotions. Then Lord Aiden, in a tone of 
 indolent despondency, returned to the subject they had 
 been speaking of when Lady Chislehurst entered, and in- 
 formed her of the fate that was hanging over the chateau. 
 ' You see,' he said, ' what it is that France is coming to.' 
 
 1 ,ady Chislehurst's mind was sufficiently full of forebod- 
 ings to make her listen to this with an almost emulous 
 sadness. ' Yes,' she said, 'and it is just the same in Eng- 
 land. The chateaux there have the same future before 
 them. No, Mrs. Harley, I assure you you need not laugh. 
 
 11
 
 98 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ii. 
 
 One could hardly have imagined, till the approach of the 
 election has showed it, how far the influence of the country 
 gentlemen has declined. In my nephew's county — the 
 place I have just been in — who should you think the Liberal 
 candidates are ? An architect is one, if you please ; and 
 some nobody from the Stock Exchange is another. I have 
 not seen either of them ; but one can quite imagine the 
 sort of thing — men whose public programme is to abolish 
 the Lords, and whose private programme is to dine with 
 them.' 
 
 Mrs. Harley, with a face half sad and half smiling, said : 
 ' As for the chateaux, I fear that their days are numbered.' 
 
 Carew was determined that nothing should go without a 
 fight for it, and Lord Aiden wondered whether anything 
 were left worth fighting for. 
 
 Harley, who was by far the most cheerful person pre- 
 sent, believed that of existing institutions two at least would 
 be permanent. These were the institutions of property and 
 marriage. Everything else, he thought, was rapidly decom- 
 posing. 'Still,' he added, addressing himself to Lord 
 Aiden, ' the territorial classes might last a good bit longer, 
 if they would only wake up a bit and appeal more to the 
 people.' 
 
 'Yes,' Lord Aiden replied, 'and a weary work that 
 would be.' 
 
 'My dear Lord Aiden,' said Lady Chislehurst winningly, 
 ' there's only one thing can save us, and that is the Church. 
 I sometimes think that the Church is the only thing that 
 will be saved. Mr. Stanley, tell me, do you agree with 
 me?' 
 
 Mr. Stanley looked gravely at her. 'Any institution 
 may be saved,' he said, ' which has not lost the power of 
 adapting itself.' 
 
 ' And yet,' said Harley, casting his eyes about him, 
 ' what could adapt itself better than this chateau to all the 
 demands of our simple modern luxury ? And all the same, 
 you tell us that we shall not save this chateau.'
 
 chap. in. PRESENT AND PAST 99 
 
 ' Let us hope,' said Lady Chislehurst, ' if it must go out 
 of the family, that it will be bought as it stands by some one 
 who will take care of it.' 
 
 ' It could be bought as it stands,' said Carew, ' by no 
 one except a millionaire. Indeed, I am not sure that I 
 would not sooner think of it as a ruin than as furbished up 
 and inhabited by some rich Radical bourgeois.' 
 
 'That,' said Mrs. Harley, 'is a sentiment worthy of 
 Lady Mangotsfield.' 
 
 ' Lady Mangotsfield,' said Carew, evading this piece of 
 the criticism, ' at all events is perfectly happy. She is 
 having her dinner in a room that was occupied by Charles 
 the Fifth, and her bed, which, in grandeur, is quite as good 
 as a throne, has been aired for her by Francis the First, who 
 slept, I am told, three weeks in it.' 
 
 'And so,' said Lord Aiden presently, 'a few years more, 
 a very few years, and our present surroundings will be all a 
 dream of the past — everything scattered to the four winds of 
 heaven. Well, this chateau is only an illustration of what 
 we have just been saying. It is very much like the world 
 in which we have been brought up from our childhood — 
 our world, I mean — the world of us who are here now. It 
 is not gone ; but it is going : as,' he added with a laugh, 
 ' the auctioneer will be saying about this beautiful china 
 some day.' 
 
 'Our world,' said Carew, 'will, you think, be knocked 
 down as this china will. It may be knocked down, but it 
 will be handed over to nobody.' 
 
 He had hardly done speaking when a grave and majestic 
 footman, his hair snowy with powder, who had not waited 
 at dinner, approached Carew deferentially, and murmured 
 a few words to him. Carew turned to his guests, and, 
 smiling, explained the message. 
 
 'Lady Mangotsfield,' he said, 'has just come down. 
 Let us keep up our French habits, and all of us go in to her 
 together.' During the general movement, for a second or 
 two Miss Consuelo Burton was next to him. ' I am glad,' 
 
 II 2
 
 IOO THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ii. 
 
 he said to her, ' that you have again got your red berries on. 
 I picked them myself, both yesterday and again this evening, 
 and I gave orders that they should be taken to your room. 
 You wore berries like that — perhaps you may not remember 
 it— the last evening I ever saw you in London.' 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PAST JUDGES THE PRESENT. 
 
 To a hasty glance that had not learned to discriminate, 
 Lady Mangotsfield might have passed for the meekest of 
 living women. The party from the dining-room found her 
 smiling placidly in the hardest and uneasiest of all the chairs 
 available. Her black silk dress, which was the same she 
 had worn last night, was dowdy and put on with negligence ; 
 what shape it had was obscured by a yet dowdier shawl ; 
 and her long hands, crossed on her lap before her, were 
 covered with wrinkled gloves that had only been half 
 drawn on. But the real meaning of her toilette was the 
 very reverse of what it seemed to be. It expressed not her 
 estimate of herself as compared with the world at large, but 
 her estimate of the world at large as compared with her : 
 and the placid smile, when studied a little longer, seemed 
 less that of a person disposed to notice everybody, than of 
 one who had been accustomed only to people fit to be 
 noticed. 
 
 With the present company she was luckily quite satisfied 
 — even with Mr. Stanley, having found out who was his 
 father. In a general way too, it appeared, she had been 
 pleased with the party of last night ; and she began almost 
 directly to make Carew a number of pretty speeches about 
 the way in which he had managed the entertainment. 
 
 ' I had often heard,' she said, ' from old Madame de 
 Courbon-Loubet, of all the fine doings which your cousin
 
 chap. iv. THE PAST JUDGES THE PRESENT 101 
 
 still kept up here ; and so when I learnt it was you who 
 were at the chateau this winter — and I only learnt it by the 
 merest accident from a stranger — I sent you a note at once 
 and said I was coming to see you. I've been writing this 
 morning to your poor dear Uncle Horace, telling him all 
 about it. He gets out very little ; and any bit of news 
 amuses him. By the way,' she added, 'you made one mis- 
 take, you shouldn't have invited that woman — I always 
 forget her name ' 
 
 ' Who ? ' said Carew, though he knew quite well what 
 was coming. 
 
 'That woman with all the diamonds — that princess — 
 that banker's daughter. It don't do. She don't mix with 
 the others.' 
 
 ' I know,' said Carew, ' that they don't exactly like her; 
 but at least they visit her ; and I couldn't avoid asking her. 
 Besides, our party was to celebrate a Royal birthday, and 
 who has been admired by so many Royalties as she ? ' 
 
 'Yes,' said Lady Mangotsfield, with an odd little low 
 laugh ; 'the Royalties can do what they like. That's just 
 what we can't.' Then somewhat abruptly turning to Mrs. 
 Harley, ' Well, my dear,' she went on, ' and what have you 
 been about lately ? Last night I had hardly a moment to 
 talk to you. Have you been having any more of those 
 dreadful men of genius to your parties ? ' 
 
 Mischief at once lightened in Mrs. Harley's eyes. 
 
 ' Our last dinner, Lady Mangotsfield, before we left 
 London, was given,' she said, ' in honour of Mr. Snapper.' 
 
 The shot told to perfection. Lady Mangotsfield moved 
 back her chair with a genuine start of horror. 
 
 'You don't mean to say,' she exclaimed, 'you have 
 actually asked him ? ' Then, as if horror were a feeling far 
 too flattering, she lowered the offence to the level of an ill- 
 judged joke ; and, shaking her fan at Mrs. Harley with a 
 tremulous air of reprimand, ' If you do that again,' she said, 
 1 1 can tell you I wash my hands of you.' 
 
 That matter being settled, she turned now to Lord
 
 102 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book it. 
 
 Aiden, and was understood to ask him if he did not agree 
 with her that it was ' really too bad ' that such a man as 
 Mr. Snapper was 'in existence,' meaning by existence his 
 being obtruded within the sphere of her notice. Lord 
 Aiden agreed that it was. ' Nothing,' he said, ' is now what 
 it used to be. Twenty years back such a man would have 
 had no chance.' 
 
 ' Of course,' resumed Lady Mangotsfield, ' we all know 
 what their object is. Their one object is to abolish primo- 
 geniture ; and if ever they do that, it will of course be the 
 ruin of England.' 
 
 Every one hung on her clear but faltering accents, if not 
 with conviction, at all events with curiosity, and waited for 
 her to confide to Lord Aiden her further views of the situa- 
 tion. It appeared, as she went on, that it made her angry 
 rather than apprehensive. What is commonly spoken of as 
 the growing power of democracy, she seemed to regard as 
 an outburst of passing popular naughtiness. The people, in 
 her eyes, was a child with a fit on it of impertinence and 
 perversity ; and the best punishment its natural leaders could 
 inflict on it was not to notice it till it had grown obedient 
 and good again. Real political life was still confined to the 
 old families ; and political knowledge, as much as herds of 
 deer, was secluded in the precincts of country gentlemen's 
 parks. Lord Aiden, as he listened to her, had a quiet 
 cynical smile ; but, all the same, he listened with obvious 
 sympathy. He inclined to her view of things much as he 
 inclined to Catholicism. It was not true ; but no other 
 view was tolerable. 
 
 ' By the way,' said Carew to Lady Mangotsfield, as soon 
 as she had finished her politics, 'you said just now you 
 heard of my being here from a stranger. May we know who 
 the stranger was ? ' 
 
 ' That,' said Lady Mangotsfield, ' is the very point on 
 which you must enlighten me. You know him quite well. 
 He assured me he was a great friend of yours. His name 
 what was his name, now? Upon my word I can't
 
 chap. iv. THE PAST JUDGES THE PRESENT 1 03 
 
 recollect it. It was not one that conveyed any idea to my 
 mind.' 
 
 'Who,' said Carew, ' introduced him to you ? ' 
 
 'Who introduced him to me? Why, oddly enough, 
 Stonehouse did. I was sitting in my carriage at the band, 
 and Stonehouse had just left me, when I saw this gentleman 
 go suddenly up and whisper to him ; and then after a 
 moment or two, Stonehouse came back to the carriage 
 again, and in his queer little precise voice — so like in that 
 he is to his dear father— "Aunt Hilda," he said, "will you 
 
 allow me to introduce to you a " ah, I have it now — 
 
 " will you allow me to introduce to you a Mr. Inigo, who is 
 dying to pay his respects to you ? You'd better know him. 
 I think he'll very likely amuse you." I suppose — I don't 
 know — but I suppose, that I drew back a little ; for Stone- 
 house said, " You needn't be frightened of him. I assure 
 you he won't bite." He's always so droll, is Stonehouse. 
 Well, the long and short of it was, this Inigo was brought 
 up to me, and before I knew where I was, he was telling me 
 some long story about the Grand Duke, and how anxious 
 he was to see me. God bless the man, I thought, I didn't 
 want to be told that. I had been with the Grand Duke 
 nearly all the morning already. However, that's not the 
 point. The point is that I heard you were here from Mr. 
 Inigo : and now I want you to tell me, if you can, who this 
 Mr. Inigo is.' 
 
 ' How like Stonehouse ! ' exclaimed Miss Consuelo 
 Burton, who, though rather in awe of Lady Mangotsfield, 
 was overcome by her sense of amusement. ' He played 
 just the same trick on us.' 
 
 ' What, my dear ? ' said Lady Mangotsfield sharply. 
 ' Lord Aiden, what was it this young lady said?' 
 
 'Stonehouse,' said Miss Consuelo, 'finds Mr. Inigo 
 rather an affliction ; and he thinks it a joke sometimes to 
 introduce him to other people.' 
 
 Lady Mangotsfield reflected for a moment on who 
 Stonehouse was — her own nephew, and his father's eldest
 
 104 THE 0LD ORDER CHANGES book ii. 
 
 son ; so she decided on being slightly amused, and said, 
 ' It was very naughty of him. But come— you have none 
 of you yet told me who the gentleman is. Is he a gentle- 
 man ? That's what I want to get at.' 
 
 'I,' said Carew, 'have an exceedingly slight acquaint- 
 ance with him, but he's become lately a sort of gentleman- 
 in-waiting to my Uncle Horace, who is less fastidious than 
 he used to be, as his sight and hearing are failing him, and 
 who finds Mr. Inigo useful to play whist with him, and even 
 on occasions to write out invitations to dinner.' 
 
 'Well, Evelyn,' said Lady Mangotsfield to Mrs. Harley, 
 ' and what do you say of this wonder ? ' 
 
 ' He's far too fashionable,' said Mrs. Harley, ' for me to 
 be intimate with ; so I, for one, can hardly venture on an 
 opinion.' 
 
 ' Nonsense, my dear,' said Lady Mangotsfield ; ' how 
 can you say such a thing? The man's not fashionable, 
 else I should have heard of him. But you all seem to know 
 him. Has he any position of his own ? ' 
 
 'Yes,' said Harley, 'he certainly has one. His position 
 is at the top of every staircase in London he can get to.' 
 
 ' And,' said Carew, ' if you don't think that makes him a 
 gentleman, I can only say that your opinion is very different 
 from his.' 
 
 Lady Mangotsfield could appreciate many things, but 
 not a tone of banter when it happened to be addressed to 
 herself. ' Our friend here,' she said, turning again to Mrs. 
 Harley, 'should not talk about things which he does not 
 understand. I can only say that if this Mr. Inigo is the 
 fashion, fashion is very much changed from the thing that 
 it was in my day. Besides, even in my day this was always 
 true — the men who were seen everywhere were the men 
 who were sought for nowhere. And you, Consuelo — when 
 you're going about to your parties — I'll tell you one thing, 
 and remember an old woman told it to you — when a man 
 of fashion is not a gentleman, there is no one in the world 
 so vubar as a man of fashion.'
 
 chap. v. THE RIDDLE OF LIFE BY MOONLIGHT 1 05 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE RIDDLE OF LIFE EV MOONLIGHT. 
 
 No sooner bad Lady Mangotsfield retired, which she did 
 before any of the others showed any symptoms of weariness, 
 than Carew went to one of the windows, and looked out at 
 the night. The curtains, as he drew them aside, let in a 
 flood of moonlight. Then with permission he threw the 
 window open ; and the moonlight was followed by a warm 
 fresh odour of orange-blossoms. By this time the others 
 were all standing close to him ; and the vision that met 
 their eyes was so alluring and brilliant that hats and cloaks 
 were sent for, and they all of them went outside. 
 
 Right below the window was the old moat of the chateau, 
 with a little bridge crossing it to the broad ramparts beyond. 
 The moat was nothing now but a sunken cincture of orange 
 trees ; and the ramparts had been turned into a terrace from 
 which the whole landscape was visible. To this terrace 
 they passed. They had stood there the night before, and 
 the same hills fronted them that had been alive with fiery 
 flowers and fountains. But the moon then had been hidden 
 behind a thick bank of clouds ; everything near and far had 
 been lost or blurred in obscurity, and their minds and eyes 
 had been occupied almost exclusively by the numbers of 
 people, and the bewildering blaze of the fireworks. Now 
 everything looked so wholly different that they could hardly 
 believe it was really the same scene ; and for a time they 
 were almost silent before its fantastic beauty. 
 
 The sides of the tall tower, as it rose soaring and solitary, 
 had a strange gleam on them, and showed traces of Moorish 
 ornament. By common consent they all moved slowly 
 towards it. Around its base, and again below the ramparts, 
 the tops of unfamiliar palm-trees made feathery arches in 
 the air, as though they were exotics which grew here in some 
 magic summer. Mysterious gardens, too, which none of 
 the guests had visited, were now seen to descend all that
 
 106 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book 11. 
 
 side of the hill ; and here and there, as peering eyes looked 
 down on them, far in the depths was a white glimmer of 
 flowers, or a winding gravel walk, that shone like a thread 
 of silver ; whilst farther away the mountains, woods, and 
 villages, the terraced olive yards, and the keen crags above 
 them, were at once so clear and faint, at once so brilliant 
 and so shadowy, that they looked less like a real landscape 
 than a reflection in a sorcerer's mirror. 
 
 ' Why should we walk ? ' said Lady Chislehurst, presently. 
 ' We are all wrapped up. There are seats. What does 
 every one say to sitting down ? ' 
 
 The suggestion proved welcome, and the group settled 
 themselves pensively. 
 
 ' Thank God,' murmured Lord Aiden at last, ' we can 
 forget politics here.' 
 
 Lady Chislehurst looked at him with an expression of 
 motherly sadness. ' My dear Lord Aiden,' she said, ' if I 
 may make a personal speech, it's a pity that you ever took 
 to politics at all. The world would have gained if you had 
 never deserted poetry.' 
 
 There were many reasons why, as uttered by her, these 
 few words had a special effect on her hearers, and came to 
 them charged with the weight of many associations. Lady 
 Chislehurst, it was known, had had her own private history ; 
 through the breath of scandal having never presumed to 
 touch her, it had always remained for the world a respectful 
 and vague conjecture. In early life she had possessed un- 
 common attraction ; and she had enjoyed the credit of having 
 broken numerous hearts, without the discredit of having 
 ever designed to do so ; but, though she had twice made a 
 devoted and blameless wife, having found herself at forty for 
 a second time a widow, there was still a legend about her 
 that, in the breaking of hearts and the mending of them, one 
 alone had been broken really ; and that one was hers. It 
 has been said that she had read much. She had also written 
 something. She was known to have been the authoress of 
 an anonymous volume of poems, of which George Sand had
 
 chap. v. THE RIDDLE OF LIFE BY MOONLIGHT 107 
 
 said in her old age that it recalled to her the saddest and 
 the purest feelings of her youth ; and many observers of 
 Lady Chislehurst's sympathy with sorrow were convinced 
 that she could only have learnt it from sorrow and desola- 
 tion of her own. 
 
 Lord Aiden was fully aware of the character of the 
 woman who had spoken to him ; and by no means the sort 
 of man, under ordinary circumstances, to submit to a reproach 
 or even advice in public, he replied to Lady Chislehurst 
 with a frank and reflective simplicity, which might have been 
 almost called humble had it been a little less indolent. 
 
 ' I,' he said, ' didn't desert my poetry. Quite the con- 
 trary : my poetry has deserted me. Even if I had not lost 
 the ability, I have lost the impulse to write.' 
 
 'And doesn't it,' said Miss Consuelo Burton, 'come 
 back to you on a night like this ? ' 
 
 Lord Aiden was touched by the interest in the girl's 
 luminous eyes. 'The impulse,' he answered, 'to think 
 poetry may come back, but the impulse to write it, never. 
 I suppose,' he went on, in a more cynical tone, ' that we may 
 venture to admit, in Lady Mangotsfield's absence, that in 
 more ways than one this is a democratic age : and what has 
 silenced me is the growth of the reading public. The sense 
 of private life is completely taken away from one ; and to 
 write poetry now would be much the same, to my mind, as 
 discussing one's private affairs at a table d'hote or in a rail- 
 way carriage.' 
 
 ' Besides that,' said Harley, with his usual geniality, ' the 
 world, or at least civilisations, when they grow to a certain 
 age, lose their voices, as men do. Europe is too old for 
 poetry ; America is too young.' 
 
 'No, no,' said Lady Chislehurst, 'it is not the age of 
 Europe that is the matter with us. My dear Mr. Harley, 
 the world is old enough, but to each new heart it is still as 
 young as ever. The first time that a girl loves, to-day, love 
 is as fresh to her as it was to Eve in Eden.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Carew, ' there are many things in life — many
 
 108 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ii. 
 
 things and thoughts, let them be never so often talked about, 
 which, until we have learnt to realise them, are as strange 
 and unknown as death.' 
 
 'You, Lord Aiden,' said Mrs. Harley after a pause, 
 'once wrote a poem in which you said something just like 
 that. You said— do you remember? — that "Death was as 
 strange as love." ' 
 
 ' Did I ? ' he said, with a little contemptuous laugh, 
 common to poets when their own works are alluded to. ' I 
 believe I did, now that you come to remind me of it. I 
 forget the name of the critic who once pointed out that 
 nearly every simile had the makings in it of two : and that, 
 like a coat, if you turned it, you could make a new one.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Carew, ' and often one just as good. The 
 other day, I was driving along the Corniche road, and there 
 constantly kept recurring to me a line or a phrase of Ten- 
 nyson, in which he describes the very waters that were 
 under me as " bays, the peacock's neck in hue." No simile 
 could be more perfect or beautiful ; but if you wished to 
 describe a peacock, it would be just as perfect inverted ; 
 and you might say that the peacock's neck was the colour 
 of a Mediterranean bay.' . 
 
 ' That,' said Mr. Stanley, ' is perfectly true ; and the 
 simile helps the imagination as much in one case as in the 
 other. It's an odd thing, but it is so.' 
 
 ' I think,' said Lord Aiden, growing gradually more 
 animated — ' I think that the explanation of it is this. The 
 mind at rest is full of vivid images, which have settled on it 
 everywhere like a flock of brilliant and quick-eyed birds ; 
 but the moment we approach any one of them, and set 
 about examining it carefully, its wings are spread, and with 
 one flash it is gone. But when we employ a simile to 
 illustrate anything, the thing which we want to illustrate acts 
 as a kind of stalking-horse, and the image which is to illus- 
 trate it is caught before it knew we were near it.' 
 
 ' My dear Lord Aiden,' exclaimed Lady Chislehurst, 
 'you are still a poet at heart. As you were speaking this
 
 chap. v. THE RIDDLE OF LIFE BY MOONLIGHT 109 
 
 last moment, one would have thought you were your old 
 self again. Do you remember at Vienna, many years ago, 
 one pleasant night when you recited one of your poems to 
 us ? Recite us one now, if you never mean more to publish 
 any. Do ; and let me live over old times again.' 
 
 ' Ask Carew,' said Lord Aiden ; ' he's a better poet than 
 I am ; and a wiser one, too, for he never published at all.' 
 
 'Come, Mr. Carew,' said Lady Chislehurst. 'Doesn't 
 this scene inspire you ? ' 
 
 'This scene,' said Carew, 'or this country, is the only 
 thing that for many years past ever has inspired me. Would 
 you really like to hear me repeat something? I will if you 
 like — not because the verses are good, but because I mean 
 what is said in them so much that I find a pleasure in re- 
 saying it. One person here, however, knows them only too 
 well already. I wrote them for Mrs. Harley, when she set 
 up an album, and asked me to contribute something — which 
 she was good enough to call poetry. They are headed 
 " Lines to the Riviera." ' 
 
 ' We are listening,' said Lady Chislehurst. 
 
 Carew repeated as follows : — 
 
 Ah, what ailed you to bid rhyme for you 
 
 me — me who have done with rhyme ? 
 Would you ask of a tree figs when you 
 
 know well it is past the timt .' 
 See the lute that I breathed love to ! It 
 
 hangs now on a broken stria ;. 
 One song only of all songs have I 
 
 now courage or heart to sing. 
 Oh, my luminous land, glowing with 
 
 blue under and blue above! 
 Land whose violets breathe sweeter than 
 
 all mouths that have murmur d love ! 
 Oh, my land of the f aim, olive, and 
 
 aloe ! laud of the sun, the seal 
 Still my heart is a child's, turning in 
 
 long longing to thee, to thee ! 
 
 Carew was sitting next to Miss Consuclo Burton, and the
 
 110 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book n. 
 
 consciousness that she was listening gave a depth and feeling 
 to his intonation, which endowed the verses with a merit 
 which was possibly not their own. After they had been 
 accorded a fitting acknowledgment, Lord Aiden was again 
 beset by Lady Chislehurst with entreaties that he would 
 follow Carew's good example, and give them something, if 
 only a few lines, of his own. This time he proved to be 
 more open to persuasion. A sense of intimacy gradually 
 had sprung up amongst them all. A tone now seemed 
 natural that half an hour ago would have been singular, 
 and Lord Aiden yielded to the spirit of the moonlight and 
 the moment. 
 
 ' Here,' he said, ' is the last thing I have written. It is 
 not published, and it will not be. Like Carew's, it was written 
 in answer to a friend's request, who was good enough some 
 time since to wish to have my autograph — a gifted and 
 beautiful woman,' he went on, speaking into the collar of his 
 coat, and brushing some cigarette ash off the fur of it, ' who 
 was suffering from the most unfeminine of all our modern 
 maladies — a want of belief in any further existence. What 
 I wrote for her was this : — 
 
 Far in a doubtful world I place my treasure, 
 
 And in this near world you : 
 But will you find that your world gives you pleasure? 
 
 Or I, that mine is true ? 
 
 ' My dear Lord Aiden,' said Lady Chislehurst presently, 
 ' shall I tell you why your Muse has deserted you ? ' and she 
 smiled at him with a look of benignant — of almost con- 
 descending interest. ' It is because you have lost faith. That 
 is the simple reason. You can't sing of your treasure unless 
 you are certain that your treasure exists.' 
 
 ' Surely,' said Miss Consuelo, with a slight sense of 
 perversity, ' men did so in the days of the Renaissance.' 
 
 ' Their case,' interposed Carew, ' was very different to 
 ours. They may have been doubtful, or even careless, about 
 the old treasure ; but their life was vivid with the illusion 
 that they were finding a new one.'
 
 chap. v. THE RIDDLE OF LIFE BY MOONLIGHT 1 1 1 
 
 ' I,' murmured Miss Consuelo Burton half audibly, 'have 
 not ' 
 
 There she stopped short. Only Carew heard her. He 
 looked round at her, and in a low tone asked, ' What did 
 you say ? ' 
 
 ' Nothing — nothing,' she answered. Again he whispered, 
 ' Tell me.' She paused for a moment, took one hasty glance 
 at him, and then, in a voice lower than ever, spoke : ' I was 
 going to say that 1 had not even the comfort of the illusion.' 
 
 ' You, Mr. Carew,' Lady Chislehurst was meanwhile 
 proceeding — ' you, I know, are on my side. You agree with 
 me, don't you, in what I have just told Lord Aiden ?' 
 
 ' My dear Lady — my dear friend,' said Lord Aiden, ' we 
 agree with you one and all of us. Apart from religion, I can 
 conceive of no good in life ; and of only one evil — I mean 
 democratic progress. But we none of us have any religion 
 — our want is precisely that.' 
 
 ' I think,' said Mr. Stanley, with an odd half-humorous 
 smile — ' I think, Lord Aiden, your generalisation is a little 
 too sweeping. You forget that three of us here to-night are 
 Catholics.' 
 
 'And Mr. and Mrs. Harley,' said Lady Chislehurst, 'are 
 very excellent Protestants. I can only hope that I shall see 
 them something better some day.' Harley, on hearing this, 
 laughed to himself somewhat, as Sarah did behind the tent 
 door ; but Lady Chislehurst, though angelic in many respects, 
 could not hear like the angel ; and continued quite unruffled : 
 ' There's one thing,' she said, ' about which I am quite sure. 
 If we all of us try to find the truth, we certainly shall find 
 it ; and if we all of us help each other, we shall find it still 
 more quickly.' 
 
 Carew looked at her with an odd expression on his face, 
 and then said abruptly, 'Will you join my Society ? ; 
 
 ' What Society is that? ' said Lady Chislehurst with an 
 inquiring softness. 
 
 ' A Society of people whose one link together is the wish 
 to find the truth, as you say they arc sure to find it.' And
 
 112 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ir. 
 
 Carew proceeded to explain at sufficient length the project 
 which already he had confided to Mrs. Harley. He was 
 altogether surprised at the result of his communication. He 
 was surprised at the quickness with which Lady Chislehurst 
 grasped his idea, and the enthusiasm with which she enter- 
 tained it. Even to his own mind, a moment ago it had been 
 little more than a dream ; but now that it had been seized 
 on by hers, it seemed suddenly to have become a reality. 
 
 ' Let us found your Society to-night,' she said, ' and let us 
 join it one and all of us.' 
 
 Harley for a moment sounded a mild note of discord by 
 observing that Lady Chislehurst could hardly be a seeker 
 for truth, because, according to her own principles, she 
 possessed it. But Mr. Stanley at once replied to this : — 
 
 ' I, at any rate, must claim to be numbered amongst the 
 seekers. Faith is a compass, and the object of faith is fixed ; 
 but human society is as unfixed as the sea. Winds affect it, 
 mists obscure it, and it is crossed at times by currents which 
 we call or miscall progress. Often, the more faith we put in 
 the compass the more anxious shall we be as to how to sail 
 and steer by it.' 
 
 ' In that way,' said Mrs. Harley gravely, ' I am sure we 
 must all agree with you. Putting aside the religious beliefs 
 which we do not share, I feel as fully as Mr. Stanley does 
 the perplexities which we do share. Yes — I too am one of 
 the seekers — I am one of those who require both help and 
 knowledge.' 
 
 Miss Consuelo Burton drooped her head as she mur- 
 mured, ' Of whom I am chief.' 
 
 'Well,' said Lady Chislehurst, 'let us consider that we 
 have made a beginning, and before our party breaks up here 
 we must make some arrangement with regard to our next 
 meeting. I don't know, I'm sure, what everybody's plans- 
 may be, but I should suggest, let us meet at Rome at Easter. 
 However, as to that, we have some days before us to think 
 about it, and who knows meanwhile what conclusions we 
 may not have come to. We shall expect our host,' she
 
 chap. v. THE RIDDLE OF LIFE BY MOONLIGHT 113 
 
 went on, with her most benignant smile at Carew — ' we shall 
 expect our host to be a host indeed, and to give his ideas to 
 us as well as his hospitality. He must tell us a little more 
 how he himself approaches the problem.' 
 
 ' To-morrow,' said Carew, ' I shall perhaps be able to 
 show you. Part of the secret is hidden in this chateau.' 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE RIDDLE OF LIFE BY DAYLIGHT. 
 
 Little did the guests, as they took themselves off to bed, 
 expect what the morrow was going to bring forth. Carew's 
 last words, indeed, had roused in them some slight expecta- 
 tion ; it had also been arranged that they should do what 
 they had not done yet — go round the house and see all its 
 curiosities thoroughly. But events were in store for them 
 far more startling than these, and quite as startling to Carew 
 himself as to anybody. 
 
 The morning, however, passed off calmly enough. This 
 was spent in the promised tour of sight-seeing, which had 
 been specially arranged in honour of Lady Mangotsfield, as 
 that afternoon she meant to return to Nice. She found 
 that the chateau even more than answered her expectations ; 
 and, with one exception, she was in high good humour with 
 everything. This exception was supplied by the chapel. 
 But it was not the structure or the associations of the chapel 
 itself that disturbed her : it was the sight of Lady Chisle- 
 hurst's maid, who was discovered in the act of arranging on 
 the altar two tall silver candlesticks, taken from her mistress's 
 bedroom, whilst the floor at her feet was littered with leaves 
 and flowers. 
 
 Carew, as the scene burst upon the party entering, 
 observed how Miss Consuelo Burton glanced for a moment 
 at Lady Chislehurst, first with a smile in her eyes, and then 
 a half-contemptuous irritation. Lady Chislehurst, mean- 
 while, quite unconscious of this, was saying to Carew in her 
 
 I
 
 114 THE O ld ORDER CHANGES book 11. 
 
 sweetest and most beatified accents : ' How much nicer it 
 looks now, doesn't it ? I couldn't bear to think of its being 
 left as I found it yesterday evening.' Lady Mangotsfield 
 heard the words, and took in the whole situation perfectly ; 
 but it was often her way, when she felt displeased at any- 
 thing, to affect an extreme deafness ; and turning to Carew 
 with a slight sharpness in her voice, ' What,' she said, ' have 
 you got going on here? Is that young woman going to 
 hang up a mistletoe bough ? ' Carew murmured an explana- 
 tion, which contained the name of Lady Chislehurst. ' Oh,' 
 said Lady Mangotsfield, raising her eyebrows, ' Lady Chisle- 
 hurst ! ' That was her only answer. It was given in the 
 mildest tone, and accompanied by the mildest smile, but the 
 smile and the tone between them seemed somehow to fill 
 the atmosphere with a delicate but unmistakable essence of 
 politely pitying Protestantism. Lady Chislehurst was more 
 conscious of this than any one. She was, however, quite 
 equal to the occasion ; and her own pity, which rose at a 
 moment's notice, was more than a match for that of her 
 antagonist. 'Yes, dear Lady Mangotsfield,' she said, very 
 much as if she were an angel instructing a child, ' there is 
 going to be Mass said here to-morrow morning. To-morrow 
 is Sunday, and a feast of one of the Church's saints.' 
 
 ' Sunday, my dear ! ' retorted Lady Mangotsfield, ' yes, 
 of course it's Sunday. As I always do when I'm at Nice, I 
 shall go and hear Mr. Fothergill. Come, Mr. Carew, we'll 
 look at the kitchens now.' 
 
 But it little availed her to cover her retreat thus. Lady 
 Mangotsfield felt that Lady Chislehurst was the victor, and 
 she was made to feel it again more than once afterwards. 
 Lady Chislehurst, however, fought, when she did fight, 
 simply and solely by the extra vigour of her sweetness. Her 
 charity and her conversation became like a douche of balm, 
 administered with a force just sufficient to make them sting. 
 
 ' It strikes me,' said Lady Mangotsfield at luncheon, 
 ' that you were all of you very late in getting to bed last 
 night. What were you all doing ? '
 
 chap. vi. THE RIDDLE OF LIFE BY DAYLIGHT 1 1 5 
 
 'We were out on the terrace,' said Lord Aiden, 'talking 
 and quoting poetry.' 
 
 ' We were doing more than that,' said Lady Chislehurst, 
 leaning graciously towards Lady Mangotsfield : ' we were 
 founding a Society.' 
 
 ' Eh ? What ? ' said Lady Mangotsfield, shielding her- 
 self again behind her buckler of deafness. ' What does 
 she say, Lord Aiden ? ' Lord Aiden informed her. ' Well,' 
 she continued, ' and your Society, what is it to do, pray ? ' 
 
 ' Dear Lady Mangotsfield,' said Lady Chislehurst, ' it is 
 to find, and to clear the way to, a recognition of a Catholic 
 truth.' 
 
 'It's a Society, then, is it, to make you all turn Roman 
 Catholics ? ' 
 
 ' If you like it, Lady Mangotsfield, we will drop the word 
 Catholic, and call it merely a Society for the recognition of 
 truth. It is going to be joined by many of the keenest 
 intellects in London.' 
 
 Carew and his friends stared at Lady Chislehurst, nor 
 did their wonder lessen as they listened to what followed. 
 ' We are going,' she continued, ' to have the Duke of Ang- 
 mering with us, Lady Carlton, Lady St. George, the Cardinal, 
 the Duke of Renfrew, and the Prime Minister — every one, 
 in fact, whose opinions ought to be influential.' 
 
 ' Then, in that case,' said Lady Mangotsfield, ' your 
 Society will be an exceedingly small one.' 
 
 ' Its members,' said Lady Chislehurst, ' are to have one 
 qualification, at least, which you, dear Lady Mangotsfield, 
 are quite sure to approve of. They are to be all of them 
 ladies and gentlemen.' 
 
 This information, no doubt, was in itself conciliating, and 
 several of the names just mentioned were those of person- 
 ages Lady Mangotsfield held high in honour ; but, at the 
 same time, the Society, if it meant anything, must, she felt, 
 be a species of Popish plot, and the very fact of its being 
 talked of affected her as some affront to herself. 
 
 'Well,' she said, with an odd perversity of temper, 'if 
 
 1 2
 
 Il6 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book n. 
 
 you mean your members to be all ladies and gentlemen, I 
 should advise you as soon as possible to elect Mr. — what's 
 his name — Mr. Inigo. I dare say I shall see him at Nice, 
 and if so I shall tell him all about you all. Eh, John ? 
 What's this? How did this come?' 
 
 These last words were addressed to her footman, who 
 had been standing behind her chair, with a silver tray in his 
 hand, waiting for the first moment when he might venture 
 to tender to her a letter. 
 
 ' The post-chaise,' he said, ' has just come for your 
 Ladyship, and this is a letter that was sent by Dr. William- 
 son.' 
 
 Dr. Williamson was Lady Mangotsfield's own doctor, 
 who had lived in her house for the last twenty years, and 
 generally travelled with her to attend to her health and to 
 her travelling rugs. She glanced at the letter rapidly, and 
 then, as if slightly disturbed by it, 'John,' she said, 'tell my 
 maid to come to me. Let her go into the drawing-room. 
 I will come in there to speak to her.' 
 
 She had hardly risen and reached the door, when Carew, 
 who was holding it open for her, was addressed by a servant 
 also, and for him too there was a tray with a missive lying 
 upon it. Moreover, like Lady Mangotsfield, he seemed 
 slightly disturbed by receiving it ; and murmuring some 
 excuse to his guests, he likewise left the dining-room. 
 
 ' It's exactly,' said Lord Aiden, 'like a scene in a Greek 
 play. First comes one messenger, then another. But, my 
 dear Lady,' he added, turning to Lady Chislehurst, ' our 
 Society, according to you, is far larger than we had any idea 
 of.' 
 
 ' I've no doubt,' said Lady Chislehurst, with the frankest 
 smile imaginable — ' I've no doubt that Henry Renfrew and 
 all the others would join us. Nothing is wanting but for 
 me to write and ask them ; and even if we decide on keep- 
 ing our Society to ourselves, it will have done Lady Man- 
 gotsfield good to hear what we just told her. It will have 
 woke her up a little. She is,' Lady Chislehurst added,
 
 chap. vi. THE RIDDLE OF LIFE BY DAYLIGHT WJ 
 
 pausing for a word, and almost making it classical by the 
 apologetic hesitation which prefaced it — ' she is such an old 
 stick-in-the-mud.' 
 
 A slight smile in a moment or two flickered on every 
 lip, for Lady Mangotsfield almost directly returned again, 
 and having called for some rice-pudding that had been 
 specially made for her, informed the company that her 
 departure had been put off till to-morrow, her doctor having 
 forbidden her to drive when the wind was east. ' And 
 where's our host? ' she said. ' I must tell him he'll have to 
 keep me.' 
 
 Carew, however, did not return to the table, and in a 
 very few minutes a message was brought from him to Mrs. 
 Harley, begging that she would be good enough to go out 
 and speak to him on the ramparts. 
 
 She at once rose, and hardly knowing what to expect 
 she found him with all the air of a man in some great per- 
 plexity. 
 
 ' Do you remember,' he exclaimed, as he went forward 
 to meet her, ' how I told you in my letter that I had perhaps 
 a surprise in store for you ? ' 
 
 'You did,' she said. 'But I thought we had had it 
 already — your plays, your fireworks, your musicians, and 
 your Legitimist duchesses.' 
 
 ' No, no,' said Carew, ' what I meant was something 
 quite different. In a few hours' time, who do you think will 
 arrive here ? ' 
 
 There was something in his tone which made Mrs. 
 Harley look at him anxiously. ' I can't conceive,' she said. 
 ' I hope it's no one very alarming. Tell me who is it ? ' 
 
 Carew kept her in suspense for a few moments, and then 
 said, ' Mr. P'oreman.' 
 
 Astonishment, incredulity, and something nearly akin to 
 consternation were visible on Mrs. Harley's face. 
 
 ' Mr. Foreman ! ' she echoed. ' Never — you can't pos- 
 sibly mean it ! ' 
 
 ' I do though,' said Carew, ' and I only wish I didn't.
 
 I 1 8 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book; ir. 
 
 The mine has exploded sooner than I intended. Listen a 
 moment, and I'll tell you how it happened. For the last 
 few years Foreman has known my name. Several of his 
 statements I have exposed in the papers, and he and I, in 
 that way, have had more than one passage-at-arms together. 
 We have also exchanged one or two private letters. Well, 
 as you know, I heard from you that he was at Nice ; and 
 my first impulse when you told me so, putting aside his 
 illness, would have been to kick him rather than seek his 
 company. But several things were said that night which I 
 thought over afterwards. I was struck by the interest which 
 the mention of him and his views seemed to excite in our 
 friend Miss Consuelo Burton ; and to make a long story 
 short, the morning after I dined with you — in fact, just be- 
 fore I paid you my early visit — I had a little surreptitious 
 interview with him, and hardly thinking that he would 
 dream of accepting my invitation, I suggested that whilst 
 you were with me he should come over and meet you here.' 
 
 ' Indeed,' said Mrs. Harley, still aghast at the news. 
 ' He said nothing about it to me. And did you tell him 
 who else would be here ? ' 
 
 ' If he did come,' said Carew, ' I suggested that his day 
 should be Monday. Lady Chislehurst would by that time 
 have been gone, and I never really looked on Miss Consuelo's 
 presence as a possibility. But somehow or other, he can't 
 have understood me properly, for a terrible telegram which 
 has just arrived informs me that our gentleman will be with 
 us this afternoon.' 
 
 Mrs. Harley looked down meditatively. ' It's an 
 awkward thing, I admit,' she said ; and she tapped the 
 gravel with the tip of a dainty boot. 
 
 'My great difficulty, you see,' said Carew, 'is this. 
 What will be said to the meeting by Miss Consuelo's sisters 
 by-and-by ? And what will be said to it by Lady Chisle- 
 hurst now ? As for Aiden, it will amuse him ; and he will 
 do his best to make things go smoothly.'
 
 chap. vi. THE RIDDLE OF LIFE BY DAYLIGHT 119 
 
 ' And Mr. Stanley ? ' said Mrs. Harley. 
 
 ' He will be more than amused. If I know him at all, 
 he will be interested. Indeed he is my chief hope. My 
 fear is that Foreman may say something violent ; that he 
 may horrify Lady Chislehurst ; and that in addition to a 
 scene at the moment, she may make mischief afterwards- 
 There they are at the window — Aiden and Lady Chislehurst 
 both. If I could only catch his eye, I'd get him to come 
 out and speak to us.' He at last did what he wished to do, 
 and Lord Aiden emerged. ' My dear fellow,' cried Carew, 
 ' for pity's sake come and console me. I've a live Socialist 
 coming here this afternoon — that animal Foreman who 
 spouts revolution in the parks. Please support me by tell- 
 ing me that you don't much mind meeting him.' 
 
 Lord Aiden for a second looked just a trifle annoyed ; 
 but he then said carelessly, ' Not I — I shall like it. A little 
 variety is always rather amusing. I believe, by the way, this 
 is a person of some education.' 
 
 ' Dear, yes,' said Mrs. Harley. ' He was a Fellow of a 
 College at Cambridge.' 
 
 'See,' said Carew, 'here come all the others — Miss 
 Consuelo, Frederic Stanley, and Lady Chislehurst. They're 
 not coming near us, but I had best call them. Now for it 
 — I must break the news to her ladyship. You see us, Lady 
 Chislehurst,' he said, ' in rather a troubled conclave. A 
 guest is going to arrive whom I had not at all expected, and 
 whom, I fancy, some of us may not like. I mean he's a 
 roughish man, not much used to society. He's a man who 
 spends his life in working amongst the East End poor. In 
 fact,' said Carew, taking courage as he proceeded, 'you may 
 possibly know his name, as the Cardinal takes an interest in 
 him. His name is Foreman.' 
 
 I.ady Chislehurst's face beamed with inquiring gracious- 
 ness. 'No,' she said, ' I don't think I can have heard of 
 him. But any one who interests the Cardinal is sure to be 
 worth meeting, even if he should be a little — well — not 
 quite like ourselves.' Suddenly, however, she seemed to
 
 120 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book n. 
 
 recollect something. ' He surely,' she said, ' can't have any- 
 thing to do with that horrible man Foreman, who is the 
 ringleader of the East End Socialists ? ' 
 
 Carew, in spite of his perplexity, could not help smiling 
 at this. He turned to Mrs. Harley, and with the frankness 
 of utter despair, he exclaimed aloud, ' Well, now, all the fat 
 is in the fire ! ' 
 
 The suspense for a moment was dreadful, but help was 
 almost immediate. ' I,' said Mr. Stanley, 'know the man's 
 name well enough. Tell me, Carew : he's a disciple of 
 Karl Marx, isn't he ? ' 
 
 'He is,' said Carew. 
 
 'Then, by all means,' said Mr. Stanley, 'let us welcome 
 him. There's nobody in the world I should like better to 
 have a talk with.' 
 
 In Lady Chislehurst's alarm there was a sudden and 
 miraculous lull. Still, it was with anxiety, though anxiety 
 tempered by faith, that she asked Mr. Stanley if Socialists 
 were not of necessity Atheists ; and added that, to judge of 
 them from the mob she herself had encountered, they were 
 the most sinister and desperate people she had ever seen 
 in her life. Mr. Stanley, however, replied very coolly, 
 ' That is probably why the Cardinal admires him for work- 
 ing amongst them. And as for religion, I take it the case 
 is this : a Socialist may be a good Christian, though hardly 
 a very sensible man. Still,' he added, turning to Lord 
 Aiden, ' in mere point of argument, they have a great deal 
 to say for themselves. Did you ever read Karl Marx's 
 treatise on " Capital " ? It is the profoundest piece of im- 
 perfect reasoning that I ever met with in my life ; and my 
 only wonder is that it has not made more heretics. I 
 allude, Lady Chislehurst,' he added, with a smile, ' to eco- 
 nomic heretics, not to theological ones.' 
 
 Carew seemed somewhat reassured by the turn which 
 events had taken ; but suddenly with a start, ' God bless 
 my soul ! ' he exclaimed, ' I ought to be going in, and seeing 
 something of Lady Mangotsfield.'
 
 chap. vi. THE RIDDLE OF LIFE BY DAYLIGHT 121 
 
 'Oh,' said Mrs. Harley, 'my husband is with her, amus- 
 ing her.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Carew, 'but she'll be off, I suppose, pre- 
 sently ; I must be going in and paying my last civilities 
 to her.' 
 
 A moment's silence settled on the group round him. 
 Then Mrs. Harley said, 'What! and you haven't heard?' 
 in a voice that made him feel there was still some disaster 
 in store for him. ' I forgot,' she went on ; 'of course you 
 have not. Lady Mangotsfield has been asking for you, in 
 order to let you know — that she can't go to-day, and is 
 obliged to stop till to-morrow.' 
 
 Carew was thunderstruck. ' What ! ' he stammered, 
 ' not go ? Why can't she ? ' 
 
 ' Her doctor,' said Mrs. Harley, unable to repress a 
 smile, 'won't allow her to travel in the east wind.' 
 
 Carew looked up with a blank expression of helpless- 
 ness. ' What's to be done ? ' he said. ' What do you think 
 will happen? Foreman and Lady Mangotsfield meeting at 
 one table ! — Will the world go on, or the sun ever shine 
 after it? Why was this Socialist — why was he ever born ! 
 Or why am I not possessed of all the droits of a seigneur, 
 that I might send some minion to meet him and have him 
 scragged on the road ? ' 
 
 ' I have it ! ' said Mrs. Harley, with a burst of unlooked- 
 for cheerfulness. 'Leave him to me, and I'll manage him 
 beautifully. When does he come, do you say ? At any 
 rate not till tea-time. Let me get at him before he sees 
 Lady Mangotsfield, and I'll engage that she finds him a 
 delightful person.' 
 
 All looked at Mrs. Harley with eyes of relief and 
 wonder. ' Listen,' she went on to Carew. 'You propose!, 
 I think, taking us for a drive this afternoon. Of course 
 the dear old lady won't come, and if Foreman arrives in our 
 absence ' 
 
 'That,' said Carew, 'will of course never do. I must
 
 122 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ir. 
 
 stop in, and tackle him the very moment he sets foot in the 
 precincts.' 
 
 ' No,' said Mrs. Harley, ' there is no occasion for that. 
 Before we go out I will write him a letter, which your ser- 
 vants must give him before he sees anybody. Lady Man- 
 gotsfield, ten to one, will be in her own room ; but even if 
 they do meet, my letter will have made him harmless. 
 Stay, my husband will not drive. He shall prepare Lady 
 Mangotsfield. You may tell her that a Mr. Foreman is 
 coming ; and George shall manage the rest.' 
 
 Miss Consuelo Burton had listened to all this intently ; 
 and when by-and-by the carriages came for their drive — 
 two carriages, which were a large barouche and a pony-cart 
 — she found herself, by design or accident, in the latter, with 
 Mr. Stanley. This arrangement was a slight disappoint- 
 ment to Carew, and often during the drive, he saw, with a 
 glance of envy, with what animation and earnestness she 
 was talking to her companion. But on going home the 
 Fates were entirely kind to him. It seemed to suit every 
 one that Miss Consuelo should be faithful to the pony-cart, 
 and Carew, in the most natural way, changed places with 
 Mr. Stanley. 
 
 ' I little thought, Miss Burton,' he said presently — ' I 
 little thought, the other evening at Nice, that a few days 
 later I should be driving you here, and still less that I 
 should be on the point of welcoming Foreman as a visitor. 
 Do you know this ? it was partly the interest you expressed 
 in him that made me think of asking him if he would come 
 to me. Are you pleased at the thought of seeing him ? ' 
 
 ' I am,' she said gravely, with downcast eyes. ' I have 
 been talking about him to Mr. Stanley. Of the man him- 
 self I know nothing. It is his work and his views I care 
 for.' 
 
 ' He's a little uncouth, but perhaps you will not mind 
 that.' 
 
 ' No,' she said, laughing, ' I don't think I shall. He 
 might drop his h's and not be dressed for dinner, and in all
 
 chap. vi. THE RIDDLE OF LIFE BY DAYLIGHT 1 23 
 
 probability I should not even notice it — at least it would 
 make no matter to me.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Carew, ' he's not quite so bad as that.' 
 
 ' I always feel,' she went on, pursuing her own line of 
 thought, ' that any one can meet any one with ease, whatever 
 their social distance, when they meet upon points that are 
 of equal concern to both. In a relation like that it is absurd 
 to feel any difference, as in any other it is to affect equality. 
 Besides, if Mr. Foreman is a little rough, he will be all the 
 more of a change from Lady Chislehurst.' 
 
 ' I saw,' said Carew, ; when we went into the chapel this 
 morning, your look of amusement at the signs of Lady 
 Chislehurst's zeal. I was amused myself — I confess it ; and 
 yet — will you let me say it to you ? — I was shocked at seeing 
 that my amusement was shared by you. Yes/ he went on, 
 when he found that she did not speak ; ' by you, whose posi- 
 tion is so far other than mine. I know I should feel, if that 
 altar meant to me even a tithe of what it, of course, must mean 
 to you, that no act of homage done to it, supposing it done 
 sincerely, could be really ridiculous, no matter how ill- 
 judged. Perhaps you would laugh at the dolls' frocks and 
 the tinsel that the Italian peasant delights to see on the 
 Madonna. I don't laugh ; the tinsel to him is beautiful ; 
 and his doll is to me like a child's half-articulate hymn. 
 But perhaps it is natural that you should treat things as you 
 do. Every one knows that man must live by food, but food 
 is a jest to those who have never known famine.' 
 
 ' What ! ' she exclaimed, ' and am I altogether a riddle 
 to you? I'm stupid, I know, whenever 1 try to explain my- 
 self; but still, with your cleverness, I thought you might 
 have seen something. I can as little understand why you 
 are not a Catholic as you can understand why I am not 
 satisfied with Catholicism. There— did you hear that? 
 There I go again, saying just what I don't mean. I had 
 better not talk at all, or else I shall give you scandal. -Mr. 
 Stanley knows my meaning— at least I think he does. But 
 you — how shall I put it to you?' She was silent for some
 
 124 THE 0LD ORDER CHANGES book it. 
 
 moments, and then she broke out abruptly, 'The world is 
 changing, and the Church stands apart from the change.' 
 
 ' What change ? ' said Carew. 
 
 ' Oh, I don't know,' she said hurriedly. ' At least I can't 
 describe it to you. It is the change we were talking of last 
 night at dinner. I feel it. It is in the streets ; it is every- 
 where. It must come, and we must take our part in it' 
 
 ' Well ? ' said Carew, as she was silent, though evidently 
 still wishing to speak. 
 
 ' And what,' she went on at last, with a sound like a 
 stifled sob — 'what has the Mass got to do with this? It 
 might have so much, but at present it has nothing. It dis- 
 tracts us from our duty ; it does not nerve us to follow it. 
 What right have I to be listening to the singing of angels, 
 when outside the chancel wall are the groans of the crowded 
 alley? Often, often, often, when I have heard the organ 
 playing, " Hang the organ ! " I have thought ; " let me listen 
 to the crying of the children ! " Think of this ; it is a scene 
 I shall always remember. I used once to go to lectures at 
 the Royal Institution ; and arriving one night at the door, 
 I saw through a lower window two professors, discussing 
 what apparently was a fossil. I see their faces now — grand 
 intellectual faces, full of what I suppose it is right to call 
 elevation. And just outside, only a few paces away from 
 them, were two cabmen, quarrelling over a pot of beer. 
 What two different worlds were there side by side ; and 
 what good did the higher do to the lower? Look at me — 
 do you think I am worldly? Perhaps you don't ; but I am. 
 I am fond of dress, I am fond of gaiety, I am fond of 
 admiration. I have everything in my nature that I ought 
 not to have ; and yet my one wish at one time was to enter 
 a convent : I believe, too, that I had a vocation. But now,' 
 she said, clasping her hands, and speaking with a nervous 
 earnestness, ' I could never endure that. I shall never 
 again feel, till I learn how to work for others, that it is more 
 than solemn child's-play to be feathering my own spiritual 
 nest.'
 
 chap. vii. A MAN WITH A NEW ANSWER 1 25 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A MAN WITH A NEW ANSWER. 
 
 The pony-cart reached the chateau before the large car- 
 riage ; and Carew, having exchanged a few words with the 
 concierge, turned to Miss Consuelo Burton and said, 'The 
 great prophet has come. Let us wait here for Mrs. Harley. 
 I have sent for her husband, and before we meet Foreman 
 it is absolutely necessary that we all hold a council.' 
 
 ' I suppose,' said Miss Consuelo, who had recovered her 
 usual spirits, ' he will not have hoofs and a tail. If I must 
 confess the truth, I am beginning to get nervous.' 
 
 The others arrived presently ; and at almost the same 
 moment Harley emerged from the house, with a smile of 
 subdued amusement. His wife hurried up to him ; they 
 had a brief consultation, and then, at Carew's request, the 
 whole party, witli all the feelings of conspirators, retired into 
 a disused room facing that of the concierge. 
 
 ' Well ? ' said Carew, and he paused, turning to the 
 Harleys, as if to indicate that it was they who were looked 
 to for instruction. 
 
 'Everything has happened,' said Mrs. Harley, 'just as I 
 hoped it would. There is only one thing that we must 
 remember to do, and that is to avoid certain subjects. Let 
 us keep as clear as we can of property and the wrongs of 
 the poor ; and if we must talk politics let it be party politics 
 only. Foreman is an enthusiast, and, like most enthusiasts, 
 he has a temper almost as bad as a naughty child's in a 
 nursery. Social politics might bring us to grief in a moment. 
 He might fire up at a phrase ; his eyes would roll and 
 glitter, and we should have him exploding as if he were a 
 packet of dynamite. But keep him on party politics, and 
 all will go more than well.' 
 
 Every one saw that there was something else to come ; 
 and after a slight pause Mrs. Harley went on again.
 
 126 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES hook li. 
 
 ' You will, I dare say, be amused and surprised to hear 
 that Foreman at one time either was or thought he was a 
 Conservative; and if he had not been snubbed by some of 
 the understrappers of the party, he would have been pro- 
 phesying the millennium in the capacity of a Conservative 
 candidate. Well, on one point he is still as sound as ever, 
 and that is his contempt for the Liberal, above all for the 
 Radical party. Let us keep him on that, and his words 
 will be music to Lady Mangotsfield. There is, however, 
 one preliminary difficulty. He is not very polished and not 
 very compromising in his ways, and Lady Mangotsfield 
 would be wondering who this strange person was, and why 
 he should be presuming to have any opinions at all. Now, 
 it so happened that during his Conservative days he had 
 several conversations on the labour question with Lord 
 
 B , and Lord B really listened to him with a great 
 
 deal of attention. I have therefore got George, whilst we 
 have been out driving, to recount and, so far as he could 
 without imperilling his soul, to magnify this incident to Lady 
 Mangotsfield ; and the result is, that when she sees Foreman 
 this evening she expects to meet some one, having an 
 
 historical interest, as a specimen of Lord B 's sagacity 
 
 in detecting genius beneath an uncouth exterior.' 
 
 ' I told her, too,' added Harley — ' and it is just as well to 
 say that we have really not been obliged to go beyond the 
 truth — I told her that Foreman's chief and most bitter 
 opponents, at the time when he was anxious to come forward 
 as a candidate for Marylebone, were the big shopkeepers 
 and the vestrymen. "Ah !" she said, "what a pity that 
 things are changed ! In the good times we might have easily 
 found a borough for him." ' 
 
 ' And where is he now ? ' said Carew. 
 
 ' In the room where the tea is,' said Harley, ' counting 
 the tea-cups, and wondering who's going to drink out of 
 them.' 
 
 ' Listen ! ' said Mrs. Harley ; ' whilst you are all of you 
 getting your things off, I will go to him and stroke him the
 
 chap. vii. A MAN WITH A NFAV ANSWER 1 27 
 
 right way a little. I told him in my note something of what 
 we should expect of him ; and unless unhappily his temper 
 should get the better of him, he has a certain sense of humour, 
 and will fall in with our plans.' 
 
 She had not apparently indulged in any exaggerated 
 promises ; and when the rest of the party — all except Lady 
 Mangotsfield — met together again, about half an hour after- 
 wards, they found that she and Carew had the Socialist tame 
 in a chair, and were between them offering tea and cake to 
 him. He was a man of perhaps forty, with a broad forehead 
 and quick but genial eyes, and though there was a coarseness 
 in the actual shape of his features, and a certain wildness 
 in his bushy moustache and beard, his expression was intel- 
 lectual and by no means without refinement. The only 
 immediate sign of any divergence in him from common good- 
 breeding was a certain easiness and want of deferent distance 
 in his manner of acknowledging his introduction to the 
 various strangers. For the rest, there was little to distinguish 
 him from any average man who, without many social 
 advantages, had been brought up at a university. There 
 was little, and yet there was one thing. This was a certain 
 air as if he were something or somebody — as if he possessed, 
 or at least represented, a power, which it quietly amused him 
 to see that the others but half realised. 
 
 Nothing could be better than the way in which matters 
 began. Lord Aiden shook hands with him humanely, as if 
 he were some zoological curiosity ; Mr. Stanley did so with 
 a keener and far friendlier interest ; and Miss Consuelo, 
 Jjiirton fixed her eyes on him, as if he were a sphinx who, 
 with regard to the social riddle, not only asked, but was 
 perhaps able to answer, it. Airs. Harley was anxious about 
 no one except Lady Chislehurst ; and Lady Chislehurst in 
 a moment sent all such anxiety to the winds. Graciousness 
 hardly describes her manner as she approached Foreman. 
 It seemed as if a flock of blessings Hew out of her mouth 
 when she spoke to him, and settled all over him, even upon 
 the back of his chair : nor had many sentences passed
 
 128 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ir. 
 
 between them before she was attacking him with the magic 
 name of the Cardinal. 
 
 ' Yes,' he answered, smiling, ' the Cardinal means well, 
 but ' 
 
 He looked at Lady Chislehurst ; and to all but Lady 
 Chislehurst herself the pause expressed a reserved contempt 
 for Cardinals, far too complete to have any tincture of hos- 
 tility. It was plain, however, that he had every wish to 
 be civil ; and, clearing his throat, he added a moment after- 
 wards : ' In one point at least we Socialists agree with you. 
 The first great wrong ever done to the English people was, 
 in our estimation, the theft of the monastic properties.' 
 
 He spoke calmly and pleasantly ; but Carew could not 
 help observing that his hands for a second clenched them- 
 selves, as if in unconscious anger. 
 
 Lady Chislehurst was charmed with what she had heard. 
 ' Yes, of course,' she said. ' The Church was always the 
 best friend of the poor. Mr. Foreman, let me give you 
 another cup of tea ; and come, I must get rid of that nasty 
 slop in your saucer for you.' 
 
 ' Mr. Foreman,' interposed Mrs. Harley, ' please let me 
 remind you that you are under a solemn compact with us 
 not to say anything till to-morrow — Lady Mangotsfield goes 
 to-morrow, doesn't she, Mr. Carew ? — not to say anything 
 till then about such dangerous matters as " we Socialists." 
 And yet — George, we must ask him this before we go up to 
 dress for dinner — tell us, Mr. Foreman, about your social- 
 istic candidates. He,' she added, explaining her question 
 to the others, ' has twenty Socialist friends, who are stand- 
 ing at this election.' 
 
 'Yes, Foreman,' said Harley, 'tell us about your candi- 
 dates. You surely don't expect to get all of them in — or 
 indeed any of them ? ' 
 
 Mrs. Harley looked at her husband with some anxiety. 
 ' Do let him take care,' she murmured to herself, ' or we 
 shall be having a scene in no time ! ' 
 
 Foreman meanwhile had sat straight up in his chair ;
 
 chap. vii. A MAN WITH A NEW ANSWER 1 29 
 
 and though his expression had not ceased to be friendly, a 
 flush of excitement had mounted into his cheek, and there 
 was a momentary glance in his eyes like a flash of faint 
 sheet-lightning. 'No,' he said, '/ am expecting to get in 
 nobody: for revolutions are things that are never made by 
 an individual — anymore than they are ever stopped by one. 
 But you are right as to twenty successes. Those I do not 
 expect: but in the next Parliament, as sure as I sit here, 
 the Social Revolution will have at least fifteen represen- 
 tatives.' 
 
 'My dear Foreman,' said Harley, 'you are a master of 
 statistical prophecy.' 
 
 'Does any one remember,' said Lord Aiden, 'what was 
 the number of the Beast ? Because I have sometimes 
 fancied it might be the number of the existing House of 
 Commons.' 
 
 This pleasantry seemed hugely to tickle Foreman ; and 
 he startled the company by bursting into vociferous laughter. 
 ' Capital ! ' he gasped, as by degrees he recovered himself. 
 1 A middle-class House of Commons, a parliament of Japhet 
 Snappers ! I doubt if any prophet ever foresaw such a 
 Beast as that. Allow me, however, with regard to my own 
 Apocalypse, to say that my statistics have not been revealed 
 to me in an ecstasy. They are based on the books of the 
 League of Social Democrats, which allow us to test the rate 
 at which our opinions spread.' 
 
 'Suppose,' said Mrs. Harley, who saw here an oppor- 
 tunity for interrupting him — ' suppose you tell us about all 
 that to-morrow; and at dinner, if you would wish to make 
 somebody really happy, tell Lady Mangotsfield what you 
 think of the House of Commons. By the way,' she hurried 
 on, determined to change the conversation, which she saw 
 had already begun to alarm Lady Chislehurst, 'talking of 
 books, Mr. Foreman, is this book yours ? I found you 
 reading it, and I have only just seen what it was.' 
 
 ' What is it ? ' cried several voices. 
 
 'What !' said Mrs. Harley, holding it up. 'It is one of 
 
 K
 
 130 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book n. 
 
 Thackeray's novels. I'm surprised that Mr. Foreman, who 
 wants to reform away everything, should condescend to be 
 amused at such a trifling writer as Thackeray, whose whole 
 view of life was confined to polite society.' 
 
 'Oh,' exclaimed Foreman, rubbing his hands, and rais- 
 ing his eyes to the ceiling with a thoughtful leer of apprecia- 
 tion, 'Thackeray to me is delicious— absolutely and alto- 
 gether delicious. He's the greatest political novelist of this 
 or of any country. Of no party movement has there been 
 ever so exquisite an analysis as that which forms the sub- 
 stance of all Thackeray's novels. It's worth all the histories 
 of modern Radicalism put together.' 
 
 Lord Aiden eyed Foreman with a stare of tolerant curi- 
 osity ; and then turning to Harley, who stood next him, ' I 
 don't know,' he said, ' about Thackeray's politics ; but of all 
 great novelists he is to my mind by far the most vulgar.' 
 
 ' Vulgar ! ' replied Foreman, who caught the word. ' Of 
 course he is vulgar— gloriously vulgar ! ' and here he began 
 laughing ; but his laugh was abruptly drowned by the over- 
 powering clang of the dressing-bell. 
 
 'Mr. Foreman,' said Mrs. Harley, as they were all pre- 
 paring to separate, ' you have been talking riddles to us. 
 At dinner we shall call on you to explain yourself. I think/ 
 she added to Lady Chislehurst, as they were leaving the 
 room together, ' Thackeray's novels and Mr. Snapper's in- 
 iquities ought to see us safely through the evening — at least 
 till Lady Mangotsfield has retired.' 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE PROPHET RESTRAINS HIMSELF. 
 
 Mrs. Harley proved eventually to have been not far 
 wrong in her anticipations ; though there was one dreadful 
 moment which made her fear she had been so. This was 
 the moment of Foreman's introduction to Lady Mangotsfield. 
 The great lady, as soon as he was brought up to her, raised
 
 chap. tiii. THE PROPHET RESTRAINS HIMSELF 131 
 
 her wrinkled eyelids with a mild benignity, and was inclining 
 her head very slightly but encouragingly, in recognition of 
 
 Lord B 's political foundling, when the foundling, to her 
 
 astonishment, had actually the presumption to say that ' he 
 was very much pleased to meet her and make her acquaint- 
 ance.' He said it, too, in a voice that had actually the 
 presumption to be genial ; and he filled up the measure of 
 his audacity by unhesitatingly holding out his hand to her. 
 
 Lady Mangotsfield gave as good a start as she had done 
 on the previous evening at the mention of Mr. Snapper ; 
 and raising her eyeglass as her greeting died on her lips, she 
 scrutinised Foreman from head to foot, wondering, so it 
 seemed, if he could really be the person she had heard 
 about. At last she said, very much in the same tone she 
 she might have used when engaging a servant bringing a 
 doubtful character : ' You used, I think, to know Lord 
 B , didn't you ? ' 
 
 ' Oh yes,' said Foreman, perfectly unabashed. ' I used 
 at one time to have many conversations with him.' 
 
 1 And is it true,' she went on, ' that he wanted to put you 
 into Parliament ? ' 
 
 It was now Foreman's turn to start, and Mrs. Harley, 
 who was watching him, said afterwards that at this question 
 his very beard was beginning to bristle. Luckily, however, 
 before he had time to answer, dinner was announced, and 
 his arm was claimed by Mrs. Harley, Lady Mangotsfield 
 being carried off by Carew. 
 
 At dinner things were on a securer footing. Foreman 
 was placed in very excellent custody. Mr. Stanley was on 
 one side of him, and Mrs. Harley on the other; whilst 
 Carew divided Mrs. Harley from Lady Mangotsfield. Fore- 
 man in this position was almost powerless for mischief, and 
 his conversation became little more than a tap which those 
 near him could turn on and off as they chose. Mrs. Harley 
 felt now quite in her element, and everything went exactly 
 as she designed it. 'I forget. Lady Mangotsfield,' she 
 began, 'if you are an admirer of Thackeray? We were 
 
 k 2
 
 132 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book n. 
 
 talking of him just before dinner, and we were having a 
 grand dispute about him.' 
 
 'There's nobody like him now, my dear,' said Lady 
 Mangotsfield ; ' not so clever, I mean. When his books 
 came out I read them— so we all of us did. But I didn't 
 like them. There was always a vulgar tone in them. What 
 does Lord Aiden say ? ' 
 
 'I,' Lord Aiden replied, 'say exactly the same thing; 
 except that I think I should put it in stronger langunge. 
 You, Mr. Foreman, hold also the same opinion?' 
 
 Lady Mangotsfield again put up her eyeglass and looked 
 at Foreman, as if in bewilderment as to what a man like that 
 should know about such a subject. Mrs. Harley meanwhile 
 was joining issue with all of them. 
 
 ' I confess,' she was saying, ' I can't see what you mean. 
 You call Thackeray vulgar. Why, he was always lashing 
 vulgarity.' 
 
 ' If he was,' exclaimed Foreman, breaking out into a 
 chuckling laugh—' if he was, he was like Job, scraping his 
 own sores.' 
 
 Lady Mangotsfield dropped her eyeglass. She looked 
 more surprised than ever ; but the surprise changed its 
 character. Her withered lips worked themselves into a 
 smile, and leaning a little forwards, with a voice of tremu- 
 lous approbation, 'That's very coarse, Mr. Foreman,' she 
 said, 'but it's very true — very true indeed.' 
 
 'Mr. Foreman, however,' said Lord Aiden, ' thinks one 
 thing which I confess I don't understand. He thinks that 
 Thackeray was our chief political novelist' 
 
 ' Oh no,' said Lady Mangotsfield, shaking her head as 
 if that answered the question — ' oh no ; poor dear Lord 
 
 B was that. No political novels were ever written 
 
 like his.' 
 
 ' Excuse me,' said Foreman, ' but Thackeray exhibited 
 
 what Lord B hardly tried to describe, and that is the 
 
 origin of the modern Radical party — the party which calls 
 itself the party of the working-men and cf the people.'
 
 chap. Tin. THE PROPHET RESTRAINS HIMSELF 133 
 
 'In Thackeray's days,' said Lady Mangotsfield, 'there 
 was no such a party existing. We were all very good to the 
 poor, but nobody cared anything about the people. Poli- 
 ticians in those days were gentlemen.' 
 
 ' Do you think the Radical party,' said Foreman, 'cares 
 anything about the people now — or about the poor either? 
 Not they. I've watched them for twenty years, and the one 
 
 idea in their minds ' He paused and looked round the 
 
 table to see if he was being listened to. He was. There 
 was silence, and then he resumed his sentence. ' The one 
 idea in their minds is precisely the same idea that occupies 
 Thackeray's mind through every one of his novels.' 
 
 'And pray,' said Lady Chislehurst, 'what idea is that?' 
 
 ' The uneasy and envious inferiority of a bourgeoisie in 
 contact with an aristocracy,' said Foreman, in a voice so 
 emphatic that it seemed to defy dissent. ' Every virtue and 
 every vice is measured in his mind by its relation to that : 
 and this essentially limited and middle-class source of 
 temptation is for him the supreme evil that man has to 
 struggle with.' 
 
 ' Perfectly true,' said Lord Aiden. ' No criticism could 
 be truer.' 
 
 ' I,' said Mrs. Haiiey, ' can't admit that for a moment. 
 Of Thackeray's own character we are of course none of us 
 talking : we are talking of the class which Mr. Foreman 
 says is analysed by him, and I quite deny that either in 
 Thackeray's books or in reality their lives as a rule are filled 
 by this one idea he speaks of. I have known — I know— 
 any number of the unmistakable middle-class myself ' 
 
 'My dear,' interposed Lady Mangotsfield, 'I'm sure you 
 know a number of shocking people.' 
 
 'And I can only say,' Mrs. Harley continued, 'that 
 simpler people, people more unworldly, and less pushing I 
 never met with in my life.' 
 
 'You misunderstand me,' said Foreman. 'Two thirds 
 of the middle-class are Conservative. You may take their 
 content. I willingly make you a present of it. I am talking
 
 134 THE 0LD ORDER CHANGES book ii. 
 
 only of the one third, which is Radical, and that one 
 third represents human nature for Thackeray. According 
 to Thackeray man has only two temptations — to fawn on 
 his superiors, or else to spit in their faces. Had he not 
 shown us with all the force of his genius that there are men 
 of whom this is really true, it would for many of us be very 
 difficult to believe it. But there are such men — there is a 
 whole class of them ; and the Radicalism of to-day is the 
 expression of their corporate character. In Thackeray's 
 days, Lady Mangotsfield, they had not learnt how to express 
 it. Will you allow me to tell you out of my own humble life 
 a little anecdote which will help to explain my meaning ? In 
 the country town where I used to live when a boy, the great 
 lady was the doctor's wife, Mrs. Hopkins, and Dr. Hopkins 
 had no more admiring patient than Mrs. Skinner, the wife 
 of the wealthiest draper. Well, one Christmas Mrs. Hop- 
 kins gave two memorable parties : the first for her best 
 friends, the second for her second best. Mrs. Skinner — I 
 remember the event now — poor soul, she was asked to the 
 second ; and she met the wife of the butcher, and was given 
 a stale mince-pie. From that day forth the doctor, once so 
 infallible, became, according to her, an ignorant brazen 
 quack, and she threatened to go to law with him for having 
 sent her the wrong prescription. Now, in place of the 
 Hopkinses put the gentlemen of the country. ■ Take the 
 condition of good Mrs. Skinner's mind, give it political 
 instead of private libel to work with, and there you have a 
 complete and accurate image of our Radical leaders when 
 they pretend to a popular policy. Snapper, for instance, 
 after a public meeting — a public meeting at which he has 
 been denouncing the landlords, were there only some talis- 
 man that could force his real thoughts from him, no fun 
 since the world began could equal it ! Bless my soul, with 
 him and with all his followers, the real grievance is that 
 they cannot dine with dukes, not that millions of wage-slaves 
 can get no dinners at all.' 
 
 ' Perfectly true,' said Lady Mangotsfield to Carew. ' I
 
 chap. Tin. THE PROPHET RESTRAINS HIMSELF 135 
 
 never heard anything truer ; if only the dear man would 
 make a little less noise about it.' 
 
 ' Mr. Foreman,' said Mrs. Harley, 'since when have you 
 become so exclusive ? ' 
 
 Foreman stared at her. 'I can't imagine what you 
 mean,' he said. 
 
 'I am thinking,' said Mrs. Harley, 'of the magnificent 
 way in which you contrast Mr. Snapper with the gentlemen 
 of the country, who seem according to you to be synonymous 
 with the country gentleman.' 
 
 ' They are so,' said Foreman, squaring his elbows and 
 leaning on them, ' the country gentlemen and their families. 
 I am quite aware that to many this use of the word is 
 offensive, for to many people there is nothing so offensive 
 as truth. But a gentleman is a man who is born in a 
 certain way ; he is the same thing as a gentilhomme, and 
 any other definition, as Dr. Johnson says, is fantastic. I 
 am myself not a gentleman any more than I am a negro. 
 By birth I belong to the middle classes, and, thanks to my 
 opinions, I belong to no class at all.' 
 
 'Really, Mr. Foreman,' began Lady Chislehurst, 'a 
 
 man of your intellect and education ' But Foreman 
 
 politely interrupted her. 
 
 'Excuse me,' he said, ' I know what you would tell me 
 exactly. You would tell me that I was a gentleman because 
 I was a man of education, and in one sense you would 
 speak sincerely. But would you say the same, I should 
 like to know, if I wished to marry your daughter? ' 
 
 Had such a question been asked with any trace of per- 
 sonal feeling, it would naturally have produced the most 
 awkward situation imaginable. But Foreman smiled as he 
 spoke with the most perfect and most phlegmatic apathy, 
 and though Lady Chislehurst coloured at the first moment, 
 a giance at his face at once made her calm again. As 
 for Lady Mangotsfield, she needed no calming whatever. 
 
 ' A nice unassuming person, this friend of yours," she 
 said to Carew, and then turning her glasses on Foreman
 
 136 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book 11. 
 
 with a twinkle of condescending encouragement, ' If every 
 one else,' she said, ' were like you, Mr. Foreman, England 
 would not long be in the state it is at present.' 
 
 ' By God ! ' roared Foreman, ' you are perfectly right 
 there.' 
 
 Lady Mangotsfield's last sentence had been too much 
 for him. Everybody stared at him thunderstruck — every- 
 body but Lady Mangotsfield herself. As for her, she merely 
 turned to Carew, and wrinkling her forehead, as if the 
 sound had pained her, ' It's a pity,' she said, ' that in his 
 manners he's not a little more what one could wish him. 
 But on the whole I like him. He speaks the truth, and he 
 don't pretend to be a gentleman.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Lord Aiden to Foreman, as they were 
 strolling into the drawing-room, laying his hand as he spoke 
 on the other's shoulder, ' I always thought myself this 
 social envy of the landlords was really at the bottom of the 
 popular philanthropy of the Radicals.' 
 
 'Well,' said Foreman, with a grim though good-natured 
 smile, ' we Socialists shall cure them of that at least, for we 
 shall by-and-by leave the landlords very little to envy.' 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE PROPHET'S FIRST THUNDERS. 
 
 If Lady Mangotsfield liked Foreman during dinner, her 
 liking did not prove to be a very durable feeling, though, 
 to do her justice, it only departed gradually. They had 
 hardly been in the drawing-room five minutes before he had 
 returned of his own accord to the subject which the others, 
 for his sake, would have studiously avoided. 
 
 'We were talking at dinner, Lady Chislehurst,' he began, 
 
 ' about gentlemen and not gentlemen. I am told that the 
 
 other night you had Le Bourgeois Gentiliiomme acted here. 
 
 Do you remember what Cleonte says to Monsieur Jourdain : 
 
 Je vous dirai ' franchemcnt que je nc suis point gentilhomme?
 
 hap. ix. the prophet's first thunders 137 
 
 If only our bourgeoisie had the same common sense in 
 England ! As for me, my own parentage was this : my 
 father was a small grocer, my mother was the daughter of 
 a parson. She married against the will of her family ; in 
 your class you would say she made a mesalliance. The 
 parson's father was an auctioneer, and from him, at his son's 
 death, there descended to my mother some fifteen thousand 
 pounds— enough to maintain, and it did maintain, a family 
 in that swinish comfort which the middle classes adore, and 
 which tends to foster a viler type of life than anything does, 
 except the lowest stage of privation.' 
 
 'Well,' said Lady Mangotsfield to Lord Aiden, as if 
 making the best of things, ' he's quite right not to be 
 ashamed of his parents, though he needn't think we're so 
 anxious to hear all about his private affairs.' 
 
 1 1 don't want,' Loreman was meanwhile proceeding, 
 unconsciously anticipating this criticism — ' I don't want to 
 trouble you with my own biography; I only want to show 
 you this — from what position I look out upon the world, 
 and how perfectly free I am from aristocratic bias when I 
 criticise, as I have done, the middle-class Radical party. I 
 have left my own class, but I have not tried to enter yours, 
 except as a curious observer. That I have done, and in so 
 impartial a spirit that I could, if I liked, give my own 
 impressions of you with as little prejudice as if you were 
 South Sea Islanders.' 
 
 A slight cloud was gathering on Lady Mangotsfield's 
 face. Lady Chislehurst's, on the contrary, was brightening 
 with the sunlight of inquiry. 'Well,' she said, 'give us 
 some of your impressions-- do ! We are all listening. No- 
 thing could interest us more. I feel,' she added, as she 
 smoothed down her rustling silk, 'just as if one was going 
 to hear one's character told from one's hand.' 
 
 'You want to know,' said Foreman, looking round him, 
 ' what I, an outsider, think of you. I'm very blunt ; I go 
 to the point at once. I think, then, that you, the ladies 
 and the gentlemen of England, are the only people who
 
 1^8 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ir. 
 
 J 
 
 behave like ladies and gentlemen; for all such behaviour is 
 based upon one thing— a sense of inherited and unworked- 
 for superiority. Other classes, no doubt, may try to copy 
 it, but they have not the sense I speak of, so the copy is 
 merely a sham. It is as meaningless as a portcullis would 
 be at the gate of a Clapham villa.' 
 
 ' Come,' interposed Mrs. Harley, ' I shall make a stand 
 now in earnest. If you are going to talk again about what 
 classes are vulgar and not vulgar, I must at any rate tell 
 you this. I've met with more vulgarity and more snob- 
 bishness in the very highest sections of society than I ever 
 have done in any other. And as for refinement, cultivation, 
 and real consideration for others, I could show you these 
 in every grade of the middle classes — yes, and amongst the 
 workmen too.' 
 
 ' My dear Mrs Harley,' said Lord Aiden, 'that I can 
 well believe. A snob is simply a person, no matter what 
 his station, who judges aristocratic society by the standards 
 and with the feelings of the middle class : and many fine 
 people, now classes are so jostled together, have learnt to 
 do this, as we all of us here must know.'" 
 
 'There's more truth,' exclaimed Foreman, 'in what you 
 have just said than perhaps your Lordship appreciates. 
 Those qualities, Mrs. Harley, which you just now named to 
 us— they make a man better than a gentleman, but they 
 don't make him a gentleman, and I can't think why you 
 should try to prove they do.' 
 
 'Dear Lady Mangotsfield,' said Lady Chislehurst, 'and 
 what is your view of the matter ? ' 
 
 'What, my dear? What?' said Lady Mangotsfield 
 sharply. ' I've not been listening to what has been said 
 lately. I don't at all understand what it all is you have 
 been talking about.' This reply was accompanied by a 
 slight rustling sound ; and the party then perceived that 
 Lady Mangotsfield had a newspaper in front of her, and 
 either was, or was at least pretending to be, quite uncon- 
 scious of the conversation. It was all very well, she
 
 chap. ix. THE PROPHETS FIRST THUNDERS 139 
 
 thought, that Foreman should admit lie was not a gentle- 
 man, and should expose the malcontents of his own rank in 
 life with the authority that comes of near acquaintanceship. 
 It might even be borne — though this was perhaps a liberty 
 — that he should compliment gentlemen on the superiority 
 of their breeding. But that he should presume to go into 
 such niceties as what good breeding was, and that her 
 friends should be discussing with him -the son of a small 
 grocer — the most delicate social problems that occupy high 
 society — this was more than Lady Mangotsfield could endure. 
 A copy of the ' Figaro ' had happened to be beside her, which 
 afforded her the means of making a silent protest; and though 
 it is true she was holding it upside down, she managed to 
 fix her eyes on it with an air of severe abstraction. 
 
 'We've been talking,' said Lady Chislehurst, 'about the 
 difference between snobs and gentlemen. We thought it 
 was a subject in which you took a good deal of interest.' 
 
 ' Xot I, my dear,' said Lady Mangotsfield. ' I don't know 
 anything about snobs. In my day we used to have nothing 
 to do with them. Mr. Carew, may I ask you to light me a 
 candle and ring for my servant. I think I will go upstairs 
 now. I shall have a great deal,' she added as she was going 
 out of the door — ' I shall have a great deal to tell that fine 
 gentleman, Mr. Inigo, if I see him. He, I've no doubt, will 
 be charmed to hear all about it.' 
 
 It was well for Lady Mangotsfield's feelings that she left 
 the scene when she did, for Foreman, despite her inattention, 
 was fast warming with his subject, and all the others were 
 anxious to keep him going. Hardly had Lady Mangotsfield 
 had the door closed upon her, when he had again fastened 
 on Mrs. Harley and caught up the thread of his argument. 
 
 ' Why, Mrs. I larley,' he said, ' should you be so anxious to 
 prove all your virtuous friends gentlemen? And why, Lady 
 ( 'hislehurst, should you be shy of denying the title to me? 
 The distinction really is hardly worth fighting for. You and 
 your friends will possess it a little longer, but nobody will 
 possess it for long. When it goes it will be a pretty thing
 
 140 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book it. 
 
 lost ; but it is merely a pretty thing now, though once it was 
 much more.' 
 
 ' And why,' said Lady Chislehurst, ' do you think it need 
 go at all ? ' 
 
 ' And why, pray,' said Mrs. Harley, ' should it not be 
 shared by everybody ? ' 
 
 ' Why ? ' echoed Foreman. ' For a precious simple reason. 
 Because you can never turn everybody into a small and 
 exceptional class. That is why you can't confer it on others. 
 Before very long you will have ceased to be exceptional ; and 
 this is why you will soon lose it yourselves. How do you 
 differ from the wealthy middle classes ? In this — that along 
 with your wealth you have traditions of hereditary power and 
 usefulness. Well, your part is played ; you are useful and 
 powerful no longer. Don't think I speak from any ill feeling 
 against an aristocracy as such. As a Socialist — I suppose, 
 Mrs. Harley, I may use that terrible word now — as a Socialist, 
 I regard you as the survival of a class that was once both 
 noble and necessary : whereas the modern middle class, the 
 slave-driving bourgeoisie, has been bad from the very begin- 
 ning, and every day it is growing worse.' 
 
 ' Do you think,' said Carew, ' that, supposing we made 
 an effort, there would be a chance for us still of retrieving a 
 lost position?' 
 
 ' No,' said Foreman bluffly, ' I don't think, Mr. Carew, 
 that there would ; and if you like it, I'll tell you why, though 
 Lord Aiden — he may not know it — has really told you already. 
 You, the gentlemen of the country, the old landed families 
 — I include, too, the newer ones which have acquired the 
 good-will of their predecessors — you no longer stand on 
 your own proper foundations. You are reduced financially 
 to mere hangers-on of the bourgeoisie. Your material splen- 
 dour, which once had a real meaning, is still, no doubt, 
 maintained. But how ? Here is an instance. Some while 
 since I went from curiosity to see the castle of a certain duke. 
 During the last ten years it has been what he calls restored. 
 The yellow stucco of ninety years ngo has given place to the
 
 chap. ix. THE PROPHET'S FIRST THUNDERS 141 
 
 towers of a Gothic castle. Well, what does this imposing 
 transformation mean? That his Grace has become more 
 powerful as a territorial noble ? Not a bit of it. What it 
 means is this : that he has five million dollars' worth of 
 railway stock in America. Such is the case with the whole 
 body of the aristocracy.' 
 
 ' I wish,' murmured Lord Aiden to Carew, ' I could say 
 it was the case with me.' 
 
 'It is a type,' went on Foreman, ' of the present position 
 of you all. You could no longer live like seigneurs if you 
 were not half tradesmen.' 
 
 ' But surely,' said Mrs. Harley, 'these are the very people 
 — these rich landlords with capital to fall back upon — who 
 as landlords can be most generous to their tenantry.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Foreman, 'and some of them are generous. 
 Some of them have returned 50 per cent, of their rents, 
 where 10 per cent, would have been more than ample. Such 
 generosity does more harm than good ; and, apart from that, 
 you seem quite to forget the operatives — the hands, as you 
 call them, the poor jaded underfed wage-slaves, drudging 
 somewhere in the foul air of some factory, who really supply 
 the cost of it. You quite forget, or you else have not yet 
 learnt, the one grand truth that we Socialists mean to teach 
 you. The profits of capital are the spoliation of labour ; and 
 it is as impossible for a capitalist to be a real friend of the 
 people as for the owner of a gin- palace to be a real apostle of 
 temperance.' 
 
 Foreman's savage accent was in this last utterance ; and 
 Mrs. Harley, who knew it well, detected its presence not 
 without anxiety. Mr. Stanley, however, seemed perfectly 
 unruffled ; and with an air of authority which seemed to 
 surprise Foreman said, 'There you raise two quite distinct 
 points. Allow me for the present to put the last one aside 
 — the illegitimacy of the profits derived from capital ; and 
 accepting these profits as a fact, I will put one question to 
 you. You admit that our aristocracy still has a tradition of 
 leadership. Don't you think that an aristocrat who receives
 
 1,12 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book it. 
 
 the profits of capital may possibly administer them in the old 
 aristocratic spirit ? For, after all, what are they ? Merely a 
 new form of power.' 
 
 ' Ah/ said Foreman, with a slightly malicious laugh, ' I 
 am coming to that now. For the moment, if you like, I will 
 grant that your profits are right enough. I will keep that 
 crow to pick with you by-and-by : and since you wish it, I 
 will answer you this first. Only, I tell you again, Lord 
 Aiden has anticipated me in what just now he said about 
 snobs and snobbishness.' 
 
 ' What did I say ? I forget,' murmured Lord Aiden 
 languidly. 
 
 'You said, my lord,' said Foreman, 'that a number of 
 fine people had learnt to judge of one another by the stand- 
 ards of the class below them. And that is what I have to 
 say in answer to Mr. Stanley. Not only has our aristocracy 
 cast in its lot with the bourgeoisie financially, but it has 
 become corrupted by the ideas of the bourgeoisie socially. 
 You have often told me, Mrs. Harley, and I have gathered 
 it myself from the papers, that if some Manchester slave- 
 driver wants to succeed in London, thousands of pounds 
 are spent on a single ball, and to this, with the aid of some 
 fashionable lady as an accomplice, the fashionable world 
 comes flocking like so many moths about a candle.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Harley, 'that is perfectly true; and next 
 week they will have forgotten the host and hostess.' 
 
 ' I think, dear,' said his wife, 'that you are wrong there. 
 They will be quite civil to them ; and will ask them, in 
 return, to their own balls. But the civility will be so distant 
 that virtually it amounts to an insult ; and my only wonder 
 is that these people will stand it.' 
 
 ' Oh ! ' said Foreman, gruffly : ' they know it won't last 
 for long. The people who are rude to them this year, five 
 years hence will be courting them.' 
 
 'You are quite right,' said Lord Aiden in a melancholy 
 murmur. ' This rudeness is only the sacrifice which our
 
 chap. ix. THE rROPHET'S FIRST THUNDERS 143 
 
 fine people offer to their own self-respect. Think of the 
 self-respect which such a sacrifice can propitiate ! ' 
 
 ' At any rate,' said Carew, with a slight cynical laugh, 
 'they won't let their territory be invaded without a 
 struggle.' 
 
 ' The territory,' said Foreman, ' is only sticking out for 
 the highest price it can get. But this,' he went on, 'is 
 merely a side matter. The point is not that you truckle to 
 their wealth — not even that you share it. The point is that 
 you adopt their standards, which are the very inverse of 
 your own, and that you are fast coming to measure all life 
 by them. A man once had a stately dinner because he was 
 a great man. Now he is a great man because he has a 
 stately dinner. That is the principle on which you coun- 
 tenance them ; and, having once accepted it, you have to 
 apply it to yourselves. Here you have the reason why half 
 the land of England is mortgaged. Think of this bourgeoisie 
 which was once fawning at your feet ; and now you are 
 ruining yourselves in order to feed it with truffles, or to 
 avoid the shame of not eating so many truffles as it does.' 
 
 'Come,' said Mrs. Harley, 'I want you to tell me this. 
 How does a man who draws an income, say, from a brewery 
 differ from a man who has had just the same education, but 
 happens to draw his income from an old landed property ? 
 Would you really wish that from a mere sense of pride the 
 one should refuse to associate on equal terms with the 
 other ? ' 
 
 'They don't differ,' said Foreman, 'except superficially. 
 That is the very point I am arguing.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Mrs. Harley, ' and how should they, or could 
 they ? ' 
 
 'They can't,' said Foreman. 'That is, again, my point. 
 Revolutions, as I told you, are not made by individuals ; and 
 the social change which we are now speaking of is only a 
 fragment of a change that is far wider. No ; our aristocracy 
 and our bourgeoisie don't differ, except superficially ; and it 
 is absurd for the one to affect to despise the other, because it
 
 144 TIIE 0LD ORDER CHANGES book it. 
 
 is absurd to believe that an aristocracy any longer really 
 exists. There are but two classes in the world — labourers, 
 and those who traffic in labour.' 
 
 ' What, then, Mr. Foreman,' said Lady Chislehurst, a 
 little severely, 'can you possibly mean by what you just now 
 told us about Radicalism ? You told us that the motive of 
 the rich Radical classes was nothing but envy of this same 
 non-existent aristocracy.' 
 
 'When I spoke,' replied Foreman, 'of our aristocracy as 
 having ceased to exist, remember, please, that I added this 
 saving clause. I said — I even urged — that it still retained 
 its appearance, which, though not a sham, and when gone 
 quite irreplaceable, is all the same a mere dying survival. 
 Still, it is this — this shadow, this phantom — which our rich 
 bourgeoisie envy ; but envy is a passion which shows itself in 
 two opposite ways. The retired huckster who spends five 
 thousand pounds on hanging a ball-room with roses, in the 
 hope that countesses will dance in it— his is an ambition 
 which is petty and ignoble enough. But make his ambition 
 still more intense and sensitive, make it ten times more 
 abject, ten times more grovelling, and then it inverts itself, 
 and turns into rancorous hatred. The orators who are so 
 anxious to rob the lords of their coronets are the very men 
 who, had the opportunity only come to them, would have 
 given their eyes to boast about " My intimate friend Lord 
 So-and-so.'" 
 
 'That,' said Lord Aiden, 'I am sure, is perfectly true.' 
 
 ' And I can give you, my lord,' said Foreman, ' one piece 
 of comfort at least. Before Mr. Snapper relieves you of 
 your lordship's coronet, we shall have relieved Mr. Snapper 
 of many things far more substantial.' 
 
 ' Now, Mr. Foreman,' said Mrs. Harley, ' although you 
 are a Revolutionist, you must not forget you are an invalid ; 
 and society itself, though it is only as old as civilisation, is 
 hardly more easy to upset than your health at the present 
 moment. So you must let me remind you that it is already 
 past your bedtime.'
 
 chap. ix. the prophet's first thunders 145 
 
 'You're very kind to me,' said Foreman, with real grati- 
 tude in his voice. 
 
 ' I'll tell you what I am,' said Mrs. Harley. ' I'm very 
 much provoked at you. It's all very fine to denounce the 
 bourgeoisie, as you call them. But why should not Mr. 
 Snapper, if he uses his wealth well, be as useful to England 
 under Queen Victoria as ever was any baron before the 
 Wars of the Roses ? Mr. Stanley asked you that very ques- 
 tion just now ' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Foreman, looking about him eagerly, ' and 
 would you really listen to me if I gave you the full answer? 
 If so, you shall hear a few more truths to-morrow.' 
 
 ' Do you know,' said Harley, as soon as Foreman was 
 out of the room, ' there's a good bit of shrewdness in some 
 of the things he says.' 
 
 'You mean,' said Lord Aiden, 'about Radicalism, and 
 fine ladies, and ball-rooms ? ' 
 
 'All that,' said Mrs. Harley, 'about ball-rooms hung 
 with roses — poor Foreman, I don't suppose he was ever 
 in a ball-room in his life — it's all true in a way, but of 
 course it's out of proportion.' 
 
 'The simple fact of the matter,' said Lord Aiden, 'is 
 this. He makes the mistake of every theorist who ap- 
 proaches a life with which he is not familiar, and thinks he 
 can understand it by the aid of his general principles. 
 One can do that with no high society — least of all with 
 English. The relation that prevails, and indeed has always 
 prevailed in England, between birth and riches, between 
 rank, power, and talent, may not, perhaps, be the most 
 important problem in the world ; but, excepting Chinese 
 grammar, I doubt if anything is more complicated ; and a 
 judgment on it that even approaches truth is as nice a thing 
 as the most delicate chemical compound. It is a mental 
 secretion rather than a mental achievement. It is easy to 
 learn principles ; the problem is how to apply them. They 
 themselves may possibly never change ; but the circum- 
 stances they apply to are rarely in two cases the same ; and 
 
 L
 
 146 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book 11. 
 
 our social judgments, and much of what we mean by good- 
 breeding, are a constant process of instinctive casuistry.' 
 
 ' Precisely,' said Mr. Stanley. ' A man is no nearer being 
 well-bred from having learnt the rules of an etiquette book, 
 than he is nearer being a saint from knowing the ten com- 
 mandments. And,' he added, smiling, 'as for our friend 
 Mr. Foreman, what he says may be shrewd enough here and 
 there ; but taking as a whole his views of the wealthier 
 classes, his own manners, I expect, are more like those of a 
 dandy than his judgment of the dandy's position would be 
 like the actual truth.' 
 
 'Well,' said Carew, 'we shall see what he will tell us 
 to-morrow.' 
 
 ' And you too, Mr. Carew,' exclaimed Lady Chislehurst, 
 ' you mustn't forget that you still owe us a debt. Do you 
 remember your promise to tell us something about yourself, 
 and some little mystery that employs you here at the 
 chateau ? My dear,' she whispered to Miss Consuelo Burton, 
 'my own belief is, he's preparing himself for becoming a 
 Catholic' 
 
 ' Foreman,' said Carew, ' leaves us to-morrow afternoon. 
 When he is gone I shall be pleased to show you my 
 mystery.' 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF REVOLUTION. 
 
 Neither Foreman nor Lady Mangotsfield had so absorbed 
 the attention of everybody as to prevent the arrangements 
 being made that came so near Lady Chislehurst's heart for 
 the celebration next morning of early Mass in the chapel ; 
 and the servants for the occasion deserting the village 
 church, there was present a very respectable congregation. 
 To Lady Chislehurst's extreme delight, Carew was amongst 
 the number ; though could she have read the inner thoughts 
 of his heart, she would have seen in what brought him 
 there some cause for disappointment. He came less in the
 
 chap. x. THE GOSPEL OF REVOLUTION 147 
 
 hopes of being touched by the sacred rite himself, than 
 for the sake of observing the demeanour of Miss Consuelo 
 Burton. 
 
 On a similar occasion, unknown to her, he had once 
 before watched her at the Brompton Oratory ; and the sight 
 of her there had left behind it an image which, whenever 
 he thought of it, gave a secret elevation to his life. And 
 could it be, he had now lately asked himself — could it be 
 that this vision, this faith was leaving her, which had once 
 almost awed him, as though it made her a superior being, and 
 yet, at the same time, had somehow suggested help to him ? 
 Much of what she had said during the last few days seemed 
 to hint this ; and as, from a shadowy corner, he now fixed 
 his eyes on her, he watched with a feeling of apprehensive 
 sadness to detect some signs in her of a difference from her 
 former self. And such signs, without doubt, he did detect ; 
 but they were not of the kind he had anticipated. What 
 was his surprise when, instead of seeing, as he was prepared 
 to see, that the devotion once so fervent had become luke- 
 warm and perfunctory, he grew gradually to realise more 
 and more that, if signs meant anything, it had grown and 
 not lost in intensity ! This was the girl who, only the day 
 before, had seemed to be complaining that the chief of her 
 Church's sacraments had ceased for her to have any saving 
 virtue. Carew, as he watched her, felt more strongly than 
 ever as if, through her, he were somehow placed in the pre- 
 sence of a power, a life, and a help which, to his own eye, 
 was hidden ; and when she rose finally, and was about to 
 leave the chapel, her dark eyes, as she raised them towards 
 the dingy window, seemed to have another light in them 
 beyond what came through the cobwebs, and there was a 
 glimmer in them as of tears that had just been shed secretly. 
 'Well,' said Lady Chislehurst as she met him in the 
 passage afterwards, 'I am glad, Mr. Carew, to have seen 
 you here this morning.' 
 
 ' Next,' said Carew, ' to saying a prayer oneself, the best 
 thing is to watch a good Catholic praying.' 
 
 1. 2
 
 I48 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ii. 
 
 Lady Chislehurst answered this with a glance of bene- 
 diction and encouragement ; and then for an instant laying 
 her hand on his arm, ' Did you see,' she said, 'some one 
 else, who was present in the gallery ? I could hardly be- 
 lieve my eyes : it was actually Mr. Foreman.' 
 
 At this very moment Foreman himself appeared, having 
 emerged from a narrow staircase. 
 
 ' Mr. Foreman ! ' exclaimed Lady Chislehurst, ' allow me 
 to congratulate you on the way in which you have begun 
 your Sunday.' 
 
 ' Oh,' said Foreman, with a bland and careless laugh, ' I 
 watch beliefs just as I watch classes. Besides, to-day I was 
 doing what is merely an act of justice. I have been listen- 
 ing to you because you have promised to listen to me.' 
 
 At breakfast, Lady Mangots field being safe with an egg 
 in bed, Mr. Stanley recurred to this same subject. 'Mr. 
 Foreman,' he said, ' must remember what lies before him. 
 He promised to tell us why what he calls the bourgeoisie can 
 never succeed to the part that was once played by the aristo- 
 cracy. I have a special curiosity to hear what he says on 
 this point ; so I, for one, shall be no party to excusing him. 1 
 
 Foreman was flattered to find he had roused such in- 
 terest ; but he experienced a sensation of somewhat uneasy 
 surprise at the critical tone which his ear seemed to catch 
 in Mr. Stanley's manner of speaking about his 'special curi- 
 osity.' 'What,' thought Foreman, 'can this man, who only 
 an hour ago was muttering hocus pocus, in the dress of a 
 mediaeval conjurer — what can he know of the rights and 
 the claims of Labour? What can he know of that coming- 
 social earthquake which will send his churches toppling like 
 a house of cards?' 
 
 'I trust,' he said civilly, but with a slight accent of 
 sarcasm, ' that you will not think, if I really try to explain 
 myself, that I am engaging you on subjects not befitting the 
 day.' 
 
 ' On the contrary,' said Mr. Stanley, with the same note 
 in his voice, which seemed to indicate that he was treading
 
 chap. x. THE GOSPEL OF REVOLUTION 1 49 
 
 on familiar ground, 'if your theory, or if your religion — 
 I suppose, Mr. Foreman, I may venture to call it a reli- 
 gion ' 
 
 'Certainly,' said Foreman ; 'and of a kind that will make 
 martyrs.' 
 
 'Well,' said Mr. Stanley, 'if your religion were true, I 
 should regard it at once as an integral part of mine.' 
 
 ' Do you think, sir,' said Foreman, ' that the two would 
 agree together ? ' 
 
 'They would,' said Mr. Stanley, 'if the world were 
 perfect ; and when the world is perfect they will.' 
 
 ' Perhaps,' returned Foreman, ' you are hardly quite 
 aware of what the principles of us Socialists are.' 
 
 ' And for that reason,' said Mr. Stanley, ' we are so 
 anxious that you should tell us.' 
 
 After breakfast Foreman's first proceeding was to beg 
 Mrs. Harley to have a word in private with him. 
 
 ' I have with me,' he said in a low confidential tone, 'a 
 copy of the new Address which the League is printing by 
 thousands, and distributing in all the poorer quarters in 
 London. It has also been translated into French, and our 
 executive committee has sent two thousand copies to 
 Decazeville, and ten thousand to the men on strike in 
 Belgium. It goes straight, and without any humbug, to the 
 bottom of the matter ; and as these people seem anxious to 
 hear something more from me, I could give them a glimpse 
 of the ground they are really standing on. Do you think 
 they would listen to me ? I don't want to convert them ; 
 it's of no possible moment whether they are converted or 
 not, and I should be sorry to bore them when no good could 
 come of it.' 
 
 'No, no,' said Mrs. Harley; 'let us have your address 
 by all means. I will put it to them now, and I'm sure they 
 will say the same. Mr. Carew, Lady Chislehurst, everybody : 
 Air. Foreman says, if you wish to hear more about Social- 
 ism he will read you a paper he has just written himself, and 
 which will tell us all just what we want to hear from him.'
 
 I 50 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ii. 
 
 Every one assented to this proposal with pleasure, and a 
 servant was sent to Foreman's bedroom for a bag, which 
 seemed when it appeared to be bulging with revolutionary 
 literature. 
 
 1 Holloa ! ' exclaimed Harley, ' hooray for the dynamite ! 
 Evelyn, why in the world have I been given this red pocket- 
 handkerchief ? I'll give it to Foreman, and he shall use it 
 as a flag.' 
 
 ' Ah,' said Foreman with a grunt, ' you may laugh if you 
 like now. But even now you'd perhaps not laugh so much 
 could you only see a letter which I got this morning from 
 Chicago.' And he pulled out and tapped an exceedingly 
 dirty- looking envelope. 
 
 Meanwhile, however, he had been grubbing about in his 
 bag, and at last he extracted from it, with a quiet triumphant 
 smile, a limp printed document like an electioneering leaflet. 
 By this time his congregation had gathered round him, the 
 members varying in the depth and quality of their interest, 
 but all possessed with the not unpleasant feeling that they 
 were going to be given a peep into the mind of a real con- 
 spirator. 
 
 ' What I am going to read,' began Foreman, ' as I have 
 just told Mrs. Harley, is designed for the poorest workmen.' 
 But here he stopped ; his eyes seemed to be straying from 
 the paper he was reading to another that was lying upon his 
 knee. ' Perhaps,' he said, as he took up this latter, ' you 
 will let me first add a word or two to something I said last 
 night.' 
 
 All his audience looked at him, and they were surprised 
 both in his voice and his expression to detect a softness 
 that had hitherto been present in neither. ' We were talk- 
 ing,' he went on, ' about Thackeray, and the social facts 
 which he represented. I have here an extract from the best 
 of his books, though the least instructive — " Esmond " ; and 
 just as in most places he exhibits the meanest of all social 
 emotions, so here he spreads out for us, as a soft bed to 
 repose upon, the falsest and yet the most plausible of all the 

 
 chap. x. THE GOSPEL OF REVOLUTION I 5 I 
 
 moral emotions. " Love," he writes — and the writing is 
 pretty enough — " Love, omnia vincit, is immeasurably above 
 all ambitions, more precious than wealth, more noble than 
 name. He knows not life who knows not that ; he hath 
 not felt the highest faculty of the soul who hath not 
 enjoyed it. In the name of my wife I write the com- 
 pletion of hope and the summit of happiness. To have 
 such love is the one blessing in comparison of which all 
 earthly joy is of no value ; and to think of her is to praise 
 God!"' ' 
 
 ' Beautiful ! ' said Lady Chislehurst. 
 
 'Why, that,' said Mrs. Harley, 'is my favourite bit in 
 Thackeray. What have you to say against that ? ' 
 
 'Pooh!' said Foreman. 'There is the fault of all 
 religions. They keep you fiddling away with your own 
 private emotions, dusting your own souls as if they were 
 women's boudoirs, and filling yourselves with ecstasy if none 
 of the little Dresden-china virtues in them are broken. 
 What right have you to think that the summit of happiness, 
 when your neighbours are turned into brutes by despair or 
 hunger next door to you ? Give me the man whose only 
 notion of love is derived from a sixpenny kiss and a pair of 
 painted cheeks ; and if such a man remembers the crying 
 misery of the poor, he's a better man, I say, than any others 
 who forget it, even if they forget it in praising God for their 
 wives.' 
 
 Lady Chislehurst s face became frigid with disapproval, 
 and she cast an anxious glance towards Miss Consuelo 
 Burton. Mr. Stanley, who was sitting near Foreman, 
 said something in a low tone to him, in which Miss Con- 
 suelo's name occurred ; but it was evident that then he 
 must have added something conciliating, for Foreman, 
 dropping the paper he had just been glancing at, again took 
 up the original one, and proposed to resume his reading. 
 As for Miss Consuelo herself, Carew looked at her, and her 
 eyes were fixed on Foreman, as if her very soul were in the 
 words he had just uttered.
 
 152 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book 11. 
 
 He was now beginning again. 
 What I am going to read,' he repeated, ' is designed for 
 the poorest workmen. It is therefore put as simply as 
 possible, and every point is ignored except those which are 
 absolutely necessary. . Mr. Stanley looks at me as if he 
 would ask, Necessary for what? I mean, necessary for 
 this — for showing the wage-slave what is the real relation 
 between the results of his labour, the wages by which his 
 labour is bought, and the profits of the employer who buys 
 it — the profits, or what is just the same thing, the interest 
 on the capital, the shares, the investments which that em- 
 ployer manipulates. Think of that,' exclaimed Foreman, 
 his face growing gradually darker. ' Let every owner of 
 personalty think of that ! Let every owner of land, which 
 is now merely the least objectionable form ot personalty, 
 think of that ! And it will thus be seen that this little 
 leaflet, these few little pages I am now going to read to you, 
 go straight to the root of the existing social misery, and 
 also,' he added, giving his voice a sarcastic calmness, 'of 
 the existing social order. Well, I begin my Address thus :— 
 '■Fellow-citizen, working- man — no matter what you work 
 at, -working with your hands for daily wages : Have you 
 ever known what it is to want for anything— for a better 
 meal, for a more wholesome lodging, for a bit of pleasure and 
 leisure for yourself, your wife, and children ? Are you ever 
 discontented with the squalid court into which the window of 
 your one room opens ? Do you ever think that tough meat 
 twice a week, and on most days a herring and a dry crust of 
 bread, is not quite all that a hard day's work should earn, in 
 this land of fabulous plenty I If so, consider this question. It 
 concerns you very nearly. 
 
 1 By what means do you live, if that can be called life 
 which is only not starvation ? The single dog's hole that you 
 live in, the wretched food you eat, the very rags you stuff into 
 the broken window-panes — to get even these you must give or 
 sell something. They are not given to you out of good nature. 
 Now, what is it that you do give or sell? Have you a
 
 chap. x. THE GOSPEL OF REVOLUTION 1 53 
 
 balance at your banker* si Have you an estate in the 
 country ? Beyond the clothes on your back and a fere chairs 
 and blankets, do you possess anything at all? And were all 
 these sold, would they feed and lodge you for a week ? Not 
 they. Suppose that for a week you were thrown out of employ- 
 ment, what would your case be at the end of it? Would you 
 have anything? Could any creature in the whole wide 
 world be so wholly destitute, so wholly helpless as you? 
 
 ' Do you see your nakedness ? J ou possess absolutely 
 nothing — nothing, and yet one thing. That thing is your 
 labour — the pozver of your muscles, guided by the intelligence 
 of your brain. It is your labour that you give and sell from 
 day to day for your subsistence. Cease to labour, and if it 
 were not for the workhouse you -would die. 
 
 ' And notv turn from your own case— from your ozen 
 one room — to that magnificent palace yonder. Look at the 
 owner coming out of it, with a gorgeous flower in his button- 
 hole, and about to enter his carriage. Consider him ; take a 
 good look at him. That man sleeps on the softest down. 
 Every hour of the day, if he wishes it, he eats some costly 
 dainty. He has thirty servants, who each cat more at a sitting 
 than you do in two whole days. The cornice round one of 
 that mail's rooms has cost as much as will be the total of all 
 your life's earnings. Here then Is a second question for you : 
 How does this man live ? To get all these countless, these 
 includible luxuries, he too must give or sell something. Nobody 
 gives them to him out of good nature. JJ'e will tell you what 
 he gives or sells. It is the same thing — the very same thing 
 that you do— it is LABOUR. 
 
 ' " Labour .'" you exclaim; "he never did a stroke of 
 work in his life. Ho his puffy white hands, covered -with 
 rings, look like it?" My friend, you are quite right— he 
 never did a stroke, as you say. Catch him! And yet what 
 he gives in exchange for all these luxuries is Labour. It is 
 all he has got to give — labour. And it is Labour just such 
 as yours — the power of muscle, guided by the intelligence of a 
 brain. But he differs from you in this point, and in this
 
 154 THE LD ORDER CHANGES book 11. 
 
 point only : the Labour he gives is not his own, but it is jours 
 — yes, yours, and that of hundreds of others of your fellow- 
 labourers. And how does he get this Labour, this use of 
 your muscles and your intelligence I There is only one way in 
 which he can possibly get it, and in that way he does get it. 
 He STEALS it. LLow could he get it otherwise ? Are you 
 his property ? What right has he to your Labour 1 
 
 ' Perhaps a new idea like this frightens you. Perhaps 
 you will say that this man lives on the profits of his capital. 
 Well, if you like, you may say that ; it is only a question of 
 words. But we would advise you to use words which explain 
 their meaning a little more clearly. We will give you some 
 that do ; and as to what our words mean, you will be in no 
 doubt whatever. Capital — this Capital we hear so much 
 about — is simply the thief s name for Accumulated Labour ; and 
 profits, or interest, is simply the thief's name for Stolen Labour. 
 
 ' Listen, friend. No doubt you have studied politics, and 
 have heard a good deal about Party cries. Well, how does 
 that which we have just said strike you as the material for a 
 cry ? Perhaps you have heard things like it in the speeches of 
 various Radicals. If you have, it is only for this reason — 
 that these Radicals, who profess to be such friends of yours, 
 never mean what they say, and, in this case, have not under- 
 stood what they say. How can we know this? you ask. We 
 know it for a very good reason. The leaders of these same 
 Radicals are the greatest Labour Thieves in England them- 
 selves, and, therefore, they cannot really be proclaiming to you 
 the truth, which, if you once understood it, would put a stop 
 to the entire work of their lives. The particular slave-driver 
 who, you are no doubt told, will be in a fere years the Radical 
 Prime Minister, and whose own endeavours will be then to 
 protect your interests, steals from you at the rate of three 
 thousand pounds a month, and is ahvays looking about for 
 means which will enable him to go on stealing with g7'eater 
 and still greater security. LLe calls this looking for sound 
 investments. 
 
 ' If, then, you think that a cry against the Labour Thieves
 
 chap. x. THE GOSPEL OF REVOLUTION 1 55 
 
 will be a good cry for the labouring classes to rally to, we 
 agree with you. But do not confound it with the cries the 
 Radicals offer you. Their cries, even if they sound like ours, 
 have nothing in common with it but the sound. Their cries 
 are clap-trap. Ours, which we offer you, is truth. Yes, my 
 friend, truth. lie do not commend it to you merely because 
 it suggests hope to you, but because it is based on a truth which 
 can be as clearly proved, and is as scientifically true, as any of 
 those discoveries which have resulted in railways or the electric 
 telegraph. The political economists will not like it. We do 
 ?iot expect they will ; but in the course of a few years we shall 
 have taught them to swallow it. At first it will startle them. 
 It will startle them still more later on, when they see what is 
 the result of your acting on it — when they see how very dif- 
 ferent their own lives are then, and how different yours arc, 
 too. We think that that will startle them. 
 
 ' This, then, is the great truth which we want you, as a 
 working-man, as a man who works for an employer, to grasp. 
 The profits of that employer, -which make him a rich man, are 
 simply thieviugs from your Labour, and he thieves from you 
 in this way : He only pays you a quarter op tvhat your 
 Labour is worth. Every time he gives you five-and-twenty 
 shillings you virtually have given him five pounds. You give 
 him a five-pound note, and he professes to give you change for 
 it. What he does give you is a sovereign and five shillings. 
 LLe quietly pockets the rest, saying nothing to you about it. 
 There you have his profits. 
 
 ' Think of this, and see if it is not true. LJo not say it is 
 true befo?~e you have examined it. We want you, before you 
 get the idea fixed in your head, to thoroughly examine it, so as 
 to be able to explain it and show your friends that it is no 
 mere idle talk. J I 'hen once you have seen it, it is the clearest 
 thing in the world I 
 
 ' Now,' said Foreman, 'looking up from It is paper, 'we 
 arc coming to the great theorem of Revolutionary Econo- 
 mics — a discovery hardly known to our bourgeois politicians, 
 but one beside which, for its practical import to society,
 
 156 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book 11. 
 
 those of Newton, of Darwin, of Watt himself, are insignifi- 
 cant. We come to Karl Marx's theorem as to the nature 
 of profits or interest, or — to put the matter plainly — of the 
 entire subsistence of the leisured and the propertied classes. 
 This is the real dynamite that will shatter our existing civili- 
 sation — this single economic discovery. Recollect I am 
 putting it here in the simplest way possible ; and the land 
 question — quite a secondary one^for the moment I omit 
 altogether.' 
 
 ' Come,'' he went on, beginning again to read, ' take any 
 case which as a workman you kno7c> by your own experience — ■ 
 one such case is just as good as another — in which you or your 
 fellows make some given thing for a wage-payer. One example 
 will be as good as a thousand. 
 
 '■Let us take, say, a number of boots, which you. are making 
 for the owner of a large boot-shop. On what does that shop- 
 keeper live, as he docs live, in affluence ? For he is affluent, 
 compared with you, at any rate. 
 
 ' Part of the answer is easy, and anybody can at once give 
 it. He lives on the difference between what he gives you for 
 making the boots and what his customers give him for them. 
 
 1 Yes, but wait a bit. All that difference is not theft, and 
 he does not live on the whole of it. Let us be quite just, and 
 not jump too quickly at conclusions. The shopkeeper — let us 
 put this point first — does some work on the boots, just as you 
 do, before they are sold finally. Lie introduces your boots to 
 the customer : he makes them marketable. This 7Cork is 
 necessary, and he must be paid for it ; though, as the work is 
 easier than yours, he should, perhaps, be paid less. Of the 
 difference, then, between the price he gets for the boots and the 
 sum he pays you for making them we must credit him, to be 
 generous, with a wage equal to yours. Be careful, however, 
 to see what that means. Lt is faster work to sell boots than to 
 make them, and he sells, we max suppose, in one day what it 
 takes you six days to make. Thus, if the shopkeeper is to be 
 fully occupied, he must employ six workmen, each of whom 
 supplies him with boots for one day in the week. Since, then,
 
 chap. x. THE GOSPEL OF REVOLUTION 1 57 
 
 he is entitled to the same -weekly wage as you and your fellow S, 
 he is entitled, for selling your six days' Labour, to exactly 
 one sixth of what he pays you for it. If he gives you, say, 
 five shillings a day, he is entitled to five shillings a day him- 
 self Thus, he is entitled to five shillings for selling what he 
 pays you thirty shillings for making. You see, therefore, that 
 what he pays you thirty shillings for making cannot possibly be 
 sold to the customer for less than thirty-five shillings. 
 
 ' It could not be sold for less. We must say more than 
 that ; it could not be sold for so little. Consider, the shop- 
 keeper has to pay for the leather, and he has also to pay for 
 his shop. The leather costs, we will say, as much as your ow)i 
 wages, namely, thirty shillings for the week ; the rent of the 
 shop for the day on which he sells your work is seven shillings. 
 Here, then, is a total of thirty-seven shillings, which the shop- 
 keeper, if he is to sell boots at all, must get back from the customer. 
 
 ' Nou.', then, here is a little sum for you, which will explain 
 your employer s position, so far as it has to do with you. 
 Thirty shillings you receive for the making of so many boots ; 
 your employer must receive five shillings for selling them ; he 
 must receive, also, thirty shillings for the material which he 
 has bought, and seven shillings for the day's use of the shop — 
 making in all seventy -two shillings. That is the minimum for 
 which the boots could be sold; and, were they sold for that, the 
 shopkeeper would be earning exactly what you earn. He would 
 be living as you live, in one squalid room, tasting meat only 
 twice a week. But does he live like that / Not he, as you 
 know well enough. \ ou know where his snug villa is, with 
 its greenhouse and its garden in front of it ; and you have 
 seen the chops and steaks which he has every day in the back 
 parlour of his shop. 
 
 ' Here at last we come to the practical question for you — 
 for you, the man who has stitched the boots— you through 
 whose sweat and lueariness the leather has become boots at all. 
 How is it your employer lives as he does live live so much 
 better than you 1 How does he get the money which enables 
 him to do so 1 Let us see. Let us take a peep at his account-
 
 158 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book jl 
 
 books, and they, we rather fancy, will throw a little light on 
 the subject. 
 
 ' His account- boohs tell us that he gets his money in this 
 way- from selling the boots not for seventy-two shillings, but 
 for a hundred and sixty shillings. Remember this too — he is 
 able to sell the boots for that sum because they are worth it. 
 If the v were not worth it he could not get it. The competition 
 of other shoemakers would pretty soon force his price down. 
 Taking the shopkeepers of this country as a body, the average 
 price charged by them, and got by them for their goods from 
 the public, represents the value of those goods. Of those goods 
 our boots are only a specimen. 
 
 1 How, then, do the boots come to have the value above 
 stated? What item is there in the cost of producing and 
 selling them that we have not yet considered? The rent of the 
 shop is seven shillings, the leather costs thirty shillings — that is 
 thirty-seven shillings. You merely have to add the shop- 
 keeper's own wage, five shillings, and your wage, thirty 
 shillings, making in all seventy-two shillings; and yet the 
 total result is a hundred and sixty shillings. There are 
 eighty-eight shillings unaccounted for. Perhaps lie bought the 
 leather too cheap, or got his shop too cheap. Do you think 
 that? Do landlords let their shops below the market price? 
 Do leather-sellers let their customers have for thirty shillings 
 7chat is really worth a hundred and eighteen ? You know 
 better than to believe that. Depend upon it your employer 
 has paid for the house and the leather every penny that either 
 of them is worth. Think ! Do you smell a rat notv ? Does 
 it not strike you that there may still be something for which 
 he has not paid so honestly ? There is only one thing left, 
 and that thing is your Labour. 
 
 ' There you have it. There is the thing which the eighty- 
 eight shillings comes from. Your Labour, withyotir employer's 
 added to it— for let us give the Devil his due, and let us re- 
 member his Labour also — this Labour is in reality worth, ?iot 
 thirty or thirty-five shillings, but it is worth a hundred and 
 twenty-three shillings. Of this one sixth belongs to him.
 
 chap. x. THE GOSPEL OF REVOLUTION 1 59 
 
 What is one sixth of that ? Twenty shillings and sixpence. 
 Give him that, and hare done with him ; and then what 
 remains for yon ? Five pounds two shillings and sixpence. 
 That is your just share ; not thirty shillings. Thus your 
 employer, every time he pays your weekly wage, underpays 
 you by the difference between these two sums. That is to say, 
 he robs you of three pounds twelve shillings and sixpence. He 
 robs you of it, he pockets it, and then calls it his profits. 
 
 ' Turn this thought over in your mind. Think of it at 
 leisure ; think of it in the workshop. Think of it when you 
 have not a penny in your pocket, when you are hungry, when 
 your wife and little children are hungry. Think of it, above 
 all, when your wages are being paid you. Every time your 
 employer gives you thirty shillings, remember that you have in 
 reality given him something like a five-pound note ; and that 
 he is pocketing, that he is robbing you of, some three pounds 
 ten of your change. 
 
 ' In speaking to you, we have supposed you were a shoe- 
 maker. It is no matter what you are or whom you work for. 
 If you are a bricklayer, a journeyman tailor, a hand in a 
 factory, it is all the same thing. You, and all your fellow 
 wage-slaves, numbering in this country some twenty-seven 
 millions, are all in the same case. The propertied classes— 
 your employers — one and all rob you. 
 
 ' This is a great subject. We cannot put the whole of it 
 to you in one pamphlet, but this one thought — the thought that 
 you are robbed, that the propertied classes live on robbing you, 
 and that all the other wrongs which politicians say they will 
 remedy are nothing if this wrong is not remedied — keep that 
 in your own mind, and try to put it into the mind of your 
 fellow wage-slaves ; and remember, if you want any more 
 information, you can have it at the office of the league of 
 Social Democrats. 
 
 * If you would further your own cause, you are invited to 
 join that league. The subscription is half a crown.' 
 
 'There!' exclaimed Foreman, dropping his paper and 
 looking round him. ' 1 )oes that satisfy you ? Does that
 
 l6o THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ir. 
 
 sound clear enough for you ? I should like to know. Does 
 it, or does it not ? ' 
 
 ' Do you really mean to say,' exclaimed Lady Chisle- 
 hurst, ' that you are trying to disseminate ideas like these 
 amongst the working-classes— to fill them with such horrible 
 feelings of envy, hatred, and discontent ? ' 
 
 ' I do,' said Foreman, bringing his hand down on the 
 arm of his chair with a thump ; ' discontent with the lives 
 they lead now, and hatred of those who force such a life 
 upon them.' 
 
 'Then,' said Lady Chislehurst, 'I must tell you I con- 
 sider it very wicked of you. You like plain speaking, Mr. 
 Foreman, so you must not object to it in me.' 
 
 ' Lady Chislehurst,' said Mrs. Harley in a whisper, 'don't 
 make him angry, for pity's sake, or we shall have a scene in 
 a moment. Haven't you watched his eyes ? They have the 
 regular tint of madness in them, and can't you see the ex- 
 citement into which he's read himself? Listen — listen now. 
 Your friend Mr. Stanley is at him.' 
 
 Mr. Stanley was speaking with a gentle, an almost timid 
 courtesy. ' There was one point,' he said, ' in your paper, 
 Mr. Foreman, on which I should like to question you. The 
 wages paid to the supposed shoemaker, and the price of the 
 leather used by him — were these real, or merely imaginary?' 
 
 'The figures quoted,' said Foreman, 'were as a fact 
 imaginary ones. What the real figures would be I neither 
 know nor care. These were chosen because they were easy 
 to work with. Their actual accuracy,' he added brusquely, 
 ' matters nothing at all to the argument.' 
 
 ' Certainly not,' said Mr. Stanley, ' nothing at all. And 
 now may I ask you this? Given the wages which you 
 imagine the workman to receive, was the proportion between 
 those wages and the profits of the employer — between the 
 thirty shillings and the three pounds twelve and sixpence — 
 was that imaginary also ? Or do you suppose it to represent 
 a fact?' 
 
 Foreman stared at Mr. Stanley, not with anger exactly,
 
 chap. x. THE GOSPEL OF REVOLUTION l6l 
 
 but with excitement. ' I don't,' he said, ' suppose anything 
 at all in the matter. That does represent a fact. There is 
 no reason for supposing there.' 
 
 ' But how,' said Mr. Stanley, ' since you are not aware 
 of the exact wages that prevail in the shoe trade, are you 
 able to arrive at such exactness in this most important 
 point ? ' 
 
 ' In this way,' said Foreman, fumbling for something in 
 his bag. ' In this way,' he went on, producing another leaf- 
 let. ' I will only read you a line or two. That will answer 
 your question — 
 
 ' Workmen of England : consider the following figures. 
 The annual income of this country is thirteen hundred millions. 
 All those thirteen hundred millions are made by your labour. 
 Who gets them ? What becomes of them ? This becomes of 
 them. Ten hundred millions are appropriated, are nabbed, by 
 your employers, the drones, the propertied classes. Three hun- 
 dred millions only are left for you— for you — you, who have 
 made the whole of it. Think of these figures. Think of 
 them ! Think of them ! ! Think of them ! ! ! ' 
 
 ' There,' said Foreman, ' is the basis of my calculation 
 as to the shoe trade. These figures show you the broad 
 facts of the case. Take the workers of this country as a 
 whole, and their employers — the drone-classes — as a whole ; 
 and the latter fleece the former to the tune of ten pounds 
 out of every thirteen. In my case of the shoe trade, if I 
 err at all, I err in putting the shopkeeper's legitimate gains 
 too high.' 
 
 ' May I,' said Miss Consuelo Burton, ' look at that last 
 leaflet, Mr. Foreman ? ' 
 
 Surprise and gratification came into Foreman's eyes. He 
 handed her the leaflet, and was about to begin addressing 
 her, when an ill-timed remark from Lord Aiden completely 
 diverted him from his intention. 
 
 ' It seems,' said Lord Aiden, in an accent of lazy thought- 
 fulness, ' that you take no account of the interest yielded by 
 capital.' 
 
 M
 
 1 62 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ii. 
 
 For a few moments Foreman was absolutely silent. He 
 stared at Lord Aiden much in the same way as he had 
 stared at Mr. Stanley ; only this time his excitement was 
 greater, and there seemed something in it almost ferocious. 
 At last the storm broke. 
 
 ' Interest! ' he exclaimed, hissing with nervous vehem- 
 ence. ' Capital bear interest ! That is the very lie I am 
 unmasking. It is the thief's lie — the swindler's lie. It is 
 the lie on which the propertied classes repose, and under 
 which the working classes are crushed. Interest, the swin- 
 dlers tell you, is a plant that grows out of capital. Fools ! 
 It no more grows out of capital than corn grows from a 
 spade. It grows out of labour as all wealth grows; and it is 
 merely the name for the part of the growth you steal. Of 
 course,' Foreman went on, his tone growing contemptuous 
 rather than angry, 'to understand the matter scientifically, 
 one must understand the nature of Values. But first let the 
 workman digest the notion that he is plundered, and then 
 if he is inclined to doubt it, we will take care to prove to 
 him that his notion is correct.' 
 
 ' My dear Lady Chislehurst,' Mrs. Harley was saying 
 meanwhile, ' I believe all this no more than you do. Can't 
 you see that the poor creature's a madman ? Dangerous ? 
 Yes ; no doubt this teaching is dangerous ; but it's just as 
 well to realise what it is.' 
 
 ' I am sorry,' said Lady Chislehurst, ' that Consuelo 
 thinks so, at any rate. That man seems quite to have 
 bewitched her.' 
 
 Mrs. Harley looked to see if this observation was justi- 
 fied; and the tableau that met her view made her think that 
 perhaps it was. Miss Consuelo Burton had risen from her 
 seat, and, looking very pretty in the neatest of neat dresses, 
 was standing by Foreman's chair, with one slim hand on the 
 back of it, and her eyes and voice at once were making some 
 request of him. ' Mr. Foreman,' she was saying, ' may I see 
 that other paper of yours also — the one you first read out to
 
 chap. x. THE GOSPEL OF REVOLUTION 1 63 
 
 us? There are one or two things in it which I did not 
 quite follow, I think.' 
 
 Foreman did not need to be asked twice. The look of 
 ferocity died away from his face, and a gleam succeeded it 
 of odd innocent vanity. He seemed quite subdued by the 
 graceful form that bent over him, and the voice that, with all 
 its timidity, had a subtle note of command in it. ' Keep the 
 papers,' he said ; ' you can have as many copies as you like. 
 Here, too, is another, about " Value and Capital." You had 
 better take that as well.' 
 
 She took the two papers, and retiring into a distant 
 window, to Lady Chislehurst's horror, was at once completely 
 absorbed in them. 
 
 ' I think, Mr. Foreman,' said Mr. Stanley, ' that if I 
 wished to teach your lesson to the working-classes, I should 
 have administered the paper on Value as the first dose, not 
 the second.' 
 
 'You do !' exclaimed Foreman, with a start of suspicious 
 astonishment, which seemed partly caused by the priest's 
 having any opinion on the matter, partly by his decided and 
 calm way of expressing it. 'And may I venture to ask, sir, 
 why ? ' 
 
 ' But, Mr. Stanley,' said Lord Aiden, ' you would surely 
 not personally be for teaching these theories to the working- 
 classes at all ? ' 
 
 ' I think,' said Mr. Stanley, ' that if you take these 
 theories as a whole, in sober earnest, there are only two 
 defects in them.' 
 
 ' My dear sir,' said Foreman, ' you are very good, I am 
 sure. But permit me to remark, you have not yet heard the 
 whole of them — not even in outline ; and even if you had, 
 you could hardly pronounce on them, or even fully under- 
 stand them, off-hand.' 
 
 ' In that,' said Mr. Stanley, ' I am sure you are perfectly 
 right, and I fear I must seem to you presumptuous, or 
 perhaps even impertinent. But I assure you, Mr. foreman, 
 that I should not have ventured on my criticism if the 
 
 m 2
 
 164 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ir. 
 
 subject had not been one with which — if I may have your 
 permission to say so — I am as familiar as you yourself 
 are.' 
 
 Foreman sat up in his chair, bending his head forward. 
 1 Excuse me,' he said, almost stuttering in his eagerness— 
 ' excuse me, Mr. Stanley, but no one can be familiar with 
 this subject we are speaking about who has studied social 
 problems under Catholic — under clerical authorities. No 
 one who has not mastered a work almost unknown in 
 England — the epoch-making work of Karl Marx on 
 
 " Capital " — no one, I say ' he repeated, pausing with 
 
 an air of triumph. 
 
 ' Again,' said Mr. Stanley, ' I agree with you perfectly ; 
 for there is no work in the English language with which I 
 am so familiar as that special work you refer to.' 
 
 'The work I refer to,' retorted Foreman, 'happens to be 
 in German, and no English translation has ever yet been 
 published. I much fear we are talking at cross purposes.' 
 
 ' I think not,' replied Mr. Stanley, smiling. ' What I 
 said just now was perhaps a slip of the tongue ; and yet it 
 was more accurate than you could know it to be. No 
 English translation of Marx has been published — that is 
 quite true. One has been made, however, and will be 
 published shortly, with notes on the author's fallacies.' 
 
 ' Indeed ! ' said Foreman. ' And may I ask you by what 
 translator ? ' 
 
 'Myself,' said Mr. Stanley dryly. 
 
 Over Foreman's face there came a dull cloud of mortifi- 
 cation. He leant back again, and said with a forced air of 
 indifference, ' Perhaps, then, you will kindly tell me what 
 are the two defects in the system of Karl Marx, which you 
 spoke of.' 
 
 ' I charge Marx,' said Mr. Stanley, ' with only one of 
 them. I will talk about that presently. The other — forgive 
 me for saying so — is an error which must be mainly your 
 own. The figures you quote with regard to the distribution 
 of wealth in this kingdom, and which you rely on to arouse
 
 chap. x. THE GOSPEL OF REVOLUTION 16$ 
 
 in the workman a sense of social injustice — they refer, I con- 
 clude, to the present time, do they not ? ' 
 
 'They do,' said Foreman, 'and you are right — the figures 
 are mine.' 
 
 'Well,' said Mr. Stanley, with almost apologetic civility, 
 ' if you will go into the matter a little more carefully, with a 
 little method, and access to the best authorities, you will 
 find that your present calculations are — and we should be 
 thankful for it — so far in error that they do not represent 
 even an approximation to the truth.' 
 
 The cloud upon Foreman's face grew duller and more 
 lowering. ' Are you at all aware,' he exclaimed, speaking 
 with difficulty — 'are you at all aware who I am?— who it is 
 who is sitting in this chair here ? Perhaps you do not know 
 that for the past ten years I have done nothing but study 
 the misery of the working-classes — ay, Mr. Stanley, and in 
 the very scenes and times of their misery ; and not there 
 only. I have ransacked your Blue-books and your Parlia- 
 mentary returns, and with the aid of the first statistician in 
 England I have ranged my facts and ranged my figures in 
 order. There is only one other man in existence who knows 
 as much of the subject as I do, and that is the man from 
 whom my figures are taken. He, Mr. Stanley, is Mr. 
 Charles Griffen, the statistical secretary to the Inland 
 Revenue Office. Do you admit Mr. Griffen to be an 
 authority ? Or, possibly, you have never heard of him.' 
 
 'No, no,' said Mr. Stanley; 'Mr. Griffen is a most 
 undoubted authority ! ' 
 
 'Well,' said Foreman, 'as I tell you, it is from him my 
 figures are taken. They are taken from his various Abstracts 
 and Essays, and are put together by myself. Mr. Griffen, 
 you may not be aware, has from his official position sources 
 of information almost unique in their completeness, and 
 accessible to him alone. The results he is deducing from 
 these are not yet made public. When they are, of course, 
 they will be more detailed than mine ; but nothing can 
 make them differ from mine substantially, though what his
 
 1 66 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book it. 
 
 details will be we shall none of us know till he publishes 
 them.' 
 
 ' Do you know Mr. Griffen personally ? ' said Mr. 
 
 Stanley. 
 
 ' No,' replied Foreman. 
 
 ' It happens,' said Mr. Stanley, ' that I do. I have been 
 over the proofs of this very work of his you are alluding to ; 
 in fact, he was good enough to entrust me with the correc- 
 tion of them.' 
 
 ' Figures,' exclaimed Foreman savagely, ' can be made 
 to prove anything, that is to say on paper. Let me see Mr. 
 Griffen's figures, and I will engage to make good my own 
 case from them— let the figures be what they may. You 
 come with me into the workman's quarters, and then doubt 
 me if you can. Have I worked for ten years amongst the 
 wage-slaves of England, and yet cannot be sure of the 
 simple fact which I tell you —that out of every thirteen 
 pounds the wage-slaves produce, the capitalistic classes rob 
 them of ten pounds? That is, I repeat, the proportion, 
 and no juggling with arithmetic can alter it.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Mr. Stanley, ' since we cannot agree about 
 England, let us turn to some other country. Do you con- 
 sider that the same thing holds good everywhere? Does 
 it hold good, for instance, in America? I am told that if the 
 workmen in England get little, in America they get still less.' 
 
 ' Less than ours in England ? ' said Foreman. ' If they 
 did they would starve. In England the workmen live on 
 starvation wages. Who will venture to tell you that any- 
 where they can live on less than that ? ' 
 
 ' Let us reduce the affair to dollars,' said Mr. Stanley. 
 ' In a dollar there are a hundred cents. Out of every dollar 
 the English workman makes, the capitalist, according to 
 you, takes about seventy-seven cents, and leaves him 
 about twenty-three. Such is your computation. Well, 
 in America, I am told that out of every dollar the work- 
 man makes, the capitalist takes ninety-four and leaves 
 him six.'
 
 chap. x. THE GOSPEL OF REVOLUTION 1 67 
 
 'What fool,' exclaimed Foreman, 'can have possibly 
 told such stuff to you? And do you mean to say you 
 believed it ? ' 
 
 ' No,' said Mr. Stanley. ' I have not admitted that. 
 But the person who made the statement holds a position, 
 and claims a species of knowledge not unlike your own. 
 You spoke, Mr. Foreman, just now of Chicago. The 
 person I quote from is a certain Heinrich Jungbluth, the 
 leader and organiser of the Chicago band of Socialists. 
 He has stated in a leaflet, very similar to yours, that the 
 American workman, for every dollar he makes, gets him- 
 self exactly six cents.' 
 
 The fashion of Foreman's countenance underwent a 
 sudden change. His jaw fell. He appeared to be almost 
 terrified. 
 
 ' Heinrich Jungbluth ! ' he exclaimed. ' And what do 
 you know about Heinrich Jungbluth ? ' 
 
 ' Several things,' said Mr. Stanley, ' if you care to hear 
 them. He was a clerk originally in a commercial house in 
 Paris, but was dismissed in consequence of some disgraceful 
 scandal. Subsequently he came to America, and took a 
 prominent part in the Pittsburg riots. At one time he was 
 suspected of having forged a cheque. At another time he 
 was sent to prison for a violent assault upon a woman. He 
 is now the corresponding member of the League of Social 
 Democrats, and is urging them at this moment to attempt 
 some outbreak in London.' 
 
 ' Who are you ? ' shouted foreman. ' Are you a Socialist 
 yourself in disguise ? Let me look at you. Have I ever 
 seen you before ? ' 
 
 ' No,' said Mr. Stanley. • I am a priest of the Catholic 
 Church — a league, if you like to call it so, even more far- 
 reaching than yours ; and we, too, have our correspondents 
 in all parts of the world. Let us say no more, however, about 
 Plerr Jungbluth's character. I merely mentioned his 
 statistics, which you say arc impossible, to show you that 
 Socialism does not always insure accuracy.'
 
 1 68 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ir. 
 
 1 God bless my soul, sir ! ' said Foreman, ' if you under- 
 stand the matter so much better than I do, I can only say 
 you had better become a Socialist yourself, since you tell me 
 you are not one already.' 
 
 ' Let us forget,' said Mr. Stanley, ' the point on which we 
 differ personally. In spite of that even I would willingly be 
 a Socialist, if it were not for the other fatal defect I spoke of 
 — the defect in the theory, as apart from the statistics of 
 Socialism.' 
 
 'Well,' said Foreman sulkily, 'you seem so singularly 
 conversant with the entire question that I cannot but be 
 curious — very curious indeed — to learn from you what this 
 fatal defect may be.' 
 
 ' Put briefly,' said Mr. Stanley, who was now the centre 
 of attention, 'it is this : not that your theory is in any place 
 inconsistent with itself, but that it is quite inapplicable to 
 ordinary human nature. Were we all of us angels, your 
 economic system would be perfect ; and if we lapsed after- 
 wards into capitalists you might properly call us devils. As 
 it is, we are men, with men's powers and motives, which must 
 be indeed controlled, but can never be fundamentally altered. 
 If your economic system does not apply to these it applies 
 to nothing, and has no practical meaning. What I say is, 
 that your system does not apply to them. Allow me to ask 
 you this : you are not a believer, I think, in what are called 
 natural rights, are you ? ' 
 
 ' Certainly not,' said Foreman. ' Natural rights imply 
 some supernatural sanction ; and whatever Socialists indivi- 
 dually may think as to religious matters, their economic 
 system has nothing to do with religion. Our basis is social 
 rights, not any such nonsense as natural rights.' 
 
 ' Precisely,' said Mr. Stanley. ' Your position I think is 
 this : men have no right to anything which they have no 
 means of keeping ; and no right to anything which there is 
 no possibility of their getting. Thus they have no right to 
 any property in the wind, and they have no right to any 
 property in the moon.'
 
 chap. x. THE GOSPEL OF REVOLUTION 169 
 
 ' Of course,' said Foreman impatiently, ' we all of us know- 
 that.' 
 
 ' Well, Mr. Foreman, let us now go to practical matters. 
 Let me ask you if you agree to this : capital is essential to 
 production — we may call it, in fact, the means of production 
 ■ — and, were capital destroyed altogether, the working-classes 
 would suffer even more than they do from its being kept as 
 it is, in the hands of a few capitalists.' 
 
 ' Naturally,' said Foreman ; ' that is the key to the whole 
 position. Capital is not merely the means of production, 
 it is the means of life ; and it is because the means of 
 life have been monopolised by that small ring which we call 
 the capitalists that these capitalists are able to dictate terms 
 to the workers.' 
 
 'That is to say,' said Mr. Stanley, 'the workers must 
 either starve, or work for the capitalists ; and the capitalists 
 pay them, not what their work is worth, but only just enough 
 of its worth to keep them in working order, and to make 
 life seem a better thing than death to them. The remainder 
 is appropriated — as you would say, stolen — by the capitalists ; 
 and they are only able to steal it because they have mono- 
 polised the capital. Now, Mr. Foreman, if you put the 
 case like that, up to this point I altogether agree with 
 you.' 
 
 ' You do ? ' exclaimed Foreman. ' Well, sir, and what 
 next?' 
 
 'I agree with you, further,' Mr. Stanley continued, 'in 
 this : could it be brought about that there were no such 
 monopoly, and if the community possessed the capital in 
 common, the workers would themselves receive the whole 
 of what they have had a hand in producing. The capitalists, 
 to borrow your language, would not be able to steal any 
 profits from them. Here, then, we come, I think, to the 
 sum of the Socialistic gospel — the workers have a right to 
 the capital of the community? 
 
 ' Certainly,' said Foreman. ' That is substantially what 
 we say.'
 
 170 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ii. 
 
 ' Now here, at last,' replied Mr. Stanley, ' is the' point 
 where we part company. I say just the reverse. I say the 
 capitalists have a right to what you call their thievings. I 
 don't expect to convince you ; but I can, if you will listen to 
 me, explain to you what I mean, and at all events you will find 
 in it something to think of. We agree — don't we ? — upon 
 two points as to capital. It is necessary to the workers ; 
 there is one point. It is accumulated labour ; there is the 
 other point. Well, I say that the capitalists have a right 
 to their thievings, because if it were not for the sake of 
 these thievings the capital would never have been accu- 
 mulated ; and that the workers at large have no right to the 
 capital, because, if they seized on it, they would be unable 
 to keep it. It has only — Mr. Foreman, pray let me finish 
 what I am saying — capital has only been accumulated under 
 the direction of a minority. It would begin to disappear 
 the very moment it ceased to be properly administered ; 
 and no one is able to administer it properly except those 
 who are certain to profit by its administration. There, Mr. 
 Foreman, you have my meaning in outline. If we were all 
 equally clever and all equally industrious your theory would 
 be perfect. The State would be Socialistic to-morrow. 
 There is only one other supposition on which the same 
 result would be possible.' 
 
 ' And what is that ? ' said the voice of Miss Consuelo 
 Burton, who had again joined the group, and for some time 
 past had been listening. 
 
 'It would be possible,' said Mr. Stanley, 'if the average 
 race of men were all of them to rise to heights of zeal and 
 self-sacrifice to which saints and heroes at present find it 
 very hard to attain. Will Mr. Foreman allow me to ask 
 him one question more ? The kind of life you contemplate 
 in your Socialistic state is one of enjoyment, comfort, cheer- 
 fulness, and so forth, is it not ? It does not, at all events, 
 approach the gloom and the hard discipline of the severe 
 monastic orders ? Exactly. I thought so. I have known 
 other men of views similar to yours, and they have all
 
 chap. x. THE GOSPEL OF REVOLUTION 171 
 
 declared that the asceticism of the Christian Church is 
 little less than a blasphemy against our healthy human 
 nature.' 
 
 ' How can Mr. Stanley allude to such opinions in such 
 company?' Lady Chislehurst said to herself in a troubled, 
 half-audible murmur. 
 
 'Fasting, for instance, and celibacy,' Mr. Stanley was 
 meanwhile proceeding, ' the violent mortification, and, 
 above all, the suppression of any natural appetite, men of 
 Mr. Foreman's school think terrible- -tending, in fact, to 
 produce every form of evil.' 
 
 'There,' said Foreman dryly, 'you do me complete 
 justice.' 
 
 ' You are doubtless aware, Mr. Foreman, that this 
 discipline in its severest form is regarded by the Catholic 
 Church as fitted only for a very small fraction of mankind. 
 What I want to say to you is, that the severest discipline 
 ever devised for any handful of monks does far less violence 
 to our average human nature than the change in it which 
 your system would require to be universal. It would be 
 easier, far easier, to make men Trappists than Socialists.' 
 
 Foreman had come to the chateau expecting some dis- 
 cussion, and he was fully prepared to startle and horrify 
 everybody. Some cross-questionings, some panic-stricken 
 contradictions, he anticipated ; and he pictured himself like 
 a war-horse riding them down and dispersing them. But 
 that he should meet with any one to whom his arguments 
 were familiar beforehand, and who, instead of being fright- 
 ened and shocked at them, was able to dispute them in 
 detail, and make him exchange his thundering rhetorical 
 charge for a slow argumentative walk, in which lie was 
 answered at every step for such a contingency lie was 
 utterly unprepared ; and he now sat feeling almost as dizzy 
 as if his chair had suddenly broken and he laid fallen 
 forcibly on the floor. 
 
 In this state of mind, though he hated footmen on prin- 
 ciple, he had never been so near to thinking he had seen an
 
 172 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book n. 
 
 angel as he was now, at the entrance of Lady Mangotsfield's 
 attendant, who threw the whole question of the rights of 
 the masses into the background, by the announcement that 
 her ladyship was at breakfast in the east salon, and before 
 her departure, in half an hour's time, would be very much 
 pleased to say good-bye to her friends. ' I was to say,' the 
 man added, ' that her ladyship particularly hopes that Mr. 
 Foreman will see her ladyship.' 
 
 At this last announcement a smile went the round of the 
 company, in which Foreman himself joined, though with 
 anything but good humour. He had by this time recovered 
 his self-possession ; and though he had not by any means 
 collected and got into fighting order his arguments, which 
 had been scattered by Mr. Stanley's attack to the farthest 
 confines of his mind, he found himself fortified by a fit of 
 gathering anger, and this showed itself at the very first op- 
 portunity. The party were now preparing to break up ; but 
 the subject just discussed still held their attention ; and 
 Lord Aiden, turning to Foreman, said in a conciliatory 
 way : — 
 
 ' Of course the practical point for us who do not agree 
 with you is not so much whether your opinions are true, as 
 whether they are in reality spreading much amongst the 
 people.' 
 
 'You are right there, my lord,' said Foreman ; 'and the 
 rate at which these opinions spread amongst the people 
 varies with the acuteness of industrial distress or depression. 
 I'm not a man who is squeamish about a simile, and I don't 
 mind saying that Socialism is for all the world like yellow 
 fever or the cholera. It is propagated by germs ; only in 
 this case the germs are knowledge, often disseminated in 
 the form of mere leaflets. What I have just read you is one 
 of them. I think, Mr. Stanley, you will by-and-by have a 
 practical lesson as to whether Socialism is really inapplicable 
 to ordinary human nature or not. Listen : can you deny 
 this? Take any audience of working-men you like — let 
 them call themselves Radicals, let them call themselves
 
 chap. x. THE GOSPEL OF REVOLUTION 1 73 
 
 Conservatives — what they are really brooding over is a 
 sense of the same social injustice. They feel it, but they 
 can't define it. Socialism defines it for them. When they 
 realise the definition then the disease is taken.' 
 
 'Your similes,' said Harley, 'don't flatter your argu- 
 ments.' 
 
 ' They don't,' said Foreman ; ' they are not meant to 
 do so. You don't flatter the devil if you want to describe 
 him, do you ? And from your point of view — I am quite 
 aware of this — my opinions are far uglier than any devil you 
 believe in. Yes,' exclaimed Foreman, 'and they'll be play- 
 ing the devil soon, inapplicable as they are to average 
 human nature, with most of the things that propertied 
 human nature lives by.' 
 
 'My dear Foreman,' exclaimed Harley, with a genial 
 burst of laughter, ' upon my word you are quite delightful.' 
 
 Foreman was in no mood to be joked with by even his 
 oldest friends. He sat up in his chair like an adder about 
 to spring. 
 
 'Come,' said Lady Chislehurst, carefully looking away 
 from him, 'Mr. Carew is gone to Lady Mangotsfield ; let 
 us all of us go, too.' 
 
 ' Listen ! ' exclaimed Foreman, in a voice that suddenly 
 arrested them ; ' before you go, let me tell you all this : and 
 before a fortnight's over you will see whether I am a liar or 
 no. By that time Socialism will either speak with fifteen 
 mouths at St. Stephen's, or it will be speaking with a great 
 many more, and with louder mouths, in the streets ! ' 
 
 At this moment the door of the room opened, and a 
 tremulous but distinct voice was heard outside in the passage. 
 ' Mr. Carew,' it was saying, ' and where is that odd creature 
 
 — poor Lord B 's Conservative ? He goes back to Nice 
 
 himself, don't he, to-day? Tell him to come in my car- 
 riage, and Fll give a little advice to him.' 
 
 Lady Chislehurst rustled towards the door with the 
 instinctive intention of arresting Lady Mangotsfield's re- 
 marks about a person who could hear every word of them.
 
 174 THE 0LD ORDER CHANGES book ii. 
 
 It may safely be said, however, that she did not break her 
 heart when, before she could accomplish her purpose, Lady 
 Mangotsfield went on again, and said in a voice that must 
 have been still more distinct to Foreman, ' Of course if 
 people of that sort must meddle in politics it's all the better 
 that they should be on the right side ; but I often think of 
 what I once said to my gardener, who was always teasing me 
 with the ardour of his Tory principles. " Macdonald," I 
 said, " I'm very glad you have sound opinions ; but I'd far 
 rather that you had no opinions at all." ' 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 PONDERING IN HER HEART. 
 
 Lady Mangotsfield was gone. Foreman was going. 
 With Lady Mangotsfield he was not in the least angry. He 
 was even pleased with the view which she took of his own 
 position — a view which to him was as picturesque as a 
 ruined castle, and as harmless. He had no inclination, 
 however, for the high honour of travelling with her ; and as 
 soon as ever her post-chaise had departed, his own humble 
 vehicle drew up at the archway. It was close upon one 
 o'clock. He was begged to stay to luncheon ; but the pro- 
 phetic rage, which was not quite devoid of sullenness, was 
 upon him ; and, putting a constraint on his appetite, although 
 it happened to be voracious, he declined all refreshments 
 except a few solitary biscuits ; and even the dust of these, 
 as he went, shook off as a testimony. 
 
 ' Well,' said Mrs. Harley, who walked out with him to 
 the carriage, ' I think, Mr. Foreman, you have met your 
 match to-day.' 
 
 ' I suppose,' he said, 'you are alluding to that priest. I 
 was certainly surprised to find that he knows as much of the 
 question as he does ; though I could show him, if I had the 
 time, that he knows rather less than he thinks. As for the
 
 chap. xi. TONDERING IN HER HEART 1 75 
 
 others — I don't suppose there is one of them who has 
 thought enough to have any real opinion about it at all.' 
 
 ' And so,' said Carew at luncheon, ' the prophet has 
 come and gone ! ' 
 
 There was an inexpressible relief amongst all present at 
 the thought ; and Carew and Mrs. Harley began to con- 
 gratulate each other that things had not gone off as badly as 
 they easily might have done. 
 
 'Don't you think,' interposed Lady Chislehurst, 'that 
 he's a very horrible man ? If lie's as bad as he makes 
 himself out to be, he is little better than a criminal. He's 
 trying to bring about those very horrors which he pretends 
 to think are inevitable.' 
 
 ' He's a product,' said Mr. Stanley, ' of many social con- 
 ditions, and represents — depend upon it — certain very im- 
 portant forces. I have long watched the ways of the 
 Socialists carefully, but had not come across Mr. Foreman's 
 track before.' 
 
 'My dear Mr. Stanley,' said Lady Chislehurst, 'you 
 don't really think that these men can do anything ? ' 
 
 'I,' said Carew, 'am not at all so certain of that. In 
 London alone they have every material for a rising ; and 
 they may make a massacre, though they will never make a 
 millennium. Mrs. Harley, what wine are you drinking?' 
 
 'I must confess,' said Lady Chislehurst, 'you take 
 things very coolly, Mr. Carew.' 
 
 ' After all,' he said, 'what does it matter? Life as it is 
 — apart from religion, I mean — is a bad thing at the best ; 
 and human beings are contemptible little animals.' 
 
 'And yet,' said Miss Consuelo Burton, 'you think so 
 much of an aristocracy — you think them, Mr. Carew, such 
 a very superior order of beings.' 
 
 ' Everything,' said Carew, ' is comparative. They are 
 clean when compared to dirt. An aristocracy — this at 
 least is what I feel — is the best of all possible orders in the 
 worst of all possible worlds.' 
 
 ' And so,' said Mrs. Harley, ' the people are dirt, are
 
 176 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book 11. 
 
 they ? I thought, Mr. Carew, you were so devoted to im- 
 proving their condition.' 
 
 'They are only dirt,' said Carew, 'when they seize on 
 power. We are dirt when we relinquish it. Soup is dirt 
 on your pocket-handkerchief ; your pocket-handkerchief is 
 dirt in the soup-tureen.' 
 
 'Well,' said Mrs. Harley, 'if those are your political 
 opinions, there won't be very much power, in these popular 
 days, for you.' 
 
 ' They are not my opinions,' said Carew ; ' they are my 
 feelings — which is a very different thing. My political 
 opinions are my political feelings criticised.' 
 
 During the rest of luncheon Miss Consuelo Burton was 
 silent. Whether Foreman was right or no with regard to 
 most of the others, when he said that as to his views they 
 had no real opinion, with regard to Miss Consuelo he was 
 certainly quite wrong. She had an opinion that was very 
 real indeed, and with that tact which rarely deserts a woman 
 until she is so much in love that her happiness hangs upon 
 its exercise, she contrived, during the course of a walk in the 
 afternoon, to secure Mr. Stanley for a time as her sole com- 
 panion, on purpose to communicate this opinion to him. 
 
 In all the landscape commanded by the ramparts of the 
 chateau, the most singular object, perhaps, was a certain 
 solitary tower which rose out of the foliage of a semi-preci- 
 pitous forest, and seemed to be guarding the entrance to a 
 winding valley. It was the one remnant of a stronghold 
 that had formerly belonged to the Templars ; and it had 
 been partly repaired by the Comte de Courbon-Loubet, and 
 converted by him into a memorial to his lost children. Its 
 distance from the chateau was not more than two miles, and 
 as soon as the party had recovered from the lulling effects 
 of luncheon, it was to this tower they all set out on foot. 
 
 Mr. Stanley and his companion were the first to arrive ; 
 and whilst the others were still far below them, waging a dila- 
 tory battle with the thick and refractory underwood, they 
 themselves were already quietly seated at the top of a flight of
 
 chap. xi. PONDERING IN HER HEART 177 
 
 steps by which the base of the tower was reached. They 
 exchanged a few remarks about the building and the scene 
 around them. Then Miss Consuelo abruptly changed the 
 subject, and said, somewhat to Mr. Stanley's surprise : — 
 
 ' I saw the other day an odd thing in a newspaper. I 
 saw that of all the kinds of books published in England 
 annually, those on religion were by far the most numerous. 
 The reason is, I suppose, that although the subject is dry, 
 yet, to those who care at all for it, it is the most important 
 subject in life.' 
 
 ' One is,' said Mr. Stanley, ' sometimes apt to forget 
 what an enormous body the reading public is, and that only 
 a small section of it reads mainly for amusement. The 
 bulk of the middle and lower middle classes, when they do 
 read, read with the serious aim of instructing themselves.' 
 
 'I'm not surprised,' said Miss Consuelo, 'that so dry a 
 subject should be popular ; but that the general public 
 doesn't take to a dryer one. If I were the general public, I 
 know I would. I would think about nothing else — nothing, 
 nothing, nothing ! I would,' she exclaimed, as if carried 
 away by her feelings — 'I would shut up all my books on 
 religion ; and — and this other subject — till I knew and felt 
 at rest about it, I could never open any one of them again.' 
 
 Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were fixed on the 
 priest. She seemed to be half afraid of the words she had 
 just spoken. 'Tell me,' he said, 'and what subject is this, 
 which is so much more important to your own life than 
 religion is?' 
 
 She paused for a moment as if not quite sure of her 
 voice. At last she spoke, and there came into her eyes as 
 she did so a spark of vanishing laughter. ' Of course,' she 
 began, ' when I tell it to you, it sounds not only wicked but 
 ridiculous. The subject I mean is — don't laugh at me — it 
 is Political Economy.' 
 
 Mr. Stanley looked at her, with a smile that was certainly 
 not one of ridicule. 
 
 'What was the man's name,' she went on, 'that you 
 
 N '
 
 1^8 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ir. 
 
 and Mr. Foreman talked about? Karl Marx— yes, that's 
 it. Why don't people in general study books like his, and 
 see if they're true or not, or how far they are true ? I know 
 that Political Economy is called the dismal science. I 
 know that it sounds wicked to put it before religion. But 
 I don't mean wickedness, if you only knew my meaning. 
 To me it would not be dismal, let it be never so dry and 
 hard ; for it would tell me one thing, which I must be set at 
 rest about before religion can ever tell me anything. And 
 yet— it seems to me that language must all be wrong. It is 
 religion — the very thing I am thinking about. It is part of 
 it — it must be.' 
 
 1 Go on,' said Mr. Stanley, ' tell me your meaning. 
 Whatever it is, I am sure you don't mean wickedness. What 
 is this that you wish to be set at rest about ? ' 
 
 'Religion,' she said, 'you will, of course, tell me is the 
 first thing. If I felt it was not I should be a bad Catholic. 
 Well, what does Religion, what does the Church teach me ? 
 Mr. Stanley, doesn't it teach me this — how to act under the 
 circumstances in which I have been placed ? Of course it 
 does : but the thing I want to know is, have I any right to 
 remain under those circumstances ? ' 
 
 ' Go on,' said the priest. ' Don't be afraid of what you 
 are thinking. Explain yourself a little more fully.' 
 
 She looked at him with a wistful inquiry, something as a 
 dog might. ' Are you understanding me ? ' she said. ' Tell 
 me. Or have I merely muddled myself with a dream ? I 
 am richer than other people. Have I any right to be so ? 
 Am I a robber — are we all of us robbers ? Have we any 
 business to be in the position we occupy ? Oh, if you knew 
 how, in some shape or other, some thought like this has 
 been haunting me — I can't tell for how long ! Often at 
 balls last season I found myself thinking during supper of 
 the hungry faces I had seen in the street outside. I once 
 went over Mr. Snapper's manufactory, and watched the faces 
 of the poor men working there. They no doubt had quUe 
 enough to eat ; but in their looks, in their attitudes — I can
 
 chap. xi. PONDERING IN HER HEART 1 79 
 
 see them at this moment — there seemed a reproach to me 
 or a claim on me, I could not tell which. I have always felt 
 when I heard of popular politics — and at home, as you 
 know, we don't hear much, still we hear something — I have 
 always felt that there was something in the background 
 which no one had the courage to recognise ; and now to-day 
 I have heard it put into words. When Mr. Foreman was 
 talking, I couldn't understand it all ; but offensive as he was 
 in many ways, and strange as his wording was to me, it 
 somehow seemed to be what I had unconsciously been 
 waiting for. We are the cause, he said, we and the world 
 we live in, of all the blight we see in the lives below us. Is 
 that so ? Are we ? We must know that — surely we must — 
 before our minds can be satisfied. Where does our duty 
 lie — in which of these two opposite things — in renouncing 
 our position or in using it ? There, Mr. Stanley — I have 
 spoken straight out now. There is the question which 
 seems to me, every day when I am saying my prayers, to 
 come far before those questions which are commonly called 
 religious. Am I wrong? Tell me if I am wrong.' 
 
 ' My child,' he said, ' you are not. You are profoundly 
 right. Political economy, and the social conditions of 
 labour, have become in our day indeed a part of theology 
 — its youngest branch ; and as such, I, a priest, have 
 studied it. Yes, this question that troubles you is the one 
 great question for those whose hearts God has moved to 
 ask it. Every age has its riddle, and this riddle is ours. 
 I, perhaps, may be able to give some help to you.' 
 
 ' Oh,' she said quietly, ' but you have helped me already. 
 I listened to every word you said this morning ; and I 
 mainly understood Mr. Foreman from the way in which you 
 argued with him. Oh, indeed you have helped me. Listen : 
 the others are coming. I hear them in the wood under us. 
 But before they come let me ask you one thing more. Let 
 me say what I think you mean, and you tell me if I am 
 correct' 
 
 'Tell me,' he said. ' There is still time.' 
 
 N 2
 
 l8o THE OLD ORDER CHANGES _ book n. 
 
 'You don't believe, then, do you,' she said hurriedly, 
 ' that all riches are robbery— that you and I, for instance, 
 are living on stolen goods because we are staying at a castle 
 —or because I give five shillings, say, for a pair of gloves ? 
 You mean that the talents which produce money and so on 
 
 all those things that Mr. Foreman wishes to take from us 
 
 —depend on the workings of our average human appetites ; 
 that is to say, these talents would never be developed at all 
 if it were not in the nature of things that those fortunate 
 few who possess them, should possess also the riches which 
 result from their exercise. Is not that what you mean ? ' 
 
 'Exactly,' said Mr. Stanley. 'In considering human 
 actions we must always remember this. The natural reward 
 causes the effort, just as much as the effort wins the reward : 
 and the Church, in its message to the world in genera], 
 never assumes for a moment that these natural rewards can 
 be dispensed with. She enjoins not the extinction of the 
 desire for them, but simply the regulation of it. The desire 
 itself is presupposed as permanent. I am, of course, not 
 speaking of the counsels of perfection.' 
 
 ' No,' she said, ' but it was about those I was thinking.' 
 ' You must remember,' he answered, ' that they, in their 
 very nature, are addressed to a few only. They are plainly 
 not addressed to society as a society ; for a society that fol- 
 lowed them could not continue to exist.' 
 
 ' Yes,' she said, ' but let us keep to the one matter we 
 are talking about. Suppose all the men on whom the pro- 
 gress of industry depends had grace given them to forego 
 the natural reward of their exertions — suppose they were 
 still to make the same enormous profits, but instead of 
 taking them, as they now do, for themselves, were to 
 willingly hand them over for the general good — then there 
 might be a state like that Mr. Foreman dreams about. Is 
 not that so ? ' 
 
 ' True,' said Mr. Stanley. ' But think of this. Such a 
 change must in its very nature be voluntary — more than 
 voluntary : it must be enthusiastic. It would have to come
 
 chap. xi. rONDERING IN HER HEART l8l 
 
 from the inner movements of men's spirits. We are little 
 likely to see such a change as that.' 
 
 'Not in the world at large— no. But it might — surely 
 this is possible — take place in some. Some might still 
 make the exertion, develop all their faculties, and yet forego 
 the natural reward. They might extend commerce, they 
 might develop manufactures, as if they were doing so under 
 some monastic vow — some vow of poverty with a modern 
 meaning in it. It is at least conceivable that they might do 
 so ; and if they did — well, I want to know, wouldn't they 
 be doing good ? ' 
 
 'No doubt,' he said, 'if they acted thus they would.' 
 
 ' Thank you,' she said ; ' what I wished to ask you is 
 answered.' 
 
 She rose from where she was sitting, and moved a few 
 paces away from him ; and, looking down into the depths 
 of the wood below, began to trifle with the grass that grew 
 on a ruined parapet. She was standing thus when the rest 
 of the party arrived ; and as she turned unwillingly round to 
 confront them there was a curious something in her whole 
 air and expression which caught, in an instant, Carew's 
 experienced eye. 'If,' he exclaimed to himself, 'she had 
 had any other companion, I should think she had just been 
 listening to a declaration of love.' She, too, on her side, 
 had seen the way in which he looked at her ; and though 
 she had no time to inquire nicely into causes, she felt that 
 for a second her heart beat quicker than usual. She felt, 
 too, that she blushed ; and the blush was still on her cheeks 
 when, a few moments later, history began to repeat itself, 
 and Carew was again her companion on her way home. 
 
 ' You seemed,' he said to her presently, ' to be having an 
 interesting conversation just now, when we interrupted you.' 
 
 ' When you came,' she said, ' I was not talking — I was 
 thinking.' 
 
 ' Will you tell me,' he asked, ' what your thoughts were ? 
 Were you thinking about what we heard this morning ? ' 
 
 'I was thinking,' she said, 'of something that will alter
 
 1 82 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book it. 
 
 my whole life, perhaps.' She stopped short abruptly, and 
 walked on in silence, Carew meanwhile from time to time 
 watching her. Presently she began again, taking up her 
 former sentence, as if unconscious there had been any 
 pause in her speaking. ' And yet,' she said, ' who can tell ? 
 Perhaps by next season I shall have forgotten all about it, and 
 be thinking; of nothing but balls and new ball-dresses. Do 
 you think that's likely ? ' she went on, with a little nervous 
 laugh. ' Or perhaps you don't know me well enough to be 
 able to form an opinion.' 
 
 ' I don't know,' said Carew, ' what it is you are speaking 
 about ; but about you I know, or at least believe, one thing. 
 You will never be satisfied until you have seen the Right ; 
 and when you have seen it you will never be untrue to it. 
 That is my belief about you ; it is more than that — it is my 
 faith.' 
 
 She looked up at him with a soft startled stare. ' Your 
 faith about me ! ' she exclaimed. ' What grounds can you 
 possibly have for a faith about me of that kind ? ' 
 
 ' You yourself are the grounds,' he said. ' I know of 
 none other. Do you remember yesterday, when you said 
 something about the Mass, and I told you it shocked me ? 
 That was because of my faith in you. But this morning — 
 you didn't see me — I was in chapel, though, watching you 
 — this morning, the faith which you had shocked was 
 much more than made whole again. I saw that the Mass 
 was not to you what you said it was. It was not outside 
 your inner life, but a part of it. Let me say to you just 
 what I think. Let me think aloud to you, without either of 
 us feeling embarrassed. Religion and faith are not things 
 about which one pays silly compliments, and I am merely 
 telling you what I mean and feel. It can do you no harm 
 to hear it ; perhaps it may do you good. Look at me,' he 
 said, stopping in his walk suddenly ; ' is the sun shining on 
 my face, or do the trees hide it ? ' 
 
 ' The sun shining on your face ? Yes — not in your eyes, 
 but on your cheeks.'
 
 chap. xi. PONDERING IN HER HEART 183 
 
 ' I couldn't have known that if you hadn't told me.' 
 
 'Naturally,' she said. 'You can't see your own face 
 without a looking-glass.' 
 
 Carew suddenly turned to her with a look of earnest- 
 ness. ' Then I could see,' he began, ' although you could 
 
 not see ' But then his voice faltered. He lowered his 
 
 eyes and he looked away from her. 
 
 ' Tell me,' she said gently, ' what could you see ? ' 
 
 ' I could see on your face and in your eyes this morn- 
 ing "The light that never was on sea or land." Come, let 
 us move on.' 
 
 They resumed their walk in silence, which was for some 
 time broken by nothing but an occasional sound of Carew's 
 stick on a bramble. Presently, however, they emerged from 
 a dense thicket, and the chateau all of a sudden came full 
 into view before them, with its tower, its gardens, and its 
 ramparts, crowning the hill opposite. There were some 
 exclamations from both of them at the singular picturesque- 
 ness of the sight ; and then Miss Consuelo turned to Carew 
 and said, a trifle brusquely, 'You like to live in a castle, 
 don't you ? ' 
 
 ' How do you mean?' he said. 
 
 ' I mean, you like to lead a life that separates you not 
 only from the vulgar rich— of course you like that — but 
 from the common lot of men and women in general ? ' 
 
 ' For riches merely as riches,' replied Carew evasively, 
 'I care little or nothing. I would sooner eat a dinner of 
 herbs with gentlemen than a stalled ox with people — well, 
 with people of no family.' 
 
 ' Yes, but if gentlemen are to hold their heads up in the 
 world, there are certain surroundings which you think are 
 clue to them, to which morally they have a birthright ; and 
 you yourself like to be surrounded by these. You would not 
 like to renounce them ? ' 
 
 ' To me,' he said, ' they are symbols — they are not 
 luxuries.' 
 
 'What, 5 she exclaimed, suddenly brightening into a
 
 1 84 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ii. 
 
 wayward laugh, ' do you lounge in a soft arm-chair to show 
 the length of your pedigree ? ' 
 
 Carew laughed too ; and until they reached the chateau 
 the conversation lapsed into a less serious tone. Both, 
 however, still were aware of serious thoughts beneath it ; 
 and when they were standing in the archway waiting for the 
 others, Miss Consuelo again said in something of her 
 former manner, ' Yes, this is the sort of thing you like — 
 this stately seclusion, these battlements, these great coats of- 
 arms ' 
 
 ' Well,' he said, ' and what are all these but signs ? 
 Would you like yourself to renounce the thing they 
 signify ? ' 
 
 ' No,' she said ; ' on that point I feel just as you do. It 
 is partly for what they signify that I would renounce the 
 present signs. I should find new ones. What we have 
 now I would sacrifice.' 
 
 ' Tell me,' said Carew, ' what are the exact things you 
 are thinking of.' 
 
 She looked at him as if she but half heard his question 
 — as if her thoughts were wandering; and her words, when 
 she spoke, seemed little more than a ripple on the surface 
 of a silent meditation. ' Many things,' she said ; ' not only 
 houses and lands and servants — other things, too— poetry, 
 books, drawing, self-development— perhaps other things — 
 all the unwritten poems of which one's own soul is the 
 heroine. I think all this is involved in the thought I have 
 received to-day. But I can't tell,' she said, rousing herself— 
 ' I can't tell yet. That thought is like one of my own 
 travelling-trunks. It will take a long time to unpack.' 
 
 ' Will you not,' said Carew, ' let me help you in unpack- 
 ing it ? ' 
 
 ' Perhaps some day,' she replied, ' perhaps never.' Then, 
 with a little brusque movement of the head, she looked him 
 in the eyes for a moment, and said, ' If any one helps me 
 you shall.' The words were hardly uttered when a deep 
 blush covered her cheeks, and changing her manner with a
 
 chap. xi. PONDERING IN HER HEART 185 
 
 strong effort, she went on almost flippantly, ' But you 
 wouldn't like the task. No, no ; these are the surroundings 
 for you. You will live and die with liveried servants wait- 
 ing on you. You are quite right about yourself. The 
 people, for you, are dirt.' 
 
 'See,' said Carew, 'here come Lady Chislehurst and the 
 others. I have something to say to them. Will you all of 
 you,' he went on, 'come now with me, and I will show you 
 what I said I would —how I occupy my solitude here. Per- 
 haps,' and he turned again to Miss Consuelo Burton, 'you 
 will find in this a reply to what you have just said.' 
 
 Carew led his guests, who were delighted at his proposal, 
 into a side of the chateau which they had none of them yet 
 visited ; and they presently entered a suite of small sitting- 
 rooms, opening one into the other after the fashion of old 
 houses. 
 
 ' When,' he said, ' I was unpacking my books and papers, 
 and wondering how on earth I should ever sort and arrange 
 them, this little row of rooms struck me all at once as a god- 
 send. I have consecrated one of them exclusively to each 
 of my several tastes, or perhaps I should say more properly, 
 of the several interests of my life. In this room — you see 
 I have not used it much — in this room are all my poets, 
 dramatists, novelists, and so on; everything, in fact, that you 
 call literature proper. Now come into the next. Here are 
 all my books on philosophy and religion.' 
 
 'This room,' said Lady Chislehurst with approbation, 
 'looks more lived-in than the other. And— ah, I see you 
 have all the great Catholic writers —nearly all are Catholic; 
 and here is Mr. Stanley's book on the life of the Angelical 
 Doctor. But that table, Mr. Carew, has not been sat at 
 lately; or else your French housemaids are very bad hands 
 at dusting.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Carew, 'now come into the third room.' 
 
 An exclamation burst from several voices, and Harlcy 
 said, expressing the meaning of all of them, ' Well now, 
 Carew, we have srot to your den at last.'
 
 1 86 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book 11. 
 
 And a den indeed it was. Along the walls, on rudely 
 constructed shelves, were rows upon rows of books, many of 
 them bound in paper, whilst the floor was piled with reports 
 and pamphlets, and official-looking folio-sheets covered with 
 tabulated statistics. At each of the two windows there was, 
 moreover, a writing-desk, and each of these desks was plainly 
 in present use. The visitors slowly inspected the contents 
 of the curiously unornamental library ; and volume after 
 volume as they went the round of the room was seen directly 
 or indirectly to deal with the same subject. Political 
 Economy, and the social conditions of labour— the subject 
 was that; the subject was that only. English, German, 
 French, and American manuals all were here; and still more 
 numerous were rows of Reports and Blue-books. 
 
 ' Here,' said Carew at last, ' is the scene of my daily life. 
 My solitude is a nut, and here you get to the kernel of it. 
 There is hardly a book, Mrs. Harley, of any present influ- 
 ence either in Europe or America, dealing with the labour 
 question, or the land question, which I have not got here ; 
 and I have also done my best to get all the most reliable 
 accounts, official or otherwise, of the way the workers live in 
 various countries, and their comparative comfort or misery 
 at various periods. I am trying to reduce a number of my 
 results to writing.' 
 
 'And who,' said Lady Chislehurst, 'sits at that other 
 desk ? Do you keep an amanuensis ? ' 
 
 ' There he is,' said Carew, pointing to Mr. Stanley, ' or 
 rather I am his. He this week is correcting, and I am help- 
 ing him to correct, the proof-sheets of Mr. Griffen's work, 
 which our poor friend Foreman was looking forward to as a 
 new revelation. Now, Lady Chislehurst, I have made my 
 confessions to our Society, as my contribution to its inaugural 
 meeting.' 
 
 ' I hope,' she said as they returned to the room adjoining, 
 ' that you have not abandoned this room — the room of your 
 theologians.' 
 
 ' At any rate,' said Carew, ' I have passed to the other
 
 chap. xi. PONDERING IN HER HEART 1 87 
 
 through this ; and to this, you see, I return, whenever I leave 
 the other.' 
 
 Late in the evening, shortly before the party separated, 
 he said in a low voice to Miss Consuelo Burton, ' And do 
 you think that I care nothing about the people now ? ' 
 
 ' No,' she replied, 'what I said I unsay.' 
 
 ' And will you do this ? ' said Carew. ' One thing which 
 you said — will you now say it over again ? Will you say again, 
 " If any one ever helps me, you shall " — will you say that ? ' 
 
 'Yes,' she murmured, ' I say it.' 
 
 That night, in her room, before she retired to bed, she 
 opened a large despatch-box and took out a number of 
 papers from it. She put these before her on the writing-table, 
 and she sat for a long time pensively looking over them. 
 Her head rested on her hand as if wearily ; a half-contemp- 
 tuous smile flickered about her mouth ; once or twice she 
 gave a little cold soft laugh ; once or twice too a sigh escaped 
 her. The papers were all in manuscript ; part was prose, 
 part was verse. It was all of her own composition. She had 
 never shown it to any one, or ventured to hope that it could 
 be of any value to others ; but it had been for her like a 
 hidden store of honey, which she had secreted from time to 
 time, obeying a natural impulse. To another reader she 
 knew that the words might convey little ; but to her, when 
 she wrote them, they were like so many constellations of stars 
 marking and fixing the figures created by her own imagination. 
 In the case of the verse, it was the same, too, with regard to 
 their melody. They were like notes in a copy of music, 
 which only she could read, and which could be played only 
 on the instrument of her own mind. 
 
 To-night they still charmed her, but not as formerly. 
 There was a difference. The thoughts, the sentiments, which 
 it once so pleased her to chronicle, were now dear to her 
 only as the toys of a lost childhood. Willi the mere melody 
 it was otherwise. That, as she read, seemed sonorous and 
 satisfying as ever. It was as though she were herself singing 
 to herself, and she turned the pages regretfully as if the sound
 
 I 88 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book n. 
 
 fascinated her. But no sooner had she come to the last page 
 than, rising from her seat, she gathered them all together, 
 and then, moving towards the chimney, carefully placed them 
 across the iron dogs and set fire to them. She stood looking 
 at them, as a mother might look at a dead child, whilst they 
 burned slowly. Then, when the last blue flames were flicker- 
 ing faint amongst the folded embers, she pressed her hands 
 tightly across her eyes ; her lips quivered a little, and she 
 murmured half aloud, ' What is poetry or the poetry of life to 
 me !' 
 
 Lord Aiden and Carew, on the terrace just below her, 
 were meanwhile pacing up and down together, smoking their 
 cigarettes, whilst the stars glittered above them. Lord 
 Aiden, who, in spite of his dilettante languor, was really 
 touched by poetry more deeply than by anything, and had 
 always escaped to it as a refuge from imperial politics and 
 diplomacy, repeated in Greek that loveliest of all Greek 
 epigrams, of which the following is a widely known trans- 
 lation — 
 
 My love, thou gazest on the skies : 
 Ah, would that I might be 
 
 Those skies, with all their thousand eyes, 
 That I might gaze at thee ! 
 
 ' We were talking the other night,' he went on, ' about 
 the inversion of similes. I have often thought that we 
 might invert the whole thought of that poem. Some men 
 are constant not to a woman but womanhood, and instead 
 of seeing in the skies an image of themselves as they would 
 wish to be, they see in them the image of womanhood as it 
 actually is. They do not wish for a thousand eyes to look 
 at any one woman ; but they see the same mysterious inex- 
 haustible charm of womanhood everywhere looking out of a 
 thousand eyes at them. They are pantheists in love, and 
 they are not inconstant though they seem to be.' 
 
 'I,' said Carew, ' hitherto have been a pantheist some- 
 what of that kind ; but no woman could ever move me now, 
 unless we both clung together to a something beyond our- 
 selves.'
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A SEEKER FOR TRUTH SHIPWRECKED. 
 
 A few days later the chateau was dull and silent ; and 
 Carew once more was alone in it. Indoors, on his desk, 
 his books and papers invited him ; outside, the sun was 
 shining brightly as ever : but nothing pleased or satisfied 
 him as it had done formerly. It is not surprising, when a 
 house has been full of guests, if the host who remains be- 
 hind should feel depressed by the solitude ; but Carew's 
 depression did not arise from this. The mere absence of 
 his friends he could have borne with perfect composure ; 
 and the thing that weighed upon him was not that these 
 friends were gone, but the peculiar circumstances which had 
 attended the going of one of them. 
 
 On Sunday night he had persuaded the whole party to 
 stay on with him at least till Tuesday ; and Monday was to 
 be occupied in some picturesque excursion, a prospect which 
 filled Miss Consuclo Burton with pleasure. 
 
 But on Monday morning, soon after the post arrived, 
 Mrs. Harley had come to him with an odd look in her face, 
 and informed him, in a manner not far from embarrassment, 
 that she had just had a letter from the eldest Miss Burton. 
 
 'Who has been telling her tilings,' said Mrs. Harley, 
 ' I am sure I don't know ; but she has heard already — she- 
 must have heard it yesterday — that Consuelo has been meet- 
 ing Foreman here. She is very much annoyed about it, 
 and wishes her to come back immediately. Consuelo, poor 
 child, has had a letter from her, too. She won't show it to
 
 I po THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 me ; but I can see it is disagreeable. Has Elfrida not 
 written to you ? ' 
 
 Carew drew from his pocket a number of unopened 
 envelopes. ' I will look,' he said. ' Yes, this must be hers.' 
 
 It was a note couched in the coldest terms of civility. 
 'When I allowed my sister,' it said, 'to come to your house, 
 I did so believing that she would be safe from meeting a 
 person whose opinions and character are notoriously offen- 
 sive to her family, and with whom they could never allow 
 her to associate for an instant. Since this, however, proves 
 not to have been the case, it will hardly surprise you that I 
 have asked Mrs. Harley to arrange for my sister's return at 
 the earliest moment possible ; and we are sending a carriage 
 to fetch her, which, so far as we can ascertain, will arrive at 
 your house very nearly as soon as this letter.' 
 
 ' I can never,' said Mrs. Harley, ' let her go back alone. 
 I am more sorry than I can say to leave you in this way. 
 Georo-e, of course, can remain ; but I, you will see yourself, 
 must really go back with her ; and I have no doubt that the 
 moment I see Elfrida I shall be able to show her that you 
 have been not to blame.' 
 
 To this Carew could offer no opposition ; indeed, 
 annoyed as he was at the whole incident, what he felt most 
 was the position of Miss Consuelo herself. 'Where is she?' 
 he asked Mrs. Harley. ' I should like to speak to her.' 
 
 ' She is in her room,' said Mrs. Harley, ' getting ready 
 to start ; and I must go too. Poor child, she is painfully 
 troubled ; and the instant the carriage comes she begged 
 we might be off. For aught I know, it may be here 
 
 already.' 
 
 He saw neither of the two ladies again till a minute or 
 two before their departure. He had no opportunity of say- 
 ing one word to Miss Consuelo privately ; and indeed, till 
 he was actually seeing them into the carriage he was unable 
 to do as much as catch her eye for a moment. At last he 
 did this in the act of saying ' Good-bye ' to her ; and what 
 was his sensation then? What emotions were they that
 
 chap. i. A SEEKER FOR TRUTH SHIPWRECKED 191 
 
 he read in the look she turned on him ? Was sympathy 
 there ? Was there any feeling of friendliness ? To his sur- 
 prise, there was nothing but a frigid stare of indifference; 
 and when he proceeded, before his surprise had overpowered 
 him, to murmur some hope of their very soon meeting 
 again, she merely replied with a civil conventional little 
 laugh, ' I'm rather afraid we are going to leave Nice pre- 
 sently.' 
 
 As to the question of Foreman, he talked that over with 
 Mr. Stanley, and he had little doubt that that would be soon 
 explained. He wrote Miss Burton a letter about it ; and 
 felt fully able to clear himself. On that score he was soon 
 at ease. But his mind was full of some dim foreboding 
 consciousness that there was something behind, which he 
 had not yet arrived at ; and all through the time that the 
 rest of his friends remained with him, he was haunted and 
 stung by the thought of this unexplained parting. The day 
 after it, he had sent Miss Consuelo a line or two, to say 
 simply how he hoped he had not offended her ; and now 
 that his guests were gone, and there was nothing whatever 
 to distract him, he was pacing after breakfast up and down 
 the ramparts, wondering if the post would bring him any, 
 or what, answer. 
 
 Absorbing, however, as this thought was, it left room in 
 his mind for others of a more important nature ; indeed the 
 excitement caused by it seemed to compel their presence. 
 His old desponding impression that the existing social 
 world, with its soil of centuries, in which all his life was 
 rooted, and with which alone he could conceive himself as 
 having any relations — his impression that this world was on 
 the eve of its destruction, and that the very ground he trod 
 on was slipping away under his feet, returned to him more 
 vivid than ever. The stately hush of the old halls and 
 parks, which represented to him the climate in which his 
 own thoughts had grown, and out of which he could 
 hardly think at all, he seemed to see invaded by two 
 discordant armies— a savage mad proletariat armed with
 
 192 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 axes and firebrands, and an impertinent middle-class 
 entrenching itself in villas, and devastating the aris- 
 tocratic solitudes with sandwich-papers and the claws of 
 lobsters. This impression was again traversed by another, 
 that matters were not yet hopeless ; and that though it 
 was a riddle how to save what he clung to, the riddle 
 had an answer, if he only knew where to find it. But 
 both his hope and his despondency, and all the care in- 
 cluded in them, were, for the time being, inseparable from 
 the thought of Miss Consuelo Burton. They seemed like 
 emanations from it; it seemed perpetually to be shaping 
 itself out of them. 
 
 Such was his mood of mind when the stable-clock struck 
 ten — the hour when the post was due : and before long a 
 tray of letters was brought to him. He had only expected 
 one which could bear on his anxiety. Instead of one there 
 were three. There was the one he expected ; he knew it 
 must be her handwriting ; he looked at the back, and there 
 he saw her monogram. Besides that there was one from 
 her eldest sister, and there was another from Mrs. Harley. 
 
 He read the one from the eldest sister first. She ac- 
 cepted Carew's explanation with regard to the presence of 
 Freoman, but she did so in phrases of such studied cold- 
 ness as to show that her displeasure remained, although 
 the alleged pretext for it had been abandoned. This was 
 apparent in even the first few sentences ; and then followed 
 something that was even more unequivocal. ' My sister has 
 received the note which you thought fit to address to her on 
 this subject, and with my sanction is herself writing to in- 
 form you that she is perfectly satisfied with your explanations. 
 We must beg, therefore, that you will not put yourself to 
 the trouble of either thinking or writing any more about it.' 
 
 He crushed the letter in his hand with a sense of anger 
 and perplexity ; and it was some time before he looked at 
 the others. He resumed his walk at a more rapid pace, the 
 very stamp of his feet betraying the mood that possessed 
 him : and it was not till he had several times been the whole
 
 chap. i. A SEEKER FOR TRUTH SHIPWRECKED 193 
 
 length of the ramparts that he found himself prepared to 
 open Miss Consuelo's envelope. Within its folds there was 
 still some faint hope for him, but so faint that, like a flicker- 
 ing candle, it produced not light so much as an instant fear 
 of darkness. At last, however, he tore it open and faced 
 the contents. In a second his hope had vanished. Her few 
 lines were as follows : — 
 
 'Dear Mr. Carew, — Your letter told me nothing that 
 1 had not already known. I was much interested in meeting 
 Mr. Foreman ; but the incident, which you may have sur- 
 mised would be very displeasing to my relations, was, so far 
 as you are concerned, not only accidental but unavoidable : 
 and I can assure you they are now quite aware of the fact. 
 I am glad to have an opportunity of thanking you for my 
 interesting visit ; and also of telling you that, everything being 
 perfectly clear, no further explanations of any kind are 
 necessary. 
 
 ' I am, yours truly, 
 
 ' C. Burton.' 
 
 This letter he crushed even more violently than the 
 other. He seemed for the moment to be on the point of 
 tearing it up ; but changed his mind, and thrust it angrily 
 into his pocket. Mrs. Harley's still remained for him ; he 
 felt, however, that that might keep ; he had read quite 
 enough for the present. He went indoors, put on a stout 
 pair of walking-shoes, and, letting it be known that he would 
 not be in till the evening, resolved to seek consolation in a 
 long excursion on foot. 
 
 However heavily trouble may weigh upon one, there is a 
 comfortless exhilaration in the effort to shake it off; and 
 Carew, when he emerged again, felt that his spirits rose a 
 little. The charms of the day and country had also some- 
 thing to do with this. Colour and sunlight had naturally 
 upon him much the same effect that music has upon some 
 people ; and sore with a sense of undeserved injury, he 
 
 O
 
 194 THE 0LD ORDER CHANGES book in. 
 
 yielded himself now to their blandishments with a kind of 
 defiant recklessness. The blinding blue of the sky, the 
 liquid luxurious atmosphere which made the whole pano- 
 rama glitter as if it were seen through water, the tints of the 
 hills and hollows, the golden flash of the oranges, and the 
 misty bloom of azure which slept on the distant mountains, 
 and seemed as one looked to palpitate with its own intensity 
 —all this struck on Carew's nerves like the crash of some 
 inspiriting orchestra. In a half-hearted way it made him 
 feel a man again. Where he would go he had not yet 
 decided ; but his eyes fell suddenly on a little mediaeval 
 town, shining over its olive-yards far off in the upland 
 country. He had often heard reports of it — of its towers, 
 its fortifications, and its singular antique houses. This was 
 Saint Paul du Var. He resolved that he would go there now. 
 The walk was lovely. The country as he went revealed 
 to him, by road or mule-path, its quaintest scenes and the 
 choicest of its secret prospects ; and at last, after three 
 hours' travel, on emerging from a grove of cork-trees, he 
 saw on the opposite side of a deep but narrow gully a 
 glimmering girdle of grey walls and bastions ; above these 
 a huddling cluster of windows, roofs, and balconies, and 
 crowning all, a church and a square watch-tower. 
 
 Continuing to follow the pathway which had brought him 
 thus far, he arrived in the course of five or ten minutes more 
 at a wooded slope, which shelved down to a carriage-road, 
 or rather a space in which the carriage-road ended ; and on 
 the farther side of this was the embattled gate of the town. 
 Here he paused ; and seeing that the ground was inviting, 
 he sat down on the dry brown pine-needles, and drew from 
 his pocket some slight luncheon he had brought with him. 
 Despite his unhappiness exercise had made him hungry ; 
 and as he ate a reflective calm stole over him, such as often 
 accompanies the satisfaction of any natural craving. He 
 looked at the scene before him with a quiet, dejected interest. 
 It was full of sympathetic suggestions. The narrow gateway 
 that confronted him, flanked by two mouldering towers ;
 
 chap. i. A SEEKER FOR TRUTH SHIPWRECKED 1 95 
 
 the walls, pierced with loopholes, that ran to left and right 
 of it, were still nearly as perfect as when their builders had 
 left them. Little had changed them but the noiseless action 
 of time, which had laid on them the tints of centuries. 
 Close by these walls were several rude carts, plainly too wide 
 to pass through the narrow arch. In and out amongst them 
 were some little children playing ; an old crone with a distaff 
 sat in the sunshine watching them ; and some twenty yards 
 away a bevy of laughing girls were grouped together round 
 a bubbling marble conduit, and with quick brown arms were 
 washing their store of linen. Then presently there was a 
 slight noise behind him. He turned to look, and straying 
 downwards from the forest a boy goat-herd, actually playing 
 on a pipe, passed by with his goats, like a figure out of a 
 story-book. 
 
 Carew, as he sat contemplating this idyllic picture, 
 instead of forgetting his own personal trouble, felt it by con- 
 trast assuming a clearer shape. For a second time in his 
 life, Miss Consuelo Burton was lost to him ; but the cir- 
 cumstances now made the loss more crushing than formerly. 
 Then she had left him against her will, and regretfully- 
 Now she took part with those who told her to turn her back 
 upon him. And why? For what reason ? All the sins of 
 his life rose up before him, as they are said to do before the 
 eyes of a drowning man. At first he accused himself, and 
 said, with a bitter humility, ' I am an unclean man. She 
 is quite right in departing from me.' Then he compared 
 — he could not help doing so — his own life with the lives 
 of certain other men whom he knew the Miss Burtons 
 treated with marked favour ; and in what way, he won- 
 dered, could he be worse than these ? And why was he 
 worse to-day than he had been a week before ? Miss 
 Consuelo was lost to him : that was one pain. But this, 
 for the time being, was almost lost in another. He felt not 
 as if he had been wounded, but as if he had been beaten 
 all over ; and he was conscious of a sense of blank and 
 wondering desolation, out of which affection had disappeared 
 
 o 2
 
 jq6 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 like a trampled plant. All the present seemed somehow- 
 pitted against him. It was as hard and unjust to him, in 
 the person of his private acquaintances, as it was alien to 
 him in its general social tendencies ; and the past embodied 
 in the objects now surrrounding him, seemed to be receiving 
 and soothing him like a tender personal friend. 
 
 He rose presently and entered the little town. He 
 wandered eagerly through its narrow winding streets, noting 
 with keen glance every detail of interest — the decayed 
 scutcheon over a door that had once been noble ; the rich 
 ironwork of some mediaeval balcony ; or a well glimmering 
 in the middle of some courtyard, its marble rim gashed 
 with deep notches by the rope that had raised for centuries 
 its ever luminous water. At last a crooked alley brought 
 him out upon the ramparts, and, having looked about him 
 for a few minutes, he sat down on an old rusty cannon, 
 which had probably lain where it was unmoved since the 
 days of Vauban. Everything his eye fell on harmonised 
 with his own spirit. The old masonry, the fortifications, 
 the immemorial houses, in their forlorn survival, and in 
 their utter absence of hope, seemed, as it were, to be a part 
 of his ow r n being. 
 
 In this mood of mind he bethought himself of Mrs. 
 Harley's letter. He could learn nothing from it that would 
 add to his unhappiness ; it might contain something that 
 would at least ease his anxiety. It began, as might have 
 been expected, with a number of civil things about the 
 charms of Courbon-Loubet, and the unpleasantness of Miss 
 Consuelo's departure. It then went on to repeat the assur- 
 ances which Carew had received already from two other 
 quarters, and which added to his uneasiness rather than 
 took away from it — that the Burtons, so far as Foreman's 
 presence was concerned, now realised fully that they had no 
 complaint against him. The letter went on as follows : — 
 
 ' You know, however, what Elfrida is ; and, somehow or 
 other, there has been some mischief made about you. What 
 it exactly means I really can't make out ; but I think I have
 
 CHAr. i. A SEEKER FOR TRUTH SHIPWRECKED 1 97 
 
 gathered one thing — that that insufferable Mr. Inigo is at 
 the bottom of it. Perhaps that may tell you something. It 
 doesn't tell me much ; and Elfrida is as close as her own 
 father confessor, and when she is opinionated there is no 
 one so perverse as she is. I should like to shake her. 
 However, these little matters, though they are very annoying 
 at the time, soon blow over and clear themselves up, if one 
 only lets them alone. Indeed, my dear Mr. Carew, if I had 
 nothing to tell you but this it would hardly have been 
 worth while for me to inflict a letter on you. But I have 
 more to tell you. 
 
 ' Here, then, is some news which you may not yet have 
 seen in the papers : indeed parts of it have only just reached 
 me by a private telegram. Here is some news which will at 
 once amuse and please you. Eighteen out of twenty of our 
 friend Foreman's elections have come off already. Eighteen 
 of his Socialist candidates, who were to rally round them, in 
 all its terrible strength, the voting force of educated and of 
 organised labour — Foreman thought that the result would 
 make all England tremble, probably all Europe — well, of 
 these eighteen gentlemen, the one who polled most votes 
 polled — how many should you think ? Out of eight thousand 
 votes, and in a constituency supposed to be the most revo- 
 lutionary in the kingdom, this terrible candidate polled a 
 hundred and ninety- five ; and none of the other eighteen 
 polled as many as thirty. Poor Foreman ! It's impossible 
 not to pity him ; and yet, though I like him, it's impossible 
 not to be amused at him. You never saw a man so com- 
 pletely knocked down in your life. I dare say in a week or 
 two he'll be full of explanations, but he hasn't had time to 
 think of one yet. He's positively as white as a sheet, except 
 when I make fun of him, and then lie gets red with anger — 
 or rather he did, for, I believe to avoid me, he has gone off 
 to spend a week in retreat at Mentone ; and from thence, he 
 told me, he is going back straight to Eondon. There was 
 something almost ghastly in the eves of the poor creature 
 w hen he warned me at parting that we should soon hear again
 
 198 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 of him, and that his members without constituencies — I 
 don't know how they'll manage — will soon hold a parliament 
 that will make us all tremble, in the streets. Meanwhile, I 
 think you and I may congratulate ourselves that the old 
 order of things has still got legs to stand upon— even, perhaps, 
 the old families with their quarterings. Only, you and your 
 friends must show them how to be useful ; and — a thing 
 which is even more important — you must get them to be so 
 after you have shown them. 
 
 'The Burtons leave Nice to-morrow for Rome, where 
 they remain till Easter, and where we expect to join them, 
 and then we talk of going home together by the Italian lakes. 
 I wish there was any chance of your being at your cousin's 
 beautiful island villa at that time, and that we might all 
 meet again. I have not the least doubt that between this 
 and then Elfrida will have unbosomed her secret to me ; 
 and I shall be able to show her what a ridiculous mare's- 
 nest it has been. Yes — depend upon it: like a good soul as 
 she is, in another three weeks she will be humbly begging 
 your pardon, and you will be generously dissembling your 
 sense that she looks foolish.' 
 
 The first part of the letter told Carew little. The mention, 
 indeed, of Mr. Inigo's name produced a passing emotion of 
 contemptuous and irritated wonder ; but what Mrs. Harley 
 said with regard to the Burtons merely deepened his blank 
 and almost dreamlike sense of estrangement from them. 
 The elder sisters, he felt, might believe or disbelieve what 
 they pleased ; but nothing could soften his memory of the 
 way in which the younger one had parted from him. Very 
 different was the effect of the political news that had reached 
 him. The vast forces of change which were supposed to be 
 undermining society, and which seemed to menace with their 
 widespread and subterranean rumblings the imminent ruin 
 of all the existing fabric — these forces had put their strength 
 to the test : and with what result ? The terrible Titan, so it 
 seemed to Carew, had shrunk to the proportions of a squalid 
 malignant dwarf. He felt like a man relieved suddenly from
 
 chap. i. A SEEKER FOR TRUTH SHIPWRECKED 1 99 
 
 a nightmare. He was not in a mood to criticise this impres- 
 sion. It came to him by surprise ; he received it glowing 
 with gratitude ; and a sense of exhilaration spread itself 
 through all his body, as if after a long fast he had drunk 
 some strong stimulant. 
 
 He rose from his seat. The Chateau de Coubon-Loubet 
 seemed to rear itself on its hill with a bolder and statelier 
 dignity. The old buildings round him partook of the same 
 spirit. They ceased to look forlorn ; they defied change 
 and progress. He resumed his walk with a light and ex- 
 cited step, resolving to see, if possible, the interiors of some 
 of the houses. Full of these thoughts, he was descending 
 a flight of steps which led down from the ramparts to the 
 level of the ground below, when his foot slipped and he 
 found that he had sprained his ankle. The immediate pain 
 was not great, but he feared that it would soon increase, and 
 he was at once confronted with a doubt as to how he should 
 get home. 
 
 The scene of the accident was close to the gateway of 
 the town, and, recollecting the carts he had noticed outside, 
 he made his way to them limping, in order to see if he 
 could not engage one as a vehicle. He had hardly, however, 
 emerged from the shadow of the arch, when the first sight 
 that presented itself was a carriage, which must have arrived 
 lately. The horses had been taken out, but the coachman 
 was in his place on the box, and was placidly regaling him- 
 self with the contents of some paper packages. Carew's 
 ankle at the moment beginning to be more painful, his 
 ordinary scruples at once went to the winds ; and he in- 
 quired with interest of the coachman from what place he 
 had come, and of what his party consisted. The carriage 
 had come from Cannes ; its occupants were three people, 
 and they were now inspecting the town. Carew, on hear- 
 ing this, explained his condition to the coachman ; told him 
 he was anxious to get to the Chateau de Courbon-Loubet, 
 which lay hardly mure than a mile off the direct Cannes 
 road ; and then, with the present of a live-franc piece,
 
 200 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES ecok hi. 
 
 begged him to look for his employers, and ask them if, of 
 their goodness, they would give a lift to a gentleman who 
 had just lamed himself. 
 
 But he had hardly finished speaking when the coachman, 
 with a jerk of his thumb, exclaimed, ' Voila, monsieur ! ' 
 and Carew, turning his head, saw coming towards him the 
 very people in question. There was a tall bronzed man 
 with a somewhat military bearing, walking slowly by the side 
 of a middle-aged lady — a lady whose face was singularly 
 gentle in expression, and who was a little singular, too, for 
 the richness of her Parisian dress. There was something in 
 her look and movements so attractive and soothing, that 
 Carew had hardly time to do more than notice that a second 
 lady of some sort was walking a short way behind them, 
 under the shade of a fanciful brown parasol : and he was 
 just preparing, though not without some shyness, to advance 
 and meet the two foremost of the strangers, when their 
 companion, moving her parasol, caught sight of him and 
 started. He started also. They both had a second look 
 at each other ; and Carew recognised in the strangers 
 Miss Capel and her parents. 
 
 The girl's smile had still the same charm for him, the 
 same frankness, the same tantalising mystery, that it had 
 had on the mountain road and in the moonlit garden at 
 Nice. With a quick elastic step she came forward to meet 
 him ; and a welcome in her eyes flashed like sunshine on 
 trembling water. He, too, moved forward a step or two. 
 There was something intoxicating in the pleasure she showed 
 at seeing him ; and he hardly knew whether his ankle pained 
 him or no. 
 
 'Mamma,' she said, 'this is Mr. Carew, who saved my 
 precious fan for me— the beautiful one you gave me. Mr. 
 Carew, this is General Capel.' 
 
 ' You seem,' said Mrs. Capel, ' to have much the same 
 tastes as we have. We are devoted to wanderings amongst 
 these old places.' 
 
 ' But, God bless my soul 1 ' exclaimed the General
 
 chap. i. A SEEKER FOR TRUTH SHIPWRECKED 201 
 
 1 Have you hurt yourself? You seem as if you could hardly 
 walk.' 
 
 Carew explained that such was indeed the case, and 
 that when they appeared he was just nerving himself to ask 
 if they would take him home in their carriage. 
 
 ' I discovered,' he said, ' from your coachman, that you 
 had come from Cannes — I see you have left Nice— and my 
 house lies almost directly upon the way.' 
 
 ' And how have you come ? ' inquired Mrs. Capel kindly. 
 ' Have you walked ? ' 
 
 Carew explained that he had, and also where he was 
 living. 
 
 ' I remember,' the girl exclaimed. ' you told me you had 
 a castle somewhere. Fancy a castle in these days ! You 
 are like a prince out of a fairy tale.' 
 
 'Mr. Carew,' interposed Mrs. Capel, 'I am forgetting 
 myself. We are letting you stand when you ought to be 
 sitting down. Come, get into the carriage, and make your- 
 self comfortable ! The back seat — I insist. I'm accustomed 
 to be obeyed in these things. That's right, and like a 
 sensible person. And now, if you'll take my advice, rest 
 your foot on the seat opposite.' 
 
 Mrs. Capel's voice was unusually soft and musical, and 
 there was a trace in her of that simple and yet most danger- 
 ous charm which, Carew was already aware, was one of her 
 daughter's attributes. The childlike, the unconscious, the 
 fearless frankness of manner, though never more familiar 
 than that of a well-bred friend, was wholly without the 
 ceremonious distance found and expected in an ordinary 
 well-bred acquaintance : and the impression produced on 
 Carew, both by mother and daughter, was peculiar. It was 
 not as if they had pushed themselves with any effort into 
 his confidence ; but as if without effort, like two witches 
 or fairies, they had traversed the space by which mundane 
 strangers are separated, and put themselves noiselessly close 
 to him by a mere act of sympathy. 
 
 Mrs. Capel's commands as a nurse he found there was
 
 202 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 no resisting. He arranged himself exactly in the attitude 
 she suggested ; and then the daughter, with a smile of 
 mimic authority, got into the carriage and propped his back 
 up with a cushion. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A SIREN. 
 
 During the earlier part of the drive, so far as Miss Capel 
 was concerned, it was enough for Carew to be pleasantly 
 conscious that she was there. Her pretty jacket, her black 
 hat trimmed with honeysuckle, her light brown gloves, and 
 her pocket-handkerchief edged with forget-me-nots, all 
 combined to make up a piquant picture, which took a 
 meaning from the sense that her eyes were watching him. 
 But his whole conversation he gave to the two elders, 
 anxious to arrive at some sort of conclusion as to who and 
 whence they were, and what was their position and history. 
 
 He gradually learnt quite enough to transform them 
 from social phantoms into flesh-and-blood social realities. 
 The General, who spoke with a slightly un-English accent, 
 was descended not remotely from a well-known English 
 family ; his parents, however, had settled in the Southern 
 States of America, and his military rank was that of an 
 officer in the Confederate army. As to Mrs. Capel he could 
 not glean quite so much, but he gathered from something 
 said that she too was a Southerner by birth, though the 
 greater part of her life had been passed in Paris and London. 
 In addition to this, though there was no trace in her manner 
 of any desire to boast of any great acquaintances, she betrayed 
 quite accidentally that she had one or two intimate friends, 
 amongst not only men but women, of the highest position 
 and character. It is true that there breathed about her a 
 certain perfume of Bohemia, but it was a Bohemian per- 
 fume of the highest and most delicate kind. 
 
 By-and-by, having talked with the parents enough to 
 establish for them and himself some mutual social footing,
 
 chap. ii. A SIREN 203 
 
 he began to address himself more particularly to the 
 daughter ; nor was he long in discovering at least one new 
 charm in her. This was her keen sense of the beauty of 
 the scenes around her. She not only saw but felt it ; and 
 in the little remarks which she made from time to time on 
 the changing effects of shadow and light and colour, still 
 more in the pensive silence in which she would sometimes 
 watch them, he felt, as it were, that he was listening to a 
 musical instrument, from which the outer world was elicit- 
 ing some tender, delightful melody. In the radiant morning, 
 as he started for his walk, nature had appealed to him 
 directly ; now it appealed to him through the appeal it 
 made to a woman, and came fraught with the music and 
 mystery of a woman's heart. The imaginative impression 
 that he was listening to some actual tune grew on him with 
 a dreamy enchantment ; but its meaning, as he listened to 
 it, became more and more ambiguous. Now it was a 
 woman's longing for a love that had not yet come to her ; 
 now it was a woman's regret for some dead love or lover ; 
 now it was the sound of a child singing one of Blake's 
 ' Songs of Innocence.' 
 
 Meanwhile the afternoon was waning : the sunlight first 
 grew rich with a warm gold colour ; then into this came 
 a stealthy flush of rosiness ; and by-and-by the west was 
 barred with crimson ; and the purple dusk of the twilight 
 descended from the stainless sky. 
 
 Miss Capel looked round her as the silent darkness 
 deepened ; and, after a long pause, murmured almost in a 
 whisper, 'The shadows seem to fall on everything, just as 
 the dew does.' There was a spell as she spoke, not in the 
 words so much as in the tone. The tone seemed to say, as 
 distinctly as any language could, that it came from a heart 
 which would not be so touched now if it were not tender 
 for very different causes, or at least if it would not be. 
 
 ' Look,' said Carew, as a turn of the road brought into 
 view a new reach of country, ' there is the chateau at the 
 top of the further hill.'
 
 204 TIIE 0LD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 ' Indeed ! ' said the General. ' It must be a very 
 interesting place. I was wondering what it was as we came 
 along this morning.' 
 
 'And I hope,' said Mrs. Capel, 'as soon as you get 
 there, Mr. Carew, you will be careful of that ankle of yours. 
 Will you let us send over a doctor from Cannes to you? 
 We are quite early : you needn't look at your watch.' 
 
 ' I was looking at my watch,' said Carew, 'not with any 
 thought of the doctor, but because I wanted to ask you if 
 you would remain and dine with me?' 
 
 ' I am afraid,' said Mrs. Capel, ' that it's too late for 
 that.' 
 
 ' No,' retorted Carew, laughing ; ' I'm not going to let 
 you off. It's too late for one thing — for you to make that 
 excuse. Let us ask the General.' The General politely 
 hesitated. 'And you, Miss Capel,' Carew went on, 'what 
 do you say ? Would you like the arrangement ? ' Miss 
 Capel said nothing, but with a soft, almost solemn smile, 
 raised her eyes to his and nodded her head slowly. They 
 at once moved in a world of secret mutual understanding. 
 
 ' Come,' Carew resumed, ' let us consider that that is 
 settled. Your horses will be all the better for resting ; and 
 you, Mrs. Capel, who have been so kind to me as an 
 invalid, must know that for a sufferer there is nothing like 
 pleasant company.' 
 
 These persuasions were, before long, successful ; and it 
 was quite evident that the Capels were pleased to have been 
 persuaded. Little had Carew expected when he set forth 
 in the morning, desolate and depressed about everything — 
 about life and love and politics— little had he expected that 
 he should return a few hours later with an excitement that 
 disguised if it did not cure his unhappiness. And yet such 
 was, indeed, the case. Only for one moment, as they 
 crossed, in nearing the chateau, the track of his Sunday 
 walk with Miss Consuelo Burton, did a sickening pain, a 
 despairing regret come back to him. But it passed pre- 
 sently ; the remarks of his new friends drowned it ; and
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 A SIREN 205 
 
 in the pleasure and expectation they betrayed as the five- 
 sided tower drew nearer, he felt a renewal of his own fresh 
 sensations on perceiving it first himself. Indeed, when 
 they arrived at the great arched entrance, and he conducted 
 his guests across the court into the interior, he was con- 
 scious of an excitement, in receiving these chance strangers, 
 which last week had been altogether wanting when he 
 was performing the same office to his friends. To 
 his friends the chateau had appealed as a fragment of 
 history — as part of a past to which they had some close 
 relation. To his present guests it was a fragment, not of 
 history but of fairyland. It was a delightful adventure to 
 them to find themselves in the midst of it ; and to him 
 by sympathy it became an adventure also. Everything 
 suddenly acquired the charm of strangeness. The table, 
 covered with its familiar glass and silver, and the faded 
 liveries of the lackeys dimly moving in the background — 
 he could hardly believe that he had ever seen any of it 
 before. 
 
 ' I wish,' he said as dinner drew to an end, ' that I could 
 take you for a walk on the terrace and through the gardens 
 in the moonlight.' 
 
 ' No, no,' said Mrs. Capel, ' you keep yourself quiet. 
 There was an arm-chair in the room where we were just 
 now, which I at once took note of as the very thing for an 
 invalid. Perhaps the General and Violet might go out and 
 look about them for a moment ; and meanwhile, I will give 
 you a little medical advice.' 
 
 Carew was not pleased exactly at the notion of being 
 parted from Miss Capel ; but Mrs. Capel, by some mys 
 terious exercise of authority, contrived, when they rose 
 from the table and passed into the adjoining salon, that her 
 husband and daughter should do as she had suggested ; 
 and she herself and Carew were presently left together. 
 He soon comprehended the reason of this gentle and adroit 
 manoeuvre. 
 
 With a kind imperiousness she saw him arranged in
 
 206 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 comfort ; and then, with a grave expression, taking a seat 
 close to him, ' I had heard from my daughter,' she said, 
 'how you had met her at Madame de Saint Valery's — 
 Madame de Saint Valery is, as you know, my niece. What 
 a sad story hers is ! ' 
 
 ' It is,' said Carew. ' No one knows that better than 
 I do. There was never a woman who had more good in 
 
 her ' 
 
 'Yes, yes,' said Mrs. Capel, interrupting him, 'and 
 never a woman who has come to greater evil. Mr. Carew,' 
 she continued, ' you have never before heard of me ; but 
 though I never expected to see you, I have heard a good 
 deal of you. I know how on the night before she finally 
 threw over everything, you took her for a walk by the side 
 of the river at Hurlingham, and made her tell you the 
 trouble that you saw was on her mind. I know how she 
 told you plainly the desperate resolve she had taken, and 
 how you did all you could to dissuade her. Her husband 
 was in St. Petersburg. He had never behaved well to her. 
 In all London she had no real friend but you ; and you, 
 though people said you were yourself in love with her, did 
 all you could, like a real friend, to save her. Mr. Carew, I 
 know it was from no selfish motive. You were no rival of 
 the man who did the mischief. You wonder how I know. 
 My unhappy niece has told me.' 
 
 ' If ever I,' said Carew, ' had any influence for good on 
 her, it was only because in herself there was so much good- 
 ness naturally.' 
 
 ' There was,' said Mrs. Capel ; ' and it was for this 
 reason that I allowed Violet the other night to go to her. 
 But — I hoped for an opportunity of speaking to you on this 
 subject — that can never occur again. I suppose you are 
 hardly aware what has happened to that poor creature by 
 this time. She is now with some Russian prince — a real 
 prince, but a ruined man and a thorough-paced scoundrel. 
 She is with this man,' said Mrs. Capel, drawing closer to 
 Carew, and lowering her voice, though there was no one at
 
 chap. ii. A SIREN 207 
 
 hand to overhear her, 'and she helps him in keeping a 
 private gambling-hell at Nice. The whole thing is done 
 with the utmost secrecy. Their great effort is to elude the 
 vigilance of the police. It seems there is a club of them, 
 and they meet in different houses — never at the same house 
 two nights running. Can you fancy anything more dread- 
 ful? Any morning we may see in the papers that she has 
 been arrested. This is the reason why we have left Nice. 
 It is a sad story, but I wished to tell it you ; partly because 
 you had taken an interest in her, and partly because I 
 wished to explain to you how my child came to be with 
 her. That was a circumstance which otherwise you might 
 have easily misunderstood.' 
 
 1 No,' said Carew, ' I think not. At all events, I under- 
 stand it perfectly now. Poor Madame de Saint Valery ; 
 fancy her having come to that ! ' 
 
 ' Isn't it extraordinary? ' said Mrs. Capel. 'And it's not 
 for the sake of money that she has formed her present con- 
 nection. She has money of her own — plenty of it. She 
 has just bought a villa in Italy. No — it's simply an impulse, 
 a caprice for this man ; but a caprice, while it lasts, as 
 generous as the best kind of affection. Yes, Mr. Carew, 
 hers is a fine nature ruined.' 
 
 Whilst she was speaking servants appeared with coffee. 
 ' And now,' she went on, ' let us send for them to come 
 in from the terrace. Perhaps also you will allow me to 
 order the carriage.' 
 
 ' Not yet,' said Carew ; ' you can wait half an hour 
 longer. Think when you are gone how lonely and desolate 
 I shall feel.' 
 
 ' Mr. Carew,' said Miss Capel, appearing at the window, 
 'this is the most beautiful place, I think, I ever saw in my 
 life. Can we ever thank you enough for having let us 
 see it?' 
 
 'Yes, you can,' said Carew; and then turning to Mrs. 
 Capel, 'You can thank me easily,' he added, 'in one way; 
 and in one way only. Come here again, and pay me a visit
 
 203 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book in. 
 
 for a day or two. I am quite alone here ; and, as you know, 
 I am partly crippled. But I could at least show you some 
 of the neighbourhood, which is beautiful ; and if you were 
 not afraid of finding this place dull, you would certainly 
 prevent its being exceedingly dull to me.' 
 
 There was a little pause, and Mrs. Capel looked at her 
 husband. 'I am afraid,' said Carew, 'that the General 
 would not find much to amuse him.' 
 
 1 Oh, it's not that ! ' said Mrs. Capel. ' The General at 
 the present moment likes quiet better than anything. He's 
 writing an account of the Battle of Bull Run for one of the 
 New York magazines. To us, I am sure, nothing could be 
 more delightful.' 
 
 ' Then in that case,' said Carew, ' we will consider the 
 matter settled. It only remains for us to fix the day.' 
 
 'I'm afraid,' said the General, 'it can't be till the week 
 after next. Next week we are obliged to go to Genoa.' 
 
 ' Then why not this week ? ' said Carew. ' Have you any 
 engagements this week ? ' It appeared that they had not. 
 Carew's heart beat with pleasure. ' Well, then,' he said, 
 ' suppose that you come to-morrow. To-morrow is Thurs- 
 day. That would give you a few days here, at any 
 rate.' 
 
 Again there was some hesitation, and a little family 
 council ; but the result was quickly arrived at, and after one 
 or two rapid arguments, the invitation was accepted with the 
 prettiest grace in the world. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE GATES OF DREAMLAND. 
 
 The Capels, when they went — when their carriage dis- 
 appeared into the darkness, seemed to Carew to have come 
 and gone like a vision, and all his cares crowded back again 
 on him. The vacant rooms were filled again with his 
 friends ; he heard the voices that echoed his own feelings ;
 
 chap. m. THE GATES OF DREAMLAND 209 
 
 the chairs, the walls, all the objects around him, told him 
 that the eyes of Miss Consuelo Burton had rested on them : 
 and he asked himself in a fit of weary and useless repent- 
 ance why he had invited these strangers to profane and 
 trouble his solitude. He remained in this mood during 
 most of the next day, and had hardly tried to get free of it 
 before his visitors came. When he thought of the girl who 
 had so readily charmed him yesterday, another image like a 
 ghost revealed itself by the side of hers, and hers became 
 almost an annoyance, which disturbed without distracting 
 him. 
 
 Luckily, however, for the credit of his own civility, the 
 Capels' actual arrival roused a little of his yesterday's interest 
 in them, and, helped by a crutch, he limped out to welcome 
 them. There they were with a cortege of two carriages, one 
 containing themselves, the other their boxes and servants. 
 The moment he saw them again he felt his pulse quicken, 
 and a number of minute impressions were stamped upon his 
 memory in a moment — the spiked moustache and brown 
 hands of the General, the dove-like glance and the delicately 
 faded face of the mother, and the dainty audacity, almost 
 too much like that of a fashion-book, which caught his eye 
 in Miss Capel's dress as she descended. 
 
 Then followed presently the same little round of incidents 
 which had marked the arrival of the Harleys and Miss 
 Consuelo Burton. There was the same gathering in another 
 ten minutes round the tea-table ; there was the very same 
 tea-service. But the room, and everything in it, though 
 nothing whatever had been changed, was like the same 
 instrument having a new tune played on it, and it seemed 
 to be filled with a wholly different atmosphere. 
 
 Mrs. Capel's eye at once lit on the cups ; and drawing 
 off a long grey glove, which she extracted with difficulty 
 from under a heavy bracelet, she took one of them up and 
 examined it with the air of a connoisseur. 'Do you know,' 
 she exclaimed, ' that these are perfectly priceless ? ' And 
 she informed Carew of their exact date and history. Soon 
 
 P
 
 210 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book in. 
 
 after she was attracted by the old silver tea-pot, and she 
 seemed equally able to give an opinion about that. 
 
 ' This old place,' she said, looking round her with a 
 smile of soft surprise, 'must be a regular museum if all of 
 it is like this room. Do you see, Violet, those fiddles and 
 flutes over the door there ? They are exactly like what the 
 Count has at St. Cloud in his billiard-room. You must 
 know, Mr. Carew, that I am devoted to china and bric-a- 
 brac. We have a house at Saint Cloud ourselves ; and our 
 neighbour, whom I was just speaking of, is one of the 
 greatest collectors in Paris. Are you,' she added, again 
 looking at the tea-cups — 'are you very fond of these beautiful 
 things yourself? ' 
 
 ' I like them here,' said Carew, ' because they are in 
 keeping with the place.' 
 
 Mrs. Capel, however, hardly heard this, for looking up, 
 she exclaimed with enthusiasm, 'What a pity it is that they 
 should be all thrown away here ! For your cousin, I think 
 you told me, never comes here himself ; and your presence 
 is nothing more than an accident. However, as it's not 
 your house, I am going to indulge my feelings, and admire, 
 and admire, and admire everything to my heart's content. 
 Rudolph,' she went on to her husband, 'look at these lovely 
 curtains. They're exactly like that brocade on the walls of 
 Violet's sitting-room.' 
 
 Carew felt suddenly that he began to understand some- 
 thing as to where the difference lay between his new friends 
 and himself. The contents of the chateau pleased and 
 satisfied him because to him they were the right things in 
 the right place ; they delighted, but they surprised, Mrs. 
 Capel because they were the right things in a strange place. 
 At once his mind constructed from her manner, from her 
 tone, from her temperament, the external surroundings of 
 herself, her husband, and her daughter. He had a vision 
 of a villa, dainty as a jewel-casket, with gaily painted ceilings 
 and cabinets of Sevres china ; where everything had about 
 it a bloom of newness, delicate as the youth in the bloom of
 
 chap. in. THE GATES OF DREAMLAND 211 
 
 a girl's complexion, and where the antiquity of the choicest 
 artistic objects only gave them the charm of the rarest and 
 the newest acquisitions. The difference was just this. To 
 Carew, such objects in a drawing-room would suggest a 
 dilapidated chateau ; to Mrs. Capel, such objects in a 
 chateau suggested a possible drawing-room. 
 
 The General, as he talked to him, bore out this impres- 
 sion. It was quite evident that he was a man of taste and 
 cultivation ; and he instantly named the painters of two 
 small Dutch pictures which Carew, till that moment, had 
 never looked at twice. He seemed well acquainted, too, 
 with the history of the Revolution in France, and the posi- 
 tion of the noblesse both before and after it. But the subject, 
 though it commanded his interest, made no appeal to his 
 sympathy. He treated it as calmly as if it were some geo- 
 logic catastrophe : whilst as to the old towns, which he 
 seemed so fond of visiting, it is true that he admired them 
 for their picturesqueness and their curiosity ; but in their 
 associations he found nothing more personally touching to 
 him than he would have probably found in some curious 
 geologic formation. 
 
 Nor did Miss Capel in this way differ much from her 
 parents, except that to her the strangeness and antiquity of 
 the chateau seemed a source of imaginative and half-smiling 
 alarm, which Carew, as he watched her, presently found 
 himself admitting became her almost as well as a feeling for 
 its real meaning and history. And this impression grew on 
 him. All the signs about him of a stately order of things 
 which was well-nigh dead in France, and might soon be 
 dying in England, possessed for himself so close and sad 
 a significance, that was, to his ears, a kind of fairy-like 
 music in hearing them spoken of by a pair of lips so dainty 
 merely as ' so odd ' and ' so curious,' as if no sadness 
 attached to them. He even smiled with pleasure as he 
 caught in her soft eyes a floating Hash of what seemed like 
 unwilling amusement. 
 
 ' I must,' she said, rising as soon as she had finished her
 
 212 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 tea, ' move about and examine everything for myself. Mr. 
 Carew, you don't mind it — do you ? I'll promise to be 
 careful, and break absolutely nothing. Ah,' she exclaimed 
 presently, ' what flowers ! what roses ! Mr. Carew, I like 
 them best of all ! ' 
 
 Carew watched her as she stood close to the window, 
 with her nostrils buried in a forest of crimson petals. She 
 seemed like a creature fed on the breath of gardens. Then, 
 turning round, with deliberate gliding waywardness, she 
 moved here and there, inspecting one thing after another, 
 till at last, in the corner, she caught sight of an old harpsi- 
 chord. ' Will it play ? ' she asked, with a little cry of 
 delight. 
 
 ' Try,' said Carew. ' Let me open it for you.' 
 The instrument was certainly not in very good con- 
 dition ; but still Miss Capel contrived to elicit an air from 
 it, that was not only distinctly an air, but an air full of 
 plaintive pathos. Carew was much struck by this quick 
 transition of sentiment, for her face as she looked at him 
 seemed to take its expression from the music ; and with 
 some interest he asked what the air was. She did not stop 
 playing, but, fixing her eyes on him with a half-regretful 
 mockery, ' Don't you know it ? ' she said. ' It is quite old, 
 
 I believe. 
 
 Si le Roi m'avoit donne 
 Paris, sa grande ville — ■ 
 
 The words come from Moliere. Didn't he live under the 
 Monarchy — under the old regime} I thought you were a 
 Legitimist — isn't that what you call it ? — and that you cared 
 for all that sort of thing. I wanted to prove to you that I 
 was not quite ignorant — not quite unworthy of being a 
 visitor at your chateau.' 
 
 Carew murmured that she had proved that long ago. 
 She had stopped playing now, though her hands were still 
 on the keys, and, bending a little forward and looking at 
 him very gravely, ' Would you like me,' she said, ' to prove 
 it to you still more conclusively ? '
 
 chap. in. THE GATES OF DREAMLAND 21 3 
 
 ' You have proved it enough,' said Carew ; ' but you can 
 never prove it too often. Yes, please, prove it me in the 
 way you say you will.' 
 
 ' I don't know,' she said — ' I don't know if I have the 
 courage. I can't do it just at this moment at all events. I 
 shall have to consult mamma.' 
 
 What she could mean he was utterly at a loss to con- 
 jecture ; and she seemed to please herself in watching his 
 baffled curiosity, which was only interrupted by the distant 
 clang of the dressing-bell. 
 
 He had by this time recovered completely his yester- 
 day's sense of her fascination. He now was convinced that 
 she would distract without disturbing him, and he looked 
 forward with interest to seeing her dressed for dinner. Her 
 parents, however, both came down without her ; and Mrs. 
 Capel with many apologies said she would be ready directly. 
 But the minutes went by : no Miss Capel appeared ; and 
 her mother at last insisted that dinner be kept waiting no 
 longer for her. They had not, however, finished their soup 
 when the defaulter entered ; and Carew could hardly repress 
 an exclamation of delight and of astonishment. Anything 
 so radiant, so bewildering, he had never seen in his life. 
 She was powdered and patched, and her cheeks had a 
 natural flush on them that was not rouge, and that made 
 rouge unnecessary. Her dress was perfect, from the 
 ribbon round her neck to the tips of her high-heeled shoes. 
 She was a beauty of the Court of Louis Quinze come to life 
 again ; and the way in which she bore herself made the 
 spell complete. There was a little shyness in her entrance, 
 but no awkwardness. There was an expression in her eyes, 
 in her movements even, half mischievous and half deprecat- 
 ing ; and she advanced to the table with all the grace of a 
 child conscious of some misdemeanor and yet certain not to 
 be punished for it. 
 
 ' It's a dress,' said her mother, ' which she wore at a 
 fancy ball at Paris. It is just like a picture in the gallery 
 outside ; Yiolet noticed it the moment we came into the
 
 214 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 house, and nothing would satisfy her but to surprise you in 
 it to-night' 
 
 ' I hope,' said Miss Capel, looking at Carew as she sat 
 down — ' I hope you are not angry with me. I wanted to 
 show you, as I told you at the piano, that I could make 
 myself, at least superficially — is that the right word, I 
 wonder? — I dare say it isn't — that I could make myself 
 superficially in keeping with an historic chateau.' 
 
 ' Why,' said Carew by-and-by, ' can't we all go back to 
 powder, and dress as they did a hundred years ago ? ' 
 
 ' We should have to change plenty of other things,' 
 laughed the General, 'before we could manage that.' 
 
 ' We should,' said Carew, ' and I should like plenty of 
 other things changed.' 
 
 ' How funny that would be ! ' said Miss Capel, smiling 
 at the idea. ' No — I don't want, myself, to go back to 
 powder for always. It takes so long to do : you've no 
 notion of what a time it takes. I don't think, indeed, that 
 I want to go back at all, except — except ' 
 
 ' Except what ? ' said Carew, in a low tone of inquiry. 
 
 The General and his wife were at that moment speaking 
 to each other, and Miss Capel, having cast a glance towards 
 them, let her eyes rest on Carew's, and finished her broken 
 sentence. 
 
 ' We should all of us like, I suppose, to go back in our 
 own lives for some things — to do them again, or not to do 
 them at all' 
 
 These words, and the manner in which she uttered them, 
 remained in Carew's mind all through the course of dinner ; 
 and no sooner did the party find themselves in the drawing- 
 room than, pointing out to her a magnificent grand piano, 
 ' I hope,' he said, ' you will go back far enough now, to play 
 us that old song again. Perhaps, too, you would sing it 
 to us?' 
 
 ' I'm afraid,' she said, ' I have quite forgotten the words ; 
 but if you like, I will certainly sing you something — that is 
 to say, if you don't make me feel too shy. What shall I sing ? '
 
 chap. in. THE GATES OF DREAMLAND 21 5 
 
 she went on as Carew was opening the piano for her. 
 '• Mamma, tell me what I shall sing.' And whilst she was 
 speaking her fingers began touching the keys. Mrs. Capel 
 was about to suggest a song, but before she could name it 
 the musician had already begun one. It was quite different 
 from anything Carew had expected, but in a second or two 
 his senses confessed its witchery. It was in some Italian 
 dialect, and moved to a tinkling air, as light and tender as 
 the murmur of waves in moonlight. ' It is a little love-song,' 
 she said, ' that is sung by Neapolitan fishermen. Do you 
 like it? Here is another.' The other was of a different 
 character, though apparently in the same dialect. To Carew 
 the words meant nothing ; but he could not mistake the 
 sentiment, its plaintive melancholy, its mixture of rest and 
 wistfulness ; and the eyes of the singer, with a look of 
 devotional abstraction in them, seemed to form unconsciously 
 a part of the song themselves. But the object of the senti- 
 ment — as to that he was in doubt. 
 
 ' What,' she said softly, when she had ended, ' do you 
 think of that ?. Do you like it as well ? It is an evening 
 hymn the boatmen sing to the Virgin. It's the favourite song 
 of my cousin, Madame de Saint Valery.' 
 
 ' Tell me this,' he said by-and-by to her, as they were all 
 preparing to retire. ' That hymn I like best of all your songs. 
 Are you Catholics ? ' 
 
 ' No, no,' she said, ' I don't know what we are. I don't 
 suppose the General and mamma are anything. Can't one 
 sing songs like that, and yet not be a Catholic ? ' 
 
 ' But you,' he said, ' sang it with feeling. At least I 
 thought so.' 
 
 ' Do you ever,' she replied, ' read any of Shelley's poetry ? 
 If you do perhaps you have read these lines — 
 
 The desire of the moth for the star, 
 
 Of the night for the morrow ; 
 A devotion to something afar 
 
 From the sphere of our sorrow — 
 
 That is what, somehow, that song seems to mean to me.'
 
 2l6 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ' MY HAND IS ON THY BROW.' 
 
 By the following morning Carew was pretty clear in his mind 
 as to where the charm lay that his new friends possessed for 
 him ; and he thought it over with a distinct if not a deep 
 satisfaction, though the eyes of Miss Consuelo Burton were 
 still watching him in the background. Their charm lay in 
 the fact that whilst they sympathised with him on some 
 points there were others, a whole set of them, in which they 
 not only did not sympathise with him, but which it seemed 
 they could not even comprehend. There was a total want 
 in them of those social prejudices and attachments, and — 
 it appeared — of those religious perplexities also, which were 
 making all life in these latter days seem dark to him. They 
 had no capital entrusted to those two disastrous vessels — a 
 foundering aristocracy, and a religion that was already a 
 derelict. The past to them was nothing more than a 
 curiosity ; the changes of the present perplexed them with 
 no personal problems : and Carew felt that in their company 
 he caught their insensibility to his own sources of sorrow. 
 He became conscious as he was dressing of a singular sense 
 of emancipation. The sky of his mind grew suddenly blue 
 and cloudless, and a world was breathing round him languid 
 or bright with flowers. So vivid, indeed, was this last impres- 
 sion, that, with a fanciful wish to act literally in accordance 
 with it, he had the actual flowers of the garden picked in 
 increased profusion, in order to fill the rooms with scent and 
 brilliant colour ; and the Capels had not been with him for 
 four-and-twenty hours before a new spirit seemed to animate 
 all the chateau. 
 
 His present disabled condition, though it proved to be 
 nothing serious, prevented his making as yet any active 
 efforts to entertain them ; but, strange to say, no such efforts 
 were needed. With the aid of his crutch he could move from 
 room to room, and he was thus able to exhibit the contents
 
 - > 
 
 chap. iv. 'MY HAND IS ON THY BROW 2\J 
 
 of the house to them. Then the General had his own literary 
 work to engage him ; and whenever his attention was not 
 claimed elsewhere, he was perfectly happy in a little study 
 that had been allotted to him. Both the ladies, too, with a 
 tact that was half-thoughtfulness and half-instinct, did as 
 their host begged them, and made themselves equally at 
 home. Mrs. Capel brought down a gorgeous piece of 
 embroidery, which she was copying from a Sicilian pattern ; 
 and, seated near a window in an old gilt arm-chair, she was 
 a perfect picture of contented and luxurious industry. As 
 for Miss Capel, her ways, from Carew's point of view, though 
 a little more restless, were not less satisfactory. She brought 
 down a portfolio of music, which she turned over and dis- 
 cussed with him. Then again returning to her little hoard 
 in her bedroom, she produced a pile of her favourite books 
 of poetry ; and at last, having admitted that she drew, she 
 was prevailed on to exhibit her sketches. Carew was sur- 
 prised at the talent displayed in these — especially in some 
 coloured portraits. ' If,' he said, 'you like to paint whilst 
 you are here, there is an easel in one of the rooms, and a 
 canvas stretched in readiness. The room itself would make 
 a capital studio. You have just shown me your poets : it 
 is there that I keep mine. Come and see it — will you ? ' 
 
 They went, and he found himself fur the first time really 
 alone with her. He was surprised at the pleasure the situa- 
 tion gave him. The room in question — the first of that 
 suite of three which he had shown to his former guests as 
 the scenes of his private labours, was hung with English 
 chintz, and had old-fashioned English furniture. A century 
 back it had been occupied by one of his great-great-aunts. 
 Miss Capel was delighted with it ; but a farther door being 
 open, she glided forward and peeped into the room adjoin- 
 ing. ' More books ! ' she exclaimed, and she began to read 
 the titles of them. These were Carew's treatises on philo- 
 sophy and theology 7 . She did not proceed far. With an 
 odd incredulous smile she turned towards him and said, 
 ' Do you really ever look into these ? How funny of you !
 
 2l8 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 I can't imagine it.' Then with a little grimace of mock 
 determination and wilfulness, ' Now,' she said, ' I am going 
 to open this other door. This is your Bluebeard's room, 
 perhaps, where you keep your beheaded wives.' She opened 
 the door, but closed it almost instantly. 'Oh,' she said, 
 ' that's nothing ! That's just like a lawyer's office. I sup- 
 pose it's the place where you add all your accounts up. 
 No, no — here is the room I like,' and she went back again 
 to the one they had first entered. ' Do you know,' she 
 exclaimed, ' this looks exactly like a home — not, I mean, a 
 home that I have ever had myself; but like what I imagine 
 an English home must be. Oh ! and, Mr. Carew, you have 
 got my dear Shelley here ! ' 
 
 ' You shall make this your home,' said Carew, ' as long 
 as you stay with me. It shall be your own room.' 
 
 'Do you think,' she replied, 'one can make a home in 
 three days ? ' 
 
 ' Three days ! ' he said. ' You must stay longer than 
 that. Now I have you here I am not going to let you go. 
 See, there is the easel, in case you should care to use it.' 
 
 She gave a slight start, as if a new thought had occurred 
 to her. Then she looked at him for a few moments in 
 silence, with all the while an ambushed laugh in her eyes. 
 At last she said: — 
 
 ' If you will sit to me, I will try and make a picture of 
 you. Not now — I don't mean that — but to-morrow. You 
 mustn't mind, though, if it's a very bad one — all out of 
 drawing — one shoulder higher than the other. I'm not able 
 to flatter.' 
 
 'You mean not with your pencil?' 
 
 'I don't think,' she said gravely, still keeping her 
 eyes on him, ' that I could natter you in any way. How 
 could I? What could you care for anything I said to 
 you? ' 
 
 She stopped short abruptly, and her gaze wandered away 
 from him, something as that of a kitten does when its eye is 
 caught by a butterfly. ' Oh ! ' she said, ' how delicious ! Is
 
 chap. iv. 'MY HAND IS ON THY BROW ' 219 
 
 not that a guitar in the corner ? I used to play the guitar. 
 Let me take it to mamma and show it to her.' 
 
 ' Presently,' said Carew. 
 
 ' No,' she said, smiling, ' not presently, but now — ■ 
 instantly, Mr. Carew — instantly.' 
 
 He could hardly believe his senses. She moved quietly 
 up to him and gently touched his arm to emphasise her 
 wish that he should be moving. But what struck him far 
 more than the familiarity of the action was the total want in 
 it of any suggestion of boldness. It suggested nothing but 
 an almost unconscious trust, and the moment the first shock 
 of surprise was over he felt as he would have felt had he 
 been touched by some soft wild animal. He was sorry that 
 the tete-a-tete should be ended ; but there was a sort of 
 pleasure even in obeying her command to end it. 
 
 Chemists tell us that at a touch a liquid will sometimes 
 crystallise. A touch will produce sometimes as great a 
 change in feelings. Everything the girl did, however slight 
 and trivial — her words, her smiles, her gestures, the smallest 
 occupation she shared with him, even her playing Beggar- 
 my-neighbour, as she did with him that evening— all became 
 full of some magical and indefinable charm. She was not 
 only freeing his spirit from its natural load of cares, but she 
 was gradually lulling and refreshing it with some undreamt- 
 of melody. What the melody meant he was in no hurry to 
 ask himself. In its uncertainty lay some part of its spell. 
 He only knew, when, on this second night of her visit, he 
 looked back on the day which had just been ended, that 
 although on the surface there were none but the most trivial 
 incidents, yet its memory was to him a mosaic of coloured 
 moments. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE SIREN'S PRELUDE. 
 
 The day which followed was superficially just as tranquil ; 
 but under the surface he found it even more bewildering.
 
 220 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book jit. 
 
 It was iridescent with new sensations. The General talked 
 pleasantly at meals, and talked pleasantly over his cigarette 
 afterwards. In the intervals of sociability he retired to his 
 notes and papers ; his wife sat in the gilt arm-chair at her 
 embroidery, diffusing around her an atmosphere of suave 
 and refined contentment ; once or twice there was a little 
 music ; coffee was drunk on the ramparts in the bright 
 afternoon sunshine ; in the evening the guitar was strung 
 and played upon ; and finally there was a rubber of whist. 
 Meanwhile, during the course of the morning, Carew's 
 portrait had been begun, in the chintz-hung studio. 
 
 So far as events went, this was the whole day's chronicle ; 
 and if the conversation which went with them had come to 
 be written down, it would, for the most part, have seemed 
 equally insignificant. This was the case with what passed 
 in private between the sitter and the artist, just as much as 
 with what passed when they were altogether. Indeed, to 
 Carew one of Miss Capel's chief attractions was, that with 
 her conversation came so naturally that it left behind it no 
 lasting trace in his memory — nothing but a wake of laughing 
 and disappearing ripples. It was less an intentional inter- 
 change of thoughts than a natural result of the contact of 
 two lives. It was little more conscious than the sound of 
 meeting waters, or than the blush that comes on the cheek 
 of health or pleasure. 
 
 But though its details, for the most part, made but little 
 impression upon him, yet, taken as a whole, a very strong 
 impression indeed was produced by, or at least produced 
 along with, it. Carew felt that her character was becoming 
 gradually clear to him, like a summer landscape appearing 
 through a gauzy mist. He was conscious of an odd mixture 
 in her of gaiety and of wondering tenderness. She seemed 
 constantly to be struck with the humorous side of a world 
 of which personally she had had no rude experience ; and 
 her fancy moved with a kind of mischievous buoyancy, like 
 a star of sunlight dipping and floating upon the sea. 
 Indeed, she somehow conveyed the idea that all life had
 
 chap. v. THE SIRENS PRELUDE 221 
 
 been a playground to her, into which she had been turned 
 loose ; and that what she divined or knew of its sadness 
 and its deeper realities she had found out for herself in 
 the course of a lonely holiday. 
 
 It was not by her words only that this impression was 
 conveyed. It was conveyed by her looks, and the naive 
 grace of her movements — sometimes by their infantine petul- 
 ance, and by the childish mishaps which, as she bent over 
 her drawing, would bring her light cloud of hair straying 
 downwards across her eyes. 
 
 There was something more also. Here and there in the 
 middle of her ordinary conversation — her musical succession 
 of unremembered sentences — a sentence would escape her 
 of quite a different kind, which shone out from among the 
 others like a coloured lamp amongst leaves, and made them 
 flush with the hue of its own suggestions. These sentences 
 stamped themselves on Carew's mind, and tended to make 
 the girl's character a puzzle to him. What, for instance, he 
 asked, could she have been thinking of when, at dinner, she 
 said that most people would be glad to go back in their 
 lives for some things— to do them again, or not to do them 
 at all? And now, when she was drawing him, she once 
 looked solemnly up at him, and said without a smile or any 
 symptom of flinching : — 
 
 ' Mr. Carew, I want you to tell mc something. Do you 
 think I am very forward ? ' 
 
 'Forward!' he said, laughing. 'No. 'Why should I 
 think you so?' 
 
 ' I think it was very forward of me to say I would do 
 your picture. I should have waited, if I had wished to do 
 it- — and I did wish that ; I wished it very much — and I 
 should have fished for you to ask me.' 
 
 ' Why,' he asked, 'do you think you should have done 
 that?' 
 
 ' Other people would have done so,' she said, ' wouldn't 
 they? You must know. Other people wouldn't tell a man 
 that they wanted to do his picture. .Mamma would say
 
 222 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book in. 
 
 that it wasn't modest to do so — or proper — I think that's 
 her word. Mamma thinks at times that I'm not at all a 
 proper person. Proper ! ' she repeated, as if thinking the 
 matter over — ' I can't tell what's proper. I always say out 
 just what I think.' 
 
 ' And so,' Carew persisted, ' you did wish to draw me, then ? ' 
 
 ' I did,' she said, quite simply. ' I wished to draw you 
 the moment you mentioned drawing. Yes,' she added, 
 ' from quite the very first moment. Mr. Carew, sit still. I 
 am trying to get your mouth.' 
 
 What, thought Carew, did this little episode betoken ? 
 Had she been a coquette of the most accomplished kind, 
 she could hardly have introduced in a more decided way 
 that element into their acquaintance which a coquette would 
 desire to find in it. 
 
 A similar incident happened late in the afternoon. 
 Carew had retired to his room to write a number of business 
 letters ; the General and his wife had been occupied in the 
 same way ; and Miss Capel had gone off for a short walk 
 by herself, to do a little exploration on her own account. 
 She returned at about five o'clock, and found the others 
 round the tea-table. She had on her hat and gloves, and 
 she paused in the doorway, leaning on a slim gold-headed 
 walking-stick. 
 
 'May I come in?' she said, 'or must I go up and 
 change my things ? ' 
 
 ' Come in,' said Carew, ' come in.' 
 
 But she still stood there for a moment, as if she were 
 bent on tantalising him. 
 
 ' I'm longing,' she said, ' to tell Mr. Carew all the places 
 I've been to. I'm positively longing.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Carew, ' don't keep us all in the draught. 
 Suppose that you shut the door and give us a description of 
 your wanderings.' 
 
 She began to do this as well as she could, and up to a 
 certain point he saw clearly the path she had taken ; but 
 when she had brought herself to the edge of a neighbour-
 
 chap. v. THE SIREN'S PRELUDE 223 
 
 ing wood, when she followed the windings of a certain 
 shadowy footpath, and at last arrived at an old ruinous 
 fountain, he could only conceive that her description was 
 faulty, or admit that she had hit on a spot which was as yet 
 unknown to himself. 
 
 ' Mamma,' she exclaimed at last, 'what do you think? 
 I know the grounds of Mr. Carew's castle better than he 
 knows them himself. If,' she continued, speaking to him 
 only, ' you are able to walk before I go away, I will take 
 you to my fountain, and show you I have not invented it. 
 Will you come ? ' 
 
 Carew said 'Yes.' 
 
 ' I don't believe you will,' she replied. ' Men never 
 mean what they say. But I should like to take you. Yes, 
 I am determined to take you. Fancy,' she added, as if the 
 reflection pleased her — ' fancy my taking Mr. Carew for a 
 walk ! ' 
 
 She had asked him already if he considered her forward, 
 and her present proposal recalled the question to his mind. 
 He smiled as, looking into her clear eyes, he thought of it. 
 He would as soon have attributed forwardness to a blue-eyed 
 child in its cradle. 
 
 The walk at once assumed a prominent place in his 
 prospects. He thought how delightful it would be to be lost 
 in some lonely wood with her. His ankle, however, still 
 kept him a cripple, so, though he would willingly have gone 
 off at once with her, he had to postpone the pleasure at any 
 rate till to-morrow. The rest of the day passed much like 
 the earlier part of it, except that, in a way he was hardly 
 conscious of, his intimacy with his companion was growing 
 silently closer, and every idle and unregarded hour added a 
 thread to the chain that was fast binding them. He would 
 have accepted the situation for the present, enjoying with- 
 out examining it ; but, during the evening, once again she 
 startled him. 
 
 She had been singing a little, and he was standing by 
 her at the piano. A song had been just cndjd ; he was
 
 224 THE 0LD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 engaged in looking out another for her, and she was strik- 
 ing a few careless chords in the interval. Presently some 
 instinct made him turn and look at her. She was watching 
 him intently, and he felt that she had been doing so for 
 some moments. When their eyes met she showed no sign 
 of confusion. She only smiled a little, but she did not 
 withdraw her gaze. It remained as steadfast as if Greuze 
 had painted it. At last she began softly humming to the 
 stray notes as she struck them, and then, abruptly, but in a 
 tone equally soft : — 
 
 ' I am not,' she said, ' going to do any more to your 
 picture.' 
 
 ' Why not ? ' he asked. 
 After a pause she answered him. 
 
 ' Because,' she said, making a louder noise with the 
 chords — ' because — do you know this, Mr. Carew ?— it's very 
 bad for me to look at you. I am not going to do so — ever 
 — ever — ever any more.' 
 
 ' Never any more ! ' said Carew. 
 
 ' Of course,' she said, laughing, ' I shall look at you 
 enough to avoid running against you in the passage, or 
 spilling any slops over you when I come for more tea. I 
 shall look at you just enough, perhaps, to prevent your 
 thinking me rude. But that's all. Do you understand ? ' 
 
 ' No,' said Carew, ' I don't ; and I don't believe it. Why 
 do you say that it is bad for you to look at me ? ' 
 
 ' For many reasons,' she said — ' for many, many reasons.' 
 She stopped playing suddenly, and he heard a faint sigh 
 come from her. ' You couldn't understand them. Men can 
 understand nothing. No, Mr. Carew, no picture to-morrow.' 
 ' Come,' said the voice of Mrs. Capel from the farther 
 end of the room, ' we are waiting for another song, Violet. 
 Are you not going to give us one ?' 
 
 ' No,' said Miss Capel, rising, ' I have no more voice, 
 mamma. I have sung enough for this evening. Have you 
 the key of my album ? I am going to show Mr. Carew my 
 photographs.'
 
 chap. v. THE SIREN'S PRELUDE 225 
 
 'It is upstairs,' said her mother, 'on my chain, where 
 you asked me to put it. If you want to show your photo- 
 graphs, you must do so to-morrow.' 
 
 ' Very well, then,' she said, ' I will show him my poetry 
 books over again. I don't believed he has half looked at them.' 
 
 ' No,' said Carew, ' I am sure I have not seen this one.' 
 
 She tried to take it from him, but he was too quick for 
 her. 'Why,' he asked, ' don't you want me to look at it ? ' 
 
 'Oh,' she said, ' it is not what you would care for.' He 
 read the title. It was ' Songs of the Soul's Life.' 
 
 ' Look at it if you like,' she went on. ' Oh, there are no 
 secrets in it.' He found it was a selection from various 
 well-known writers, of poems bearing on moral and spiritual 
 struggles; and he noted, with some wonder, as he turned 
 the pages over, that they were marked in many places. 
 ' Are they your marks ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' Some,' she said, gently but indifferently. ' Most, I 
 think, were made by the person who gave the book to me.' 
 
 ' I like this,' said Carew — ' this poem on Prayer ; ' and 
 he paused, reading a sonnet which had first arrested his eye 
 by the deep lines underscoring its last couplet. The couplet 
 itself, when he read it, he found even more striking. It 
 
 was this : — 
 
 Is there a wish for which you dare not pray ? 
 Then pray to God to take that wish away. 
 
 'He raised his eyes to Miss Capel, in half-incredulous 
 wonder as to what such a passage could possibly have to do 
 with her. She seemed to understand the look, and said 
 with a trace of flippancy, ' I don't know what it was I was 
 supposed to wish for, so dreadful that I might not pray 
 for it.' 
 
 'Mr. Carew,' Mrs. Capel here interposed, 'do you 
 know what the time is? It is actually past eleven. You 
 must allow me to say good-night to you. I must take off 
 Violet too ; and you must finish your discussions, and she 
 must show you her photographs, to-morrow.' 
 
 ' I had thought,' said Carew, ' that to-morrow we might 
 
 Q
 
 226 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 manage a little picnic to a place on the sea just beyond 
 Nice, called Beaulieu. There will be time, however, to 
 settle about that in the morning Look, Miss Capel : since 
 I am not to inspect your album, I shall take upstairs with 
 me a certain volume of poetry.' 
 
 Before he went to sleep he turned to the same sonnet, 
 again wondering what could be its application to her. Then 
 he glanced at some of the other poems ; but his whole 
 attention was suddenly drawn away from them by an in- 
 scription on the fly-leaf, and a copy of verses under it, 
 plainly in a man's handwriting. The verses were dated 
 Calais, the Christmas Day of two years ago, and the inscrip- 
 tion was simply, 'To V. C. at Naples.' The verses were 
 not remarkable for much literary excellence, but they kept 
 Carew wakeful for many hours that night. They were as 
 
 follows : — 
 
 Yesterday a cloudless sky was glowing. 
 
 All the flowers were flowering yesterday ; 
 And to-day a bitter east is blowing, 
 
 Flowerless all the flowers, the slcys arc grey. 
 Yesterday there breathed a life beside vie — 
 
 Now the lips and eyes are far away. 
 Deep in memories of the past I hide me, 
 And I pray for her, whatever betide me, 
 
 Every 'wish for which I dare to pray. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DISCORDS. 
 
 If Carew was inclined, and indeed he was inclined, to allow 
 the verses to haunt him the following morning, the arrival 
 of the post at once put them out of his mind, and for the 
 time being gave him something more pressing to think about. 
 The General, it appeared, had received a letter from Genoa 
 which begged him to come there some days sooner than he 
 had intended. Having followed him from Nice to Cannes, 
 and from Cannes on to the chateau, it had been consider-
 
 chap. vr. DISCORDS 227 
 
 ably delayed upon the road ; and if he were to act on the 
 urgent request contained in it, he and his party would have 
 to start immediately. 
 
 Here was, indeed, a blow to Carew's whole prospects. 
 The enchanting cup that was being just raised to his lips 
 was to- be dashed at once to the ground, before he had 
 more than tasted the foam of it. He anxiously asked 
 the General if the matter was very pressing. It was, 
 the General said ; it was a matter not of pleasure but 
 of business. He was largely interested in the Genoese 
 Tramways, and there was to be a meeting of the share- 
 holders, at which he must be present if possible. The 
 meeting had been at first fixed for Friday ; the date had 
 now been altered to Tuesday ; to-day was Sunday ; and, 
 accordingly, at the latest, it would be absolutely necessary 
 for them to leave by to-morrow evening. 
 
 As soon as Carew learnt that it was a matter of busi- 
 ness, a ray of hope again brightened the situation. Why, 
 he asked, should the General not go alone, leave his wife 
 and daughter at the chateau behind him, and return to 
 them, and finish his visit, on his way back to Cannes ? 
 "Why not ? There was only one valid answer, and that was 
 their fear of trespassing on their host's hospitality. This 
 was expressed in the most courteous and delicate way, and 
 Carew could see that it was perfectly unaffected. The 
 same was apparent, however, with regard to his own wishes ; 
 and as soon as the General and his wife were convinced 
 that such was the case, they agreed to his plan with almost 
 as much pleasure as he himself evinced when he saw that 
 they were going to do so. 
 
 ' And now,' he went on, ' that being settled satisfactorily, 
 what do you say to this as a little scheme for to-morrow ? 
 1 was talking last night about a picnic at Beaulieu. Now 
 the General's train, which leaves Nice about five, passes 
 Beaulieu about twenty minutes later. What 1 propose is 
 that we go there for our picnic to-morrow, and leave the 
 General, on our way home, at the station.' 
 
 q -
 
 228 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES ijook ni. 
 
 This, again, seemed perfectly satisfactory, and nothing 
 was wanting but to communicate the arrangements to Miss 
 Capel. She, however, was not to be seen. She had left the 
 room, without saying a word, the moment she had heard the 
 contents of her father's letter, and it was presently found, on 
 inquiring, that she had gone out of doors. 
 
 'You are beginning, Mr. Carew,' said Mrs. Capel, 'to 
 walk so much better again. Why don't you go out and 
 look for her ? She's sure to be on the terrace. Poor child, 
 she will be in raptures with all your kindness ! The General 
 and I shall have some letter-writing to get over. Do, Mr. 
 Carew, go out and look for Violet.' 
 
 ' I suppose,' smiled the General as he was preparing to 
 go off with his wife, ' this being Sunday, we ought to be all 
 at church. But my motto has always been that of the 
 monks, Qui laborat orat. It is about the only piece of 
 monkery that applies to the modern world.' 
 
 Carew was no sooner left alone than he went out eagerly, 
 and began a search for Miss Capel. He walked several 
 times round the chateau ; he asked the men at the stables 
 if she had gone down the front drive, and he then descended 
 into the mazy walks of the gardens ; but he could neither 
 see nor hear of her. Meanwhile his thoughts went straying 
 back to that day a week ago, and to the scene at morning 
 Mass ; and all life, with its changes, began to seem to him 
 like a dream, so quickly did one phantom supplant another 
 in it, so readily did the phantom he was even now seeking 
 elude him. 
 
 At last, out of spirits, he again mounted to the ramparts, 
 hoping, but hoping in vain, for Miss Capel's figure some- 
 where. There was not a soul stirring. He was standing 
 on the spot from which, such a short while since, his grand 
 party had watched the display of fireworks. Just under the 
 walls were the tiled roofs of the village, and a bare patch of 
 ground, where the children were accustomed to play. It 
 chanced that here he looked over the parapet ; and down 
 below, seated on a broken mill- stone, he saw Miss Capel
 
 chap. vr. DISCORDS 229 
 
 talking to a little sun-browned child. He was about to call 
 her, but his voice checked itself. For a moment he re- 
 mained watching her. Her bright spotted dress and her 
 parasol lying beside her gave a charm to the sight merely as 
 a piece of .colour ; but what specially struck him was a sad 
 tenderness in her attitude, and still more in the smile that 
 he saw was playing upon her face, like the upward flickering 
 light reflected from the running water. At last he uttered 
 her name. She looked up and rose ; and, patting the child 
 on the cheek, pointed to a neighbouring turret, through 
 which by a narrow stair there was a way up to the ramparts. 
 Carew went forward to meet her. Her movements were more 
 <|uick than his, and when he reached the top of the stair 
 she was just emerging. Her face was sadder than he had 
 ever seen it before. Her eyes shone with a light that 
 suggested recent tears, and her cheeks were like flowers that 
 had just been rained upon. 
 
 'I have been looking for you,' he said, 'everywhere. 
 Where on earth have you been ? ' 
 
 She turned her head towards the village. ' I have been 
 to church,' she said. 
 
 ' Alone ? And why did you not let us know that you 
 were going ? ' 
 
 'What would have been the good?' she said. ' They 
 never go, and I don't suppose you do. I do everything alone.' 
 
 Carew looked at her with a new sensation of wonder. 
 ' You have not been alone,' he said gently, 'since you have 
 been here, have you ?' 
 
 'That,' she murmured, 'will be all over to-morrow.' 
 
 'No, it won't,' he exclaimed with a sudden glow of 
 delight as he discerned the extent of the regret he was 
 about to dispel. 'I have been trying to find you every- 
 where on purpose to tell you this. You and your mother 
 are to stay here with me. Your father is to go to ( lenoa by 
 himself; after that he is going to come bark h< re ; and as 
 for to-morrow, we are all of us going for a picnic, and shall 
 set him down at Beaulieu station in the evening.'
 
 23O THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book in. 
 
 She looked at first as if she could hardly believe the 
 news. But presently the sun once more shone out in her 
 eyes ; her whole face made an artless confession of pleasure ; 
 and gently coming close to him, she so extended her hand 
 that he for a short moment took it in both of his. 
 
 ' Tell me,' he said to her by-and-by when luncheon was 
 ended, ' are you going to do any more to my picture, or are 
 you not ? ' 
 
 ' You can walk now/ she said, ' so I am going to take 
 you out walking — that is to say, if you will come. I am 
 going to show you the fountain I discovered, and which you 
 believe I have invented. No,' she went on, in answer to 
 his glance towards her parents, ' they are not coming. They 
 have papers — business — all sorts of things to settle this 
 afternoon. You must come with me quite by yourself ; 
 unless you think you will be too much bored with my 
 company. Mamma, do you hear this? I am going to show 
 Mr. Carew his own fountain.' 
 
 When she first began to speak, there had seemed some- 
 thing half clandestine in her proposal ; but, though she was 
 evidently pleased at the prospect of being alone with him, 
 the idea of concealment had apparently not entered her 
 mind. 
 
 'Go, then,' said Mrs. Capel, 'and put your things on 
 quickly : or else you will be losing the best part of the 
 day. You always take so long in getting yourself ready for 
 anything. Come, Mr. Carew, whilst Violet is upstairs you 
 shall see that book of her photographs which she wanted to 
 exhibit to you last night.' 
 
 Carew with considerable interest watched the unlocking 
 of the volume. His quick eye, amongst the opening pages, 
 at once caught a vision of landscapes, yachts, and faces, and 
 of these last, he hardly knew how or why, he received an 
 impression that the greater number were men. 'That,' said 
 Mrs. Capel, beginning at the very beginning — ' that is the 
 General's yacht. The picture was done at Naples. You see 
 Violet there, in a sailor's hat, under the awning. That
 
 chap. vi. DISCORDS 231 
 
 group— I dare say you can see where that was clone — it was 
 in the Club garden at Cowes. Violet is there too — a little 
 in the background. There are some other faces there which 
 I dare say you will recognise.' Mrs. Capel was right ; he 
 did recognise some of them ; and they were not faces that 
 it gave him much pleasure to see. Then followed views of 
 various Continental towns, such as Trouville, Homburg, and 
 Florence ; and the views of each town were accompanied 
 by some groups, as a souvenir ; several of which had been 
 taken, it seemed, at races, and in all of which Miss Capel's 
 figure was visible. To these succeeded some pages of single 
 portraits. They were mostly men, as Carew had imagined 
 they would be. They were also mostly foreigners ; and he 
 fancied that he could catch a trace of pique in his voice as, 
 passing from one languishing young exquisite to another, he 
 asked, ' Who is this ? ' or ' Pray, and who may that be ? ' 
 Mrs. Capel spoke of none of them with much enthusiasm ; 
 and was passing them rapidly over, in search for a chateau 
 in Hungary, in which, she said, they had passed the pre- 
 vious autumn, when Carew exclaimed, ' Wait just for one 
 moment. Who was that man — the one you turned over this 
 instant?' 
 
 'Which?' said Mrs. Capel. 
 
 'Not a young man — an old man— a man with a black 
 moustache, and exceedingly well-curled hair. This one — 
 yes, this is the one I mean.' 
 
 ' What,' said Mrs. Capel, with a tone of slight embarrass- 
 ment, ' do you find to interest you there ? Do you think it s 
 a wise face ? ' 
 
 'Surely,' said Carew, 'that must be the Prince de 
 A'aucluse, the grandson of Napoleon's old army contractor. 
 I thought I saw him in that group in the Club garden at 
 Cowes.' 
 
 ' You are right,' Mrs. Capel began, but she was inter- 
 rupted by a voice over her shoulder. 'Mamma,' it said, 
 'what are you showing my book to Mr. Carew for? and 
 that page too ? Please shut it up. Why need you be always
 
 232 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book in. 
 
 turning to it ? And the key— I must have my key. Re- 
 member, mamma,' she said with a smile as she took it, 'I 
 am never going to let that out of my own possession again. 
 And now — now, if Mr. Carew's quite ready, I'm going to 
 take him off for this walk I told him of.' 
 
 Carew had rarely enjoyed a moment more than that 
 when they found themselves together in the open air, his 
 companion's eyes glancing close beside him, and the scented 
 pine-wood, for whose shade they were bound, fronting 
 them. Miss Capel, he found, had been quite correct in 
 her description. She had made what to him was quite a 
 new discovery, and at the end of a path which had possibly 
 once been gravelled, but which now was nothing more than 
 a neglected clearing in the underwood, an abrupt turn 
 brought them to a little hollow or dingle, its entrance 
 guarded by two mutilated statues. There, embedded in a 
 bank of rocks and ferns, was the fountain of which Miss 
 Capel had spoken. It was an old basin, gleaming with 
 dark water, and arched over by a shell -shaped canopy of 
 brickwork. 
 
 ' Look, Mr. Carew,' she exclaimed, ' don't you call this 
 delicious ? Don't you thank me very much for having dis- 
 covered it ? ' 
 
 ' I thank you,' he said, looking at her with a gravity he 
 was hardly conscious of — ' I thank you far more for having 
 come yourself to show it me.' 
 
 The words seemed to sink into her like a stone into 
 deep water, and she returned his look with a sort of wonder- 
 ing gratitude. 
 
 ' Mr. Carew,' she murmured at last, ' how can you say 
 such things ? It is you who ought to be thanked for coming 
 to walk with me.' 
 
 She had seated herself on the rim of the basin, and now, 
 looking down into the dark and gloomy reflections, she 
 began to splash the water with the tip of her parasol. At 
 last Miss Capel, not raising her eyes, but still watching the 
 water and continuing to play with it, said with a forced
 
 chap. vi. , DISCORDS 233 
 
 flippancy, ' Well, Mr. Carew, will you have the kindness to 
 make a remark ? ' 
 
 ' I was,' he said, 'just going to do so. I was looking 
 last night at that collection of poems you have. You know 
 the book I mean, don't you ?' She assented. ' I was read- 
 ing,' he went on, 'the verses at the beginning — those in 
 manuscript. I see you have an accomplished poet amongst 
 your friends.' 
 
 ' The person who wrote that,' she said gently, ' was no 
 friend of mine : and I should have torn those verses out if 
 they hadn't been rather pretty. It's horribly ungrateful of 
 me to say so ; for he wished to do me good. He wished 
 to improve me. He thought me, I believe, very wicked. 
 But one can't be grateful merely because one ought to be. 
 Can one, Mr. Carew ? ' 
 
 ' May I ask,' he said, 'who the person was ?' 
 
 ' Certainly,' she replied carelessly, there's not the least 
 secret about it.' 
 
 ' Then was it the Prince de Vaucluse ? ' 
 
 'The Prince!' she exclaimed, with a light ironical 
 laugh. ' What a notion ! 1 don't suppose he knows what 
 poetry is— except that it's something which has nothing to 
 do with races. Besides, the Prince thinks me so perfect 
 that there is no need to improve me. No — the person who 
 wrote those verses was a sort of cousin of the General's— 
 an English cousin.' 
 
 ' Oh ! ' said Carew, relieved, 'a relation of yours.' 
 
 ' Didn't you know ? ' she said, ' and yet I suppose you 
 didn't — how should you? — that the C.eneral is not my 
 father? He is only my step-father. I took his name, and 
 he is going to leave some money to me. There's another 
 interesting fact which, perhaps, you did not know either. 
 I'm an heiress. Mr. Carew, I'm afraid you're not attending. 
 Why are you knocking those leaves about with your stick ? 
 Don't you find all this that I tell you very exciting?' 
 
 ' Xo,' said Carew, with a certain dryness in his tone, ' I 
 can't say I do.'
 
 234 THE LD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 ' Mr. Carew,' she said. He looked up at her, and he 
 saw in her eyes a soft provoking mockery. 'Are you,' she 
 went on, ' not a fortune-hunter ? ' 
 
 ' Should you wish,' he said, ' to be married for the sake 
 of your fortune ? ' 
 
 ' I think,' she murmured, her voice getting tender again 
 for an instant — ' I think it would be too horrible. However, 
 don't pity me. There is no chance of that ever happen- 
 ing.' 
 
 ' How do you know that ? ' he said. 
 
 ' How do I know that !' she repeated deliberately, and in 
 a manner that was half absent and half teasing. ' Perhaps I 
 don't know it; perhaps I only conjecture. Or, Mr. Carew, this 
 is just possible — perhaps I know it because I am already be- 
 spoken. Bespoke — bespoken — which is the right thing to say ? ' 
 
 Carew was seated on the trunk of a fallen tree, his eyes 
 fixed on the ground. He neither looked up nor spoke. 
 He merely continued the application of his stick to the 
 leaves with an air of deeper preoccupation. 
 
 ' Mr. Carew,' said Miss Capel, after some moments' 
 silence, ' why don't you answer my question ? ' 
 
 ' What question ? I was not aware that you had asked 
 me any.' 
 
 ' Yes, I did. I asked you a question of grammar. 
 Which is it right to say — bespoke or bespoken ? ' 
 
 Carew muttered something that was like the shadow 
 of an oath, and struck his stick on the ground with such 
 violence as to break it. When next Miss Capel spoke the 
 tone of her voice was changed. It was soft, regretful, 
 tender. 
 
 ' Are you angry ? ' she said. ' Why should you be ? ' 
 
 ' I am not angry,' said Carew, in a constrained voice, 
 rising and turning away from her. 
 
 ' Yes, you are,' she said ; and she slipped down from her 
 seat, and, going up to him, looked him full in the face. 
 ' You are angry. Will you please not be ? ' She put out 
 her hand, and held him by one of the buttons of his coat.
 
 chaf. vi. DISCORDS 235 
 
 'Mr. Carew, will you please not be angry any longer? I 
 want you, if you will, to let me do one thing.' 
 
 'Well,' he said, taking her hand and smiling. 
 
 ' I want you to allow me to go on doing your picture. 
 Come in, will you? Do you mind? If only the light lasts 
 I might do a little now.' 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE SIREN'S SPELL. 
 
 They were to start for the picnic by eleven o'clock next 
 day, and the carriage, freighted with hampers, was waiting 
 at the door punctually. 
 
 ' The General and Violet will be down directly,' said 
 .Mrs. Capel to Carew as she entered the drawing-room. 
 ' Will you kindly fasten this last hook of my cloak for me ? 
 Thank you.' 
 
 Then, as if the performance of the slight office had put 
 him for the moment on a footing of greater intimacy with 
 her, she laid her hand on her daughter's locked book of 
 photographs, and said rather sadly :— 
 
 ' You know the Prince de Vaucluse, do you?' 
 
 ' Hardly,' said Carew. 'Put he was once to be seen 
 about a good deal in London society. 
 
 'Of course,' said Mrs. Capel— ' of course I know all that, 
 and he is now one of the very smartest men in Paris.' 
 
 ' My acquaintance with him,' said Carew, 'was confined 
 to seeing him at "The Travellers," where every afterno 
 he filled up a large arm-chair— I see him now with the light 
 on his turquoise rings— and drank sweet curacoa out of a 
 claret-glass.' 
 
 'I hope,' said Mrs. Capel, 'that he's better in that way 
 now. lie's a great admirer of Violet's. In fact, he is 
 engaged to be married to her.' 
 
 'Indeed ! ' said Carew, trying to speak with indifference. 
 ' When ? '
 
 236 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 Mrs. Capel raised her eyebrows with an odd expression 
 of gentle but unwilling resignation. 
 
 ' Not yet,' she said, ' not yet. The General insisted that 
 she should wait for some months longer. If the Prince 
 likes, he will be allowed to claim her in May ; but I hope 
 myself — well, we shall see what happens. I can't imagine, 
 for my own part, what my child can see in him.' 
 
 She had hardly finished speaking when the General and 
 Miss Capel appeared, and in a few moments they had all 
 set off on their expedition. The day was so bright and 
 exhilarating, and the country looked so beautiful, that ex- 
 pressions of admiration and pleasure supplied at first the 
 equivalent to an animated conversation ; but after this came 
 the usual succession of silences, and then Carew began to 
 turn his thoughts inwards, and ask himself what effect Mrs. 
 Capel's news had had on him. He had not been quite 
 unprepared for it ; but, all the same, when he heard it it 
 affected him something like a slight electric shock. He 
 was, however, further aware of this : the shock, being slight, 
 had not been wholly disagreeable. It contained, no doubt, 
 elements of pain, of pique, of disappointment, and of 
 jealousy; but through all these there came tingling a 
 sensation of triumph and of possession. That lovely form 
 that was breathing and blushing close to him, those eyes 
 with the colour and light in them of a tremulous morning 
 sea — he was sure, or he was almost sure, that, whoever 
 might claim them some day, for the present moment they 
 belonged to him more completely than to anybody else in 
 the world ; and every smile, movement, or rippling laugh 
 of hers seemed like a music that was part of his own life. 
 
 This feeling, through the whole course of the drive — ■ 
 this feeling of his possession of her — was constantly receiv- 
 ing food from the countless minute ways in which she 
 seemed to assume possession of him. Most of them were 
 wholly imperceptible to any one but their two selves. 
 Sometimes, however, they were more open and undisguised, 
 and Carew was surprised, on more than one occasion, at her
 
 chap. vii. the siren's spell 237 
 
 almost parading— so it seemed — the footing on which she 
 was with him. 
 
 'Mr. Carew, talk,* she said, after he had been silent for 
 longer than usual. ' Say something to amuse us ; or, if you 
 can't do that, to instruct us. You won't? Well, repeat us 
 a piece of poetry.' 
 
 'Violet,' exclaimed Mrs. Capel, ' Mr. Carew will think 
 you a lunatic' 
 
 ' Mamma,' Miss Capel continued, apparently not hearing 
 the interruption, ' if Mr. Carew won't repeat any poetry, I 
 will repeat some. Listen ! ' 
 
 And with a grave face and a demure mechanical sing- 
 song, she began : — 
 
 Yesterday a cloudless sky was glowing, 
 
 All the flowers were flowering yesterday ; 
 And to-day a bitter east is blowing — 
 
 Blowing — blowing — blowing. Mamma — Mr. Carew— don't 
 you think that's beautiful? I call it most touching. I 
 don't know what you do.' 
 
 A slight shade of annoyance passed over Carew's face, 
 and Mrs. Capel again interposed with a remonstrance., But 
 the girl's eyes were full of a mischievous determination, ami, 
 with a graceful doggedness, she repeated the aimless ques- 
 tion. 'Don't you think those verses are very touching? 
 See, I try to make conversation, and no one will keep it up. 
 Mr. Carew, if you don't like poetry, suppose we try grammar. 
 Tell us something, will you, about the auxiliary verbs . J ' 
 
 'Violet !' exclaimed Mrs. Capel, actually frowning, for a 
 wonder, 'we shall think you are gone crazy.' 
 
 'Mr. Carew, mamma, is a great authority on English 
 grammar, and he gave me a -lecture yesterday — or, rather, 
 he would not give me a lecture— on the formation of the 
 past participle.' 
 
 When this conversation was taking place they were I 
 nearing their destination, and Carew was here obliged to 
 stand up, in order to give the coachman some directions
 
 238 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi 
 
 about the road. The scene of the picnic was to be a certain 
 secluded spot, almost hidden by woods', at the end of a long 
 promontory. It was hard to find, to any one. who did not 
 know the locality, and his guidance was now required almost 
 constantly till they arrived at it. The subject of English 
 grammar was, therefore, allowed to drop ; but just as the 
 carriage drew up, and the door was being forced open, Miss 
 Capel said, with the same look in her eyes, ' Mr. Carew, 
 I want you to tell us this. Which is right — bespoke or 
 bespoken ? ' 
 
 The look, the tone, the question, all jarred upon Carew. 
 He could not tell why, but, each and all, they irritated him, 
 and half the charm of the drive seemed tarnished by this 
 incident at its ending. To hide such a feeling he set him- 
 self with double diligence to help the servants in unpacking 
 the hampers ; but when Miss Capel came to join in the 
 operation, he could not, try as he would, keep a slight frost 
 from his manner. 
 
 She, for her part, seemed not to notice this, and all her 
 former appealing ways had returned to her, though he might 
 have detected in them a certain trace of timidity. He did 
 detect it at last, but not till after many minutes of blindness. 
 He detected it in her gentle, almost humble tone, when she 
 asked him if he would help her in carrying some bottles of 
 wine, which it was thought advisable to cool in a brook close 
 by. He did as she asked him, and they walked off together, 
 and arranged their bottles in a satisfactory position ; then, 
 just as they were about to go back again, she laid her hand 
 on his arm, and, looking into his eyes sadly, ' Are you angry,' 
 she said, ' because I teased you in the carriage ? Nobody 
 but you knew what I was laughing at. It's not that I want 
 to laugh ; I can tell you that truly. Mr. Carew, please not 
 to be angry with me any more.' 
 
 The effect of the prayer was instant, and when they 
 returned to the table-cloth, which was by this time well 
 covered with dishes, the cloud that had gathered between 
 them had quite melted away. The General and Mrs. Capel
 
 chap. vn. THE SIREN S SPELL 239 
 
 were both charmed with the spot, and were full of Carew's 
 praises for his happy judgment in choosing it. It was a 
 little grassy common jutting into the sea, like a mulberry- 
 leaf. It was tufted with gorse and rosemary, and backed 
 by a belt of fir-woods ; and the woods, with their faint smell 
 of turpentine and their murmur, mixed in the morning with 
 the smell and murmur of the sea. 
 
 The luncheon passed off in the most agreeable manner 
 possible, and the General, when it was over, brought out 
 his cigar-case. His eye had been caught by a distant 
 mountain fort which was being constructed on one of the 
 heights above Nice ; and the taste of tobacco having un- 
 loosed his tongue, he was soon giving Carew an elaborate 
 lecture on the various errors the engineers had committed. 
 Carew's civility was put to a severe test. He had promised 
 himself a walk all alone with Miss Capel, and now what 
 had happened? He could hardly even steal a look at her. 
 At last matters came to a crisis. She rose, opened her 
 parasol, and strolled away by herself. But the General still 
 went on ; he was on a favourite subject ; and, to crown all, 
 he presently made Carew walk off with him, and away from 
 Miss Capel, to a distance, in order to get a glimpse of the 
 harbour works at Villefranche. Carew felt as he went that 
 his feet were made of lead. He could hardly force them 
 to go on this most unwilling pilgrimage, and never before 
 had ten minutes seemed so much like two long hours to 
 him. At last, however, he was back again at the scene of 
 the luncheon. Mrs. Capel was still sitting there, attentively 
 reading a copy of the ' Baltimore Weekly Sun ' ; but as for 
 Miss Capel, what had become of her? This was the ques- 
 tion which Carew asked at once. Mrs. Capel looked slowly 
 round. 
 
 'I don't know,' she said ; 'she has gone off somewhere 
 by herself.' 
 
 'Ah !' said Carew, 'there she is, just going round that 
 point.' 
 
 'I believe,' said Mrs. Capel, 'there's an old tower she
 
 240 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 wants to look at. Go to her, Mr. Carew ; go and help her. 
 The General and I will follow you. I walk rather slowly ; 
 and besides, I want to show him an article in this paper.' 
 
 Carew did not wait to be told twice. He was off at a 
 rapid pace in the direction of the disappearing figure, which, 
 clearly defined, with its outlines, against the sea, had all the 
 distinctness of an object quite near, and yet impressed the 
 imagination as if it were very far off. It was some moments 
 before she caught sight of him, but when she did so she at 
 once stood still. When he came up to her,- her face was 
 bright with a smile, and her very soul seemed in her eyes, 
 greeting him : but at the same time she was panting, and 
 pressing her hand to her heart. 
 
 ' I thought,' she said, ' you were not going to come at all.' 
 
 ' It was the General kept me,' said Carew. 'Are you out 
 of breath ? ' 
 
 ' No,' she said, ' it is only that I was so glad when I saw 
 you coming at last. Do I look glad? I'm afraid I do— a 
 great deal too glad. I can never hide my feelings — never : 
 that's the worst of me.' 
 
 ' I wish,' said Carew, ' I could but believe that.' 
 
 ' What ? — that that is the worst of me ? ' 
 
 ' No,' he said, ' but that you really show your feelings — 
 perhaps I should say, that you really feel what you show.' 
 
 ' I have not,' she said, ' hidden them from you, certainly, 
 I have shown them a great deal too plainly.' 
 
 ' To-day, for instance,' said Carew, ' in the carriage.' 
 
 'What, Mr. Carew : are you angry about that still — 
 because I teased you about those verses ? Why should you 
 be ? I could tease you again now. It was not that I 
 wanted to laugh, as I said before to you. I was much more 
 inclined to cry. But men are so dense, they never under- 
 stand anything.' 
 
 They were making their way up a rugged and rocky 
 slope, on the brow of which stood the tower which Miss 
 Capel desired to reach ; and the difficulties of the scramble 
 made a pause here in the conversation. The first to speak
 
 chap. Tir. THE SIREN S SPELL 24! 
 
 again was Carew, and he did so just as they were at the 
 dark door of the building. 
 
 ' I understand one thing,' he said, ' I do understand one 
 thing.' 
 
 ' What thing ? ' she asked. 
 
 ' I understand,' he said- ' we have not decided how to 
 put it grammatically — I understand that you ar: bespoken.' 
 
 Her cheeks flushed, and her sensitive lips parted, not 
 to speak, but merely in helpless trouble. At the same 
 moment she was spared from attempting any answer to him 
 by a quavering voice which was heard addressing them from 
 the interior ; and directly afterwards an old woman appeared, 
 who lived in the tower, and was accustomed to show it to 
 visitors. They followed her in, and she began her usual 
 explanations — how the tower was built in the reign of Louis 
 the Fourteenth; how there was once a fort round it, and 
 so on ; and how the Great Napoleon had passed two nights 
 in it. There was a prison to be seen, and several small 
 rooms ; and by-and-by they mounted to the roof. The old 
 woman did not follow them there. They were alone. But 
 each, for some reason, seemed to have grown shy of the 
 other, and neither offered to resume the interrupted con- 
 versation. Instead of that they leaned over the battlements 
 in silence ; or if they spoke, it was only to comment on 
 some trivial object. 
 
 At last .Miss Capel said, ' See, in the distance there are 
 mamma and the General coming. We had bettergo down and 
 meet them. What is the use of our remaining here like this?' 
 
 She spoke very softly ; her voice was almost a whisper : 
 and she moved towards the opening of the stair by which 
 they had mounted. 
 
 ' Let me go first,' said Carew, in a voice almost as low 
 as her own. ' The steps are worn and slippery.' 
 
 He placed himself in the narrow doorway : his foot \ 
 on the first step: but there he paused and again looked at 
 his companion, as if expe< ting some answer that had not yet 
 been given him. She seemed to divine his thoughts, and to 
 
 K
 
 242 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book in. 
 
 know that he still was dwelling on that one fact which he 
 said he did understand about her ; to know also that he was 
 waiting for some answer. He saw, as he looked at her, 
 that she was struggling to command her voice ; but her 
 eyes were like messengers, hurrying on before it. At last 
 the voice came. 
 
 ' Oh, why,' she said, ' do you talk about such things ? It 
 will not be for a long time. Why need we think about it now?' 
 
 The words and the look were full of a pleading sadness, 
 and expressed a trust in him so complete and intimate, 
 that it might have been called passionate had it not been so 
 cloudless also. They were standing close together. Carew 
 said nothing. He merely, as she spoke, drew her towards 
 himself. She came unresistingly into the fold of his arms, 
 and, bending down, he kissed her. Then they descended 
 the stairs. In touching her lips he felt as if he had touched 
 a flower. 
 
 During the drive home, sunk deep in a reverie, he kept 
 asking himself, 'Was the flower a lotus or a forget-me-not?' 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A STRUGGLE IN SLEEP. 
 
 On their return that night, the General having duly left 
 them, the little dinner of three had for all of them a peculiar 
 charm : — not that the General was not missed ; he teas 
 missed : and the charm consisted precisely in the sense of 
 intimacy, produced by the fact that they all had a loss in 
 common. The homely evening that followed made the 
 charm complete. Carew was surprised to find how all sorts 
 of kindly thoughts, all sorts of small tastes and sympathies, 
 which, so far as expression went, were usually frozen by his 
 reserve, now began to declare themselves almost uninten- 
 tionally, like drops of water from snows when they begin to 
 thaw ; and when the two ladies had gone to bed, he subsided 
 again into his chair, and thought his situation over.
 
 chap. yiit. A STRUGGLE IN SLEEP 243 
 
 All that day, as if in a half-trance, he felt he had been 
 drifting into a kind of fairyland. He remembered that in 
 the morning there had been a few little far-off troubles ; but 
 they had been over long ago. The touch of those lips that 
 met his on the tower had been for him literally a kiss of 
 peace ; and there had fallen on his mind the same sort of 
 expectant calm that breathes and sleeps over a murmuring 
 moonlit sea. He knew enough, however, of the ways of the 
 heart's weather to know that such calms were often extremely 
 treacherous. At present, he said to himself, he was in love 
 delightfully. Was there any danger, he asked, of his becom- 
 ing in love dangerously ? And then he wavered, and asked, 
 was he really in love at all ? These questions, he found, 
 were strangely pleasant to dwell upon ; and to clear his 
 judgment about them he went out into the moonlight. 
 
 The moonlight made the answers no more certain ; but 
 there was an element of pleasure in their very uncertainty. 
 He was certain of one thing only, and this was that whatever 
 might be his relations to Miss Capel, her presence and 
 influence made a magic circle round him, which kept, for 
 the time at least, a world of troubles away from him. He 
 felt that within that circle he had somehow grown years 
 younger again. The desolating anxieties with which thought 
 had made him familiar could not disappear, indeed, but they 
 became semi-transparent phantoms. The voices of men 
 asking in vain for spiritual guidance, the growth of democracy 
 uneasily chafing for change, dwindled in his ears to a faint 
 noise in a dream ; and the things close to him resumed their 
 old reality. The crisp rustle of the palm fronds, the softer 
 whispering of the orange-trees, the moonlight sleeping on 
 the antique walls of the chateau, and the light from within 
 that glowed at a certain window these were the sights, these 
 were the sounds which once more seemed to him to touch 
 what is deeper in man's nature. Miss Capel was there above 
 him, behind that lighted window ; but her spirit, he felt, 
 was everywhere. It glided in and out amongst the orange- 
 trees j it was wandering below in the gardens ; it floated up to 
 
 K 2
 
 244 TH E OLD ORDER CHANGES book m. 
 
 him from the beds of violets. Was there danger in this — 
 danger to him, to her ? Was sorrow somehow lying in wait for 
 either of them ? The voice of the garden seemed to answer 
 ' No ! ' and, breathing about his pillow as he softly sank to 
 sleep, whispered that in love like this there was delight but 
 no danger. 
 
 This comfortable but somewhat visionary conclusion was 
 hardly borne out by the next two days' experience. He did 
 not, indeed, himself call it in question ; but that was only 
 because he was too much preoccupied to criticise it, and the 
 hours flowed by in a stream of enchanted feeling, whose 
 surface no obstacle fretted or troubled into thought. He 
 discovered, it is true, during the course of the very next 
 morning, when she resumed her work at his picture, that 
 she not only distracted his mind from the subjects which used 
 to absorb him, but that she could hardly herself understand 
 what those subjects were. She knew as little of politics as 
 if they were brewing or paper-making ; and when, in allusion 
 to the neighbouring room which he had shown her, he hap- 
 pened to say that he was interested in political economy, she 
 repeated the two words with a soft contemptuous wonder as if 
 they meant to her as little as Mumbo Jumbo. This discovery 
 he did reflect upon for a moment ; for a moment it dis- 
 appointed him ; then he looked into her eyes and acquiesced 
 in it. Nor was she, indeed, wanting in qualities by which 
 this defect was atoned for. In poetry of the lyrical and 
 more emotional kind she was exceedingly well read, and had 
 a singularly sensitive appreciation of it; and in her own 
 remarks on the emotional side of life not only was the same 
 appreciation observable, but a certain shrewdness mixed 
 with a dreamy pathos, which seemed to indicate that she had 
 been at school under experience. 
 
 As to her engagement, as if by some tacit understanding, 
 that was not again referred to ; and as to their own affection, 
 instinct taught both of them that they could indulge in it 
 with the greatest ease by frankly and cheerfully ignoring it. 
 By the morning after the picnic, the image of the Prince
 
 chap. viii. A STRUGGLE IN SLEEP 245 
 
 de Vaucluse, at least in Carew's mind, had receded into the 
 background. It was lost amongst a multitude of other 
 banished anxieties. Standing by the easel to watch how his 
 portrait was progressing, he once more stooped down, and 
 touched the lips of his flower. She raised her face to his, 
 and to-day was joined to yesterday. The present closed 
 about them like a cloud, hiding from them with a luminous 
 mirage the hard world of consequences. They began to 
 live and breathe together in a coloured cocoon of dreams. 
 
 Airs. Capel, who was far from strong, and had been 
 reminded of her weakness by the fatigue she felt after the 
 picnic, was not inclined for any more active exercise than an 
 occasional walk along the ramparts. Thus the two others, 
 through all the sunshiny afternoons, roofed by the cloudless 
 sky, and breathing the siren air, wandered about together, 
 with no company but their own. The garden was a world 
 for them, just as if they had been children. The banks, 
 with their shrubs, seemed to rise to visionary altitudes. The 
 blossoms of the camellia-trees seemed to touch the clouds. 
 Sometimes, too, they carried their explorations farther. They 
 strayed along the neighbouring hill-sides, amongst terraced 
 vineyards and olive-groves. They threaded the peasants' 
 footpaths ; they listened to the headlong brooks ; they 
 plucked maidenhair from the crevices of wet rocks. 
 
 A day or two later, however, Miss Capel informed her 
 mother that she had had a letter from some girl who had 
 been at school with her. The contents of the letter, which 
 she discussed in Carew's hearing, seemed to him trivial and 
 indifferent enough ; but he noticed at the time a slight 
 change in her manner— a slight sadness, a slight increase of 
 thoughtfulness ; and by-and-by, when they were by them- 
 selves in the garden, this change, which in the interval he 
 had thought might be only his fancy, again struck him, and 
 struck him as unmistakable. She was sitting on a seat, 
 under an arch of myrtle; and he was standing a pace or 
 two off, in front of her. Content and happy in the mere 
 sense of her neighbourhood, he was not looking at her, but
 
 246 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 with a lazy smile of amusement, was watching the move- 
 ments of a long procession of caterpillars. Meanwhile her 
 eyes had been fixed on him with a gentle persistence, as if 
 nothing else were worth looking at. At last she pronounced 
 his name ; and at once he turned towards her. Never 
 before had her face been so full of meaning ; and never in 
 her eyes, despite the smile that played in them, had there 
 floated an expression of such sad alluring tenderness. 
 
 ' Mr. Carew,' she said with a grave simplicity, ' I don't 
 think I can ever let you go away from me.' 
 
 Carew had never in words made her a direct declaration 
 of any kind. She, indeed, had been far franker than he ; 
 and though she, like him, had said nothing about love, she 
 had over and over again told him how much she liked him : 
 but her perfect straightforwardness, like perfect truth in a 
 diplomat, had made him think she meant less than she 
 said rather than more ; and whilst adding to the piquancy 
 of the situation had increased his sense of security in it. 
 Now the case was different. Her words had something 
 in them — he could not quite tell what— that thrilled him 
 with a sense of their being really true. He paused for a 
 moment, thinking what reply he should make to her. 
 Words trembled on his lips almost as simple and straight- 
 forward as her own ; but with an impulse whose source he 
 had no time to analyse, he sharply repressed them, and only 
 said regretfully, ' It is you who are going away from me, 
 not I from you. But why do you talk of going away? 
 You are not going yet ; and when you do — well, perhaps 
 I shall come with you.' 
 
 She looked round her at the garden and all its flowers, 
 as if she had not heard him. ' Don't you think,' she said 
 absently, 'that all this is very beautiful?' Carew replied 
 that he did. ' I wonder,' she went on, ' whether it would 
 be equally beautiful if we were not happy in it ? I think its 
 beauty to me is, that it means my happiness.' 
 
 ' And mine too,' said Carew. ' It means it, it interprets 
 it. The light in those roses is not only the sunshine. It is
 
 chap. tiii. A STRUGGLE IN SLEEP 2\J 
 
 the light of our two lives, which they reflect back on us, 
 with some added light of their own.' 
 
 She suddenly began to murmur this verse of Shelley's : — 
 
 ' Like a glow-worm golden 
 
 In a dell of dew, 
 Scattering unbeholden 
 Its aerial hue. 
 
 Do you think our lives in your garden have been like that ? 
 Perhaps they have. Your garden will always have the same 
 sunshine coming back to it, but never the same glow-worm. 
 No, Mr. Carew,' she went on, trying to assume a tone of 
 lightness, ' never, never, never the same glow-worm. Come,' 
 she exclaimed, and she struggled still harder to command 
 some tone of her ordinary conversational buoyancy — ' come 
 — we've had enough poetry. It's tea-time, and I'm dying 
 for my tea— tea, and some of that beautiful cake of yours. 
 Cake ! — Mr. Carew, doesn't it make your mouth water ? ' 
 
 That evening the two ladies were somewhat late in 
 coming down to dinner, and Carew was wondering what 
 had possibly kept them, when Miss Capel entered the room, 
 with a quicker step than usual, holding out and waving a 
 small piece of blue paper. There was an odd brightness 
 in her eyes, and she was humming an air of Offenbach's. 
 ' Mr. Carew,' she exclaimed, stopping in the middle of a 
 bar, 'didn't I say so — never the same glow-worm}' And 
 she laughed with an air that tried to seem one of gaiety. 
 
 Carew could do nothing but stare at her. She put the 
 paper into his hand. It was a telegram from the General, 
 and the purport of it was this : his wile's presence was 
 needed at once at Genoa 'To-morrow morning,' said 
 Miss Capel, 'we must go to-morrow morning." She raised 
 her eyes, and the brightness had quite left them. 
 
 She had hardly done speaking when her mother entered, 
 slightly agitated, and full of regrets and apologies. There 
 was no cause whatever for any anxiety. Her presence at 
 Genoa was simply needed to complete some legal formalities 
 incident to the General's business, property of hers, a-- well
 
 248 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book in. 
 
 as his being concerned in it ; but the necessity of leaving 
 the chateau in this unexpected way discomposed her. Still 
 it appeared that there was no help for it ; she and her 
 daughter must be off as early as might be, next morning, 
 hoping in a very few days to come back with the General ; and 
 Miss Capel, having submitted to the inevitable, seemed.only 
 anxious to know if the post would come before they started. 
 
 Carew was able to satisfy her with an assurance 
 that it would, wondering, as he did so, what this anxiety 
 meant. Then, when the practical details of the departure 
 had been settled, they fell to consoling themselves by 
 making various plans for the happy time when they should 
 all be reassembled. 
 
 In this way they passed a somewhat dejected evening. 
 All their efforts were directed to dispelling a sense of sad- 
 ness ; but in spite of everything it still hung in the air. 
 Then came the two 'good-nights' ; the two ladies retired, 
 and Carew 7 was left alone in the drawing-room. A minute 
 or two later the door opened softly, and Miss Capel came 
 back again. At the sight of her an impulse seized him — an 
 impulse which surprised himself— to rush forward and fold 
 her in his arms, and say something — his impulse was rather 
 vague as to what. But he mastered himself, and remained 
 perfectly still ; whilst a small voice, as of a prudential con- 
 science, continued to whisper, ' One rash word, and you 
 will commit yourself.' 
 
 She had come back for her work-basket. Carew rose 
 to find it for her ; but she saw it before he did, and, seizing 
 it by a rapid movement, she was again at the door, as if she 
 were afraid to linger. She paused there for a second, she 
 cast one last glance at him, and, having lightly pressed her 
 finger-tips to her lips, she was gone. 
 
 Carew one more sank back in his chair abstractedly. 
 At last, with a distinctness which startled his own ears, he 
 heard the following few words escape him : 'Marry her ! I 
 could as soon imagine myself marrying a fairy or a mermaid ! ' 
 
 By that time the following night she and her mother were 
 at Genoa.
 
 chap. ix. THE SPELL WORKS 249 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE SPELL WORKS. 
 
 Seeing that Carew, up to the last moment, could thus let 
 prudence control and criticise impulse, it might be thought 
 that he had been right in his estimate of his own situation, 
 and that his devotion, whatever effect it might have produced 
 upon Miss Capel, was certainly not strong enough to cause 
 any great trouble to himself. And, indeed, until he was 
 actually left alone, this continued to be his own view of the 
 matter ; but from that moment he began to see he was mis- 
 taken. He was like a man who has been drinking in a hot 
 room for hours, and thinks he is quite sober till he finds 
 himself in the fresh air. No sooner was his companion of 
 the past week gone from him— no sooner had her carriage 
 disappeared through the outer archway, than a solitude that 
 might be felt took possession of his consciousness, and he 
 began to understand gradually the real results of her com- 
 pany. Instead of passing away from him like a beautiful 
 dream— a dream which was sure soon to return and con- 
 tinue itself, and which during its absence it was a pensive 
 luxury to regret— she had taken half of his waking life away 
 with her. 
 
 It was different some ten days back when Miss Con- 
 suelo Burton had left him, though he himself, for reasons 
 far down in his mind, felt it a profanity to compare the two 
 occasions. It was different then. Miss Consuelo Burton 
 had some connection with his life, regarded as the life of a 
 man with some high and rational purpose. When she had 
 turned away from him, he felt as if he had been excom- 
 municated. Now he felt merely as if he had been abandoned. 
 He could connect Miss Cape) with no purpose of any kind. 
 He could reason about his longing lor her as little as he 
 could reason about thirst or hunger. He only felt she was 
 gone and had left a blank behind her. He knew quite well 
 that she iiad not gone willingly, and that there was also a 
 prospect of her speedy return. But the mere fa< t of her absence
 
 250 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 quickly developed in his mind the same feeling of desertion 
 he would have had if she had fled from him with a rival, 
 and the same feeling of hopelessness he would have had if 
 no return had been in question. 
 
 Whilst she was with him, enchanting as he felt her 
 presence, he had never regarded her as any part of his own 
 life. He had escaped, as it were, out of his own life into hers. 
 He never imagined that he could take hers into his. He 
 could form no picture of any practical career with her. Now 
 the case was altogether reversed. He could form no picture 
 of any practical career without her. 
 
 Her presence, he felt, would be more to him than grati- 
 fied ambition, more than any sympathy on political or social 
 matters, more than any successful struggle with the hated 
 tendencies of the day ; and to live for her, to guide her, to 
 cherish her, to tend and defend this one single flower, would 
 not indeed be more than duty — it would be duty itself. 
 
 During the day of her departure these thoughts and 
 feelings developed rapidly like a fever, and his imagination 
 by the evening was in a state of abnormal activity. Con- 
 tinually in the bright sunshine, and then again in the moon- 
 light, he had looked down at the garden, with all its dells of 
 flowers, thinking of her, in accordance with her own simile, 
 as the glow-worm that had lit up everything with ' its aerial 
 hue ' ; and before he could bring himself to attempt sleep- 
 ing he was obliged to seek relief in beginning a passionate 
 letter to her. This as he wrote it was a surprise, a revela- 
 tion to himself. He was like a man whom a fever has 
 literally taken possession of, and who starts on suddenly 
 seeing his changed face in a glass. 
 
 ' Everything/ he wrote, ' is blank to me now you are 
 gone. Everything will be blank till you come back again. 
 Shall I ever send these lines to you ? I hardly know. I 
 try to think I shall not, because then I shall feel bolder in 
 speaking each thought as it shapes itself. Thoughts ! — I 
 am wrong ; it is not thoughts that I desire to convey to you: 
 it is simply a longing. And that longing — how shall I 
 
 &
 
 chap. ix. THE SPELL WORKS 25 I 
 
 describe it? I cannot. It can be described no more than 
 a perfume. It can be expressed only in a multitude of 
 images, from which it seems to breathe, as the perfume 
 breathes from the petal. As I am writing this the moon- 
 light falls upon my paper, for the curtains are drawn back 
 and my window is wide open. You, and my longing for 
 you,. are for my mind associated with that moonlight, and 
 with the garden below me amongst whose odours it falls. 
 Do you think I am talking nonsense? It is nonsense unless 
 you have the key to it. But you, on whom no shade of 
 feeling is ever lost, you, my "glow-worm golden in a dell of 
 dew," perhaps you will understand me. Heart of my heart, 
 life of my life, llesh of my flesh, spirit of my spirit, if I wake 
 to-night I shall think all night of you. If I sleep I shall 
 dream of you.' 
 
 This was all he wrote; and the following morning he 
 shrank from re-reading it, much as he might have shrunk 
 from touching some sensitive spot in his body. He did not 
 fear that he had said more than he felt ; he feared seeing 
 what he did feel too completely exposed. But a letter 
 arrived for him by the post which sent all such scruples to 
 the winds, and changed his fear that he had said too much 
 into a contemptuous sense that he had said too little. 
 The letter was dated ' Ventimiglia.' He knew the hand- 
 writing. She had written to him so soon ! 
 
 ' We have nearly two hours,' Miss Capel began abruptly, 
 ' to wait at this station ; so I seize the first opportunity of 
 saying to you what must be said sooner or later. If one 
 jumps out of bed in the morning the very moment one 
 wakes, the act of getting up is easy. If one closes one's 
 eyes again, one may struggle to rouse oneself for ho'.. 
 The same is the case with the waking dreams of life. Years 
 of trouble may be saved if one breaks away from them the 
 first painful moment one realises they have been only dreams. 
 
 'I have been dreaming. I don't know whether you 
 have. Very possibly you have been only pretending to 
 dream: indeed, now that my eyes are open, I can hardly
 
 252 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 venture to think it was otherwise. But what does that 
 matter? I was not pretending; and I am writing to you 
 now very seriously to say that I must dream no more. I 
 hope you do not think me rude. I hope I do not pain you. 
 No — I don't think you will mind much ; but still this is 
 abrupt and sudden, and you will wonder what is the mean- 
 ing of it. 
 
 'Well, do you remember my last day, and a letter I 
 got from an old school-friend of mine, in the morning? 
 Mamma and I were talking about it. My friend, who is 
 married, is a relation of the Prince de Vaucluse, and she 
 wrote to say that she was going to send me a wedding 
 present — a pair of earrings. That brought the reality of 
 things back to me, though I tried not to think of it ; and 
 I might have put it away from me, if my friend had not said 
 also that the Prince had come back to Paris. He has been 
 at Southampton lately, where he keeps his yacht ; and, now 
 he was back in Paris, I knew I should at once hear from 
 him. That was why I was so anxious about our letters 
 yesterday when we were going away. I expected one from 
 him ; and I felt a kind of shyness in thinking that you might 
 see it. It came. I had hoped — how wrong of me ! — I had 
 hoped it might be to say that his yacht was being got ready, 
 and that he was going round the world in her. He meant 
 to have done so ; and that made what is going to happen 
 seem so far off to me. And the letter really was to say he 
 is coming to Nice — I think in three weeks ; and in May we 
 are to be married. 
 
 ' It will be difficult for me to forget the days that I have 
 passed with you ; perhaps it will be impossible. But I must 
 do my best to forget them, or never to think of them with 
 any kind of tenderness. No, Mr. Carew; there must be 
 no half-measures for me. If I had my own way, I would 
 not even come back to Courbon-Loubet, as mamma and 
 the General propose doing. But it would be very difficult 
 for me to remain away ; and I have not the courage, the 
 determination, to face the difficulty. Else I couldn't ever
 
 chap. ix. THE SPELL WORKS 253 
 
 look at you again — not till I could do so without remember- 
 ing. Will that time ever come ? 
 
 ' We shall be at the Hotel de Genes. Will you write me 
 a line there ? When we meet again everything will be so 
 very different ; and a few kind words from you would make 
 things a little easier.' 
 
 Then followed the signature. It was simply ' Violet.' 
 
 This letter had a singular effect upon Carew. His fever 
 in reading it passed rapidly into an acuter phase; and the 
 thought that Miss Capel seemed on the point of escaping 
 him did much to ripen a definite wish to seize her. Life if 
 he lost her, he felt, would have no taste in it. He turned 
 to the letter he had himself begun last night. All shyness 
 of his own protestations had left him; and in their strained 
 excited language he now found a futile comfort. He tore 
 the paper up, however, for two reasons. Its language was 
 not strained and not excited enough ; and there was also 
 no answer in it to the news he had received this morning. 
 He began writing afresh to her, and in a more vehement 
 way. What he had said before he repeated with added 
 emphasis, and there ran through his phrases what in his first 
 letter was wanting a note of pain and decision, that gave 
 them a certain brusquerie. 
 
 ' You speak,' he wrote in conclusion — ' you speak of your 
 dream ending. Why must you end it? What constraint is 
 put upon you ? Consider how young you are, how jour 
 whole life is before you. It has seemed to me that that life 
 of yours has just begun to unfold itself, petal by petal, trem- 
 bling to the light. And now, if you do what you talk of 
 doing, there will be nothing in store for you but blight and 
 darkness. The rose-tree of your life will live, but the rose 
 will be gone. There will be no second blossoming. Have 
 the courage to continue dreaming,, and the dream will 
 become the reality. Do you doubt that? Let me tell you 
 one thing. To me what were once realities have become 
 dreams ; and the dream which you and I have dreamt 
 together has become the one, the only reality. 1 will a^k
 
 254 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ui. 
 
 this of you. Decide on nothing till you return here. Let 
 us meet, for a few days at least, as we have met before. 
 Those days may be the earnest of a happy future ; or they 
 will be something — a small something— saved from a dark 
 one.' 
 
 It occurred to him after he had sent this letter off that 
 even now he had made no direct and practical proposal to 
 her. There had been much mention of dreams ; and he 
 thought he must have seemed like a lover literally pleading 
 in dreamland — a land where there was no marrying and no 
 marriage settlements. Mere emotion, however, possessed 
 him far too completely to allow much foothold in his mind 
 for critical reflections such as this ; and until an answer 
 came from her he hardly knew what to do with himself. 
 One thing he did know — he could not remain quiet ; and 
 when he entered the study where he had once been so 
 absorbed and industrious, and looked at his shelves of 
 Ricardo, Marx, and Bastiat, they affected his mind with the 
 same sort of repulsion that a man about to be sea-sick feels 
 for a leg of mutton. 
 
 At last the letter he had been so longing for came. 
 The beginning of it piqued him by its coldness ; but he 
 saw in a moment or two that the coldness was artificial ; 
 and the ending touched him in a quite unexpected way. 
 
 ' I had hoped,' she said, ' that in waking up from my 
 dream I should, indeed, have found one part of it a reality. 
 I dared to hope so ; and the part I speak of was your 
 friendship. I had hoped you would help me. I am quite 
 alone in the world. It is very hard to do right. Am I 
 preferring a very presumptuous request when I ask you 
 not to make it harder — as you so easily, so very easily 
 can? ' 
 
 He had been utterly unprepared for any appeal of this 
 kind. He had pictured her suffering from many an emo- 
 tional struggle, but never from a moral one. Just as she 
 had seemed a stranger to his political and his social anxieties, 
 so had he conceived of her as a stranger to the conflict
 
 chap. ix. THE SPELL WORKS 255 
 
 between virtue and wrong-doing. The idea of vice he had 
 never for a moment associated with her ; but he had as little 
 associated with her the idea of virtue. In the singular 
 quality of her ingenuousness she had seemed like Eve before 
 the fruit of the tree of knowledge had been eaten ; and the 
 only standard she had suggested to him hitherto had been 
 that of her refined and easily wounded feelings, and her 
 seeming need of some deep and unfound affection. ,He 
 recalled her volume of poems that dealt with spiritual sub- 
 jects, and the lines at the beginning of it that had been 
 addressed to herself; but all that had seemed to perplex 
 rather than appeal to her. He recalled, too, the incident of 
 her having stolen off to church alone ; but even then she 
 seemed to have acted not so much like a devotee as like a 
 child, or a stray dog looking for some friend. 
 
 Now he saw his error, though he could not fully realise 
 it ; and too late his conscience began to smite him, not only 
 for the hasty and false judgment he had formed of her, but 
 for the way in which by her undefended affections he had 
 led her into sorrow and danger. 
 
 It's dangerous work to play with souls 
 And matter enough to save one's own — 
 
 these lines of Robert Browning's kept on constantly recur- 
 ring to him ; and the thought expressed in them, with the 
 personal reproach implied in it, mixed in his mind with a 
 feeling for her of contrite pity. He wrote, in answer to her, 
 a subdued and gentle letter, promising to give her whatever 
 help he could. 
 
 ' It seems hard,' he said, 'that in this case my truest 
 sympathy for you must be shown by suppressing nearly 
 every sign of itself ; and that the help you speak of must 
 consist in holding out no hand to you. But if it must be 
 so it must. The bitterest reproach you could ever bring 
 against me would be, that I had caused you to reproach 
 yourself.' 
 
 He thought that in thus writing he was saying farewell to
 
 256 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 all his former relations with her ; but in this very act of 
 renouncing his affection that affection deepened. It took 
 a new glow and colour, as suddenly as some cloud does in 
 the sunrise ; and having seized his pen again, he added this 
 postscript: 'When you come, I shall ask you a definite 
 question, and you must be prepared to answer it one way or 
 another. Is not some change in your plans possible?' 
 
 He looked at the words for some moments reflectively ; 
 and at last, acting under a vague combination of motives, 
 he tore up the separate sheet they were written on. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF FEVER. 
 
 When two friends, at a distance, quarrel through the medium 
 of correspondence, the estrangement is apt to seem far 
 greater than it really is, or than, if they had met, it would 
 have seemed to be. The same is true of every difference of 
 feeling which takes place under the same circumstances : 
 and when a meeting does take place at last, there is a surprise 
 on either side at the sight of the familiar features, instead 
 of the far-off phantasmal face that had seemed to stare coldly 
 through the letter-paper. 
 
 Carew was keenly conscious of this when the Capels 
 came back to the chateau. Looking at Miss Capel as she 
 sat opposite him at dinner, noting in her eyes exactly the - 
 same softness and the same sparkle that seemed to leap with 
 pleasure at the sight of him, he could hardly believe that 
 this was really the person who had been begging, almost 
 ordering, him to keep a chilly distance from her. One 
 thing only reminded him that such was the case ; and this 
 was the way in which she treated a piece of intelligence that 
 was for him exceedingly disappointing. His visitors could 
 not possibly remain more than two nights with him. The 
 day after to-morrow they were obliged to go back to Cannes ; 
 and Miss Capel in a number of ways, imperceptible to any
 
 chap. x. THE BEGINNING OF FEVER 257 
 
 one but himself, gave him to understand that this plan had 
 her entire approbation. She declared that Cannes was the 
 loveliest place in the world ; that nothing v as pleasanter 
 than to drink chocolate, with delicious whipped cream, at a 
 certain confectioner's on the Promenade ; and she asked 
 Carew what he would advise her to wear at a ball which 
 next week would be given at the Cercle Nautique. 
 
 After dinner he tried to speak to her alone, as she used 
 to be giving him occasions to do constantly. But she 
 avoided any incident of this kind with a tact so extraordinary 
 that he could hardly tell whether the avoidance were not 
 unintentional. The only sign which convinced him it was 
 not so was a sort of mischievous triumph which he detected 
 once or twice in her eyes. For the rest, her behaviour was 
 superficially quite the same to him ; she talked, laughed, 
 sang, just as she had done. But in spite of this he felt that 
 everything was changed ; and he went to bed with a sense 
 of provocation and bitterness which he could not appease, 
 though he knew it was wholly unjustified. 
 
 The following morning he fancied himself more lucky. 
 He had thought she was sitting with her mother in the 
 large saloon, and having gone for a book into a small sitting- 
 room next to it, he was surprised and delighted at finding 
 her there alone. But the moment he approached her she 
 seemed to shrink away from him, something like a bird 
 which, although perfectly tame, betrays a horror of having a 
 hand laid on its feathers. I It- sat down on a chair close to 
 her, and said, in a forced voice, 'My picture is not finished 
 yet.' 
 
 A book lay in her lap. She looked down at it, and 
 began turning over the pages. 
 
 'No,' she said, ' that must wait till some other time.' 
 
 1 it is not finished,' exclaimed Carew, 'but something 
 else is.' 
 
 • What else ? ' 
 
 Carew paused for a moment, and then said, almost 
 fiercely, 'What you call a dream, and what 1 call a realil
 
 258 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 She appeared to take no notice of this, but merely- 
 turned over the pages rather quicker than before ; then, 
 springing from her seat, she said, ' This is the wrong 
 volume ; I must go and fetch the other,' and she moved 
 lightly towards the door of the large saloon. 
 
 But Carew was there before her, and, with his hand on 
 the handle, confronted her with a gaze of inquiry. 
 
 ' Mr. Carew, will you let me go by ? ' she said. ' Please 
 — please — I am in a hurry.' 
 
 And she tried to give to her voice an air of petulant 
 playfulness. 
 
 'In one moment,' he said — 'in one moment. But first 
 — I may never be alone with you again — first say good-bye 
 to me.' 
 
 ' Do you want to get rid of us yet?' she said. ' I thought 
 you were going to have kept us as your guests till to- 
 morrow.' 
 
 ' It is you,' he retorted, ' who are anxious to get rid of 
 me. You have already driven me to the door of your heart. 
 Well, won't you say good-bye to me before the door is 
 slammed?' 
 
 He took her hand, which she surrendered to him pas- 
 sively. 
 
 ' Will you,' he murmured, ' not kiss me once more ? ' 
 
 He leaned towards her, but as he did so she drew 
 back. 
 
 ' No, Mr. Carew,' she answered, ' never, never again.' 
 
 And she looked at him, not with anger exactly, but with 
 a little pout of refusal. She seemed almost as childlike in 
 her resistance to temptation as she had been in her forgetful- 
 ness that such a thing as temptation existed. 
 
 ' Why,' she exclaimed, half teasingly, half sadly — 'why do 
 you look so cross ? Mr. Carew, will you pick that letter up 
 for me ? '" 
 
 He stooped to do so. In a moment she was half through 
 the door, and, receiving the letter with a parting smile, she 
 disappeared.
 
 chap. x. THE BEGINNING OF FEVER 259 
 
 ' Mamma,' she said, an hour or two later, when, having 
 fetched her work, she was seated beside her mother, ' where 
 is Mr. Carew? We have not seen him for some time.' 
 
 ' Didn't you hear what he told me ? ' said Mrs. Capel. 
 'You must have been out of the room, then. He has had 
 some business in the neighbourhood which has called him 
 away, and it is very possible that he will not be back till the 
 evening.' 
 
 Miss Capel changed colour suddenly. She became first 
 white, then she flushed scarlet. 
 
 ' And we,' she said presently, ' go early to-morrow !' 
 
 Nothing more was seen of Carew for hours. He re- 
 entered the saloon a little after five, and found Mrs. Capel, 
 who had finished her tea, just quitting it. 
 
 'Well,' he exclaimed, with an air as careless as he could 
 command, ' I've done my business. I've had a hard day's 
 work of it. I have been as far as Beaulieu.' 
 
 Mrs. Capel turned back for a moment. She asked if he 
 was not thirsty, and said the tea was still quite warm. 
 
 ' I shall be down again in a moment,' she added. 
 ' Violet will pour you out a cup. See how I am doing the 
 honours in your own house !' 
 
 He had not at first noticed Miss Capel ; but there she 
 was, in a low chair by the tea-table. She looked up at him, 
 and the flush came again into her cheeks. 
 
 ' You have been at Beaulieu ? ' she said. 
 
 'On business— yes,' he replied coldly, still standing at a 
 distance from her, and making no offer to advance. 
 
 ' Come,' she said, 'will you not have your tea?' 
 
 'Will you allow me.' he said in a strained changed voice, 
 'to come near you? I hardly know on what I may venture.' 
 
 ' Come,' she repeated, and this time so gently that he 
 moved forward and took a seat close to her. ' Mr. Carew, 
 how can you talk in that way ? Why do you ? And so you 
 have been to Beaulieu — and on business? What busi- 
 ness ? ' 
 
 'Shall I tell you?' said Carew. ' To avoid any chance 
 
 s 2
 
 260 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 of giving pain to you as you are now, and to live over once 
 more an hour with you as you were then. I rode there. I 
 rode as hard as I could. I put my horse up at the hotel, 
 and I walked on to the promontory — our promontory. 
 Perhaps you have forgotten it.' 
 
 ' It would be well for me,' she said in a choked tone, 
 'if I had.' 
 
 'And I sat there, on a rock,' he continued, 'looking 
 at our tower, shining in to-day's sunlight just as it did in 
 yesterday's. I couldn't go near it— I hadn't the heart for 
 that. I found — do you know what I found ? It was the 
 fragments of one of our wine-bottles, which you had broken 
 against a stone. My life was lying at the foot of that tower, 
 broken into pieces by you, just as you broke that bottle. 
 Whilst I was sitting there I wrote something I want to show 
 you. Will you look at it ? ' 
 
 He held out to her a piece of paper with something in 
 pencil scribbled on it. Whilst she was reading he watched 
 her, his chin resting on his hand. What she deciphered 
 was this. It was headed ' The Tower at Beaulieu ' ; and 
 then came what follows : — 
 
 One true hour of love lies there, 
 Dead in the clear unburying air. 
 Hear distracted Memory call, 
 ' Who shall give it foirial? ' 
 Memory! thou of little wit, 
 There be three shall bury it. 
 Let the World, false, vain, and loud, 
 Be the grave-clothes and the shroud ; 
 Let the Devil's Scorn of Good 
 Be the heavy coffin-wood ; 
 And let False Love be the clay 
 That hides all from the light of day. 
 
 She was a long time bending over the paper. She must 
 have read the lines several times, and once or twice he saw 
 that she bit her lip. At last she raised her eyes, and two 
 large tears fell from them. She held her hand out to him ;
 
 chap. x. THE BEGINNING OE FEVER 261 
 
 he took it ; she pressed his convulsively, and then abruptly 
 dropped it. 
 
 'You mustn't,' she murmured, 'be angry with me. You 
 must be always my friend. By-and-by I shall want friends 
 more than ever. Listen!' she exclaimed, starting slightly, 
 and making a strong effort to recover her natural manner, 
 ' I hear Mamma coming. She is gone into the next room — 
 yes, I know why. She has gone to see if I have left any of 
 my goods about. Let us go to her. Do be civil to her. 
 Don't let her imagine you are thinking of other things. Did 
 you hear what I just said ? What will your opinion of the 
 Capel family be? Mamma does the honours of your own 
 house to you, and I give you lessons in how to do the 
 honours yourself.' 
 
 Whilst she was speaking she had risen, and a smile had 
 at length come back to her. She was looking down at him, 
 motioning him to rise also ; and in that downward smile 
 there seemed to him to be something compassionate, as if, 
 despite all that was childlike in her, she knew more of life 
 than he did. He rose. As he did so her smile grew 
 tenderer, and, putting her hand on his shoulder, she quickly 
 and softly kissed him. But how different was the touch of 
 her lips now to what it had been on the tower! It was 
 nothing now but a sign of pity and concession. It was he 
 who was like a child now — a poor refractory child — and her 
 kiss was like a sugar-plum given to him at last furtively and 
 under protest. This was his last private interview with her 
 before she left the chateau. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 'IHI-: FEVER CONQUERS. 
 
 Vv'iif.n the Capels departed, the following morning, both the 
 General and his wife said many civil things about their hopes 
 that Carew would come often to Cannes and see them. Miss
 
 262 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 Capel also murmured something to the same effect, but she 
 did so mechanically, putting little or no meaning into it. 
 She was leaving him thus! He could hardly bear the 
 thought. He determined that he would not wait long 
 before he came to some better understanding with her, and, 
 just as the carriage was beginning to move off, he called 
 after it to her, ' I shall be at Cannes the day after to- 
 morrow.' She looked round, waved her hand to him, and 
 he could just catch the words, ' Certainly ; we shall expect 
 you.' 
 
 During the last few days his mind had been so much 
 occupied that he had allowed an accumulation of business 
 letters to remain unanswered, some of them even unopened. 
 He resolved now to kill the day in attending to them. 
 When, however, he was sitting down at his writing-table, the 
 first thing that caught his eye was a little three-cornered 
 note placed conspicuously upon his blotting-book. It was 
 from Miss Capel. It ran thus : — 
 
 ' I am writing good-bye to you, for I do not know how 
 to say it. I am afraid you must think me a very odd person. 
 This is partly due to circumstances which I cannot explain, 
 and partly to another cause, which I could explain if it 
 would not make you angry. You do not now think enough 
 of the position in which I stand. If you did you would see 
 that I am not different, but that I am obliged to seem 
 different — and not only now, but for always. Would you 
 wish it to be otherwise ? I thought you were going to help 
 me, and not make things harder for me. I have heard 
 again from him. He is coming to Cannes a fortnight hence, 
 perhaps, and then everything may happen much sooner than 
 was at first intended. It all seems so strange, I can hardly 
 realise it. We shall see you again soon. I shall like that. 
 Like it! You see the language I am obliged to use to you. 
 It is like withered roses. 
 
 ' When you meet me I must leave it to you to settle with 
 your own conscience how you will behave to me. Good-bye. 
 God bless you. I hardly know what I am writing. There
 
 chap. xi. THE FEVER CONQUERS 263 
 
 are some feelings, Mr. Carew, which we must bury, even 
 though they may not be dead.' 
 
 Carew's business letters at once went out of his head. 
 Having read Miss Capel's note several times over, he slowly 
 took from a drawer some crumpled sheets of paper, scribbled 
 with pencil jottings; and spreading these before him pressed 
 his head on his hands and began poring over them. By- 
 and-by he began writing, not continuously, but at irregular 
 intervals. After his luncheon he took a short walk, and 
 then returned again to this same occupation. What its 
 nature was will be seen from the following letter, which 
 he enclosed that night in an envelope directed to Miss 
 Capel. 
 
 'You tell me to consult my conscience as to how I ought 
 to meet you again. I have consulted my conscience, and I 
 hardly know what it says. You think your position must 
 be clear to me. I answer you it is not so. You are 
 engaged to marry a man you do not care for, and with 
 whom you do not sympathise. You do sympathise with me. 
 Why must this marriage take place ? Surely you are a free 
 agent. There is no constraint put upon you. 
 
 ' Put me for one moment out of your head entirely, and 
 think of me as pleading not for my sake but for your own. 
 It is better, far better, not to marry at all than to many as 
 you propose to do. Be wise in time. It will be too late 
 soon. I can think of no fate more terrible, more ruinous, 
 for you than to be tied to a man who is wholly unable to 
 sympathise with you ; and you know as well as 1 do that 
 such is the man in question. 
 
 ' But, Violet, my own Violet, let me suppose the worst- 
 Let me suppose that a promise binds you, which, for some 
 reason unknown to me, you must fulfil at all costs. 1 will 
 suppose it does. Well — what thin? I have still one prayer 
 to make to you. When the time comes you will marry him 
 — you will redeem your promise — you will be true to it on 
 the reckoning day. But what meanwhile? Listen. 
 
 'Just as a promise will claim you then, meanwhile an
 
 264 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 affection claims you. Need you be in such haste to show 
 yourself false to it — to it which claims, and can claim you 
 for such a little while longer ? If for that little while you 
 continue to be to me all you have been, we shall be but 
 seeing our last of what we both realise we must part with. 
 It would be very different if we renewed our friendship 
 afterwards. We should then be plunging into danger, not 
 saying good-bye to happiness. Violet, for your sake I 
 would never allow that. 
 
 'I fear myself to speak of that time ; I hardly dare look 
 forward to it. How could I ever endure to see you pass 
 me in the street, under those altered circumstances? Could 
 I endure to see that face that has been so often near mine, 
 far — far away from me ? — those lips that have so often 
 kissed me, open to me only in some chilly commonplace, or 
 with a cordiality far colder than coldness ? Violet, every- 
 thing here recalls you to me — the gardens, the ramparts, the 
 little chair you oftenest sat in, and every distant mountain 
 whose shadows we have watched changing : but most of all 
 Beaulieu, and the old tower there. All that afternoon 
 which I spent there by myself, when you drove me away, 
 words, expressions, thoughts, came thronging into my brain 
 and clustering into — I won't call it poetry — but metrical ex- 
 pression. I had not to hunt for rhymes and phrases, but 
 merely to choose from the crowd that swarmed round me, 
 soliciting me like beggars : and they had all to do with you. 
 To-day I have been trying to make them intelligible, think- 
 ing I would send them to you. Then I thought they would 
 strike you as unreal and artificial ; and I began this common 
 letter to you instead. But they are not artificial. They 
 may be bad poetry; but, Violet — what name shall I call 
 you that will express my longing for you ? — they show what 
 I mean, what I am, far better than this prose does. I didn't 
 call them, they came to me. Remember this as you read 
 them. You will see that all you urge in that little note 
 of yours filled my mind yesterday as I wandered alone at 
 Beaulieu.'
 
 chap. xi. THE FEVER CONQUERS 265 
 
 Which is the better, which the kinder part- 
 To leave you quite, to cast you quite aside, 
 
 And in one cold farewell to hide with art 
 The pain and passion nature will not hide ; 
 
 Or, still to hold and fold you to my heart, 
 
 And, in a vain dream, dream you slid my bride, 
 
 Not ever call one loving word the last, 
 Until the past become indeed the past? 
 
 This is the question which, the whole blank day, 
 
 I ask my heart as I sit here alone, 
 Watching the dull waves break in Leaulieu bay ; 
 
 And answer from my heart receive I none. 
 What makes it mute? you ask. I will not play 
 
 With hackneyed phrases. Oh, my own, my own, 
 There is no need to say my heart is breaking ; 
 
 Pain makes it mute, although 'tis only aching. 
 
 Pain in my heart, and silence in my cars, 
 
 ( rloom in my eyes — my eyes and ears that miss 
 Your eyes and voice, and vague regrets and fears 
 
 Clouding my thoughts — my life is come to this : 
 With one keen sense through all, that all my years 
 
 Have closed this meaning in your hopeless kiss. 
 Ah ! <mce again, before the moment slips, 
 
 Love, let me leave my life upon your lips. 
 
 What ! tlo you chide me for that desperate cry, 
 
 And say 1 tempt you ? Yes, I feel you do. 
 Listen to me, then : I have lliis reply : 
 
 Lcl Love, my loved die, judge 'twixl me and you. 
 Inquire of Love, who still stands lingering by, 
 
 And gives us still his licence t<> be true, 
 And will not wholly leave us, till betwixt 
 
 My life and yours there is the great gulf fixed. 
 
 Ask Him, for He has made you one with me ; 
 
 You are with me, and around me everywhere. 
 I feel you in the mountains ami the sea, 
 
 And when I breathe you t\c<] me in the air. 
 And oh, my soul's true soul, the thought of thee 
 
 Moves me to pray, and mixes with my prayer. 
 Ask Him, for still He still can point to-day 
 
 Towards Heaven, and say, ' In me behold the way.'
 
 266 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 Ask Him to-day. He will have said ' Farewell,' 
 
 Farewell to you, farewell to me — to-morrow : 
 And where He dwelt another Love will dwell, 
 
 With haggard, pitying eyes, and lips that borrow 
 Their hopeless sentence from the gates of Hell, 
 
 ' Through me the way is to the eternal sorrow ' ; 
 And lure and warn us in the same low breath — 
 
 ' Take life from me, but know my life is death.' 
 
 ' Remember what I have said. When your fate is 
 settled, I will never allow myself to see you again. I will 
 not run the risk of guiding you to the eternal sorrow. Now, 
 and now only, is the accepted time. You may be to me 
 as you have been for a few days longer : you may, if you 
 will, be everything to me, for all your life. But you know 
 the condition. It is that you free yourself from your pre- 
 sent engagement.' 
 
 Carew's business letters received no attention that day. 
 The following morning he had a note from Mrs. Capel, 
 saying, ' Come to us to-morrow as early as you can. We 
 propose to givejw/ a little picnic in return for the one you 
 gave us ; and we think of going to a place amongst the 
 Esterel mountains, not far from Theoule. Be with us, if 
 you can, by twelve.' 
 
 This arrangement delighted him, and he at once wrote 
 to acquiesce in it. Then, in somewhat better heart, he 
 addressed himself to the pile of documents which he had 
 too long neglected, and he soon found one of them to be 
 of quite unexpected interest. 
 
 Its perusal produced one instant effect. He hastily tore 
 up the letter which he had written to Mrs. Capel, and sub- 
 stituted another for it in which, while accepting the invita- 
 tion, he said he should be unable to meet them at Cannes. 
 He would, instead, go to Theoule by train, and wait for them 
 there at the railway station, which they would naturally 
 pass in driving.
 
 CHAP. XII. 
 
 A CRISIS 267 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A CRISIS. 
 
 'There he is ! I can see him through the railings ! ' This 
 was Miss Capel's exclamation. Her eyes were quicker than 
 her parents. 'He is on the platform, standing by an enor- 
 mous pile of luggage. Who with so much luggage can have 
 possibly got out at Theoule, I wonder ? ' 
 
 The Capels' carriage drew up at the little wayside 
 station ; and Carew, after a few moments' conversation 
 with one of the officials, came out through the wicket, and 
 they were presently proceeding on their journey. 
 
 He now had time to look at the girl's face. He at once 
 noticed that the tint in her cheeks had faded. The light 
 still gleamed in her eyes, but it was not so buoyant as usual, 
 and, for the first time during his whole acquaintance with 
 her, her childlike and fearless frankness had given place to 
 a certain timidity. As, however, she watched Carew's be- 
 haviour, her old manner, little by little, returned to her. 
 She had anticipated that his attention or his reproachful 
 silence might embarrass her, but she was surprised and 
 relieved at finding that nothing of this kind happened ; and 
 that, instead, he appeared to be distracted by some quite 
 alien subject. She was relieved, but she was slightly 
 piqued ; and, under the influence of the latter feeling, she 
 began to attack him with a little volley of questions. 
 Why had he not joined them at Cannes and driven with 
 them? What had he done with himself since they left? 
 What was he talking about so confidentially to the man at the 
 station ? Who had got out of the train with that imposing 
 pile of luggage ? To the last question alone did she get any 
 definite answer. 
 
 'The luggage,' Carew said, 'is mine.' 
 
 Her cheeks flushed with pleasure ; and yet from her eyes 
 there came a moment's glance of reproach. 
 
 'What 1 ' she exclaimed, 'and are you really coming to 
 stay at Cannes for a little ? '
 
 268 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 ' At Cannes ? ' he repeated. ' No. I am on my way 
 back to England.' 
 
 Mrs. Capcl and the General were loud in their expressions 
 of regret ; but Miss Capel did not utter a word. 
 
 ' Family matters,' said Carew, ' have recalled me sud- 
 denly. Before long I hope to be back in the South again ; 
 though circumstances,' and here he looked towards Miss 
 Capel, ' may be such as to make me exchange Courbon- 
 Loubet for Italy. Our picnic the other day ended with our 
 seeing off the General to Genoa. To-day you must return 
 the compliment, and see me off from Theoule station to 
 London.' 
 
 The picnic was pleasant and uneventful enough, having 
 nothing special to mark it, excepting the beauty of the 
 scene — an open spot in the folds of a pine-clad valley. 
 Carew and Miss Capel both did their best to exhibit the 
 signs of an ordinary cheerful friendship, and hopes were 
 expressed both by him and all the others that, in the course 
 of a fortnight or so, he would be once more among them. 
 As soon, however, as the last biscuit had been eaten, and 
 the inevitable cigar-case was emerging from the General's 
 pocket, Miss Capel said, with a soft, imperious laugh, ' I'm 
 not going to let Mr. Carew stop smoking here with papa. 
 I'm going to take him with me for one last walk along the 
 valley. You know the path, mamma. It is the way we 
 went last year.' Miss Capel was evidently accustomed to 
 have her way in everything — at all events in matters of this 
 description ; and she and Carew were soon going together 
 through a narrow forest path, with brushwood on each side 
 of them. For some time they said very little, and what 
 they did say was mere constrained trivialities. At last, after 
 a pause of unusual length, Miss Capel began thus : — 
 
 'And so, Mr. Carew, you are really going away, are 
 you?' 
 
 ' I am,' said Carew drily. 
 
 'And this time to-morrow,' she went on, 'you will be — 
 how far away? — a thousand miles, at least.'
 
 CHAP. XI r. 
 
 A CRISIS 269 
 
 'You,' said Carew, 'are going farther away from me than 
 I voluntarily should ever go from you. You can come to 
 England— the place to which I am going; but you are going 
 to a place to which I can never follow you.' 
 
 ' Why not ? ' she said. ' You may be my friend still. 
 So far as our friendship goes there need be no difference.' 
 
 'You are talking nonsense!' he retorted angrily. 'So 
 far as our friendship goes, there must be every difference. 
 If you wish,' he went on presently, 'that I should put the 
 matter in plain words to you, I will do so. I love you far 
 too well to see you only as a friend ; and under the circum- 
 stances, which you are deliberately choosing for yourself, I 
 love you far too well to dream of your being more than a 
 friend. So there is nothing left us, you see, but to say a 
 long good-bye ; and if possible to think no more about it.' 
 
 'Exactly,' she said, 'that is just what you will do, Mr. 
 Carew. I know you better than you know yourself. I do 
 not say you will think no more about it, but you will 
 certainly think very little. You will think a little ; — yes, I 
 believe you will do that.' Carew was about to open his lips 
 in protest. 'No,' she said, 'don't look hurt or angry. You 
 think you are fond of me. You think I am necessary to 
 your happiness. But what charms you is not me. It is the 
 echoes in your heart which I have chanced to awaken — the 
 echoes which go on wandering from dell to dell, and the 
 birds there I have awaked also. It is all in yourself. 
 There is very little music in me. I don't complain. I am 
 simply telling you what is. Very soon you will have no 
 regret for me. I shall be a pleasant memory you will not 
 shrink from looking back upon. As for me, I shall wish that 
 I had never met you.' 
 
 ' You are wrong,' he said. ' Why should you think that ? ' 
 But he spoke in a voice which hardly asked for an answer. 
 
 At the same moment the path took a turn which brought 
 them, on a sudden, in full view of the sea. She seemed 
 glad of an excuse to change the subject. 
 
 'There,' she said 'is the view I wished to show you.'
 
 2/0 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book hi. 
 
 He too seemed equally glad to escape to any triviality, 
 even to the fact of his being, as she spoke, caught in a 
 dangling bramble. 
 
 'Look,' he said, 'you have landed me in the thorns of 
 life already. I am caught completely, and all owing to the 
 path by which you have taken me.' 
 
 'It is hitched in your coat,' she said, 'just behind your 
 collar. Let me pull it off for you.' 
 
 She stepped up on the bank at one side of the path, and 
 she thus stood looking down on him from a vantage-ground 
 of a few inches. She seized both ends of the bramble and 
 began to free it from him ; but suddenly her purpose changed : 
 she gently drew it round him, more closely than before, and 
 watched him as she held him there bound in this mimic 
 fetter. At last she said : — 
 
 ' I have possession of you now. I don't think that I shall 
 ever let you go again.' 
 
 ' Don't,' he said gravely. ' Keep me — keep me always. 
 It is what I ask you to do.' 
 
 ' Tell me,' she said : ' shall I come with you this after- 
 noon to England? I won't let you go till you tell me that.' 
 
 But Carew made no immediate answer. They both spoke 
 as if they were tantalising themselves with ideas rather than 
 proposing possibilities. At last Carew said, in a constrained 
 and painful voice : — 
 
 ' I have no home in England to which I could take you 
 — at all events I do not know if I have. Many things have 
 happened since last I saw you ; or, rather, I should say, I 
 have learnt many things. My future is in my own hands 
 no more than yours is — perhaps not so much.' 
 
 ' Mine,' she said absently, ' is not in my own hands at 
 all.' And then, as if her thoughts were straying still farther, 
 she began to murmur something to herself in an indistinct 
 monotone. 
 
 'What are you saying?' he asked her. 
 
 She stopped, and looked at him with a faint momentary 
 smile. ' Something,' she said, ' that I was reading over
 
 chap. xii. A CRISIS 271 
 
 yesterday — verses, Mr. Carew, verses. I found them in a 
 collection of Dramatic Lyrics, arranged and selected by 
 the author, Mr. Robert Browning.' 
 
 'Tell me them,' said Carew. 'What were they?' 
 She seemed to hesitate between seriousness and a forced 
 air of mockery. In a moment or two she was serious ; and 
 in a tone something like that of a child learning to recite a 
 prayer — except that in this case there was deep emotion 
 veiled by it — she began to recite, gravely fixing her eyes 
 on him : — 
 
 ' It all comes to the same thing in the end, 
 
 Since mine thou art, mine wast, and mine shalt be, 
 
 Faithful or faithless, sealing up the sum, 
 
 Or lavish of thy treasure, thou must come 
 
 Back to the heart's place which I keep for thee.' 
 
 As she finished, by an impulse that seemed instinctive, 
 she began to extend her arms, as if inviting him to come to 
 her ; and at last she murmured almost below her breath : — 
 
 ' Say good-bye to me ! ' 
 
 But the moment he moved a step nearer to her, her pur- 
 pose abruptly changed ; and lightly descending from the 
 bank on which she was still standing, she began to walk at 
 a rapid pace back towards the scene of the picnic. Carew 
 followed her with a sense of complete bewilderment, which 
 was not lessened by the fact that when she looked behind 
 her for an instant she seemed to be once more smiling. He 
 called to her to stop ; he asked her where she was going ; 
 then he quickened his pace. No sooner, however, did she 
 find him coming up to her than she suddenly took to run- 
 ning, saying, in a voice that suggested laughter and tears 
 equally : — 
 
 ' Run, Mr. Carew, run ! Can't you see I am racing you.' 
 
 To this invitation he made no response. On the con- 
 trary, he began to walk more slowly again, and watched 
 her glancing figure as it sped away from him. When, how- 
 ever, she was about a hundred yards ahead of him she 
 stopped short, and turned round, waiting for him.
 
 2/2 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book in. 
 
 ' Come, Mr. Carew,' she exclaimed, as soon as he was 
 within speaking distance ; ' here are Mamma and the 
 General. They have been making tea for you, and you are 
 to have some before you begin your journey.' 
 
 And a moment afterwards the two elders appeared. 
 
 ' It's a cruel kindness,' said the General, ' not to speed 
 the parting guest, if he must part, however sorry we may be 
 to lose him. But from what you say about your train, you 
 have not too much time, if we intend to do things com- 
 fortably.' 
 
 They returned together to the spot where they had had 
 their luncheon. They drank their tea ; and in spite of 
 efforts at gaiety, there were signs of sadness apparent in all 
 the party. Still more was this the case when they again 
 entered the carriage, and the horses' heads were directed 
 towards the station. 
 
 ' When do you get to Paris ? ' ' When do you get to 
 Calais? ' ' So far as we can judge, you will have an excel- 
 lent passage ' such were the remarks and questions which, 
 with the inevitable answers, did duty for conversation during 
 Carew's last twenty minutes with his friends ; and even this 
 was kept up with difficulty, for, towards the end, Miss Capel 
 became wholly silent ; nor did she even raise her eyes till 
 Carew had actually descended, and then he saw that they 
 were tremulous with tears, which, as all her face showed, she 
 was struggling not to shed. 
 
 Ten minutes later he was leaning back in the railway 
 carriage, partly occupied with the perplexities of his imme- 
 diate future, partly with the scenes that were drifting away 
 behind him. 
 
 And it was thus they had said good-bye, so he bitterly 
 told himself, with no explanation either on the one side or 
 the other. Then he thought of the cause that was taking 
 him back to England, and exclaimed wearily, ' I was right. 
 It was best that I did not speak.'
 
 BOOK IV. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A RETURN FROM DREAMLAND. 
 
 Carew was heir to estates in the West of England, a part 
 of which at least had been in his family since the Conquest. 
 There had been hardly a reign in which one of his name 
 or more had not figured somehow in the stirring history 
 of the county — from the days of fighting to the days of 
 borough-mongering : and Otterton Hall, which would one 
 day be his home, was the oldest and most remarkable 
 country house of the district. 
 
 In addition to these prospects he was in present pos- 
 session of an income which, for a bachelor, was, to say the 
 least of it, ample. He was able without extravagance to 
 entertain as he had done at the chateau. 
 
 Still, his position was not one of independence. His 
 father, who had been dead for many years, was the second 
 of three brothers ; and on his mother, who was still living, 
 had been settled for life nearly all that his father left — a 
 moderate competence. His two uncles, who were still 
 living also, were both of them very old men ; and to the 
 estates of the eldest Carew's succession was assured. These 
 estates, however, were much encumbered. The fact was 
 so notorious that many would-be country gentlemen were 
 counting on the day when they would have the chance of 
 bidding for them ; and it was at all events hardly open 
 to doubt that unless Carew had considerable means besides, 
 he would never be able to hold his own at the Hall. But 
 his younger uncle, Mr. Horace Carew — a successful dandy 
 
 T
 
 274 THE C» LD ORDER CHANGES hook iv. 
 
 of the palmiest days of dandyism, had married a great 
 heiress, who had died leaving no children ; and all her 
 fortune, which was quite at his own disposal, he let it be 
 understood was designed for Carew, his nephew. But this 
 was not all. He had not been content with promises. He 
 had practically charged himself with Carew's entire educa- 
 tion. He had first sent him to Eton, and then to Oxford ; 
 and had since made him an allowance of fifteen hundred a 
 year. 
 
 Carew's whole prospects thus hung on this uncle's 
 favour— not merely his prospects of wealth and luxury, but 
 the prospect, far nearer his heart, of restoring the fortunes 
 of his family, and indeed of retaining his old family home. 
 
 As for luxury, he was as careless of that as most men ; 
 and in his present position he could have made himself 
 quite happy on half or even a third of the income he 
 actually enjoyed. But considering himself in the light of 
 the prospective head of his family, he regarded wealth in a 
 very different spirit. It became in his eye a something 
 which naturally ought to belong to him. It was as much 
 in the fitness of things that he should be surrounded by 
 servants, and eat his dinner off plate, as it was that every 
 man should be possessed of a suit of clothes. Such pomp 
 and circumstance was for him a sign merely ; and beyond 
 securing him this, the possession of wealth meant to him 
 the saving an institution with which his whole life was 
 connected as closely as any Hamadryad was ever connected 
 with her oak-tree. That institution was his own family ; 
 and the preservation and restoration of it was as much an 
 act of piety, to him, as the embellishment and care of 
 an altar might be to a congregation of the faithful. Nor 
 was this feeling on his part mere personal vanity or selfish- 
 ness. Indeed, when comparing his own family with others, 
 he was extremely modest and sober in his estimate of its 
 comparative importance. He respected it mainly for the 
 sake of the great social principle, of which it was but one 
 amongst many more prominent representatives ; and his
 
 chap. i. A RETURN FROM DREAMLAND 275 
 
 own prejudices and principles had become more and more 
 stringent, in proportion as those of such other representa- 
 tives seemed to him to be growing more lax and lukewarm. 
 
 This being the case, it is easy to conjecture the feelings 
 with which he received at the chateau the following infor- 
 mation from his lawyer — an old man who was not his 
 lawyer only, but a family friend as well. The letter, indeed, 
 which conveyed it, though enclosed in a blue envelope, was 
 friendly and not official. It began by reminding Carew 
 how the younger of his two uncles had expressed strong 
 wishes as to his making a suitable marriage ; and how 
 twice, on conceiving that these wishes might be thwarted, 
 he had shown symptoms of no doubtful anger. 
 
 ' I quite feel,' the letter went on, ' how difficult and 
 delicate a subject this is to touch upon, but, since I must 
 touch upon it, it is best to speak quite plainly. Your 
 uncle, Mr. Horace, as, of course, you are aware, has the 
 whole of his fortune entirely under his own control, and 
 you can hardly be in doubt as to the result threatened, in 
 case you should contract an alliance which would seriously 
 offend him. 
 
 ' Well, Mr. Carew, you will forgive my recalling to you 
 ,how alarmed he was some eighteen months ago by some 
 gossip — some foolish gossip — which reached his cars, con- 
 necting your name with that of the Countess de Saint 
 Valery. One can easily understand and excuse an old 
 man's anxieties, looking at the world from the distance of 
 infirmity and seclusion ; and he was, as you know, much 
 disturbed by the idea that just at the time when you should 
 be thinking of marriage, you were making your marriage 
 impossible by an entanglement with a married woman — or 
 a woman who, if divorced, would be even more distasteful 
 to him. 
 
 'Madame de Saint Valery's subsequent adventures set 
 his mind at rest. He became quite persuaded that your 
 relations with her were not what he had supposed they 
 were. Sometimes, however, it happens that an idea which 
 
 ■
 
 2;6 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 seems to be dead is really only sleeping, and, I am sorry 
 to say, such has been the case here. Madame de Saint 
 Valery has been at Nice lately, so your uncle hears. He 
 hears, also, that your old intimacy with her has been 
 
 resumed, and that you have It is needless, however, 
 
 to repeat details. It will be enough to tell you the result. 
 He is persuaded— he has got it into his head, and nothing 
 will get it out— that, since this lady is certainly divorced 
 now, there is a danger— a probability— of your wishing to 
 marry her. On what grounds he bases this fear, who have 
 been his informants, and what they have informed him of, 
 I cannot pretend to say ; nor does it concern us now, 
 especially as, you will allow me to add, I disbelieve the 
 entire story. All I have to tell you is this. Your uncle 
 talked over the whole matter with me. No one, as you 
 know, is more obstinate than he is ; but no one, though he 
 may do a disagreeable thing, more dislikes saying a dis- 
 agreeable word. He is therefore determined, come what 
 may, to have no personal dispute with yourself; and he has 
 accordingly requested me, as a friend, not as a lawyer, to 
 convey to you a determination he has arrived at. He 
 hopes that the knowledge of it may influence your future 
 conduct. 
 
 ' He is going to make an important alteration in his 
 will. I need not now trouble you with the legal details 
 of it ; but its practical effect, so far as regards yourself, will 
 be as follows : his fortune, to which he still wishes you 
 to succeed, is, with the exception of one thousand a year, 
 to cease to be yours in the event of your marrying an alien. 
 
 ' I have now discharged my mission. 
 
 ' I need only add that, so far as the Countess de Saint 
 Valery is concerned, I do not for a moment believe that 
 this arrangement can have any concern for you ; but there 
 are circumstances which may very probably arise, under 
 which you might find yourself seriously hampered by its 
 consequences. For every reason, therefore, it is quite right 
 that you should know of it ; and if you should be able to
 
 chap. i. A RETURN FROM DREAMLAND 2/7 
 
 set Mr. Horace's mind at rest, by writing yourself to him 
 and contradicting the reports about you, you would be 
 doing not only a kind, but also a prudent action. 
 
 ' He is in very feeble health ; and his extreme anxiety 
 to have this alteration in his will effected without delay, 
 makes me suspect that, though his doctors speak smooth 
 things to him, he thinks his condition far less certain than 
 they do.' 
 
 Carew's first emotion on reading this letter was simply 
 one of bewilderment. As to his uncle's displeasure with 
 him on account of Madame de Saint Valery — of that, it 
 is true, he retained the liveliest recollection. It was the 
 only occasion, during the whole of his life, on which that 
 uncle had addressed him otherwise than with complacency. 
 He recollected the old man's looks, and the very words 
 employed by him. They were these : — 
 
 'There has been a folly of this kind in the family once 
 before. One of your grandfather's brothers, as you know, 
 ran off with one of these d — d women — monstrous pretty 
 she was, too, so I am told — shot the husband in a duel, 
 and by-and-by married her. He was the eldest son, but, 
 fortunately, it was possible to disinherit him. Xosv mind 
 this — don't let me hear that you are up to any tricks of 
 that kind. I'm not giving you a sermon on morals — I 
 leave morals to the parson. I speak to you as a man of 
 the world, and as a relation who has some right to speak to 
 you. And in these capacities I say two things to you — two 
 things, mind : Don't be a fool, and don't disgrace your 
 family. I may add, as a friend, don't ruin your prospects 
 and make yourself miserable for life. Remember what I 
 have said ; and now we'll change the subject.' 
 
 Carew did remember. The event was too odd for him 
 to have forgotten it ; but not only had the elopement of 
 Madame de Saint Valery opened — at least he imagined so 
 — his uncle's eyes to the truth, and cured him for ever of 
 his suspicions, but Lord Stonehouse, who knew the whole 
 facts of the case, had shown him in the clearest way that
 
 278 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 there had never been good cause for them. Thus Carew's 
 present astonishment, though the whole communication 
 astonished him, was not due to the nature of his uncle's 
 suspicion, but to the sudden and inexplicable revival of it. 
 
 Presently, however, a light began to dawn on him. Mrs. 
 Harley's letter came back to his mind : and he recollected 
 that, in connection with Miss Consuelo Burton's departure, 
 she had mentioned Mr. Inigo as being somehow concerned 
 in the mischief. He now began to put two and two to- 
 gether. Mr. Inigo had caught him on the Promenade 
 des Anglais by moonlight, engaged in a manner that was, 
 without doubt, equivocal ; and Carew, with impatient and 
 indignant anger, jumped at the conclusion that the Miss 
 Burtons and his uncle alike had been prejudiced against 
 him by the gossip of this blundering tattler. In his uncle's 
 case this seemed specially probable, as Mr. Inigo was one 
 of his most industrious parasites. The only question was, 
 What could have been the man's motive ? For, crediting 
 Mr. Inigo with all the ambitious stupidity which the largest 
 Christian charity could possibly claim as a shield for him, it 
 was difficult not to believe, in the present case, that his 
 sedulous misrepresentations must have had in them an 
 element of malice. 
 
 Anger and speculation, however, of this kind soon gave 
 way to thoughts that were far more practical. It flashed on 
 him suddenly that, so far as he understood her parentage, 
 Miss Capel was an alien quite as much as her cousin ; and 
 the threatened alteration in his uncle's will, if it ruined his 
 prospects in the event of his marrying the one, would be 
 equally fatal in the event of his marrying the other. Miss 
 Capel, it is true, had spoken of herself an an heiress ; but 
 with regard to money matters she knew little more than 
 a child ; and he had learnt accidentally, from something 
 said by her mother, that the utmost she would inherit from 
 the General would be some six hundred a year. 
 
 He rapidly realised the situation. Either he must per- 
 suade his uncle that his fears were groundless, and that the
 
 chap. i. A RETURN FROM DREAMLAND 279 
 
 proposed alteration in his will was a needless and unfair 
 precaution ; or else, for his own part, the matter resolved 
 itself into this : he must choose between Miss Capel (if he 
 could win her) on the one hand, and his hopes of restoring 
 his family, indeed of saving it from ruin, on the other. 
 
 In his then mood of mind he could bring himself to 
 renounce neither ; and without tormenting himself prema- 
 turely by placing these two in the balance, it at once 
 occurred to him that, if he saw his uncle immediately, he 
 might secure an arrangement by which neither would be 
 shut out from him. His action was prompt. It is true 
 that his lawyer's letter had been unopened for two days ; 
 but from the moment of his reading it not a single hour 
 had elapsed before he was making preparations for an 
 immediate return to England. 
 
 Such, then, were the circumstances of his journey ; and 
 it will now be sufficiently apparent what were the thoughts 
 by which his mind was distracted — the problems that lay 
 before him, and the memories that lay behind him, as the 
 clanking train on its long journey northwards was hurrying 
 him away from the land of flowers and sunshine. He 
 crossed from Calais at night ; a raw coldness was in the 
 air, and all his future was somehow expressed to his imagi- 
 nation in the bleared lights of Dover revealing themselves 
 through the drizzling mist. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 REAL] l IKS REAPPEARING. 
 
 A few hours later he woke up from a sleep born rather of 
 dejection than of fatigue, in which he had wandered back 
 to the green pine forests of the Esterels, and had almost 
 arrested the retreating figure of Miss Capel. He brushed 
 away the moisture that was darkening the windows of the
 
 280 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 railway carriage ; with heavy eyes he peered out into the 
 dimness ; and there, sweeping past him, were the squalid 
 bricks of London, mildewed with morning frost. 
 
 A few minutes more, and he was in the echoing gloom 
 of the terminus. A familiar vision of milk-cans, of four- 
 wheeled cabs, groups of shivering porters, and the placards 
 of last night's papers, slowly moved before him, and at last 
 came to a standstill. Then he recognised his servant wait- 
 ing for him ; and he was presently on his way to his own 
 chambers in Curzon Street. 
 
 The unchanged aspect of London, as it stared at him 
 through the wintry morning, struck sadly and strangely on 
 him. His life during his absence abroad had seemed full 
 of hope and suggestion ; and now he felt as if all had gone 
 for nothing, and he had drifted back to the point from 
 which he had started. He could almost believe that the 
 puddles at the gates of the station were the same that his 
 cab had splashed in on the day of his leaving England. 
 Only one thing struck him as new in any way ; and even 
 this made nothing but a very faint impression on him. It 
 was the recurrence on the newspaper placards of words in 
 large type, such as ' Riots,' ' Outrages,' and ' Renewed 
 Alarms,' which he concluded must have reference to affairs 
 in Ireland, or perhaps in Paris. But he gave the matter 
 very little attention ; and presently, in a mood of tired dis- 
 consolate apathy, he was ascending the stairs that led to his 
 own rooms. 
 
 The cloth was laid for breakfast, a bright fire was burn- 
 ing, and a smell arose from somewhere suggestive of chops 
 and coffee ; but in spite of these signs of welcome every- 
 thing looked dismal. There was none of that little daily 
 litter which links us with our surroundings, and makes them 
 seem to sympathise with us. There was nothing to connect 
 the scene with his present self, except two objects — one a 
 copy of that morning's Times ; the other, a solitary letter 
 lying between his knife and fork. It was a letter from his 
 lawyer, whom he had informed of his movements by tele-
 
 chap. ii. REALITIES REAPPEARING 23 1 
 
 graph ; and the moment he read it, his plans were again 
 changed. 
 
 His uncle's house was in Berkeley Square ; and it had 
 been his intention, as soon as the hour would permit of it, 
 to report himself at once to the relation on whose action so 
 much depended. Carew was a man who, if people thought 
 him wrong, was generally too proud or too indolent to care 
 to put himself in the right ; and when first his relations 
 with Madame de Saint Valery had been misunderstood, he 
 had let the world, and his uncle too, make what they could 
 or what they would out of the matter. But now he had 
 resolved that in his uncle's mind, at least, no shadow of 
 suspicion should be left resting on him. In approaching 
 the subject at all he would have to use much diplomacy ; 
 and still more in proceeding to the restrictions that it 
 was threatened would be placed upon his marriage. He 
 knew all this. It would be an affair not of delicacy only, 
 but of time. He had resolved accordingly to lose no 
 moment in beginning. 
 
 His lawyer's letter, however, which was but a few lines, 
 informed him that the new will, containing the obnoxious 
 provision, had been actually made ready, though it was 
 probably not yet signed ; and then followed the news that 
 his uncle, who had been suffering much from the fogs, had 
 left London yesterday, and was now with the Squire at 
 Otterton. 
 
 Carew and both his uncles had always been on excellent 
 terms ; nor, so far as his personal reception was concerned, 
 was the present unpleasantness at all likely to interrupt 
 them. As for the Squire, he had been an invalid for years, 
 and had never gone farther than the study next his bed- 
 room, or worn any more ceremonious garment than a red 
 velvet dressing-gown. His near relations were his continual 
 guests, and one at a time he would occasionally give them 
 an audience. Often, however, they might be in the house 
 for weeks, and though he would send them a succession of 
 civil messages, they would never receive a single summons
 
 282 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book it. 
 
 to the presence chamber. It thus happened that Carew 
 saw him but seldom ; and when he did see him the inter- 
 views were but brief. But at Otterton he was always wel- 
 come ; rooms were always kept for him there, and he was 
 free to come and go as if it were his own home. 
 
 His plans now were accordingly made with promptness. 
 He arranged to go to Otterton himself, that night. He 
 would reach it by midnight, if he left London at five. 
 
 By-and-by, after he had had a bath and had breakfasted, 
 and tried in vain to sleep a headache off in a chair, he 
 walked round to Berkeley Square, to hear more detailed 
 news about Mr. Horace. As he stood waiting for the bell 
 to be answered, other thoughts rose in him than those con- 
 nected with the invalid ; and almost for the first time since 
 the beginning of his journey, he began to realise why that 
 journey had been undertaken. His actions, hitherto, had 
 resembled those of a somnambulist, except that the waking 
 with him was a gradual process. 
 
 The house, which was designed in a sedate, quasi-clas- 
 sical style, and dated from the middle of the last century, 
 had never been altered since, and looked as if it had never 
 been cleaned. The corroded iron of its railings and its 
 torch-extinguishers, the darkness that lay like a bloom on 
 its chiselled stone-work, made its facade seem to Carew like 
 a magic mirror, which showed the square alive with chariots 
 and running footmen, followed presently by the dandies 
 and the statesmen of the Regency — all the signs of that old 
 aristocratic life, when Mayfair was the stately centre of 
 England. It was a house that had been built by his great- 
 great-grandfather ; but forty years ago the Squire had been 
 obliged to sell it, and it was only saved from passing out of 
 the family by its present possessor buying it, when he provi- 
 dentially married his heiress. 
 
 Carew, as he looked at it, felt his old sense reawakening 
 in him, that he was connected, as if by fibres which were 
 part of his own being, not only with the people and things 
 which affected him personally, but with an entire social and
 
 chap. ii. REALITIES REAPPEARING 283 
 
 an entire political order. He experienced what may he 
 described as a certain expansion of his consciousness, and a 
 half-formed comparison flickered across his mind between 
 the claims of his own position and the value of a girl's 
 blue eyes. 
 
 Presently the door was opened by an old housekeeper, 
 whose face lit up with delight the moment she saw Carew. 
 But directly after, it settled itself into a querulous gravity. 
 She informed him that her master was really in a very critical 
 condition ; and that bad as London was no doubt for him, 
 the journey on which he had ventured was, in her opinion, 
 worse. 
 
 Carew turned away with a gathering anxiety in his mind, 
 and, completely absorbed in his own thoughts, walked 
 slowly down to one of his clubs, which was in St. James's 
 Street. He had not yet looked at a newspaper. The 
 Times in his own room he had impatiently pushed aside ; 
 and he meant now to make up for his negligence. But 
 when, sitting down, he seized on a Morning J'osf, he found 
 he could get no farther than the Births and -Marriages. The 
 effects of his journey, combining with his mental depression, 
 rapidly began to tell on him. His eyelids felt heavy ; the 
 paper dropped from his hand ; the bars of the window 
 seemed to flicker before him ; and leaning back he fell into 
 an untimely doze. 
 
 He slept lightly, however, and a sound before long 
 roused him, though he was far too listless to open his aching 
 eyes. He gradually realised what the sound was. It was 
 the sound of a man's voice, who, to judge by his utterances, 
 was evidently talking for the benefit of the room at large. 
 
 'Of course,' he was saying, ' this sort of thing is intoler- 
 able. Did you hear what happened? — they pulled Lady 
 Harriet out of her carriage; and by their insults they 
 caused such a shock to her nerves, that she actually 
 had to get her sister to receive for her at her fancy 
 ball. I wonder you weren't there. You oughtn't to have 
 missed it.'
 
 284 TIIE OLD ORDER CHANGES bdok iv. 
 
 ' No,' said a second voice, ' I was out of town — I was at 
 Lord Bays water's.' 
 
 ' Lord who ? ' said the first voice. ' Why don't you 
 call him Robertson ? I,' it continued, with a magnificent 
 haughty weariness, ' can't really keep pace with all of these 
 new peers.' 
 
 Carew felt a smile spreading itself over his lazy lips. 
 Without looking, he had recognised Mr. Inigo. But his 
 smile, though one of amusement, was by no means one of 
 complacency ; and, could he have done so unnoticed, he 
 would have walked out of the room. Unable to do that, he 
 lay back still in his chair. He hoped, being in a shady 
 corner, that he might escape Mr. Inigo's observation, and 
 he was doing his best to fall asleep again, when there fell 
 on his ears what he thought was the name of Madame de 
 Saint Valery. Mr. Inigo was by this time speaking in an 
 important undertone ; and Carew, unwilling to play the part 
 of an eavesdropper, opened his eyes, and was about to make 
 himself visible. At this moment, however, one of Mr. 
 Inigo's friends exclaimed with a loud laugh, 'Getaway with 
 you, Inigo : you've been after her yourself, you old sinner!' 
 Carew would not for worlds have missed what he then saw. 
 Mr. Inigo made several playful gestures, indicative of a juve- 
 nile desire to decapitate his friend with a cane ; and then 
 with a delighted knowingness he leered at him through his 
 glasses. A second later he started so that his glasses fell 
 from his nose. He had suddenly seen Carew. Had Carew 
 been a ghost, the effect could not have been greater. Mr. 
 Inigo looked for a moment as if he would like to make his 
 escape ; but, recovering his self-possession with a super- 
 human effort, he slowly turned on the apparition the tails of 
 his frock-coat ; and thrusting his hands into his trousers 
 pockets, he stared at the street from the middle of a bay- 
 window. Carew's eyelids gradually dropped again ; and he 
 fell into a sleep this time so sound, that when he awoke 
 from it, it was his first and most natural impulse to stare 
 about, and discover what had disturbed him.
 
 chap. n. REALITIES REAPPEARING 2S5 
 
 There was a movement and an excitement in the room 
 which there certainly had not been half an hour ago. The 
 number of members had increased, and they were all of 
 them clustering round the two windows, peering into the 
 street, and talking together in tones of expectation. What 
 had happened or was about to happen Carew could not 
 possibly conjecture ; but towards one of the windows he 
 presently made his way ; and as he did so, he saw that in 
 the middle of the other was standing erect the figure of Mr. 
 Inigo, so perfectly motionless that it might have passed for 
 a portion of the building. A variety of indignant feelings 
 were just beginning to assert themselves, when his ears 
 caught something of what his neighbours were saying, and 
 Mr. Inigo was in a single moment forgotten. 'They're 
 coming this way.' 'They are a worse lot than those of yes- 
 terday.' 'The police say they are powerless.' Such were 
 the remarks that his neighbours were interchanging. 
 
 'What is it?' he asked, turning to an acquaint- 
 ance. 'Who's coming? What will be worse than 
 yesterday?' The man addressed stared at him. 'I,' said 
 Carew, 'know nothing. I have but this morning returned 
 to England.' 
 
 ' Haven't you heard ? ' said the other. ' It's the mob, they 
 are coming this way. 5 
 
 'Here they are, here they are !' cried a dozen voices at 
 once ; and the group at the window pressed as near to the 
 panes as possible. 
 
 'Tell me,' said Carew, still persevering in his inquiries, 
 'who is it? What is it ? For goodness' sake tell me.' 
 
 'It is the mob — the unemployed,' was the answer. 
 ' They are led by the professional agitators. You'll see for 
 yourself in a minute or two. Listen to that! There they 
 are ! ' 
 
 Carew did listen, and now his ears comprehended a con- 
 fused and approaching noise of shouts, shrieks, groans, and 
 the trampling of innumerable feet; and in another mom. 
 added to this, came the crashing of broken glass, and out-
 
 286 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 bursts of yelling laughter. At last he got so far into the bay- 
 window as to be able to see down the street ; and what met 
 his eyes was a black advancing mass, moving like some 
 great volume of semi-liquid sewage, on the surface of which 
 certain raised objects seemed floating, whilst the edges of it, 
 in one place or another, were perpetually frothing against 
 the sides of the shops and houses. A moment more, and 
 this hoarse and horrible inundation was flowing past the 
 window at which he himself was standing ; and he then 
 began to understand its character better. Considering the 
 stones that were flying in all directions, the position he 
 occupied was no doubt one of danger ; but neither he nor 
 any of the other members showed any inclination to quit it. 
 The spectacle below seemed somehow to fascinate all of 
 them. 
 
 A long procession of discoloured and pitiable faces was 
 slowly defiling by ; some looking down with a sullen and 
 dull stolidity, others fixing their eyes with a stare of ferocious 
 wonder at the impassive group watching them : but beyond 
 the shaking of an occasional fist, that blank stare at first was 
 the only sign of animosity. The attention of the mob was 
 concentrated on the opposite side of the street, where a 
 certain University club displayed a frontage composed 
 entirely of plate-glass and of window-frames. At the sight 
 of this structure, as if it acted like a signal, a chorus of 
 yells and groans burst suddenly from the multitude, and 
 a storm of missiles began to assail the windows. About 
 this special attack there was a determination and a violence 
 which, so far as Carew could see, had been wanting else- 
 where. To smash the glass was not nearly enough ; but 
 show r ers of stones were poured into the rooms through the 
 apertures, -and presently, with a noise that thundered across 
 the street, a heavy chandelier fell crashing from the ceiling 
 of the reading-room. 
 
 ' That's his club,' exclaimed several of Carew's fellow- 
 spectators. ' It's the club he was kicked out of for advo- 
 cating the assassination of Ministers.'
 
 chap. ii. REALITIES REAPPEARING 287 
 
 ' See,' cried another, ' there he is himself— the man in 
 the wagon, with a red flag in his hand.' 
 
 Carew could make nothing out of these mysterious 
 observations, but craning his head forward he looked in the 
 direction indicated ; and there was a sight which at once 
 made the matter clear to him. One of those raised objects, 
 which he had already seen from a distance, was now 
 approaching ; and it proved to be what his neighbours had 
 just hinted. It was a huge open wagon drawn by four 
 horses. On the shafts, and on the sides, were seated 
 perhaps a dozen men, wildly gesticulating to the crowd. 
 Whatever they were, they were plainly not English work- 
 men. Their long, lank hair, and their wild moustaches, 
 which waved and bristled, with an affectation of ruffianly 
 dandyism, said at least as much as that. 
 
 Carew glanced for a moment at this cluster of scare- 
 crows, and then his eyes fixed themselves on a figure which 
 rose above them. This was a man seated in a rude arm- 
 chair, which had been propped up on a packing-case. If 
 his satellites looked wild, he looked a great deal wilder ; 
 not, indeed, in respect of his dress or hair, for in that way 
 his appearance was quiet and common enough : but he 
 was shouting to those around him like a maniac loose from 
 Bedlam, and waving the red flag which he held, with 
 corresponding gestures. Sometimes he seemed to use it 
 as a sign of encouragement, sometimes to indicate some 
 particular building. Meanwhile his eyes were starting out 
 of his head ; and his whole face was flickering with the 
 livid gleam of insanity. Carew started at the spectacle. 
 This figure was Foreman. 
 
 When the wagon reached the club, which was the 
 special object of attack, it halted ; the crowd moved round 
 it like water about a rock ; and Foreman began to shout 
 with a voice of redoubled emphasis. Most of what he said 
 Carew failed to catch ; but several times he distinguished 
 such broken phrases as 'Blood for blood, I tell you,' and 
 ' A life for a life.' Finally this was audible: 'Is there no
 
 283 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book it. 
 
 food in there, think you ? Those men know how to get it, 
 and so might you, who deserve it more than they do. What 
 keeps your bellies empty ? Not want of food in the country, 
 but want of courage in yourselves. You're afraid — that's 
 what you are! But what is it you fear? Better to die 
 fighting, I tell you, than die starving ! ' 
 
 The words did not fall idly. The harangue was not 
 ended before a rush was made for the doors of the shattered 
 club. At the threshold there was a fierce but short struggle ; 
 ' then, whatever opposition there was was overborne, and a 
 crowd of squalid forms swarmed into the interior. Presently, 
 from the broken windows a number of incongruous objects 
 began to be hurled into the street — books, the cushions of 
 sofas, and, in a moment more, cabbages, joints of meat, 
 and various other eatables. All of these the mob pitched 
 wildly about, with shouts of derision, and finally trampled 
 them under foot— all except one leg of mutton, which, 
 having found its way to the opposite side of the street, 
 finished by being pitched against the window next that in 
 which Carew was stationed. This incident, to him only 
 partly visible, elicited a shout of laughter, which, though 
 certainly sufficiently sinister, had more in it of derisive 
 amusement than of mere' brute ferocity. It was so loud 
 and sudden that it attracted the attention of Foreman, who, 
 turning round, and having stared for a few moments, began 
 to swell the clamour with hysterical merriment of his own. 
 ' Eggs ! ' he shouted to the men around him ; ' eggs ! eggs ! ' 
 And in another instant, following the course of the mutton, 
 a shower of eggs came hurtling towards the fated window. 
 Oddly enough, something of the laughter of the street 
 seemed to find an echo amongst the members of the club 
 themselves. Carew moved back into the room to see what 
 possibly could have happened ; and the first thing that 
 met his eyes was a rapidly retreating object, which looked 
 not unlike a gigantic running daffodil. A second glance 
 revealed to him what this rarity was. It was nothing else 
 than Mr. Inigo, yellow from head to foot with the yolks of
 
 chap. ii. REALITIES REAPPEARING 289 
 
 a. hundred eggs — eggs which, plainly, were exceedingly far 
 from fresh. 
 
 ' It was done in an instant,' said one of the men who 
 had been near him. ' Foreman — or whatever the devil's 
 name is in the cart there —pointed him out to his myrmidons, 
 who, to say the truth, are d — d good shots with their 
 beastliness. Before Inigo knew where he was he was com- 
 pletely covered in front, and the moment he turned his 
 back, his back was in the same condition. What's become 
 of him now? Gone off, is he, to clean himself? Hang 
 him ! I declare that first he ought to have himself photo- 
 graphed. What do you say, Carew? It is a duty he owes 
 to history.' 
 
 Another shout from outside recalled both the speakers 
 to the window. The crowd in St. James's Street had by 
 this time almost passed ; indeed, little was left of it but a 
 more or less straggling rear. But the dense mass was 
 pouring itself into Piccadilly, and there a scene was begin- 
 ning of far more savage excitement. Stones were flying 
 with greater force and frequency ; the noise of broken 
 glass was more sustained and ominous ; and, presently, a 
 member came rushing into the club from Bennet Street, 
 with his hat crushed, and his coat and waistcoat torn, 
 bringing the news that all the shops were being looted. 
 At the same moment another member, who had quitted 
 the room a couple of minutes previously, was heard bring- 
 ing other news, which received a far louder welcome. 
 ' What do you think, now !' he exclaimed. 'Inigo will die 
 happy. One of the mob has called him a " bl — y 
 aristocrat.'" 
 
 When some alarming event actually happens before our 
 eyes we often accept it with a dull apathetic coolness, 
 which, when imagining it beforehand, we should hardly 
 conceive possible. This was the case with Carew now. 
 No sooner had the mob quitted St. James's Street than he 
 quietly subsided into the chair in which he had before been 
 
 U
 
 290 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 dozing, and, picking up the paper which was lately so void 
 of interest to him, he became at once absorbed in it. 
 
 There he learnt that during the last two days there had 
 been demonstrations of working men in various parts of 
 London, their object being to call public attention to the 
 extent and depth of the distress then prevalent, and to 
 the number of those who were absolutely without any 
 employment. These demonstrations in the first instance 
 had been orderly, both in their programme and in their 
 conduct. Following close as they did on the Parliamentary 
 elections, the chief idea in the minds of their original pro- 
 moters was to impress the new members— the majority of 
 whom were Conservatives — with the gravity of the crisis 
 under which so many of their constituents were suffering. 
 But in each case, or nearly so, these meetings had been 
 broken up, and turned, as far as possible, into a savage and 
 menacing riot by organised gangs under the direction of 
 the League of Social Democrats — a body made desperate 
 by their late defeat at the polls, and anxious to turn to their 
 purpose every form of popular suffering. Carew gathered 
 further that an immense mass meeting had been convened 
 that very day in Trafalgar Square ; and at it resolutions of 
 a more or less Conservative character were to have been 
 put to the unemployed by certain of their most competent 
 leaders. He gathered also that in this case, as in the 
 others, the Social Democrats were known to contemplate 
 interference, and that some disturbance was accordingly 
 thought probable. 
 
 This was all he could learn from the morning's paper ; 
 but he had hardly done reading it before a successionof 
 telegrams began to arrive, and took up the broken narrative. 
 Everything had happened exactly as had been anticipated, 
 with only two exceptions. The body of men which the 
 Socialist leaders had brought with them was far larger and 
 far more promiscuous ; their own disciples were mixed in 
 it with the vilest dregs of the population, and thieves and 
 theorists were shouting side by side ; their own speeches,
 
 chap. ii. REALITIES REAPPEARING 29 1 
 
 too had been unprecedented in violence and ferocity, 
 
 i were evidently designed to promote some actual 
 
 atbreak. In addition to this, from some unexplained 
 
 reason, the police, like the witches in Macbeth, seemed 
 
 lave ' made themselves air,' and there was not a siern 
 to be seen anywhere that law and order had a single 
 official guardian. 
 
 Here, indeed, there was matter for grave reflection ; 
 and, quite unconscious how time was going, Carew seized 
 on another of the papers, whose columns were full of dis- 
 cussions on the present condition of the labour-market and 
 the sufferings of the labouring classes. At Glasgow, Leices- 
 ter, Birmingham, Northampton, in nearly every town, the 
 same distress was prevalent. There was the same cry — now 
 fierce, now lamentable — from thousands upon thousands of 
 men, all presumably honest, who asked for no gift of food, 
 but merely for the means of earning it ; and how to supply 
 these means, except, perhaps, for the moment, was a ques- 
 tion which seemed to astound and baffle everybody. There 
 was a long succession of letters addressed to the Editor 
 about it, but Carew's eyes strayed through a good half- 
 dozen of them without being caught by anything that 
 seemed worth his attention. At least four out of those he 
 looked at were by clergymen, and though not defending 
 any resort to violence, certainly tended to palliate it by the 
 pity they expressed for the sufferers, and the sensational 
 pictures drawn of the popular misery. 
 
 On reading these a sense of irritation seized him, and 
 all his own opinions on economic and social subjects, which 
 he had been forming so anxiously and carefully with the 
 help of Mr. Stanley, woke in his mind from the sleep into 
 which Miss Capel had thrown them, as suddenly as the 
 inmates woke in the Palace of the Sleeping beauty. Jump- 
 ing up from his chair, he went to one of the writing-tables, 
 and, taking the largest sheet of paper he could find, 
 addressed the following letter himself to the journal he had 
 just been reading.
 
 292 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 ' Sir, — I am probably quite as humane as most people, 
 and am quite as much touched by the sorrow and wants of 
 others. But in cases like the present it seems to me wholly 
 wrong to approach the public or the Government through 
 the sense of pity. The ills of the body politic are like 
 those of the individual body. They require in the doctor 
 who is to cure them, not pity, but knowledge and self- 
 possession. Indeed pity, if not kept strictly in order, tends 
 to make the use of knowledge impossible. If a surgeon 
 who is to operate on me begins to cry over his instruments, 
 I shall distrust his skill rather than thank him for his sym- 
 pathy ; and the best security I can have for his doing his 
 best for me will be simply the importance of my cure to 
 himself. 
 
 ' It is just the same with the statesman when dealing 
 with any popular misery. In his capacity of a statesman, 
 such misery ought to concern him, not on account of what 
 the miserable suffer themselves, but because their misery is 
 a danger to the entire community. An Irish agitator not 
 long since described education as a kind of moral dynamite ; 
 and of education as he conceived it — that is to say, as a 
 tissue of ignorant and rancorous lies — the description is no 
 doubt true : but, applied to misery, it is even truer. Its 
 exactness is absolutely perfect. Masses of men who, under 
 existing social conditions, suddenly fall from comparative 
 prosperity into privation, and see before them no hope for 
 the future, become dangerous by the laws of social chemistry, 
 as surely as, under chemical treatment, do the harmless 
 materials of dynamite. Like dynamite, too, they are not 
 self-exploding. They remain dumb and impassive till the 
 fuse is applied by the agitator. Then an explosion follows. 
 It is useless to blame the people. The agitator alone is 
 guilty, and there is no guilt in the world of so deep a dye 
 as his. Could he insure a new order of things by blowing 
 up the old, we might, perhaps, call him a hero ; but the 
 only result of his explosion is, that the people themselves 
 are crushed under whatever ruin they have caused. The
 
 chap. ii. REALITIES REAPPEARING 293 
 
 structure of society still remains unchanged, or changed 
 only in being for a short time disjointed. 
 
 'There remains, however, also this question for society 
 to consider. Is it, in the present and prospective condition 
 of trade, secreting a constant or a growing mass of explosive 
 misery? If so, there is serious trouble ahead for us. It 
 may not be the fault of society, it may be its misfortune 
 only, that this misery is secreted by it ; it will not be the 
 fault of the miserable if they cause as well as suffer it. 
 Blame is equally useless and equally inapplicable in either 
 case ; but unless this diseased secretion can be checked, it 
 is impossible for a sane man to imagine that, in such a 
 country as England, society can ever again experience its 
 old security. Neither poppy nor mandragora will ever 
 medicine it to that sound state which, up till lately, we 
 have been accustomed to consider natural to it.' 
 
 Carew, when he had written this, which he did with 
 care, and had re-read it, was conscious, as he said to 
 himself, of feeling somehow a man again. ' Blame the 
 people ! ' he repeated as he put his letter into the box. 
 ' Poor devils ! Why, as I watched the crowd just now, I 
 was far more inclined to cry over the sight than to be 
 angry at it. As for Foreman and his crew, I would willingly 
 string the lot of them up to a lamp-post. But the others 
 ■ — even the roughs and thieves — sunt lacryma rerum. 
 They are the tears of things, and they are the riddle of 
 things.' 
 
 In the middle of these reflections the striking of a clock 
 roused him. He looked at his watch, and found, to his 
 great surprise, that it was high time for him to be hastening 
 back to his chambers. When he emerged from his dub 
 the street was perfectly quiet ; but for the first time, he 
 realised the violence of the tempest that had passed. As 
 he crossed Piccadilly there was hardly a house westward 
 which, so far as a glance could inform him, had not suffered 
 damage of some kind. Several jewellers' shops, the windows 
 of which were generally glittering, were nothing now but
 
 2Q4 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book rv. 
 
 so many black openings, which scared-looking men were 
 hastily protecting with shutters ; and the whole pavement 
 in front of a well-known fruit-dealer's was a singular pulp 
 of trodden flowers and pineapples. In Mayfair, however, 
 everything was just as usual. Cabs and carriages were 
 passing and repassing, just as if no disturbance had happened 
 within a hundred miles ; footmen were knocking at doors ; 
 ladies were leaving cards ; and Carew found, when he 
 reached his rooms, that his servant had not heard of there 
 being any riot at all. He began to feel as if the whole 
 affair had been a dream ; and thoughts of Miss Capel, the 
 Esterel mountains, howling mobs, broken windows, and, 
 lastly, the kneeling figure of Miss Consuelo Burton at 
 Mass, came floating through his brain in dizzy and quick 
 succession. But on his way to the station he was recalled 
 sharply to the sense that he was moving in a world of 
 realities. He came again across the track of the rioters, 
 who had apparently made their way up South Audley 
 Street and Park Lane also, as in both of these thorough- 
 fares there was hardly a shop or house which had not a 
 window broken or else a door defaced. ' And to think,' 
 he said to himself, when he was at length seated in the 
 train, and was slowly gliding out from under the arches of 
 Paddington — 'to think that it was only two short days ago 
 that a girl's eyes, looking at me in a forest of fairyland, 
 seemed to me to mean either the failure or the success of 
 a lifetime ! ' 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MORE REALITIES. 
 
 When he reached his own station it was nearly eleven. 
 The moon was shining brightly, and he received a curious 
 shock as he recognised the outlines of the tall familiar 
 hedgerows, the unmended thatch of a barn on the far side 
 of the road, the line of white palings which fenced in the
 
 CHAr. in. MORE REALITIES 295 
 
 platform, and the old-fashioned brougham that was awaiting 
 him just beyond them. Stranger still seemed to him the 
 turnings in the narrow lanes that he had known from boy- 
 hood, the gates he had swung on under his nurse's tutelage, 
 and the very ditches where once he had stooped for water- 
 cress. All was the same, and yet, in a way, how changed ! 
 In one miniature creek he recollected he had lost a knife, 
 his treasure when he was seven years old, and he felt half 
 inclined now to jump out of the carriage and look for it. 
 Presently, shining like a linen sheet in the dimness, there 
 came in sight the first outlying cottage of Otterton. Carew, 
 in his childhood, had paid many a happy visit there. He 
 could see at this moment the row of mugs on the dresser, 
 and feel again on his tongue the taste of the delicious 
 cider. The face of the old man who lived there seemed 
 again to beam on him, and the wife, half deference and 
 half affection, to drop a delighted curtsey. In his mind's 
 eye he saw them both ; but, like the brothers of Helen, 
 'them the life-giving earth hid now ' in the village church- 
 yard. Presently, he was entering the village street itself — a 
 long irregular line of silent sleeping dwellings ; and now 
 the carriage had sharply turned a corner, and beyond him 
 lay what looked like a world of shadow and of woodland. 
 
 Against this background something was gleaming dimly. 
 It was a lofty arcli between two decaying lodges. Carew 
 leaned his head out to take in every detail of this structure. 
 In one window a faint light was glimmering ; over the 
 archway was a huge stone scutcheon, intricate with illegible 
 quarterings ; there was a heavy gate in the very act of 
 being opened ; there was an old woman in a white cap who 
 curtseyed ; and in another moment the carriage had passed 
 by her, gravel was crunching under it, and the moonlight 
 was dimmed with trees. 
 
 Carew, as he breathed the air, felt it was charged with 
 memories. The very soul of the earth in which his family 
 had been rooted seemed to be floating in the smell of the 
 damp dead leaves. Presently he had quitted the wood and
 
 296 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES kook it. 
 
 was speeding through the open park, where the moonlight 
 undulated white over far-reaching knolls and glades, and 
 slid in a sluggish film on the waters of a noiseless river. 
 Now there came into view immemorial clumps of elm-trees, 
 and a long avenue meeting the distant sky-line ; and a 
 gathering consciousness of what his family was, of what it 
 was to be the heir of so many centuries, came from the 
 shadows and the branches and invaded his imagination. 
 Now he was passing the gabled house of the gardener, now 
 the long walls of the old-fashioned kitchen-garden. Now 
 the carriage had rumbled under the arch of a lofty gate- 
 house ; a row of outbuildings capped with a line of turrets 
 was seen for a moment dimly stretching away from him ; 
 and at last a plunge through a grove of enormous ilexes 
 brought him out before a vision of old tOwers and oriels, 
 part of which plainly belonged to an inhabited house, but 
 the more striking of which were just as plainly ruinous. 
 
 The butler who opened the door, a tremulous grey- 
 haired man, greeted Carew with so solemn a smile of 
 welcome as to fill him at once with some vague presenti- 
 ment of evil. 
 
 'I'm glad you've come, sir,' he said. 'We've been in 
 a bad way here.' Carew asked him to what it was he 
 alluded. ' It's not the Squire, sir ; he's much the same 
 as usual. It's Mr. Horace. Hush, sir, go softly. He's in 
 the west bedroom, and a noise in the hall may wake him. 
 The doctor's been here twice to-day ; and he has to-night 
 a nurse who is sitting up with him. There's supper, sir, in 
 the small library, and Mrs. Samuel has got the Countess's 
 room ready for you, because your own, she thought, was 
 too near Mr. Horace's. The doctor says he must have no 
 sound to disturb him.' 
 
 Carew, the following morning, was roused from a heavy 
 sleep by his servant undoing the tall creaking shutters; and 
 his eyes were hardly well free from drowsiness before in 
 the man's aspect he detected a certain gravity, which, when 
 he announced the hour, was still more unmistakable.
 
 chap. in. MORE REALITIES 297 
 
 ' It's eight o'clock, sir,' he said. There was a pause. He 
 then continued : ' Have you heard, sir ? There's bad news. 
 Mr. Horace, sir, died about four o'clock this morning.' 
 
 From the moment Carew had entered the house he had 
 felt in the air a cold presentiment of death ; but this had 
 not made him the better able to bear it. It merely in- 
 creased the solemnity of the event, with the added solemnity 
 of a dim prophecy verified. He asked a few of the ordinary 
 questions as to the manner in which the end had come, 
 and he learned that his uncle had died in a kind of a 
 stupor, itself so like death that the nurse could hardly tell 
 at what moment actual death had happened. 
 
 As he descended the broad stairs, with their worn 
 Brussels carpet, he saw that the blinds had already been 
 drawn down. Crossing a long gallery, towards the room in 
 which he was to breakfast, he dropped a book he was 
 carrying on the bare oak floor, and a flock of echoes 
 instantly filled the air, like so many startled pigeons. 
 Picking the book up, he saw the butler standing a little way 
 off, and holding a door open ; and he looked at him with 
 an air of apology for the noise that had just been made. 
 The old man understood the look perfectly. 
 
 'Ah, sir,' he said, 'you needn't go softly now. Air. 
 Horace sleeps too sound for any of us to wake him. I was 
 to say, sir,' he added presently, as he was uncovering the 
 dishes on the breakfast-table, 'that the Squire would be 
 glad to see you at half past twelve.' Carew had thus the 
 whole morning to himself, and he welcomed that prospect 
 as much as he could welcome anything. Directly his 
 breakfast was over he had an interview with the nurse. I [e 
 learnt from her every detail she had to tell him, and then, 
 for a few moments, visited the bed of death, and watched 
 the upturned face that lay on the white pillow, as clear and 
 quiet as if moulded in yellow wax. 'Ah,' thought Carew, 
 amongst many other reflections, 'Mr. Inigo will play no 
 more whist with you, or haunt your dinner-table to scrape 
 acquaintance with peers.'
 
 298 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 This brief visit over, he wandered out of doors, and 
 avoiding as far as possible every gardener or domestic, he 
 roamed about, contemplating the house and its precincts, 
 and struggling as he did so to collect his disordered 
 thoughts. The house had in former days been the largest 
 in the West of England, and had once consisted of an 
 irregular pile of buildings, towers and cloisters, and long 
 barn-like outhouses, ranged together round an enormous 
 oblong court. But of this one side had little left but the 
 foundations ; and two of the others, though still stately, 
 were ruinous. Specially stately in its ruin was a magnificent 
 baronial hall, which Carew's uncle, being too poor to 
 repair it, had been forced to unroof some forty years ago ; 
 and now the tracery of its beautiful Gothic windows showed 
 like skeletons with the sky shining through them. One 
 side of the quadrangle only was now inhabited, and even 
 this formed a house of no small dimensions, though one 
 end of it had been cut off from the rest, and had been let 
 to the tenant who rented the home-farm. The slope that rose 
 in the background was shadowy with magnificent timber. 
 Old-fashioned laurel hedges gleamed below ; above was the 
 clang of the rooks in the boughs of the leafless elm ; and, 
 peering over the sloping slates and the chimneys, the tower 
 of the parish church showed its belfry windows and its 
 battlements. 
 
 Carew moved from point to point, absorbing the spec- 
 tacle, with its many meanings, into himself. Everything 
 he saw was, he felt, a part of him ; he, he felt, was himself 
 a part of everything. Not a single object on which he 
 could rest his eyes, even to the pollard on the farthest hill 
 blotted against the sky, was unconnected with his own name 
 and family. They, for eight hundred years, had been the 
 rulers and the centre of all the life around them. They 
 were part of the landscape ; they were part of the trees 
 and earth. So far as traditions extended, they had always 
 been kind landlords, and, so long as they could be, generous 
 ones. There was not a house within miles in which their
 
 chap. in. MORE REALITIES 299 
 
 name had not been reverenced as if it were almost royal. 
 Every pinnacle on the house was part of their fossil history. 
 The church walls were hidden with their hatchments and 
 mural tablets. His grandmother's monument almost 
 dwarfed the altar, the chronicle of her virtues being upheld 
 by two cherubs, the one hugging her coat of arms, and the 
 other, in triumph, brandishing her crown of glory. ' Nothing,' 
 thought Carew — 'nothing can alter this. We may be swept 
 away, but we can never be replaced. We may have a new 
 race of manufacturing plutocrats, rising and falling like so 
 many golden sandhills. They may eclipse us in splendour, 
 but they never will be what we are. They never will have 
 their roots in the historic life of the country. They will 
 never be, like us, the aristocracy of traditional England.' 
 
 The surrounding objects which had suggested these 
 thoughts seemed also to repeat and to draw them out like 
 a fugue. The air was keen with the smell of yet unmelted 
 frost ; and a silvery steam rose slowly from the grass and 
 floated across the gloom of the gnarled and solemn tree- 
 trunks. To Carew these sights and smells were as part of 
 his own mental condition, the mind and the senses inter- 
 penetrating and explaining each other. 
 
 Presently from the church tower boomed the deep note 
 of a bell. A long pause ensued, and then another followed 
 it. They were tolling for his uncle's death. The sound 
 roused him to a consciousness of his own personal situation. 
 Had the second will of the dead man been signed? With 
 sudden distinctness this question came to him ; and yet, 
 though he knew that something important hung upon it, 
 it was some moments before he could recollect what. With 
 an effort he did recollect ; and then, like a reflection in 
 some transparent water, which, the moment the eye catches 
 it, obscures the pebbles at the bottom, a vision of blue 
 skies and of palm-trees, and Miss Capel's face recalling him 
 to the land of roses, floated between his heart and the 
 visible scene before him. All his perplexities were now 
 mapped out distinctly. The possibility of his retaining the
 
 300 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 family estates, or at all events doing his duty by them, and 
 restoring the family prosperity, depended on his possession 
 of his dead uncle's fortune. Would he find that the dead 
 hand had so ordered his fortune that the choice lay for him 
 between his family and Miss Capel, and that he must be 
 false to his interest in either one or the other ? And if so 
 which choice should he make ? 
 
 In answering this latter question his imagination wav- 
 ered ; but he found as he examined himself that his will 
 was already fixed. Much as it might cost him to renounce 
 Miss Capel, it hardly seemed to him now within the range 
 of conceivable possibilities that he should with his eyes 
 open renounce his family for her. He looked again at his 
 old ancestral surroundings, at the moss-grown slated roofs, 
 and the ivied walls that were roofless, and he thought, 
 ' You are more to me than any woman's heart in the world.' 
 
 Whether or no he would continue to maintain this de- 
 cision, he had not long to wait before he learnt decisively 
 that he had at any rate not been at superfluous trouble 
 in forming it. At the hour named he was ushered into 
 the Squire's study. It was a room which had been fur- 
 nished and decorated, during the Georgian period, by the 
 same ancestor who had built the house in London ; and it 
 was well in keeping with the aspect of its present possessor. 
 The Squire was a perfect type of a race that is now fast 
 dying. The cut of his pale whiskers and the locks of his 
 grey wig connected him visibly with the pr?e-popular 
 epoch ; and the placid smile that dwelt on his lips and 
 eyelids were the smile of a man so accustomed to obedient 
 deference that he could very rarely have had occasion for 
 frowning. Holding out to Carew a delicate wrinkled hand, 
 he expressed quietly his pleasure at seeing him, and then, 
 with an equal quiet, spoke of his brother's death. His 
 manner conveyed no impression of heartlessness — he was 
 not a heartless man ; but extreme old age learns to accept 
 everything, and the breaking of no link can much affect 
 those for whom, in a few years at farthest, all links will be
 
 cuap. in. MORE REALITIES 301 
 
 broken — broken or reunited. The Squire then proceeded 
 to say that he had telegraphed for the family lawyer, whose 
 presence for several reasons would be desirable ; and he 
 handed Carew a paper with a long list of names on it. 
 
 ' I should be glad,' he said, ' if you would write letters 
 to these, and let them know what has happened— together 
 with the date of the funeral, on which I have already de- 
 cided. I thought at first of making my servant do so. A 
 business letter he can manage well enough ; but the con- 
 founded fellow,' said the Squire, still as quiet as ever — 'the 
 confounded fellow would bungle over a matter like this. 
 And now,' he went on, when Carew had undertaken the 
 commission, 'there's another little affair about which I 
 wished to speak to you. Your poor Uncle Horace had 
 got some ridiculous notion into his head that you were 
 likely to make a fool of yourself with some French adven- 
 turess. He had arranged in his mind the whole course of 
 the drama, though, as he had never seen her, it was clever 
 in him to be able to do so. You were first to disgrace her 
 by making her your mistress, and then to disgrace yourself 
 by making her your wife. Of course the whole thing is a 
 mare's nest ; but, anyhow, he has been at the trouble of 
 making a new will in consequence. Perhaps he has already 
 taken steps to let you know this?' Carew admitted that 
 such was the case. ' I told him,' the Squire continued, 
 ' that it was a monstrous waste of trouble ; but last week 
 he had been hearing some nonsense about you in London, 
 and nothing would persuade him that he was not perfectly 
 right. Practically to you it can make no possible differ- 
 ence ; and, at all events, now there is no use regretting it. 
 It was only yesterday morning that this new will was signed, 
 and I was one of the witnesses. By the way,' he added as 
 his nephew was leaving the room, ' I had a letter from 
 your sister this morning, with a poor account of your mother. 
 After things here are finished, you'll no doubt go over and 
 see them.'
 
 302 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AN ECHO FROM DREAMLAND. 
 
 Carew's days between his uncle's death and the funeral 
 were passed in a noiseless and almost monastic seclusion. 
 The lawyer arrived with as little delay as possible — a spec- 
 tacled freckled old gentleman, who but for his confidential 
 intonation was like a country gentleman far more than a 
 solicitor. Carew was glad of his friendly and sustaining 
 presence, and passed with him nearly the whole of the 
 subsequent mornings, visiting farms and cottages, examin- 
 ing their dilapidated condition, and learning afresh and in 
 all possible detail the hopeless extent to which the property 
 was encumbered. 
 
 ' I am as good a Tory,' said the lawyer, wiping his spec- 
 tacles—' I am as good a Tory as any man in England, and 
 should as much regret any legislation that tended to break 
 up the estates of the old families. But I am bound to say, 
 Mr. Carew, and I think you will agree with me, that when 
 an estate is in the condition of this one, it becomes an 
 abuse which the law should not perpetuate. Unless its old 
 possessors acquire the means of doing their duty by it the 
 old possessors ought to go. This I believe as firmly as any 
 Radical. I differ from the Radical only in one point. He 
 would cackle over any excuse for their dispossession. I 
 should break my heart over its necessity. However,' he 
 added, ' that case is not yours. It sometimes sounds inde- 
 cent, when a relation is hardly dead, to begin reckoning up 
 the advantages his death will bring one ; but we are speak- 
 ing now not so much of yourself as of your family : and I 
 am, Mr. Carew, in a position to tell you positively that you 
 are at this moment the possessor of three hundred thousand 
 pounds. Two thirds of that sum will enable you to pay off 
 every mortgage on this property, which else, sooner or later, 
 I am certain would have to go. Several men have had their 
 eyes on it already ; indeed the bailiff tells me that there is
 
 chap. iv. AN ECHO FROM DREAMLAND 303 
 
 a man here now — he's been living in the largest of those 
 two stucco villas — who would buy you out to-morrow had 
 he only the chance of doing so. At least that's the gossip 
 about here. Unless, however,' he added smiling, ' you for- 
 feit your new inheritance, I trust the Carews may reign here 
 for many a generation yet. Yes — I trust the day by-and-by 
 will come when you may not only be able to restore your 
 own home, but be blessed as a benefactor in every home 
 about you.' 
 
 ' I agree,' said Carew sadly — ' I agree thoroughly with 
 the view you take of families in such a position as ours. 
 If we exist only as an abuse we had better not exist at all.' 
 
 ' You,' replied the other, ' may exist otherwise ; though I 
 fear that, as matters have turned out, there will be more 
 difficulty than you perhaps anticipate in applying your for- 
 tune to the purposes we have just spoken of.' 
 
 Carew inquired to what kind of difficulty he alluded. 
 
 ' By-and-by,' said the lawyer, ' you will be able to 
 understand it more completely ; but I can, in a general 
 way, put the matter intelligibly before you now. Mr. 
 Horace Carew's wish, as you know, was so to leave his 
 money as to deter you from making a certain marriage ; 
 and he has compassed that end by placing a deterring 
 penalty on your marriage with any one not a British subject. 
 Now you will of course see that if, in the event of such a 
 marriage, it was his intention that all his money — for this 
 is your uncle's arrangement — that all his money, except a 
 small portion, should pass from you to a distant relation 
 of his wife's, he could not leave it in your power to employ 
 the principal at your discretion in paying off the mortgages 
 on the acres that you are bound to inherit. He wished, 
 indeed, that you should have that power, but he was deter- 
 mined you should not have it until the contingency 
 he dreaded was an impossibility. Accordingly, though, 
 unless you marry an alien, the interest of the money left 
 you will be paid to you during your life, you will not li- 
 able to dispose of a single penny of the principal unless and
 
 304 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES eook iv. 
 
 until you marry some born British subject. I can only 
 trust that, vexatious as the condition is, and I am sure 
 quite uncalled for, it will not be found one difficult or dis- 
 tasteful to fulfil.' 
 
 This conversation took place the day after the lawyer's 
 arrival ; and now the situation, under its most homely and 
 practical aspect, was beginning to stare Carew very full in 
 the face. There were two points in it which he had not 
 before realised, in addition to those relating to his marriage 
 or abstention from marriage. In the first place, he learnt 
 that, as the heir to his elder uncle, he would be a far poorer 
 man than he had had any idea of. In the second place, as 
 the heir to his younger uncle, he would be, in fact he was, 
 a far richer one. The alternatives before him surprised him 
 by the sharpness of their contrast. On the one side was the 
 complete ruin of his family — more complete and more 
 inevitable than despondency had ever foreshadowed to him. 
 On the other was its restoration to power, splendour, and 
 beneficence, greater and more certain than he had ever 
 ventured to hope. 
 
 During the whole afternoon of that day and the next he 
 roamed about like a restless ghost, through the glades of 
 the park, through the unweeded walks of the garden, with 
 their furlongs of straggling laurel, through the roofless hall, 
 through ivied vestiges of the cloisters, and again through the 
 corridors of the inhabited house itself, his whole mind in a 
 ferment. Generations of dingy ancestors peered at him 
 from shadowy walls ; here and there, distinct amongst the 
 pale tribe, were one or two fine Vandykes ; and in a low 
 hall, with a faint smell of wood-smoke in it, there were eight 
 tall Sir Joshuas. One of these, which was hung close to the 
 door, was so placed that whenever the door opened the key 
 struck the canvas, and had knocked a ragged hole in it : 
 and in this stately and magnificent picture, which, if uncared 
 for, would in a few years be ruined, Carew seemed to recog- 
 nise an image of his own family. ' Could he,' he asked 
 himself, 'allow all this to go? Did he not owe to it, as it
 
 chap. iv. AN ECHO FROM DREAMLAND 305 
 
 were, a filial duty? Was he not bound to save, and, if 
 possible, to transmit it to a descendant ? Could he, for the 
 sake of any private affection, be a traitor to this trust, which, 
 if gone, would be gone for ever?' Everything, from the 
 crumbling towers outside to the rudest oak bench and 
 frayed matting within, from the faintest daub in feminine 
 water-colour fading on the wall in its tarnished frame for a 
 century, to the sixty-four quarterings of his great-great- 
 grandfather, which stained the daylight on the great stair- 
 case window — everything he felt to be indescribably a part 
 of himself, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. He could 
 not suffer it to be torn away from him. 
 
 ' Had I a brother,' he said to himself, ' who might take 
 my place — to whom all this money would go, in case I was 
 to forfeit it, I would say to him "Take it." He might take 
 the estates too. But of all our name, there is nobody left 
 but me. I am not myself only ; I am a family, I am an 
 institution : and as such, I represent that principle which 
 alone makes, or can make, civilisation worth preserving. 
 Anyhow I think so ; and if the thought is a folly, I can at 
 least give my folly some dignity by suffering for it.' 
 
 The tone of his resolution remained pretty much like 
 this till after his uncle's funeral, when he left Otterton for 
 his mother's. Her home was an old manor house some 
 twenty miles distant — small, but in its own way perfect. A 
 tall rookery rose directly behind it, whose branches over- 
 shadowed the white clustering chimneys. A lime avenue 
 and a garden of stocks and wallflowers made a world of 
 quiet in front. Inside, there was china and an odour of 
 pot-pourri, straight-backed chairs standing on faded Turkey 
 carpets, and rows of calf-bound volumes such as ' Tom 
 Jones ' and ' The Spectator.' 
 
 Closely as Otterton was connected with Carew's life, the 
 manor was connected with it in a yet more intimate way ; 
 and just as in his present frame of mind the associations of 
 the one pained and stimulated him, so did those of the 
 other lull, caress, and fawn on him. The waves of thought 
 
 X
 
 306 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 and feeling were still with him in the state of hush that they 
 are in so often with those who have come from a house of 
 death ; and all the homely and kindly days of his childhood 
 ro:e up in his memory as he arrived, filling him with a 
 longing for rest, and a wish that he could again subside on 
 them. The old grey-haired man-servant, who welcomed 
 him smiling at the door, with his striped waistcoat, his white 
 silk stockings, and pink cheeks like an apple, seemed to him 
 like one of his own relations ; and as he dined with his 
 sister in what was known as the little parlour, the rest he 
 longed for he almost thought he had found. 
 
 His mother that evening he was not able to see. She 
 had been for some years failing, and, as Mrs. Harley had 
 told the Miss Burtons, Carew had always shown himself a 
 most good and attentive son to her. But her condition was 
 such that though always a ground of anxiety, and though 
 one from which she could never recover, it might still be 
 protracted for an indefinite time longer ; and except for an 
 occasional sinking, to which her family now were accus- 
 tomed, she gave no graver cause for solicitude at one time 
 than another. It happened that the present was one of her 
 times of weakness, and instead of dozing as usual, though a 
 calm afternoon, in the drawing-room, for the past few days 
 she had not quitted her bed. She had often, however, been 
 much weaker before, and there was nothing to interfere with 
 the flow of reciprocal information that pleasantly took place 
 between the brother and sister. What had happened to the 
 family in this or in that cottage, whether Mary Ann had 
 married the young man that she used to walk with, and 
 whether the auctioneer's daughter still wore blue gloves on 
 Sundays — on all these little points Carew asked for en- 
 lightenment ; and especially as to who was the stranger who 
 was living in the larger of the two villas near Otterton. 
 But the last question was one which his sister could not 
 answer. 
 
 Late the following morning his mother was in a condition 
 to receive him. She was still in bed, and had just finished
 
 chap. iv. AN ECHO FROM DREAMLAND 307 
 
 her breakfast. Her weakness had long been such that her 
 pleasure at the sight of him had found better expression in 
 her face than in her slow and feeble articulation. It was so 
 this morning as she just turned her head on his entrance. 
 No words could have said to him more than that slight and 
 difficult movement ; and he saw looking at him out of those 
 dimmed and well-known eyes all the years of his life, and 
 seventy-eight years of the century. The interview did not 
 last long, nor was there much said at it ; but the scene 
 throughout the morning was strongly stamped on his memory. 
 On a table beside the bed were the remains of her small 
 breakfast — a piece of broken toast and an egg-cup with its 
 hollow shell. Beneath her chin, too, there still remained a 
 napkin ; and on this a little of the yolk of the egg had 
 fallen. Under ordinary circumstances nothing so offended 
 Carew as the slightest untidiness in any one's ways at table ; 
 but now when he thought of the hands and lips grown help- 
 less that had once for him been the signs of such strength 
 and help, this small and unsightly detail subdued his mind 
 with a feeling which had been quite strange to it hitherto, 
 and he bowed his head in reverence for the sacred weakness 
 of age. 
 
 During the rest of the day he poked about with his 
 sister, amongst old chests and cabinets filled with various 
 relics ; and they had been half touched and half amused at 
 discovering an entire fossil childhood, in a collection of toys 
 and lesson-books. These had lately been disturbed to 
 make room for some other lumber ; and they thought of 
 inquiring of the servants as to the fate of some objects that 
 were missing. This question was, however, in part an- 
 swered by an accident ; for, passing through the diminutive 
 stable-yard, their eyes chanced to be attracted by something 
 red on a rubbish-heap ; and going nearer, and using his 
 stick to assist him, Carew recognised amongst dead leaves 
 and cinders the morocco covers of his diary when he was 
 ten years old, which had then seemed to him a marvel of 
 sumptuous splendour, and which still, no doubt, contained, 
 
 x 2
 
 308 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 in the damp and dirt, the tremulous records of his hopeful 
 unclouded life. He looked again, and a worm was crawling 
 over it. ' What fools the servants are ! ' he exclaimed in a 
 moment's petulance. ' I feel almost as if they had pushed 
 me in there myself.' 
 
 These occupations, and the thoughts suggested by them, 
 at first filled his mind completely : but by-and-by, through 
 them and intermixed with them, other thoughts came also, 
 gently pushing and asserting themselves. Here was a 
 house, here were surroundings, where a man might live in 
 comfort on no immoderate fortune. If he valued respectable 
 antiquity and family associations, if he valued mellow refine- 
 ment contrasting with mushroom finery, surely he had thai 
 here. Might he not brave the chance of having to let 
 Otterton go, and beg Violet Capel to make a home here 
 with him ? Over and over again he asked himself this 
 question, the girl's eyes and lips pleading with him to say 
 ' Yes ' to it ; and more than once he repeated those lines of 
 Thackeray's which Foreman had quoted in a very different 
 temper — ' Love omnia vina't, is immeasurably above all am- 
 bition, more precious than wealth, more noble than name. 
 He knows not life who knows not that ; he hath not felt the 
 highest faculty of the soul who hath not enjoyed it. In the 
 name of my wife I write the completion of hope and the 
 summit of happiness. To have such love is the one blessing 
 in comparison of which all earthly joy is of no value ; and 
 to think of her is to praise God.' 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 AN UNEXPECTED MONITOR. 
 
 The following morning Carew was sitting in the library 
 toasting his feet on the brass fender. He was looking at a 
 pile of newspapers that lay on an old spinet ; he was 
 reproaching himself for having scarcely so much as opened
 
 CHAr. v. AN UNEXPECTED MONITOR 309 
 
 them, and he was still mainly occupied with thoughts about 
 Miss Capel, when his sister entered and said in a hurried 
 tone that she thought their mother's state was worse than it 
 had been yesterday. 'In fact 'she added. 'But per- 
 haps you will come upstairs with me.' 
 
 They went. His sister entered the room before him. 
 There was perfect silence in it. He at first saw nothing but 
 the bed-curtains. Then he moved softly round to the foot 
 of the bed ; and there all revealed itself. Black with her 
 back to the light was the bending figure of the nurse ; and 
 carefully propped up on the pillows a still face rested, with 
 that yellow wax-like bloom upon it, the meaning of which 
 he already knew so well. 
 
 The end had been sudden. His mother evidently had 
 begun her breakfast as usual. It was there on the little 
 table. Slight and trivial things become sometimes full of 
 meaning, and Carew's eye fell on the half-drunk cup of tea 
 and the egg half eaten. He knew at the moment that he 
 should never forget the look of them. The. breakfast and 
 those dead lips — ten minutes ago how closely and commonly 
 they were related ; and now between them was all the width 
 of eternity — between that smeared egg with the spoon in it, 
 and the life that mysteriously was not. 
 
 This event, as was not unnatural, completely changed, 
 for the time, the whole tenour of his thoughts. Miss Capel's 
 image, though he did not intentionally dismiss it, now 
 receded out of the ken of his consciousness. The in 
 evitable business matters for the next few clays occupied the 
 practical faculties both of himself and his sister ; and as for 
 his thoughts, though he affected no conventional gloom, they 
 kept a silent vigil over the strange something that had 
 happened. He recalled what some one had said on the 
 ramparts at Courbon-Loubet — that there are tilings in life 
 which, however much we may talk of them, are to each, till 
 he feels them himself, as new and as strange as death ; and 
 amongst these, he learnt, was the death of one near to him. 
 It was some time, indeed, before his imagination could grasp
 
 310 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iy. 
 
 it ; and after having asked his sister some questions she was 
 unable to answer— questions mostly connected with the 
 past and with the neighbourhood, he heard himself say- 
 ing, ' Well, we will ask my mother.' And then again his 
 mind would imperfectly correct him — ' I mean,' he would 
 add, f when she comes back.' 
 
 His feelings, as was natural, were deep rather than 
 poignant. They : sank down into his heart rather than 
 wounded or crushed it, and affected his views of life more 
 than his views of his own life. But at the funeral — at this 
 second funeral, so closely following on the other — he felt at 
 least for a moment how sharp a sting death can have for 
 the living. 
 
 On his way to the ceremony, which took place at Otter- 
 ton, reflections such as these kept on recurring to him : 
 ' What is half of life but the memories we share with others ? 
 And before we are thirty a half of this half is gone. Before 
 we are half through life we are knee-deep in the waters of 
 death.' Then by-and-by came the short pilgrimage to the 
 church, and there sounded in his ears the opening words 
 of that office which, whether a man believe or whether he 
 disbelieve, is more moving and terrible than any tragedy 
 ever written, bringing him face to face with all that is worth 
 hoping for, or else with the thought that all hopes are vain. 
 The extreme simplicity, too, of the whole proceedings 
 touched him — the church with its square pews, its huge 
 pulpit and reading-desk, the arms of Carew on every panel 
 of the gallery, the lion and the unicorn keeping guard over 
 the altar, and the absence of any one except a few neighbours 
 and the villagers. 
 
 All those impressions, solemnly as he received them, he 
 could take in and assimilate more or less as a philosopher ; 
 but it was different when, leaving the church, they stood by 
 the grave's brink — for it was always his mother's wish to lie, 
 not in the vault, but in the churchyard. He had not realised 
 fully the personal import of it all to him till he saw descend- 
 ing actually into that horrible gash in the earth — that cold,
 
 chap. v. AN UNEXPECTED MONITOR 311 
 
 insulting mud, that damp and streaming clay — the thing 
 which but yesterday he would have sheltered from the least 
 wind or from a raindrop. He thought of his diary, and how 
 he had seen it on the rubbish-heap ; and now, the mother 
 who had given him that diary— they were casting her into a 
 rubbish-heap yet more hideous ; they were doing to her 
 what he had lately shuddered to see done even to a little 
 morsel of morocco. 
 
 He bit his lip. Every nerve was strained to prevent his 
 feelings finding some natural outlet. At last, just before 
 those assembled separated, he raised his eyes, venturing to 
 look about him, and there, standing by the grave on the side 
 opposite to him, was an object that proved a new trial to 
 his fortitude. It was an old woman ten years older than his 
 mother, who had begun life as his mother's maid, and who 
 had never, till her strength failed her, left the service of the 
 family. For many years now she had been settled in a 
 cottage, and Carew was not aware that she was any longer 
 living. She seemed to have risen from the dead to take he" 
 last look at the dead. 
 
 Presently he went up to her, and taking her by both the 
 hands, ' Nancy,' he said, ' and don't you remember me ? ' 
 She looked at him doubtfully ; he then explained who he 
 was, and a light of recognition like the last ray of a sunset 
 suddenly lit up the old woman's face. She seized his hand 
 again, and began to speak to him of her memories— both of 
 his childhood and his mother's ; and then ended, with a 
 glance towards the grave, ' I shall be going to join her there 
 soon. I ought to have gone already.' 
 
 ' And I too,' said Carew, as he turned away from her. 
 ' We both of us belong to a world that is dead or dying.' 
 
 His sister and he were to remain at the Hall for the 
 present ; they had neither of them yet decided on their 
 immediate movements in the future — and the rest of the 
 day was passed in the vacant quiet which so often succeeds 
 an event like that of the morning. On Carew's mind there 
 was vaguely an impression as if it was Sunday; his very
 
 312 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 thoughts seemed afraid to stir themselves into their common 
 secular activity. Next morning, however, an unforeseen 
 incident roused them. 
 
 He had wandered away after breakfast into a remoter 
 part of the park, trying to review calmly his situation as 
 regarded Miss Capel. His feelings about her were pretty 
 much what they had been when the shock of his mother's 
 death had rendered them, as it were, insensible ; and now 
 slowly and faintly they were coming to life again, untouched 
 as yet by the hostile associations of Otterton. His tender- 
 ness for the girl was once more asserting itself ; his 
 imagination once more in its mirror was showing him the 
 magic of her eyes. Wholly occupied with these inward 
 events, he passed mechanically through a door in the park 
 wall, and continued his walk in the public road outside. In 
 a few minutes this brought him to one of the gates — a 
 grandiose entrance between two Georgian lodges, with the 
 coats-of-arms crumbling from the friable stone. Within, 
 there stretched away a long avenue of elms, some of whose 
 boughs lay broken and untouched on the ground, whilst 
 grass and weeds were invading the stony roadway. 
 
 By this gate Carew was intending to re-enter, but he 
 paused at a little distance, struck by its mournful aspect, 
 whilst the claims of the family honour gave a timid prick to 
 his conscience. He paused and he looked thoughtfully at 
 it. Suddenly his eye was caught by an unusual object — an 
 exceedingly smart brougham, standing some way off in the 
 road. Moved by his curiosity, he slowly strolled by it. 
 There was no one inside, so he was able to examine it care- 
 fully. All over it was a gloss of virgin varnish. There was 
 a gloss that was almost equal on the coats of the horses ; 
 and though outside there was no device of any kind, inside 
 there was a profusion of ivory fittings, each one of which 
 was, apparently, florid with some large monogram. In con- 
 trast to this — ' Or could it,' Carew asked, ' be in keeping 
 with it ? ' — the coachman and footman held themselves 
 rather slouchingly, and seemed to be indulging themselves
 
 chap. v. AN UNEXPECTED MONITOR 313 
 
 in less reserved conversation than is perhaps usual amongst 
 gentlemen's servants when on duty. 
 
 Having seen what he could, Carew was turning back, 
 when he descried emerging from the one lodge that was 
 inhabited, a man who seemed, from a distance, to be dressed 
 for Piccadilly or Bond Street. The stranger moved a little 
 way into the road, thrust his hands into his pockets, and 
 began staring at the lodges. Carew by this time was within 
 some thirty feet of him, and was so struck by his un- 
 explained presence and his behaviour, that, leaning against 
 a gate, he began to watch him curiously. Who was he ? 
 What was he ? Was he the undertaker's man ? Was he a 
 doctor ? Was he the head of some mourning establishment, 
 come at his sister's order? He might be a doctor, perhaps ; 
 and yet, Carew argued, few doctors but those of the lowest 
 class could invest the quiet of their dress with such a loud 
 ostentation of quiet. A second glance showed that he 
 could hardly be the undertaker or the mourning-man, 
 for his trousers had a purple stripe on them, and in his 
 little finger there was embedded a diamond ring. At last 
 he turned, and with his head well in the air, and treating 
 Carew to a blank stare in passing, he entered the brougham, 
 which had already advanced to meet him. 
 
 Carew fancied he had seen this man's face before ; but, 
 think as he would, he could not remember where. He 
 entered the lodge, and inquired of the woman who lived 
 there if she knew the stranger's name, and what it was he 
 wanted. The woman said she had seen him several times 
 lately, walking in the road, and pausing to inspect the lodges ; 
 and she gathered — though from what source she did not 
 specify — that he lived somewhere outside the neighbouring 
 town. Then, following what is a common rustic practice, 
 she brought out the only definite part of her answer last. 
 
 The stranger, she said, had seen the bailiff talking to her, 
 whom he recognised and at once accosted. He seemed to 
 have something of special importance to say to him, and as 
 it was cold standing in the open air, they had both gone
 
 314 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 inside and sat by the back-kitchen fire. The bailiff was 
 there now if Mr. Carew wanted to see him, and would no 
 doubt tell him more than she could. 
 
 Carew found this to be no more than the truth. The 
 bailiff was full of the interview that had just ended. ' I was 
 wishing, sir,' he said, ' the moment that you came in, to be 
 able to tell you about it before you went away. I did 
 mention, you may remember, at the time of Mr. Horace's 
 funeral, that there was a party residing in the neighbour- 
 hood who had his eye upon this property. He's been 
 trying to find out all he can about it ; he's been busier than 
 ever since then. Well, sir, that's the gentleman — the gentle- 
 man — though to my mind he looks much more like a hair- 
 dresser. He talks to you,' the bailiff continued, in apology 
 for this freedom of speech, ' as if you were no better than 
 the dirt under his feet, and he puts questions to you as if he 
 were hearing you your catechism.' 
 
 ' Do you know his name ? ' said Carew. 
 
 ' I've heard it,' said the bailiff, scratching his head, ' but 
 I don't rightly remember it. I never knew such a gentle- 
 man to ask questions. He asks about rents, and leases, and 
 hares and rabbits ; and at last he got, sir, to asking about 
 the Squire, and if it wasn't true that the Squire was very 
 hard on the poor. I said, if every rich man had as kind a 
 
 heart as the Squire Snapper, sir — that's his name, sir 
 
 —it's just come back to me. I thought 'twas a name like 
 one one sees now in the newspapers. Maybe he's some 
 relation.' 
 
 ' Relation ! ' exclaimed Carew. ' It's the man himself. 
 The devil's grown a moustache — that was why I did not 
 recognise him.' 
 
 He left the lodge in a mood very different from that in 
 which he entered it. Once again his mind was in full 
 activity. It turned from his private emotions to what he 
 conceived to be his duties. ' Let the property pass to a 
 man like that ! ' he muttered. ' I would sooner never speak 
 to Miss Capel or to any other woman again.'
 
 chap. vi. ROUSED AT LAST 315 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ROUSED AT LAST. 
 
 Carew's mind was now fully awake. He suddenly realised 
 in a way which he had not done hitherto the full practical 
 meaning of the large fortune that had been left to him, and 
 the future which that fortune, especially if it became his own 
 absolutely, opened out to him so certainly and so immediately. 
 All his theories as to the duties and the capacities of an 
 aristocracy, all his knowledge and study of the economic 
 problems of the period, he now felt he might begin to 
 translate into definite practice. A sense overcame him of 
 sudden impatient restlessness. He could no longer live on 
 emotion, or even on thought. His whole moral being 
 craved to be fed with action. His emotion had turned into 
 a hunger for something beyond itself. It no longer sufficed 
 him to reason about the poor and about the people ; about 
 the conditions of their employment, the rates of their wages, 
 and the cost and quality of their lodging. He longed to 
 feel that there were a certain number of families whose 
 daily lives he could help to order happily ; that there was 
 actual distress he might do something to cure ; and that he- 
 was doing his best to set a real example of that devotion to 
 all whom his power could benefit, which alone, in his estima- 
 tion, gave power either permanence or dignity. 
 
 Under the stirring influences of prospects and thoughts 
 like these, his whole conscience became like a kind of 
 litany — a cry, a supplication to some unnamed Providence, 
 that his life might be granted the development which, and 
 which alone, could complete it. 
 
 In most men's lives there have been analogous moments. 
 Their importance is often misunderstood. No doubt, in 
 any such excitement and exaltation of the moral being, in 
 any such passing clairvoyance into the conceivable possibilities 
 of life, coupled as it usually is with the desire to make these
 
 316 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 possibilities facts, judgment, imagination, self-esteem, and 
 hope say a thousand things which are soon seen to be 
 exaggerated, and perhaps may excite a smile. But for all 
 that, they need not be unreal. They are not unreal if, in 
 spite of their exaggeration, they express and for a moment 
 illuminate a tendency which is permanent, but which usually 
 operates in obscurity, and clogged with difficulty and 
 obstruction. Most men would be able to bear witness to 
 this. There are occasional moments, indeed, when the 
 mind is full of oracles, when it hardly knows itself for all 
 the voices filling it. Such moments are the seeds of moral 
 changes, of new departures, though too often they are seeds 
 that never grow. 
 
 Of this last fact Carew was perfectly well aware ; and 
 several times when, in the course of his meditations, his 
 moral excitement was gaining its completest possession of 
 him, he would sober himself by the prosaic reflection that 
 all the fine things he was saying to himself were addressed 
 to himself as he might be rather than as he was. And then 
 again, as a correction to such moral despondency, he would 
 recall to himself the following pregnant couplet : — 
 
 Deeds in hours of insight willed 
 
 May be through hours of gloom fulfilled. l 
 
 But even now, without waiting for the future, he was 
 aware that these hours of insight had had already one 
 practical effect on him. For the first time since he had 
 yielded to the witchery of Miss Capel's presence, he felt 
 that even though he lost her life might be still complete. 
 She was no longer necessary to make his future satisfying. 
 He still knew her charms ; he still knew the magic of her 
 wide childlike eyes. She was like sunshine, she was like a 
 perfume, she was like a strain of plaintive music breathing 
 through a garden of roses, or fresh from the breast of a 
 blue southern sea. He knew the power that her nature had 
 over him ; but he knew it as he might know the power of a 
 dose of opium, which each time he repeated it would have 
 
 1 Mr. Matthew Arnold.
 
 chap. vi. ROUSED AT LAST 317 
 
 the same effects, but effects from which, for the time being, 
 he was free. Once more he was master of himself. He 
 felt capable of choosing the life which the thought and 
 experience of years had affirmed and reaffirmed to be the 
 life of rational duty — the only life which could appease his 
 unsatisfied consciousness, and, by affording work to every 
 one of his faculties, would perhaps yield him at last some 
 resting-place for his spirit. 
 
 How should he make use of this free interval, in which 
 once more his intellectual conscience was supreme, and 
 passion stood at his feet ready to do its bidding? This was 
 the question he asked himself, and he asked it with a 
 business-like deliberation. ' Any new state of the thoughts, 
 feelings, and desires,' he wrote in his diary as a sort of 
 mental record, ' may be arrested and realised if we can but 
 translate them into action, and this may make a new turning- 
 point for the whole life and character. The danger which I 
 run is that of never translating them into action at all ; and 
 if I yield to this danger I know quite well what becomes of 
 me. My life, instead of a structure, is simply a shapeless 
 mound of subsiding aspirations, out of which it is as easy 
 to make any useful career as it would be to mould a statue 
 or a brick out of treacle.' 
 
 In this state of critical self-distrust, one image, and only 
 one, came back to him, which brought with it suggestions 
 of action, vigour, and life. This was the image of Miss 
 Consuclo Burton ; and even that, for external reasons, was 
 shrouded in a veil of despondency. All the details of their 
 last parting returned to him, and the contemptuous coldness 
 of her last words and her letter. Much, he reflected, might 
 no doubt be explained by some false reports — he did not 
 quite know what — which she had heard of him ; and her 
 coldness — this was certainly just possible — might have 
 betrayed interest in him far more than indifference. 
 
 'But still,' he asked himself, 'what must be her opinion 
 of me if she is so ready to believe me, at a moment's notice, 
 guilty of anything that could make me deserve such treat- 
 
 An
 
 318 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 ment ? Probably by this time what interest she may have 
 taken in me has died out, not to be reawakened. Perhaps, 
 after all, there was not much interest ever.' Anyhow, he 
 continued to reflect, it would be very difficult to approach 
 her again, at all events immediately. How to explain 
 matters, or indeed what matters to explain, he did not know. 
 There were no ostensible grounds for any explanation at all. 
 Added to this, he was not certain where she was. Thus, in 
 spite of both the definite conduct and the help and the 
 encouragement to pursue it, which the very thought of her 
 suggested to him, she seemed to his imagination to resemble 
 a light, bright indeed, and sending through the gloom its 
 kindly message of rays to him, but shining in vain over the 
 sheets of a broad intervening water. 
 
 His feelings, therefore, will be easily understood — the 
 sudden throb of his heart and the tingling of all his pulses — 
 when he saw one morning, on coming down to breakfast, a 
 re-directed letter for him, bearing a foreign postage-stamp. 
 Was it from Miss Capel? Was it from Miss Consuelo 
 Burton ? On taking it up he saw that it was from neither ; 
 but it did not prove on that account to be any the less 
 interesting. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 AN OLD ROAD REOPENING. 
 
 Carew's correspondent was none other than Mrs. Harley. 
 Her letter was dated ' Rome,' and ran as follows : — 
 
 ' Dear Mr. Carew, — You must not be surprised at 
 getting a long letter from me ; for I have many things to 
 ask you, and many things also to tell you. I am going to 
 begin with my asking. 
 
 ' What have you been doing with yourself all this long 
 time ? We had hoped we might have seen you again at 
 Nice, before we left it ; and we were much disappointed 
 that you gave no sign of yourself. We are here till after
 
 chap. vii. AN OLD ROAD REOPENING 3 19 
 
 Easter, with some mutual friends of ours ; and after Easter, 
 as I think I told you before, we go, for perhaps a week or 
 so, to the Italian lakes. You were good enough to say that 
 you would get us an order to see the beautiful villa and 
 gardens on the Lago Maggiore which belong to your 
 Milanese relations — the " cousin Alfonso " you have some- 
 times told us about. If this reaches you in time, will you 
 write to me here, or else to the Poste Restante at Baveno. 
 I wish there was a chance of your being at the villa your- 
 self and doing the honours of the place for us. I know you 
 do go there often, and that it is a sort of second Courbon- 
 Loubet for you. I think that that is all I have to ask you — 
 what have you been doing? will you send me the order? 
 will you be there yourself? I will now go on to tell you 
 things. 
 
 ' Of course you have heard how our friend Foreman has 
 been distinguishing himself. He now pretends, as you will 
 have seen in the papers — he has also had the face to write 
 to me to the same effect — that he had nothing to do with 
 these riots, and that they were simply the result of accident. 
 He is frightened out of his life at the prospect of being 
 prosecuted by the Government ; and a friend tells me, who 
 saw him a few days ago, that his state of nervousness is 
 something really pitiable. George says he is like some man 
 in Rabelais — would it be Panurge? — who swore, "By the 
 pavilion of Mars, I fear nothing but clanger ! " I must, 
 however, do our Socialist this justice : if he does fear danger 
 he certainly does not fear exertion ; for, ill as he is, he went 
 suddenly back to London — I wrote to you at the time about 
 it — not very long after he left Courbon-Loubet. We now 
 see the reason why. I've not the remotest doubt in my 
 own mind that the whole thing was hatching for many 
 weeks beforehand. He was brooding over it whilst he 
 was under your roof. In fact, now one comes to think 
 of it, he told us as much there. 
 
 'But, my dear Mr. Carew, my real aim in writing to you 
 is not simply to gossip about Foreman and his vagaries.
 
 320 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 My real aim is to tell you that I think I can clear up a 
 mystery, the results of which you had every right to feel 
 annoyed at. I mean the recall of Miss Consuelo Burton 
 from your delightful and hospitable house. The subject 
 perhaps is one which is a little delicate to touch upon. 
 However, I think we may contrive to get over the difficulty. 
 After all, what is there to be shy about ? I am a woman of 
 the world, writing to a man of the world, and our being 
 what we are gives us this advantage at least, that whilst I 
 hope our feelings have not become blunted, we are able 
 to speak about them with a convenient and comfortable 
 directness. 
 
 ' Let me begin, then, by reminding you that I am 
 perfectly well aware of the way in which rumour once con- 
 nected your name with that of a certain beautiful though 
 not very respectable lady — the Countess de Saint Valery. 
 I think I know the rights and wrongs of the story pretty 
 accurately. You have spoken about it yourself to me. I 
 am aware too— and so must you be, though you can hardly 
 have been told it directly — that the elder Miss Burtons, at 
 one period of their acquaintance with you, fully believed 
 you to have a serious attachment for their sister — and I 
 must remark in a parenthesis that I don't think you could 
 do better — but this belief was quickly and rudely disturbed 
 by the reports which reached them, and to them seemed 
 reliable, that all the while they were wasting their most 
 Catholic encouragement upon you, and preparing to welcome 
 you into the bosom both of the Church and their family, 
 you were carrying on an intrigue with the person I just 
 mentioned, and that you would have gone off with her your- 
 self if a rival had not forestalled you. 
 
 ' Well, of course I think myself they were a couple of 
 fools to believe this ; but, given the belief, you can hardly 
 wonder at the consequences of it — that they acted as they 
 did, and gave you the cold shoulder. Afterwards, however, 
 they heard another side of the question, and began to sus- 
 pect that their thoughts about you — which, to do them
 
 chap. vii. AN OLD ROAD REOPENING 32 1 
 
 justice, they never made public — might possibly have been 
 far too severe. Of course that you should know such a 
 person as Madame de Saint Valery at all was an offence in 
 their eyes, and took some of the bloom off your sanctity. 
 Still, you were not hopelessly lost to their favour, and you 
 had a chance of salvation left you in their uncovenanted 
 mercies. When they met you at Nice I was able to be your 
 advocate, and I told them what geese they had been to 
 swallow all that gossip against you ; but your best advocate 
 was yourself. The best proof of the good impressions you 
 made is the fact of their allowing me to bring Consuelo with 
 me to stay with you. Of course the presence of Lady 
 Chislehurst and Mr. Stanley had a good deal to do with 
 that ; but the impression made on them by you yourself 
 personally had, I am sure, even more ; and, as you see, they 
 were becoming quite willing to receive you back again on 
 the old footing. 
 
 ' Now comes a mystery on which I can throw no light. 
 Perhaps you can. In some way or other you must have 
 offended Mr. Inigo. How, I cannot imagine ; but he 
 evidently must have some grudge against you ; for what do 
 you think he has been doing ? I will tell you. 
 
 ' Whilst we were staying with you in the chateau, Elfrida 
 and Mildred were away on some little expedition of their 
 own — I think it was to a convent ; and they only returned 
 on the morning before I and Consuelo left. They had 
 hardly been in Nice for a couple of hours when Mr. Inigo 
 found them out and pounced on them, filling their ears 
 with a long tale of your iniquities. That Foreman was 
 staying with you he learnt from Lady Mangotsfield, for 
 whom, I am told, he had been constantly on the look-out 
 ever since Lord Stonehouse introduced him to her. So this 
 piece of news at once went to Elfrida, and along with it 
 another, which no doubt will astonish you. Mr. Inigo 
 asserted that the reason for your being in the neighbourhood 
 was nothing else but the presence there of Madame de 
 Saint Valery ; and he added, to clench matters, that he had 
 
 V
 
 322 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 himself seen you leaving her house at twelve o'clock that 
 very night on which you dined with me. Nor was this all, 
 but he raked up again all the old gossip about you, assuring 
 Elfrida that it was true. How he got her — her and Mildred 
 too — to listen to him, is more than I am able to say. But 
 it turns out that they did so. Poor things ! In intentions, 
 no doubt, they are as harmless as doves ; but that kind of 
 harmlessness, when lacking the serpent's wisdom, is very 
 often as bad as the serpent's malice. 
 
 ' Fancy ! this is what they wrote to Consuelo about you — 
 at last I have seen the letter. " We are surprised to hear 
 that Mr. Foreman is staying at the chateau. We consider 
 it very undesirable" — and so on, and so on; you can 
 imagine the sort of thing. " We also hear that Mr. Carew 
 is engaged to a lady of such a character as to show us that 
 we were mistaken in thinking his house would be a proper 
 place for you to visit at, and we are sure that Lady Chisle- 
 hurst must be mistaken equally. Anyhow, we must request 
 that you come away at once, and we are writing to Mrs. 
 Harley — though we have told her nothing more than is 
 necessary — to ask her to make your departure as easy and 
 as comfortable as she can for you." 
 
 ' There ! what do you think of that ? Perhaps your eyes 
 are opened a little now. 
 
 ' Luckily, however, there is more to add. There has at 
 last appeared on the scene — I don't know if I remember 
 rightly the little Latin I once on a time learnt — a dens ex 
 machind, in the person of your old friend and defender Lord 
 Stonehouse. He is not here now, but he has been at Rome 
 for a few days with us ; and it was only the day before 
 yesterday that, quite by accident, he found out there had 
 been any trouble about you. I must describe the scene to 
 you. I can't help laughing when I think of it. 
 
 'I and the three Burtons were sitting together in the 
 morning, trying to settle what should be our plans for the 
 day, when Lord Stonehouse came in and began talking of 
 some palace he had been visiting. Amongst other things
 
 chap. vir. AN OLD ROAD REOPENING 323 
 
 he said : "There were enough of coats-of-arms there to 
 satisfy even our friend Carew. By the way, Elfrida, where 
 is he ? He's such a devoted admirer of yours, you ought to 
 know. You should have brought him to Rome and made 
 him kiss the toe of his Holiness." 
 
 ' You should have seen the look Elfrida gave him. One 
 could almost have fancied that her face was turned into ice, 
 she seemed so completely to refrigerate the whole room; 
 and as for Consuelo, I only gave one glance at her, and her 
 cheeks were scarlet. Lord Stonehouse, with his curious and 
 almost old-womanish shrewdness, at once saw something 
 was wrong, and looked at Elfrida, smiling out of his screwed- 
 up eyes with a patient patronising curiosity. Consuelo the 
 next moment went out of the room, and then in an instant, 
 before Elfrida could speak, " My dear Elfrida," he began, 
 " how have I put my foot into it ? I am immensely anxious 
 to know ! " Nothing would put him off. Elfrida was no 
 match for him ; and though she was very unwilling to dis- 
 cuss the subject at all, he soon managed to worm out of 
 her all the stories she had heard about you, and from whom 
 she had heard them. All this she told him with a painful 
 and embarrassed solemnity, as though she were touching 
 pitch and were almost afraid of being defiled by it. And 
 then when all was out, Lord Stonehouse leant forward in 
 his chair, gave a slap to one of his fat knees, and burst into 
 a chuckle of laughter. "That is too rich ! " he exclaimed. 
 " Upon my word, that is too rich ! " 
 
 ' Elfrida, at this, was perfectly dumb with astonishment 
 and anger, and put on what Lord Stonehouse calls her 
 " excommunicating face." 
 
 '"My dear Elfrida," he said, "do tell me why you are 
 looking so glum. You don't mean to say that you believe 
 this cock-and-bull story, do you ? " 
 
 ' Elfrida told him stiffly that she had only too good 
 grounds for believing it. 
 
 ' " What grounds ? " said Lord Stonehouse. " The chat- 
 tering of this fellow Inigo ? If I hadn't thought you could 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 have taken his measure better I declare I would never 
 have introduced him to you. He's nothing more than a 
 pedlar of second-hand scandal and gossip, which he picks 
 up and alters, and hopes will pass for new ; and then when 
 he gets any one to stop and examine his wares — though no 
 one does so except for the purpose of laughing at them — 
 he imagines that he is mixing in society. Pooh ! All this 
 about Carew — I can tell you exactly what the real facts are. 
 Madame de Saint Valery has never seen him but once 
 since he has been here, and that happened quite by acci- 
 dent. He was smoking his cigarette on the Promenade des 
 Anglais, and she happened to be leaning over the balustrade 
 of her garden. I have not the honour of knowing the good 
 lady herself ; but a Russian acquaintance of mine, Prince 
 Olgorouki, whose shoes our friend Inigo was under a kind of 
 contract to lick, knows her exceedingly well ; and I heard 
 of it all from him. He himself had heard it from Madame 
 de Saint Valery ; and she, I believe, had spoken of it to 
 him because she wanted to know where Carew was living, 
 and was very much aggrieved at his not having been to 
 call on her." 
 
 'At this moment Lady Chislehurst entered the room, 
 and, hearing your name mentioned, insisted on learning 
 what was being said about you. She knew that something 
 had gone wrong, but was not quite sure what ; except that 
 there had been an unpleasantness in connection with 
 Foreman's visit, and now for the first time she was told the 
 whole truth of the matter. At once a discussion besan 
 about your intimacy with the lady in London, and your 
 whole former acquaintance with her ; and Lady Chislehurst 
 at once took up the cudgels for you — with excellent effect. 
 She, as you know, has a wonderful knowledge of gossip ; 
 in fact, with regard to any one who is suspected of Catholic 
 leanings, she is a kind of epitomised Inquisition — I am 
 bound to say, a most kind and charitable one. Though 
 she is determined to know the worst, she always hopes for 
 the best ; and she was able to tell Elfrida, with every air of
 
 chap. vii. AN OLD ROAD REOPENING 325 
 
 authority, that the worst about you in this connection was 
 certainly not very bad. 
 
 'As for Consuelo, I don't know that I have anything 
 special to add. I think it will be enough for you to be 
 simply told that she too knows what her sisters know. She 
 knows you have been judged wrongly. 
 
 ' Out of that intelligence I must leave you to make what 
 you can or what you choose ; and I will only add that 
 when next you meet the Burton family, if they are at first 
 a little shy of you — I don't know that they will be : I only 
 say if they are — the only reason will be, not that they think 
 you deserve ill of them, but that they feel they have acted 
 unfairly and perhaps foolishly by you. 
 
 'And now I am going to return to the subject of our 
 own plans. In about ten days' time we leave Rome, as I 
 have already told you, for the Italian lakes ; and I will at 
 last reveal to you that the mutual friends who are going 
 with us are none other than the three Burtons, together 
 with Lady Chislehurst and Mr. Stanley. It is just possible, 
 too, that Lord Aiden may join us there, after he has paid 
 a solitary visit to the Lake of Garda, and enjoyed on the 
 peninsula of Catullus the tunes that his own mind will play 
 to him. We shall probably ourselves make a number of 
 expeditions, but our headquarters will be Baveno, just 
 opposite your cousin's island villa. Don't let me put you 
 to any trouble ; but if without trouble you can do so, you 
 will, I am sure, send us an order for seeing it. I only wish 
 there was any chance of your coming that way yourself. 
 Happy man, with all these foreign relations ! Even Fore- 
 man will not be able to deprive you of every place of 
 refuge at once/ 
 
 Carew felt, on laying down this letter, as if a sudden 
 break had come in a sky of grey clouds, and a sun, whose 
 existence had almost become incredible, were beginning 
 to brighten through them. At once a change came over 
 his whole mind. His power of resolution again began to 
 assert itself; and his plans for the future, up till now so
 
 326 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book iv. 
 
 undecided, with a strange rapidity assumed a practical 
 shape. 
 
 His altered condition might have been detected in his 
 step when he rose from breakfast. He moved towards 
 the library like a man with a definite purpose, and wrote 
 letter after letter with an air of business-like rapidity. He 
 then inquired for his sister, who had not been yet down- 
 stairs, and had presently a conversation with her as to her 
 movements in the immediate future. What she told him 
 he found perfectly satisfactory ; and his next step was to 
 request an interview with the Squire. This was graciously 
 granted ; and before the hour of luncheon it was known 
 to the whole household that owing to some sudden news 
 Carew would be leaving Otterton by dawn the following 
 morning.
 
 BOOK V 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 In a large pillared room, with an echoing painted ceiling, 
 and a tesselated floor that shone with reflected statuary, a 
 man was seated alone at a small table in the centre, having 
 just finished his solitary evening meal. A pile of fruit 
 which glowed and gleamed in the candle-light was lying 
 untasted before him ; and sometimes his gaze would rest 
 listlessly upon this, sometimes it would wander round the 
 florid unhomely walls, whose friezes and medallions were 
 now almost lost in shadow. 
 
 Presently rousing himself, he tinkled a silver hand-bell, 
 and, whilst awaiting the coffee for which this was the signal, 
 produced from his pocket a letter in a clear female hand, 
 and, spreading it open before him, began to read, or rather 
 to contemplate it. An expression of pained perplexity 
 gathered on his face as he did so ; and at last, with a deep 
 sigh, he abruptly rose from his seat and opened one of the 
 windows. 
 
 Outside, a night palpitating with starlight and dewy 
 with scents of flowers, revealed a balustraded terrace and 
 tall classical vases. Beyond these, from a garden that 
 lay below, masses of dark foliage just raised themselves 
 into sight ; and again beyond these, between the tops of 
 cypresses and oleander-blossoms, was the moonlight faint 
 upon a lake that floated under a boundary of mountains. 
 
 The man, bare-headed, stepped out upon the terrace 
 and inhaled the air as if it gave him a kind of comfort.
 
 328 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 Then he moved to a spot at a short distance from the 
 window, and fixed his eyes on the lights of some small 
 town, that was visible from thence on the far side of the 
 water, glimmering at the foot of the mountains like the 
 sparks of a fallen rocket. 
 
 'By this time,' he exclaimed to himself, 'they must be 
 there, all of them— there amongst those lights. And I — 
 how shall I meet them? To-morrow I shall be coming to 
 the turning-point of my life — to the day, or the few days, 
 that will give their character to years. How much, at 
 times, hangs on the choice of a moment ! How much, at 
 times, on our making no choice at all ! We say to our- 
 selves with regard to some course of action, " We will think 
 about it and call again," as if we were speaking to a shop- 
 man ; and when we do call again, the thing we might have 
 chosen is gone. Never, never, never can we recall the 
 wasted opportunity. We forget that life is a journey which 
 can only be travelled once. There are no circular tours 
 in it.' 
 
 The letter which he had been looking at indoors he 
 still held in his hand, and he now crushed it with a sudden 
 and painful contraction of his fingers : then for a moment 
 he raised it and sorrowfully pressed it to his lips. A minute 
 or two later he started as if he had come to a resolution. 
 Returning to the dining-room, he again rang the bell, and, 
 scribbling hastily a short note in pencil, confided it to a 
 servant, with some brief directions and inquiries. Once 
 more he sought his former station on the terrace ; and 
 folding his arms, he remained there staring motionless at 
 the lake. 
 
 This man was Carew. 
 
 Five minutes elapsed, and not a sound broke the still- 
 ness ; then there rose from below the whisper of dipping 
 oars, and presently a boat, or rather a dim blot on the 
 waters, was seen moving straight towards the cluster of 
 lights opposite. An hour or so later it again became visible 
 returning, and Carew was still on the terrace, at once watch-
 
 CHAP. i. THE PROMISED LAND 329 
 
 ful and preoccupied. He waited there till he heard foot- 
 steps approaching, and directly after a letter was brought 
 out to him— a letter which at once he hastened indoors to 
 read. 
 
 ' My dear Carew,' it ran, ' you tell me that you are in 
 some great perplexity. You want my advice, and you want 
 it, you say, instantly — before the beginning of the probable 
 meetings of to-morrow. As to those meetings you are 
 certainly quite right, for by to-morrow afternoon the whole 
 party will have assembled here— Lady Chislehurst, the 
 three Miss Burtons, the Harleys, and Lord Aiden. The 
 Harleys, indeed, are here already, and Mrs. Harley has 
 duly informed the others that you hope to see and welcome 
 them as soon as possible after their arrival. If, therefore, 
 you wish to consult me about anything, I will be with you 
 at breakfast— let us say at about nine o'clock. I think, 
 a little later, you may expect Mrs. Harley, who has just had 
 some singular news which she wishes herself to communi- 
 cate to you. 
 
 ' So many of your perplexities have, I know, been 
 cleared up, that I am a little at a loss to conjecture why 
 you write so dejectedly. However, I can imagine that 
 there may be a point or two as to which you may think me 
 able to make you feel more at ease ; and any hint or infor- 
 mation which I may be able to give you, I shall give with 
 the greatest pleasure, and hope it may prove useful to you. 
 No doubt at present I am writing a little in the dark. 
 Until the very day before I started from Rome, I had not 
 a notion that you were not still at Courbon-Loubet, and 
 now I find that you have been for weeks in England, and 
 that you have suffered a loss for which, my dear Carew, 
 you will know I feel deeper sympathy than can be expres 
 in a note like this. 
 
 ' Ever yours, 
 
 • Frederic Stanley.' 
 
 The following morning, by the time named in the letter,
 
 330 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 Carew was standing at the landing-place watching for his 
 friend's arrival. Before him a flight of crescent-shaped 
 granite stairs dipped into the rippling water. Over him was 
 a canopy of budding bankshia roses, and a marble satyr 
 behind him glimmered through the leaves upon its pedestal. 
 High in the background rose a series of artificial terraces, 
 supported on walls and arches which were half-hidden by 
 foliage — laurels, camellias, myrtles, oleanders, and cypresses. 
 Here and there through valleys of flowers and verdure there 
 were glimpses of urns and statues, and small fantastic 
 temples, or the spray of a fountain floating like a tissue of 
 white crape ; and crowning all were the parapets and top- 
 most windows of a palazzo. 
 
 Such was the place to which, acting on Mrs. Harley's 
 suggestion, Carew had betaken himself directly after 
 receiving her letter. Everything thus far had fallen out as 
 he had hoped it would — everything at least which, at that 
 juncture, he had reckoned upon. And yet his brow was 
 clouded ; it betrayed neither hope nor resolution ; his air 
 was as listless and anxious as it had been a week back at 
 Otterton. The morning was bright everywhere except upon 
 his face. Something or other he plainly had on his mind, 
 and it was this which he was now waiting to unburden to 
 Mr. Stanley. 
 
 Confession, whatever relief it may bring eventually, is 
 rarely at the time a very delightful process, and Carew, when 
 he saw Mr. Stanley's boat approaching, had an uneasy 
 feeling as if he were about to submit himself to his dentist. 
 Mr. Stanley's very first words, however, at once made him 
 feel more comfortable. There was about them, as about 
 his manner usually, a certain pleasant, half-humorous 
 matter-of-factness which, when he was discussing any grave 
 or delicate subject, put any awkwardness or false shame out 
 of the question. No one, in fact, could approach a case of 
 sentimental casuistry with more sympathy and with less 
 sentimentality than he. 
 
 It was an inexpressible relief to Carew to see on the
 
 chap. i. THE PROMISED LAND 33 I 
 
 priest's brow no annoying reflection of the cloud that 
 obscured his own. It was an inexpressible relief to hear 
 him, the moment he was landed, instead of attuning his 
 voice to a note of anxious solicitude, declare that he was 
 dying of hunger and could talk about nothing till he had 
 breakfasted ; and then, as they went up to the house, falsify 
 this statement by launching into exclamations of delight at 
 the fairyland of gardens that burst upon him. They were 
 presently seated at breakfast in a small carpetless room, that 
 was gaily frescoed with shepherds, temples, and goddesses ; 
 and a voluble parrot in a glittering gilded cage was making 
 them smile with unexpected scraps of Italian. All these 
 surroundings formed natural subject for conversation, and 
 rapidly paved the way, without any effort or awkwardness, 
 for that other subject which Carew was anxious to touch 
 upon. 
 
 ' No,' said Mr. Stanley, ' I was never here before ; nor, 
 till a very few days ago, had I any notion that you were 
 here. I thought, as I told you in my note, that you still 
 were at Courbon-Loubet' 
 
 ' And I,' said Carew, ' till I got Mrs. Harley's letter, was 
 equally ignorant as to the movements of all of my guests 
 at the chateau — all except Foreman : I learnt quite enough 
 about him.' 
 
 'I think,' said Mr. Stanley, smiling, 'you will learn 
 something more to-day.' 
 
 ' About Foreman ? ' exclaimed Carew. ' What on earth 
 have I to learn about Foreman ? And why do you laugh 
 when you speak about him ? One would think there was 
 some mystery.' 
 
 'Well,' said Mr. Stanley, 'if there is one, Mrs. Harley 
 will reveal it to you. She has made me promise to leave 
 that pleasure to her.' 
 
 ' You know, I suppose,' said Carew, ' that she has 
 revealed one mystery to me already? You know that she 
 wrote to me, don't you? and what the things were that 
 she explained to me ? '
 
 332 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 ' Perfectly,' said Mr. Stanley, ' perfectly ; and I was 
 delighted to hear she had done so. Of course you refer to 
 the mischief that was made by that good gentleman Inigo ; 
 and I can well understand — or at least, my dear Carew, I 
 think I can — all the annoyances which must have been 
 suffered both by yourself and Miss Consuelo Burton.' 
 
 ' It was about that,' said Carew, ' that I wished to speak 
 to you. When one meets one's friends again after a certain 
 rupture it is sometimes a little difficult to know exactly how 
 one stands with them ; and a good deal depends on one's 
 understanding one's position accurately.' 
 
 'Well,' said Mr. Stanley, 'with regard to the elder 
 sisters, your position is just what it was when you last met 
 them at Nice— or rather, you are higher in their favour. 
 You must surely realise that, by their eagerness to come 
 and visit you here. Your perplexity, surely, cannot refer 
 to them.' 
 
 'Not altogether,' said Carew, 'and yet partly. I am 
 thinking how best to explain it.' 
 
 ' Let me,' said Mr. Stanley, ' hazard the beginning of the 
 explanation, and my guess, if w T rong, will at any rate have 
 been complimentary to yourself. You have had, if I am 
 not mistaken, the fortunate penetration to discover the 
 depth of character — one might almost call it the moral 
 genius — of their young sister ; and you wish to know, after 
 what has lately happened, in what frame of mind she is 
 likely to meet you to-morrow. Is not that your meaning? ' 
 
 ' More or less it is,' said Carew doubtfully. 
 
 ' Then, in that case,' said Mr. Stanley, ' I need only 
 say about her the same thing that I said about her two 
 elder sisters. She too will meet you as she met you last, 
 before there had arisen any of this foolish misunderstanding. 
 I'm afraid, however, that I am talking wide of the mark. 
 Judging by your face, we are not on the right subject yet.' 
 
 ' We are not,' said Carew, with some slight hesitation. 
 ' I am glad to hear what you teil me ; but it was not what 
 I was most perplexed about. I didn't so much want to ask
 
 chat\ i. THE PROMISED LAND 333 
 
 you anything about her feelings towards me, but as to her 
 impression, and the impression formed by her sisters, as to 
 my feelings towards her. I merely speak to you, my dear 
 Stanley, as if you were a common observer : I do not want 
 you to betray any confidences, in case her sisters should 
 have spoken about the matter to you. Do you think that 
 she — that Miss Consuelo Burton entertains the idea that I 
 am — well — in any way seriously attracted by her?' 
 
 Mr. Stanley stared at Carew in astonishment. ' Do you 
 mean to say,' he exclaimed, ' that you can possibly doubt 
 that?' 
 
 ' Once,' said Carew, ' I certainly did not doubt it. I 
 mean in London. I felt sure then that she realised how I 
 appreciated her. I thought, too, that she was growing to 
 appreciate me. But,' he continued wearily, 'times change, 
 people drift apart ; and it often seems to me almost as- 
 visionary to hope that such feelings in another would still 
 remain and wait for one, as to hope to find to-morrow some 
 cloud of yesterday's sunset.' 
 
 ' My good friend,' said Mr. Stanley, ' we are not talking 
 at present about what the young lady feels for you, but 
 about her natural conclusion as to your feelings for her. 
 Let us leave London alone ; let us merely go back to 
 Courbon-Loubet. I don't know — so far as words go — how 
 much or how little you may have said to her. I am referring 
 merely to your whole manner and conduct there. If you 
 did not yourself know what such conduct would seem to 
 mean, one might almost imagine that you did not mean 
 much by it. That, however, I don't believe for a moment ; 
 for were that true, one could hardly imagine a case of 
 more barefaced and more deliberate trifling.' 
 
 'You are right,' said Carew, 'in believing me not to 
 have been trifling. The long and the short, then, of the 
 matter is this : I produced the impression both on her 
 and on others that I wished to marry her, and this wish 
 they will still attribute to me. Is not that what you 
 mean ? ;
 
 334 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 ' Certainly,' said Mr. Stanley, ' and it had never occurred 
 to me that you could be in doubt about it.' 
 
 ' About what, then,' said Carew, 'did you think I wished 
 to speak to you ? ' 
 
 ' To tell you the truth,' said Mr. Stanley, ' I was a little 
 puzzled to conjecture. I concluded, however, that, con- 
 sidering the complications which have occurred, you wished 
 to know in what temper she would meet you. Her manner 
 towards you was much less unequivocal than yours was 
 towards her. I can easily conceive your being in some sort 
 of perplexity, and what I gathered from your note was this — 
 that you thought I might tell you something of how the 
 land lay, and so spare you a little unnecessary embarrass- 
 ment. Indeed if that was your meaning you were right. 
 I certainly could, without violating any confidence, tell you 
 certain things, which I think it would be well for you to 
 know.' 
 
 As Mr. Stanley spoke Carew's eyes brightened. ' Tell 
 me,' he said. ' Tell me whatever you can tell. Yes, it is 
 this — what you speak of — it is this that I wished to consult 
 you about. But what I had wished also, and what I had 
 wished in the first place to have explained to you, was very 
 much what you have already taken for granted.' 
 
 ' Explain it to me again,' said Mr. Stanley, ' and explain 
 it in your own way. If one is to give advice, you can never 
 learn the circumstances too exactly.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Carew, with an effort assuming a certain 
 dryness of manner, ' there is no need to indulge in the 
 language of sentiment. It will be enough to state my case 
 as if I were writing a Parliamentary Blue-book. I have 
 come, then, to this conclusion with regard to my own life: 
 I shall be more likely to make a good use of it — indeed, 
 I shall be likely to do so only — if I can find a wife who 
 understands my views and aspirations, who would help and 
 encourage me in putting them into practice, and would 
 redeem them from becoming what I fear they are now — so 
 many useless sighs and so much waste of brain-tissue. So
 
 chat-, i. THE PROMISED LAND 335 
 
 far as my acquaintance extends — and amongst women this 
 is pretty extensive — there is only one person who possesses, 
 or even suggests, the necessary qualifications, and that 
 person is Miss Consuelo Burton ; and so important to 
 myself do I consider the settlement of the matter, that I 
 have come to this place for the express purpose of meet- 
 ing her under favourable circumstances, and arriving at an 
 understanding with her, either one way or the other. So 
 far as she knows, my being here at the same time as 
 herself and her party is nothing more than an accident. 
 Mrs. Harley alone knows otherwise. I don't suppose, 
 though you and she have discussed my affairs together, 
 that she has told even you the real reason of my coming 
 here — that I am here simply in consequence of the informa- 
 tion she sent me.' 
 
 ' No,' said Mr. Stanley. ' She has kept your secret 
 perfectly. All these people conclude that you are here in 
 the natural course of things, taking the lakes as a resting- 
 place on your journey home. They have none of them, to 
 my knowledge, even heard that you have been in England, 
 though the deep mourning in which I grieve to see you 
 will soon oblige them to know the fact. Of course,' he 
 added, 'you got a letter from Miss Elfrida Burton? She 
 wrote to you before leaving Rome.' 
 
 ' I did,' said Carew, 'and a very kind, frank letter it was. 
 So far as mere ease and pleasantness goes, this evening's 
 meeting will be easy and pleasant enough. What I wanted 
 to ask you as plainly as 1 decently could I have already 
 asked you: I mean, whether 1 were distinctly looked upon 
 as anxious to marry Miss Consuelo. That question you 
 have answered. You have also told me that ycu could tell 
 me something as to what my prospects in that direction 
 were. You said as much as that, didn't you ? ' 
 
 'We have finished breakfast,' said Mr. Stanley. 'Would 
 you mind our coming into the garden ? What I have to 
 tell you I can tell you as we are strolling about.' 
 
 They did as Mr. Stanley suggested, and for some
 
 336 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book t. 
 
 minutes they both found a relief in suspending their per- 
 sonal conversation and indulging themselves in the enjoy- 
 ment of the morning. 
 
 By-and-by Mr. Stanley began again. ' I cannot,' he 
 said, ' give you a very definite answer with regard to the 
 point you spoke of; not because I am bound to keep 
 secret any special fact that I know, but simply because I 
 have no certain knowledge. If you want a definite answer 
 you must get that from herself. Still, as I said just now, I 
 have one or two things to tell you which may possibly help 
 to guide you. In the first place, I am glad you have given 
 me this opportunity of expressing the admiration I feel for 
 this girl's singular character, which is still more singular 
 when considered in its relation to your own. What your 
 interests are, my dear Carew — at least, your higher inter- 
 ests — nobody knows better than I. I think, too, that you 
 are perfectly right in your distrust of your own practical 
 resolution. But your instinctive sympathies, and the in- 
 stinctive bent of your intellect, constantly connect you, as 
 if by a kind of fate, with the special social problems of the 
 present and the near future. In this way she is almost 
 your exact counterpart.' 
 
 ' You think that ? ' said Carew. ' That is your real 
 opinion ? ' 
 
 'It is,' said Mr. Stanley. 'I don't want to indulge in 
 any exaggeration, though this beautiful garden is suggestive 
 of poetry ; I would much rather imitate you and talk like a 
 Blue-book ; but I must say that Miss Consuelo Burton in 
 many respects reminds me of Saint Theresa. It is the same 
 kind of nature ; but, so far as I am able to tell, it is quite 
 without the true monastic vocation. However, I can't speak 
 for certain, and there will lie your difficulty.' 
 
 ' What ! ' said Carew, ' does she think of entering a 
 convent ? ' 
 
 ' I believe,' said Mr. Stanley, ' that her thoughts are 
 tending in that direction, though they would certainly not 
 lead her to take the veil at once.' He paused, and a
 
 chap. i. THE PROMISED LAND 337 
 
 moment later resumed. ' What is special about her, to my 
 mind, is this. Other women, in numbers, have devoted 
 themselves to the service of the poor ; but she not only 
 shares the impulse which produces this immemorial devo- 
 tion : she has realised, in the keenest and most practicable 
 way imaginable, the special conditions which distinguish 
 our own epoch, and which present an old duty under a new 
 form. It is not often that the keenness and coolness of mas- 
 culine logic are united to the passionate sympathy of femin- 
 ine intuition ; but they are in her. To you a marriage with 
 her would be of incalculable benefit. I am speaking quite 
 calmly, not as the confidant of a lover, but as a kind of 
 moral politician.' 
 
 'What,' said Carew, laughing, 'is the good of telling me 
 that, when in the same breath you tell me that, at present, 
 her dearest hope is to renounce marriage with any one ? ' 
 
 'She is not decided,' said Mr. Stanley. 'Perhaps you 
 might help to decide her. I must tell you, too, that the 
 ideas she connects with a cloister are very different from 
 those of an ordinary would-be nun. Quite apart from any 
 personal interest in her, you will find much in them that is 
 suggestive, and well worthy of thought— especially as they 
 are largely due to her visit to you at Courbon-Loubet' 
 
 ' You speak in riddles,' said Carew. 
 
 'They are riddles,' said Mr. Stanley, 'which she will be 
 able to answer ; and Lady Chislehurst, you may be sure, 
 will insist on her doing so. She is longing that the matter 
 should be fully explained to you.' 
 
 'What!' said Carew. 'This is a very odd state of 
 affairs. A girl's private reasons for wishing to enter a 
 cloister are not usually the subject of her general conversa- 
 tion with her friends.' 
 
 'You don't understand,' said Mr. Stanley, 'but a couple 
 of days will make you, and perhaps this evening will. Any- 
 how, Lady Chislehurst won't let the subject sleep. You 
 recollect Miss Consuelo's eagerness — doivt you? — when she 
 was staying at the chateau, about Foreman's Socialistic 
 
 X
 
 33§ THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 theories. She at once realised that, alone of all reformers, 
 the Socialists had gone straight to the root of the social 
 difficulty. She also realised that, having once got at the 
 root, there their wisdom ended, and they utterly failed to 
 see what this root was made of.' 
 
 ' Or rather,' said Carew, ' it was you who pointed that 
 out to her. The root, you said — with a most happy illus- 
 tration — was simply human nature. You said that the same 
 causes would prevent our turning a country into a Socialistic 
 commonwealth that would prevent our turning it into a 
 Trappist monastery.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Mr. Stanley, ' but I used the illustration with- 
 out realising at the moment how accurate and apposite it 
 was. Miss Consuelo Burton understood it instantly, and 
 read a meaning into it beyond what I had put there. She 
 saw ' 
 
 ' Saw what ? ' said Carew. ' What is it you are looking at ? ' 
 
 ' Look,' said Mr. Stanley, ' who's that in the boat below 
 us ? It surely is Mrs. Harley.'" 
 
 ' It is,' said Carew, ' and she is waving her parasol at us. 
 We must go down and meet her.' 
 
 ' And now,' said Mr. Stanley, ' be prepared for a piece 
 of news. What I began to tell you will keep.' 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ON THE BRINK OF JORDAN. 
 
 Carew's face during the whole of the late conversation, 
 though sometimes it had lit up with interest, had never lost 
 its fixed air of anxiety, nor, if he had meant to unburden 
 himself of some secret trouble, did he exhibit thus far the 
 least sign that he had done so. The moment, however, he 
 met Mrs. Harley and gave her a hand to help her from the 
 boat to the landing-steps, his eyes brightened and his lips 
 wore a happier smile. Nor, indeed, was this unnatural.
 
 chap. ii. ON THE BRINK OF JORDAN 339 
 
 Mrs. Harley's face, always brilliant with quick thought and 
 expression, was now prophetic of something so eminently 
 delightful that a sense of expectant humour must have been 
 awakened in all who looked at her. 
 
 When the first greetings were over and they were pro- 
 ceeding up to the house, 'I have come,' she said, 'with a 
 piece of special news for you, and I only hope it has not 
 reached you before me.' 
 
 Carew said it had not. 
 
 'Because,' Mrs. Harley continued, 'it is here — in these 
 newspapers,' and she tapped with a rough brown glove a 
 copy of the Mornmg Post that was blushing under her red 
 umbrella. ' Let us sit down somewhere, and then vou shall 
 hear the secret.' 
 
 Carew led the way to a huge shady portico that just 
 eluded the dazzling glare of the sunlight, and as soon as 
 they had seated themselves Mrs. Harley unfolded her 
 papers. Whilst she was looking for the passages she wanted, 
 the others kept perfect silence. 
 
 ' Listen,' at last she said — ' listen to this letter. It is 
 addressed to the editor of the Morning Post, and is dated 
 from a club which you, Mr. Carew, belong to, in St. James's 
 Street. 
 
 '"Sir, — As an eye-witness of the recent disgraceful 
 riots, I must beg your permission to say a few words. 
 Letters have appeared in all the most influential journals 
 urging that the Government should at once prosecute the 
 ringleaders, in especial the notorious Foreman. At the 
 same time, it has been represented in other quarters that 
 such a prosecution would be futile and unadvisable, either 
 because Foreman and his associates were not really to 
 blame, or else because it would be impossible to bring their 
 guilt home to them. Whether these latter suggestions 
 emanate from those who fear or from those who sympathise 
 with the miscreants, I do not pretend to deride ; but I ask 
 you to give publicity to the following facts. I and five or 
 
 Z L'
 
 340 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 six other gentlemen of the most distinguished social posi- 
 tion are prepared to offer evidence so explicit and circum- 
 stantial that, were none else forthcoming, it alone would be 
 sufficient to convict Foreman of everything he has popularly 
 been charged with. The riot was practically his creation. 
 It is said to have been planned by him. As to that I 
 naturally know nothing, not being in the habit of associating 
 with agitators and revolutionists. But I do know that it 
 was deliberately led and deliberately directed by him. One 
 event — in itself sufficiently uninteresting — has become known 
 to the public : that he was turned out of a certain Univer- 
 sity Club which he belonged to owing to his having publicly 
 advocated the murder of a Cabinet Minister ; and this club 
 is opposite that from which I am writing. As the rioters 
 were advancing up St. James's Street, Foreman ordered a 
 halt directly in front of these windows. I watched the 
 event myself, and heard every word he uttered. I saw him 
 point to the club from which he had himself been ejected, 
 and with violent gesticulations, and expressions of the 
 wildest hatred, urged the attack on it which almost imme- 
 diately followed. We, who are connected with no political 
 party, and whose only sin is the name of being dandies and 
 fashionable exclusives, were meanwhile allowed the benefit 
 of our obscurity. By accident, however, Foreman caught 
 sight of a group of us, whom it is not impossible he knew 
 well by appearance, as three of us were personages of the 
 very highest rank and distinction ; and at once, with an 
 almost maniacal fury, he began to direct the attention of 
 his followers to us, signalling out my unworthy self in par- 
 ticular, and calling for eggs and other disgusting missiles. 
 We had done nothing to irritate the mob — nothing even 
 to attract their attention. If we had not been signalled 
 out by the knowledge and malice of this one man as repre- 
 sentatives of the aristocratic classes, we should not have 
 been so much as noticed. I may also add that the atten- 
 tion and ferocity of the mob could not possibly have been 
 directed towards us so rapidly had Foreman not had about
 
 chap. ii. ON THE BRINK OF JORDAN 341 
 
 him a large and trained contingent from his League of 
 Social Democrats, which embraces, in all probability, some 
 of the most notorious thieves in London. Only let the 
 Government have courage to bring this miscreant to his 
 trial, and I can promise for myself and for my friends that 
 the case for the Crown shall not fail for lack of conclusive 
 and circumstantial evidence. I have the honour to remain, 
 
 sir, your obedient servant, . ; ' Then,' said Mrs. Harley, 
 
 ' follows his name, and after that comes a postscript : — 
 
 '"P.S. — It only remains for me to add that I shall be 
 much astonished if this infamous League be not pronounced 
 to be an illegal society ; and also that the man Foreman, if 
 he be not found to merit penal servitude, will onlv escape 
 that from being found more fit for an asylum. Little as 
 one is in the way of hearing anything about the private lives 
 of such people, reports are afloat that he is well known by 
 his friends to be subject in private matters to the most 
 extraordinary hallucinations." 
 
 'Now who should you think,' said Mrs. Harley, 'is the 
 author of that letter? It is none other than our good 
 friend Mr. Inigo — "Your obedient servant, Geoffry Inigo."' 
 
 ' I knew it ! ' said Carew with a laugh of real amuse- 
 ment ; and then as the laugh died his look of sadness 
 returned to him. 
 
 'Wait a bit,' said Mrs. Harley. 'That is not all. We 
 have not yet come to the part that concerns yourself 
 
 'Concerns me !' said Carew. 'What has all this to do 
 with me ? ' 
 
 'Listen,' said Mrs. Harley, 'and you will very soon see. 
 I have read you one letter ; I will now read you another.' 
 
 Carew looked, and saw that she now had in her hand a 
 second newspaper, of a different appearance from the first, 
 which he recognised in another moment as the organ of 
 sensational Radicalism. 
 
 'This,' said Mrs. Harley, 'is addressed to the Pall Mall 
 Gazette. Listen to it. 
 
 '"Sir, — A letter has appeared lately in the columns of
 
 342 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 the Morning Post, from a certain Mr. Geoffry Inigo, con- 
 taining a series of false and libellous statements respecting 
 my conduct during the recent regrettable disturbances. I 
 wrote a letter in reply to it to the same journal, which the 
 editor — with what fairness I leave you to judge — has flatly 
 declined to publish. I must beg you, sir, therefore, as a 
 matter of common justice, to give publicity to the following 
 plain statements, for the truth of which I am not only pre- 
 pared to vouch, but absolute proofs of which I am enclosing 
 herewith to you. 
 
 ' " The value of Mr. Inigo's testimony in general may be 
 estimated by what I have to say about it with regard to the 
 two following points. 
 
 ' " In the first place, he gives us to understand that 
 he is a representative of the aristocracy and the world of 
 fashion. As to the world of fashion I will not presume 
 to speak. It is impossible to say what may not fitly re- 
 present it. But as to his claims to aristocracy, beyond the 
 fact that he was standing with some Lords and Honourables 
 in a window, his only claims are these. His father was a 
 grocer, in a small way of business in Shrewsbury, and his 
 mother had been cook-housekeeper to a rich attorney in 
 the neighbourhood. Her maiden name was Jane Jennings, 
 and she died in the August of 1868. 
 
 ' " In the second place, he calls the League of Social 
 Democrats an infamous society, and declares that the law 
 could not hesitate to pronounce it illegal. It may surprise 
 the public to learn — but it is nevertheless quite true — that 
 this same Mr. Inigo has been for the past ten years the 
 largest and most constant of our contributors to the funds 
 of that very society. If he is inclined to deny this, copies 
 of his cheques can be produced in evidence. 
 
 ' " I can easily imagine that as to this point at least your 
 readers may incline to be sceptical. But the following facts 
 will make what I have said intelligible. 
 
 ' " This so-called Mr. Inigo is not Mr. Inigo at all. 
 Inigo is, indeed, one of his Christian names, but his real
 
 chap. ii. ON THE BRINK OF JORDAN 343 
 
 surname is Foreman. He is, in fact, my own half-brother 
 — the child of my father by his first wife. 
 
 ' "The one thing he dreaded most in the world was any 
 exposure of his parentage ; and having quarrelled with me 
 for my indifference to fashionable ambition, he subsequently 
 began to suspect that I should claim him as a relative, and 
 so bring disgrace upon him. This idea was entirely his 
 own. It had never entered into my head. But some ten 
 years ago he came to me of his own accord, and told me 
 that, my opinions being so and so, and my conduct being 
 so and so, it would be a serious disadvantage to him were 
 his relationship to me known ; and he asked me on what 
 terms I would consent to keep it secret. I at once saw my 
 way to a good thing, and told him that I would hold my 
 peace on condition of his subscribing two hundred pounds 
 annually to the League of Social Democrats. His sub- 
 scription, which till now has been paid punctually, was due 
 this day a week ago — the day after the riots — riots which I 
 regret as much as any man, and in which he himself was 
 a slight and accidental sufferer. But no subscription was 
 forthcoming. I wrote to him, and reminded him of the 
 matter, at the same time assuring him that the ill-usage 
 he had received was not designed for a moment to do him 
 serious injury, and expressed neither hatred nor anger on 
 the part of the mob, but simply a supreme and almost 
 good-humoured contempt. Still I received no answer ; but 
 instead of an answer to myself, I saw in the Morning Post 
 the libellous letter which has prompted me now to address 
 you, hoping that the public will gather from our only cir- 
 cumstantial accuser what is really the trustworthiness of the 
 accusation. ' " I am, sir, yours faithfully, 
 
 '"Josiah Foreman. 
 
 ' " Office of the League of Social Democrats, 
 Palace Chambers, Westminster." 
 
 'There!' exclaimed Mrs. Harley, 'and what do you 
 think of that? Do you see now how the correspondence 
 affects you ? Mr. Inigo imagined that you had somehow
 
 344 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 divined his secret, and was terribly afraid that you would 
 whisper it to some of your friends. Do you recollect the 
 night at Nice when he came in after dinner, and you 
 by accident mentioned Foreman's name to him? Did 
 you see the look he gave you, and the odd change that 
 came over his manner? At the time we none of us could 
 make out what it meant.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Carew, ' I recollect it well. God bless my 
 soul ! this is really too ridiculous. Don't speak to me for 
 a moment. Let me lean back quietly and be amused at it. 
 My dear Mrs. Harley,' he went on presently, 'it's worth 
 while to have suffered a little annoyance merely to have 
 arrived at so delightful an explanation of it. Of course — of 
 course, everything fits in like the parts of a child's puzzle. 
 If Inigo suspected what you say he suspected at Nice, 
 Foreman's presence at Courbon-Loubet must, of course, 
 have confirmed his suspicions.' 
 
 ' Of course,' said Mrs. Harley ; ' I know it all for a fact. 
 I've just had a letter from Foreman's wife, who tells me 
 about it. Poor woman — for her I am really sorry. She 
 fully believes that her husband will really be imprisoned, 
 and she knows — for it is quite true about his having a 
 touch of madness — that if he only is sentenced to solitary 
 confinement, he will, as Mr. Inigo insinuates, have to 
 march out of his cell into a madhouse. Foreman himself, 
 too, is in a state of most abject terror, as you can see by 
 that letter, which he would never have written if in his 
 senses — terror for his own safety, and rage against Mr. 
 Inigo. Mr. Inigo is the one person for whom I have no 
 manner of pity. Of course it's all very well for us to laugh 
 now ; but a man with that spiteful tongue might easily do 
 permanent mischief — and it's no thanks to him that in this 
 case he hasn't.' 
 
 These last words produced a curious change on Carew. 
 The laughter and animation which he had till now exhibited 
 suddenly left his face, and his former look of dejection came 
 over it like nightfall.
 
 chap. u. ON THE BRINK OF JORDAN 345 
 
 At length rousing himself, he said in a mechanical way, 
 ' And where are Lady Chislehurst and the others ? Have 
 they arrived yet at Baveno ? ' 
 
 'Lady Chislehurst,' said Mrs. Harley, 'arrived just 
 before I was starting — and with her a Catholic bishop and 
 two atheistic professors — one of them no less a person than 
 the great Mr. Humbert Spender. The Burtons are due 
 at two in the afternoon, and Lord Aiden an hour or two 
 later. I hope you fully realise that you have asked us all 
 to dinner to-night, and Lady Chislehurst begs me to tell 
 you to remember that this will constitute a second meeting 
 of your Society.' 
 
 ' My dear Carew,' Mr. Stanley here interposed, ' do 
 you know how time has been passing? I must be going 
 back to Baveno.' 
 
 Carew turned to him with a look of blank disappoint- 
 ment, and begged him to stay longer. Mr. Stanley, however, 
 said this was impossible ; and Mrs. Harley, who declared 
 herself to be equally pressed for time, said she would return 
 in the same boat with Mr. Stanley. 
 
 'Well,' said Carew, 'come as early as you can this 
 evening, that we may walk about and look at the place 
 before dinner. Stanley,' he added in a low tone to the 
 priest, 'you have not finished what you began to tell me.' 
 
 'Never mind,' said Mr. Stanley, 'you will hear all 
 about it to-night, or some time to-morrow at the farthest.' 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 UNABLE TO CROSS OVER. 
 
 Carew passed the rest of the day miserably, in dull 
 dejection varied by feverish excitement, till late in the 
 afternoon, when his guests duly made their appearance — 
 the three Burtons, the Harleys, .Mr. Stanley, Lord Aiden,
 
 346 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 and Lady Chislehurst. The meeting was to Carew a 
 surprise from its unmixed pleasantness. Lady Chislehurst 
 was more benignant than ever ; and as to the elder Miss 
 Burtons, their frank and half-childish laughter as he came 
 forward to meet them put him at his ease in a way which 
 he had never ventured to hope for. Not only did they 
 make him feel no new embarrassment, but he found 
 that the little thunderstorm which had now so happily spent 
 itself had cleared the air of anything that had formerly 
 marred their intercourse. 
 
 Nor did Miss Consuelo make matters much more 
 difficult for him. There was a little tremor in her manner 
 and a little blush when he first met her at the landing-place 
 and helped her out of the boat ; but whether or no she 
 was really fit for a convent, she had at any rate so much of 
 the knowledge and graceful dignity of the world, that if she 
 felt any awkwardness she was perfectly able to hide it, and 
 to do what so often only women of the world can do — give 
 her eyes and manner the easy frankness of her feelings. 
 
 The evening was clear and balmy ; the spirit of spring 
 breathed everywhere, and so long as the daylight lasted, 
 melting by luminous stages into transparent dimness, they 
 wandered about the garden, and through the great rooms of 
 the palazzo, examining and discussing whatever happened 
 to strike them, out-of-doors or within, from the landscape to 
 pictures and furniture, and promising themselves a clearer 
 view of all the beauties and curiosities to-morrow. 
 
 Just before dinner Mr. Stanley said to Carew, ' Don't 
 try this evening to turn the conversation to that particular 
 topic which we left unfinished this morning. Miss Consuelo 
 Burton would be only annoyed by your doing so. If she 
 has a fault, it is too keen a sense of the ridiculous ; and 
 she said to me, only the last time I talked to her, that she 
 dreaded nothing more than appearing like a woman with a 
 hobby — a female bagman who travelled with one idea — an 
 intellectual monkey who performed one particular trick. 
 To-morrow night, no doubt, we shall hear something of her
 
 chap. in. UNABLE TO CROSS OVER 347 
 
 — well, of her scheme, her plan, her notion — whatever we 
 like to call it ; indeed, you may trust Lady Chislehurst for 
 having it well ventilated. But to-night let us be less ambi- 
 tious. Let the conversation take its course.' 
 
 Carew yielded to this advice with the relief often 
 experienced in putting off what is serious ; and he did this 
 with all the more readiness on hearing Lady Chislehurst, 
 true to the character given of her, declare that next day 
 must be a regular reunion of their Society, and that, fresh 
 from Rome as they were, there would be no lack of things 
 to talk about. ' I wish,' she added, ' the Bishop would be 
 one of us : and Professor Spender, who is, I believe, the 
 most famous of living scientific philosophers — if we made 
 him an honorary member for an evening, who knows that it 
 might not prove to be a means of grace to him ? ' 
 
 This latter suggestion was not taken up by anybody, and 
 the conversation presently lapsed into a pleasant and care- 
 less babble, consisting mainly of an interchange of news 
 and impressions from Rome, from London, and Lake Garda, 
 with occasional illusions to the late riots at home, and the 
 ominous destitution that was spreading amongst the in- 
 dustrial classes. To-night, however, these last were allusions 
 only, and were little more than the shadow of the skeleton 
 at a feast, which was animated mainly by a spirit of expecta- 
 tion and rest. 
 
 When the diners had sat down there had still been 
 colour in the west — a luminous liquid saffron ; but when 
 they rose the face of nature was changed. The stars were 
 out, and the moon was about to rise. Something was said 
 by one of the company about returning, and Carew was 
 addressed on the subject of boats and boatmen. He, how- 
 ever, refused to listen to this. 
 
 'It is quite early yet,' he said. 'You can be in no 
 hurry to get back ; and if you won't feel cold — and you 
 won't, for the night is as warm as summer— I propose to 
 take you for a little row on the lake. I've arranged every- 
 thing, and I'm quite sure you will be enchanted.'
 
 348 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 The proposal was so pleasant that he had no need to 
 press it ; and all the party being well provided with wraps, 
 and the boat being commodious and comfortable, and well 
 manned with rowers, they felt, as they glided out into the 
 soft gloom, in no hurry to bring the expedition to an end. 
 Presently something occurred which made this opinion 
 grow on them. They had not gone more than a few 
 hundred yards from the island when they saw another boat 
 coming slowly towards them, like an object moving in a 
 dream. Suddenly there arose from it a tinkling sound of 
 music — of a guitar or mandolin struck by a practised hand ; 
 then there joined in some other stringed instruments, per- 
 forming a kind of prelude ; and at last came the melody of 
 a rich Italian voice, singing a song half reckless and half 
 tender, the burden of which, at the end of every verse, was 
 taken up by other voices in chorus. All the party exclaimed 
 with delight at this gliding and mysterious orchestra, which 
 now suffered them to approach near to it, and would then 
 elude them and float away into the distance, leaving its 
 music like a vanishing wake behind it. Carew was beset 
 with inquiries as to who the performers could be ; and at 
 first replied, laughing, that the lake was ' full of noises,' like 
 Prospero's Island. But he at last admitted that he had 
 planned the entertainment himself, and that the performers 
 were a small troupe — two of them Neapolitans — who 
 happened then to be in the neighbourhood. The music 
 passed from one tune to another with a fairy-like succession 
 of changes, seeming, as if by some magic, to be luring on 
 the boat that followed it ; and it kept ahead of them all 
 the way, till the clocks on shore were heard striking eleven, 
 and the party found themselves making for the lights of 
 Baveno. 
 
 All were loud in their thanks to Carew, and were 
 regretting that the expedition was so very nearly over, when 
 a cry of ' Listen ! ' from one or two of them again called 
 attention to the music. Carew, in particular, became sud- 
 denly silent, as if the sound had mesmerised him.
 
 chap. in. UNABLE TO CROSS OVER 349 
 
 ' That song ! ' exclaimed Lady Chislehurst. ' How well 
 I know it ! It is a hymn the Neapolitan fishermen sing to 
 Our Lady in the evening.' 
 
 Carew had recognised this fact already. It was the first 
 song he had heard Miss Capel sing. 
 
 The whole evening, till this last moment, had been of 
 unexpected, of almost bewildering pleasure to him. He 
 had neither had, nor tried to have, any intimate conversation 
 with Miss Consuelo Burton. He had been content to give 
 these hours to the natural healing of their friendship, 
 leaving what was more than friendship to assert itself 
 during the days that would follow. But he had been mean- 
 while observing, with admiring and minute observation, her 
 graces of manner and movement, and even the little niceties 
 of her dress and the arrangement of her hair. He had 
 been observing this, and connecting it mentally with his 
 knowledge of what solemn and serious things those eyes 
 could look upon which flashed so brightly under that dainty 
 fringe of hair, and how all the gravest hopes and sorrows of 
 life had agitated the breast which was hidden by that pretty 
 Parisian jacket. 
 
 But now this song, floating mysteriously across the 
 water, suddenly stirred thoughts alike in his heart and 
 conscience which for some time had been lying soundless 
 and tranquil, and made them move and murmur as a wind 
 makes fallen leaves. He said good-night to his friends 
 sadly and absently ; he arranged for their return to t he- 
 island next day, as if he hardly knew what words he was 
 uttering, and when he was rowed back alone in the now 
 silent boat he had the air of a man who had lost rather than 
 found a treasure. 
 
 'Coward that 1 was!' he exclaimed. 'Stanley might 
 have helped and advised me ; but I could not find courage 
 to tell him the only thing which in any serious way made 
 any advice necessary ! '
 
 350 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A PRISONER OF THE PAST. 
 
 The following morning he awoke with a dull sense of 
 apprehension ; and as soon as he had time to recollect the 
 cause of it he discovered it to be this. He wished to have 
 the whole of the day till the evening absolutely alone ; he 
 feared to be broken in upon by an early arrival of his 
 friends, and he could not remember in the least at what 
 hour he had said he would expect them. 
 
 Springing out of bed, he wrote a letter to Mrs. Harley, 
 and despatched it at once by boat, to say that important 
 business had unexpectedly called him away, and that he 
 would not be back to receive them till close upon five 
 o'clock. 
 
 ' Yes,' he murmured to himself as he sealed the envelope, 
 ' it is important, and it was utterly unexpected ! ' 
 
 The day was not far advanced before, acting under an 
 impulse very similar to that which at Courbon-Loubet had 
 driven him on his pilgrimage to St. Paul du Var, he was 
 gliding slowly towards a distant quarter of the lake, under 
 the congenial conduct of a dumb Italian boatman. 
 
 A jutting ridge of mountains shut him presently out of 
 sight of Baveno, and as soon as the glitter of the last white 
 house was invisible, with the air of a man who at length finds 
 himself in private he drew from his pocket a crumpled 
 sheet of paper. It was the letter which two nights ago he 
 had been pondering over during his solitary dinner. Again 
 he re-read it, lingering over every word. It ran thus : — 
 
 ' I wonder if you will think it wrong of me to write to 
 you as I am going to write. I wonder if you will think it 
 immodest, unwomanly. Some people like women better 
 for being like that ; I don't know if you do. I don't know 
 what you will think of me. I might almost say that 1 do 
 not care ; for when a person is in a position like mine, after
 
 chap. iv. A PRISONER OF THE PAST 35 I 
 
 all, what does anything matter ? Do you see what I have 
 come to ? Do you see what you have brought me to ? 
 
 ' But it is not you only ; and oh ! I do not mean to 
 reproach you. It is nothing new that you have done that 
 fills me with this mad longing to write to you. No ; it is 
 something else. It is this — how shall I put it ? 
 
 ' It is coming upon me — you know what I mean — 
 sooner than I expected. This suddenness is terrible ; and 
 till it came so near I don't think I could have realised — 
 indeed I am sure I did not — what it would be like. 
 
 ' He comes to-morrow ; and in ten days we are to be 
 married. To-morrow ! — and after that all my life will be 
 behind me. 
 
 ' I cannot, I will not — no, at least I will stop at that 
 — I will not write to you one word when he is here. It is 
 treachery, of course, to do so now, but it would be doubly 
 treacherous to do so then, when, the moment after I had 
 sent away all my thoughts to you, I should be obliged to 
 pretend that they were still in my eyes for him. A woman 
 may become bad ; but that kind of constant deceit and 
 falsehood — never ! — oh, not that ! 
 
 ' Perhaps it will bore you, hearing me tell you what I 
 feel for you. Men do get bored if a woman once admits 
 she is fond of them. But never mind ; I am a long way 
 off, and you can tear my letter up as soon as you have had 
 enough of it. But you ought to forgive me, for it is your- 
 self whom you have to thank for this — for all this I am 
 inflicting on you. You taught me to do what I am doing 
 now. Do you remember those verses you sent mc, in 
 which you said you 
 
 Would never wholly leave me, till betwixt 
 My life and yours there is the great gulf fixt ? 
 
 And till then I don't mean to do so. But, do not be 
 frightened when I say I will not leave you till then ; for 
 that " then " is to-morrow. 
 
 'Oh, once more — since it will be once more only— let
 
 352 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 me feel that my arms are about your neck — that I am 
 holding you — that I know that you are there, and that I am 
 telling you in your own ear, hiding my eyes against you as 
 I do so, how everything in me fit to be called love has been 
 yours, and is yours still, and how, when it may not belong 
 to you any longer, it will never belong to any one. 
 
 ' I don't believe that you understand this at all — no, no, 
 not one small bit. How should you ? This is the sort of 
 thing that a man never understands. It is simply the old 
 story. You will go away, and forget, and find some one 
 else. Your having known me will not alter your life in any 
 way ; but mine will never — no, never— be the same again. 
 You have shown me what happiness might be ; you have 
 taught me to know the taste of it ; and, as I cannot ever 
 have that happiness for my own, I shall never now be 
 content with what once perhaps might have contented me. 
 That is all. As I tell you, it is a very simple story ; and I 
 don't complain. 
 
 ' Complain ! I should think not. Oh, my — I don't 
 care to call you what I should like to call you — do not be 
 angry with me for writing to you like this, for it was you 
 who made me love you ; and do not pity me too much. 
 I do not mean to give way and be dismal. I suppose even, 
 though I say that I shall never be happy again, that in the 
 years to come I shall try to clutch at happiness, or what at 
 the moment seems like it ; and perhaps one day I may 
 succeed in forgetting you by making myself no longer fit to 
 remember you. But if I do that, I would sooner you never 
 heard of my having done so, and that you never thought 
 about me again. 
 
 ' Good-bye ! good-bye !- — how much that word means 
 now ! — and believe that though I shall never be yours at 
 all, the one wish of my heart is that it had been possible 
 for me to be 
 
 ' Yours always, 
 
 ' Violet.'
 
 chap. iv. A PRISONER OF THE TAST 353 
 
 To this was added a postscript on another piece of 
 paper, dated the following day : — 
 
 ' I had meant to have told you not to send me any 
 answer. But you may now. I have heard from him again 
 this morning. It is put off for another three whole weeks. 
 He is kept in Paris by business. A line from you, if you 
 will write to me, will be the one good thing this reprieve 
 can bring me. Except for that, it will be merely a pro- 
 longation of intense suspense and suffering.' 
 
 Carew had arrived at the Island, now a few days back, 
 full of hope and confidence. His future at last seemed to 
 be shaping itself in a way that promised to satisfy every 
 need and aspiration that had ever made him respect him- 
 self. But he had not been there for four-and-twenty hours 
 before this letter had reached him, having dogged his path 
 from England. The moment he read it it filled him with 
 a disquiet and perplexity for which when at Otterton he 
 had never bargained. Its chief effect was to stimulate not 
 so much his affection as his conscience. His relations 
 with Miss Capel were placed in a new light by it. He 
 had always believed she was in some measure attracted by 
 him : but his belief in this attraction, or rather the extent 
 to which he realised it, obeyed a law which is very far from 
 being singular. He understood her heart entirely by the 
 light of his own. It was only the glow of his own feeling 
 that rendered the signs of her feeling visible to him ; and 
 in proportion as his feelings grew sober about her, hers 
 about him — her feelings and her whole position — gradually 
 passed away out of the grasp of his imagination. The 
 result with him was a mental state much more common 
 than many people would like to acknowledge, in which the 
 only moral problem the disposal of his affections presented 
 to him was what would harmonise best with the needs of 
 his own best nature, not what he owed to the needs which 
 he possibly might have awakened in hers. 
 
 Accordingly, when he found, as he had found, that 
 another and not Miss Capel was the woman fittest to 
 
 A A
 
 354 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES bcok v. 
 
 complete and redeem his life, the one difficulty which he 
 realised as obstructing his path was simply what lingering 
 tenderness Miss Capel might still excite in himself. She 
 was not a claimant to be met, but a temptress to be set 
 aside. 
 
 Thus the above letter came like a moral shock to him, 
 and his conscience suddenly roused itself into a state of 
 abnormal activity, which might perhaps seem even greater 
 than such a stimulus could explain, unless account is taken 
 of his state of mind at the time. The letter reached him 
 just at the very crisis when, full of serious, high, and deter- 
 mined thoughts, he was preparing to offer himself to Miss 
 Consuelo Burton. To him, in such an offering, there was 
 something almost sacramental— over and above what con- 
 stitutes the ordinary sacramentality of marriage. He would, 
 if he married her, be not only offering his faithful com- 
 panionship to a sympathetic woman : he would be offering 
 her life and his to some great Cause as well. Here was a 
 sacrament and a sacrifice the very desire for which sprang 
 direct out of the highest needs of his nature : and the mere 
 act of contemplating it made his conscience sensitive — 
 sensitive to an almost morbid degree. For this reason Miss 
 Capel's letter touched him with a keenness that might have 
 been wanting otherwise : and he sorrowfully seemed to 
 himself like a double traitor— a traitor to her, and Miss 
 Consuelo Burton also. If he offered himself to the latter, 
 he would have to confess to her that his heart since their 
 parting had been possessed by another image. That indeed 
 might be forgiven him, and the offer of his heart be ac- 
 cepted, could his confession end there. But he would 
 have to confess also — for he felt now that candour was the 
 one virtue open to him — he would have to confess also 
 that in seeking Miss Consuelo Burton he was seeking his 
 own salvation at the price of another's ruin. He would 
 have to confess to her that, if he knelt with her at the altar, 
 hoping that, with her to guide him, he might find heaven 
 and happiness, the thought of another bride would neces-
 
 chap. iv. A PRISONER OF THE PAST 355 
 
 sarily come across him, to whom, partly through his con- 
 duct, the altar would mean nothing but despair. 
 
 Such were the thoughts, such were the feelings, which 
 he had made up his mind to confide to Mr. Stanley, and 
 which, when the time came, he had found himself unable 
 even to touch upon. Mrs. Harley's news about Mr. Inigo, 
 and the subsequent arrival of his other friends, had for the 
 time distracted him, and allowed him to forget his troubles ; 
 but the song so unexpectedly sung by his own musicians 
 on the lake had not only reawakened the voice of his im- 
 portunate conscience : it had once again vivified his own 
 longing for Miss Capel. This longing, it is true, was more 
 under control than formerly, and it did not efface for a 
 moment the image of Miss Consuelo Burton. But it filled 
 his being with painful and humiliating discord. It came 
 back to him like a distant smell of firwoods : it came back 
 to him like a voice from a lost Paradise : and though he 
 felt he should be able to master it if necessary, he fully 
 realised that it would cost him some effort to do so. 
 
 Such had been his condition last night ; such was his 
 condition now as he lay under the awnings at the stern of 
 his lazily moving boat which his dumb boatman was direct- 
 ing on a course he had already indicated. 
 
 All of a sudden he raised himself from a reclining po - 
 tion, and, sitting up, looked round him. He was not more 
 than a hundred yards from shore, and was slowly roundin^ 
 a headland covered with luxuriant gardens. The gardens 
 feathered down close to the water's edge, their dense foli.< 
 sprinkled with white laurel-blossom and buoyant flower- 
 tufts of the lilac-trees. Here and there peeped out an 
 angle of some glimmering villa, and the waves below w. 
 gleaming along a succession of granite landing-steps. Pre- 
 sently one villa of more pretension than the others became 
 visible, showing to the lake the whole of its unveiled 
 facade. A trim parterre was in front of it, ornamented 
 with statues and cool with a splashing fountain. Gay blinds 
 sheltered the open windows ; and at some of these could be 
 
 A A 2
 
 356 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 seen the flicker of a transparent curtain. The whole place 
 had somehow an air about it of wealth and refinement, 
 and struck the imagination as a bower of luxurious quiet. 
 
 Carew fixed his eye on it, lost in a reverie. He then 
 wrote in Italian, on the back of an envelope, the following 
 question, which he handed to his mute attendant : ' Who 
 lives now in the villa which was occupied two years ago by 
 the Comtesse de Saint Valery ? ' 
 
 The man, who was well accustomed to this means of 
 communication, replied that he did not know, as the present 
 occupant had arrived but a few days ago ; and he added a 
 sentence, whose meaning he emphasised by a gesture, to the 
 effect that they now were at the precise place where the 
 Comtesse had once saved the life of a drowning child. 
 
 To Carew this was no news. His mind had gone back 
 to the well-remembered scene already — to his first meeting 
 with that beautiful and unfortunate woman, half shallow in 
 her nature and half noble, made now reckless and now 
 selfish by passion. He seemed to see her again as clearly 
 as though she were really present, dripping with water as he 
 drew her into his own boat, and turning to him a face which 
 now had a new meaning for him : for in that remembered 
 face he now saw an image of Miss Capel, with all the charm 
 in it of which Miss Capel could never divest herself, and all 
 the daring frailty which Miss Capel might ever develop. 
 Little had he thought then how the acquaintance he was 
 making would prove one day the source of the worst of 
 his life's troubles. Silently, moodily, yet with a touch of 
 embittered pleasure, he brooded over the past, which the 
 place and the scene recalled to him ; and when he roused 
 himself and signed that he wished to be returning to the 
 Island, the hard facts of the present seemed harder and 
 more miserable than ever. His friends whom he was about 
 to welcome he would be welcoming under false pretences. 
 Taken as a group, they represented to his imagination a 
 paradise which he was about to enter, but to enter as an 
 alien only, and in which he never could have either part or lot.
 
 chap. v. A GUIDE THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 357 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A GUIDE THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 
 
 Carew's friends were at the Island before him, so he had 
 no time on arriving for making a moral toilette, but was 
 obliged as best he could to pull himself together at the 
 moment. Lady Chislehurst did much to make this opera- 
 tion easy, for the simple reason that she instantly made it 
 necessary. She was full of news of the most various and 
 interesting kinds. She had been sitting half the afternoon 
 with her bishop and her two atheistic philosophers ; and 
 she had herself been tendering much practical instruction 
 to the former, and hearing him in turn make argumen- 
 tative mincemeat of the latter. In addition to this, the 
 newspapers of the day were full of alarming accounts from 
 the United States and from Belgium. The late riots in 
 London had acted as a signal to the revolutionary labour 
 party all over the world. On the great American railways 
 the traffic had been totally suspended ; in Belgian towns 
 and villages factories had been burnt to ashes. Strikes, 
 with a threatening of armed rebellion in the background, 
 seemed to be everywhere spreading themselves with the 
 rapidity of some terrible conflagration. 
 
 His thoughts being hurried away by these practical 
 matters, Carew was able for the time to forget his private 
 perplexities, and he entered into the conversation with as 
 much interest as usual, till at last these impersonal subjects 
 took gradually a personal colouring. 
 
 'I can't say,' murmured Lord Aiden at dinner, 'that I 
 myself am at all a prey to panic' 
 
 1 But at any rate,' Mrs. Harley retorted, 'you must be a 
 prey to pity. These strikers and rioters may very likely be 
 mad, hut it is a kind of madness that is mainly produced 
 by misery.'
 
 358 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 ' No doubt,' said Lord Aiden, ' the present is a period 
 of distress. These economic diseases of the modern world 
 are very much what the plague was to>the Middle Ages, and 
 are as little to be cured by revolution or agitation.' 
 
 'No,' said Mrs. Harley, 'but their recurrence may 
 perhaps be prevented — just, Lord Aiden, as that of the 
 plague has been — by some gradual change in the social 
 condition of the people.' 
 
 'I doubt,' said Mr. Stanley, sadly, ' if it is good to be 
 too sanguine. It is true, as you say, that the plague has 
 ceased to visit us ; we have also protected ourselves more 
 or less against the ravages of smallpox. But are we pro- 
 tected against disease in general? Do we see our way 
 to dispensing with either doctors or hospitals ? To me, I 
 must say, it seems utterly visionary to expect a time when 
 economic distress shall be impossible ; and the true point 
 to which we should direct our endeavours is the care and 
 relief of sufferers rather than the extinction of suffering. 
 The highest thing for the practical man to aim at is the best 
 that is practicable, not the best that is imaginable. For 
 the politician, as the politician, there are no counsels of 
 perfection.' 
 
 ' Precisely,' exclaimed Lady Chislehurst. ' Now there's 
 a bit of wisdom — I wish, Mrs. Harley, you would realise 
 this fact — which is Catholic all over. The Catholic Church 
 indulges in no illusions. It produces saints, but it knows 
 that its chief work is with sinners, and will be so till the 
 end of the world comes.' 
 
 ' And we think,' said Mrs. Harley, ' I think, and Consuelo 
 thinks — that the way to get at the sinners is to get at the 
 outer circumstances that make half of the world's sins 
 inevitable. Consuelo, may I tell Lady Chislehurst what 
 you said to me this morning? I am sure you have the 
 courage of your opinions.' 
 
 The two elder Miss Burtons looked towards their sister 
 with an odd mixture of affectionate wonder and anxiety as 
 she quietly said, 'You may.'
 
 chap. v. A GUIDE THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 359 
 
 ' Well,' said Lady Chislehurst, gracious but inquisitorial, 
 ' what was it ? ' 
 
 ' It was this,' said Mrs. Harley — ' I don't know whether 
 it will shock you. She said that a home which a decent 
 man can respect has as much to do with holiness as have 
 all the Seven Sacraments.' 
 
 The elder Miss Burtons certainly did look shocked, but 
 as for Lady Chislehurst, to Mrs. Harley's surprise, she 
 showed no sign of displeasure except a momentary twitch of 
 her eyebrows, and replied, in a voice that had all her usual 
 sweetness, ' Had Consuelo said that some three or four 
 weeks ago, and before I knew, as I do now, what it is she 
 is thinking of, I should be sorry to hear that she had let 
 herself use such language. Even now I think that the 
 language itself is wrong, but as to her meaning it will do all 
 of us good to think of it. Come, Mr. Carew, I have some- 
 thing particular to say to you. Have you forgotten that we 
 here are not merely a dinner-party, but that we are members 
 of a certain Society? There are some things which perhaps 
 we can talk of better when we are out of the noise of knives 
 and forks and wine-glasses ; but if, by-and-by, we may sit 
 in the western portico and watch the remains of the sunset, 
 which I am quite sure must be lovely, I shall insist on our 
 taking up the discussion which we left unfinished on the 
 terrace at Courbon-Loubet.' 
 
 ' By all means,' said Carew ; ' I could wish for nothing 
 better.' 
 
 'Do you remember,' said Lady Chislehurst, 'how you 
 showed us your room, your books, and your labours on 
 Political Economy ? You contributed some ideas to us 
 there. We have brought some from Rome which we are 
 going to offer to you ; yes, and to you too, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Harley, for I think you have heard but little of these 5 . 
 
 With regard to the sunset Lady Chislehurst was per- 
 fectly right ; and though the stars were sparkling when the 
 party settled themselves in the portico, the heart of the 
 west was still alive with rose-colour.
 
 360 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 'Well,' exclaimed Harley, whilst the servants were going 
 round with coffee and Lord Aiden was lighting a cigarette, 
 his constant comforter, ' no doubt for us it is a very de- 
 lightful thing to look across lakes and gardens at purple 
 mountains and sunsets, and talk about the sorrows of men 
 who live in back-yards and alleys. It is delightful to dream 
 of the new duty which we owe them, and new ways of dis- 
 charging it. It's a delightful intellectual exercise, just as 
 Plato's "Republic" was. But after all, do we, any of us, 
 really think that we shall ever be led to any new discovery ? 
 As Mr. Stanley says, distress must always exist. Have 
 we anything better to oppose to it than our good old- 
 fashioned charity, or some improvement in the poor-laws ? ' 
 
 ' My dear Harley,' said Lord Aiden, softly through his 
 smoke-wreaths, ' the monastic orders of the Middle Ages 
 were a new discovery practically. The monasteries,' he 
 went on, turning to Mr. Stanley, ' offered a certain relief to 
 the sufferings of those who were oppressed by society ; and 
 you perhaps would say that men in the modern world 
 should aim at finding some substitute for the monasteries.' 
 
 ' I,' Mr. Stanley began, ' should go even farther than that 
 But the musical voice of Lady Chislehurst inter- 
 rupted him. 
 
 ' Mr. Carew,' she exclaimed, ' you must please listen to 
 this. If you will allow me to do the intellectual honours of 
 your house for you, I must tell everybody that the meeting 
 of our Society is begun. We are in the middle of it even 
 before we knew that it had opened. Listen, listen. This 
 is our contribution from Rome. Mr. Stanley,' she continued 
 as she settled her voluminous skirts, ' go on. We are 
 attending.' 
 
 Mr. Stanley emitted a little dry laugh. ' I was,' he said, 
 ' merely about to observe to Lord Aiden that though the 
 monasteries in the Middle Ages did much, we should aim 
 at doing relatively even more. My own belief is — and here 
 is an answer to Mr. Harley — that there is being developed 
 in us the consciousness of a new duty — I mean our spiritual
 
 chap. v. A GUIDE THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 36 1 
 
 duty to the material conditions of the poor, of which in past 
 ages we have been in invincible ignorance.' 
 
 ' It's all very well,' said Harley, ' for us to talk about 
 this new duty ; and I quite agree that the world is growing 
 to feel it. But have we any of us any ideas more practical 
 than those of Foreman as to the means, the machinery, by 
 which to put it in practice ? ' 
 
 ' I have one friend,' said Mr. Stanley, with a momentary 
 glance towards Miss Consuelo Burton, ' who has a very 
 definite idea indeed.' 
 
 'Hush,' said Lady Chislehurst. 'Attend, Consuelo, 
 tell Mrs. Harley — for you have not told her yet — what 
 your thoughts are on the subject. You need not be 
 shy, for they have been spoken of to the Holy Father ; 
 and they will help to show Mrs. Harley what Catholics 
 really are.' 
 
 Carew watched the girl as closely as the dusk permitted 
 him. He saw her impatiently turn her head aside ; he saw 
 her for a moment bite her lip with annoyance ; and then, 
 in a voice half constrained and half mischievous, ' My 
 thoughts,' she said, 'as a Catholic, Lady Chislehurst, are 
 these. Men who are housed like pigs can hardly pray 
 like Christians : and where life is a long flight from 
 starvation, it is not a flight that takes the fugitives 
 towards heaven.' 
 
 ' Perhaps,' said Mr. Stanley, at once coming to her 
 assistance, ' Miss Consuelo Burton will let me speak instead 
 of her, and explain the idea— it is a very suggestive one — 
 that came into her mind after her visit at Courbon-Loubet. 
 Suppose, then — Mrs. Harley, here is the point that appeals 
 to you — suppose we take these men who are housed like 
 pigs. The increasing masses of them, clustering in hu,u r e 
 cities, are the special phenomenon and problem of the 
 modern world, and the Church is interested in them just as 
 much as the State. Of course, for these people spiritually 
 there is hope in the uncovenanted mercy ; but our business 
 as Catholics and as practical men is not to trust to the
 
 362 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 uncovenanted mercy, but to extend the kingdom of the 
 covenanted.' 
 
 ' Hear, hear ! ' exclaimed Mrs. Harley, softly. 
 
 ' This is the idea,' Mr. Stanley went on, ' which, not to 
 mention myself, has impressed itself most strongly on the 
 mind of Miss Consuelo Burton. She feels that sanitary and 
 social work, carried out on some wide and organised plan, 
 is a necessary part of modern religious propagandism ; and 
 in case any one should think such sentiments un-Catholic, I 
 may mention that I have expressed them myself in language 
 quite as emphatic in a short discourse which I submitted 
 lately to the Pope, and which will very shortly, I hope, be 
 published with his sanction.' 
 
 ' Indeed ! ' said Lord Aiden. ' I shall read that with 
 interest. But let us by all means hear what the ideas of 
 our young friend here are.' And he laid his hand on the 
 back of Miss Consuelo's chair, as if entrusting the wood to 
 transmit the action to her shoulder. 
 
 ' Well,' said Mr. Stanley, ' the idea is simply this — and 
 at first sight it will not strike you, perhaps, as so novel as it 
 really is. You have spoken, Lord Aiden, of the monastic 
 system already. The idea I am about to explain is a modi- 
 fication of that system. You all recollect, no doubt, a little 
 economic argument which I had at Courbon-Loubet with 
 that worthy man Mr. Foreman ? ' 
 
 'Yes,' said Mrs. Harley, 'perfectly — every word of it.' 
 
 'You recollect, then,' said Mr. Stanley, 'what I told 
 him his error was? I told him that the minority, who, he 
 said, were thieves and marauders — I mean the men who 
 direct and organise industry — I told him that these men 
 seized on the growing wealth which they possess for the 
 plain reason that virtually they created it ; and further, that 
 they only created it for the sake of themselves possessing it. 
 The desire to possess it, I urged on him, was a natural 
 appetite, having the same relation to production that hunger 
 has to cooking ; and to expect that the talent and astonish- 
 ing mental activity which on the part of the minority has
 
 chap. v. A GUIDE THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN ^G^ 
 
 produced our modern wealth — to expect that this activity 
 will still continue to be developed when its normal stimulus 
 is wholly taken away from it, is to expect of the minority an 
 act of supernatural virtue as unfit for the world at large as 
 the rule of the Trappist cloister. Perhaps you recollect my 
 having said that to Foreman ? ' 
 
 Several voices murmured 'Yes,' and Mr. Stanley con- 
 tinued : — 
 
 ' I put my criticisms in that way without premeditation ; 
 but it at once struck Miss Consuelo Burton. It was merely 
 a seed dropped by the wayside ; but in her mind it has 
 flowered into this suggestion. The monastic rule, she 
 argues, is not fit for every one, but it is fit for some, and 
 these the most devoted of mankind. Why, then, should 
 not the old monastic renunciation of riches be revived in 
 the modern world, under the form of a renunciation of 
 profits? If all the directors of industry, the inventors, the 
 sharp men, the men of energy and enterprise, through 
 whose means industry grows in productiveness, would still 
 exert themselves to maintain and increase production, and 
 at the same time forego their claim to the increased pro- 
 ducts, then, she says — and she is perfectly, she is obviously, 
 right — the Socialistic problem would be solved. But, as 
 we said just now, to forego these natural claims would be 
 nothing less than a special monastic virtue of precisely the 
 same character as poverty and celibacy. It is not to be 
 thought of for all ; but, she asks, may it not well be thought 
 of for some ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Lady Chislehurst, in a reverie of approba- 
 tion, casting her eyes down on a small silver crucifix 'y< 
 the point is there.' 
 
 ' I )o you mean,' interposed Hark v, 'that some — what 
 shall we say — some railway company should every quarter 
 pay its dividends into the poor-box? I'm not laughing 
 I'm merely trying to get at the idea.' 
 
 'No,' said Mr. Stanley, 'the idea is not that. What lias 
 presented itself to the mind of Miss Consu
 
 364 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 a vision of some new industrial order, or orders, under 
 which the monastic vow of poverty might be applied to 
 our modern factory system. Her notion, in fact, of a 
 monastery or a convent is a modern factory where the 
 hands should be monks or nuns ; where the spire should 
 rise side by side with the chimney ; and the quiet cloister 
 should refresh the mind after the rattle of wheels, and 
 looms, and belts.' 
 
 ' That,' said Lord Aiden, in a tone of poetic apprecia- 
 tion, ' makes a really beautiful picture. And when are we 
 to look forward to seeing Miss Consuelo Burton an abbess ? 
 But, tell me,' he added, relapsing to the levels of prose, 
 ' how would such an establishment differ from any other co- 
 operative enterprise based on the principle of profit-sharing?' 
 
 'Ah,' said Mr. Stanley, 'that is what I am coming to. 
 The profits, of course, instead of going to the capitalists, 
 the manager, and the specially gifted few, would be the 
 property of the whole body. They would not, however, be 
 divided amongst the workers, and thus take the form of 
 increased wages. That result would stultify the whole 
 scheme. The whole monastic body would live in voluntary 
 poverty — on lower wages, rather than on higher wages, than 
 the average worker outside ; and all their profits would be set 
 by as a fund to relieve distress, especially such as is caused 
 by commercial crises. In that way the Catholic religion 
 and system would be brought into practical contact with 
 the modern industrial world, and would become a visible 
 part of it. The idea is one — at least I find it so — which 
 becomes more suggestive the more one thinks of it.' 
 
 Silence reigned for some moments when Mr. Stanley 
 ceased speaking. At last Mrs. Harley whispered, ' Yes, the 
 idea is beautiful.' And then, with an abruptness which 
 made them all start, Carew, as if continuing some train of 
 unspoken thought, said, ' Charity is far from being their 
 only work. It is not even the chief. Their chief work 
 will be their living example. By the stern simplicity and 
 yet perfect content of their lives, by the decency of their
 
 chap. t. A GUIDE THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 365 
 
 habits despite their utter poverty, they will form a moral 
 leaven amongst the labouring classes at large, and do more 
 than anything I ever had thought imaginable to give 
 an ideal dignity to our modern factory-labour. Fancy,' he 
 went on. 'over the gate into the factory-yard, if we saw a 
 crucifix placed there with real meaning ! And this too— 
 think of this. Here and there some man of high position 
 has renounced his place in the world and adopted the life 
 of a labourer. In the present condition of things such 
 conduct is useless and fantastic ; it is very much like mad- 
 ness. But there would be nothing fantastic in it if labour 
 became conventual.' 
 
 He ceased as abruptly as he began, and his eyes were 
 turned in the gloom towards the glimmer of Miss Consuelo's 
 dress. 
 
 ' Well,' said Mr. Stanley, in his most practical and 
 incisive accents, 'you have heard the idea that Lady Chisle- 
 hurst promised you. I don't know that to-night we can do 
 much towards making it clearer.' 
 
 'Anyhow,' said Mrs. Harley, 'you have given us much 
 to think of.' 
 
 'And I,' said Carew to himself when his friends had 
 once more left him — ' I might join my life to the life of 
 a woman with thoughts like these, if I had not bound 
 myself by an idle debt to another, from which she — my 
 better angel— would despise me if I released myself 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 AN ARBITRESS. 
 
 ih: passed the night in restless and almost irritated per- 
 plexity. The irritation, however, was a hopeful and healthy 
 sign, for he was next morning in a more vigorous mood, 
 even if not in a happier one. He resolved in a practical 
 way, like a man beset by creditors, to cast up his moral
 
 366 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 accounts, and examine instead of contemplating his situa- 
 tion. 
 
 How did he stand with regard to Miss Capel ? That 
 was the great question which he must carefully reconsider. 
 He tried to do this, and indeed he did do it, impartially ; 
 and here is the story which for his own benefit he told 
 himself. 
 
 The moment he was free from the spell of the girl's 
 presence, the void left by her absence was suddenly filled 
 to overflowing by a throng of practical interests and entirely 
 alien feelings. On this, his old desire for her, if it did not 
 actually die, became as faint as the moon's disc in daylight, 
 and the evanescence of his attachment for her had paralysed 
 his power of imagining her attachment to him. 
 
 Then he went on to reflect as follows. His forgetful- 
 ness of her was not wholly his own fault. She had in many 
 ways laid the foundations of it herself. Never for a moment 
 had she seemed to consider the bare possibility of her 
 freeing herself from her existing engagement. If at times 
 she had yielded tenderly to her inclination for him she 
 recovered herself with ease, and very often with flippancy ; 
 and if he had occasionally wondered since he had left her 
 whether she might not be really unhappy at the loss of him, 
 he had checked the thought as the child of his own vanity. 
 
 At last, late in the day, utterly unexpected, her letter 
 had fallen on him like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, or 
 rather it had been like a dagger stuck suddenly in his heart. 
 After all, he discovered that this girl had felt for him, not 
 only as much as she had seemed to feel, but more ; and 
 when she had seemed to forget those feelings, it turned 
 out that she was only fighting against them. She had been 
 fighting to save herself — fighting helplessly and piteously. 
 And he, he alone, had to answer for all this. He appeared 
 to himself like a man who had been torturing a child for 
 his amusement. In his own eyes he was utterly degraded 
 and humiliated. 
 
 Yielding to an impulse that was at first but a selfish
 
 chaf. vi. AN ARBITRESS 367 
 
 longing for distraction, he had sought her society as a kind 
 of mental dram-drinking, and had gradually done his utmost 
 to evoke in her a passion for himself. He dwelt on the 
 phrases he now remembered he had used to her — 'life of 
 my life,' ' soul of my soul,' and so forth. And in the light 
 of the self-knowledge that now too late had come to him, 
 he wondered blankly and bitterly at what could have then 
 possessed him. He saw that, all the while he had been 
 allowing this licence to his emotions, he had been doing so 
 comfortably, with the thought at the back of his mind that 
 they would vanish, if necessary, almost as easily as they 
 arose ; and he had idly said to himself that the same would 
 hold good with her. And now his position was like that of 
 the Witch of Endor. A spirit of love had indeed arisen 
 in her, but it was a spirit of a different order from the one 
 he had meant to summon. It was a spirit that refused to 
 vanish. It would not even retreat. It stood before him, 
 and overawed him with the sound of its voice, but what 
 was the voice saving? 
 
 Here came the hard, the practical, the immediate point 
 which he had to face and decide upon. Was the voice 
 simply upbraiding him, with a resigned and hopeless des- 
 pondency ? Or was it urging him, was it imploring him at 
 once to do something ? Something .' Why not call it by 
 its right name ? Was it urging him, before it was too late, 
 to fly to her rescue, and offer his hand and life to her, and 
 save the soul whose whole future he had endangered? 
 Could this really be so? Could that pleasant past, that 
 dream of flowers and poetry, thus rise against him and 
 demand from him this sacrifice? 
 
 Again and again he put the question to his conscience, 
 and his conscience seemed to him not like a single coun- 
 cillor, but rather like a cabinet of opposing scruples and 
 excuses which were not able to come to any decision. On 
 one hand it was urged that he was too late already, and 
 that even if he offered himself Miss Capel would not a< < ept 
 him ; on the other, that he ought at least to allow her to
 
 368 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book y. 
 
 have the chance ; and again, that he also should think of 
 the utter and hopeless shipwreck which he would if he 
 married her be making of his practical life. He was deter- 
 mined, however, to force himself to some resolution ; and 
 going to a drawer where Miss Capel's last letter was de- 
 posited, he again referred to the date on which it was 
 written, and compared this with the interval which then, 
 she said, separated her from her marriage. 
 
 The letter now was at least ten days old. Her marriage 
 when she wrote would take place in three weeks' time. 
 There were accordingly eleven days before him, in which 
 he might give her the opportunity of saving herself from 
 certain misery. She was still at Cannes ; and in four-and- 
 twenty hours a letter could reach her, or even he himself. 
 There at any rate was something settled and certain. 
 Should he decide on making, or rather on risking, the 
 sacrifice, he had ample time to do so. He had no excuse 
 on that score. But what then of his conduct to Miss Con- 
 suelo Burton ? His conversation with Mr. Stanley about 
 her came back to his mind, and he asked his conscience if 
 she also had no claim on him, and if of the two claims hers 
 were not the older. 
 
 At last he came to a fixed resolve on one point. He 
 would do something, which though it might prove painful 
 he would do at once, and do bravely and thoroughly. He 
 would seek counsel of Miss Consuelo Burton herself. He 
 would confess everything — the whole of his heart — to her ; 
 he would place his life, his whole future, in her hands ; and 
 she should at least choose his road for him, even if she 
 could not travel it by his side. 
 
 He had settled this with himself not a moment too 
 soon, for his friends were to come to him for the midday 
 breakfast, and, as it happened, they arrived a little before 
 their time. 
 
 Carew's heart began to sink within him ; but during 
 the meal he received a little unintended encouragement. 
 The conversation at first had been but semi-serious ; several
 
 chap. vi. AN ARBITRESS 369 
 
 allusions, however, had been made to the topic of the pre- 
 vious evening ; and at last Mrs. Harley, in a spirit of 
 friendly banter, said to him, ' Well, and on what do your 
 hopes rest now ? Who is going to save us from ruin and 
 revolution — the new monastic orders, or the old landed 
 families? ' 
 
 ' Both,' said Carew, laughing, though his manner was 
 somewhat absent. 'Yes,' he went on, suddenly becoming 
 animated, 'let the new monastic orders do all that we could 
 dream of their doing — and I for one can dream of their 
 doing much — I still hold that if the world is to recover its 
 health again, if there is to be any increase of happiness 
 amongst the bulk of the labouring classes — the classes 
 whose content is the corner-stone of civilisation, another 
 thing must revive besides the monastic orders ; there must 
 be a revival of class feeling.' 
 
 ' Surely,' said Harley, laughing, ' we've plenty of that 
 already.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Carew, ' of class envy and of class fear, we 
 have. Every one is either in terror of losing his position, 
 or else angry and sullen at not being able to escape from 
 it. The class feeling I mean is a feeling possible only 
 when classes are acquiesced in as stable and natural institu- 
 tions, and movement from one to the other is looked upon 
 as only exceptional. For instance, I say this : the healthy 
 ambition of the average country labourer should consist 
 in a desire not to escape from his cottage, but to adorn 
 his cottage with security, content, and affection. His t 
 should seek the faces of those around him, not the coat- 
 tails of those who arc just above him. And as to the 
 aristocracy, their whole life should be guided by a sense of 
 duty to the great multitude that is connected with them by 
 the difference of its lot, not by the sameness of it. It is 
 very possible that I am only a dreamer, but still I cannot 
 help indulging the dream, that the obligation of acknow- 
 ledged position, that high-breeding, and even family pride, 
 have a mission still in the world, if we only can find it out.' 
 
 B I;
 
 370 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 ' My dear Carew,' said Mr. Stanley, putting his hand 
 on Carew's arm, ' feeling as you feel about these gifts and 
 qualities, I should venture to say that in your case they had 
 a mission already.' 
 
 Carew rose from the table thinking, ' If this be so, can 
 it really be that I am bound to renounce my talents? ' 
 
 It was now not long before the moment came for which 
 he had been longing, though at the same time he was 
 dreading it. The party soon, in a somewhat desultory way, 
 proceeded to spread themselves over the villa and the 
 gardens, and without having designed the situation, almost 
 before he had even realised it, he found himself on a ter- 
 race alone with Miss Consuelo Burton. 
 
 He felt that now or never the bold plunge must be 
 made : so, beating about the bush as little as possible, he 
 paused in his walk, and, leaning against the marble balus- 
 trade, gravely raised his eyes to her, and began in this 
 way. 
 
 ' Do you remember,' he said, ' our conversations at 
 Courbon-Loubet ? ' 
 
 She too paused. She looked him in the face for a 
 moment, and then said simply, ' Yes, I have not forgotten 
 them. Do you think that either of us is any nearer the 
 truth since then ?' 
 
 'You are,' he said. ' Tell me, do you remember this? 
 You said that in your search for truth you would let me be 
 your helper — that is, if you needed help from any one.' 
 
 'Did I?' she said. ' How long ago was that? Some 
 weeks — -I don't think more ; but during that time I have 
 become years older.' Then changing her tone, and with a 
 resolute frankness looking at him, ' Yes,' she went on, ' I 
 remember quite well, and I was told directly afterwards 
 that you wanted to help nobody — I mean not in that 
 way.' 
 
 ' Do you believe that now ? ' 
 
 She merely shook her head. 
 
 'And yet,' said Carew, 'it is true; but not in the way
 
 chap. vi. AN ARBITRESS 371 
 
 you thought it was. I should no longer dare to say that I 
 wanted to help you, for with far more fitness I should ask 
 you to help me. May I,' he went on, seeing that she 
 said nothing, and his voice as he spoke sank and became 
 tremulous — 'may I ask you a few questions?' 
 
 ' Go on,' she said, ' ask them.' 
 
 ' Tell me this, then,' said Carew, ' for I trust your judg- 
 ment. You heard what Mr. Stanley said to me about my 
 mission in life. Do you think it true ? Do you think that 
 it must be really a man's highest duty to consecrate any 
 powers, any external advantages he may be born with, to 
 the service of those who are working and suffering round 
 him? Do you think that our first debt is due to those 
 rather than to any private creditor's on one's conduct, 
 whose claims, perhaps, one may be unable to satisfy with- 
 out becoming a bankrupt as to all the others ? ' 
 
 'I think,' she said, 'you must be making some special 
 allusion, but I do not know to what. I can only answer 
 you generally, and tell you my own feelings. Duties like 
 those you speak of, so it seems to me, differ in proportion 
 to our own powers of seeing them. Some of them, or some 
 forms of them, arc more or less like ghosts : they appear 
 to some eyes only ; and those that don't see them of course 
 have no call to follow them. But when once one of these 
 ghosts has appeared to any one, that person is never the same 
 afterwards. One must try to follow it even though it "lead 
 one to the cliff" like Hamlet's father, or else one's whole 
 life long one will feel one has made " the great refusal." 
 I never asked or prayed to see my ghost ; I never went 
 out of my way to think about the poor or about the people ; 
 but I seem to have absorbed like a sponge all 1 have heard 
 about their lives, or read about them in the newspapers, or 
 seen by chance in the streets or other places. I remember 
 our housekeeper once telling me that cocoa would take the 
 taste of any groceries it was standing near. My thoughts, in 
 the same way, are full of the taste of poverty. I don't try 
 to keep it there, but I can't get rid of it.' 
 
 B B 2
 
 3/2 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 ' I,' said Carew, ' like you, have seen the duty you speak 
 of. The same ghost has appeared to both of us. Do you 
 think, then, using your conscience as mine, that no con- 
 sideration for the mere personal feelings either of myself or 
 of those near me should induce me to surrender my powers 
 of doing this duty effectually ?' 
 
 She looked at him with an air of perplexity. ' I can 
 only tell,' she said, ' what I feel in the matter myself. 
 Perhaps the time may come when I shall be called on to 
 say good-bye, not merely to luxury, but to the pleasure of 
 books, of poetry, of music — all those refinements with which 
 it is generally thought a duty to pamper oneself ; and I 
 suppose in that case I should be called on to starve one 
 whole side of my nature. Perhaps, should the time ever 
 come, I shall be unequal to the sacrifice ; but if it is a 
 question of what I ought to do, I feel that for the duty we 
 speak of I ought to renounce everything — the pleasure of 
 self-culture, the pleasure of pleasing those nearest to me.' 
 
 ' Is it true,' said Carew after a pause, ' that you think 
 of a conventual life for yourself, or at least of keeping your- 
 self for such a life at some future time ? ' 
 
 She smiled faintly and pensively, and turned her head 
 away from him. 
 
 ' I don't know,' she said, ' if I am fitted for such a life. 
 I am very worldly in some ways. I hate an ugly hat, or 
 ugly gloves or boots. Though I didn't acknowledge it at 
 Courbon-Loubet, I have almost as much prejudice about 
 birth and family as you have. I am fastidious about 
 people's manners, and I easily think them common. Oh, 
 and there are other things — perhaps I have no vocation.' 
 
 She stopped short suddenly. Carew started and looked 
 at her. Her head was averted, but he could see that her 
 cheek was crimson, and her breast was lifted with a slow 
 and suppressed breathing. 
 
 For a moment his voice failed him. He had his heart 
 in his mouth, and a throng of words, like the forlorn hope 
 of an army, seemed to pause, arrested and tremulous, before
 
 chap. vi. AN ARBITRESS T>73 
 
 they broke forth in passion. This instinctive hesitation 
 gave him time to collect himself, and when he spoke it was 
 with a constrained calmness. 
 
 ' Will you listen,' he said, ' to something I want to tell 
 you ? You must see from what I have said already that I 
 am thinking of serious things, and you must see from my 
 speaking about them to you that I look on you as a person 
 who can share, and is now consenting to share, the deepest 
 thoughts of which I am conscious : the thoughts, the feel- 
 ings — I don't know what to call them — which my soul will 
 live or die by. You will listen to me, won't you ?' 
 
 She bent her head as a sign for him to proceed. 
 
 'I am going,' he went on, 'to say two things to you ; 
 and do you say nothing — no word — in answer to the first 
 till you have heard the second. We have talked of duty — 
 we have talked of a special duty, which both to you and to 
 me too seems in these days the first duty of all, and alone 
 to give religion a body instead of leaving it merely a sigh. 
 But I know myself so well that I dread this. I am almost 
 certain of this — if left to myself, I shall not cease to think, 
 but I shall never begin to act. If, however, I could find 
 some one who could understand me and would help me— 
 who, by sharing my thoughts and impulses, would strengthen 
 them a thousand fold, and who would make me by her 
 presence incapable of any shameful thought then, indeed. 
 I might dare to hope that on my death-bed I should be 
 able to say to myself, " I have not lived in vain.'' Can you 
 imagine, to a soul like mine, any healing, any consolation 
 like this? Consuelo, your name is Consolation — you must 
 know that I speak of you.' 
 
 She had not moved. Her eyes had been still averted, 
 but he saw that the colour was still deep in her cheek, and 
 that she was biting her lip hard. At last, when he paused, 
 she turned to him for a single moment, and tears, helpless 
 and uninvited, were filling her dark eyes. 
 
 ' I have not finished,' he went on, 'and when you hear 
 what remains perhaps you will think that I should not have
 
 374 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book \. 
 
 said what I have said. And yet no ; I retract that. I 
 trust you so entirely that I am sure you will not misjudge 
 me. Perhaps when I tell you all I shall lose your respect 
 in one way ; but at least you will respect me for having 
 honestly told you. When you went away from Courbon- 
 Loubet — when you said good-bye to me as if I were hardly 
 fit to be spoken to — but I won't talk of that. You know 
 how it all happened.' 
 
 ' I know,' she whispered. 
 
 ' When you had gone,' he went on, ' I felt like some 
 criminal. I didn't know what I had done, but I felt as if I 
 must have forged, or committed some murder in my sleep. 
 I seemed to myself to be such an utter outcast that I was 
 grateful to the very dogs when they looked at me and put 
 their paws upon my knee. As to you, I was not angry 
 with you ; but it seemed to me as if, of your own free will, 
 you had taken yourself away to some hopeless distance 
 from me, and that I should never be able to see you or 
 come near you again. Well, it so happened that, in those 
 days of my desolation, I met with some people of whom I 
 had known something before, though only a little.' And 
 Carew gave a brief account of how he had met the Capels, 
 and of the way in which they had come to stay with him at 
 the chateau. 
 
 'The girl,' he continued, 'was very beautiful, and — will 
 you remember, please, that I am trying to tell the exact 
 truth to you, exactly as I should were this the Day of 
 Judgment ? As to my own conduct I am going to palliate 
 nothing. This girl, without any effort at first on my part, 
 seemed to sympathise and be pleased with me. If the very 
 dogs at that time touched me by their friendliness, you may 
 judge the effect on me of this beautiful girl's attention. 
 By-and-by I realised that I did more than please her, and 
 that I exercised over her a certain sort of attraction, which 
 she made at times a strong effort to resist. Her behaviour 
 in this way puzzled and piqued me ; the sense of her beauty 
 grew on me. Let me make no words. about it — I began to
 
 chap. vi. AN ARBITRESS 375 
 
 fall in love with her ; and more than that, I determined 
 that she should fall in love with me. As often as I was 
 aware of any resistance on her part I was impelled to do 
 recklessly all I could to overcome it. Little by little she 
 made me the helpless victim of as strong an attraction as 
 any I exercised over her. As for you, you seemed somehow 
 far away from me. I didn't forget you, but I saw you, as it 
 were, in another world through some semi-opaque barrier. 
 It is not very pleasant for me to have to tell you this, but 
 you must see me just as I am. I will have no secrets from 
 you. What do you think of a man with constancy such as 
 mine ? What could be the value of anything I could offer 
 you ? Are you not shocked — disgusted ? ' 
 
 ' Did I not tell you,' she said in a low steady voice, 
 'that during the past few weeks I have grown older by 
 years? I always understood some things more clearly than 
 some girls. The best constancy in man is a virtue ; the 
 best constancy in woman is an instinct. 1 do not judge 
 you as if I had lived only on romances. Go on — you were 
 in love with her.' 
 
 'I must,' said Carew, 'tell you in what way. Her influ- 
 ence on me was that of some drowsy spell. I might have 
 roused myself from it ; I ought to have done so : I can 
 only say that I did not. And yet all the while I knew in 
 my heart of hearts that I should wake up one day and find 
 that I had been loving in a dream. That an end of some 
 kind was bound very soon to come 1 knew for one excellent 
 reason. I found that the person I speak of was actually 
 engaged already, and so far as I could see, she never o 
 templated breaking off the engagement. From ibis 1 drew 
 a conclusion, which does not for a moment excuse me, but 
 with which I soothed my conscience. I concluded thai 
 she had the same sense as 1 had of being in an emotional 
 dreamland, and that she would wake up presently in just 
 the same way as I should. In this, however, 1 find I 
 have been mistaken. My sin has found me out with a 
 vengeam e. I have reason to believe that the feelings
 
 3/6 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 ■which I indulged myself by developing in her, are of a 
 more serious nature than I ever dreamed they could be. 
 Into this I don't think I need go particularly. I need only 
 say that if I leave her to the fate that awaits her I may 
 have to answer for having made her wretched, or worse 
 than wretched, a life that but for me and for my conduct 
 might have been happy. There are the facts. My con- 
 fession is over now. If you had not been what you are I 
 should never have dared tell you. I am not pleading my 
 cause, I am not defending myself. I know too well all 
 that can be said against me. If anything can be said for 
 me, your generosity will say it better than I can.' 
 
 There was a long pause, and it seemed to both that 
 they could hear their two hearts beating. 
 
 When, however, the painful silence was broken, and it 
 was broken first by Miss Consuelo Burton, her voice was 
 still as quiet and hushed as ever. 
 
 ' If you married her,' she said, ' if she left the other 
 man, whom I conclude she does not like, for you, should 
 you yourself be happy ? Are you fond of her enough for 
 that, or in that way?' 
 
 Whilst Carew had been speaking she had remained per- 
 fectly motionless, with no sign of feeling except that her 
 cheek had grown pale again, and her eyes, cast down, had 
 been fixed on one particular jasmine flower. ' Go on,' she 
 resumed. ' Answer me. I may be able by-and-by to 
 advise you.' 
 
 The phrase, chilly but kind, cut Carew to the heart. 
 She seemed already to be speaking to him from the hope- 
 less distance of a convent. 
 
 ' Listen,' he replied, ' and you shall have my whole con- 
 fession. You have asked me a question which refers to 
 myself simply — to my own lot, not that of another. I 
 seemed at the time, under the influence of the person we 
 speak of, to be entering, as it were, some terrestrial para- 
 dise where all life moved to some dreamy imploring music, 
 where the holiest flower of the soul was love for the sake of
 
 chap. vi. AN ARBITRESS 277 
 
 love. I do not mean love as opposed to duty, hut love 
 considered as the sum and measure of duty. Well, let me 
 tell you what in my sober waking moments I believe about 
 myself. I believe that life, unless I sank into an idle 
 dream again, could never for me, for my own soul, be 
 tolerable, if devoted merely to an affection for its own sake, 
 no matter how beautiful. Indeed, such an affection, unless 
 it mixed itself with my principles of action and sent its 
 pulses through all the veins of my being, of my thoughts, 
 of my intellect, of my most strenuous moral promptings, 
 would soon cease to be an affection at all, and would 
 become merely a burden. In the case of the person I speak 
 of I am certain that this would happen. The ideas of duty 
 and usefulness which, if I am really to live at all, must be 
 my life, are to her mind wholly incomprehensible. As Mr. 
 Stanley would say, she is in invincible ignorance of them.' 
 
 Carew paused, and then suddenly went on again. 
 'This,' he said, 'is owing to no fault of hers. She has 
 none of the ideas which animate you and me. She has 
 been born and brought up in a different world from ours ; 
 and these ideas are as strange to her as the Chinese 
 language. By birth and by education she is a foreigner. 
 Miss Burton, I must tell you one thing more. I had for- 
 gotten it till this moment, but I must tell it you, for per- 
 haps you will think that it helps to warp my judgment. 
 If I marry a foreigner the bulk of my fortune goes from 
 me. Were I not in the position I am I could easily bear 
 that ; but this loss of fortune would mean for me the entire 
 surrender of our old family property : it would mean the 
 handing over to others the care and interest of those whom 
 I else might benefit, the desertion of an order I would 
 willingly die defending, and the throwing away of that 
 power and responsibility which my best ambition is to use, 
 and to use for good. My own feelings, then, are these : 
 whatever value I might set on the affection in question, 
 however urgent might be my duty to adhere to it, ion 
 
 to that duty would and must mean for me a practical
 
 3/8 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 renunciation of nearly all others. Whether, as a fact, this 
 affection still continues to influence me, I think you need 
 not ask. To deny a feeling to which one has once owned, 
 when the person who excited it has done nothing to de- 
 serve ill of one, goes to one's heart as an act of treachery. 
 If the thing has happened it has happened, but one may be 
 spared speaking about it.' 
 
 Miss Consuelo Burton here turned towards him with a 
 slow melancholy movement, and looked him in the face 
 with eyes that were now quite tearless. She seemed by her 
 helpless silence to be expecting him to say more. 
 
 'Do you understand,' he went on, 'what it is that I 
 wish to know ? She, unless something intervenes to pre- 
 vent it, will be married in a fortnight's time to a husband 
 she does not care for. I do not know if, under any cir- 
 cumstances, she would break this marriage off ; but I do 
 know that, owing to me, it has become hopelessly distaste- 
 ful to her. Is it my duty to offer myself to her unreservedly, 
 so that if she choose to accept me she may ? I ask you this 
 because I feel that I should be nearer you if I left you for 
 the sake of duty, than if, concealing the truth, I won you 
 and possessed you in spite of it.' 
 
 ' You must let me think,' she said. ' I will tell you to- 
 morrow evening. Listen,' she exclaimed, 'the others are 
 coming this way ! ' And with a violent effort changing her 
 whole manner, and forcing her lips to wear a conventional . 
 smile, ' Come,' she said, ' let us go and meet them. We 
 have talked of this long enough ; and you promised that 
 this afternoon you would take them all to some place — 
 where was it ? I can remember nothing.'
 
 chaf. vii. WAITING FOR JUDGMENT 379 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 WAITING FOR JUDGMENT. 
 
 Carew, having made his confession, felt in one way more 
 at his ease ; though it was the ease combined with the 
 prostration that succeeds some operation of surgery. He 
 was able, however, during the rest of the day to speak to 
 Miss Consuelo Burton without any signs of embarrassment. 
 Indeed, his manner to her was such, and such also was hers 
 to him, as to give Mr. Stanley the impression that a happy 
 understanding was being arrived at by them. He little 
 knew the perplexity and the apprehension that were really 
 lying on each of them like a heavy dead weight, or how- 
 each felt that before another day was over they might be 
 face to face, not with union, but separation. 
 
 The afternoon was occupied with a distant excursion by 
 boat, in which all the party joined with the exception of 
 Lady Chislehurst. She went back by herself for a few 
 hours to Baveno, in order to meet her bishop— the Bishop 
 of Wigan and Lancaster— a prelate who had been but 
 lately appointed to his sec, and to whom she conceived she 
 could give many hints of importance. W 'hen she returned 
 to the Island for dinner the others had not yet arrived ; so, 
 following an instinct which very rarely deserted her, and 
 which she had exhibited with such zeal during her visit at 
 Courbon-Loubet, she summoned a servant and asked to be 
 shown the chapel. Of its own style, that of the late Renais- 
 sance, it was really a line specimen, florid with marble and 
 with gilding, and glowing with gorgeous frescoes. It was 
 seated for several hundred worshippers ; there was an 
 apparently beautiful organ ; and Lady Chislehurst learned 
 that when there was any service the steward of th< , rty 
 
 — an accomplished musician — was the organist. The twi- 
 light prevented her inspection being very minute, but .she- 
 seemed to have seen enough to be satisfied in a high degree ;
 
 380 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 and when the others at last arrived, they found her in a 
 state of unusual pleasure and excitement. 
 
 During dinner the cause of it was explained — the cause, 
 or rather the causes. In the first place, she had a long 
 conversation with the Bishop, and had told him a variety 
 of things with regard to the poor of the north-west of 
 England, which, so she said, he was exceedingly glad to 
 learn. Then, whilst this interview was going on, who 
 should be announced but one of her atheistic professors, 
 who supplemented his lectures at the Royal Institution by 
 an occasional service at the Positivist Church in Blooms- 
 bury ! ' It was charming,' she said, 'to see the Bishop tackle 
 him. The whole was done with such dignity and such 
 perfect charity. I only wish Mr. Stanley could have been 
 there too ; for what do you think, Mr. Stanley, the Pro- 
 fessor was good enough to tell us ? So far as the Church's 
 practical teaching went he quarrelled with it, he said, upon 
 one point only, and that point, if you please, was this. The 
 Church regards sin as an offence against God and against 
 our own souls ; whereas the cardinal doctrine in what he 
 called scientific morals is " that sin is simply an offence 
 against society, and regarded as anything else is a mis- 
 chievous and complete illusion." ' 
 
 Every one was astonished that Lady Chislehurst had such 
 patience with error as even to state calmly so monstrous a 
 doctrine as this ; but what caused even more astonishment 
 was the fact that she smiled graciously as she did so, and 
 actually seemed to dwell on the recollection of its apostle 
 with complaisance. The explanation of the wonder, how- 
 ever, presently came to light. ' The Professor,' she went 
 on to say, ' found me talking to the Bishop about the poor, 
 and that gave him occasion to allude to the view I have 
 just mentioned. The Bishop, you know, delights in argu- 
 ing with freethinkers, and has had many a battle-royal with 
 the Professor before ; and now, the moment the vexed 
 question was touched upon, what should you think he said ? 
 He said, " If you want to compare your religion with
 
 chap. vii. WAITING FOR JUDGMENT 38 1 
 
 Catholicism, you should talk to Mr. .Stanley ; or, if you 
 can't do that, you should read what he is about to publish." 
 And then he went on to tell us of many things which the 
 Holy Father had said about this very Discourse, Mr. 
 Stanley, of which you were speaking to us this morning. 
 Well, do you know what I did ? I told the Professor that, 
 if I could possibly arrange it, there should be a Benediction 
 in this chapel to-morrow, and that Mr. Stanley should give 
 us a short sermon upon the very point that was at issue.' 
 
 Carew looked across the table at Miss Consuelo Burton, 
 in remembrance of a look which, on a similar occasion, had 
 passed between them at dinner at Courbon-Loubet ; but 
 the slight smile that was again exchanged between them had 
 little mirth in it, and no mockery. Even the others, though 
 experiencing the peculiar pleasure which titillates the mind 
 when any one does anything specially characteristic, were 
 inclined to hear Lady Chislehurst's scheme with interest. 
 
 'You must remember, Mr. Stanley,' she went on, seeing 
 that he did not speak, ' that you are a member of our Society 
 for the discussion and discovery of truth ; and I think you 
 owe it to all of us, merely on that ground, to let us have the 
 benefit of your wisdom at this unexpected meeting. If you 
 will do what I suggest I can answer for it that the Professor 
 will be present, and he will bring with him no less person 
 than Mr. Humbert Spender, who, as the Bishop said to me 
 afterwards, has, of all unbelieving philosophers, done most 
 harm to the cause of Truth.' 
 
 Mr. Stanley was quite silent for a moment or two, and 
 his face seemed to have le>s expression than usual. The 
 reason was that, much as he respected Lady Chislehurst, he 
 could not help, as has been said before, being amused at 
 her, and he was now suppressing a smile at her ultra- 
 piscopal activity. No sooner, however, had he quieted 
 his rebellious muscles, than he said, with perfe< I gravity :- 
 
 'It is hardly fair on a preacher to ask, at a minute's 
 notice, for a philosophical sermon. Pious advice, no doubt, 
 we can always give ; but arguments are things whose power
 
 382 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 of touching others depends much on their careful and pre- 
 pared arrangement ; and the best reasoner, if he has to act 
 in a hurry, may hardly be able to be more cogent than the 
 worst. My notes, however, I think are in such order that 
 I might put together, into the form of a suitable sermon, a 
 few of the main points to which I conclude the Bishop 
 alludes, and about which I certainly did have some conver- 
 sation with his Holiness.' 
 
 ' I'm sure you could do so, Mr. Stanley,' Lady Chisle- 
 hurst exclaimed with enthusiasm. ' Think what a blessine 
 such a sermon might be, if only heard by men when in a 
 mood that laid them open to conviction.' 
 
 ' A modern philosopher,' said Mr. Stanley, ' is, I am 
 afraid, not so easily converted. But it can do him no 
 harm to hear the opposite side of the question.' 
 
 'Well,' said Lady Chislehurst to Carew as, at the close 
 of the evening, they were all preparing to re-embark for 
 Baveno, ' I will let these gentlemen know about to-morrow's 
 service, and I've not the least doubt that they will be part 
 of our congregation.' 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF RENOVATION. 
 
 The following day the Harleys, Lord Aiden, and Mr. 
 Stanley appeared at the Island, during the morning, as 
 they had done before ; but there were no Miss Burtons 
 and there was no Lady Chislehurst. Lady Chislehurst 
 would not come till the afternoon, being busy at Baveno 
 with beating up a congregation ; whilst the eldest Miss 
 Burton, who had been nursing a slight cold, thought it 
 best to wait and come over with her ; and both her sisters 
 decided to do the same. 
 
 To Carew this was half a relief and half a disappointment. 
 As the hour drew near when he was to receive an answer
 
 chap. viii. THE GOSPEL OF RENOVATION 383 
 
 the sense of suspense became more and more pressing, and 
 produced, as is common in such cases, a miserable mixture 
 of exhaustion and utter restlessness. 
 
 The day wore slowly on, and the afternoon was matur- 
 ing, when at last the chapel bell began a monotonous 
 tinkle, and two boats could be seen making their way 
 towards the Island. Carew, glad of anything that de- 
 manded exertion, went down to meet them. His own 
 friends had just landed when he arrived, and Lady Chisle- 
 hurst, like an angel at the gate of Paradise, was watching the 
 debarcation from a second boat of a party of men, with a 
 lady or two, who, she felt persuaded, were all of them on 
 the eve of conversion. She at once introduced to Carew 
 the Professor and the Philosopher — both of them men with 
 a certain grim refinement in their faces, and a mixed air in 
 their dress of deference for convention and contempt of it. 
 The others she merely included in a gracious and com- 
 prehensive smile, naming Carew to them, who replied 
 by raising his hat, and at once proceeded to lead the way 
 to the Villa. He had no opportunity, even had he desired 
 one, of exchanging more than a moment's greeting with 
 Miss Consuelo Burton till they were all of them passing 
 into the chapel down a long corridor, and even then there 
 was time for only a single sentence. It so happened that 
 she was walking behind the others, and when, on arriving at 
 the chapel-door, Carew stood holding aside a curtain, she 
 turned to him as she passed, with eyes as frank as a sister's, 
 and yet with a something in them which a sister's could 
 never have, and said : — 
 
 ' I will tell you this evening what yesterday I promised 
 I would tell you.' 
 
 A few minutes later the service had begun, and the 
 representatives of modern thought were wondering when it 
 would end. To their clear and masculine intelligences it 
 was indeed a melancholy thing to see men and women in 
 this grand scientific century bowing to a Power who was 
 nothing but a nursery dream, gravely lighting ridiculous
 
 384 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 rows of candles, and asking the heroine of a nursery fable 
 to pray for them ; whilst the whole ceremony was led by a 
 man who, though they had reason to believe him a sane 
 and even accurate thinker, was now posing before them 
 dressed up like a harlequin. They sniffed the incense as 
 though it were an effluvium from some moral sewer ; and 
 the note of reverence and contrite humility which, in the 
 music and the immemorial Latin, sounded through the 
 whole liturgy, was to their ears as irrational as a chorus of 
 cats at midnight. They bore their trial, however, with a 
 very creditable patience ; and at last it came to an end, and 
 Mr. Stanley mounted the pulpit. 
 
 A perfect silence at once reigned through the chapel. 
 There was not a whisper, not a foot nor a book was 
 shuffled. 
 
 1 1 will take,' he began, with an absence of convention- 
 ality which at once fixed and increased the curious expec- 
 tation of his hearers — ' / will take for my text these verses from 
 the General Epistle of St. James. 
 
 '"Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for the 
 miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, 
 and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver 
 is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against 
 you, and ye shall eat your flesh as it were fire. . . . Behold 
 the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, 
 which is of you kept by fraud, and crieth ; and the cries of 
 them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the 
 Lord of Sabaoth. 
 
 ' " If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily 
 food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye 
 warmed and filled ; notwithstanding ye give them not those 
 things needful to the body, what doth it profit? 
 
 ' " To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, 
 to him it is sin." 
 
 ' / take,' proceeded Mr. Stanley, ' these verses for my 
 text because I can think of no others that deal so directly 
 with the heart of that special subject which I have been
 
 chap. vni. THE GOSPEL OF RENOVATION ^g, 
 
 asked to speak about this afternoon. That sit '>/Wt is familiar 
 I believe, to all who are now listening to me. It is the 
 chief subject which divides modern thought, and you all 
 entertain about it certain special doubts and opinions. T'o 
 make clearness doubly clear, I will define it in few words, so 
 that you all may see at starting that you and 1 have the same 
 things in our minds. 
 
 ' The subject, then, is the nature of virtue, or duty, or 
 goodness, or -whatever we like to call the conduct and the 
 moral condition which is held to be most desirable and most 
 admirable in a man and in a citizen. And this virtue — 
 pray remember this, for the -whole discussion hinges on it 
 — we have to look at in two lights : first, as conduct, which 
 7ce desire that citizens should practise ; and, secondly, as 
 conduct which citizens can b: induced to practise. Why do -we 
 wish them to be virtuous ? How are they to be persuaded 
 to be virtuous ? Tor, as -we all know, it is not easy to 
 be so. 
 
 ' These two questions arc at the bottom of all human 
 problems, not for the Christian world only, but equally for 
 those who cast all religion aside and only busy themselves -with 
 political and social improvement. And they require discussion 
 Mainly for this reason, that at the present day two answers 
 are offered to them -which are thought to be, and which certainly 
 seem to be, contradictory. 
 
 ' The first answer is an answer we have inherited from 
 our fathers. It is the traditional answer of the Church and 
 of the Age of Faith, and is associated with prayers, sacraments, 
 dogmas, and so forth. The second is supposed to be the great 
 discovery of the age of Science and of Reason. 
 
 f I will sum them up both briefly. The first is, that 
 virtue and duty have for their object God, and that our in- 
 ducement to practise them is the desire to please God and 
 the fear of offending Him. The second answer is, that their 
 object is our fellow-man and the health of the social organism : 
 whilst our inducement to practise them is in part the constant 
 prompting or teasing of the tribal instinct, or conscience, and 
 
 cc
 
 386 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 in part our own sympathies, and dread of the disapproval 
 of others, aided by a glow of emotion consequent on the con- 
 templation of idealised Humanity. I presume that you desire 
 vie to co)itrast these two answers, and show you ho7C>, as a 
 Catholic, I would either vindicate the former against the 
 latter, or else reconcile the two. 
 
 1 Let me begin, then, with the second answer— the answer 
 universally given by that modern science which all over 
 the world is said to be supplanting with its simple and 
 demonstrated truths the misleading fables and superstitions 
 of 7chat is commonly called religion. For I have something 
 very decided to say to those who consider this answer satis- 
 factory. 1 have to say to them, deniers of Christianity as 
 they are, that 1 not only think their answer has strong 
 claims on our attention, but, within limits, I think it entii'ely 
 true. 
 
 ' To show you that I speak of it with my eyes open, I 
 will state it a little more at length. The scientific moralist 
 of to-day, then, tells us that an act is virtuous because in 
 proportion as such acts arc practised the sum of human 
 happiness is maintained or increased ; and that an act is 
 evil or sinful, not because our own souls are sullied by it, 
 but because in proportion as such acts are practised sorrow 
 and suffering eventually develop themselves amongst others. 
 One of the most popular and gifted exponents of this theory 
 — / am referring to George Eliot — has explicitly contrasted, 
 as objects and ends of virtue, personal perfection and holi- 
 ness, which is pointed out as a false object, with " those 
 material processes by which the world is kept habitable " — 
 these latter being held up as the true object ; or, to quote a 
 more comprehensive phrase from the same authority, virtue 
 refers and only can refer to, is tested and only can be tested 
 by, its reference to " that great cause by which suffering is 
 to be made to cease out of the world." Thus, the only sin 
 which we can commit against ourselves consists in making 
 ourselves less efficient members of society ; and the whole 
 body of acts which we call sins generally ivould cease to be
 
 chap. Tin. THE GOSPEL OF RENOVATION 3S7 
 
 sins, would be virtuous or else indifferent, if other human 
 beings would thrive no worse in co7isequencc of them. This 
 theory, it is claimed by those who sjipport it, sets virtue 
 on a solid and scientific basis ; and by freeing it from its 
 supposed connectioti with a fantastic and unreal object, makes 
 it incalculably more efficacious in promoting its object in 
 reality. 
 
 ' / think that, so far as such a matter can be explained 
 in a few words, I have described this theory fairly, and 
 shown that I appreciate 'what are its salient points. And I 
 repeat, what has possibly been a surprise to some of you, 
 that within limits I think it entirely true, and I think it not 
 only true, but a truth newly discovered. I will only in pass- 
 ing make one criticism, which I shall return to by-aud-bv, 
 but which at present I will simply indicate. 1 wish to say 
 that there is a certain class of acts, of forbearances, and 
 conditions of the soul, which the Church and religious people 
 generally regard as virtues, but which this theory can neither 
 explain, enjoin, nor make room for. The state called holi- 
 ness is an example of the virtues I refer to, or rather, it 
 may be said to be a name that comprises all of them. But 
 I merely mention this point as one I shall recur to by -and- by. 
 For the present I waive it. I will put these virtues aside, 
 as though they were not virtues at all, and speak merely of 
 those that are left, as if they were the only virtues existing 
 for us : and they do indeed comprise by far the larger part of 
 them. 
 
 ' With regard, then, to this great body of practical vir- 
 tues, such as honesty, uprightness, temperance, justice, self- 
 control, unselfishness— 'with regard, I say, to this great body 
 of virtues, and the moral code that enjoins them, I fully and 
 frankly admit, as a Catholic and Catholic priest, that the 
 modern explanation of them is not only ingenious but true. 
 I am prepared to admit that the test and the justification 
 virtue is its tendency to maintain and promote the general 
 'well-being of the social organism— the improvement and 
 perpetuation of this human race of curs on the surface of 
 
 c c 2
 
 388 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 this planet. I say I admit this explanation. I do more 
 than admit it: I welcome it, and I do so in spite of a con- 
 sideration which some of you might perhaps think would 
 stagger me. I told you that I recognised it as not only true 
 but new — a new discovery. I recognise further that the 
 discovery has been made outside the Church, and mainly 
 by men hostile to the Church, and I do not welcome it one 
 whit the less for that. 
 
 ' Let me ask you to bear this last statement of mine in 
 your minds — a startling statement to non-Catholics, coming 
 from a Catholic priest — ivhitst I make what at first may 
 strike you as a fantastic and meaningless digression, 
 
 ' The doctrine of Transubstantiation, as taught by the 
 Catholic Church, is regarded generally by the non-Catholic 
 world as nothing more than an arbitrary and superstitious 
 paradox. Most of these, hoivever, who are now listening to 
 me are, probably, aivare that this doctrine, whether true or 
 false, involves a train of reasoning of the most close and 
 elaborate kind ; in fact, that it implies and depends upon 
 certain of the philosophic conclusions of the most com- 
 manding and most comprehensive thinker that ever lived. 
 It implies and it depends upon certain philosophic co?iclu- 
 sions of Aristotle. The same may be said of other ideas 
 and doctrines, which have been either formally enimciated 
 or are generally held by the Cliurch ; but this, of Transub- 
 stantiation, is enough to illustrate the fact I am going to 
 dwell upon. It illustrates the fact which to the Protestant 
 world may seem curious, that the philosophic system of a 
 heathen philosopher forms an integral part of Catholic 
 Christianity. Yes, let me say it again ; the laborious con- 
 clusions of o?ie whom none of the Apostles had even heard 
 of; wiiose name is never mentioned in Gospel, in Epistle, 
 or in Creed — one who himself knew nothing of God the 
 Son, or of God the Father — the views, the conclusions of 
 this heathen amongst the heathens, are now living parts of 
 the body of the Catholic Church — bone of its bone, flesh of 
 its sacred flesh.
 
 chap. viii. THE GOSPEL OF RENOVATION 389 
 
 ' / must further add this. Aristotle's influence over 
 Christian thought dates not from the Apostolic, not even 
 from patristic times, but from the Middle Ages. The Church 
 remained for centuries altogether unconscious of a body of 
 intellectual beliefs which, in the fulness of time, it recognised 
 as involved in, and as essential to, its teaching. 
 
 1 Perhaps now you realise why I have thus digressed. 
 The relation of the Catholic Church to the philosophy of 
 Aristotle is the type of her relation to all thought and all 
 discovery that is outside herself. Whether truth is dis- 
 covered within Iter fold or "without it matters nothing to her. 
 fust as in nature she sees one revelation of God, so does 
 she see another in the heart and in the intellect of man ; and 
 just as she interprets the truths which the Heavens declare, 
 so does she take into herself and assimilate the truths "which 
 human society discovers. She may not do this at the first 
 moment of their discovery, for the process of assimilation is 
 gradual; but the Holy Spirit, the soul of the Mystical Body, 
 the ' forma corporis,' as St. Thomas calls the soul — the Holy 
 Spirit knows its own times and seasons, and the assimilation 
 takes place at last. The truth which at this moment the 
 Church is beginning to assimilate is, in my judgment, that 
 modern theory of virtue by which its own authors conceive 
 that the theory of the Church will be superseded. 
 
 ' Now we come to the point where I and these modern 
 thinkers part company. J believe that so far is their theory 
 from superseding that of the Church, that it is the Church 
 alone "which can make their theory practicable. In the 
 temple of the Church there is a vacant place waiting for it, 
 and in that place it will help to build up the fabric ; but, 
 taken by itself, as it now stands, it is like a carved stone 
 lying useless in an Egyptian quarry. 
 
 ' Such is my belief ; and I shall now explain it. J'iriue, 
 as we all know, is not only not coincident with our natural im- 
 pulses, but one of its great characteristics is that it constantly 
 runs counter to them. Conscience, therefore, which "we 
 may call the spokesman, the steward, the factor, for virtue,
 
 390 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES took v. 
 
 must justify virtue in a way which shall satisfy the demands 
 of the intellect — the demands of the intellect in its most 
 serious and most searching mood. Noiu conscience, ac- 
 cording to the theory we are discussing, justifies virtue, as 
 we have seen, by pointing to its connection — a connection 
 which I assume to be demonstrated — with the general well- 
 being of the race, or, if we like to use a sonorous and 
 popular phrase, the collective well-being of humanity. 
 
 ' So far so good. So far conscience would be right; but 
 if this were its last word, if it had nothing further to add, 
 I maintain that it would have been right in vain. He?-e I 
 part company with the discoverers of the modern theory. 
 I maintain that the well-being of this perishing human ?-ace, 
 regarded by itself, and apar-t from any fm'ther beliefs about 
 it, is not an object which can so present itself to the heart 
 or mind as to force any constant, any general self-sacrifice 
 for the sake of it. It is not an idea on which the heart or 
 mind can permanently or generally rest satisfied. 
 
 ' The ordinary duties and the ordinary forbearances of 
 the day no doubt become easy to us by habit and education ; 
 but for anything beyond these, when there is anything hard 
 to be done, anything delightful or anything alluring to be 
 resisted, above all, when any continuous meaning and hope 
 is sought for in life, habit is not enough. We want to know 
 clearly on what this meaning depends, and to see that tlie 
 object which our struggles are to subserve is satisfactory. 
 The intellect, as it were, goes into retreat ; fixes itself on this 
 question, broods over it, tears it to pieces, does all it can to 
 see it as it really is, free from all illusions. And I say again, 
 that, wJien submitted to this criticism, the welfare of the 
 race, of humanity, of the Social Organism, of the human 
 inhabitants of this planet, is an idea which can permanently 
 satisfy neither the heart nor the intellect of man. 
 
 ' Terhaps for a generation to those who have first seized 
 on it, it may seem satisfactory, because it has the glow 
 and the bloom of novelty. But the bloom will not stand 
 the friction of persistent thought, which the mind instinc-
 
 chap. viii. THE COSrEL OE RENOVATION 391 
 
 lively will be always longing to bear on it ; and by-and-by 
 a more sober and far keener judgment will supervene. To 
 the eye of reason, unaided by faith, bat aided on the other 
 hand more and more by silence, this planet we inhabit will 
 seem more and more insignificant, the human beings who 
 swarm on it more and more microscopic, their duration as a 
 race more ephemeral, their collective destiny more indifferent. 
 The little circle of personal pleasures and appetites, em- 
 braced by the glance of selfishness, and measured by the 
 standards of selfishness, may indeed retain its hold on men. 
 But this is the sphere not of virtue but of the exact reverse 
 of virtue. Virtue can only be ours, according to the 
 scientific theory, through our rising out of this sphere, taking 
 a wider view, and contemplating the race as a whole ; and 
 that object of contemplation, unless we have faith to aid us 
 the more familiar we grow with it will grow less and less — / 
 don't say only less impressive, but less interesting. Contem- 
 plation for the scientific moralist ivill have an effect the exact 
 reverse to what from time immemorial it has had upon all 
 believers. To the believer the withdrawal of the soul from 
 the vain interests oj the world opened a vision of the deeper 
 realities behind the world. To the unbeliever this same 
 earnest withdrawal may indeed show him that the world is 
 vain ; but it will show him that anything beyond the world- 
 is colder and vainer still. No idea more depressing, more 
 hopeless, more ludicrously miscalculated to evoke heroism 
 or to curb passion, can possibly be imagined than the human 
 race as a whole as it shows itself to the eye of reason un- 
 aided by faith. 
 
 ' But to change listlessness into life, to change contempt 
 into reverence, to fire the lukewarm soul with the spirit that 
 makes martyrs, one thing only is needful— one thing suffices. 
 That is a belief in Clod, and the human soul as related to 
 God. I am not referring at present to the personal desire 
 for heaven or the personal fear of hell. J am not referring 
 to that at all. f am referring simply to the effect of I 
 beliefs on that Idea which the thinkers of the day present
 
 392 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 us with— the Idea of the human race as a single organic 
 Whole, to which we owe all our duties. It is to that that I 
 am calling your attention. I am thinking at present of no 
 other point but that. That is the point to which all I have 
 said alr-eady has been leading up. let me ask you to listen 
 to me earnestly. 
 
 ' Duty to the race, as a substitute for duty to God, is, I 
 say, worth nothing ; it means nothing. But duty to the 
 race regarded in a very different way, regarded as a netu and 
 more definite interpretation of our duty to God, is a con- 
 ception which to us as Catholics is of the very highest im- 
 portance. It does not supersede that duty ; no : it helps 
 us to understand its meaning and its depth more fully. I tell 
 you I sit at the feet of our modern teachers ; I accept the 
 good of the social organism as the formal test of virtue ; I 
 admit that virtue is relative to that good altogether ; I mean 
 by this good of the social organism, the amelioration of the 
 material co?idition of each individual life ; but I declare that 
 such amelioration can present itself to us as a duty, so as to 
 satisfy the intellect and take hold of the heart, only in virtue 
 of a living belief on our part, that it somehozv represents the 
 will a?id purpose of God, and points to issues which reason 
 can not even guess at. The perpetuation of the race, so 
 long as the planet is habitable — which it will be for only a 
 moment longer — a moment only as compared with the life of 
 the universe — this object, in itself so unsatisfactory, becomes 
 transfigured when we believe that God wills it; when we 
 know that some purpose, behind the veil, is subserved by 
 it ; and when we realise that virtue, though its formal test 
 may be its social results merely, is in itself, is in its essence, 
 a co-operation with God's will — the will of Him who holds 
 the stars in the hollow of His hand, and whom the Jieaven 
 of heavens cannot contain — to whom the earth is no larger 
 than an ant-hill, but to whom an ant-hill is large as all 
 infinity. 
 
 ' Once let the scientific moralist see his creed thus 
 affiliated to Christianity, and whether or no he can believe
 
 chap. vin. THE GOSPEL OF RENOVATION 393 
 
 the Christian religion true, he will see that, if true, his theory 
 
 clings to it, and coheres tvith it, and coalesces with it, and 
 
 acquires a something which it never had before. On the 
 
 other hand, let the Catholic and Christian once see his own 
 
 religion assimilating this scientific theory, and he will see a 
 
 practical relationship, -which he may have been tempted l<? 
 
 doubt of suddenly reveal itself between that religion and 
 
 the special problems of the day — between the religion of 
 
 the ages of faith and the problems of the age of railways. 
 
 He will hear the voice of the Catholic Church telling him 
 
 as clearly as any scientific theorist or lecturer, as clearly as 
 
 philanthropist or republican reformer, that it is not enough 
 
 to conceive of virtue as referring to our own souls ' salvation 
 
 or that of the souls of others, He will see that because it 
 
 does refer to the spiritual condition of others it refers 
 
 equally to their material condition also. He will sec this, 
 
 and seeing it, he will find that the echoes of the Mass and 
 
 the confessional follow him, and mix naturally -with the 
 
 clatter of omnibuses. 
 
 ' Let me d-well a little lojiger on this. I can hardly leave 
 it. A man's home, his family, his means of livelihood — 
 these are the chalice -which holds the sacramental wine of 
 his life, a) id if -we allow the chalice to be soiled or leaky the 
 wine -will be defiled or wasted. God -wills that it should 
 not be -teas ted ; and though even in this case, there is hope 
 that in His uncovenanted merer he will gather up tin 
 scattered drops, yet, so far as we are concerned, wasted it 
 most certainly is : and if so, for that waste we — -we — are 
 responsible. If we are responsible when we make one 
 brother offend by tempting him, we are equally responsible 
 if -we make [him offend by leaving him in those wretched 
 conditions -where nothing but offence is possible. This truth 
 in its fulness is only no:,' dawning upon the world. It is 
 the special revelation vouchsafed to us in this epoch of 
 scepticism. In former ages the world was blind to it, and 
 so, let us hope, it did not know sin. Now the Church is 
 receiving the revelation. She that assimilates all things that
 
 394 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 are of God, no matter by what channels they are sent to 
 her, she is assimilating this new truth — her spiritual duty to 
 the material condition of men ; and just at the time when 
 the nations are declaring her to be dying, she against whom 
 the gates of Hell shall never prevail is giving to the nations 
 a new sign of life. 
 
 ' I have no wish to enter into the vague land of prophecy ; 
 but I feel myself not to be talking as a prophet, but as an 
 ordinary man making an ordinary forecast, when I say that 
 new saints suck as St. Bernard, St. Dominic, and St. Francis 
 will find in the near future a new field opened to them ; 
 and for us who are not saints the same field will be open 
 also — the field of sanitary and of social improvement, the 
 field of trade, of factory labour, and the capitalistic system. 
 Through all the sights and sounds of the prese?it day, through 
 tke noise of the terminus, through the hoardings covered 
 with advertisements, we shall, with no sense of incongruity, 
 discern the vision of God ; and when, tired at night, we are 
 closing our eyes in sleep, we may feel that we have laid our 
 most material labours on His altar. Christ, when on earth, 
 learnt literally a material handicraft. The mystical Body of 
 Christ, which is on earth still, will not disdain tke path that 
 has been trodden by tke Son of tke Carpenter. 
 
 ' And now I am going to make an abrupt transition. 
 Having said tints muck of tkat great body of virtues which 
 modern science has analysed, and with results so important, 
 I return to those other virtues which, for argument 's sake, I 
 left out of count at starting : those virtues which I said the 
 scientific moralist could never explain, and which, perhaps, 
 he does not consider to be virtues at all — / return to these ; 
 and having spoken of these I shall conclude. In speaking 
 of them, what I trust to show you is this : not tkat their 
 object is God, and our own souls as related to God — for 
 that, though true, hardly requires proof — but that, so far 
 are they from not being virtues from the utilitarian stand- 
 point, so far are they from being a superfluous addition to 
 those virtues whose object is the welfare of society, tkat it
 
 chap. vni. THE GOSPEL OF RENOVATION 395 
 
 is through them and through our possession of them only 
 that the utilitarian virtues become in any way binding on us, 
 that we acquire grace to practise them consistently, or find 
 in practising them any sure comfort. 
 
 ' I say, then, once more that the service of the human 
 race is a satisfactory service — satisfying the entire emotional 
 and intellectual needs of man — only because the social wel- 
 fare of that race is the will of God. Thus duty consists in 
 co-operating at all costs with that will ; and very often the 
 cost is heavy indeed. Here, then, comes the crucial prac- 
 tical question. What consideration or motive is to nerve us 
 to bear that cost 1 One thing, and one thing alone ; that is 
 t/ie love of God. And now consider this. There are many 
 states of the heart, as you all know, in which the love of 
 anything remote from the world of sensual pleasure is im- 
 possible ; in which any ideal aim, in which, any spiritual 
 conception, seems to us like a dream. The heart, then, is 
 like a mirror which has been painted on, and which cannot 
 reflect the sun ; or like one of the contacts in an electrical 
 apparatus which has become dirty and will not alloro the 
 current to pass through it. In contradistinction to a state 
 of the heart like this is that state, or those states, which 
 we call by the name of holiness. Holiness consists in the 
 cleansing of this mirror, or this electrical contact, so that 
 our hearts may receive the vision of God, may be conscious 
 of the current of His love, and may themselves be moved 
 towards Him. It is only in virtue of their being in this 
 state, or of their approaching it, that we can feel the love 
 which enables us — which, alone enables us — to do and to 
 suffer all things : which alone will give a value in our eyes 
 to all our social activities, in face of the apparent failure 
 surely in store for so many of them ; for it will teach us to 
 lay them in faith as an oblation at J lis feet. 
 
 ' I speak oj practical failure, and 1 do so with delibera- 
 tion; because if there is one lesson taught us by all hitman 
 experience, all human experience teaches us this — that par- 
 tial failure is sure to crown every effort: and however we
 
 396 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 struggle to alleviate misery, though we may do much, we 
 shall never make earth a paradise. There is no Utopia, 
 there is no new Atlantis, there is no Icaria for us here. The 
 knoivledge that this is so — and no enthusiasm, hozvever 
 strong, can in the long run shield us from the knoivledge — 
 would be enough to daunt us, and would be sure to daunt us, 
 if we did not know one thing: that behind this apparent 
 failure there is a power that judges our acts, not by what 
 to oitr eyes they seem to have accomplished, but by what He 
 sees they aimed at. It is in this we have the indescribable 
 and unfathomable comfort of knowing in faith that a life 
 which in its visible results is only a saddening failure, a 
 forlorn repulse, is not for that reason reckoned of less value 
 when cast into God's treasury. 
 
 ' Oh, my brethren ! ' exclaimed the speaker, breaking for 
 the first time into the impassioned tone of a preacher, 
 ' when we consider the millions of human beings around us 
 now, and the countless millions that will come after us, when 
 we consider this mass in its overwhelming aggregate, how 
 little can be done for it by the greatest of men singly ! Hotv 
 shall we encourage and comfort ourselves in the face of this 
 paralysing, this insidious thought, when we are asked to 
 sacrifice things that are much to us for the sake of what to 
 this huge mass is so little ? We can only do so by the divine 
 paradox, the holy and saving teaching which the Church 
 alone can give, which to the Positivists is a stumbling-block, 
 and to me?i of science foolishness, that it is more important to 
 every man that he should do his utmost for humanity, than 
 it can be for humanity that any one man should do his utmost 
 for it. 
 
 ' And that importance to the individual lies in this. 
 Bear with me, such of you as think the soul and its im- 
 mortality a fiction — bear with me whilst I address you all as 
 though it were the central fact of life ! That importance 
 to the individual lies in this : that he owes his soul to God 
 as an everlasting debt ; he owes to God this soul's submission 
 to God's will, and its co-operation with God's will ; and
 
 chap. Tin. THE GOSPEL OF RENOVATION 397 
 
 he is hound to keep this soul pure and holy, because without 
 such virtues he is unable to see God, or do the work God 
 wills in this stony social vineyard. Remember this — / be- 
 seech you remember this: in exact proportion as these 
 virtues are cultivated does the Divine Vision become clearer 
 and the motive poiver of social virtue grow in strength. 
 Hence,' Mr. Stanley proceeded, and his voice, which still 
 retained its earnestness, seemed suddenly to soften into a 
 note of pleading personal solicitude — ' hence we see how the 
 reception of the Lord's Body, together with the preparation 
 needful for receiving it 'worthily, fits us, not only for the 
 repose of heaven, but for work in the modern world. The 
 same, too, may be said of another Sacrament — the Sacra- 
 ment of Marriage. Marriage, as every priest knows, as 
 every man of the world knows, cannot in every case — ?iot 
 only is not, but cannot be a perfect union. The circum- 
 stances do not admit of it. But there can be, and there 
 are, good marriages, just as there are good communions. 
 There are marriages in -which the intellect and the sympathy 
 of the husband and wife so unite as to direct their two lives 
 with a doubled intelligence and ardour to their work in the 
 world, and with a devotion doubled in clearness and in 
 steadfastness to offer that work to God. 
 
 ' Sacramental, too, in their nature, are those external 
 advantages 'which raise the minority of the world above the 
 majority. And this observation brings me to the last thing 
 I have to say to you. You will see that throughout my 
 address to you, I have been addressing myself to those who 
 by position, by intellect, by education, are placed more or 
 less above the ordinary level of mankind. To the labour- 
 ing classes themselves there is a similar message to be given, 
 but I am referring now to the others, because to their class 
 you belong who are listening to me. You are those to 
 whom much has been given. You are those of whom much 
 will be required. And to you I would say — specially to 
 such of you as have not only the gifts of knowledge and 
 intellect, but also the advantages of material riches and the
 
 3 
 
 98 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 prestige of inherited positions — to yon, I would say, Think 
 /i07c>, in the light of what I have just been urging, your own 
 responsibility becomes more pressing and definite. What 
 the chisel and the trowel are to the labourer, your wealth 
 and your social example are to you. Should it be God's 
 will that in the hidden course of the future these tools should 
 be taken from you, you will use whatever tools may be put 
 into your hands instead ; but so long as they remain yours 
 do not be ashamed of them, do not think, like coivards, of 
 casting them away from you. Do not hide your talents in a 
 napkin through any fear of other men's envy or your own 
 heavy responsibility. Use these splendid tools : your duty is 
 to use them. And if you do, in all human probability you 
 will be confirmed in their possession here, as well as meriting 
 the reward of God hereafter. 
 
 ' But suppose that, as I hinted, they should be taken away 
 from you, through God's permission in the course of social 
 change, and should your practical pouter for good thus seem 
 to be crippled — suppose you should lose wealth and considera- 
 tion, or that any one of y 'ou should lose the comfort and the 
 spiritual help of human love, you must not for that reason 
 petulantly cease to struggle. In that case tur?i to Christ, and 
 think of His social condition. He had neit/ier wealth, nor 
 temporal power, nor a wife's companionship. But he showed 
 Himself to us divested of all such helps and advantages, not 
 that He might teach us to think lightly of them if they are 
 given to us, but that He might teach us that our want of 
 them is no excuse for our refusing to do our duty ; that we 
 should none of us say, 'Because I am poor, because I am 
 solitary, for these reasons, Lord, I am unable to follow 
 Thee."' '
 
 chap. ix. WHOSO LOSES HIS LIFE 399 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 WHOSO LOSES HIS LIFE. 
 
 The strangers from Baveno, as soon as the service was over, 
 lingered at the door to address a few words to Carew ; and, 
 when they had done this, they also expressed a wish to 
 thank Mr. Stanley for the sermon he had just given them, at 
 the same time saying that they would not undertake to 
 criticise it except by praising the courtesy and moderation 
 of its tone. They were not, however, allowed to go without 
 the offer of some slight refreshment, and Carew also took 
 them through part of the Villa and the garden. By the time 
 he had seen them into their boat the daylight had almost 
 faded, and the first bell rang as a warning of approaching 
 dinner. The decisive moment now could not be long post- 
 poned. Dinner was the only event that stood between him 
 and it, and it may be easily imagined that, as he did his 
 duties as host, he did not distinguish himself by any great 
 vigour of appetite. 
 
 One remark during dinner, and one remark only, roused 
 him. This was a question put to him by Lady Chislehurst 
 — the same question he had himself put to the boatman — 
 as to who lived in the Villa that had once been Madame de 
 Saint Valery's. It appealed that prior to their coming over 
 to chapel she and the rest of her party had been for a row 
 on the lake, and this villa had excited the admiration of all 
 of them. Carew said with constraint, that he knew as little 
 about it as they did ; and the next moment, with an almost 
 painful start, he found Lady Chislehurst telling him that they 
 had heard some beautiful voice singing in it. Often himself 
 had he heard, with indolent pleasure, there, the voice of 
 Madame de Saint Valery — of Miss CapePs cousin. 
 
 At last the meal was over, and the whole party, having 
 risen, prepared, as on former occasions, to take a stroll 
 along the terraces. Hitherto Carew, when seeking to speak 
 to Miss Consuclo Burton in private, had been content to
 
 400 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 wait till a tete-a-tete should arrange itself naturally ; but now, 
 almost without any attempt at concealment, he went up to 
 her, as she stood not far from her sisters, and said in a low 
 voice to her : — 
 
 ' Will you now tell me your decision ? ' 
 
 Quietly, but without hesitation, she detached herself from 
 those near her, and slowly walked away at Carew's side into 
 the dimness. As soon as they were well out of ear-shot and 
 observation of the others : — 
 
 ' Well,' he said, ' I am waiting. Consuelo, are you going 
 to tell me ? ' 
 
 ' I am,' she said. ' I have thought it all over. I ought 
 not to have taken so long in deciding. I ought not to have 
 felt the trouble I have felt in doing so. But my mind was 
 made up last night, after I left you — late last night ; and 
 what we have heard this afternoon in chapel has confirmed 
 me in my decision. As to what you do, I can of course 
 advise you only ; but as to what I myself must do, I can 
 only follow my conscience.' 
 
 'Tell me,' said Carew — 'tell me what you advise me.' 
 
 ' First,' she said gently, ' let me tell you one thing. You 
 have conveyed to me as clearly as if you had used many 
 more words what you feel for me ; and I believe you — I trust 
 you. I ' — and here her voice grew low and tremulous — 
 ' I, if I followed my impulse, should try to make some reply 
 to you. But why should I now? It is better not to express 
 a feeling which most probably one will have to renounce for 
 ever.' 
 
 ' Never ! ' exclaimed Carew, with a sudden passionate 
 energy. ' Consuelo, I can never renounce you. My life 
 will be blind without you.' 
 
 ' You are wrong,' she said. ' If you renounce me in the 
 same spirit as that in which I renounce you, your blindness 
 — if you are blinded — will be a blindness more clear than 
 sight. Listen. I am going to speak very plainly. My 
 advice is going to be of the most plain and practical kind. 
 If your conduct towards the person you spoke of yesterday
 
 chap. ix. WHOSO LOSES HIS LIFE 4.OE 
 
 has been such as I understand it to have been — and I am 
 perfectly sure I did not understand you wrongly, for women 
 in such matters have a very quick instinct — you owe that 
 person a debt which you are bound to pay, or at all events 
 to offer to pay. In spite of any sacrifice it may entail on 
 you, in spite of any loss of the power and influence that you 
 yourself are so anxious to use for good, you are bound by 
 honour and duty to go to her and offer yourself in marriage 
 to her. If she accepts you, and if you act to her after your 
 marriage as truly as you did in going back to her and 
 marrying her, you will have chosen a higher life, even should 
 your external influence be lessened, than you would have if, 
 by doing a wrong to her, you had retained the power of 
 making that influence larger.' 
 
 ' And suppose,' said Carew, ' that my offer is rejected ? ' 
 
 ' In that case,' said Miss Consuelo Burton, ' you at any 
 rate will have done your duty. So far as she is concerned 
 you will be free ; and then, perhaps, you may find one who, 
 though not better herself, is able to help you better. Else, 
 else — what shall I say ? — you will have made your sacrifice ; 
 and believe me, believe me in this : I too shall have made 
 mine. Write to her, go to her. Lose no time about it ; 
 and when you know her answer, either send me your fare- 
 well, or come back to me.' Then looking at him, with a 
 faint smile on her face, ' Do it,' she said, 'at once. Write 
 this very night— the moment that I am gone. If you put 
 the duty off you will persuade yourself that it is fantastic and 
 unreal. That is the way that lives are lost and wasted. 1 >o 
 this duty, and you will soon see that it is real enough. It 
 will have made a different man of you. Remember that. 
 Now come ; let us go back to the others.' 
 
 That evening, however, Carew wrote nothing. W 
 his guests were gone he tried to compose a letter, but after 
 a moment's attempt he pushed the paper away from him ; 
 and a little later, alone in a light boat, he v.. is floating out 
 on the lake, over the wavering reflections of the mountains. 
 
 The lights of Baveno were glittering at him out of the 
 
 1) I)
 
 402 
 
 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 distance, and he knew that by this time Miss Consuelo 
 Burton must be nearing them. He could not bear them. 
 They seemed like eyes watching him. He longed to escape 
 into the darkness and there settle his future. All of a 
 sudden there came back into his mind Lady Chislehurst's 
 mention at dinner of the villa of Madame de Saint Valery, 
 and the singer's voice that issued from it. He hardly knew 
 what impulse prompted him, but he turned the head of his 
 boat at once in that direction, and with vigorous strokes of 
 the oar was soon moving towards it. 
 
 Before long the Baveno lights were lost ; a dark pro- 
 montory had eclipsed them, then another came into sight, 
 and another ; and then a third, with the night caught in its 
 gardens, and sprinkled through all their foliage with waver- 
 ing flakes of moonlight. There were the villas, visible only 
 by peeps, seeming to sleep softly. Their windows were 
 dark ; they meant to Carew nothing. But at last the one 
 upon which his thoughts were centred was before him — a 
 sudden vision ; and there was something about it, something 
 strange and startling, that at once made him stop his rowing. 
 
 There were lights in the lower windows — windows he 
 once knew well ; and, to his great surprise, these lights, 
 which evidently came from shaded lamps, were— or at least 
 he thought they were — of a delicate and peculiar carnation 
 colour. It was the favourite colour of Madame de Saint 
 Valery ; and her taste seemed to have been inherited by the 
 present occupant of the villa. The sight, as if by magic, 
 made the past present to him. Memories rose and came 
 hovering round him from the bosom of the lake, from the 
 statues, from the flower-beds, from the bright interior ; and 
 he thought of the woman who, without having made him 
 love her, had often made him wonder why she had failed to 
 
 do so. 
 
 At length, rousing himself, he softly moved his oars 
 again, and with noiseless progress advanced somewhat 
 nearer to the shore. Presently his ears were startled, just as 
 a moment ago his eyes had been. He heard, or thought he
 
 chap. ix. WHOSO LOSES HIS LIFE 403 
 
 heard, the sound of guitar-strings stealing across the water 
 with a faint elfin tinkle. Again he rested on his oars. He 
 listened and watched breathlessly. He hardly knew why 
 he did so. He hardly knew what he expected to see or 
 hear, or for what reason it could interest him. He was 
 rather acting in obedience to an instinctive sense that any 
 curiosity, no matter how aimless or irrelevant, was a mo- 
 mentary escape from the thoughts that ought to occupy him. 
 
 Watching thus, he soon became aware that a figure of 
 some sort had begun to move indoors, passing and repass- 
 ing before the lamps. At once his pulses began to beat a 
 little quicker, and when presently this sign of life ceased he 
 was conscious of a strange annoying disappointment. It 
 was as if his head were aching and some one had ceased to 
 press something cool against it. A moment or two later, 
 however, his suspended excitement was renewed. Sud- 
 denly in the garden, close to the water's edge, just at the 
 place where the shade of the trees was darkest, a small light 
 with its arrowy rays revealed itself, and then began to move 
 by jerks and fitfully. He recollected that at that place was 
 the boat-house. In another moment a muffled sound 
 reached him, like that of an oar struck accidentally against 
 planking ; and faintly along with this came the sound of a 
 human voice. He strained his ears with an unnecessary 
 and blank intensity, waiting to hear more ; but meanwhile 
 in the silence that supervened, his thoughts, like carrier 
 pigeons, unbidden and unrestrainable, had winged their way 
 back to Miss Consuelo Burton. The miserable realities of 
 his situation were again finding him out. Relief, however, 
 was at hand : again there came distraction. Perfectly clear 
 - — there could be no doubt about it — he now heard oars 
 splashing. 
 
 His curiosity soon was supplied with even more stimu- 
 lating nutriment. In another thirty seconds the darkness 
 of trees and water gave forth a black boat into the moonlight, 
 and in this boat there were two figures sitting. ( hie of them 
 seemed to be resting more or less listlessly in the stern. 
 
 D I) 2
 
 404 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 The other was sculling, regularly but without much vigour. 
 A second glance — for his first left him doubtful — revealed 
 to Carew that they were women. 
 
 Any man who has ever felt much interest about women 
 in general rarely loses that interest even when one of them 
 has fixed his affections ; and Carew was conscious, pre- 
 occupied as he was, of an idly sentimental curiosity in the 
 spectacle now before him. It was not, however, of a very 
 keen nature, till he became aware as the strange boat moved 
 in the moonlight that the hair of the woman in the stern 
 was of the colour of pale gold. 
 
 ' Good gracious ! ' he exclaimed to himself. ' Am I 
 dreaming ? Has this whole day been a dream ? Have I 
 slipped back eighteen months into the past ? ' 
 
 He was still dizzy with this helpless sort of half-doubt r 
 when again there struck on his ears, and this time quite 
 clearly, the twanging notes of a guitar. He recognised the 
 shape of the instrument in the hands of the fair-haired woman ; 
 and almost before he had leisure for any further reflection 
 a sudden thrill ran shivery down his spine ; he found him- 
 self listening to that same Neapolitan hymn which Miss 
 Capel had sung to him at Courbon-Loubet, and by which 
 his own musicians had called her memory back to him. 
 
 Without pausing to reflect, obedient merely to an instinct, 
 he impelled his boat rapidly towards the singer ; and not 
 thinking how singular this conduct would appear to a 
 stranger, he very soon was gliding within a few yards of 
 her, in the mad expectation of finding that it was Miss 
 Capel herself. A glance told him his error. It was not 
 Miss Capel. It was not a stranger, however : it was Madame 
 de Saint Valery. 
 
 She at once recognised and addressed him. There was 
 some surprise in her voice, but not much. It was the 
 voice of one who finds, not an unexpected thing, but a thing 
 unexpectedly soon. Carew, on the other hand, seemed 
 completely thunderstruck. 
 
 ' You ! ' he exclaimed at last. ' And what on earth
 
 chap. ix. WHOSO LOSES HIS LIFE 405 
 
 brings you here? And back to that villa too ! Who lives 
 there? Why have you come?' Then, as if this struck him 
 as somewhot cold and uncourteous, 'Or perhaps,' he added 
 with a smile, 'you live in the waters of the lake, and have 
 risen up to sing in the clear moonlight. This is the second 
 time that your voice has brought me to you.' 
 
 'My dear friend,' she said, 'why should you be so 
 startled at seeing me? That villa is my own. I bought 
 it not many months since ; and though it is quite true 
 that you may not have known that, still, after all, is it so 
 very unnatural that I should be here? Do you think any 
 special reason is necessary to account for it ? ' There was a 
 faint twinkle in her eyes, as though she were gently laughing 
 at him ; but the next moment, growing quite serious, ' I will 
 tell you plainly,' she added, 'that there is a special reason ; 
 and that reason, Mr. Carew, is this: it is my desire to see 
 yourself. I was going to have written to you at your address 
 in England, for when you met me at Nice, like a nice proper 
 friend as you are, you quite forgot to tell me where you 
 were living ; but being at Milan, I saw in one of the papers 
 that you were on the Island, or were expected there im- 
 mediately, so I came here myself, and I meant to-morrow 
 lo have written to you.' 
 
 ' Why,' said Carew coldly, as if he dreaded her answer — 
 ' why do you wish to speak to me ? ' And as he spoke he 
 glanced towards her companion. 
 
 'Oh,' said Madame de Saint Valery, 'don't trouble your- 
 self about her. It's only my maid, and she sj teaks not a 
 word of English. What did you think of my song — the one 
 I was just beginning? I taught it once to a certain friend 
 of yours, who has very likely sung it to you. But come — 
 what I have to say will take a little time in saying. Come 
 indoors, and I will have it out with you there.' 
 
 Carew was silent. He was regretting the whole inci- 
 dent lie had no inclination for a scene with Madame de 
 Saint Valery. 
 
 'Come,' she repeated after a moment or two, with the
 
 406 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 expectant tone of a woman accustomed to be obeyed in 
 such things. 
 
 ' It is late to-night,' said Carew at last. ' No — let me 
 come to-morrow.' 
 
 Madame de Saint Valery laid her hand on the guitar 
 strings, and struck them all together into a clang of musical 
 petulance. 
 
 ' Stuff ! ' she exclaimed. ' Isn't that like a man ! Since 
 when have you kept such virtuously early hours ? You are 
 shy of me. Why are you shy ? I assure you you needn't 
 be. What I want to tell you has nothing to do with me — 
 with me, Mr. Carew, or my wretched uninteresting life. I 
 am not going to weary you with asking any more kindness 
 of you. What I want to do is to do you a kindness myself. 
 Come — please, do as I ask you. You know the boat-house. 
 Go first ; and you shall help us in landing.' 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE CHAINS OF THE PAST LOOSENED. 
 
 A few moments more and Carew was in the carnation- 
 coloured lamp-light, his blinking eyes straying over a wilder- 
 ness of flowers and china. The air was heavy also with 
 that odd excess of perfume with which women who are not 
 on the best terms with the world seek to make up in their 
 drawing-rooms for the lost ozone of respectability. 
 
 ' Sit there,' said Madame de Saint Valery. ' You know 
 the chair well. That's right ; and now let me have a look 
 at you. You are not yourself. What is it that is the matter 
 with you ? ' 
 
 ' Matter ? ' said Carew. ' Nothing. What should be the 
 matter? I am only surprised at this unexpected meeting; 
 and your pink lamps dazzle me after the moonlight.' 
 
 ' If you will not tell me,' she said, ignoring his explana- 
 tion, and rising lightly from a low seat as she spoke-- -' if
 
 chap. x. THE CHAINS OF THE PAST LOOSENED 407 
 
 you will not tell me, would you like me to tell you ? I know 
 perfectly well.' 
 
 'Tell me then,' said Carew resignedly. 
 
 'You are unhappy, my friend: that is what is the matter 
 with you ; and here is something that will show you I know- 
 why. ' 
 
 She moved to a small table covered with ornamental 
 trifles, from amongst which she extracted a velvet case ; and 
 then, seating herself opposite to Carew, and close to him, 
 tapped it gently with her slim fingers. Carew, for his part, 
 thought she must be going mad, and he remained watching 
 her without saying a word. After a moment's pause she 
 opened the case, and exhibited to him, on its bed of satin^ 
 a luminous pearl necklace. 
 
 'Tell me,' she said. ' Do you know what that is? It is 
 my wedding-present for Violet Cape!.' 
 
 Carew started, caught his breath, and stared at her. 
 
 'Ah,' she went on, with a slight pitying smile, 'you 
 see I was right. Why need you try to hide it? You are 
 unhappy because of her.' 
 
 'Perhaps,' Carew murmured, 'not in the way you think.' 
 
 'Mr. Carew,' she retorted, 'this is not friendly of you. 
 Why are you so reserved — I might almost say so shy? 
 Violet Capcl, though her parents won't let her see me, writes 
 to me every week. I am familiar with every thought of 
 hers. You may trust me that I know what I am talking 
 about. Ah — now you sit up and begin to show some in- 
 terest. You might, I think, have done me that favour at 
 first. Well, listen, and take what I say as I mean it. I 
 have made little enough of my own life, God knows. I 
 believe I have lost, or am losing, even my sorrow at having 
 made so little of it. Perhaps, however, 1 ought to observe 
 in passing that I am at last on the eve of reformation and 
 respectability. You'll hear about that some day. and 1 
 expect when you do you'll smile. But we won't talk about 
 it now. What I want to tell you is this. Whatever 1 may 
 have lost, I have not lost my sense of one thing ; and that
 
 408 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 is, my sense of the kindness you once showed me — your 
 real interest in my welfare. You advised me well ; you 
 tried to make me make the best of myself. I decided on 
 making the worst ; but to you I am still grateful. And now 
 the time has come when I am able to show my gratitude. 
 I want to give a little saving advice to you. I am the only 
 person, perhaps, in the whole world who could do so ; and 
 if you will listen to me it may really be for your happiness. 
 Well, just be patient whilst I talk to you, and you will see 
 that a bad woman may be on occasion a guide for a good 
 man.' 
 
 ' I'm not a good man,' said Carew, still moody. 
 
 'Well, no,' said his companion, 'I don't think you 
 are.' 
 
 She laughed as she spoke, pleasantly. Carew laughed 
 also, and he seemed in doing so to be turning into a more 
 promising listener. 
 
 ' No,' she repeated, 'you're not a good man. Still you 
 are so-so. You are better than most of them ; and you've 
 been very good to me : that's all I care for. And now I 
 begin again. You've admitted that your unhappiness is con- 
 nected with Violet Capel. I don't think you have, by the 
 way. But no matter, for I know that it is.' 
 
 ' You are right,' said Carew. ' It is connected with her.' 
 
 ' You are aware, I suppose,' Madame de Saint Valery 
 went on, ' that Violet's marriage with the Prince de Vaucluse 
 is arranged to take place very soon indeed ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Carew. ' I am aware, too, that she hates the 
 man.' 
 
 Madame de Saint Valery smiled oddly and pensively. 
 ' Violet,' she said presently, ' is a most fascinating and 
 attractive girl ; and I love her because she has always stuck 
 to me, and still writes to me unknown to her parents, 
 who have now forbidden her to have any communication 
 with me. I don't wonder at any man's losing his heart 
 to her, and a good many men have done so. But, Mr. 
 Carew, you know very little about her. I know her through
 
 chap. x. THE CHAINS OF THE PAST LOOSENED 409 
 
 and through, and I want to explain to you just what she 
 really is.' 
 
 ' Do you know,' said Carew, with the faintest trace of 
 pique in his voice — ' do you know the history of her ac- 
 quaintance and friendship with me?' 
 
 ' Hush ! ' said Madame de Saint Valery, ' do not interrupt 
 me. Let me tell my story my own way ; and when I have 
 done I think you'll have cause to thank me. Well, Violet, 
 you say, hates the Prince de Vaucluse, and will be unhappy 
 with him. No doubt that's true ; and no doubt, with her 
 beautiful eyes looking sadly at you, she has told you so, or 
 let you see it. Yes — she's perfectly right. He is not a man 
 who could ever satisfy her nature. I want to tell you what 
 her nature is. In one way she is the most innocent and 
 ingenuous creature that ever breathed. She has done 
 nothing that the world in its conventional language calls 
 wrong; and she looks about her, unstung by any self-re- 
 proach, craving for some sympathy which she has never yet 
 found. Yes, in one way you may call her virtue itself ; you 
 may call her girlish innocence itself. She doesn't, I think, 
 know even the look of evil ; and yet, for that very reason, 
 it is in her nature to do it, and do it as ingenuously and 
 simply as she would do good.' 
 
 ' Do you think she would,' said Carew, ' if she were once 
 happily married, and if her desire for sympathy were 
 satisfied ? ' 
 
 1 What is the good,' said Madame de Saint Valery, 'of talk- 
 ing about "if's"? She will not be happily married. That 
 matter is settled, and I want you thoroughly to understand 
 that it is. I will come back to it presently ; but let me go 
 on first with what I am saying now. A year or two ago, when 
 she and her parents were at Naples, she fell violently in 
 love with a certain English officer who had left home for a 
 time on account of a difference with his wife. He was a 
 very handsome man, not far short of fifty ; and many women, 
 young girls especially, still continued to find him dangerously 
 fascinating. Violet Capel at once took his fancy. She, for
 
 410 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 her part, in a couple of days — no, in a single evening — 
 became infatuated about him. Mr. Carew, I am watching 
 your face as I tell you this. I know the ways of a man's face 
 so well ; and I can see that it annoys you. I don't want to 
 annoy you ; but your annoyance is a healthy symptom.' 
 
 ' I'm not annoyed,' said Carew, lying. ' Go on. This is 
 interesting.' 
 
 ' Her devotion to this man,' Madame de Saint Valery 
 went on, ' she made no attempt to conceal. She seemed not 
 to see anything in it that called for concealment. She was 
 as open about it as she would have been had the object of 
 her devotion been a bon-bon ; and this very openness was 
 the means of saving her, for her parents most judiciously at 
 once took her away. They had another object in doing so 
 besides saving her from one admirer; for they were very 
 anxious that she should marry another — a sort of relation of 
 theirs, and quite a fitting match for her. He was a man of a 
 wholly different kind. He loved her with a tiresome religious 
 sort of devotion, and was anxious to think her, or at any rate to 
 make her, a saint. But though she tolerated him and was 
 good-natured to him, she never cared two straws for him — 
 not even though he wrote her verses about prayer and piety ; 
 and she is devoted to poetry, and always saying scraps to 
 herself.' 
 
 ' I have seen,' murmured Carew, ' some of the very verses 
 you speak of.' 
 
 ' Poor child,' went on Madame de Saint Valery, ' it was 
 no thanks to herself that that other man did not ruin her. 
 She would have gone to her ruin with the same look in her 
 eyes that most girls would have in going to their Confirmation. 
 Listen, Mr. Carew : this describes her exactly. She has all 
 the heart of Eve after the fall, and all the conscience of Eve 
 untouched in Paradise.' 
 
 ' Then there is the more reason,' said Carew sadly, ' why 
 some one who can guide her wisely should be with her to 
 guide her always.' 
 
 ' Again you interrupt me,' said Madame de Saint Valery.
 
 chap. x. THE CHAINS OF THE PAST LOOSENED 41I 
 
 1 What I have to tell you is only half-finished. I have 
 described to you only one side of her character. I have 
 described to you the way in which passion or love appeals 
 to her, and the way in which she responds to it. I must now 
 describe her to you in relation to the world and worldliness. : 
 
 ' Worldliness ! ' exclaimed Carew. ' She hardly knows 
 what the word means.' 
 
 'That shows,' said Madame de Saint Valery, 'how easily 
 you men are deceived. Violet is affected by the world very 
 much as she is affected by love — with the same mixture of 
 ingenuousness and what good people call evil. She appre- 
 ciates worldly distinction, I must tell you, with a wonderful 
 quickness, though not always, I dare say, with correctness. 
 The brilliancy of a great position, however vaguely she con- 
 ceives it, attracts her exactly as some pretty thing attracts a 
 child, or as some man she might be in love with would attract 
 her. The only difference would be this : just as she would 
 cling to the man with the ingenuous passion I spoke of, so 
 would she cling to worldly position with an equally ingenuous 
 obstinacy ; and this obstinacy, if it came into conflict with 
 that passion, would have a noiseless and almost unacknow- 
 ledged, but still a complete victory over it. She herself would 
 not realise what the process was, and for the simple reason 
 that she would not look at it. She would think she was the 
 victim of circumstances ; she would softly and sadly pity 
 herself. And yet if any one suggested to her she could make 
 the circumstances different he would find she stuck to them 
 as a snail sticks to its shell.' 
 
 ' But, surely,' interposed Carew, 'the man she was in love 
 with at Naples — there was no worldliness in the case of her 
 fondness for him ? ' 
 
 ' You see,' said Madame de Saint Valery, 'she was only 
 beginning then. And besides, I don't think I told you what 
 that man did. The morning before the ( lapels left Naples, 
 he, seeing that Violet was going to escape his clutches, went 
 off to Venice with an opera-dancer. \ iol I < !apel is still 
 tender over his memory, and his infidelity still fills her heart
 
 412 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 with a feeling that has every resemblance to a profound sorrow, 
 except that somehow it does not seem to pain her. Well, 
 by-and-by, at Paris, the Prince de Vaucluse met her. You 
 know what he is — one of the most dissolute men in Europe, 
 and, apart from a certain superficial knowledge of the world, 
 one of the silliest. But then, of course, he is immensely 
 rich : his horses win races, and he gives dinners to royalty. 
 The Prince de Vaucluse at once fell in love with Violet, and 
 his love had all that folly of which only a middle-aged man 
 of the world is capable. I don't know which to say she 
 was — his passion or his whim. Anyhow, a week after he 
 had first seen her he made her an offer of marriage. 
 Violet was flattered by the offer, and dazzled by it, and, 
 imagining that her heart was for ever buried at Naples, she 
 at once accepted him. Her mother did all she could in 
 opposition to the engagement, and the General, for various 
 reasons, insisted on a considerable delay before the marriage. 
 As to this last point Violet was quite submissive. She was 
 rather pleased, indeed, at having her doom deferred ; but 
 she was fully decided that it neither could nor should be 
 altered. Her future, to her own mind, was finally settled, 
 and the prospect from that moment became the foundation 
 of her thoughts — not of her happy thoughts only, but of her 
 coft melancholy also. Well, Mr. Carew, by-and-by she fell 
 in love with you. The details of that process you know 
 better than I do. Still, I know something, and I can at any 
 rate tell you this — for you mustn't think Violet worse or 
 more heartless than she is. No, in her way she is all heart. 
 Whatever she seemed to feel for you she did feel. Your 
 presence, your personality, as it were mesmerised her ; and 
 all that tender music— tender, imploring, unsatisfied, full of 
 far-away longings which her whole being seemed to make 
 under your influence — that, Mr. Carew, is the real music of 
 her nature. It is as real as the sound the wind makes on 
 an a^olian harp. But for all that it hasn't altered her con- 
 duct. It has not made her seriously even dream of doing 
 so. Look at this,' Madame de Saint Valery continued.
 
 chap. x. THE CHAINS OF THE PAST LOOSENED 413 
 
 ' Here is a letter which I had from her only three days ago.' 
 And she put a letter into Carew's hands. 
 
 ' My darling,' it ran — 
 
 ' Yes, the time will now soon come when I shall belong 
 wholly to him. I mean, as wholly as I can ever belong to 
 anybody. Ah me ! no doubt it is all for the best ; and yet 
 once or twice it was a very hard struggle, when Mr. Carew, 
 
 if I would only have let him But why talk of that ? 
 
 Bygones had best be bygones. His way and mine lie down 
 different channels, though surely they are channels which 
 one day will reunite us as friends. 
 
 ' And now, darling, tell me — have you been to see the 
 woman about my pocket-handkerchiefs ? I want, if you re- 
 member, five dozen of them, with the monogram V. de V., 
 and the coronet above it. They are to be done in five 
 different colours — one dozen of each. The two V's ought 
 to be very pretty. As to my pale-green silk, I have acted 
 on your suggestion, and the train is to be rather shorter. 
 Nearly all my trousseau is being made at Nice ; and you 
 were quite right— it could hardly have been done better in 
 Paris. 1 have done, too, what you advised about my dress- 
 improver. I agree with you it is much better. By the 
 way, your hands are the same size as mine, and exactly the 
 same shape. If you want any gloves, you should write at 
 once to Lang— I mean Lang at Nice. He has some that 
 would fit you even better than any you could have made for 
 you — gants de Suede, with from eight to fourteen buttons. 
 
 ' A propos of the shops at Nice, there is some lovely 
 tapestry at a place in the Avenue tie la Gare, which T shall 
 make the Prince buy for my boudoir in Paris. I told you 
 I had decided in November on having it quite done up. 
 You too, when you are married, will settle again in Paris. 
 God bless you, darling. You must get a house near ours. 
 
 'I am very busy— I have so much to do and think about. 
 The dressmaker is here nearly every hour of the day ; and 
 mamma fusses so, and I have so little time to write. But I 
 must say one thing more. Have you secured Eugene for
 
 414 TH -E OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 us ? I trust you have. The Prince says he is a far better 
 courier than Cirio ; and after our marriage we are to travel 
 for two whole months, and then be in England in time for 
 a London ball or two, and for Goodwood. The travelling 
 — think how delicious ! You know how I love travelling — 
 I don't mean with mamma and the General, who are always 
 at me about something ; but now, when I shall be my own 
 mistress, able to come and go as I like, and ask people I 
 like to dinner. But I must stop. " Violet, Violet." That's 
 mamma calling, " You must come up," she is saying, " to 
 try on this new body again. Come instantly." And I 
 must come. Good-bye ! 
 
 'Your own 
 
 ' Violet.' 
 
 Madame de Saint Valery waited till Carew had finished 
 his reading, and she allowed him to ruminate over it for a 
 little while in silence. 
 
 At last she said, ' Are you quite convinced now? And 
 do you see why I have been so anxious — as a true friend — 
 to speak to you ? I know you love Violet. I know she is 
 just the girl to make a man unhappy ; and you have prob- 
 ably still hopes of persuading her to alter her purpose. 
 Should you attempt to do this you would merely distress 
 her uselessly. I think you might make as much impression 
 as that — distress her and mortify yourself ; and I wished, 
 since an opportunity offered to convince you of two things : 
 one, that you have no hope of making her your wife ; and 
 the other, that she would not be a wife really worthy of you. 
 I love her myself ; but you deserve some one better, or 
 some one, shall I say, different.' 
 
 Carew, during the reading of Miss Capel's pages, had 
 experienced a mixture of the most oddly conflicting emotions. 
 He compared this letter with the one she had so lately 
 written to him, and he felt himself stung by the distinct 
 poison of jealousy, whilst a mad longing, unreal as he knew 
 it to be, once more thrilled through him to make the writer
 
 chap. x. THE CHAINS OF THE PAST LOOSENED 415 
 
 his own. Conscience, too, with added animation, was 
 pricking the sides of his intent ; and yet at the same time a 
 glow of unexpected happiness was flooding his mind — 
 indeed, was almost overwhelming it — as he came to under- 
 stand what was really the situation. His feelings found 
 expression, or rather a natural mask for themselves, in the 
 blank stare which he fixed on Madame de Saint Valery. 
 She could not understand it. When at last he spoke he 
 dared hardly to trust his voice. He put the utmost restraint 
 on its inflexion, and this only seemed to perplex Madame 
 de Saint Valery more. To her ears it came like the voice 
 of sheer desperation. 
 
 ' If,' he said, ' I were to ask her to marry me now, do 
 you mean solemnly to tell me that there is no chance of her 
 accepting me — that there is none if I went to her, if I told 
 her I had a home ready for her, and would take her off to 
 it immediately ? ' 
 
 ' There is no chance,' said Madame de Saint Valery, 
 ' absolutely none.' 
 
 ' How can you know this ? ' said Carew. ' It is impos- 
 sible that you can be certain of it. Nothing but certainty 
 will prevent my going to her to-morrow. This is my reso- 
 lution, and God knows I have not made it lightly.' 
 
 'Then, in that case,' said Madame de Saint Valery, 'I 
 can give you certainty. Violet Capel is married to the 
 Prince already. Don't start. I should have preferred to 
 conceal the fact ; but what you have said has forced me 
 to let you know it. They were together in London early 
 this year, and I was there. I knew what the Prince was. 
 I knew how strong his whims — we will call them whims, it 
 is a prettier word than the right one — I knew how strong 
 his whims were, and how capricious. My fear was that he 
 might satisfy his whim for Violet, and then get tired of his 
 whim for marrying her. Mrs. Capel would not hear cf the 
 marrying being done then ; and this delay has so increased 
 the Prince's keenness that he urged the girl to marry him 
 privately before the Registrar. She made me her confidante,
 
 41 6 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 and I approved of the plan. The marriage took place one 
 morning, and I was present. But now, Mr. Carew, mark 
 this — I pledge you my word it's true : as soon as the cere- 
 mony — I mean, the formality — was over, I did just what I 
 had arranged to do. I took Violet back with me to her 
 people, keeping the transaction a profound secret ; and I 
 made the Prince understand that, for various good reasons, 
 he will not be able to call his bride his own till he claims 
 her openly and marries her in his own country. As for 
 Violet, she hardly realises what has been done. She knows 
 she is married, but her imagination has never grasped the 
 fact.' 
 
 Carew, in a tone that filled Madame de Saint Valery 
 with astonishment, exclaimed several times, ' Can this really 
 be true ! ' Then, rising from his seat, he paced up and 
 down the room, avoiding the furniture with slightly impa- 
 tient gestures, once or twice muttering something to himself, 
 but uttering nothing intelligible to his companion. At last, 
 pausing in front of her, a smile broke over his face, and, 
 holding out his hand to her, he exclaimed with suppressed 
 enthusiasm, ' God bless you ! A thousand times God bless 
 you ! I thank you more than you can even imagine or 
 dream of.' 
 
 Madame de Saint Valery stared at him in bewilderment. 
 He seemed to understand her expression. 
 
 'You think me odd,' he said. 'No doubt you do. 
 Indeed, of course, you do. I will explain it all to-morrow. 
 I can explain nothing to-night. You have so completely 
 astonished me that I really can hardly tell which I am 
 doing — standing on my head or my heels. Let me go. 
 Again, a thousand times thank you.' And offering his hand 
 to her, he prepared to move towards the window. 
 
 'Don't forget,' she said, and she looked up at him as if 
 appealing for kindness — ' don't forget to come back to me 
 and to tell me all about yourself. I too have something to 
 tell you about my own future.' 
 
 ' Yes, yes,' said Carew, with a sort of absent eagerness.
 
 chap. x. THE CHAINS OF THE PAST LOOSENED 417 
 
 ' Your own future — tell me about that. Tell me all. You 
 are going to be happy, I hope.' 
 
 'I will see you down to your boat,' said Madame de 
 Saint Valery, and you shall hear this unimportant piece 
 of news by the way. I,' she went on presently, as they 
 emerged from the window, ' am going shortly to become a 
 respectable woman — that is to say, as respectable as circum- 
 stances will permit of. I don't know ' — and she gave a little 
 hard laugh — ' that this respectability includes much respect 
 from myself. I am going to be married — married to an 
 Englishman. I don't pretend to love him, but I like him, 
 though other people laugh at him ; and I shall, I think, be 
 pretty well able to manage him. Anyhow, considering what 
 for two months — for two months only — my life was at Nice 
 this winter, my life with him will be comparative peace and 
 happiness.' 
 
 ' And who is the man ? ' Carew asked. 
 
 1 Let me see. Shall I tell you ? ' she said. ' No, I 
 think not to-night. I am somewhat shy of doing so. Wait 
 — let me go back to the drawing-room, and I will bring 
 you something which will explain the whole affair to you.' 
 
 In a minute or so she returned with a newspaper, which 
 she put into Carew's hand ; and when he had taken it she 
 then gave him a letter. 
 
 ' When you get home,' she said, 'look at both. You 
 will then know the history. The letter is written from a 
 friend of yours to a friend of mine. You will agree that my 
 friend has given me the best test of his friendship in sending 
 me the most disagreeable things that other people can say 
 about me. I am glad, too, that you should know the worst. 
 It's not bad. You will only think it contemptible; and when 
 you know it, try still to keep a kind thought for me. Good- 
 night, and give me your congratulations.' 
 
 1. r.
 
 41 8 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE FUTURE OPENS. 
 
 An hour or so later Carew was in his own room again. 
 The blank sheet of notepaper which he had so lately tried 
 to fill, and tried in vain, still lay on the blotting-book. 
 Now he seized his pen, which had then refused obstinately 
 to so much as make a beginning with the name of Violet 
 Capel. He seized his pen, and began writing rapidly. The 
 first word of his letter was not 'Violet,' but ' Consuelo.' 
 
 When he had finished he looked at his watch. It was 
 half past three in the morning. He remembered, with a 
 pang of conscience, that his servant must be sitting up for 
 him. He tinkled a hand-bell ; the man appeared, blinking ; 
 and Carew told him to go to bed, leaving a door to the 
 garden open. Before long, unable to sleep or rest, he had 
 glided out again into the chilly and fresh night air ; and 
 again seeking his boat, he rowed across to Baveno. 
 
 The hotel where his friends were staying was dark in all 
 its windows, and the doors were closed. But he was not in 
 a mood to think too much about trifles, and after a great 
 knocking and ringing he managed to wake the co7icierge. 
 The man, when he appeared, not unnaturally was not in 
 complete possession of his clothes, his wits, or his temper ; 
 but an immediate apology and the tender of a seductive 
 coin restored him to his customary senses, and to something 
 of his customary civility, and he received from Carew's hands 
 an envelope addressed to Miss Consuelo Burton, which he 
 engaged should be sent up to her the very first thing in the 
 morning. It was superscribed Immediate ; and Carew had 
 but few doubts that no needless time would elapse before he 
 received an answer. 
 
 And now re-embarking, a feeling of sudden vigour 
 seemed to infuse itself into his muscles, and for the first 
 time since his new prospects had dawned on him did the
 
 chap. xi. THE FUTURE OPENS 419 
 
 full sense of his happiness really come to him, filling all his 
 spirit, and disturbing it with a limitless exhilaration. The 
 condition of his mind seemed to communicate itself to his 
 oars, and tingle through them to the blades as they met the 
 water. Not to the Island did Carew turn the prow, but 
 hither and thither in aimless and wandering courses did he 
 restlessly row himself over the sheets of the starlit lake. 
 Great happiness, like great sorrow, will not at first suffer us 
 to look it in the face ; and his spirit confided its secret to 
 his muscles and his nerves before it was calm enough to 
 confide it entirely to itself. 
 
 At last, having followed an eastward course for some 
 time, he put his boat about, with thoughts of returning 
 home ; and there, as he turned, far off behind the spikes of 
 the mountains, he saw that the sky was pale with the first 
 colours of dawn. There, too, was the star of the morning 
 shining, bright with a trembling steadfastness ; and Carew 
 felt that for him a star had arisen also. 
 
 He did not cease rowing, but his stroke became slower 
 and less excited. On his spirit there descended the solemn 
 hush of the daybreak, which makes all the earth seem like 
 some holy sanctuary : and there came back to him two 
 lines of Goethe's : — 
 
 The woman-soul leadeth us 
 Upward and on. 
 
 The lines came back to him, and remained fixed on his 
 consciousness. 
 
 Meanwhile, on the sliding and glassy waves, that moved 
 to left and right at the touch of his dipping oars, there 
 began to flicker a gleam of faint saffron and rose-colour : 
 and the breeze of the morning laid its first breath on his 
 cheek, and gently touched a straying lock of his hair. 
 
 1 Now for me,' he said to himself, as he gradually neared 
 
 the Island, ' now begins the day and not the moonlight 
 
 the day of labour and action, of weariness, of disappointment 
 
 —the day that follows the hush of the hopeful morning ; 
 
 but hope, with her to guide me, will live through every
 
 420 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 failure, and she will always make a perpetual morning in 
 my heart.' 
 
 The granite steps of the landing-stage were thick with 
 dew when he reached them. The few lights of Baveno, 
 though still bright, looked belated, and the mounting saffron 
 was faint in the dome over him. Having moored his 
 boat, he still stood by the water, looking across to the spot 
 where the heart that was his was beating ; and thoughts 
 thronged on his mind of many careers and labours to which 
 his life, with hers, might be dedicated. Visions also, though 
 he knew them too bright for truth, floated before him and 
 made his being tingle — visions of great works done amongst 
 the toiling masses, of comfort and health invading the 
 fastnesses of degradation, and the fire of faith once more 
 shining on eyeballs long blind to it. The feud of classes 
 he seemed to f see dying, and trust and duty replacing them 
 like a new religion. Meanwhile, in the actual world around 
 him, the morning breeze had by this time subsided ; 
 
 And east and west, without a breath, 
 Mixed their twin lights, like life and death, 
 To broaden into boundless day. 
 
 At length a weariness, settling like dew upon his eyelids, 
 warned him to think of rest ; but just as he was turning, his 
 hand touched one of his pockets, and he recollected that 
 in it were Madame de Saint Valery's documents — the letter 
 and the newspaper. 
 
 It was light enough now to read, and with a whimsical 
 access of curiosity he drew them out and inspected them. 
 He opened the letter first. He at once knew the hand- 
 writing. To his surprise, it was that of Lord Stonehouse. 
 The letter was to Prince Olgorouki. 
 
 ' My dear Olgorouki,' it ran, ' If you are as great an 
 admirer as you used to be of that beautiful Comtesse de 
 Saint Valery, whom I unfortunately have not the honour of 
 knowing — if you are as great an admirer of her now as you 
 were in those days at Nice when she was so much taken up
 
 chap. xi. THE FUTURE OPENS 42 I 
 
 with an illustrious compatriot of yours, you will perhaps be 
 amused to hear something about this magnifico she is en- 
 gaged to marry. For certain reasons, which when he meets 
 you next he will doubtless be delighted to inform you of, 
 he has lost, so he thinks, in the eyes of the London world 
 something of that fashionable splendour with which his 
 own imagination had invested him ; so now, like a man of 
 infinite resource as he is, his hopes and attentions are turned 
 on le high-life of the Continent. Well, there is really a 
 sort of genius in the stroke, not because it aims so high, 
 but because it does not aim too high. Having learnt 
 that Madame de Saint Valery's cousin is going to marry 
 that odious Prince de Vaucluse, he has hit on the idea 
 of marrying himself to the cousin of a live Princess. 
 Indeed, the Prince and he are such a pair of snobs and 
 impostors that, upon my word, they will not pull badly to- 
 gether ; and in Paris, no doubt, he will from time to time 
 still find some impecunious peer to dine with him. I think, 
 my dear fellow, all this will amuse you, because you know 
 at Nice how jealous you used to be of him, and how angry 
 he was when he found our friend Carew talking to the lady 
 under the garden wall. I shrewdly imagine that the bride- 
 groom that is to be was hardly aware then of the fineness of 
 his own character, and how little it would take to make his 
 intentions strictly honourable. There is only one blow in 
 store for him, and that is too tragical. His wife will be 
 unable in France to retain her title, and, though the cousin 
 •of a live princess, she will only be Mrs. Inigo.' 
 
 Carew was conscious of an almost incredulous smile, 
 and then turned to the paper. Having shaken the leaves 
 open, he at length saw the following passage :— 
 
 'A marriage is arranged, and will shortly take place, 
 between Geoffry Inigo, Esq., of 50 Halkin Street, and of 
 the Turf, White's, Marlborough, and Carlton Clubs, and 
 Elise, Comtesse de Saint Valcry, widow of the late Comte 
 de Saint Valery, so long renowned in the diplomatic circles 
 of Europe. An unusual interest attaches itself to this
 
 422 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book v. 
 
 alliance from the distinguished position of both the parties 
 concerned, the bride-elect being about shortly to become by 
 marriage the cousin of the Prince de Vaucluse. The wed- 
 ding, which will take place at the English Embassy at Paris r 
 will, it is expected, be of the most brilliant description, most 
 of the representatives of foreign Courts having had invita- 
 tions sent to them. The Prince de Vaucluse will probably 
 give the bride away.' 
 
 One thing had struck Carew faintly the moment he dis- 
 covered this paragraph. It was not in that part of the paper 
 usually devoted to such announcements, and when he came 
 to the end of it an audible laugh broke from him. Owing 
 to some carelessness, some mistake, or a sense of humour 
 in some quarter of the editorial bureau, at the end of the 
 paragraph, in brackets, came the fatal word '[Advertise- 
 ment].' 
 
 A smile was still on his lips as he slowly reverted to the 
 house, but the solemn hopes and happiness which he trusted 
 might last a lifetime were not disturbed, and did not even 
 seem incongruous as the twinkling light gleamed on it, of 
 one of life's least absurdities. 
 
 
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